Dr. Aaron Belkin
Director
Aaron Belkin is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has published in the areas of civil-military relations, social science methodology, and sexuality and the armed forces. His recent studies include analyses of aerial coercion and strategic bombing, the conceptualization of coup risk, and the relationship between coup-proofing strategies and international conflict. His publications have appeared in International Security, Armed Forces and Society, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Parameters (the official journal of the U.S. Army War College) and elsewhere, and he has made presentations on gays in the military at the Army War College, National Defense University, Naval Postgraduate School, and U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Dr. Jeanne Scheper
Research Director
Dr. Jeanne Scheper is Research Director at the Palm Center and an Affiliated Research Scholar in Women's Studies at UCSB. Her ongoing interests include American and British Culture in the inter-war period, Performance and Media Studies, and the History of Sexuality, including sexual minorities and the law at the turn of the century. Her publications have appeared in Women & Performance, Feminist Studies, Camera Obscura and African American Review (forthcoming). Dr. Scheper received her Ph.D. from University of California, an M.A. from University of Maryland, College Park and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her current book project, "Moving Performances," is a study of mobility and identity in the early 20th century (1892-1940).

Lisa Indra Lusero
Assistant Director
Indra Lusero is the Assistant Director of the Center and a student at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Puget Sound and M.A. in Theatre at the University of Colorado. Her interdisciplinary work is published in The Journal of Democracy and Education, and Educational Insights, among others. She has worked as a teacher at the Logan School for Creative Learning and as the Education Director for Deproduction, a media production company. She has been an invited speaker at many colleges and universities, discussing family and identity. She is currently researching reproductive health and the law.

Dr. Nathaniel Frank
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Nathaniel Frank is Senior Research Fellow at the Center and an adjunct professor at New York University. He first broke the story of the Army's firing of Arabic-language specialists under the ‘don't ask don't tell’ policy. He has been interviewed for national television and radio programs to discuss the topic of marriage and military service rights for gays and lesbians. Dr. Frank's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, Lingua Franca, and other publications. Dr. Frank received his Ph.D. in History from Brown University in the spring of 2002. Before that he earned his Masters also from Brown and his Bachelors from Northwestern University in History and American Culture. He is currently writing a book on the U.S. military's gay ban.

Dr. David Serlin
Senior Research Fellow
David Serlin is an associate professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego. He has served as a historical consultant for the History Channel, the National Building Museum, the National Institutes of Health, PBS, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Smithsonian. He is the author of 'Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America' (University of Chicago Press, 2004) and the author and/or editor of many other publications. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and is a member of the editorial collective for the 'Radical History Review.'

Shivaun Nestor
Web Designer
Shivaun has been designing web sites for non-profit, governmental and academic institutions since 1998. In addition to designing and maintaining web sites, she has done graphic projects for organizations as diverse as Genentech and the Oakland Public School District. In 2004, Shivaun received a Creative Work Fund grant from the Walter and Evelyn Haas Foundation for an interactive web site about young women in the juvenile justice system. As a health educator for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, her accomplishments included coordinating a national HIV prevention training program for the Centers for Disease Control and founding Free Zone, a ground-breaking health promotion arts and media program for sexual minority youth.

Filmmakers in Residence

Tom Shepard
Principal Investigator
Tom Shepard has been producing and directing documentaries for over 11 years. His films include: Knocking about the history and experiences of Jehovah’s Witnesses broadcast nationally on PBS’s “Independent Lens” in May of 2007, and Scout’s Honor, a PBS-funded documentary about the anti-gay policy of the Boy Scouts of America and the grassroots campaign to overturn it. Scout’s Honor won the two top awards at the Sundance Film Festival as well as several other others including Grand Prize at the 2001 USA Film Festival. He also co-produced documentary segments for the public television series Voting in America and co-produced and edited Camp Lavender Hill. Before that, Shepard worked as an editor at National Public Radio (NPR) for Linda Wertheimer. He’s currently directing a feature documentary about youth and science.

Michele Sieglitz
Michele Sieglitz runs a production company called lilblackcat productions, where she works as a freelance producer, shooter and editor for PSA’s, promo pieces and short films for corporations and individuals, artists and non-profit clients, from development to post-production. She has worked as an editor, producer and photographer on several independent films and Bay Area collaborations, including Tom Shepard’s Sundance award-winning documentary Scout’s Honor. Michele graduated with a degree in Television, Radio & Film Production from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University and now teaches at the BEMA department of City College in San Francisco, Art Institute of California-San Francisco, BAVC, GLIDE Memorial Teen Center, the Napa/Sonoma Film and Music Institute and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

Johnny Symons
Johnny Symons is an Emmy-nominated independent film and videomaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated Long Night’s Journey Into Day, about South Africa's search for truth and reconciliation, which won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. His documentary Daddy & Papa, about the personal, cultural, and political impact of gay men raising children, premiered at Sundance, aired on PBS and international television, and garnered multiple Best Documentary awards. He is currently directing and producing Ask Not, a feature-length documentary about gays and lesbians serving in the US military. Johnny’s work has screened at more than 100 international film festivals. He currently works as a freelance producer, cinematographer, and editor, and lectures in documentary film at Stanford and San Francisco State University.