college essays about being gay

20 Must-Read Queer Essay Collections

Laura Sackton

Laura Sackton is a queer book nerd and freelance writer, known on the internet for loving winter, despising summer, and going overboard with extravagant baking projects. In addition to her work at Book Riot, she reviews for BookPage and AudioFile, and writes a weekly newsletter, Books & Bakes , celebrating queer lit and tasty treats. You can catch her on Instagram shouting about the queer books she loves and sharing photos of the walks she takes in the hills of Western Mass (while listening to audiobooks, of course).

View All posts by Laura Sackton

I love essay collections, and I love queer books, so obviously I love queer essay collections. An essay collection can be so many things. It can be an opportunity to examine one particular subject in depth. Or it can be a wonderful messy mix of dozens of themes and ideas. The books on this list are a mix of both. Some hone in on an author’s own life, while others look outward, examining current events, history, and pop culture. Some are funny, some are very serious, and some are decidedly both.

In making this list, I used two criteria: 1) queer authors and 2) queer content. There are, of course, plenty of wonderful essay collections out there by queer authors that aren’t about queerness. But this list focuses on essays that explore queerness in all its messy glory. You’ll also find essays here about many other things: tornadoes, step-parenthood, the internet, tarot, activism, online dating, to name just a few. But taken together, the essays in each of these books add up to a queer whole.

I limited myself to living authors, and even so, there were so many amazing queer essay collections I wanted to include but couldn’t. This is just a drop in the bucket, but it’s a great place to start if you need more queer essays in your life — and who doesn’t?

Personal Queer Essay Collections

How to Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

It’s hard for me to put my finger on the thing that elevates an essay collection from a handful of individual pieces to a cohesive book. But Chee obviously knows what that thing is, because this book builds on itself. He writes about growing roses and working odd jobs and AIDS activism and drag and writing a novel, and each of these essays is singularly moving. But as a whole they paint a complex portrait of a slice of the writer’s life. They inform and converse with each other, and the result is a book you can revisit again and again, always finding something new.

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I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom

In this collection of beautiful and thought-provoking essays, Kai Cheng Thom explores the messy, far-from-perfect realties of queer and trans communities and community movements. She writes about what many community organizers, activists, and artists don’t want to talk about: the hard stuff, the painful stuff, the bad times. It’s not all grim, but it’s very real. Thom addresses transphobia, racism, and exclusion, but she also writes about the particular joys she’s found in creating community and family with other queer and trans people of color. This is a must-read for anyone involved in social justice work, or immersed in queer community.

Here For It by R. Eric Thomas

If you enjoy books that blend humor and heartfelt wisdom, you’ll love this collection. R. Eric Thomas writes about coming of age as a writer on the internet, his changing relationship to Christianity, the messy intersections of his queer Black identity. It’s a lovey mix of grappling and quips. It’s full of pop culture references and witty asides, as well as moving, vulnerable personal stories.

The Rib Joint by Julia Koets

This slim memoir-in-essays is entirely personal. Although Koets does weave some history, pop culture, and religion into the work — everything from the history of organs to Sally Ride — her gaze is mostly focused inward. The essays are short and beautifully written; she often leaves the analysis to the reader, simply letting distinct and sometimes contradictory ideas and images sit next to each other on the page. She writes about her childhood in the South, the hidden and often invisible queer relationships she had as a teenager and young adult, secrets and closets, and the tensions and overlaps between religion and queerness.

I Can’t Date Jesus by Michael Arceneaux

This is another fantastic humorous essay collection. Arceneaux somehow manages to be laugh-out-loud funny while also delivering nuanced cultural critique and telling vulnerable stories from his life. He writes about growing up in Houston, family relationships, coming out, and so much more. The whole book wrestles with how to be a young Black queer person striving to make meaning in the world. His second collection, I Don’t Want to Die Poor , is equally wonderful.

Tomboyland by Melissa Faliveno

If you’re wondering, this is the book that contains an essay about tornadoes. It also contains a gorgeous essay about pantry moths (among other things). Those are just two of the many subjects Faliveno plumbs the depths of in this remarkable book. She writes about gender expression and how her relationship with gender has changed throughout her life, about queer desire and family, about Midwestern culture, about place and home, about bisexuality and bi erasure. Her far-ranging essays challenge mainstream ideas about what queer lives do and do not look like. She asks more questions than she answers, delving into the murky terrain of desire and identity.

Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

Is this book even an essay collection? It is, and it isn’t. Some of these pieces are deeply personal stories about Lavery’s experience with transition. Others are trans retellings of mythology, literature, and film. All of it is weird and smart and impossibly to classify. Lavery examines the idea of transition from every angle, creating new stories about trans history, trans identity, and transformation itself.

Brown White Black by Nishta J. Mehra

If there’s one thing I love most in an essay collection, it’s when an author allows contradictions and messy, fraught truths to live next to each other on the page. I love when an essayist asks more questions than they answer. That’s what Mehra does in this book. An Indian American woman married to a white woman and raising a Black son, she writes with openness and curiosity about her particular family. She explores how race, sexuality, gender, class, and religion impact her life and most intimate relationships, as well as American culture more broadly.

Blood, Marriage, Wine, & Glitter by S. Bear Bergman

This essay collection is an embodiment of queer joy, of what it means to become part of a queer family. Every essay captures some aspect of the complexity and joy that is queer family-making. Bergman writes about being a trans parent, about beloved friends, about the challenges of partnership, about intimacy in myriad forms. His tone is warm and open-hearted and joyful and celebratory.

Forty-Three Septembers by Jewelle Gómez

In these contemplative essays, Jewell Gómez explores the various pieces of her life as a Black lesbian, writing about family, aging, and her own history. Into these personal stories she weaves an analysis of history and current events. She writes about racism and homophobia, both within and outside of queer and Black communities, and about her life as an artist and poet, and how those identities, too, have shaped the way she sees the world.

Pass With Care by Cooper Lee Bombardier

Set mostly against the backdrop of queer culture in 1990s San Francisco, this memoir in essays is about trans identity, being an artist, masculinity, queer activism, and so much more. Bombardier brings particular places and times to life (San Francisco in the 1990s, but other places as well), but he also connects those times and experiences to the present in really interesting ways. He recognizes the importance of queer and trans history, while also exploring the possibilities of queer and trans futures.

Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

This is a beautiful, rigorous collection of essays about disability justice centering disabled queer and trans people of color. From an exploration of the radical care collectives Piepzna-Samarasinha and other queer and trans BIPOC have organized to an essay where examines the problems with the “survivor industrial complex,” every one of these pieces is full of wisdom, anger, transformation, radical celebration. It challenged me on so many levels, in the best possible way. It’s a must read for anyone engaged in any kind of activist work.

I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya

I’m cheating a little bit here, because technically I’d classify this book as one essay, singular, rather than a collection of essays. But I’m including it anyway, because it is brilliant, and because I think it exemplifies just what a good essay can do, what a powerful form of writing it can be. By reflection on various experiences Shraya has had with men over the course of her life, she examines the connections and intersections between sexism, transmisogyny, toxic masculinity, and sexual violence. It’s a heavy read, but Shraya’s writing is anything but. It’s agile and graceful, flowing and jumping between disparate thoughts and ideas. This is a book-length essay you can read in one sitting, but it’ll leave you with enough to think about for many days afterward.

Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon

In this collaborative essay collection, trans writers and performers Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon play with both gender and form. The book is a combination of personal essays, short vignettes, song lyrics, and images. Using these various kinds of storytelling, they both recount their own particular journeys around gender — how their genders have changed throughout their lives, the ways the gender binary has continually harmed them both, and the many communities, people, and experiences that have contributed to joyful self-expression and gender freedom.

The Groom Will Keep His Name by Matt Ortile

Matt Ortile uses his experiences as a gay Filipino immigrant as a lens in these witty, insightful, and moving essays. By telling his own stories — of dating, falling in love, struggling to “fit in” — he illuminates the intersections among so many issues facing America right now (and always). He writes about the model minority myth and many other myths he told himself about assimilation, sex, power, what it means to be an American. It’s a heartfelt collection of personal essays that engage meaningfully, and critically, with the wider world.

