The Committee on the Status of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and the Transgendered [LGBT] in the Profession has authorized this review of 17 recent editions of top-selling textbooks marketed for use in courses providing an introduction to U.S. politics.
This piece introduces the four articles in this issue's minisymposium by explaining how they fit in with an emerging body of scholarship that places race centrally in asking and answering questions about American political development. The author identifies common themes and debates among the articles that contribute to understandings of the role of race in American politics and to different approaches in American political development. The author suggests that these articles together generate a new critical purchase on American politics through placing questions about civic membership as a crucial developmental phenomenon at the center of the analysis.
This article reviews the results of a discipline-wide survey concerning lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered in the discipline. We find that both research and teaching on LGBT topics have made some headway into the discipline, and that political scientists largely accept that LGBT issues can be fundamentally political and are worth studying and teaching for that reason. Nonetheless, troubling questions about discrimination both against those who conduct research concerning LBGT issues and LGBT individuals themselves remain."This campus is homophobic. A tenured faculty member warned me not to come out until I had tenure." "Bending over for junk like LGBT studies will make Political Science more irrelevant than it already is." "The most significant problem facing "LBGT" political scientists is the manner in which their lifestyle and activism cloud and confuse their professional activities." "LGBT is a nonissue and I like many others actively keep such garbage off the radar screen. It's a weak political agenda and does not merit any attention whatsoever." "I don't think LGBT political scientists face any problems." T he Committee on the Status of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and the Transgendered in the Profession recently conducted a survey of the membership of the American Political Science Association (APSA). This survey, which asked a range of questions about the experiences of LGBT scholars, attitudes of other scholars toward LGBT scholars, and attitudes regarding research and teach-ing that incorporate LGBT topics, was the first full-scale study of opinions on these issues since 1993.The survey results suggest that one's identity as a lesbian, gay man, bisexual, or transgendered person matters in the profession. Respondents, both those who identify as LGBT and those who do not, differed on how identity matters, with some arguing that it does not. But within the survey results lie debates over the extent and locations of discrimination based on identity and on the way that identity intersects with research. Further, respondents differed on how-and in a few cases whether-LGBT topics and issues should be incorporated into the research, teaching, and service missions of the discipline.Respondents reported experiencing, witnessing, or participating in few acts of overt discrimination or active hostility toward LGBT individuals. Nonetheless, respondents did report specific instances, and identified, and in a few cases expressed, highly negative attitudes about LGBT political scientists and their place in the field, whether researching and teaching about LGBT issues or not. Given what we know about individuals' reluctance to express overtly discriminatory beliefs in surveys, we assume that what we report here does not encompass the full scope of hostility that LGBT individuals and those who research and teach on LGBT issues face.Previous research on the experiences of political scientists of color and female political scientists has outlined the particular challenges they face, documenting a hostile climate...
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