Jeremy Goldbach, an expert on LGBTQ mental health, has been installed as the inaugural Masters and Johnson Distinguished Professor in Sexual Health and Education.
An installation ceremony took place May 11 in Hillman Hall.
“Professor Goldbach has an outstanding record of scholarship and a passion for his research involving the relationship between minority stress in marginalized populations and behavioral health outcomes,” said Tonya Edmond, professor and interim co-dean of the Brown School. “I was so pleased when he accepted the opportunity to join us last fall at the Brown School.”
“I am honored to have installed Professor Goldbach in a professorship named in honor of Masters and Johnson, who did much of their groundbreaking research at our university,” said Chancellor Andrew D. Martin. “I have no doubt that he will continue their legacy in pursuing his work with LGBTQ young people.”
Goldbach’s installation address was titled “Let’s Talk About Sex (Because the Silence is Killing Us).”
Goldbach joined the Brown School in 2021 after nearly a decade with the University of Southern California. Goldbach completed both his master’s and doctoral degrees in social work at The University of Texas at Austin.
His work is primarily focused on measuring, understanding and intervening upon experiences of minority stress and discrimination among LGBTQ+ children and adolescents. Goldbach’s work in the area has been continuously funded since 2012 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and National Institute on Drug Abuse; the Department of Defense and through foundations.
Before returning for his doctoral education, Goldbach oversaw a large community-organizing project in Texas that funded 32 community coalitions to reduce substance misuse through environmental, policy-based strategy.
About Masters and Johnson
William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions. Masters joined the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine in 1947, and he and Johnson began their joint work in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis in 1957.
Masters and Johnson founded the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation in St. Louis in 1964, which was renamed the Masters and Johnson Institute in 1978. They conducted independent sexological research and organized training workshops for researchers, educators and therapists until Masters’ retirement in 1994.
Masters and Johnson have been widely recognized for their contributions to sexual, psychological and psychiatric research, particularly for their theory of a four-stage model of sexual response (also known as the human sexual response cycle) and their study of sexual response among the elderly. Their most influential findings were summarized in the book Human Sexual Response (1966).
Though academic in language, the book was a nationwide bestseller and helped influence cultural attitudes toward sex. The pair followed up with Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970) and The Pleasure Bond (1975), which further disseminated their findings using language directed to a general audience.
Numbered among their awards are acknowledgments from the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists in 1978, 1985 and 1992. The Society for Sex Research and Therapy grants the Masters and Johnson annual award for extraordinary contributions to clinical sexuality and/or sexual research over the course of a lifetime and achievement of excellence in clinical and/or research areas of sexual disorders.
Masters died in 2001 at the age of 85; Johnson died in 2013 at age 88.
