Lady Gaga Launches Anti-Bullying Effort At Harvard

One of the more valuable roles a famous musician can play is to bring attention to important social issues. With last week's launch of the Born This Way Foundation, Lady Gaga stepped up her role as a supportive figure for young people who face bullying and other forms of abuse.

She was joined by Oprah Winfrey at Harvard where the launch ceremony took place at the invitation of Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

Born This Way Foundation is billed as a project of Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, and was founded in 2011 built on "three pillars":

Safety: Creating a Safe Place to Celebrate Individuality

Skills: Teaching Advocacy, Promoting Civic Engagement, and Encouraging Self-Expression

Opportunity: Providing Ways to Implement Solutions and Impact Local Communities

Lady Gaga Discusses the Three Pillars at Harvard

Last Wednesday the Born This Way Foundation officially launched at Harvard with Oprah Winfrey adding her presence in an event that was closed to the general public. In addition to many fans that showed up to see Lady Gaga on her way in, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, also attended.

Lady Gaga was invited by Harvard's Graduate School of Education because leaders there had been "searching for ways to address bullying as a neglected area of education — and as a human rights issue." In his discussion of this event for the NY Times, Nicholas D. Kristof references a variety of research that shows the debilitating effects of bullying on educational achievement.

Lady Gaga refers to her own experience of being bullied as an impetus for starting the Foundation. Given her support from and connection to gay, lesbian and transgender communities, a certain amount of Foundation-related discussion has been focused on gender and sexuality-related bullying. But members of the music industry might also consider the bullying that participants in musical subcultures have faced over the years.

For example, the generation of punk rockers that grew up after me in Raleigh, NC shared numerous tales of being harassed for their clothing, hair styles and taste in music. Emo kids have also had quite a bit to deal with during their teen years. Given that music is often a strong part of youth identity, musicians of all ages should be able to relate to young people wanting to be free to express themselves without suffering abuse in the process.

For that reason, it's been particularly disappointing to see that, beyond coverage due to Lady Gaga's celebrity status, the primary attention paid to bullying by music industry websites has been focused on questionable research.  As I discussed at length in the comments in a post at Techdirt, though certainly there are plenty of examples of what some might call "hysteria" in response to issues of cyberbullying, the research of the Pew Internet Foundation and of Danah Boyd concerning teens and bullying is flawed and does not support the conclusions drawn by Masnick.

Fortunately, though individuals such as Masnick are deservedly influential in other realms, the growing movement against bullying and for social acceptance of differing youth identities is currently gaining ground despite misleading public discussions. Efforts by celebrities are not enough but they are an important part of the puzzle, especially when the celebrities are musicians and, like Lady Gaga, strongly identified with youth subcultures.

The Born This Way Foundation is holding a poster contest for artists to create a "visual representation" for the Foundation that will "inspire, activate and move people." The deadline is Friday, March 23.

Lady Gaga pic courtesy DWNews.

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Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and music industry resources at Music Biz Blogs. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.