Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Over the last month, I’ve been tracking a collection of lawsuits applying disability civil rights laws to mask mandates, specifically to overturn BANS on mask mandates as violating IDEA, ADA, and Section 504 in various ways. The differences matter for many reasons, but in part because IDEA has an “exhaustion” rule intended to preclude disabled …
Yesterday morning, I sat in my office at home and answered email, helped draft an essay, had a meeting with graduate students, and smelled cigarette smoke, as if someone in the next room had smoked perhaps an hour ago. I coughed, not because I had to cough, but because the smell of cigarettes tells me …
Earlier this week, the ACLU and Disability Rights South Carolina announced they are suing the state over a law that bans school districts from requiring masks. Read the press release here. Read the complaint here. **** Yesterday, The Nation published my article on the core argument here, as expressed by two earlier lawsuits, one in …
Today’s latest piece at CNN comes from a simple observation, but not one I’ve seen made often: This is actually the third school year impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. And it doesn’t feel like we have a real plan. Throughout, I’ve been pushing (in various essays, tweets, calls with school admin, and more) for educational …
If we’re going to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 in all its variants, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we’ll need to impose vaccine mandates. But the details matter. I argue we should use existing systems that already mandate other vaccines, rather than trying to create new ones. In a few weeks I’ll be required to …
I think a lot about how to process living through a global mass death event. I don’t know how to do it even for myself, but am pretty sure that we’re all experiencing levels of trauma, albeit in very different ways. I try to read stories of people we’ve lost until it gets too much. …
Yesterday, a gunman using an AR-15 style rifle killed 10 people in a Boulder, CO, grocery store. It was the 7th mass shooting in the U.S. in the last 7 days. Over the years, I’ve written a lot about guns. It started with some high profile attacks on college campuses, when editors turned to me …
This week we buried my father-in-law and I wrote a very difficult essay about loss. Every single death, in all contexts, covid or not, has been shaped by this pandemic. We can’t mourn, we can’t access the community we need to process loss, and the trauma of all these delayed and denied rituals will carry …
Late in the Superbowl, Jeep broadcast one of those ads that promote a message and hope that if they make you feel, you’ll buy a car. Here, in an ad called “The Middle,” featuring Bruce Springsteen – a man from New Jersey – driving a jeep to the center of the continental U.S. in Kansas, …
From shortly after the election until at least 1/6, and arguably until the soldiers filled the streets of D.C. and made it clear they weren’t supporting a putsch, Donald J. Trump and his supporters tried to stage a coup. The efforts unfolded in court houses, in demonstrations, in federal government offices, in Congress, and finally …