David P. Rivera and Kevin L. Nadal
Academia has a wide-reaching influence in society, impacting everything from educational preparation standards to public policy. The breadth and depth of this impact is largely supported by academic freedom, a basic tenet of higher education. Although the term academic freedom is used quite frequently, there is confusion about its meaning and how it is exercised (Abdel Latif 2014). Contrary to the basic meaning of the word freedom, academic freedom is not consistently used to promote and celebrate the inclusion of diverse ideas and experiences, especially those of people from socially marginalized communities (e.g., LGBTQ people, people of color, and women). As a result, people from marginalized communities have to navigate systems that were not created to support their worldviews. LGBTQ scholars’ response to this problem has been to create their own organizations and theories that allow them to express academic freedom in ways that are truer to their lived experiences and worldviews. This chapter will examine how LGBTQ scholars have queered the academy through challenging empiricism and creating their own queer spaces. The process of queering the academy relies heavily on incorporating queer theoretical tenets into the methods we use to create knowledge and the systemic practices that govern academic institutions and organizations. Using a case study approach, we will use CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies to show how critical theories can queer the academy.
In 1991, the historian Martin Duberman and his colleagues founded the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the Graduate Center in the City University of New York (CUNY). The center has been at the forefront of creating queer frameworks, promoting the study of historical, cultural, and political issues that are vital to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and communities. CLAGS has sponsored groundbreaking public programs and conferences; it has offered fellowships and scholarships to academics, artists, and students; and it has functioned as an indispensable conduit of information. As the first university-based LGBTQ research center in the United States, CLAGS (which was rebranded in 2014 as CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies) has served as a national center for the promotion of queer and trans studies. For decades, CLAGS has been a haven for many queer theorists, from the founder Martin Duberman to Kessler Award winners Judith Butler, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Susan Stryker; to past board members José Esteban Muñoz, Lisa Duggan, and Gayatri Gopinath.
Queer theorists challenge conceptualizations of what is legitimate and acceptable. Similarly, CLAGS has also been a place where people question how we conceive what is “normal” in society (through gender binaries, sexualities, politics, behavior) while celebrating what is “queer” (applauding that which is different while validating experiences of the oppressed). Queer theorists recognize that systemic heterosexism, sexism, and transphobia are embedded throughout society, and that it is imperative to change the ways that scholars approach research so as to not condone heteronormative and cis-sexist male approaches as the only methods of inquiry. This means recognizing that everything in academia, from the empirical methodologies we use to create knowledge to the structure of the tenure process, was created primarily by heterosexual, cisgender White men who use it to promote their own particular realities and successes. An essential component of queer methods, therefore, is the recentering of academia on the lived experiences of LGBTQ people. Doing so can create new approaches to research that reflect and honor their lived experiences. This chapter will discuss the practical and philosophical roles that queer and critical theories can play in queering empirical research methods, as well as a series of associated institutional, administrative, and leadership structures and processes.
Queer theorists challenge the meaning of empiricism (Brim and Ghaziani 2016), an idea that is grounded in Western European philosophies from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With such a long history influencing mainstream conceptualizations of research, the basic tenets and influences of empiricism have largely gone unquestioned. Empiricism affects the nature of scholarly research, the mechanisms that support research, and decision-making in our everyday life. For example, funding agencies often have a preference for promoting empirical research. They rely heavily on traditional methods to make their decisions and to determine program effectiveness. The vast reach of empiricism can also be found in everyday decision-making processes, such as when we determine which brand of shampoo will promote healthier hair. Traditional academic empiricism, like this quotidian example, cannot fully analyze all types of phenomena, especially those experienced by people living in the borderlands of society. From the academic to the everyday, the logic is the same: just as there is not one type of shampoo that leaves all types of hair healthy, the analysis of social life requires a more nuanced approach and perspective. Our example illustrates the wide reach and insidious nature of empiricism, and how it is relevant beyond the academy. Queer theorists question, challenge, deconstruct, restructure, revaluate, and create meanings that attempt to more accurately understand phenomena from the perspective of the socially marginalized. In doing so, queer theorists develop epistemologies that both augment and redefine traditional empiricism.
