Journalist – Historian – Speaker
More on the cuteness porn front: If a company is going to slap a cute picture of a child with Down syndrome on a bottle, it’s fair to ask them how they plan to use the publicity and resulting profits to build a more inclusive company. If Down syndrome organizations and celebrities are going to …
The great Anne Helen Peterson, who made the leap from academia to journalism, has a great piece on bridging that divide in her weekly newsletter. On talking to journalists My advice to the group of academics, then, was two-fold. First: recognize that both sides need to be more flexible. Understand that journalists have to have …
“Concerned citizens” called police on a cute white autistic child with messy hair, concerned he was being abused by his parents. Police figured it out quickly, thankfully, and other forms of bias didn’t intervene to make the situation more dangerous (i.e. had the child not been white). Don’t do this. Then there’s this: Oh hey. …
New in Pacific Standard: Since the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution was signed in 1983, granting equal legal rights to fetuses and pregnant women, it has functioned as a total ban on legal abortion. Next May, Ireland will hold a referendum over whether to repeal the amendment, and current polling suggests that pro-repeal will …
This article on policing and autism does not quote a single autistic person. It does quote “Vicki Harvey, the community outreach coordinator with Autism Nova Scotia.” And cops. https://t.co/eQVU7lGZ3I — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) January 31, 2018 This is a story about policing and autism that quotes police and people who coordinate “outreach” for an …
Today at the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto I will be giving a talk on Public Humanities in the Age of Trump. It’s been an intense period lately around right-wing attacks on academic freedom, not the least because I’ve encountered the worst sets of attacks of my career. They were exhausting, if …
We all make our choices about where we draw our ethical lines, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves: Watching the NFL is an unethical activity. #SuperBowl52https://t.co/2JzR0QTBn3 — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 2, 2018 The best thing about the superbowl, as someone who drives by downtown every day, is that traffic is very low. The worst …
Having a pill track whether you take it sounds helpful, unless you care about privacy, freedom, or disability rights. @PacificStandhttps://t.co/9pm2FtgP6D — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 1, 2018 This is the latest frontier of the Internet of Things. It’s pretty bad. Please read and share.
When Turning Points USA launched its Professors Watchlist, I raised the alarm. A lot of folks did. But others mocked, saying that it was just some website and not worth fussing about. I wrote for The Establishment about it, saying that it was a sign of worse attacks to come. Those attacks have, indeed, come. Read …
Steve Bannon is coming to University of Chicago to perform “reasoned debate.” John Warner writes: Zingales says, “Hate cannot be defeated by hate, but only by reason.”Huh? Perhaps hate cannot defeat hate, but does this mean our only alternative is “reason?”I’m trying to think of a single instance in recorded history where hate was defeated …