DREAM Weekly News on Higher Education and Disability: January 22-29, 2017

DREAM Weekly, Disability and Higher Education in the News: January 22 - 29, 2017
From DREAM: Disability Rights, Education, Activism, and Mentoring
Sponsored by the National Center for College Students with Disabilities and the Association on Higher Education And Disability (AHEAD)
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Weekly Update on Issues Related to Disability and Higher Education
Weeks of January 22 - 29, 2017
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Disability and higher education in the news (in no particular order):

* A new frontier: US academia under President Trump - George Washington University president and provost lead panel discussion on “campus climate” with students and members of the campus community: https://goo.gl/6wnZi1

* Jamie Principato, a college student and National Federation of the Blind Advocate, has launched a petition calling on congressional leaders to swiftly pass the Accessible Instructional Materials in Higher Education (AIM HE) when it is resubmitted to the 115th Congress: http://ow.ly/yf8E308qmCu. The text of HR 6122 (AIM HE Act), introduced to the 114th Congress, called for a commission to establish voluntary accessiblity standards for online curriculum and related technologies and was supported by many organizations including NFB and AHEAD: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/6122/text

* Students at Kenyon College push for accessible dining services for students with disabilities and food allergies: http://go.shr.lc/2jx76gy

* Trump’s election has stirred up “right-wing and racist propaganda” in Canada, writes Steven Zhou, especially on Canadian university campuses. OPINION: Canadian campuses see an alarming rise in right-wing populism:  https://goo.gl/0BJhQw

* Program announced to allow children of wounded, disabled, deceased, or MIA veterans and Purple Heart recipients to attend eligible state-run post-secondary institutions in Indiana for free: https://goo.gl/vW5hP6

*Six students in the Eye to Eye, a mentoring network run by and for people with learning disabilites, share accommodations that helped them succeed in college: https://goo.gl/YC4mRY

* Fordham University denied a student’s request for a service dog to live with her on campus, despite her documented disability with the Office of Disability Services. She filed a complaint with the Department of Education, which has been turned over to the Office of Civil Rights: https://goo.gl/nS4F8G

* “Gallaudet President Navigates From World Of Hearing To Sound Leadership Of The Deaf” tells the story of how Roberta Cordano, who attended public schools often as the only deaf student, became the first deaf woman to lead Gallaudet in its 152-year history: https://goo.gl/UrtdPQ

* Many private U.S. postsecondary schools are voluntarily making their online classrooms accessible to students with disabilities. Court decisions regarding the accessibility of commercial websites can provide some guidance to what accessibility standards might be legally expected of private schools: https://goo.gl/KosW7N

Celebrations of Ed Roberts’ 78th birthday on January 23, 2017 were noted by Disability Rights activists and others in the media:

• Judith Heumann presented the Ed Roberts Award, which honors the disability activist Roberts, to former mayor Tom Bates and former California senator Loni Hancock on Monday for their contributions to the independent living movement: https://goo.gl/PdYbzK
• The Google Doodle on January 23rd -- Ed Robert’s 78th birthday -- celebrated his life and included a link for more information about Disability Rights advocacy: https://goo.gl/K2b44W
• The Google Arts & Culture website includes an online exhibit, “Ed Roberts, the Disability Rights Movement and the ADA,” by the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). The exhibit text uses photos, videos, and other primary sources to broadly trace the modern Disability Rights Movement from Ed Roberts and rise of the Independent Living Movement to the passage of the ADA and into the issues of discrimination faced by people with disabilities today: https://goo.gl/4n0AEv
• Also for Ed Robert’s Day, the blog TEDx Innovations posted “7 talks highlight people with disabilities breaking down barriers,” featuring TED talks by Judith Heumann, Charlotte Mcclain-Nilapo, Haben Girma, Denise Lance, Stephanie Thomas, and Luke Anderson: https://goo.gl/7sjgkd
• Ed Roberts’ mother, “grandmother of the disability-rights movement,” speaks out about Disability Rights in the new political landscape: https://goo.gl/PKfGVl

Of possible interest to college students with disabilities:

* Students with disabilities are at a higher risk for bullying, according to this University of Florida study that shows 1 in 5 students with disabilities reported being bullied: https://goo.gl/EOo4HP

* The author of Trans* in College discusses why increasing numbers of trans* students need more support on campuses in the Trump era: http://ihenow.com/2jan90j