The work of Judith Butler, a philosopher and gender theorist, is regarded as foundational to queer theory. Butler was among the first to challenge widely held, binary, and essentialist conceptualizations of sex, sexuality, and gender (Butler 1988). The theory of gender performativity asserts that gender is a social construct. The repetitive performance of gender creates and reinforces an understanding that it is a naturally occurring feature of our identity. Butler’s landmark text Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity ([1990] 2011) further elucidated these concepts and even challenged feminist ideologies of womanhood, as Butler believed that the feminist movement inadvertently perpetuated gender essentialism and the gender binary by categorizing and defining the concept. The work of Judith Butler helped lay a critical foundation for queer theory, which included breaking away from the rigid definitions and ideologies of gender, sex, and sexuality by theorizing that these concepts are socially constructed and thus not immune to alteration or even outright dismissal. This opened the doors for future generations of queer theorists, academics, and activists to frame their work in similar areas.
The work of early queer theorists inspired a wave of academics who sought to challenge the historical methods of inquiry that were regarded as the backbone of knowledge creation. The late performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz was concerned with the nature of empirical evidence (Muñoz 1996). He pondered the quality of observable material evidence, phenomena that scholars first observe and later code into “data” that aggregates into a set of “empirical results.” Muñoz argued that manifestations of phenomena experienced by marginalized people are not seen in the same way as phenomena experienced by people from dominant cultural backgrounds. Just as societal and institutional structures were built to maintain and uplift the privileged, the same is true for how traditional empirical methods were created to illuminate the experiences of those living comparatively privileged existences. This insight prompted Muñoz to ask: Can traditional empirical methods capture phenomena experienced by people living with marginalized identities?
Building off concepts from performance studies, Muñoz offers a compelling theory to address his question. It starts with the premise that people who are forced into the margins of society are rendered invisible. If a person is not seen by society, then it is nearly impossible to fully observe their experiences in ways that lead to capturing data via traditional empirical methods. Because queerness or having a queer identity exists in the margins of society and in many ways also exists in isolation, Muñoz argues that its manifestation is often fleeting and does not always materialize in solid form. This makes it difficult to assess by traditional empirical methods and thus challenges the entire concept of an observable and measurable phenomenon. Given the fleeting nature of queerness and observable queerness in particular, Muñoz offers the concept of ephemera material as a unit of observable phenomena that we can use when we investigate the experiences of queer people. This theory challenges the meaning of empirical methods—what is considered valid data—and it offers queer scholars more flexibility in how they conceptualize and capture data from their queer participants.
In addition to queer scholars who intentionally foreground sexuality and gender in their work, other scholar-activists and social movements have also impacted the field of queer studies and empirical methods of inquiry. Ideas from intersectionality theory, for example, align with and inform tenets of queer theory. Just as queer theory emerged from the crucial need to make visible hidden LGBTQ experiences, women of color called for intersectional theorizing of their lived experiences, which differed from the primarily White, middle-class women that led the mainstream feminist movement (Crenshaw 1989). The work of legal scholar and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw and others took an important step toward examining the synergistic relationship between various aspects of identity as situated in social contexts. The writings of the Combahee River Collective ([1977] 2007), a group of Black lesbian feminists, provided some of the first arguments for taking an intersectional approach to systems of privilege and oppression relating specifically to gender, sexual orientation, and race. These scholars called for feminists to abandon their singular, generalized focus on cisgender women and instead explore how gender interlocks with sexuality, class, and race. This approach is very similar to the motivations behind the work of queer theorists. As we consider the current state of queer theory and how to strengthen and advance its methodological influence, the intersectionality framework can make queer theory more inclusive of the lived experiences of multiply marginalized communities.
Recognizing that identity is complex, integrated, and synergistic, scholars are becoming increasingly concerned with developing a methodological portfolio that can capture a person’s multiple identities rather than retain a singular focus (e.g., sexual orientation only or race only). The field of psychology has made a significant contribution in this area by questioning the utility of traditional empirical methods for the study of multiple identities and suggesting best practices for conducting intersectionality research (see DeBlaere et al. 2010; Parent, DeBlaere, and Moradi 2013). This work is pertinent to queer studies in its concern with sexual orientation and gender identity. Researchers in this area understand that sexual orientation does not exist in a vacuum and cannot be separated from other aspects of identity, such as gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, and social class, when we attempt to understand how our identities shape our lived experiences.
