The College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the Horace A. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Women’s Studies Department, Psychology Department, and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender provided much-appreciated support for the development and implementation of this program.

We are grateful to John D. Evans (BA ’66) for the support for this year’s Summer Institute provided by the John D. Evans Foundation, and for his encouragement of other alumni to support this project. We are delighted that he will join us for part of the program this August.

The Riley Carney Scholarship to the International LGBT Summer Institute

The Riley Carney Scholarship was established by Heather Carney to create support for one young scholar to attend the first International LGBT Summer Institute.

Riley Carney was raised in the U.S. South in the midst of racial integration of the schools during the 1960s. He felt that discrimination against anyone due to skin color (or any other reason) was wrong, but because of that belief he was seen as an outcast even in his own family. He took actions during high school that were brave and not well-understood at the time, including drinking out of the ‘black’ water fountain and lobbying for males to be able to take home economics. His own sexuality was not accepted in his town or by his family. Riley’s daughter, Heather Carney, contributed this gift in recognition of his struggle, and with the hope that others will grow up in a more knowledgeable and just world than he did.

This year Eric Swank is the Riley Carney Scholar. He was selected for this honor because his research focuses on gender, heterosexism, and discrimination in the rural South.