* From “The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement:” “The 2016 Presidential campaign has reverberated with appeals to strength and victory and virility and contempt for weakness and failure and foreigners, hitting notes of blatant ugliness that we’re not used to hearing in the public sphere:” https://goo.gl/lglrqS

* The creators of #CripTheVote put together an oral history of the 2016 hashtag campaign for the Disability Visibility Project. There is also a transcript available. They discuss the creation of the movement, the impact of social media activism, and the importance of intersectionality to their movement. https://goo.gl/tkQKz0

* Laws and programs designed to benefit vulnerable groups, such as the disabled or people of color, often end up benefiting all of society as Angela Glover Blackwell argues in “The Curb-Cut Effect.” Opening with the story behind curb cuts, Blackwell demonstrates how curb cuts also work as a metaphor for the acts that enable fair inclusion and opportunity throughout society to the benefit of everyone. “The curb-cut effect underscores the foundational belief that we are one nation, that we rise or fall together. Without equity, there can be neither progress nor prosperity:” https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_curb_cut_effect

* Life, Animated, a film chronicling the coming-of-age story of a man on the autism spectrum, has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary: https://goo.gl/YbIueH

* “Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60” provides interesting statistics on the enrollment of individual postsecondary institutions according to students’ family income. The top-ten tables are interactive, allowing the reader to add colleges and universities through a search window: https://goo.gl/PV1V9S

* A man was shot at a University of Washington protest as tensions and protests grow over speeches by racist, misogynist, provocateur and Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos. UC Davis talk called off: http://ihenow.com/2jain2O

* “Will Disability Rights Have a Permanent Place in the White House?” is an interview with Maria Town, outgoing disability liaison at the Office of Public Engagement (OPE). She tells David Perry about her tenure at the OPE and the role of the disability liaison in this office: https://goo.gl/xjzGyn

* Julia Bascom, Executive Director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, expresses her greatest fears for disability-related policy issues as the Trump administration takes control of the White House: the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and block-granting Medicaid and a disregard for the civil rights and inclusion of people with disabilities gained through decisions of the Departments of Justice and Education during Obama’s administration: https://goo.gl/FKppLF

* Senator Tammy Duckworth, disabled Iraq War veteran, questioned whether the nominee for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is fit to fill the position amidst ADA concerns, referring to his 2012 opposition to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD): https://goo.gl/6yD7jJ

* In honor of the many disabled women activists she was proud to join at the Womens’ March in Los Angeles, this Autostraddle writer put together her list of “ten more resistance heroes who are already preparing the way to make sure the movement belongs to everybody:” https://goo.gl/pasqGB

* Scientists are planning their own march in Washington, D.C. Organizers want the march to be a non-partisan protest that addresses issues including government funding for scientists, transparency, climate change and evolution: https://goo.gl/pPZZwf

Last Saturday nearly half a million people attended the Women’s March on Washington in D.C. joined by over 3 million in over 600 sister marches in cities in the U.S. and around the world. Here are a few of the articles that spotlight disabled, Deaf, mad, and neurodiverse marchers:

• Women’s March expected to be largest gathering of people with disabilities in US history - The organizers of the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. expected 45,000 people with disabilities to participate in the march, making it the largest assembly of people with disabilities in US history: https://goo.gl/nUficr
• As A Disabled Woman, I'm Calling On My Sisters To Roll & March Against Trump - Robyn Powell called on disabled women to participate in the Women’s March: https://goo.gl/LDWqP5
• Don't Thank Me For Marching Because I'm Disabled — Join Me! - Following the Women’s Day March, Robyn Powell calls out ableism and asks for full inclusion of disability rights, not only in the resistance’s platform but in the movement itself: https://goo.gl/6h5x2y
• “Disability Rights are Human Rights” - A transcript of Disability Rights activist Rachel KallemWhitman speaking about disability rights in front of 25,000 people at Pittsburgh’s Sister March, Jan. 21: https://goo.gl/eLeii6
• Athlete activist Mia Ives-Rublee spreading ‘disability pride’. Mia, currently a research assistant at UNC, led the Disability Caucus of the Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21: https://goo.gl/z0vra7
• Beginning of a Movement - Tens of thousands of college students and professors march in Washington. Estimated 50,000 college students attended from across the nation. The March’s national coordinator for university engagement, Madison Thomas, from Georgetown U, coordinated over 250 campus liaisons in 40 states after election: http://ihenow.com/2jabtuy
• More than 800 people with disabilities posted to the website that enabled them virtual participation in the Women’s March on Washington: https://goo.gl/JtYcOq
• Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity (IPED), a multilingual open access journal, has issued a call for rapid responses to Trump and the Women’s March. They welcome submissions that address the Women’s March and the Trump administration.They provide a list of questions which may inspire commentary, but broader analyses are also welcome. Submissions are due by February 27th for publication in March: https://goo.gl/GCtx1I
• #AccessibleOrganizingMeans: Tweets from disabled people using the hashtag #AccessibleOrganizingMeans in reply to tweets Maria Town @maria_m_town about what access truly means, following an experience she had after the Women's March in Washington, D.C.: https://goo.gl/Qsj8EC​