Critical race theory (CRT; Delgado and Stefancic 2012) is another framework that aligns well with queer theory; both are rooted in critical theory (Sullivan 2003; Turner 2000). Both frameworks call for analyzing the oppression/privilege relationship on a structural level and elevating queer voices. While each focuses on a particular social identity category, both theoretical perspectives call for the inclusion of intersectionality and for complicating the dynamic nature of racial and queer identities. CRT offers a number of tenets that aid in making a queer theoretical perspective more intersectional in nature.
The CRT framework has five defining elements. These include (1) the centrality of race and racism; (2) the challenge to dominant ideology; (3) a commitment to social justice and praxis; (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge; and (5) a historical context and interdisciplinary perspective (Solórzano, Villalpando, and Oseguera 2005). CRT theorists more commonly endorse an intersectional approach to race and racial dynamics, and they articulate inarguable differences between lived experiences based on different social identities (Crenshaw 1991; Delgado and Stefancic 2012; Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995; Roberts 1995). CRT also posits that while those from marginalized groups share the experience of being oppressed, the quality of this shared oppression differs based on their respective intersectional configurations and social contexts (Delgado and Stefancic 1993). Critical race theory adds to queering empirical methods by offering storytelling and counter-storytelling as methods of describing qualitative and mixed-methods studies. Doing so centers marginalized voices in retelling stories that are typically expressed by dominant and mainstream voices, leaving the reader with a narrative that more closely matches the lived experiences of the marginalized and focuses in particular on issues of privilege and oppression.
Similarly, queer scholars support and promote research about concepts that are typically viewed as pathological in non-LGBTQ communities yet may be quite normative in LGBTQ communities. Just as it is necessary to use a critical queer theoretical lens to reconceptualize the research process, it is also necessary to include research topics that are relevant to LGBTQ communities—even if they challenge normative research topics. These include a variety of behaviors and processes related to sexuality, such as sex work for survival, polyamory, hookup culture, and BDSM. These topics are not only limited to sexual practices, however. Hetereonormativity also influences other phenomena and processes that are not solely or directly linked to sexual behaviors, such as healthcare needs, familial structures, and consumer behaviors. Thus, a queer theoretical lens can redefine “normative” research topics to make them more applicable to LGBTQ experiences.
Without a commitment to queering our research methods, there would be a dearth of academic literature on LGBTQ lives. If scholars in gender and sexuality studies, including those involved with CLAGS for the past twenty-five years, had merely focused on conventional scientific methods as ways of testing null hypotheses, we would have very little knowledge about the social, cultural, and political experiences of LGBTQ people. Participant samples would not be large or systematic enough, resulting in low effect sizes, and few of these analyses would be considered scientifically robust by communities of mainstream practitioners. If previous researchers had limited themselves to measures centered on samples of White, heterosexual, and cisgender men, it is likely that LGBTQ people would continue to be stereotyped as abnormal, inferior to the dominant groups, or both.
The theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that we have discussed thus far can also be applied to organizational structures as a way of queering processes that were created to maintain systems of privilege and oppression. The essence of what we call “queering administration and leadership” entails implementing queer and critical theoretical perspectives in determining the practices that honor and validate the lived experiences of queer people. Marginalized people continue to be underrepresented in positions of power and in many industries. In academia, LGBTQ people make up roughly 1 percent of college and university presidents and chancellors (LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education n.d.; U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics 2016). Representations of LGBTQ people in any given organization, as well as people from other marginalized communities, send messages about who is welcome and who is likely to succeed in that organization. Although representation is necessary for the inclusion of LGBTQ perspectives, we also need to queer the structures of an organization to ensure that material practices, such as recruitment, retention, and promotion, support LGBTQ people and scholars of queer studies. The work of CLAGS and similar queer- and trans-oriented organizations can provide concrete directions for how to do this—in other words, how academic institutions can queer their methods of administration and leadership to be more inclusive and celebratory of LGBTQ identities.
Over the years, CLAGS has offered several unique possibilities for queer methods. First, through its public programs, CLAGS encourages dialogue with people affiliated with the academy, as well as those who are not. In this capacity, CLAGS offers a type of queer education or “queer pedagogy,” as editors Amin Ghaziani and Matt Brim describe in their introductory essay: its students learn not just from professors and textbooks but also from community members from multiple educational backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. CLAGS also queers education for individuals without scholastic opportunities, who now have access to learn about theoretical concepts that they might not be exposed to otherwise. Since 1998, the CLAGS Seminar in the City series has allowed community members to take weekly classes taught by a professor on a topic related to LGBTQ studies. Often, the topic is one that is not offered by traditional academic institutions, such as “Queering the Crip/Cripping the Queer: Introduction to Queer and Disability Studies.”
