A gift of more than $1-million from a gay couple will help support what the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law is calling the nation’s first endowed academic chair in sexual-orientation law, the Los Angeles Times reported. The chair will be part of the law school’s Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, a research center that investigates such topics as discrimination against homosexuals, the impact of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and the demographics of same-sex couples who have adopted children.

R. Bradley Sears, the institute’s executive director, said that while some universities have chairs in gay and gender studies, those have been in the humanities and social sciences and not in a law school. The new chair’s formal establishment awaits a review to ensure that it matches the university’s research and teaching missions and is not too narrowly drawn, the Times said, but that approval is expected.