Home » Posts filed under meta
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts

Sunday Roundup: Blogging, Politics, Media and Disability

Sunday, November 15, 2015 0 comments
I wrote two pieces about presidential debates:
But I also wanted to talk about the way the GOP attacks higher ed and our too-often misguided defenses. Rubio said that welders make more than philosophy majors. He's wrong, but too many pundits used his mistake to laud philosophy. They're missing the point. So I wrote:
Then 
  • Three Rules of Academic Blogging (Chronicle.com, 11/12/15) - Pick a good platform, write what you want (don't worry about staying "academic"), and write for the sake of writing, not to be read. These are more lessons I've learned than rules.
Reminder - you can see my entire archive of published material here.

Then I wrote a lot of blog posts:
Thanks for reading. Later today I hope to write about anti-racism protests on my campus. Tomorrow I'll have a piece yelling at casual cruelty on the academic job market. Later next week, The Man In the High Castle.

Sunday Roundup: Four Important Posts on Disability

Sunday, November 1, 2015 0 comments
I finished a major corporate (disability-related) project this week and am hard at work on a major non-profit (disability-related) project now. That, plus teaching, plus the book, has slowed me down in terms of writing for mainstream media, but I trust that the depth of these bigger projects is more than worth it.

In the meantime, though, instead of blogging less, I'm taking ideas that might have made for publishable essays and placed them here. This week featured four posts that I think matter.
  1. How Not to Kill Someone in Mental Health Crisis. This is a video, from the UK, of a person with a machete not being killed by London police. It's instructive and important.
  2. Disability, Trauma, and the Assault at Spring Valley High - If 25% of all American children have experienced trauma, it means we have to rethink fundamental systems in our schools.
  3. Peter Singer's Tells - A controversial philosopher who argues that the correct ethical decision in the case of disability is euthanasia/abortion, reveals that he doesn't think those positions should be such a big deal. To him, they're old news.
  4. Adventures in Universal Design: Handwriting Notes and Take-Home Tests - My approach to universal design for learning. We're learning the wrong thing from the research on handwriting.
Thanks, as always, for reading.

Sunday Roundup - Guns and Mental Health

Sunday, October 18, 2015 0 comments
Next Tuesday I will speaking about disability and diversity at Lewis University. Details here. Open to the public.

Last week I went to Toledo to talk about public writing with other academics, then gave a talk on why police kill people with disabilities. Grateful to my hosts and everyone who came.

I was also on NPR's Here and Now this week, talking about Columbus Day. 7 minute segment here.

Blog posts:
I'm getting deeper into my book writing and two other major projects, but should have a piece come out next week on disability and politics.

Sunday Roundup - Back on Blogger

Sunday, September 27, 2015 0 comments
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.
Should be a published piece or two next week. Thanks for reading!

Sunday Roundup - The Republican Assault on Higher Education

Sunday, May 31, 2015 0 comments
I have a bunch of pieces out in various stages of edits, and hope to have 3 or 4 pieces published next week. This week I had only one, a new Game of Thrones piece for Vice. I think the changing relationship between the books and the show is interesting. Eventually, the show will become canon, if indeed it hasn't already. 

Of course, Game of Thrones is a very problematic show, as I try to face directly in my writing. I also wrote a blog post on Liking Problematic Things then had some thoughts about the way that Trigger Warnings Are Your Friends (focused more on academia than TV/entertainment).

Finally, I had a brief post on Language and Power: Stop Saying Troll. Center the victim. Call people who abuse folks online ... abusers.

-------------------

But the most important pieces I read this week emerged from various writers focusing on the Republican attack on higher education in Wisconsin. Here are some links:

In the last few days, the GOP in WI have removed definitions of tenure from the statute, cute around 250 million in funding from UW, and change "subject to" to "subordinate to" as a piece of their plan to destroy shared governance. Even worse, if everything passes, WI will become the only state in the country to not require even a BA to become a teacher. I don't really understand the kind of person who looks at the problems faced by WI and decides ... What we need are teachers with less education! That'll fix it.