CLAGS has also reframed the narrative of LGBTQ research. Non-LGBTQ-identified researchers have generally studied individuals who they deemed to have nontraditional sexual orientations and gender identities in pathologizing and harmful ways. Scientists performed castrations, lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and other heinous acts to “cure” people of their “disorders.” It was not until 1973 that homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychiatric disorders. While no longer labeled “gender identity disorder,” the current DSM still includes “gender dysphoria” among its list of disorders. CLAGS encourages research to be conducted by LGBTQ people (and non-LGBTQ people who are LGBTQ-affirming) and to focus on the various strengths of LGBTQ individuals and communities. While it is important for researchers to concentrate on LGBTQ disparities (such as HIV/AIDS, substance use, etc.) in the hopes of addressing, treating, and/or minimizing them, it is equally important to identify the protective factors that allow LGBTQ people to survive and thrive. Speaking more directly, LGBTQ researchers and administrators, as well as those taking a queer theoretical perspective, are more likely to uphold a strengths-based (rather than pathologizing) or assets-based (rather than deficit) approach in addressing and incorporating queer issues.
CLAGS facilitated the creation of the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network in October 2014 with a group of scholars who were interested in supporting others who identify as LGBTQ and as persons of color. With funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Arcus Foundation, and the Andrus Family Fund, the first LGBTQSOC Conference was held in April 2015 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice–City University of New York. Based on overwhelming popularity and a successful first conference, the network hosted its second national conference in 2017 at the Graduate Center–City University of New York. Part of the success of both conferences was attributed to the inclusion of various queer identity perspectives and taking an interdisciplinary approach to organizing, facilitating, and evaluating the conferences. This meant intentionally reaching out to new constituencies and involving purposeful evaluation throughout and after the conferences. The evaluation process was twofold: it included a focus on content, as we would expect, and also a focus on the process that planners and attendees were engaged in throughout the experience. This second piece is often a missing component in mainstream academic conferences. Additionally, conference coordinators intentionally promoted a “resilience and persistence model,” which celebrates the achievements of those who have navigated historic racist, heterosexist, and cis-sexist systems, instead of the “deficit model” in which LGBTQ people of color are usually framed.
Guided by queer theory, the conference organizers were mindful about not replicating mainstream structures and philosophies that lead to narrow inclusion criteria and content that does not adequately reflect queer experiences. The starting point was a reconceptualization of the meaning of “scholar.” Academia has a long history of gatekeeping that prizes the doctoral degree as an essential qualification for inclusion in traditional academic circles, including scholarly conferences. This tradition fails to recognize the disparities in educational attainment for marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people of color. Upholding this standard maintains systems of educational inequities for LGBTQ people of color and greatly circumscribes the range of possibilities for queer knowledge creation and dissemination. To address this issue, network organizers broadly defined “scholar” to include queer people of color from diverse educational and employment backgrounds. As a result, attendees included people with earned doctoral degrees as well as those without one. Participants were employed in traditional academic settings, as well as in nonprofits, governmental agencies, and the self-employed.
The LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network was established primarily because of the lack or nonexistence of queer spaces in and out of academia (Bailey and Miller 2016). LGBTQ people and people of color often find themselves as being the only one in their organizations, as well as experiencing discrimination (Bennett et al. 2011). The discipline of organizational psychology is concerned with the nature of an organization’s diversity climate. Research from this area suggests that a positive diversity climate recognizes and addresses issues that can lead to employee disengagement, turnover, and compromised work behaviors (Goyal and Shrivastava 2013). While the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network cannot directly solve the compromises in diversity climate across all institutions, the network provides a venue, both virtually and physically, for LGBTQ people of color to commune with others who have similar identities and worldviews. In structuring the conferences, the organizers honored this need by incorporating formal and informal time for attendees to connect with each other beyond attending academic sessions. The second conference was themed “Resist and Persist: Empowering LGBTQ Scholars of Color.” The theme was created in response to the many adversities LGBTQ people of color experience. The organizers included interpersonal process-oriented group dialogues where participants were able to reflect on their personal experiences and learn how to persevere in unwelcoming and hostile spaces. Examples of these group dialogues included “Navigating Self-Care, Balance, and Wellbeing as an LGBTQ Scholar of Color” and “Navigating Systemic Racism, Heterosexism, Sexism, and Transphobia in Academia.” Although still in its infancy, the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network and conference convenings have met the overall goal of providing a home for queer scholars who often feel marginalized in their organizations and disciplines. The network has also inspired its members to transport its spirit to their own organizations, furthering the reach of the endeavor.