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

I’m not a big fan of humorous essays in this vein, heavy on pop culture references I do not understand and full of snark. But I absolutely love Irby’s books, which is about the highest praise I can give. I honestly think there is something in here for everyone. Irby is just so very much herself: she writes about whatever the hell she wants to, whether that’s aging or the weirdness of small town America or snacks (there is a lot to say about snacks). And whatever the subject, she’s always got something funny or insightful or new or just super relatable to say.

Queer Essay Anthologies

She Called Me Woman Edited by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan, and Aisha Salau

This anthology collects 30 first-person narratives by queer Nigerian women. The essays reflect a range of experiences, capturing the challenges that queer Nigerian women face, as well as the joyful lives and communities they’ve built. The essays explore sexuality, spirituality, relationships, money, love, societal expectations, gender expression, and so much more.

Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships & Identity by Carter Sickels

When gay marriage was legalized, I felt pretty ambivalent about it, even though I knew I was supposed to be excited. But I have never wanted or cared about marriage. Reading this book made me feel so seen. That’s not to say it’s anti-marriage — it isn’t! It’s a collection of personal essays from a diverse range of queer people about the families they’ve made. Some are traditional. Some are not. The essays are about marriages and friendships, parenthood and siblinghood, polyamorous relationships and monogamous ones. It’s a book that celebrates the different forms queer families take, never valuing any one kind of family or relationship over another.

Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity Edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane

This book collects essays from 30 nonbinary writers, and trans and gender-nonconforming writers whose genders fall outside the binary. The writers inhabit a diverse range of identity and experience in terms of race, age, class, sexuality. Some of the essays are explicitly about gender identity, others are about family and relationships, and still others are about activism and politics. As a whole, the book celebrates the expansiveness of trans experiences, and the many ways there are to inhabit a body.

Moving Truth(s): Queer and Transgender Desi Writings on Family Edited by Aparajeeta ‘Sasha’ Duttchoudhury and Rukie Hartman

This anthology brings together a collection of diverse essays by queer and trans Desi writers. The pieces explore family in all its shapes and iterations. Contributors write about community, friendship, culture, trauma, healing. It’s a wonderfully nuanced collection. Though there is a thread that runs through the whole book — queer and trans Desi identity — the range of viewpoints, styles and experiences represented makes it clear how expansive identity is.

Looking for more queer books? I made a list of 40 of my favorites . If you’re looking for more essay collections to add to your list, check out 10 Must-Read Essay Collections by Women , and The Best Essays from 2019 . And if you’re not in the mood for a whole book right now, why not try one of these free essays available online (including some great queer ones)?

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By submitting my email address. i certify that i am 13 years of age or older, agree to recieve marketing email messages from the princeton review, and agree to terms of use., guide to college for lgbtq students.

Queer students, take heart.

College is not like high school. Even if you went to a high school that was accepting of your sexuality or gender identity, college is a whole new ballgame.

At many colleges, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) community is a visible and valued part of campus life. Students who are questioning or in the closet often find that it's easier to explore and be open about their identity in college. You'll probably meet a lot of people who have struggled with similar issues. You're also likely to find more activities, services, and, at most schools, LGBTQ resource centers. Many colleges offer a major or minor in LGBTQ Studies. You may even find decide to tell your story in your college essay —if you can explain how your sexuality or gender identity has helped shape who you are.

That said, college is still part of the real world—you may encounter homophobia at some point during your four years. And not all colleges are as accepting of LGBTQ students. It's important to do your research , discuss your priorities with your college counselor ,  visit campuses , and pick a school where you'll be comfortable.

A Note About Language

We recognize that it is not possible to write in a way that is inclusive of all identities, relationships and life experiences.

We use the term "queer" to refer to the collective community of LGBTQ students. In the past, the term "queer" has been used in a derogatory manner, but today many in the LGBTQ community have reclaimed it as a term of empowerment and inclusiveness.

Read More: College Rankings

Additional Resources for LGBTQ Students

The Princeton Review's Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life features advice from students and administrators at more than seventy colleges, and each year we publish an annual ranking list of the nation’s most and least LGBT-friendly campuses. The list identifies colleges whose students give their communities high ratings when its comes to equal treatment.

Many organizations offer scholarships specifically for LGBTQ students.

• Campus Pride offers resources, programs and services to support LGBT and ally students on college campuses across the United States.
• Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) has plenty of resources for your parents—and you.
• Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality. 

Check out Rob Franek's Huffington Post blog for more tips for LGBTQ college applicants .

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Do gays have a boost in admission?

If I am gay/lesbian, how much of a boost will I have in college admissions to elite schools?

What about if I write an essay about it vs if I don’t? Thank you!

Earn karma by helping others:

Hi there! This is a good question, and one that others have answered well below, so I won't repeat them too much.

There is no formal affirmative action or race-conscious admissions equivalent for admissions relating to sexual orientation, so there isn't a tangible "boost" to report on here. However, many schools are interested in maintaining and expanding the diversity of their classes in all aspects in order to foster inclusive environments where students will interact with and learn from people with all different backgrounds and perspectives. With this in mind, there may be a benefit to discussing your relationship with your sexual orientation on your application.

Note that I said "your relationship with your sexual orientation" and not just "your sexual orientation" -- your application (especially your essays) must be about you, not the broader meaning of queerness, the issues and discrimination affecting the LGBTQ+ community, or some other broad ideal. Essays in particular are a great place to showcase your personality and your identity (one Common App question even asks about an aspect of your identity or background without which your application would be incomplete, for example), but it must be done in such a way that the reader learns something about you beyond your sexual orientation. The thesis of the essay cannot be that you are gay or lesbian but rather that you are resilient or compassionate or eager to learn or thoughtful as seen through the lens of your experiences. As others have noted, you will want to focus on a distinctly "you" aspect of your experience as a queer person -- there are certainly some overdone essay tropes that it could be easy to fall into, so you'll want to avoid those.

One last note echoes something others have mentioned already: assessing the fit of your discussion of queerness with the values of the schools to which you are applying. For instance, if your essays recount your bitter relationship with religion and scorn for the Church because of discrimination you faced at the hands of religious people or organizations, they will not resonate with admissions officers at schools with religion at the center of their missions. This is not to say that you would not thrive, be supported by, or do well at a religious school; it is merely to say that you should avoid criticizing values they hold dear as part of your admissions narrative.

To sum up, being queer is not in and of itself a benefit for admissions, but like any other aspect of who a person is, it can be part of a compelling story worth telling. Wherever you end up and whatever you end up writing about, I hope that you continue to be proud of who you are. Best of luck!

Hi! May I ask you a question regarding this?

It's hard to tell. I think it comes down to who is reading your application. I think Elite schools, especially some Ivys are pro-LGBTQ applicants but others perhaps can't give them the environment they're seeking. For instance, I would think it would be challenging to be at Dartmouth or Cornell because 1/2 of the social life revolves around CIS White Greek Life (frats and sororities).

https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2020/01/coming-out-and-being-out-lgbtqia-students-at-dartmouth

But if you are attending Columbia, then you are in the middle of the most exciting city in the world where you can find support systems both on campus and off. The Columbia queer alliance is the oldest LGBTQ club in America (1966 founded).

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cqa/connect.html

With regards to other top schools, I think it would be hard to be an "out" LGBTQ student at Notre Dame, Georgetown, and Boston College since they are all Jesuit Catholic Institutions. And anywhere in the South, like Wash U, Vanderbilt, Duke, UVA, seems more problematic than USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford. Being a queer student at a top Liberal Arts college like Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst, Pomona seems easy. But once you get into remote places like Bowdoin, Colgate, Washington & Lee, not so much.

