Journalist – Historian – Speaker
It’s happening. Ohio is going to pass an anti-choice bill that criminalizes speech between a woman and her doctor. I wrote about the ban here. Kasich will surely sign it. I’m pretty livid. This won’t help people with Down syndrome. It’s not intended to. It just keeps spreading stigma on the one hand, while serving as a …
My latest in The Nation: Mostly buried beneath early November’s onslaught of news, stories from Oklahoma, Iowa, and Maine reveal the ways that state governments, through both apparent incompetence and maliciousness, are failing disabled residents and their families. In the first two examples, disability programs are being cut as a result of self-imposed budget crises. …
This is an incredible article on, as they were called at the time, “McNamara’s Morons,” people with intellectual disabilities drafted into the Vietnam War. One morning in the summer of 1967, I was among about 100 men at the Armed Forces induction center in Nashville. It was the height of the Vietnam War, and I …
Dominant Narrative: Conservative students on liberal campuses are ostracized and marginalized and it isn’t fair and there should be balance. Data: Conservative students at UW Madison are doing fine. Politically conservative students instead were more likely to report feeling safe, respected and like they belong than students holding other political views. Conservative students also were …
Arizona State University regents (via a committee) rejected a disability studies major (while approving a slate of technical and business majors). Majors get rejected all the time, but this one was telling, because the regent quoted clearly didn’t get the humanities. Amy Silverman wrote about the decision. Here’s the reporting on the actual decision. Searle …
In my latest for The Nation, I zoom in on a little clause in Trump’s latest comments on mental health and gun violence. Trump’s comments on mental health are typical of Republican response to violence. He characterized the killer as a “very deranged individual” who has a “mental health problem at the highest level.” This …
Arkansas is set to execute Jack Greene this Thursday. He is mentally ill, with intense delusions and a long history of self-harm and violent ideation. He committed murder, but there’s reasonable debate about the extent to which he understands reality. The prison director decided he wasn’t sufficiently mentally ill to be spared due to disability. …
In my latest Pacific Standard essay, I talk about the ways that some right-wing schools enforce indoctrination and homogeneity, even as our free speech on campus discourse focuses on left-wing schools. In response to National Football League players protesting state violence against African Americans, the College of the Ozarks, a small, Christian liberal arts institution in …
HELLO @StOlaf we have so much to talk about tomorrow! #UmYahYah pic.twitter.com/nYeCAeCHOp — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) November 2, 2017 I’m looking forward to going back to Northfield today. I spent a year and a half there while writing my dissertation, a difficult and glorious time in my life. I struggled. I thrived. I wrote. …
University of Chicago’s Open Letter condemns white supremacist abuse toward scholars of color: https://t.co/9WuFYnbNYZ — medievalpoc (@medievalpoc) October 31, 2017 This letter from the English faculty does a nice job of parsing how to talk about free speech while considering how to protect the vulnerable. They write: We wish to reaffirm that our role as …