Here are a few links. What are you reading?
In short, Wisconsin Republicans have declared total war on public education. Both the K-12 bill and the UW bill were negotiated and written totally in secret by committee Republicans, with the details released to the public only hours before the final, fore-ordained votes were held. Moral and political commitments aside, this leaves one to wonder whether those legislators who are quickest to cite “market-based” considerations have even a basic understanding of what Wisconsin’s comparative advantage is. Wisconsin has a hard-earned and well-deserved reputation for its excellent public schools and universities. Without those, what is the point of living in Wisconsin as opposed to some other state? Set aside the fact that no UW campus will ever be able to recruit a top-tier scholar again. Why would anyone choose Wisconsin as a place to raise their family? Why would anyone in their right mind move to Wisconsin after this budget?
And let's not forget North Carolina and Louisiana 

Sunday Roundup - Low Cost and High Quality Education Go Together

Sunday, May 24, 2015 0 comments
This week I had one published piece - Low Cost College Isn't Enough (CNN.com, 5/20/15)

Over the next 18 months of the presidential election, there's going to be a lot of conversation about lowering the cost of college. I am asking you to help me make sure we also talk about high quality, which for me begins with a discussion of adjunctification, excellent advising, and lots of other resources to help the most vulnerable students.

Two further points:
Other posts:

Weekly Roundup - Conferences, Compliance, and Freddie Gray

Sunday, May 10, 2015 0 comments
Happy Mother's Day. I planted lilacs, and then together we filled in our flower and vegetable garden. This morning, I'm making two kinds of crepes - sweet (with nutella or fruit or jam) and speck + cheese savory ones. I also ground a lamb leg recently and made sausage, and am considering whether some of that meat might go into dinner in some fashion.

This week I spent a lot of my time on academic issues, including in meetings and beginning to prepare for next Fall. I also wrote about The Academic Conference - A Defense both here and at the Chronicle, followed by the important blog - Conferences and Cost for the Precariat.

On Thursday, I'll be heading off to a huge annual conference, the International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, MI. About three thousand medievalists will be there, which will include professors and students, but also just people who like the Middle Ages. I'll be talking about being a public medievalist, and plan to post something important about changing registers (public/private) and raising stakes, so please watch for that.

Conferences are the reason I have a scholarly career. I am grateful to them and to the people who made them possible. Rants like the NYT piece emerge from a kind of Princeton Privilege (and other elite R1s) in which sharing ennui in the paper of record seems like a good idea, but is really a form of punching down.

Meanwhile, I wrote three disability pieces:
Thanks for reading!

Sunday Roundup: Writing Life. Restraint and Death.

Sunday, April 19, 2015 0 comments
I filed five essays this week, which is a lot for me. I also had two pieces published (linked to below):

  1. A review of Bruce Holsinger's novel (appearing Monday, Tor.com)
  2. A feature on inclusion at the Brookfield Zoo (appearing early May, Belt Magazine)
  3. Op-ed on RFK's comments on autism and vaccines (published here at CNN.com)
  4. Essay on Kayleb Moon-Robinson and the Cult of Compliance in Schools (date tbd. Al Jazeera America)
  5. Review of disability in Daredevil (appearing early next week, Vice)
Blog posts:
I also had bronchitis last week, which was less fun than all the writing. 

Sunday Roundup - Twitter, "Dear Student," and Anthony Hill.

Sunday, March 15, 2015 0 comments
Here's what I wrote last week:
I also wrote this piece for Vitae on the "Dear Student" controversy, which my academic readers will know about, and the rest of you all probably won't find too interesting. But you should, because I argue it's about power and the nature of higher education today, I argue:
The problem is this: In the Dear Student columns, the angry and precarious faculty are aiming their frustrations at hypothetical students making archetypal complaints that faculty hear all too often. But ... students are the wrong target. While they can be petty, self-involved, rude, vindictive, and otherwise display some of the awful features of humanity, the problem is that they have entered into a system that treats them as interchangeable sources of income. Corporatist rhetoric makes students feel powerful enough to demand things of professors, while all the time concealing their real powerlessness in our neoliberal education system.
I like the essay and am working on a piece in which teaching experts talk to administrators. More to come on that soon.

I've been criticized for not having enough links to other sources for this piece. Let me say publicly that I accept that criticism and should have done more linking, either in the piece when it was edited or, more likely, on my blog when the piece came up. I like to position my academic journalism as a piece in a conversation, and I didn't do that here, with one exception (Dorothy Kim).