Organizations like CLAGS and the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network fill voids created by institutions that render queer and trans people invisible due to structures and processes that were not created to support their existence and success. Documented and anecdotal evidence reveals that LGBTQ scholars are subject to heightened scrutiny of their research topics, accusations of being biased in their work, and charges of an overall lack of academic rigor (LaSala et al. 2008). In order to fully support LGBTQ scholars, academia can queer its structures and processes in a number of ways. For example, the processes of tenure and promotion can be queered to include an appreciation for more diverse research topics, methods of inquiry, and publication outlets that may not fit neatly within the narrowly defined dictates that formally and informally guide these processes.
Through the years, CLAGS has fulfilled its mission of being a catalyst for social change. It has allowed people to learn about LGBTQ identities and experiences, encouraged and facilitated difficult dialogues about diverse sexualities and genders, and supported and mentored future generations of scholars. Despite this, there are many opportunities for CLAGS to use its research to advocate for social change on systemic and societal levels. CLAGS can continue to utilize queer methods, while also being open to integrating traditional research methods into our practices in new ways that may ultimately blur the line between queer and traditional modes of research.
CLAGS needs to be more interdisciplinary. While queer studies has roots in the humanities, there has been a significant increase in LGBTQ scholars in fields like psychology, public health, sociology, and medicine. While it is crucial for young LGBTQ people to read James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, it is just as important for them to understand the current state of health, economics, structural inequalities, and well-being for LGBTQ people today. Further, in the same ways that scholars have made efforts to understand how phenomena like intersectionalities or identity development are studied in the humanities, it is crucial for us to be familiar with the empirical methods used in the social sciences to investigate similar concepts. Perhaps the programming by CLAGS or its scholarships can encourage more research on topics in which LGBTQ people are understudied but overrepresented, including criminal justice, homelessness, and other areas.
Queer studies emerged from the humanities, and we will be indebted to the scholars who broke away from their traditional disciplines to create spaces for the illumination of queer experiences and narratives. Thus, it is not surprising that queer studies programs and departments are occupied by scholars in the humanities. It also is not surprising that scholars outside the humanities who are engaged in LGBTQ-oriented scholarship are not fully versed in queer theoretical concepts or aligned with queer studies programs and departments. An interdisciplinary approach can bridge this gap and create spaces for many more disciplines to be involved in developing the field of queer studies. In order for this to manifest, however, scholars need to be aware of the history of queer studies and disciplinary representations when we make decisions about the operations of queer studies programs and departments. Course offerings send messages, both overt and covert, about the topics and disciplines that are relevant to queer studies. If the courses are limited to certain disciplines, this will send a message to emerging scholars about the fields that belong in the family. In this example, offering courses that represent an array of disciplines and that are interdisciplinary in nature is needed to ensure that future generations of queer scholars uphold and maintain an interdisciplinary approach to their work. This must include the social sciences as well as the humanities.
An interdisciplinary approach to addressing issues salient to LGBTQ people is beneficial for several additional reasons as well. First, applying multiple disciplinary lenses to the same issue can promote a more complex understanding of the phenomena at hand. Each discipline has its own unique set of overarching theoretical perspectives that its practitioners use to guide the creation of knowledge. When studying the costs of discrimination, for example, a sociological lens can broaden the scope of impact to include issues on a societal level, while an economics lens can help explain nonpsychological forces that create financial structures to promote institutionalized discrimination. If scholars uphold the queer methodological tenet of ephemera as evidence (Muñoz 1996), multiple disciplinary lenses can aid in capturing more glimpses of the queer experience than what we would capture by only using a singular disciplinary focus.
