Journalist – Historian – Speaker
I have a new piece out today at Al Jazeera America on the upcoming Supreme Court case – Sheehan vs San Francisco. I write: Twenty-five years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities are regularly dying at the hands of police officers across the country. In just the last few weeks, …
Tomorrow, 3/21, is World Down Syndrome Day, so called because of the 3 copies of the 21st chromosome that marks the condition. Last year, I wrote about the limits of cute. I expanded that argument in the Fall with this “Beyond Cute” piece for Al Jazeera. Cute is the first move, it gets people to …
No. No no no no no. Also no. According to a piece in The Telegraph (a right-wing British newspaper. Do Not Link used here), here’s how to fight body image issues among girls: A doctor and author says teachers should ask boys to tell girls what boys find attractive. Then girls will realize that boys like …
I have a new piece up at CNN on the Bruce Rauner budget. It attacks core services that both are necessary to help the most vulnerable and sound fiscal policy in the long-term sense. I write: The Rauner budget slashes state spending by over $4 billion, much of the savings gleaned by eliminating or reducing …
I have a new essay up on Yahoo! Parenting. It’s first piece for them and I’m glad to have a space that’s interested in my more personal essays (especially with their giant readership). It’s about talking to my daughter about her brother’s diagnosis. “My daughter is five and she likes to ask questions. Some are …
This is a collection of links about Republican cuts to programs serving people with disabilities, as well as comments from Republican officials/candidates questioning the rationales behind such programs. Resource pages offer collections of links for pieces I am writing, usually without comment. The comment comes in the piece I write later. Please suggest other links …
I write about public engagement and the academy for the Chronicle and here on the blog. Mostly, I have talked about the ways that formal non-academic writing (opinion essays, popular books, other media outreach) and community engagement (undocumented students) function within the core mission of an academic institution and career. There are, though, more radical views. …
For Southern Nationalists, slavery was better than modern taxation and the KKK was just a neighborhood watch. From a Guardian piece: Kiscaden, who owns a coal mine in Kentucky, had an equally peculiar interpretation of history. He disputed that Forrest was a a founding member of the Klan, which he said played a positive role …
Yesterday, I wrote about the death of Anthony Hill, a man with bipolar disorder, who, while naked and unarmed, was killed by police in the Atlanta area. Here are three stories on how police should respond to these sorts of situations (I’m guessing there are 500+ related deaths a year nationally, but numbers are hard …
“The [naked] man who appeared mentally ill ran at the officer and ignored demands to stop before the officer shot him twice.” Hill and his parents. Used by permissionof the picture’s owner. Yesterday, in DeKalb, GA, a police officer responded to a call about a naked, unarmed, man at an apartment complex. He was clearly …