A timeline of the essay writing, in case you were wondering:

  • Jesse Stommel's column was published on 2/28.
  • I was mostly off Twitter on the 28th and 1st of March, when the big Twitter discussions were taking place. 
  • I was on Facebook, and participated in a couple of private threads with robust discussion. Those are, of course, private, so I can't link to them.
  • I felt that Dorothy Kim's ideas were especially important, so I talked to her privately over email/messenger, and linked to a storify of her Tweets.
  • I pitched, wrote, and filed my essay on March 2. In fact, I also pitched, wrote, filed, and edited this CNN essay that day.  It was a busy day. 
  • Read lots of things on March 3-5 on the issue, including this awesome storify of links and tweets from Kelly Baker and  a critique of Jesse's critique, called "How Privilege Works." Stacey Patton, the author of the "Dear Student" Columns, brought that last one to my attention personally. Patton is, by the way, an awesome journalist and you should read her work.
  • I got edits on March 6 and worked on language issues but did not build a set of links, as I thought of the piece as being in the first-wave of reactions.
  • March 11 - Vitae publishes my essay. People wonder why I didn't cite them in the piece, which is fair enough.

What else should I be reading?

Sunday Roundup - Abortion, Compliance, Language, History

Sunday, February 22, 2015 0 comments
I've missed a few Sundays, mostly because so much has been going on that I can't stop writing long enough to breathe and assess. I'll try to do better. Here's the week.

Published - Facebook and Fear: The story of one woman's decision to keep her child with Down syndrome, facilitated through some quick Facebook messages.

My posts:
This week will involve a lot of Latin as I prepare an academic paper. That usually means either frenetic blogging on the side, or radio silence. The way things have been lately, I'd bet on the former.

    Monday Roundup - Justice, Disability, Freedom, Lies

    Monday, January 26, 2015 0 comments
    Usually I post my roundup on Sunday, but just so much is going on that I wrote a post instead. And I should have an article going up later today. Here are my recent posts.
    Thanks for reading. More later today when my piece on a job ad for an Associate Dean of Eureka Moments (no, really) goes live.


    Sunday Roundup: Disability Rights and Reproductive Rights - Two Core Premises

    Sunday, January 18, 2015 0 comments
    On Friday I wrote my second piece for Reproductive Health Reality Check about fighting the divide and conquer attempts to sever the disability rights movement and the pro-choice movement. I offer two core premises that I want to make sure you don't miss.
    I believe the solution lies in an intersectional approach based on each community acknowledging the genuine concerns of the other. Disability activists must make explicit their support for the right of women to choose to terminate a pregnancy based on a prenatal diagnosis of a genetic disability. Pro-choice activists must similarly acknowledge that expressing concern about prenatal testing—such as arguing against the ableist and eugenic ideologies frequently associated with the procedure—does not inherently yield ground to those fighting against reproductive rights. I have spoken to many disability advocates who believe that any discussion of their trepidations will be met with anger from pro-choice activists. That’s the divide that anti-choice lawmakers intend to exploit. Don’t let them.
    So, to recap.

    1. Disability rights activists have to do the hard work of saying - it's ok to have a disability-selection abortion. That is very difficult for many people to do. No coalition is possible, though, if we don't make clear that being pro-choice means being pro-choice, no caveats.

    2. Then pro-choice activists have to do the hard work of saying that disability-selection abortions are based on eugenic principles. That is very difficult for many people do, as well. No coalition is possible, though, if we don't make clear that a future in people with genetic disabilities are selectively filtered from the population en masse is not the future we want. Indeed, people in the disability community see it as akin to genocide.

    Accepting, owning, these two premises is not easy. And once you own them, the really hard work of fleshing out the details matter.

    Note - A friend of mine who is a historian of eugenics would like me (and y'all) to distinguish between eugenics as a state-sponsored set of programs and "eugenic principles" which individuals apply to their own decision-making.

    And now my roundup.

    Three published pieces this week, including the RHRC piece linked to above. I had a piece in the New York Times on parenting children with disabilities and microaggressions.  I had a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the need to include a campaign for adjunct justice in the discussion on "Free Community College."

