Journalist – Historian – Speaker
I have a book review out with postemedieval on a collection of recent books about the state and future of higher education. “Where are we going? Why are we in this handbasket?” is open access. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.– Rahm Emmanuel, Mayor of ChicagoEvery week, another cry of crisis reverberates …
Three published pieces this week. Two on disability and violence, and one on Star Wars. Star Wars and the Fan-Fictionalization of American Pop Culture (Vice.com, 12/18/2015) Beyond the Crisis: Philip Coleman, the Chicago PD, and Mental Illness Response (CNN.com, 12/17/2015) When Police Abuse Disabled Children (Pacific Standard, 12/17/2015) The CNN piece didn’t get as much readership as the …
My son, like many children with disabilities, has some acute sensory issues. T-shirt tags bother him incessantly, and the advent of the printed label is wonderful. We try not to buy shirts that have tags, and when we do … Universal design for T-shirts is: no tags! #Sensory pic.twitter.com/iLnupk1fZ8 — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) December …
An Islamophobic hate-rally was held in Prague last weekend, featuring Neo-Nazi songs, chants of “Burn down all the mosques,” and, interestingly to me, people in Crusader costumes. Here’s some images: Dressed as Crusaders to hear Neo-Nazi singer: Czechs march for president, against refugees https://t.co/cqKpMRIQuQ pic.twitter.com/thQhKrDOtw — Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) December 16, 2015 So this is a …
Back in June, Morgan Wheeler saw a wheelchair user and asked if she could help. He said no. She started pushing him anyway. He asked her to stop. She kept pushing him. He asked her to stop again. She kept pushing him around. 1. This is likely illegal. Battery? Kidnapping? Assault? 2. Morgan decided to …
Long read on mental health and policing in Chicago, with an emphasis on CIT team training. I should have a piece out relatively soon on the need to stop focusing on crisis, and instead look “upstream” of crisis events, to prevent them from happening in the first place.
As I (and many people smarter than me) frequently say – there is no autism epidemic. Rates are increasing largely, perhaps solely, due to changing how we diagnose autism. Now Jessica Wright, for Spectrum (and republished by The Atlantic), has written an enormously important piece on the “missing generation” of autistic individuals. Last year, Scott Hartman moved …
Cincinnati has a new red and white placard that deaf and hard-of-hearing drivers can place in their car to inform police officers of their disability. Here’s an image from a local news tweet. .@CincinnatiPD & students at @uofcincy help design traffic stop safety placards for the deaf & hard of hearing. pic.twitter.com/M6C6fOcGvn — Angela Ingram …
Explosive new report of abuse from the Massachusetts Disability Law Center. UPDATE: You can see the whole report here. 1. The Cult of Compliance (from Boston Globe): The investigation uncovered a school culture in which aggressive discipline of students had become ingrained, Eichner said. Many students suffered injuries, including scratches and bruises, and one student was …
Thomas Madden, one of my mentors, has a new piece in the Washington Post on ISIS and the Crusades. In it, he rehearses the ways in which the memory of the Crusades was carried by Western European people into the colonial era and thus brought the European ideas about the Crusades into the Islamic world. Modern …