To answer your question, I don't think you get a real tangible bump if you are queer. I think you get a huge bump if you are BIPOC Black or Latina, or a huge bump if you are some famous activist with 100,000 Youtube subscribers. So if you are a BIPOC Queer Activist, that sounds to me like a big bump. But if you are Basic White Girl Queer from an upper-middle-class suburb and have no real spikes, your queerness is not that attractive to the Circus of cohorts they are building for their Freshman class.

Even southern colleges are very liberal. Vanderbuilt is in Nashville and that is a liberal part of Tennesse. So no, I don't think they have problems with homosexuals in top southern colleges. Maybe in lower tier southern colleges, but top 20 schools select their student body from a very diverse and multitude of places, so many students won't even be from the south.

For admissions I only have my opinion but I would discourage writing your essay about it unless it plays a role in something bigger. I feel like I can't find the words to explain today but here it goes my best attempt. I apologize if I just confuse you more.

I went to a workshop for writing your essay and they worded it like this "the daily vs. the dramatic." They said the essay should tell them something you think is important they would not of known otherwise, the catch is not directly. The counselor gave the example of writing about their keychain. To them the simple keychain is meaningful because it symbolizes people trusted them enough to carry a bunch of important keys. This indirectly tells the reader that the student is someone trustworthy and that they value making meaningful relationships as trust is something that needs to be earned and takes time. This goes back to the daily vs. dramatic because schools want to know what you would be like on a random day at their school. Of course that is not to discredit something very difficult like coming out or the shock of the pandemic but in reality it is not as unique as people think. The exception would be this. If you still feel strongly about writing your essay on it you probably have a good reason that would push your essay outside of what they usually see with the topic.

I know some schools, especially elite ones, have quotas they have to meet regarding race ratios. I have never heard if being in the LBGTQ+ community helps your chances. I think it can be seen as a way to add diversity but if i'm being honest I think a lot of people would have thrown a fit if they did.

I hope I can give you some answers, I'll try to check back to see if you want me to try and elaborate.

No, you don't. I don't think it's allowed to actually ask for sexual orientation in applications so they probably wouldn't even know unless you write an essay about being gay. If you write an essay about it then it really depends on the topic. For example if the topic is just about you being gay and having a crush on someone you're probably not gonna get noticed because there's no big deal about your essay I don't see any change and I don't really see any one's personality because most people have crushes and stuff like that. But if you're talking about how your life was derailed after you came out or you lost friends or your social life changed after coming out then you should definitely write an essay about you being gay if it had a big effect on you. And to be honest it probably will have a slight increase because they will be aware of you being gay and college is one diversity.

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https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/reflections-growing-gay-and-solace-science

Taking Measure

Just a Standard Blog

Reflections on Growing Up Gay and the Solace of Science

Typical day in my lab. 

I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the mid-’70s into a blue-collar family. My father was a carpenter and my mother was a homemaker. My family was of modest means, but we always had enough food to eat and always had a roof over our heads.

On the occasional summer weekend, my parents would scrape enough money together for us to go on a road trip to a neighboring lake town, memories I cherish to this day. My early childhood years were mostly those of a typical happy-go-lucky boy. I was usually in good spirits and I had everything that I needed. Despite that, I didn’t really fit in with my “peer” group of pre-teen boys. I didn’t like sports, I didn’t particularly care for outdoor activities, and most of my friends were girls. The few male friends I did have as a child, I would learn later in life were also gay (more on that later).

Throughout my childhood, this lack of fitting in persisted. I just didn’t want to do what other boys wanted to do. And I didn’t have this peculiar attraction to girls that other boys had. I recognized that it is was only peculiar to me. I understood what the attraction was, and I looked for it within myself. I looked a lot, but couldn’t find it.

The only place I found peace and solace was in studying, so that is what I did and did it pretty intensely. I used those pursuits to distract myself from all the pain associated with not fitting into the pre-made social machinery around me. I didn’t have to go to the weekend school dance, because I was too busy studying for the chemistry exam on the following Monday. This paid other dividends with my peers at school. Since I worked so hard to fully understand the materials, it became easy for me to explain them to other students who needed help. I had found a way to be accepted by my peers; I could be the best nerd in the class!

In high school, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to the University of Tulsa that covered most of my tuition costs and ultimately resulted in a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. During my undergraduate days, I reunited with some of my elementary school friends and they introduced me to the local gay scene. There were a handful of gay bars that we would frequent, and for the first time in my life, I found a community where I was accepted and not judged. I was finally ready to come out to the world in general, and I didn’t care anymore who knew I was gay. (Before this time, I held this secret very tightly—only my closest friends knew and they were sworn to secrecy.)

After earning my degree, I was not ready to get a “real” job, since the only options that seemed available to me were entry-level corporate engineering jobs in the petrochemical industry. Sure the pay was good, but the work was not that interesting. So, I ended up applying to graduate programs across the country, ultimately deciding to attend Northwestern University. I earned a Ph.D. in the early 2000s, and that led to a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ultimately a staff position, where I now have an amazing career and work life.

Throughout my grade-school, undergraduate and graduate education, I would hear the occasional off-color “gay” comment from peers and I had more or less grown to accept it as an unfortunate fact of life. Now, as I approach the 20th year of my career at NIST, I cannot imagine my sexuality being any part of how my peers evaluate me or my abilities; to them it is only as important as the color of the (very little) hair on my head or the color of the pigments in the irises of my eyes. That is to say, it is something that is a part of me, but it is not what defines my abilities.

It is a true asset to NIST that everybody is appreciated and acknowledged for the skills and integrity they bring to their work, while the other qualities that describe them as a person only serve to enhance their contribution to the community. We still have a long way to go in completely accepting everybody. But that little boy born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 44 years ago, would never have imagined that our society would have progressed so much toward fully accepting the beautiful diversity that makes up our world.

About the author

Wyatt Vreeland

Wyatt Vreeland graduated  magna cum laude  from the University of Tulsa in May of 1997. In 1997 he began his doctoral studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. During his time at Northwestern, his research focused on developing new methodologies for high-resolution electrophoretic analysis of polymeric macromolecules in capillaries and microfluidic "lab-on-a-chip" devices. These techniques were primarily geared toward DNA analysis for genetic applications. He joined NIST in 2004. His recent research has focused on using the precise and reproducible laminar flow conditions available in microfluidic systems to facilitate the self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules into liposomes and other nanoparticles.

Thanks for sharing your story, Wyatt.

Beautifully written. So glad to call you my friend.

Thank you for helping make NIST (and the world) a better place and for sharing parts of your journey with us. They're lucky to have you.

Thank you, Wyatt!

Your story is an inspiration. I am so glad you have found a true home and inclusive community at NIST, where pursuit of excellence is our shared commitment.

Walt Copan NIST Director

This is a great story. Thank you for sharing it. It makes me think back of my high school days in the 1970s when people even suspected of being gay were treated unkindly. Now I wish I would have done more at the time in their defense. I've lost track of them but hope they have found the support you have including at NIST.

Thanks so much for sharing your story! I am very grateful to be your colleague and friend.

That was nice. Proud of you Wyatt!

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My sexual orientation isn't important to colleges

By RUDY MALCOM | March 1, 2018

 GUILLAUME PAUMIER/CC BY 2.0

Malcom is grateful that he didn’t talk about being gay on his common app.

A friend told me recently that someone she knew was applying to transfer out of Hopkins. “Even if I absolutely fucking hated it here, I don’t think I’d ever transfer,” I said to her. “I refuse to relive the stress of the college admissions process ever again.”

Notwithstanding the chronic disappointment of searching for an empty cubicle on C-level on a Sunday night to be met only with seats saved by crusty JanSport backpacks, fortunately I am truly enjoying being a student at Hopkins. Never would I ever shed my elite azure wings and vacate the Hopkins nest. Forever a Blue Jay, man.

Admittedly, however, it ruffled those very feathers slightly when I saw on Facebook in early December that someone from my high school had been accepted Early Decision to the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), from where I had first been deferred and now (thankfully) rejected. But during my senior year, when even being asked for a pen (Penn, get it?) was distressing, I wondered: Would I have gotten into Penn had I responded differently to “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it” on the Common App? Specifically, would I have gotten into Penn had my essay been about being gay? 

