Journalist – Historian – Speaker
A proposal to build a home (note: I do not know the people building or running this home, so I cannot vouch for it. I am generally opposed to this kind of large-scale establishment, but some are alright for some people) for adults with developmental disabilities in Atlantic met with opposition. Not in backyard, they …
Well, my move to Wix was a disaster. I did, however, defeat sunk cost bias and moved back here. I’ll be writing more about the lessons of the disaster in the next week or so. Here’s what I wrote this week, even as I continue to work on my book and other long-term projects. Inspiration …
An act of kindness at a Chicago-area McDonalds has been getting a lot of attention over the last week. A customer, Destiny Carreno, saw an employee decide to close his till and go help a disabled man eat lunch. Carreno took a picture, placed it on Facebook, and went viral. Her Facebook post has nearly …
Many children with Down syndrome are born with holes in their hearts. In many of those cases, the holes close by themselves as the children grow older. Unless you meet the Pope, in which case USA Today has decided to clickbait it as a miracle. The Pope asked my husband, ‘How old is she? What’s her …
Yesterday I published a brief post on Flowers v. Gopal, in which some rich California folks are trying to declare a neighboring autistic child a public nuisance. I’ll have more to say about the case, including answering the, “but but he wasn’t a nice kid!” comments I’m getting (short version: If he didn’t have autism …
Hey @rutgersu check this prof’s email to student asking to take off #EidAlAdha (student’s name removed upon request) pic.twitter.com/hMuZx1SyMB — Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) September 23, 2015 The above tweet details a snotty response to a student asking for an excused absence for Eid Al Adha. It’s rude. It’s arrogant. It’s demeaning. It implies that the …
UPDATE 10/11/15: One member of the plaintiffs called me to offer their side of the story, which is that it’s entirely about public safety and not about autism at all; furthermore, they claim, they only sued because the defendants served them with a cease and desist letter, leaving the plaintiffs with no choice to sue. …
I met Arthur Chu this summer at a workshop on the problem of misogyny on the internet and we’ve been corresponding via email and social media a lot since then. Our writing interests overlap when it comes to representation issues in media and games. He interviewed me on the problem of claiming “authenticity” as a …
(Reposted from 9/9/15) Jesse Stommel is leaving a tenure-track job at Wisconsin to go take a job as a faculty development director at the University of Mary Washingon. He wrote a powerful blog post about the descision, which you should read. I want to highlight just one point, out of the many, skipping the issue …
Here’s a great piece from Conditionally Accepted about the way being on the tenure-track makes us conservative. It’s wide-ranging and important, thinking about identity and many related issues. Read it all. Here’s the bit that especially dovetails with my interests on public writing, activism, and the academy [my emphasis]: More generally, I bear the burden …