CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

These minutes were taken during CLAGS' executive committee meetings and are dated February 10th and December 16th, 1990. They highlight CLAGS' development process prior to its institutionalization at the CUNY Graduate Center in the spring of 1991. Both the February 10th and December 16th minutes openly discuss the relationship between CLAGS and CUNY underscoring CUNY’s hesitance to hosting a gay and lesbian focused institution. However, the meetings were primarily devoted to organizing the board and determining what needed to be addressed in order to form a functioning center.

Although formally instituted at the CUNY Graduate Center in 1991, CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies was first conceived 5 years earlier by Martin Duberman, one of the first historians to embrace the, then infantile, field of Queer Studies. Duberman sensed the need for a formal center devoted to queer research. As the first university-based center for LGBTQ research, CLAGS continues to demonstrate its dedication to advancing Queer Studies, by hosting public events showcasing queer research and sponsoring fellowships to support queer scholars. Among its many notable contributions, CLAGS annually puts on at least one major conference and holds the Kessler Award Lecture every fall to celebrate a queer scholar who has made a notable contribution to the field of queer studies.