A New York Times article from 2013 found that many LGBTQ students believed that coming out in their essays could bolster their likelihood of admissions, while others thought doing so could have the opposite or no effect.

I was the last person I knew to start my Common App essay. I procrastinated it like no other assignment (except maybe the orientation Common Read), because the topic I had chosen was not the one I really wanted to write about. In a passcode-locked app on my phone, I had compiled phrases that began to describe how the metaphorical closet felt. 

I wanted desperately to put pen (ha) to paper and explain how I felt like a formaldehyde-preserved frog — puffed up on the outside, trapped in a disguise, not fully alive. I had spent more than one English class curriculum reading about superficiality from the slave-owning, pseudo-pious aristocrats of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to phonies in The Catcher in the Rye . Nevertheless, I felt as though I was the character I had learned to hate. I was hiding my sexuality behind a perhaps paper-thin veneer of straightness. I was fake.

A couple of months after my deferral from Penn, I went to an interview for a different university. My interviewer asked me if I had any new information to add to my application. Without knowing how she would react, I told her that I had come out, just days before, as gay to my parents. Would divulging this secret, by means of some sort of affirmative action, secure my admission to the Ivy League? Luckily she happened to be a marriage and family therapist and not one of the conversion variety. She congratulated me and then asked me how being gay had affected my academics.

I had never considered this. I stammered out something about how concealing my being gay had been stressful and made it hard to concentrate. Was this true? Once while taking a calculus test (yes, my STEM friends, I once knew integration by parts and u-substitution), I was indeed preoccupied, not directly by being gay but by my anguish over someone who perhaps served as a symbol for all my internalized homophobia. Someone manipulative and toxic with whom I had been close friends. Someone who frequently called me a faggot (only because he “wanted me to be one,” he once said).

I am glad that I didn’t write my essay about pining after a self-identifying straight male, even if he did send me a whole rainbow of mixed signals. College applicants should use their essays to demonstrate their maturity, not to write hackneyed sob stories indicating that they possess the emotional intelligence of a seventh grader with an unrequited crush. Only in hindsight have I learned anything valuable from the experience with him. 

When I wrote my Common App essay, I had not yet achieved self-acceptance for being gay. But what if I had? Naturally, I turned to College Confidential .

One user wrote that they didn’t “see how your sexuality is relevant to college admission.” Another found that “the coming out essay is overdone and a yawner for admissions.” Someone else asked “why just being gay makes you a better candidate than someone else” and said that they “would be more impressed by accomplishments, creativity, community service, internships and the like.” 

A different person advised that “it’s not enough to say you felt ostracized, confused, abandoned, self-pitying or suicidal... How did you overcome those feelings/fears and become a better person despite everything that has happened to you?” Someone added to this sentiment by saying “you want to show how you’ve made a difference, rather than wallowing in self-pity.” I would not have been able to do so.

I am grateful that homophonic writing implements — not homophobic parents — caused me suffering my senior year of high school and that the most difficult part of being gay was liking a selfish guy with a fragile masculinity. At the time, I had experienced no personal growth; I had only endured.

As one last College Confidential user put it, at the end of the day, “a good essay is a good essay, whether or not one mentions being gay.” Wow, that sentence rhymed. I suppose I’ve just unconsciously expressed an aspect of my identity. Here I am coming out to you in this article (though not for my first time in The News-Letter ) as... Writing Sems.

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Essay on being gay?

<p>But what do you consider it when a gay person talks about having a same-sex partner?</p>

<p>I had not previously noted Amber’s excellent post. It’s not a matter of “going there”; it’s more accurately a matter of discussing where you already are. Which is what I do all the time, Riprorin, when as a straight man I talk about my wife and kids.</p>

<p>What do I consider it? To each his own.</p>

<p>Then what is this “flaunting” that you were objecting to?</p>

<p>I would say the type of talk/behavior you might experience in a lockeroom, a frat party, or watching MTV. I’m just not keen about people who are flamboyant about their sexuality whatever their preference is. </p>

<p>Where are we going with this? The student has already said that he is going to choose a different topic.</p>

<p>But the original poster never proposed to write a college application that was full of locker room talk. You suggested that a formally written essay on being out and gay was inappropriate. That just doesn’t square with your current definition of “flaunting one’s sexuality.”</p>

<p>I think your objection to the topic boils down to a belief that gay people shouldn’t be publicly gay, even though it’s okay for straight people to be publicly straight. If there’s a reason why that’s not a double standard–and and unfair one at that-- I can’t see it. Maybe you can explain to me why it’s all right to take that position.</p>

<p>I see that you have an agenda to push and you want to put words in my mouth based on some stereotype rather than listening to what I have to say.</p>

<p>This discussion had ceased to be useful.</p>

<p>I do have an agenda: I think that society should treat gay people the same as it treats straight people. I think that’s a good agenda, and a fair one, and it isn’t happening yet.</p>

<p>I have been trying really hard, however, not to put words in your mouth. That’s why I invited you to explain why the only inference I have managed to draw about the position underlying your arguments is not correct. I guess you prefer not to do that.</p>

<p>Pause for another opinion.</p>

<p>Many kids think the personal statement is an open-ended chance to speak about whatever is important to them. There have been discussions on CC about my little brother, my rebellion, my favorite place, my atheism and more. In fact, what you need to do is show the strengths and attributes adcoms seek for their freshman class. That’s not so much the “I am-” or the tale of the challenges. </p>

<p>You can use the gay topic- probably won’t blow anyone’s minds. But the success comes from using the starting point to show the qualities the U likes. Perhaps, in this case, it is open-mindedness, how you bring people together, how your own process made you determined to assist others, in some way-- ie, more than the “identity” and how important it is to you. Again, show, not tell.</p>

<p>Well said.</p>

<p>I believe that everyone should be treated fairly too.</p>

<p>I still think writing an essay about being gay is a bad idea and the OP agreed with me.</p>

<p>I am surprised to hear that the OP agrees. The OP has not returned to this thread–or, at least, has not posted again–since his or her initial query.</p>

<p>Maybe I confused this thread with one of the many other threads on this topic.</p>

<p>I don’t understand how writing an essay about being gay is inappropriate for a college essay? I think it’s similar to writing about being an atheist in a predominantly religious area/social group, or a minority who has faced diversity, or something of that nature; people write about that very frequently. I personally think it’s a perfectly acceptable essay topic. </p>

<p>However, OP, you do run the risk of having an adcom who is socially conservative on this issue, which would obviously be unfortunate for your admissions chances. Ultimately, this is up to you.</p>

<p>Thank you for all the feedback everyone! I’m going to plan it out and see if I can make it work and put my personality into it. If not, I’ll scrap it and keep digging. Thanks! </p>

<p>As for riprorin, I appreciate your opinion, but I do not appreciate being referred to as “flamboyant” about my sexuality simply because I find it a compelling topic and vehicle to reflect other facets of me, facets that far outweigh who I’m attracted to. Sexuality is a big part of anyone’s life, but I made it clear that I do not define myself by it. I also don’t define a college essay as “show me what you do for others” rather than “show me how you grew as a person”. Both are perfectly viable options if executed right. I can’t shake the idea that there’s a certain level of homophobia hiding behind your patronizing posts.</p>

<p>Being gay can be a big part of who you are… And its a big part of everyone who is gay’s lives. Your essay will be an essay every admissions officer has read over and over. Good luck.</p>

<p>OP, I thought that you came him for an honest opinion. Since that doesn’t seem to be the case and it seems you already made up your mind before you made the post and were just looking for confirmation, I say by all means write an essay about being gay. In spite of the slander, good luck to you!</p>

<p>On the other hand, riprorin…</p>

<p>Please believe that I am really not trying to pick a fight, and really not trying to tell you what you’re truly thinking or feeling, when I say what’s coming. The way you’ve expressed yourself in this thread has made not just me or the OP, but also several other posters besides, draw the inference that on a basic level you have a problem with homosexuality or gay people or both. If that is not an impression that you want to convey, maybe you will want to consider how you could express yourself differently to create a different impression in readers and listeners.</p>

