Scholarship Reception
7pm – Massachusetts State House, 24 Beacon St
Keynote Speaker
Louis-Georges Tin
Louis-Georges Tin is a French, human rights activist involved in the struggle against homophobia and racism. Tin is an academic who earned a PhD in humanities and social sciences from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS). While at ENS, he founded the school’s association of gay students in 1997. In 2004, Tin established the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), an annual worldwide event observed every May 17th in commemoration of the day when homosexuality was removed from the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (5/17/1990). IDAHO aims to coordinate international events that raise awareness of LGBT rights violations and stimulate interest in LGBT rights work. In 2004, he also founded France’s Council of Black Associations, which federates many black organizations in the country, and became its president in 2011. In 2009, as president of the IDAHO committee, he launched a campaign against transphobia which garnered the supported of over 300 non-governmental organizations in 75 countries. As a result of this campaign, the French government removed transsexualisme from its list of mental illnesses, becoming the first country in the world to do so. Tin and other IDAHO committee members conducted a hunger strike in June 2012 to pressure the French government to take the initiative on a United Nations resolution to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide. Louis-Georges Tin is currently a professor at EHESS (France’s most prestigious school of humanities and social sciences) and a lecturer at Orleans University School of Education. Tin’s numerous publications include Homophobia Dictionary (2003), The Invention of Heterosexual Culture (2008), and The Pact for Equality and Diversity (2012). Tin has been widely recognized for his work, receiving multiple human rights awards in France, Sweden, Germany, and Russia.