Yesterday, over 60 queer scholars at Stanford University gathered for the Colloqueerium: A Symposium of Queer Excellence. To our knowledge, this was the first such event in Stanford’s 139 year history.
The event was entirely planned by students and postdocs - a collaboration between oSTEM at Stanford, the LGBTQ+ Postdoc group, and the Queer Student Resources (QSR) office. It was an honor to serve on the organizing team as student staff at QSR.1
The day started with a keynote lecture by Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, who was jointly awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her contributions to the development of simple and adaptable approaches to chemical synthesis (called click chemistry). The program also included posters and lightning talks from queer scholars across campus departments as well as a panel discussion on queerness at Stanford.
In her keynote, Dr. Bertozzi highlighted a key tension for queer scholars at Stanford: being both an insider and outsider within the Ivory Tower. We are insiders because we work and study a prestigious university, yet we are outsiders as queer people who face discrimination from colleagues and broader society. Framed by political movements for queer rights such as ACT UP and marriage equality, Dr. Bertozzi walked us through her career, life, and lesbian identity.
Reflecting on her experiences since winning the Nobel Prize, she seemed surprised at the platform that the award has given her. I could tell she is still grappling on how to best use that platform, but she is certainly trying. In the clip below from a 2022 roundtable with that year’s Nobel laureates, the moderator asked her how she could promote women scholars. She turned the question around and posed it to the 9 men around the table. (As a bonus, you can see former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke flop by expressing confusion as to why the economics prize has so few female laureates.)
After Dr. Bertozzi’s lecture, we heard from the cutting edge, insider scholarship being performed by queer folks around campus. At Stanford, queer people are making significant contributions to engineering, economics, chemistry, biology, education, medicine, and more!
Academia is a hostile space for all minoritized folks, including queer people. It’s crucial to build counterspaces (an alternative, disruptive, and identity-driven space for marginalized students, faculty, and staff to exist in community). Many such spaces exist for students, but opportunities to highlight scholarship done by marginalized folks across experience levels are rare.
According to a 2021 study, LGBTQIA2S+ professionals in STEM report fewer resources and career opportunities and more harassment than cisgender, heterosexual colleagues. Personally, I’ve faced harassment at the last two scientific conferences I have attended. In 2022 conference, a senior scientist referred to me as “a person who looks like a man” because I listed my gender as non-binary. Last year, I was sexually harassed by a tenured professor while I was setting up my poster presentation. These idiotic distractions make me feel like my work is ignored and devalued. And, I don’t think I’m alone.
Thus, the Colloqueerium as a celebration of queer scholars emerged as way to provide a new counterspace for queer scholars at Stanford. Yet, it was also clear from our capstone panel discussion that more is needed. The consensus was that queer community spanning faculty, staff, postdocs, and students is an underserved need at Stanford. There is an ache for opportunities to transfer intergenerational wisdom and cultural capital to allow us all to flourish.
And Stanford is likely not the only place with this need for more. Inside and outside of the Ivory Tower, queer people exist and are doing phenomenal work. You’re all doing AMAZING! We all should be able to bring our full identities to the work we do without having to conform to discriminatory notions of “professionalism”.
How you celebrate excellence in the spaces you inhabit?