    I blogged about:

    • The need for pockets in girl clothes. Fight the pocket patriarchy!
    • Trials of police who killed civilians.
    • A followup piece on my NYT essay on the gender divisions of shame. Men and women get shamed differently, though neither is "easier," I think.
    • Finally, January 12 was the two-year anniversary of the police killing of Ethan Saylor. Lots of good things have happened since then, but there's been no justice for Ethan. The men who crushed his trachea stay on duty.
    Next week I probably have an essay or two coming out, but will try to be disciplined and not pitch anything new, unless there's a national crisis. I need to work on my Big Secret Project.

    2014 Published Writing - My year in review

    Monday, December 22, 2014 0 comments
    Last March, a terrible story made its way through my social media feeds. A woman with Down syndrome had been raped. Her rapist was convicted. Then, a judge vacated the conviction because the woman "didn't act enough like a victim." I kept waiting for someone in the mainstream press to write a more nuanced piece than "this is horrible," because while it was indeed horrible, it's also the kind of thing that happens in rape cases all the time. If we think it's horrible in this case involving disability, then it should also be horrible in ALL cases.

    So I wrote about that for CNN. It got tens of thousands of hits, thousands of shares, and positive letters sent to me by some really awesome people and organizations, pleased to see this denunciation of rape culture on CNN.

    A few days later, a job ad showed up for an early modern English professor that said, "MUST PROVIDE EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE." I blogged about it, it got a few thousand hits, so I wrote a more formal essay on it for the Chronicle of Higher Education. It stayed on their "most viewed" list for most of the week.

    I pitched a regular column to the Chronicle and started talking to the folks over in Vitae about writing for them too. I wrote about 6 essays to prove to the CHE folks I could do it, and they all went into various queues (published over the next four months).

    I wrote three more columns for CNN in May. And I was off.

    Stats:

    Chronicle of Higher Education Essays: 21
    CNN Essays: 14
    Al Jazeera America Essays: 4
    Essays I put on HuffPo: 2
    Vice: 1
    Reproductive Health Reality Check: 1
    Co-written for The Atlantic: 1
    Inside Higher Ed (University of Venus): 1
    Post that I shared with Good Men Project and then ended up on Business Insider (uncompensated): 1
    Blog post I revised for BLOOM: 1

    Total published pieces (counting Bloom and GMP): 47.

    Here are a few of my favorite essays.
    Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing and commenting. Thanks for sending me material. I'm grateful.





    Sunday Roundup - Two Week Bonus Edition!

    Sunday, November 16, 2014 0 comments
    I missed last Sunday's roundup as I was frantically finishing my proofs. Soon (February), you will be able to buy my book! Please buy my book (or at least recommend it to your university libraries). You can't buy it yet, though.

    Child Murder

    I had two published essays last week and associated blog posts. The big one was from CNN on the murder of children with disabilities. In the piece, I talked about the need for victim-centered narratives, rather than focusing on the (very real) challenges of the parents.

     In my post, I summarized the piece and pointed to the end, with the dangerous messaging of Autism Speaks and less reputable (anti-vax) organizations. Autism Speaks really needs to be dethroned as the big Autism group or transformed into a less ableist organization. We can do this by constantly challenging their messaging and calling them out.

    My CNN piece has been criticized for linking Jillian McCabe, who was apparently hearing voices and suffering from a broad mental health crisis, to other killers. The criticism is that it demonizes people with mental health issues. I accept this criticism as valid, and yet continue to feel strongly that the first story has to be about the victim and to push back against the media narrative of disability as a burden that justifies violence.

    But a second story, to be sure, is that people in mental health crises need a better system in which to get their help they need. Still, reading account after account of these murders makes me wonder how many child murders involving disability or not involve some form of mental health crisis. My general assessment is ... nearly all of them. I'm not an expert and would accept correction, but none of these parents seem mentally sound at the moment of murder. It's only in the cases involving disability, though, that the media and the courts/juries generally invoke the disability as explanatory.

    Here's a new case from England in which there's no murder trial for a mother who smothered her three children. We can, of course, tell more than one story at a time, but I am continue to continue my work to promote victim-centered narratives as our first step in any such tragedy as this. And there will be more.

