Journalist – Historian – Speaker
A new survey of chief academic officers is out from Inside Higher Education. Among the findings: Provosts really care about civility and think it should be part of the framework for hiring and tenure. I see this as potentially troubling. When the Steven Salaita controversy broke, I wrote a piece for the Chronicle called “Don’t Speak …
Basic principle: The fight for basic economic justice for everyone is the fight for better lives for people with disabilities. #SOTU4PWD — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) January 21, 2015 Yesterday President Obama mentioned “Americans with mental illness or physical disability” as part of his long list of inclusive terms. This is not my preferred language. …
Carol Swain is a Vanderbilt University law professor and noted Islamophobe. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, she wrote a thoroughly nasty column for The Tennessean. Protests and counter protests and accusations of censorship have followed. I wrote about related issues for The Chronicle of Higher Education a few months back, in the wake …
Last week I wrote about a new bill in Indiana that forbids disability-selection and sex-selection abortion. The latter almost never happens. The former happens all too often. The combination is an attempt to do two things: 1) split the pro-choice and disability rights movement and 2) gain support for abortion restrictions by nominally pro-choice individuals …
On Friday I wrote my second piece for Reproductive Health Reality Check about fighting the divide and conquer attempts to sever the disability rights movement and the pro-choice movement. I offer two core premises that I want to make sure you don’t miss. I believe the solution lies in an intersectional approach based on each community …
Ellie building the Lego “Research Lab.” My daughter, Ellie, who is 5: I wonder why people make pants without pockets. Me: It’s because clothing designers believe girls don’t need pockets. Ellie: We should go to a clothing designer and say, ‘Hey! Put pockets in girl pants.’ And they’ll say, ‘Why? Girls don’t need pockets.’ And then …
District Attorney Kari Brandenburg decided to skip the grand jury process and charge the officers who killed James Boyd, a man with psychiatric disabilities, with murder. Grand juries don’t want to indict cops. Juries don’t want to convict cops. But at least there will be a day in court. Here’s what the defense will say: …
Yesterday I had a piece in the Motherlode blog of the New York Times. I talk about the ways that parents of kids with disabilities are shamed when their children act in atypical ways. And I argue that this shame matters – that it drives parents to isolate and works against my goal of an …
Two years ago, tonight, three off-duty deputies moonlighting as mall security killed Ethan Saylor. They killed Ethan Saylor by forcing him to the ground, fracturing his trachea. They killed him because they couldn’t figure out how to deal with a large, cursing, man with Down syndrome. They killed him because no one in the theater, …
Today is my son’s birthday. He’s eight. I used to feel that I needed to spend the day writing about our diagnosis story. It felt important to me to talk about these challenging hours, days, and week as we transitioned from shock and mourning to the deep pleasures of parenting our new baby boy. But you …