CUNY Digital History Archive: CLAGSThis collection highlights the history and development of CLAGS, a CUNY organization that played a leading role in the establishment and legitimization of queer studies in a time when the categories of queer and academia were widely believed to be mutually exclusive. Historian Martin Duberman, CLAGS’s founder and first executive director, was among the first academics to, not only come out as gay, but also insist that the study of sexuality is a valid, and indeed necessary, academic pursuit. In 1973, Duberman founded the Gay Academic Union and experienced first-hand the pushback of mainstream academics who vehemently dismissed what was then referred to as “gay studies.” Duberman remained determined, however, and in 1986 assembled a number of his friends and colleagues to discuss the possibility of an academic center devoted explicitly to the pursuit and wide-scale dissemination of lesbian and gay scholarship.