<p>As for getting an honest opinion, the OP has gotten several of them, and they weren’t all alike. In fact, I can’t recall anybody else in this thread seconding your advice, and the OP has just decided not to take it. I know I hate it when I put a lot of effort into giving my opinion and then it isn’t adopted, but that’s all that happened in this thread.</p>

<p>How does one assume OP’s mind is made up? Sounds to me like OP is still thinking and open.</p>

<p>Sikorsky, I think I’ve made two points here: writing an essay about your sexuality is a bad idea and people’s sexual preferences are their own business. I offered an opinion to the OP and he can do what he wants with it. It won’t impact me one way or the other.</p>

<p>What are you digging for by keeping this going?</p>

<p>Sorry to gravedig, but I just wsnted to make a point (more aimed at riprorin).</p>

<p>I think that college essays should be about something that GENUINELY changed and affected you. Being gay alone does not warrant that, as the simple fact of being gay is equal to that of being straight. HOWEVER, we cannot ignore the fact that gays ARE treated much differently than straight people in American society. To ignore this fact is to be completely and utterly ignorant. I can’t kiss my boyfriend in public without looking around and literally see everyone looking over, whispering. So, if OP decides that his homosexuality has changed him in the sense that he has lost friends, lost family, had to come to terms with himself, got kicked out of the house, etc, and it genuinely changed him, then I think its fair to write about. Because lets be honest, no one gets kicked out of their house, or ridiculed, or loses friends/family for being straight. No one.</p>

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The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Pariah Essay

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Somehow, in 2024, people are still debating guys wearing nail polish

June 1st is the start of Pride Month and National Nail Polish Day.

Hit up your local LGBTQ+ parade this Pride Month, and you’re bound to see men wearing nail polish—maybe even in rainbow manicures—whether you like it or not.

And a surprising number of people  don’t  like it when men paint their nails, even here in the year of our Lord 2024 Anno Domini.

How about we take this to the next level? Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy. Daily * Weekly *

View this post on Instagram A post shared by BOYS IN POLISH ™ (@boysinpolish)

We saw the homophobic hate when Duke college basketball star  Jared McCain  and newly-minted Chicago Bears quarterback  Caleb Williams  showed off their nail art—not that the two athletes are letting the gay slurs get to them.

“I like to get manicures and pedicures. I take care of my body,” McCain told  Complex  last year. “Some of these people hate, I don’t know if they do take care of their body. So, I just like getting the color, and it’s always been myself. I’ve always been big on just being yourself in any situation possible. And never letting somebody tell you what you can and can’t be. So doing the painted nails is kind of a part of me now.”

Related* No. 1 pick Caleb Williams defied homophobes by showing up to the NFL Draft with painted nails He also delivered a poignant speech about why he’s unapologetically himself.

You’d hope that by now we’d let people do whatever they wanted with their bodies—and that we’d have freed ourselves of the binary thinking that claims men can’t use cosmetics.

Even gays can be narrow-minded about other men’s gender expression, promoting the same kind of misogyny that results in femmephobia.

In a 2016 essay for  HuffPost , Connor Doherty recalled going on a date with someone who, upon seeing Doherty’s nail polish, said he “didn’t seem like  that kind  of guy”:

I was disgusted by his crude comment and the implications behind it. I knew when he said “that kind of guy” what he was really saying was “flamboyant and effeminate gay guy.” He was spewing internalized homophobia, emasculating me, and effectively invalidating trans, gender nonconforming, and queer people. He was effectively saying that femininity was bad, and that I was less attractive because I didn’t adhere to his rigid expectations of gender.

That was almost eight years ago, but the discourse hasn’t improved much since.

Just check out the hate in these X posts from the year so far—and the support from those who aren’t bothered by a little lacquer.

Unvarnished hate

Painting your nails as a Grown Man will never be cool EVER — RYAN GARCIA (@RyanGarcia) April 11, 2024

What do you guys think about straight men wearing nail polish? — Gabby Grey (@imgabbygrey) May 11, 2024

New grooming guidelines state all employees can wear makeup, earrings and nail polish. I’m telling you if I see a guy pilot wearing earrings and nail polish I’m getting off. pic.twitter.com/cT9B2OpVln — Márta Lisle (@UrUnpaidPundit) January 12, 2024

OK, to all the gay men and straight guys who think wearing nail polish makes you look punk/rock&roll. It DOESN'T if you have all of your nails polished uniformly and there is length to your nails. Two or three fingers are cool. So below is what you shouldn't do, NO BUENO…… pic.twitter.com/gRjbGLZ7bR — Cristian H (@danseurCh) February 21, 2024

We don’t want a guy wearing nail polish on the team — J (@juultweetes) May 13, 2024

Right! I miss regular gay guys. My office has a ton of skirt snd nail polish wearing dudes. — Biologist? (@Cyclopath11) April 4, 2024

It’s such a shame when a really hot guy wears colored nail polish. — Anthony?? (@NYrepublican02) January 13, 2024

Can anyone explain this trend? Why are men wearing nail polish? Anyone here do it? pic.twitter.com/8DCG9MXw3k — Carissa (@njoyzgrl81) May 17, 2024

I know it's a little silly but I have a visceral disgust of nail polish on men — 4 second fart noise (@_154831) May 16, 2024

Polished support

Worrying about another grown man's nails will never be cool, ever… — Dave H (@DavehIslander) April 11, 2024

I need it stated for the record, nail polish is for everyone. It’s a vibe on EVERYONE. Love seeing men incorporate it in their looks. — Annie Costabile (@AnnieCostabile) April 26, 2024

Normalise guys wearing makeup and nail polish. — Jeff?? (@jgadiel_) May 14, 2024

I want see Gemini and Fourth with paint nails. Bc for me,I think that nail polish on men is a mix of femininity and masculinity that drives me crazy. pic.twitter.com/fjuL0oJXQp — imacutecandidatepreperingforMLMU?? (@Gemiyaki4thT) March 7, 2024

a whole thread cause a guy likes wearing nail polish… get a life! — ?o? (@listenmitski) May 28, 2024

I grew up in a house with people who were convinced wearing nail polish was a ticket to hell. I been fighting demons my whole life my guy don’t test me ? pic.twitter.com/u3sAA8YwhV — Peaceful Chaos… ????????? (@GinD1) May 27, 2024

I like seeing men with their nails painted. And I like when they paint their nails to match their Woman partner’s nail set. It’s cute af????? it’s just nail polish. Yall be projecting your fragile masculinity on to others and it’s so interesting to observe. — Cindy Noir? (@thecindynoir) February 11, 2024

I truly consider it a humanitarian act to wear nail polish and short shorts to my hometown gym while simultaneously out lifting all the little suburban men and high school boys with that broccoli haircut. I am doing good in this community. — Ryan La Sala (@theryanlasala) December 29, 2023

I find it funny how I'll see guys who call other people snowflakes but then cry about a guy wearing nail polish or wearing a skirt — ???? ????????? ???? (@d3xthymia) January 10, 2024

Someone at work had a wildly homophobic rant yesterday. Said there’s something mentally wrong with men who wear makeup and finger nail polish. So I decided to paint my fingernails today pic.twitter.com/b88CnihAUn — Bubba Love (@BubbaL02) February 10, 2024

if ur a guy who feels threatened by other dudes painting their nails then that says so much more about u than them !!! go buy some black nail polish & live ur dreams <3 — ? ???? ???? ???? ? (@loadedgvnns) April 5, 2024

"I saw Jared McCain wearing nail polish, so I bought nail polish" – more guys in 2024, hopefully https://t.co/oEFjVDa0DO — Style Girlfriend (@StyleGF) April 1, 2024

GUYS IT’S NATIONAL NAIL POLISH DAY ?? Thank you all SO MUCH for the love and support ? pic.twitter.com/CvAWbycutb — UN/DN LAQR (@UNDNLAQR) June 1, 2023

Related* Nail polish for men? We love to see it! If you’ve noticed a surge in men wearing painted nails and male celebs launching nail polish brands, you’re not alone. Nail polish for men is in – click through to discover why.

