The Homo (Witch)Hunt of Higher Ed in the United States

This paper examines the history, outcomes, and effects of the “gay purges” which took place on the campuses of Harvard, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, University of Florida, and assorted other campuses across the United States between 1920 and 1980. Higher education has long been a site where concepts of freedom of thought and expression have been safeguarded and upheld through discipline in the exploration of knowledge and ideas. However, that freedom comes with a history and a price. In the early 20th century, as the United States, along with the rest of the world, began wrestling with ideas of sexuality beyond the heteronormative and the introduction of new terminology to describe the actions, desires, and behaviors of individuals who, until that time, practiced “the love that dare not speak its name.” An organized effort to regulate those individuals arose through governmental and higher-education structures to install what would come to be known historically as the Homophobic State. University-level purges resulted in not only a backlash towards members of the LGBTQ communities but in the creation of an environment of social hostility and oppression which left, as Margaret Nash notes, “an indelible mark” on the lives of gay educators during a pivotal point in American social history. This now-little-known narrative was traumatic for its victims, leaving a lasting mark not only on those involved, but on the history of LGBTQ individuals in higher education for years to come.