Gregory M. Herek (born 1954 in Omaha, Nebraska) is a researcher, author, and professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis (UCD). He has conducted extensive research on prejudice against sexual minorities, and coined the term sexual prejudice as a replacement for homophobia to describe this phenomenon. Herek argued that using the term homophobia incorrectly assumes that negative responses to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are founded in pathological, irrational fear (a phobia), whereas psychological research indicates they are more accurately regarded as a form of prejudice. Herek is an openly and prominent gay psychologist. Herek is considered one of the most influential scholars of sexual minorities.
Biography Herek was born in 1954, the youngest of four children. He briefly attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha, but dropped out to devote himself to political activism. He later received his B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University, followed by a year of teaching at Yale. He then joined the faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. In 1989, he returned to UC Davis, first as a research psychologist and then, since 1999, as a tenured professor.
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