Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Judge blocked Ohio law outlawing abortion if sought due to prenatal test indicating Down syndrome. … because the laws were never meant to be enforced. This is what’s never said by the Down syndrome community. https://t.co/DrbothZwHy — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) March 16, 2018 I am continuing to follow these laws. PA is next. No …
I wrote for NBC about the death of Stephen Hawking, arguing: A life like Hawking’s might easily fall into one of two ableist (discrimination or stigma based on prejudice and misconceptions about disability) tropes: The “supercrip” and the body/mind split. In the former, his accomplishments might suggest he “overcame” his disability. In the latter, his …
Today news is going around Twitter about a 30 person white male “applied history” conference at Stanford. Here it is, in all its pasty glory. ALL-MALE HISTORY CONFERENCE. This goes for the GUINNESS BOOK of the century! A team of 30 white male historians will discuss Applied History at @Stanford . What a shame. https://t.co/IXFQqi2eN2 …
Stephen Hawking, an amazing man, died yesterday. I plan to spend much of the day being surly about the word “despite,” as in, “despite his disability.” Watch the tropes …
ICE is trying to deport a local professor at Augsburg, destroying yet another family. Someday, we’re going to have a new government and we will need to have a reckoning. I can’t really imagine what it looks like, but at least a very public process where we find out exactly who decided to destroy all …
I wrote for Salon: Higher Ed’s got 99 problems … It started as a jokey, surly, listicle, then expanded into a pretty serious exercise and naming and providing a link to a broader discussion of issues that matter. Hey op-ed writers! Did you know that anti-racist activism isn’t the only problem facing higher ed? I …
This is my family’s school district. I’ll be watching closely. The mother of the student told KSTP she did not want her family’s identity revealed publicly, and said her son told her it was the van driver’s aide who assaulted him. “My son has autism, and he can act out at times,” she said. “And …
This was new, and ghastly, to me: Judges are not allowed to shock defendants in their courtrooms just because they won’t answer questions, the court said, or because they fail to follow the court’s rules of decorum.“While the trial court’s frustration with an obstreperous defendant is understandable, the judge’s disproportionate response is not. We do …
Florida school officials keep arresting disabled kids for non-compliance, especially those of color. Now they’re adding guns and promoting mental health stigma. #CultOfCompliancehttps://t.co/zkaX4TRueq — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) March 6, 2018 Yesterday, I wrote about a series of incidents in which disabled children, mostly non-white, whose stories of arrest and abuse in Florida schools have …
Yesterday, NPR broke the Sherman Alexie story. It’s been an odd one, even in this moment of “me too,” because the allegations went public and then viral long before the story, followed by an Alexie statement that generated more news, and then finally the women’s voices were heard. NPR did a great job. I did …