Here's the stuffed head of his "homo hunt":
My guess though is, that the tossing in of the rumor of "graduate student" relationship, no names, means Sabar couldn't find an actual lover. Silver prize in the homo hunt.
That's it. And then this immediately follows:In the late 1970s, Smith had a brief relationship with an openly gay Columbia student.
I know copies of the letter exists. The bit about what he wrote on top of this I trust that Avdoyan has the letter as so described. But what is the context of the statement? I don't know. I don't know what else said to contextualize this "‘coming-out’ article." But yes it appears that the "homo hunt" has finally produced a stuffed head. This is apparently a victory. Sabar is a talent writer and a great researcher. Too bad the Letter to Theodore doesn't reference homosexuality.But not until after retirement did Smith attempt to come out.
In February 1989, an NYU dean published a screed against student protesters who had demanded classes on “gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.” The dean lamented that any campus would treat homosexuality as “an acceptable form of normative behavior.”
The article appeared in an obscure journal published by a group of conservative professors opposed to campus activism. Smith had long supported the group, but the dean’s words got to him. “Homosexuality is a way of life followed by millions of adult Americans,” Smith typed, in a letter to the journal’s editors. “Attempts to require adherence to a norm from which figures so various as King David, Socrates, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Frederick the Great happily deviated, should disturb a Dean with even a rudimentary knowledge of cultural history.
“The most shameful thing,” Smith continued, was that students had to protest “to get an honest and complete course on a subject of legitimate concern to many students, faculty members, and administrators.” Equally worrisome, Smith wrote, was that the dean, as an administrator, had the power to discriminate against gay job seekers.
“I must ask that you publish this letter,” he wrote.
Smith didn’t identify his own sexual orientation, but he’d stood up for himself in a public way. On a copy of the letter he mailed to Lee Avdoyan, his friend and former student, Smith wrote, “Herewith my ‘coming-out’ article. I never expected to write one, but I’m getting old and irritable, and [the dean’s article] was just too much.” The journal never published the letter.
My guess though is, that the tossing in of the rumor of "graduate student" relationship, no names, means Sabar couldn't find an actual lover. Silver prize in the homo hunt.
Statistics: Posted by Secret Alias — Mon Mar 11, 2024 3:42 pm