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I have no problem with nail polish–I use a clear coating on mine because I inherited a tendency to brittle nails. Been doing that for years. Looking for just the right color as a topcoat.

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The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments

For the first time since the Vietnam War, university demonstrations have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia.

A pro-Palestinian protest on Columbia University’s campus this spring. Credit... Mark Peterson/Redux

Supported by

By Emily Bazelon and Charles Homans

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine who also teaches at Yale Law School. Charles Homans covers politics for The Times. He visited the Columbia campus repeatedly during the demonstrations, counter-demonstrations and police actions in April.

• Published May 29, 2024 Updated May 31, 2024

Early on the afternoon of Nov. 10, Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, was on his way into a meeting in Low Library, the domed neoclassical building at the center of campus, when an administrator pulled him aside. The school, the administrator said, was about to announce the suspensions of the campus chapters of the organizations Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, an allied anti-Zionist organization — a move that alarmed Jaffer given the fraught politics of the moment.

Listen to this article, read by Gabra Zackman

The day after Hamas’s brazen Oct. 7 attack on military and civilian targets in Israel, the S.J.P. and J.V.P. chapters co-signed an open letter declaring “full solidarity with Palestinian resistance.” The letter described the attacks as “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza” and a “counteroffensive against their settler-colonial oppressor.” It would be tantamount to “asking for quiet submission to systemic violence” for anyone to call for peace now, after years of Israeli violence and military campaigns against Palestinians. The groups issued a list of demands to the university — divestment from companies doing business with the Israeli government, the end of Columbia’s affiliation with Tel Aviv University and a recognition of Palestinian “existence and humanity” — and announced a demonstration on Oct. 12 on the steps of Low Library. They signed off: “See you Thursday.”

The Oct. 12 demonstration appeared to be in violation of campus rules, which required student groups to give 10 days’ notice for gatherings in public spaces, but Columbia had not been enforcing such requirements amid the emotional responses to the Hamas attacks and Israel’s retaliatory bombing in the Gaza Strip. “We got some pushback from the university,” recalled Cameron Jones, an organizer of the J.V.P. chapter, “but not insane pushback.”

As the sit-ins, teach-ins and die-ins continued, however, that began to change. Pro-Israel groups held counterdemonstrations, and tensions built on Columbia’s small, enclosed central campus. “In the past, demonstrations were basically students protesting against the establishment, and that was, you know, unidirectional and fairly straightforward,” the president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, said in late May, in her first interview since December. “In this crisis,” she went on, “students are opposed to other students, faculty opposed to other faculty. And those internal dynamics and tensions have made this much more difficult than past episodes.” Outside Columbia’s library, several Israeli students were physically attacked after they confronted another student tearing down posters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas. Students wearing hijabs and kaffiyehs reported being called “Jew killers” and terrorists.

By Oct. 25, when S.J.P. and J.V.P. staged a walkout of college classes, “our relationship with the administration was really crumbling,” Jones recalled. Two days later, Israel’s invasion of Gaza began. On the night of Nov. 8, with another demonstration planned for the next day on the steps outside Low, a faculty adviser told the organizers that they were out of compliance with school rules and asked them to postpone the event. They did not , and the university suspended them.

When Jaffer heard the news, “I said, ‘Suspending the groups seems like a very draconian penalty for that offense,’” he recalled. When the administration in a public statement also cited the groups’ “threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” Jaffer grew more concerned: What speech crossed that line? In an open letter, he asked Columbia for an explanation.

The university didn’t publicly provide one, and the organizations received mixed messages from the administration. In a meeting with the student groups at the end of November, one administrator said that while the groups had not violated speech rules, Israeli students could hear accusations that Israel was committing genocide or was an apartheid state as an incitement to violence. “I left that meeting extremely confused,” said Maryam Alwan, an organizer of the S.J.P. chapter.

Shafik said this month that the suspensions of S.J.P. and J.V.P. were “content neutral” — they were about breaking the rules regarding demonstrations, not political views. Regardless, the university’s decision lit a fuse. In the months that followed, as the invasion of Gaza continued and civilian casualties mounted, dozens of student groups rallied in solidarity with S.J.P. and J.V.P. On April 18, Shafik asked the New York City Police to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the Columbia lawn. That move, which included dozens of arrests, in turn sparked a wave of demonstrations at universities across the country. Columbia protesters rebuilt their encampment and, on the night of April 29, some of them stormed the school’s Hamilton Hall, occupying the building and locking and barricading the doors. At Shafik’s request, a large deployment of police returned to campus the following night, raiding the building and arresting its occupiers .

When private universities set rules for what speech they allow, including when, where and how students can protest, they can impose more restrictions than the First Amendment allows in public spaces. But for decades, they have claimed free speech as a central value, and that promise has a particular history at Columbia. In 1968, the administration called in the police to evict student demonstrators from Hamilton Hall, which they had occupied in protest of the university’s involvement in military research and a new neighborhood-dividing gymnasium project in Morningside Park.

The occupation and its violent end, the images of bloodied students dragged away in handcuffs, was a seminal moment for the Vietnam-era left; the following year, several Columbia demonstrators helped found the Weather Underground, the radical organization that bombed government buildings in the 1970s. The clash also occasioned an on-campus reckoning with long-lasting institutional consequences. The university senate, which includes faculty and students, was given a hand in disciplinary matters to check administrative power — a system the administration bypassed in suspending the pro-Palestinian groups.

For more than half a century now, campus activism and universities’ responses to it have mostly occurred within the paradigm shaped by 1968. Activists have used fights over investments, curriculums and development projects as platforms for radical politics and for a kind of revolutionary experimentation in the form of building occupations and other direct actions. Administrations have more often than not responded tolerantly or at least cautiously, out of a mix of principle and pragmatism. The building occupiers and tent-camp residents may be breaking laws or at least campus policies, but they’re also the university’s consumers.

But the upheavals on campuses across the country this spring were different. The campus war over the real war in Gaza did something no issue since Vietnam had done. It seemed to have prompted an abrupt rethinking of free-speech principles that many in academia assumed to be foundational.

In reality, though, this shift was not so abrupt. It reflected broader changes in the institutional structures and power balances within American universities and disagreements over free speech that have gradually redrawn the battle lines inside and outside academia. That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would prove the catalyst, too, was not surprising. Few conflicts had so directly centered on the power of language and who sets its terms.

In 2019, Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president before Shafik, wrote an essay for The Atlantic called “Free Speech on Campus Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You.” The occasion was an executive order President Trump issued that March, proclaiming that colleges and universities that received federal funding were required to “promote free inquiry” — a mostly symbolic measure that reflected several years of alarm on the right over what Fox News and others had declared a “free-speech crisis” on American campuses.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, college activists tried to block various appearances by speakers whose views they found repellent. At Middlebury College, they derailed a talk by the conservative social scientist Charles Murray and at William & Mary shouted down a speaker from the state A.C.L.U. chapter. Schools like the University of California, Berkeley , and Grand Canyon University , a Christian institution in Arizona, canceled or disinvited right-wing media figures for fear of demonstrations.

If Columbia managed to steer through this period with a minimum of turbulence, it was in large part thanks to Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar who defended the right of people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus. “I am of the view that one such disinvitation is one too many,” he wrote in The Atlantic essay, while noting that, in fact, disinvitations had been far rarer than the pundits and politicians suggested. But Bollinger cast the debate over the limits of campus speech as itself a part of the tradition of campus speech, and he concluded that “universities are, today, more hospitable venues for open debate than the nation as a whole.”

