<p>"BOSTON Harvard University is creating a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies with a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus.</p>
<p>Tom Parry, past president of the Caucus, said Wednesday he believed the professorship will be the first specifically for sexuality or sexual minorities in the United States. The University of Louisville has a chair in race, class, gender and sexuality studies named for lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde.</p>
<p>Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said the professorship was “an important milestone” for LGBT studies at the university.</p>
<p>Gay and lesbian studies is a relatively young field of academic study. The first programs began in the 1980s, and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center opened in 1991 as the first university-based research center.</p>
<p>Harvard students could not major in gay and lesbian studies until the university made changes in the fall of 2003, Parry said.
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