    Academia and Disability

    I wrote a piece for the Chronicle on college programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In my blog post, I asked every academic to send this article to their administrators and say - we could do this too. I hope at least some wrote in.

    The NEH

    I got my FOIA documents back from the NEH. I argue that their process for cutting the overseas summer seminars was not a process at all. I was, however, pleased to see that the Medieval Academy formally protested. We need our elite academic organizations to this kind of work, as the NEH clearly won't listen to plebeians like me.

    Other Academic Stories

    The most read blog post of the last few weeks contained my (somewhat rambling) thoughts on the problem with trying to streamline humanities dissertations to 6 years or less. I argue for the importance of enabling wandering. A friend points out that wandering is a very privileged kind of activity, and I agree. We ALSO need to enable speed and efficiency for those who need and want that. There's a both/and solution here.

    I wrote two blogs on medieval myths and imagery that permeate modern discourse. One on the blood libel, another on a "pork-eating crusader" patch for sale with an ISIS hunting kit. I think the kit is aimed at the American right wing. I suspect a lot of those right-wingers believe themselves to be supporters of Israel. I wonder if they know anything about the Jewish origins of anti-pork dietary laws.

    Assisted Suicide

    As I write about the discourse surrounding child murder, I've been thinking a lot assisted suicide. I offered a little data here on why people kill themselves (fear of loss of autonomy leads). And then a few more thoughts in "Killing Nancy," a 12-year-old girl euthanized by her parents.

    Thanks for reading. Next week I'll be writing articles about male feminism, abortion and Down syndrome, and the precarious ABLE act.

    Sunday Roundup - Cops, Ableism, Job Market

    Sunday, September 28, 2014 0 comments

    This week I had one published piece and a blog on the conference interview in academia, a practice that puts financial pressure on those with the fewest resources. It must end. My next step will be to try and understand why it isn't ending.

    I wrote a piece using the language of "presume compliance." As a police officer who reads my blog commented (and who I learn a lot from), the presumption of compliance would lead law enforcement officers (LEOs) to absorb too much risk; and yet, how do we get to a sensible middle-road position without pushing hard in the other direction. So as a thought experiment, not as a real policy position, I will continue to think about a presumption of compliance as a principle. 

    Meanwhile, South Carolina cop presumed non-compliance, shot someone, and was arrested and fired promptly thanks to video-camera evidence. Good work SC.

    I shared a set of negative comments from CNN demonstrating Ableist Abuse. Grim, but it's important to see the evidence.

    Finally, Special Olympics Washington sponsored a Run From the Cops event which demonstrated both privilege and ignorance. They eventually changed it and offered a non-apology explanation for the event.

    Did you know that white suburban America has "run from the cops" or "cops and robbers" or related events for fundraising all the time? More on this to come.

    Sunday Roundup - Disabilities and Proof

    Sunday, September 21, 2014 0 comments
    This week was focused on what the Kanye West incident tells us about disability in our culture.

    • I wrote a brief blog post about it here, linking it to another post on the "pencil test."
    • It got a very good response, so I wrote another piece about it for CNN, building on the argument.
    • That too got a big response, so I wrote another piece about disability as a spectrum, rather than a simple either/or binary. 
    • Finally, at the end of the week, I took two emails (which were emblematic of another hundred emails and comments), and wrote them into yet another post about Hidden Disabilities. In some ways, that may be the most important piece of the week, highlighting the voices of a skeptic who wants to be a good person, and a person whose disabilities cannot be seen.
    This week embodies what I value about the blog. Any individual post might get from 100-2000 readers, but the posts are iterative, linking together, building a more complex argument or set of examples than any single piece of writing, and periodically poking through to mass media. I am grateful to each reader, each share, each comment.

    I also wrote two other little posts.

    • One about #JusticeForEthan, a topic to which I return again and again, and the terrible brother of the sheriff who wants to deny people with disabilities and families of people with disabilities their independence.
    • Another about conference interviews, a practice in academia that perpetuates inequality. More on this next week when Vitae publishes an essay of mine. 

    Sunday Roundup - Boycotts: NFL, GoFundMe, University of Illinois

    Sunday, September 14, 2014 0 comments

    Get it? It's a roundup! 
    Today is Sunday. I am not watching the NFL. 