Five years later, this picture lay in tatters. Bollinger’s own university — he left office last June — was once again synonymous with building occupations and police crackdowns, and Columbia was facing legal action from both Jewish and Muslim students alleging harassing speech, among other complaints. In an interview in late April, Bollinger, who has not otherwise spoken publicly about the Columbia clashes, said that his own optimism was dimming. “There was a fair consensus that private universities,” he said, like public ones, “should embrace free-speech principles and set an example for the country in how free speech applies to a public forum. And now I think that’s breaking down.”

Other schools were also stumbling. In December, testifying before a House committee hearing on antisemitism on college campuses , three elite-university presidents equivocated when Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, asked them whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the rules on their campuses. One of them, the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, was out of her job within days ; a second, Claudine Gay of Harvard, resigned amid accusations of plagiarism that surfaced amid post-testimony scrutiny .

Shafik, testifying before a similar panel in April, fared better in the hearing room but worse back on campus. Under repeated questioning, she said that she found pro-Palestinian chants like “From the river to the sea” and “Long live intifada” antisemitic but added that “some people don’t.” Columbia also turned over documents to the committee about faculty members accused of antisemitic speech whom Shafik named in her testimony — disclosures the administration says that it was obligated to make but that infuriated professors, hundreds of whom signed open letters declaring it a breach of academic freedom. “She threw some of us under the bus,” said Katherine Franke, a Columbia Law School professor, who was among those criticized in the hearing. “But to me, that’s less important than her inability to make a defense of the university.”

To free-speech advocates, it was ominous that these presidents weren’t arguing for the university as a forum for fostering free speech, however controversial. “That commitment is really at the center of universities’ missions,” Jaffer said. “It is disappointing that so many university leaders failed to make that case.”

In the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations, however, universities confronted a dilemma far more complex than any Bollinger faced during his tenure. The invasion of Gaza has drawn students with a range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the protests, but S.J.P. and other groups at the vanguard have been clear on their own lines : They reject the idea of a two-state solution and consider the existence of a Zionist state in Israel to be illegitimate and immoral. This is a change from the early 1990s when Edward Said, the Jerusalem-born literary theorist and pro-Palestinian activist who made Columbia a leading bastion of Palestinian scholarship, championed a two-state outcome (though he rejected the idea in the last years of his life). The movement’s politics have hardened, and so have the facts on the ground. Hopes for a two-state solution have receded amid the increasingly extreme politics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and attacks on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah .

Historically, when “Zionist” becomes a pejorative, persecution of Jews has followed, and many American Jews see the rise in reported incidents of antisemitism as evidence of this once again. Some protesters crossed the line from rejecting Israel to using antisemitic imagery on posters and making threats. For example, Khymani James , a student leader of the protests at Columbia, said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” in a video of a school disciplinary hearing that he posted on social media. (James later apologized.) Chants like “We don’t want no Zionists here,” which continued at Columbia and elsewhere, made many Jewish students, including critics of Israel’s occupation, feel there was no longer a space for supporting a Jewish homeland in any sense.

But pro-Palestinian activists now often view the rejection of Zionism as an irreducible part of the cause — and are aware of how accusations of antisemitism have been wielded in the past to the detriment of that cause. When Columbia deans called for acknowledging the “genuine hurt” of both sides of the conflict in December, noting some of the language of the protests, Rashid Khalidi, a historian of Palestine at Columbia, accused them of having decided that “the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression.”

The clash over politics and language has created a rare point of real political vulnerability for universities. Several face the threat of House Republican investigations of their federal funding, which at Columbia amounts to $1.2 billion in annual grants and contracts, accounting for 20 percent of its budget. And Republicans, who have long criticized universities as fortresses of liberalism and leftism, now have allies among the many congressional Democrats who remain supportive of Israel, as well as many of the universities’ own donors, administrators and trustees. (Columbia’s board includes only one academic and no Muslims or Arabs other than Shafik.) In May, a bipartisan majority in the House passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require schools to potentially risk their federal funding if they don’t restrict speech that, for example, denies “the Jewish people their right to self-determination” — a suppression of views that would run headlong into the First Amendment.

Back on campus, the conflict about antisemitism versus anti-Zionism has landed in the middle of a decades-long, unresolved argument over speech itself. Today’s students have grown up with the idea that speech can be restricted if it causes harm — but also believe that restricting their speech can be its own kind of harm. “I can’t think of another case,” says David Pozen, a Columbia law professor, “where a group not only refuses to stop using language it’s told is harassing and intimidating and demeaning but also flips it around to say, ‘Your very demand is a tool of oppression.’”

Debates over free speech on college campuses have invariably been debates about power. This became clear in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeley, handed out leaflets organizing demonstrations against the Republican National Convention, held in San Francisco that year. The dean of students barred them from using a campus-owned plaza. Months of protests and hundreds of arrests followed, until the university finally capitulated.

The Berkeley movement proved a useful foil for conservative politicians fighting the early skirmishes of the culture wars — Ronald Reagan successfully ran against it in his 1966 campaign for governor. But the Supreme Court upheld campus speech protections in 1967 and onward. And when a more enduring critique of campus speech emerged years later, it came not from the right, but from the left.

In an influential 1989 law-review article, Mari Matsuda, a law professor at the University of Hawaii and an early critical-race theorist, argued that the significance of speech and its acceptability on a university campus turned on who was speaking and who was being spoken to. Racist speech, in particular, could be more than offensive. When it reflected historic imbalances of power — when a white student hurled a racial slur at a Black student, for instance — it reinforced and perpetuated those imbalances in ways that shut down discussion, debilitating students’ academic lives. That meant that schools should treat it not as a matter of expression but as a real-world harm and sanction it. “Racist speech is particularly harmful because it is a mechanism of subordination,” she wrote.

By the early 1990s, more than 350 colleges and universities had adopted hate-speech codes imposing sanctions on students who demeaned someone’s race, sex or religion. But the codes collided with the First Amendment. Every court that considered a university speech code between 1989 and 1995 reached the same conclusion: The rules were vague, overbroad or discriminated against speakers because of their points of view and were thus unconstitutional.

Many First Amendment scholars agreed. They recognized that hate speech causes real harm but thought that banning it caused its own problems. Geoffrey Stone, a law professor and frequent collaborator of Bollinger’s, led a committee at the University of Chicago that issued a landmark 2015 report on free speech. It proposed “the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn” while allowing for limits on the time, place and manner of protests and on genuine threats and harassment.

The Chicago principles, as they are called, have since been adopted by more than 100 other schools. But this view of free speech never achieved a consensus. Within many humanities departments, Matsuda’s theories have retained currency. Ideas about identity and power have suffused progressive politics more broadly in recent decades. And in the Trump era, incursions of white nationalists and right-wing extremists into the political mainstream caused many liberals to rethink tolerating hate speech. Such speech no longer seemed confined to the far edge of American politics, and the death of a counterdemonstrator at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 reinforced the argument that hate speech was inherently violent and should be stopped at all costs.

But as progressive students extended this justification to even conventional conservatives and some civil liberties advocates, a more generalized intolerance took hold. In a 2022 survey of college students, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties organization, found that liberal students were far more likely to say that preventing speech through protest was acceptable. Fifty-three percent of students who identified as “very liberal” said it was always or sometimes acceptable to shout down a speaker to block their appearance on campus. Only 13 percent of “very conservative” students did.

Three and a half decades ago, when Matsuda first laid out her case for sanctioning hate speech, based on the identity of the speaker, one of the most challenging tests of her framework was Zionism. Were Zionists persecutors, as pro-Palestinian activists contended? Or, given the history of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust, were they victims? Matsuda’s answer, in effect, was: It depends. She rejected the charge that Zionism was, by definition, racism. Zionists would receive a “victim’s privilege,” she said, if they spoke in “reaction to historical persecution” but not if they allied themselves with a dominant group.

Her response captured the duality of modern Jewish identity — vulnerable on a global scale, as only 0.2 percent of the world population and the subject of centuries of prejudice but wielding significant power in some contexts, most obviously the Israeli state. It also showed the difficulty of putting Matsuda’s analytical framework into practice. Doing so depended on a shared understanding of where power lay and who possessed it.

