NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Playwright and gay activist Larry Kramer, who once accused Yale University of homophobia for rejecting his offer to fund a gay studies program, have reached a new agreement for a donation.
Kramer has agreed to donate to Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library his personal papers from both his writing career and his work as the founder of ACT-UP and other activist groups.
His brother, attorney and financier Arthur Kramer, has agreed to donate $1 million over five years to create the Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies.
The agreement does not involve a financial contribution from Larry Kramer, unlike his 1997 offer to set up an endowed professorship of gay studies. But he may make a financial contribution later.
“He’s taking a wait-and-see attitude, and that wait-and-see has to do with how Yale handles this initiative,” said Marianne LaFrance, a Yale professor of women’s and gender studies.
Yale rejected the original offer because the university thought gay studies was too narrow a field for a permanent professorship. Yale also said at the time that a hiring freeze dictated they could not add a professorship unless they cut one somewhere else.
Kramer told The New York Times that a lot has changed since he tried to force Yale to do things his way four years ago.
“I’d rather they fashion their own stuff. It may allow for a much more expandable notion of what lesbian and gay studies really is,” Kramer said.
LaFrance and writer Calvin Trillin, Kramer’s Yale classmate who helped put the agreement together, said Monday they thought Kramer would make more donations if he is pleased with the programs.
“I think what Larry’s saying now is … these things ought to sort of work organically. You ought to plant the seed and start with some money and that collection, which will in draw other collections, and see where is goes,” Trillin said.
Kramer, the author of plays such as “The Normal Heart” and “The Destiny of Me,” graduated from Yale in 1957. As a freshman in 1953, Kramer has said he attempted suicide because of the isolation he felt as a gay student.
