When David Halperin teaches his queer studies course at the University of Michigan, students race to sign up and protesters race to object. Halperin teaches in the UM English department, and is presently wrapping up a fall course entitled "How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation." Last August, the course made the news when Gary Glenn, president of the Michigan chapter of the American Family Association, attacked Halperin's "uncompromising political militancy" and accused UM of "perpetrating a fraud againt UM students and the people of Michigan [with] propaganda statements about so-called cultural studies and academic freedom" when what it is really doing is promoting "queer studies" on the taxpayer's dime. Glenn first went after the course in 2000, and nearly convinced the state legislature to cut off all funding for the course. In August, Glenn exhorted Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, the Michigan legislature, and the UM Board of Regents to "stop letting homosexual activists use our tax dollars to subsidize this militant political agenda." As far as Glenn is concerned, the course title should be taken literally: Halperin, he is convinced, is using his classroom to try to convert straight young men to homosexuality.

It's clear that this is not what he is doing. Halperin's course is a straight-up cultural studies course that takes up the question of queer male identity, attempting to analyze how that identity has been historically shaped, where it acquires its norms, and, according the course description, the "role that initiation plays in the formation of gay male identity." In Halperin's own words, the course "examines critically the odd notion that there are right and wrong ways to be gay, that homosexuality is not just a sexual practice or desire but a set of specific tastes in music, movies, and other cultural forms--a notion which is shared by straight and gay people alike. The reason these courses exist is not that homosexual teachers have hijacked the university for their own purposes; they exist because they convey the results of research which sheds genuinely new light on history, culture, society, and thought." Glenn's assumption that in teaching about gay male identity formation Halperin is trying to create more gay men partakes of the crassest, most phobic type of "monkey see, monkey do" non-logic.

That doesn't mean that Halperin's course is unimpeachable. It's not at all clear what Halperin's course is doing in a department of English Language and Literature, for example. The course description does not even pretend that "How to be Gay" is a literature course, announcing that the materials studied will include "a number of cultural artifacts and activities," among them "camp, diva-worship, drag, muscle culture, taste, style and political activism," and mentioning movies and music as the principal art forms to be examined.

There are also plenty of intellectually sound reasons to object to a course that enshrines identity politics; such courses too often substitute political advocacy for intellectual inquiry, and as such they both betray the mission of the university and fail students who have a right not to be waylaid by partisan politics masquerading as balanced study. (Not having taken Halperin's course, I am in no position to judge whether it does this, but I will say I wonder how a student who believed homosexuality is a sin would fare in such a course.)

If it's obvious (to all but people like Glenn) that Halperin is not in the business of trying to convert straight men to the gay way, it's also obvious that he is very much in the business of using the classroom to promote a "queer positive" view of the world. The course's very existence asserts this by taking as a given the validity of homosexuality, by asserting as a first premise that there is such a thing as gay male culture and gay male identity, and by assuming that these phenomena are worthy of careful study. Halperin is quite explicit about his pedagogical agenda; in 1996, he wrote that "lesbian and gay studies scholars" were leading the way in compelling universities and government "to adopt and enforce anti-discrimination policies, to recognize same-sex couples, to oppose the U.S. military's anti-gay policy, to suspend professional activities in states that criminalize gay sex or limit access to abortion, and to intervene on behalf of human rights for lesbians, bisexuals and gay men at the local and national levels." "How to be Gay" seems in part to be a course about how to be a gay activist. And, according to at least one woman who took and loved "How to be Gay," it is also a course with a therapeutic function, one that helps gay students come to terms with what it means to be gay.

Glenn's criticisms were so wild, so irrational, and so poorly framed, that they drew little more than dismissal from the folks at UM. That was a mistake. They should have paid closer attention to their critics. They should have recognized that even though Glenn's specific objections to the course are far-fetched, there are some very legitimate reasons to take issue with it--it's a nakedly political advocacy course, an English class that abandons literary study in favor of multimedia, interdisciplinary consciousness-raising. Until universities can offer credible explanations for why it's valid to use the classroom--and taxpayers' money--to promote particular political views (and no, I don't consider a starry-eyed invocation of "academic freedom" to be adequate as either an explanation or as a rationale for why no explanation is needed), more and more of them are going to run into the kind of trouble that Michigan is facing now.

The lead editorial in today's Michigan Daily notes that Republican State Representative Jack Hoogendyk has introduced a resolution into the legislature that would take "oversight for class offerings out of the hands of educators and put it in the hands of politicians with the ability to control how money at universities would be spent." The resolution would also allocate funding to state schools on the basis of the number of state residents attending them--a move that would penalize UM disproportionately. The editorial rightly argues that the resolution is "an assault on the University for not sharing Hoogendykís narrow set of values," and notes that Halperin's course catalyzed Hoogendyk's resolution.

What's happening in the legislature has much to do with UM's refusal to recognize that, as interesting and fun and provocative as the course may be, it raises some serious questions about pedagogical responsibility, intellectual accountability, and the proper purview of the disciplines--questions that are much broader than one course, and much more complex than the current focus on a single course allows. It will be interesting to see whether Hoogendyk's resolution will spark the debate that clearly needs to take place, or whether it will simply further polarize mutually uncomprehending and contemptuous sides.

To go into effect, Hoogendyk's resolution would require the state constitution to be amended. It must be approved by 2/3 of the legislature and a majority of state voters.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg is also writing about the problems that arise when political advocacy and pedagogy clash. His focus is the law schools that are currently suing to overthrow the Solomon Amendment, which threatens to cut off federal funding to schools that refuse to allow military recruiters on campus as a way of protesting "don't ask, don't tell." Rosenberg cites GMU law professor David Bernstein's recent takedown of the suit, which is also well worth reading.