    For me, being a football fan was a major part of my identity, one that intensified with the advent of Fantasy Football. As the concussion scandal intensified, I began to scale back my engagement with the game. First quitting fantasy, then we moved the TV upstairs in a (failed) attempt at less screen time for the kids, so I just didn't have the games on all Sunday.

    You can say, as someone did on my Facebook wall, that my moral compass is lacking because I didn't stop watching football earlier, but it's hard to shed pieces of your identity. I was a fan. 

    The domestic violence issue - not just Rice, but the people who beat women NOT on video tape who happily are playing today, followed by the Adrian Peterson story of beating his child with a stick, has made me finally turn off the NFL. I cannot promise I won't turn it on again, but not today.

    My feeling is that the NFL enables a culture of violence, through its embrace of pain and fear as motivations, it teaches that pain and fear of pain is how you solve problems: With kids. With spouses. With each other. The NFL glorifies violence and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the violence extends outside the stadium. I have no idea what they can do about it, either, so I'm not watching.

    Not watching is different than demanding a boycott. I think it would be good if everyone in America turned off the NFL for an hour on Sunday. I have no expectations that will, or can, happen. I'm not saying what ethical decision you make if you turn on football today, but I hope more people think hard about it.

    Other boycotts have a better chance of effect.

    I will not contribute to any GoFundMe campaigns started after 9/9/14 until they treat abortion the same way they treat all other personal medical procedures. 
    Now this pledge I think you SHOULD make. I'll write more about it this week and try to drum up more awareness about the problem.

    I also wrote three posts about Steven Salaita and the boycott of UIUC: Reactions to his press conference, which I attended. Thoughts on duality of the position of Israel as a superpower and the Jews as an oppressed minority, which I think lies at the hearts of our debates about whether Salaita is punching up or down.

    Finally, I am crowdsourcing information on how the final rubber-stamp approvals work at universities with which many of my readers are associated. I said:
    I am shifting my attention to an issue on which I think we can all agree: Final approval for a job cannot take place weeks after a professor has started his or her classes.
    Can you please, in a comment, in an email, on my public facebook thread, or even on twitter tell me the timing of your final reviews for new hires at your school? I need to get a sense of how common this kind of delayed rubber stamp is.
    I think this is really important and now is a moment we can focus on these practices and, at least in some case, change them.

    Finally, I had a brief Q&A with John Scalzi on his newest book, last Monday. Feels like a long time ago before all my writing descended into this fairly grim place. Yay interesting speculative fiction. Reading fun stuff - Now that's a good way to spend a Sunday.

    Sunday Roundup - Vikings and Security Guards

    Sunday, September 7, 2014 0 comments


    My semester has begun and I'm working on a book proposal. I'll tell you all about it if it goes anywhere. These things are eating up some of my writing time.

    Still, it was a pretty lively week on the blog.

    The story I didn't tell yet is on Medicare rules for speech devices. The story here is that tablets with good apps and add-ons are much, to my mind, better than dedicated medical speech devices. But the latter, thousands of dollars more expensive, are the things that are covered. I'm going to try to figure out a way to tell this story this Fall.

    I wrote two blogs on the incident of the mock-frisking of a boy with Down syndrome in Syracuse. It's bullying, the guard was fired, but I still want us to do some thinking about the culture that enables such behavior.

    The most fun piece to write was on Viking Women Warriors - History is not a straitjacket for fantasy. But we do need more diverse books.

    I'm deeply concerned about academic freedom and I wish more scientists would get involved in this case in Illinois. I offered some opening thoughts on how to persuade our scientist friends who think it's just not their concern.

    Finally - two stories of involuntary commitment. The details of both remain unclear to me, but I'm watching them and the broader argument that says the solution to police killing folks with disabilities is to lock up the folks with disabilities for their own safety.

    And that's the week on the blog! See you tomorrow and happy Sunday.

    Sunday Roundup - Police Violence, Gender Norming, Dissertations

    Sunday, August 31, 2014 0 comments
    It's been a busy week of writing and I hope you are enjoying this holiday weekend.

    Most of the week was spent on the cult of compliance and police violence. I started with a piece on CNN on 4 police killings of people with mental health issues. I argued that we need to think about psychiatric disability - disability comes with protections and the need for accommodation - rather than illness. As usual, I added some blog followups.