Deep concerns about Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act as soon as possible generated a number of articles this week, including

• Repealing the Affordable Care Act will kill more than 43,000 people annually - The impact of Republicans' war on Obamacare is likely to be worse than anyone expects. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ prediction supported by well-respected studies: https://goo.gl/zmiH1a
• Trump’s Obamacare Repeal Could Lead to a Mental-Health Crisis - The Affordable Care Act was instrumental in making insurance providers cover mental illness, supporting the simple idea that mental health should be taken as seriously as physical health: https://goo.gl/3dYBwx

Proposed plans to convert Medicaid to Block Grants, saving federal dollars and shifting more fiscal responsibility to states, will also leave many low income and disabled people without medical coverage. Here are a sampling of articles on the issue, which like the proposed repeal of ACA will grow more and more heated in the days ahead:

• Trump’s Health Plan Would Convert Medicaid to Block Grants, Aide Says - Kellyanne Conway reports that the replacement plan will propose to give each state a fixed amount of federal money in the form of a block grant to provide health care to low-income people on Medicaid: https://goo.gl/cX2JIW
• Donald Trump Is Proposing Block Grants To Replace Medicaid - “Block grants could save the federal government money, but any savings would come at the expense of poor people, people with disabilities, and the elderly losing access to healthcare:" https://goo.gl/cHSOfC
• Trump To Kill Health Care For Millions Of Poor And Disabled People With Medicaid Block Grant - “Block grants do give more power to the states, but they also cap what federal government spends, and will allow many to provide the bare minimum of health care coverage for nation’s most vulnerable citizens:" https://goo.gl/zM4poe

Included here are a selection of articles focused on the Senate hearing of Betsy DeVos, presidential nominee to head the Department of Education, which deeply disturbed many concerned with disability and education:

• Secretary of Education nominee wrote a letter to Sen. Johnny Isakson to “fully explain” her position on the “importance of protecting the rights of students with disabilities and ensuring that they receive the quality education they deserve” in response to concerns following her confirmation hearing: https://goo.gl/aMyzxK
• The most troubling moment of the DeVos confirmation hearing was when she claimed that enforcing the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, "is a matter best left to the states." She later admitted that she "may have [been] confused" about whether it is actually a federal law: https://goo.gl/auaOpD
• The contentious confirmation hearing cemented concerns among civil rights advocates that DeVos would either ignore or dismiss the Education Department’s role as chief enforcer of the nation’s civil rights laws in schools: https://goo.gl/hCYvLc
• The education secretary nominee revealed very little about how she intends to govern an agency that oversees thousands of colleges and universities. The few times that senators asked DeVos about her stance on key regulations and the role of the government in student lending, she provided vague, noncommittal answers: https://goo.gl/4C9QEq
• The American Association of People with Disabilities issued a statement opposing the confirmation of DeVos, including relevant clips of transcripts from the confirmation hearing: https://goo.gl/JfSe9c
• Kati Haycock, CEO of The Education Trust, issued a press release that it does not support confirmation of DeVos as Secretary of Education due to unanswered questions along with overarching concerns about the direction that the Department of Education would take under her leadership: http://tinyurl.com/z367vpt
• Robert C. Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia was deeply dismayed Betsy DeVos’ performance during her confirmation hearing: http://tinyurl.com/gs6r433

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This week’s issue of the DREAM weekly e-mail is available at the DREAM website, with archived back issues available, as well (http://www.dreamcollegedisability.org). For more information about DREAM or AHEAD contact Richard Allegra ([email protected]).

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By the way, please don't presume DREAM, the National Center for College Students with Disabilities, or AHEAD agree with everything in these links we send out - we're just passing along the information so you can form your own opinions. Thanks.

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