Farquhar College to Host Lecture by Gay-Rights Activist Jeffrey Dudgeon

The Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences will welcome leading gay-rights activist Jeffrey Dudgeon on Thursday, March 12, 2009, as the speaker for the Stolzenberg-Doan Winter 2009 Lecture in the Knight Auditorium of the Carl DeSantis Building, from 6 to 7 p.m.

Dudgeon was the successful plaintiff in Dudgeon v. the United Kingdom, a six-year struggle that ended at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg resulting in the passage of a 1982 law decriminalizing homosexual behavior in Northern Ireland. This was a European first and a precedent quoted in the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Texas sodomy case judgment. Since 1982, using the Dudgeon precedent, Strasbourg judgments have decriminalized homosexuality in Cyprus and the Irish Republic.

In 2002, Dudgeon published a book about the authenticity of the erotic diaries of Roger Casement, the gay Irish revolutionary executed for treason in 1916. In addition to the diaries, the book includes a study of Casement's background, sexuality, and Irish political life. The Casement controversy has not subsided as some groups still insist the diaries were forged by England.

Dudgeon continues to research Casement's time in Germany (1914-1916) and issues in gay-law reform. He also acts as a liaison to police for crimes against gays and lesbians, and assists those charged with criminal offenses or other legal difficulties.

The Stolzenberg-Doan Winter 2009 Lecture is funded by the Stolzenberg-Doan Family Endowment, named in memory of the grandparents and mother of James E. Doan, Ph.D., professor in the college’s Division of Humanities. In addition to the lecture, the endowment funds a scholarship for international studies and other majors in the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences participating in travel-study courses taught or sponsored by the college’s faculty.

For more information, please contact Stephen Levitt, LL.M., associate professor in the college’s Division of Humanities, at levitts@nova.edu or (954) 262-8210.