Academic

NYU Law's Visiting Professor Of Homophobia Withdraws

By Dan Filler

If you haven't been following the story, NYU Law invited a scholar (and former legislator) from Singapore to teach human rights courses this fall.   While a member of the Singapore Parliment,  Li-ann Thio had opposed the decriminalization of gay sex.  Her comments included "you cannot make a human wrong a human right", "diversity is not a license for perversity", and anal sex "is like shoving a straw up your nose to drink."   Listen to the whole speech - she paints quite a picture.   (She approvingly explains, for example, that it was "only after marriage was invented  by the Jewish Torah that the genie of sexual impulses was forced into the marriage bottle." )

Once members of the NYU community learned details about this visitor, the inevitable uproar followed.   The OUTLaw Board, and a gay African-American NYU IT employee, both wrote letters of concern.  And Thio responded with a surprisingly shrill (and very defensive) retort.  (All of this is documented in the Above the Law posts noted below.)  NYU didn't back off its invitation but - perhaps inevitably - Thio has now decided not to visit after all.  She shouldn't count on getting an invitation from another elite school - not when University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter notes the "embarrassingly low intellectual level" of her parlimentary speech. 

Above The Law has provided great coverage here, here, and here.

Brian Leiter had further comments here.

And video of Thio's seriously homophobic speech is here, here, and here.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on July 23, 2009 (boomark / email).