The lack of such a shared understanding is on display in dueling legal complaints Columbia now faces over the campus clashes , from Jewish and Israeli students and their supporters in one case and Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their allies in another. Each document incidents of face-to-face harassment, and each claim to be on the wrong side of power or social clout. The Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students say in their legal filing that they were “treated differently by high-ranking administrators,” citing the S.J.P. suspension. Jewish and Israeli students, by contrast, report being excluded from student organizations (an L.G.B.T.Q. group, a dance club, a group representing public-school students at suspension hearings) that either condemned Israel or said Zionists were unwelcome, forcing them to forfeit a core part of their identity to stay in the group.

Both complaints claim Columbia is violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires universities to respond when discriminatory harassment is “so severe or pervasive” that it limits or prevents students from participating in their education. The federal Department of Education has in recent years interpreted the law to apply to religious minorities like Jews and Muslims with “shared ancestry,” and to say that speech is a form of conduct that can violate the law.

The tension with free-speech principles is evident. In mid-December, the dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky, and the chancellor of U.C. Irvine, Howard Gillman, expressed concern about briefings for universities in which the Department of Education suggested that slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” likely created a hostile environment for Jewish students. “We know that some Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students similarly feel threatened by protesters who chant, ‘We stand with Israel,’” Chemerinksy and Gillman wrote in an essay in The Sacramento Bee. “Do they also require investigations and mitigation efforts?”

The day before Shafik called the police to Columbia for a second time, she issued a public statement suggesting that Title VI was forcing her hand. Calling the encampment a “noisy distraction,” she said it “has created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty.”

David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia’s law school and a chairman of the antisemitism task force the university convened in the wake of Oct. 7, said in an email that “after the occupation of Hamilton Hall, the police were preventing trespassing and vandalism, protecting the ability of all students to do their work, sleep and prepare for finals, and were also preventing discriminatory harassment against Jewish and Israeli students.” But Jaffer, the Knight Institute director, took issue with invoking Title VI as a rationale for the police action.

“Of course we want universities to protect students from discrimination,” he said. “But whatever federal anti-discrimination law means, it doesn’t mean universities are obligated to call in hundreds of riot-clad police to suppress mostly peaceful protests.”

In 2021, Shafik wrote a book called “What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society.” Before Oct. 7, she said, she hoped that her presidency might be dedicated to a similar theme, of strengthening the frayed social contract between universities and the country and within their own on-campus communities. That was still the challenge ahead, she believed. “I think we’re all thinking very hard,” she said, “about, you know, what we’ve learned.”

While the school’s board remains behind Shafik, on May 16 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which among the school’s professors had been the most vocal in their criticism of her, passed a resolution of no confidence in the president by a margin of 65 percent to 29 percent. In an email to her colleagues, Virginia Page Fortna, a political-science professor, pointedly noted the title of Shafik’s book. “If we are to heal,” she wrote, “then Shafik owes Columbia: an apology, a strong and credible commitment to completely change course in how decisions are made, and an independent investigation of what has gone wrong.”

At the same time, few schools could credibly claim to have gotten things right in April. Institutions across the country, from large state schools to small liberal-arts colleges, struggled as the protests escalated, crossing into the terrain of encampments and building occupations, which aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Some schools that permitted encampments for a time also wound up in crisis. At the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 30, pro-Israel counterprotesters violently attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment while the campus police force mostly stood by. Even at the University of Chicago, the administration’s decision to tolerate an encampment ended when negotiations with the demonstrators broke down and the president called in police in riot gear . The several schools that did persuade students to end their encampments mostly did so by promising to consider divestment in Israel at a later date, punting on rather than resolving the underlying issue.

In the logic of protest politics, police crackdowns and the attention they generate are their own kind of victory. The campus clashes forced the war in Gaza into the center of American public life in a way that seven months of headlines about Israeli bombing campaigns, aid-shipment blockades and thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths did not. They drew attention to American dissent over the war and the United States government’s role in supporting it. Khalidi, the Columbia historian, speaks of the campus clashes as a turning point for younger Americans. “The protests have highlighted the fact that majorities of Americans oppose Israel’s war on Gaza and the Biden administration’s support of it, a fact that elites, politicians and the mainstream media systematically ignore,” he wrote in an email.

Universities now face the challenge of rebuilding their communities even as the debate over speech limits that divided them, to say nothing of the war in Gaza itself, remains unsettled — and the incentives of some interested parties, like congressional Republicans and pro-Palestinian organizers, seem to run in the opposite direction. The most realistic aspiration, perhaps, is that many students will tire of division and police deployments and make a path toward recovering a sense of empathy for one another — taking a step back and seeing their own political positions, however irreconcilable, as others might see them.

Matsuda, who did as much as anyone to shape the interpretation of language through the prism of power, had been thinking, too. “I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable on campus,” she said. “But stopping a protest movement, I don’t think it’s the way to make Zionist students feel comfortable.” At the same time, “it’s also really important for universities to help students move beyond slogans and see what might be hurtful or impactful about them,” she said.

At the height of the spring conflict, there were signs this was possible. At some schools, pro-Palestinian protesters modulated their own speech in deference to the requests of other students, even avoiding the common chant, “From the river to the sea,” which others have defended as peaceful. The protesters who made these choices didn’t do so because of a law or rule. They were sensitive to the nudge of peer relationships and social norms.

Bringing students together to hash out community standards about language is “the only way I can think of for there to be a set of norms about what speech goes too far that students on all sides would accept as legitimate,” David Pozen, the Columbia law professor, said. He felt the tumult of this spring, which at Columbia resulted in early student departures and scrambled graduation plans, aggravated and exhausted many students who did not themselves participate in the demonstrations and counterdemonstrations. “Students are feeling anguished and alienated, and maybe that’s an opening,” Pozen said.

Clémence Boulouque, a religion professor who serves on the university’s antisemitism task force, hoped Columbia could recover a sense of itself as a “place where people can coexist” and where mediation and discussion might forestall endless grievance and grief. If the divisions opened up by the protests were litigated in an endless back-and-forth of Title VI complaints, fought in the zero-sum realm of the law, then the school would fail at one of the oldest concepts in education: the moral development of its students. “Denying the pain of others, it’s not a great way of conflict resolution,” she said. “It’s also self-inflicted moral injury.”

On one level, this focus on de-escalation avoided the deep unresolved disagreements over where the political ended and the personal began. On another, it was its own kind of blunt realism. “We have to heal together and live together,” Boulouque said. “It’s just like Israel-Palestine. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

Read by Gabra Zackman

Narration produced by Anna Diamond

Engineered by Quinton Kamara

An earlier version of this article misstated the date that Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, asked the New York City Police Department to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the university’s lawn. It was April 18, not April 17. The article also misstated the position of the literary theorist and activist Edward Said on a two-state solution. He supported the proposal in the early 1990s but changed his public stance to support a one-state solution later in that decade.

How we handle corrections

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. More about Emily Bazelon

Charles Homans is a reporter for The Times and The Times Magazine, covering national politics. More about Charles Homans

The Campus Protests Over the Gaza War

News and Analysis

​Harvard said that it will no longer take positions on matters outside of the university , accepting the recommendations of a faculty committee that urged the school to reduce its messages on issues of the day.

​Weeks after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, the university police have made the first arrest related to the attack .

​​A union for academic workers in the University of California system announced that an ongoing strike challenging the system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations would extend to two more campuses , U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis.

The Battle Over College Speech:  ​University demonstrations over the war in Gaza have reignited the debate over campus speech, and have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia .

Making Sense of the Protests:  In the weeks leading up to graduation, our reporter spoke with more than a dozen students at Columbia University and Barnard College about how the campus protests had shaped them .

A Complex Summer:  Many university leaders and officials may be confronting federal investigations, disputes over student discipline  — and the prospect that the protests start all over again in the fall.

A New Litmus Test:  Some Jewish students say their views on Zionism — which are sometimes assumed — have affected their social life on campus .

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