Subject: D'Emilio Begins at NGLTF
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 18:31:06 -0400

NATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN TASK FORCE
PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Robin Kane, 202-332-6483, ext. 3311
[email-masked]

 NOTED HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR JOHN D'EMILIO BEGINS AS DIRECTOR OF POLICY
INSTITUTE

Washington, D.C. --  June 26, 1995 -- Tenured history professor and noted
author Dr. John D'Emilio this week assumes his new role as Director of the
Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).  On
leave from his post as a professor of history at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro, D'Emilio will lead the transformation of the Policy
Institute into NGLTF's formal research arm.

 Under the direction of D'Emilio, the Policy Institute will actively recruit
the movement's leading theorists, activists, academics, researchers,
lobbyists, cultural critics and others to produce timely, provocative and
pragmatic reports for activists in the field.  D'Emilio hopes to serve as a
bridge between the academic and activist world, distilling academic material
into useful documents for grassroots organizers while also encouraging
research and inquiry into areas needed by activists.

 D'Emilio, 46, is the author of Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History,
Politics and the University (Routledge, 1992) and Sexual Politics, Sexual
Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States,
1940-1970 (University of Chicago Press, 1983), and is the co-author of
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Harper and Row, 1988).
 He is under contract to write a biography of the late Bayard Rustin.

 D'Emilio received his bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees from Columbia
University.  He has worked in the history department at the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro since 1983.  He has received numerous awards,
honors and recognitions in support of his research, including research grants
from the American Philosophical Society, the John F. Kennedy Library and the
Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College.

 D'Emilio currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of
Homosexuality and the advisory board of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay
Studies.  He has served as chair of the  American Historical Association's
Committee on Lesbian and Gay History and as a member of the ad hoc Committee
on Gay Concerns of the American Association of University Professors.
D'Emilio was a founding member in 1973 of the trailblazing Gay Academic
Union, which was an early proponent of gay studies.

 "I am committed to building the NGLTF Policy Institute into an indispensable
source of reliable, useful and necessary information on gay/lesbian/bisexual
public policy issues," D'Emilio said.  "We want to use the wealth of
expertise in our community to build a reservoir of materials for activists in
the field."

--end--

[John D'Emilio is available at 202-332-6483, ext. 3302.  Photos are available
upon request.  Contact Beth Barrett, 202-332-6483, ext. 3215. ]