February is traditionally designated to celebrate the LGBT+ History Month, and as part of this initiative, many colleagues at EECS and across the University paid tribute and celebrated the LGBT+ community and their allies.
You can read about the EE & CS linked achievements at: https://cs4fn.blog/lgbtq-computer-science-greats/. Including the (love and law) story of Edie Schlain Windsor the IBM senior systems programmer who led the landmark Supreme Court Case (United States v Windsor) that led to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the US.
Paul Curzon gave a talk at the London CAS conference for teachers on the 25th February. The theme of the conference was Love Computing, and so Paul’s workshop explored the work of (gay) Christopher Strachey’s and his love letter writing program (you can read more here: https://cs4fn.blog/christopher-strachey/)
And if you haven’t seen it yet, you can still head to the cinemas to watch Blue Jean, which is a frank, powerful and emotionally resonant portrait of lives, both public and personal, in the not-too-distant past. In 1988, Margaret Thatcher’s government was about to implement Section 28 laws designed to ban anything that appears to “promote the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” The story follows a PE teacher Jean who is careful not to advertise her queerness at the school where she works, but when a new pupil joins her class, her double life becomes to unravel.