Dr. James D. Anderson
(? - living) U.S.A.
Professor, activist
In 1977, Anderson joined the faculty at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, as assistant professor in the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies. He became associate professor in 1979, associate dean in 1983, and Professor of Library & Information Science in 1997. His field is information retrieval and the design of textual databases, with special emphasis on knowledge representation methods and on terminological thesauri for mapping and managing diverse vocabularies of information seekers and practitioners in professions and disciplines.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Anderson taught at Queens College, City University of New York, and St. John's University in New York City and worked as a librarian in Alaska and Portland, Oregon. He earned his B.A. degree at Harvard and his master's and doctoral degrees at Columbia.
At Rutgers, he chairs the President's Select Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns. He was also chair (1990-1994) of the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes, the university-wide effort to help the university community celebrate its diversity and its common purposes and to do away with all forms of prejudice, bigotry, unjust discrimination, and harassment. He was removed as chair and as a member of this committee by the Administration.
Since 1993, Anderson with four other faculty members has been suing Rutgers for equal LG partner benefits. In 1999,after prompting from the Board of Governors, the Rutgers Administration offered "3/5th" coverage, which Anderson promptly called "slavery benefits," based on the original U.S. constitution counting slaves as 3/5ths persons. He is currently boycotting all faculty governance (faculty meetings and committees) as a "second class apartheid professor."
In 1991, Rutgers president Francis L. Lawrence presented Anderson with a university public service award "in recognition for your more than a decade of work to educate and encourage your University and the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), to accord to Lesbian and Gay people the same rights and responsibilities enjoyed by all other citizens."
Anderson and his life partner have been married since 1972. Since 1981, they have jointly compiled the annual Index of American Periodical Verse.
Source: The LGBT Religious Archives Network - http://www.lgbtran.org/Pioneers.asp
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