I am very excited to be going to the University of Toledo tomorrow to offer a talk: Why do police kill people with disabilities? Are you in the area? It’s a public lecture this Friday, 10/16. Details: Memorial Field House, Room 1030, 2:00. Description: A third to a half of all people killed by police…
Disability continues to be a largely ignored issue in the presidential primaries except for when it comes to gun violence, when the candidates get things entirely wrong. Here’s 100% of what Sanders or Clinton (the only candidates that actually might get nominated) said about disability last night. SANDERS: Let’s begin, Anderson, by understanding that Bernie…
Laura Michele Diener is an associate professor of history at Marshall. She works on medieval textile history, and I first met her when she gave a terrific presentation on using textile creation in the classroom. Recently, though, I’ve become aware of her public writing on contemporary issues. One of my theories about academics turning to…
This is a video of a school cop grabbing an African-American teenager by the throat for, it appears, trying to walk away. There had been a fight, the officer was telling him something, and the boy was trying to leave. Unless the boy was making some kind of threat, which no one has claimed he…
A year ago I published an essay on Columbus Day for CNN – What do you tell your kids about Columbus? In October 2013, my daughter came home from school excited about Christopher Columbus. He had come to visit her class! During his visit, he told the children that he had figured out the world…
I have a new piece up at Al Jazeera America this morning on Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is the mega-charity of the autism world. Founded in 2005, it has an annual budget of $60 million, is known for its ubiquitous awareness walks and has a handsome array of celebrity backers. In some quarters of the disability…
Bruce Holsinger is a medieval literary scholar, a novelist, a public intellectual, and a friend. Here’s my review of his novels, political thrillers set in medieval London, with John Gower as the protagonist. You should read them. Holsinger has a piece in the New York Times today on Fiorina, extending the conversation about her regular invocation…
Arizona State University hosts the National Center for Disability Journalism, an excellent group doing important work. The NCDJ offers the only annual journalism award for Disability issues – the Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability – and have announced the 2015 winners. A ProPublica story that uncovered the shocking ways children…
I am still not handling my emotional reaction to the Oregon shooting very well. I’m also troubled by the efforts to focus on everything but the guns. Of course, with every such instance, there’s a rush to stigmatize mental illness and, in this case, developmental disability. It turns out that his mother was – as…
I have a new piece at The Guardian on Carly Fiorina. She has a BA in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford in the 70s and has been claiming that it will help her fight ISIS. I write: Last Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate tried to burnish her national security credentials by claiming that her bachelor’s…