Paul D. Lerner and Stephen Reis have made a transformative gift of $2.5 million to ONE Archives at the USC Libraries (ONE) to name and endow the ONE Archives director position. That post has been held with distinction for many years by Dr. Joseph Hawkins, who has held leadership roles at ONE Archives since 2002.
“We feel that we are fortunate people who have benefited from the blood, sweat, and tears of early LGBTQ+ activists who opened up opportunities we enjoy today,” said Lerner and Reis. “It’s important for us to give back, and we hope our gift will inspire others to support ONE Archives so it can reach its full potential.”
Hawkins, who will retire this year, said, “Paul and Stephen’s gift represents a tremendous vote of confidence in our mission and everything we do. Their gift will help to ensure ONE’s stability into the future, at a time when support for queer archives and historical research is needed more than ever.”
“All of us at the USC Libraries are filled with gratitude for Paul and Stephen’s generosity,” said Melissa Just, dean of the USC Libraries. “Their gift will establish the Paul D. Lerner and Stephen Reis Director position at ONE, and we are thrilled that this will help us appoint a prominent LGBTQ+ studies scholar and cultural leader to help us build on ONE’s remarkable successes under Joseph’s leadership.”
Lerner’s ties with ONE Archives date to 1992, when he was completing a master’s degree at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and was asked to give a talk at ONE about his research on LGBTQ+ media. He has been a supporter ever since.
Together as a couple since 2000, and married since 2014, Lerner and Reis have focused on supporting LGBTQ+ organizations with their philanthropy. Reflecting on their decision to invest in ONE, the couple said, “So often our history has been denied, forgotten, or erased—but there are many fascinating historical records of LGBTQ+ people and communities in the archives just waiting to be discovered.”
“Both of us had meaningful experiences working in libraries when we were younger—Paul at Columbia University when he was an undergraduate, and me in my hometown library in Steilacoom, Washington,” added Reis, a cellist, music educator, and creator of a teaching technique for cello performance. “So we are library fans. We treasure the work they do in bringing our history to light.”
Lerner is widely known for his marketing communications and public relations work on health care issues, as well as his LGBTQ+ activism since the early 1980s. While a volunteer on the first communications committee supporting same-sex marriage rights, organized in 1995 by the Los Angeles LGBT Center, he coined the phrase “Freedom to Marry.” The rallying cry echoed across the country over the next twenty years, until the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized marriage for gay and lesbian couples nationwide. Lerner also won awards for his work in the 1990s with AIDS Project Los Angeles and Los Angeles Shanti. He later donated archival materials from the Freedom to Marry Coalition and Los Angeles Shanti to ONE.
In thinking about ONE’s future, the couple take inspiration from historian George Chauncey’s landmark Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. His influential 1994 study drew upon a decade of research at numerous archives, including several weeks spent exploring ONE’s collections.
Chauncey first consulted ONE’s collections in 1988 while completing his Ph.D. in history at Yale University and has conducted research trips for his forthcoming book on gay male culture in postwar New York. “I am continually amazed by the richness of the material I found [there],” said Chauncey. “Who knew I would have to travel to Los Angeles to learn which newsstands in New York City sold the largest number of early homophile magazines….”
“ONE Archives is already the largest and the most important LGBTQ+ archive in the world,” Lerner said. “We want ONE also to be known as the world’s leading cultural center for LGBTQ+ historical research. There is so much more to learn and understand about our histories, so we hope our gift will enable generations of researchers to reveal and reclaim our stories.”
“We hope our gift is the first of many major gifts to ONE Archives,” said Reis. “We feel that ONE has been something of a hidden gem—and it deserves to be much less hidden.”
Through its celebrated arts and cultural programs, ONE Archives engages artists, community members, educators, and the public and adds to the wealth of stories in its collections. The transformative gift by Lerner and Reis will extend the reach of LGBTQ+ history preserved at ONE through its support for the director position, which oversees curatorial, archival, and operations at ONE and serves as primary liaison with the USC Libraries and USC leadership.
