Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Elizabeth Picciuto and I collaborated on a piece in the Los Angeles Times today on abortion and disability rights in the age of Zika. Two key paragraphs: We are parents of children with disabilities who are also pro-reproductive rights. David Perry’s 9-year-old son has Down syndrome. Elizabeth Picciuto’s 6-year-old son has Cri du Chat syndrome and …
In an unforced error, the Dean of Students at the University of Chicago published a letter welcoming students to the university by telling them there would be no safe spaces or trigger warnings at his fine institution. The letter went viral, and we returned predictably to the same conversations we’ve been having about this for …
Today I’m part of a workshop on how Dominican might develop more curriculum around ableism. I’ll be talking for about 5 minutes on my basic definitions of ableism – focusing on violence – and then participating for a few hours in a group effort to propose a set of linked classes. It’s just the start …
Modern xenophobic Europeans have adopted medieval crusader imagery for their cause. As a medievalist, and more specifically a historian focused on imagination, memory, narrative creation, myth, and political culture focused around medieval crusading, I find this at once worrying and fascinating. Fascinating because it replicates many of the medieval processes by which crusading became a …
Prosthetics are everywhere in advertising these days. They look “cool.” They don’t bother typical society (advertising is all about playing to the center, I suppose, when it comes to big brands). They are easily understandable and explainable. They feed our technophilia. After the 2015 Superbowl, I wrote (in a longer piece on inspiration porn): Finally …
Two disabled men were killed by law enforcement over the last few days. Details are still emerging. Both seem to be relatively young white men. Daniel Harris, in Charlotte NC, was Deaf and communicated via sign language. Joseph Weber, in Hays KA, has not been identified by diagnosis, but a local source tells me he …
Suggestion to health reporters: If you are writing about a condition, make sure your reporting includes people who have that condition. From Quartz: How obesity became the new face of disability in America The article opens by comparing “lean” hikers to obese former steel workers in Colorado, then interviews doctors, economists, and public health officials, …
The current right-wing anti-Clinton meme is that she secretly has epilepsy (as evidenced by her nodding once and as evidenced by her needing support from aides while walking up icy stairs in heels). From that central meme, others have emerged, finding fertile ground in the segment of our country desperate to disqualify Clinton from the …
Here’s a new case out of Oakland illustrating the ways that restraint and seclusion practices in schools quickly move from “safety” to compliance. The U.S. Department of Education ruled the Oakland school district discriminated against a 9-year-old autistic boy who was restrained 92 times during one school year, sometimes for up to 90 minutes at …
Kit Mead wrote a new post late last week on ableism on the Left. The Left isn’t especially prone to ableism; rather, ableism is a society-wide phenomenon still in its early days of being discussed, understood, and countered through speech, action, and policy. We’re still having to prove ableism exists, that (in the words of …