    I also wrote a post about four stories of police violence for "Living while Black." Black men attacked for sitting, not walking, raising hands, and keeping hands in pockets. One of the story also involves autism. Thank you to everyone who read it here or one of the sites on which I shared it.

    I published an essay called "Save the Dissertation" (it saved me) on Chronicle Vitae, with a followup on the blog. There's a lot of talk in Higher Ed about reshaping graduate education, and no doubt a lot of reform is needed. But for me, the dissertation process, in all its turmoil, is how we become scholars. If we want to come up with new ways to do this, that's fine. We don't, however, get to test it out on grad students. Senior scholars at R1 schools - you go first. Then apply for grants, sabbaticals, chairs, etc. with the results and let us know what happens. 

    I had two essays. The fun one was on Huffington Post and was about my approach to "parenting against the grain."  My daughter got an Avengers backpack. Some boys doubted it was hers. I also wrote a blog about my son and gender norming, and the complexities there (due to Down syndrome).

    I also published a book review. It's got 2 errors I'm trying to have fixed. Overall, publishing blogs on HuffPo has been fun, but I'm not sure I get a lot more out of it than writing here. More on that next week.

    Sunday Roundup - Disability and Compliance

    Sunday, August 24, 2014 0 comments
    It's been quite a week. Since the publication of my Al Jazeera America piece on the cult of compliance, I've done a bunch of press, written a few new essays, prepped for the start of classes (tomorrow!), and pitched some long-term projects. More news on that when there's news.

    I was so swarmed with topics that I never even blogged about my latest from the Chronicle of Higher Education - "Don't Speak Out, the message of the Salaita Affair." For those not following, Steven Salaita is a professor who tweeted many angry things about Israel this summer, right when he was moving to Illinois. The Chancellor invoked a rarely (or never) used clause in his contract to void the hire. A huge amount of legal and rhetorical wrangling has followed, and I do think this case reveals conflicting visions for the future of the university. Or, perhaps, the Chancellor is lying, and it's just about Israel. I wrote:
    I come to this topic not as a partisan in the specifics of Salaita’s situation but as an advocate for faculty engagement with the public. Over the last year, I have written periodic columns for The Chronicle about the ways that academics can and should write for general audiences. Recently, I even suggested that "sustained public engagement" of any sort should count for hiring, tenure, and promotion.
    When I write about this topic, I often get told that the real problem is that academics are snobs. We like living in an ivory tower, goes the argument, and we look with disdain on getting our hands dirty in the public sphere. There’s plenty of snobbery to go around, it’s true, but the Salaita affair shows a different, and I think more powerful, force that keeps many academics from commenting on important contemporary issues: fear.
    For more on this topic, I recommend Corey Robin's blog, where he's been active in collecting arguments and organizing action.  I will likely have more to say on the topic as we go forward, as it relates to corporatization and public engagement, two of my "beats."

    Now here's the blog:

    • I wrote 2500 words or so on This American Life and their practices of using (or not) trigger warnings. As near as I can tell, they warn for racism or the existence of sex, and sometimes violence. Never disability issues.
    • I had a couple of pieces on the #cultofcompliance (hey look, a hashtag. You could use it on twitter!) - Two reactions to my writing from New York writers, a comparison of the police in Chicago during the NATO riots and those in Ferguson, and then a blog on Kajieme Powell. I wrote - it's possible that police needed to kill Powell, but I have some questions. As I've learned more in the days that followed, it's more and more clear that the police put themselves in a position in which killing Powell was the only option. I will have a CNN piece on this tomorrow (probably).
    • I mentioned that Dawkins is trolling families like mine, by linking to a piece on him by Amanda Marcotte.
    • I talk about Nico escaping from the house, or seeming to, and my babysitter calling the police. As I write about police violence, these are the stakes for me and my family on a personal level. We need the police to be better on disability issues.
    • Finally, I wrote a post on "The pencil test" for disability, in which I talk about Takei, Bieber, and Tampa Police throwing a quadriplegic out of his wheelchair to see how disabled he really was.
    Have a great Sunday. 

    Copyright © Global Crisis. All rights reserved.