Second, CLAGS should endorse more empirical research that incorporates queer theoretical and methodological perspectives, particularly to influence public policy. For instance, in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which legalized same-sex marriage in California (and influenced other states and the Supreme Court of the United States), attorneys relied on researchers like psychologists Gregory Herek and Ilan Meyer to discuss their work on topics such as minority stress, sexual orientation identity development, and the psychological effects of discrimination to support their case. Opposing counsel introduced biased religious researchers whose expertise was based on anecdotal experiences and problematic methods (e.g., studying narratives of survivors of abuse and generalizing it to the entire LGBTQ community), all of which were deemed inadmissible in court by the judge. These researchers provide a useful example of how queer scholars can use their positions to have influence outside traditional academia. If research can sway local, state, or federal court cases and eventually lead to changes in federal law, then perhaps CLAGS should also integrate more rigorous research methods to instill systemic change.
An interdisciplinary approach increases the breadth and depth of influence of queer studies on issues that impact LGBTQ people and their communities. The example above is a cogent demonstration of the applicability of one discipline (psychology) to another domain (the law). It also suggests the necessity of interdisciplinary work in creating the most compelling arguments for social change. Without such an interdisciplinary approach, it can be difficult to visualize and conceptualize the connections between queer scholarship and practice-based domains such as the law, health care, and education. Additionally, the most convincing evidence and arguments will materialize from research that is based on empirical methods influenced by queer theory. An interdisciplinary approach opens the doors of possibilities and brings with it the potential for increased creativity and innovation in developing solutions to the most intransigent social problems that affect LGBTQ people and communities today.
Third, many LGBTQ researchers know that there is very little funding—particularly federal funding—for the study of LGBTQ people. Even less funding is offered for those who use qualitative methods or anything not considered empirical or quantitative. Perhaps CLAGS should promote more mixed-methods approaches, or collaborations that would foster qualitative/quantitative cross talk so that LGBTQ research would be more competitive for funding. Many LGBTQ researchers prefer qualitative or observational designs, including the case studies and close readings for which queer theory is best known, because they seem more personal or less intrusive. Funders, however, prefer quantitative designs with large samples because of the perception that such samples lead to greater generalizability. Perhaps mixed methodologies can secure more funding, while staying truer to queer theory in challenging traditional approaches. If more funding would signify more resources for LGBTQ communities, then being open to new designs is worth considering.
Finally, as CLAGS’s first executive director of color (co-author Kevin Nadal) since its inception, I would encourage CLAGS and queer studies to queer their methods even more by better integrating critical race theory, intersectionality, and transgender studies into all aspects of their philosophies. In the same way that LGBTQ people should not be an afterthought in mainstream teaching, race, ethnicity, and gender-nonbinary identities should not be an afterthought in queer studies. In recent years, CLAGS has done a phenomenal job in creating programs that examine race and LGBTQ identity (e.g., our recent Kessler Award lectures by Cheryl Clarke, Cathy Cohen, and Richard Fung) and in maintaining the most diverse board of directors in CLAGS’s history. However, there is still much more to do to dismantle gender and sexuality binaries; to support transgender, genderqueer, and gendernonbinary people; and to encourage future generations of trans and queer leaders in academia.
Queering academia involves a critical examination of structures and policies across all levels of higher education. This chapter offers insights into how to queer traditional empiricism to reflect experiences that are relevant to LGBTQ communities. We also considered how to apply the tenets of queer and critical theories to queer administration and leadership. Queering the academy entails dismantling and creating new structures and processes that will allow LGBTQ scholars and queer studies to have integrated and centralized existences, as opposed to relegating them to the margins, if including them at all.
Queer scholars offer theories that challenge how we conceptualize and analyze our objects of study. Much of this has been in the domain of academic scholarship, but we also need to apply these innovative theories to analyze the operations of higher education so that LGBTQ experiences and worldviews become integrated in the structures and processes that maintain academia as a social institution. We have focused on the legacy and current work of CLAGS and the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network as two examples of administration and leadership vehicles that play a role in queering academia and that also cultivate the careers of LGBTQ scholars. In the immortal words of Audre Lorde, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 2012). And so it is with queerness, as Amin Ghaziani and Matt Brim demonstrate with force in this field-defining volume on queer methods: we need to create and use our own queer tools to truly queer academia.
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