Abstract Early on New Year’s Day in 2009, a police officer investigating a disturbance at the Fruitvale BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Station in Oakland, California, shot and killed Oscar Grant. The officer was White, and Grant was Black. At every stage of the process that followed, Bay Area residents responded with protests, some engaging […]

 Justin Simien, one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch, is the writer/director of the critically acclaimed film Dear White People, which won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent at Sundance 2014. In addition to producing and directing online companion pieces for The Help, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Middle of Nowhere campaigns, he has […]

Background Recent events that have taken place in Florida, Missouri, New York, and Texas all have one common theme: an unnecessary killing due to racial profiling. The history of law enforcement in America is deeply embedded with a presence of racial profiling, often used to maintain the status quo through practices that were biased against […]

The Protest I was thumbing through my Facebook timeline on my cell phone on a warm summer weekend afternoon when I first saw it. The picture of Mike Brown’s dead body, his blood on the concrete in a long red line. It made me sick to my stomach. My mind started playing the song “Strange […]

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), much like women’s health, is a point of frequent contention in Washington and the courts. On June 30, 2014, those two points converged when the Supreme Court, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, dealt a blow to an ACA provision specific to women’s health: the birth control benefit. i The ACA […]

Mexico has recently seen a sea change in shifts in public opinion regarding LGBT inclusion in public policy. 2013 was the first year a majority of the population surveyed (55%) supported the legalization of marriage equality, and an even higher percent (57%) agreed with allowing LGBT people to serve in the army. Further, over fifty percent […]

The last twenty-five years have seen a near-exponential rise in American acceptance of LGBT equality and in the codification of rights reflecting that equality. The AIDS crisis increased the visibility of gay men, and of gayness itself, in the 1980s and ‘90s. Democratic politicians slowly adopted more pro-gay stances, and Republican leadership used that fact […]

On February 4th the TV show Broad City aired an episode about pegging that sent delighted shock waves throughout the interwebz. “Pegging,” for the uninitiated, is the term coined in 2001 on Dan Savage’s show, “Savage Love” for a woman anally penetrating a man using a strap-on dildo. Gleeful commentary briefly basked in joy: the […]

“Can we get the successive generations to understand that we built this edifice, that this is a 100-storey building built on an extremely narrow foundation, but piled deep and structured in such a way that the winds won’t blow it down.” – Lee Kuan Yew Lee Kuan Yew was a giant revered for his brilliant […]

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) was recently named a vice-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, a group focused on shaping policy issues impacting the LGBT community. The Harvard alum is in his first congressional term and spoke with the LGBT Policy Journal about the need for straight men, Latinos and veterans to advocate for the […]

ABSTRACT This article documents evidence of recent discrimination against LGBT public sector workers by analyzing employment discrimination complaints filed with state and local administrative agencies. We present information about 589 complaints of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination filed by public sector workers in 123 jurisdictions. We find that discrimination against LGBT people in the […]

Christine Quinn was the first woman and first openly gay person elected Speaker of the New York City Council. Quinn is spending the semester as a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics where she is leading a study group on being ‘a first’ in politics. She is on the board of Athlete Ally, a […]