Harvard Endows Professorship In LGBT Studies

Harvard University says it will endow a chair in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, a chair believed to be the first of its kind in the country.

The chair will be endowed with a $1.5-million gift from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus to endow the F.O. Matthiesen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality.

Matthiessen was an American studies scholar and literary critic at Harvard, and the university says his sexuality was an "open secret."

Harvard University's president says endowing the chair is part of Harvard's effort to raise the profile of LGBT studies as an academic discipline.