BOSTON —Some Harvard students and faculty are calling on the school to award posthumous degrees to seven students expelled nearly a century ago for being gay or perceived as gay, and they’re timing a rally for their cause to coincide with a Lady Gaga visit.
But Harvard says it doesn’t award posthumous degrees, except in rare cases where students who completed academic requirements died before degrees were conferred.
Harvard apologized a decade ago, after a student reporter found a file marked “secret court” in the university archives and wrote about the expulsions.
But some say the apology isn’t enough.
“It’s not reparations; it’s more of a gesture to the present LGBT community that this university has cemented its values on the right side of history and it’s willing to address — not just put in the past — the aberrations of the 1920s,” said Jonas Wang, a 21-year-old transgender student. “You can say that the people of the court were the victims of their own culture, but this is something we are addressing in the present.” The Associated Press
