Kenny Fries March 5, 2019 Airlines deny disabled travelers their independence with patchwork policies and plain negligence “That is your legs gone. It is a basic human right,” explained BBC journalist Frank Gardner in March, 2018, as he recounted being left on a plane for more than an hour and a half after landing, because Heathrow Airport staff could not find his wheelchair. Months later, a video of paralympic athlete Justin Levene dragging himself through London Luton Airport went viral. Levene was suing the airport over the August, 2017, incident, which occurred when his custom-made wheelchair didn’t make it onto his flight. Upon landing, he was provided with a wheelchair that he couldn’t…

I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence? The university should have anticipated Tuesday night’s chaos — but security personnel were nowhere to be found UCLA, a prestigious public university in the United States, experienced one of the darkest nights in its 105-year history on Tuesday. Over the course of my 33-year career at UCLA, I have never seen anything so terrifying take place. Around 11 p.m., a group of masked counterdemonstrators made their way to the Royce Quad in the heart of campus and began to attack the encampment set up last week by demonstrators opposing the war in Gaza. They threw a firecracker…

By Arno Rosenfeld May 2, 2024   The coalition concerned about campus antisemitism spans from liberal Jews concerned about hostile rhetoric at protests to ultra-conservatives with little connection to the Jewish community who are seizing on an opportunity to push their longstanding critiques of elite institutions of higher education. But on college campuses themselves, most of the students who have been actively opposing the Gaza solidarity encampments and demonstrating in defense of Israel are young Jews, a generally liberal group. A new campus coalition That’s why I was struck by what happened at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, early Tuesday morning. Before dawn, riot police raided a tent encampment at the center…

assert themselves at college graduations In all cases, the commencement ceremonies went on as scheduled By Philissa Cramer May 6, 2024 (JTA) — Dozens of students unfurled Palestinian flags and banners at the main commencement ceremony of the University of Michigan. A single student staged a provocative demonstration during a ceremony at Northeastern University, raising hands stained with red paint as a symbol of violence in Gaza. And a Palestinian student speaker used her speech to lambaste Israel’s war against Hamas at the University of Toledo. Such were the disruptions during the first major weekend of graduation ceremonies to take place amid a sweeping pro-Palestinian protest movement on college campuses across…

By Thomas Doherty Professor of American Studies, Brandeis University Published: May 12, 2020 8:33am EDT What FDR’s polio crusade teaches us about presidential leadership amid crisis Throughout much of the last century, a lethal and terrifying virus besieged America. Then, as now, the fear of contagion gripped ordinary Americans. And then — unlike now — a president displayed decisive leadership in fighting the virus, maintaining an unfailingly good humor and leaving the immunology to the experts. The scourge was infantile paralysis, or polio, and the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was its most famous victim. First clinically described in the late 19th century and persisting deep into the 20th century, the virus invaded the nervous…

How to grieve a death in the coronavirus pandemic David A. Schuck, Gina Hens-Piazza, Rodney Sadler Editor’s note: Every religion has its death rites, communal practices developed over millennia to honor the dead and console the living. Some of these rituals are unique to one faith, but more are shared – a reminder there’s a common path toward healing. Yet COVID-19 is forcing many people to grieve in isolation. We asked three faith leaders and religion scholars for their counsel on mourning during the pandemic. Honoring the dead and comforting mourners Rabbi David A. Schuck Jewish mourning rituals follow the principles of “k’vod hamet,” honoring the deceased, and “nichum aveilim,” comforting…

By Sara Talpos September 18, 2023 Like many other institutions, the University of Pennsylvania campus was mostly shuttered to in-person learning when Vincent Kelley began work there as a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology in the fall of 2020. But when the first vaccines were rolled out to all American adults the following spring, Penn leadership announced that in-person classes would resume for the 2021-22 academic year — with one proviso: Only students, faculty, and staff who had received a Covid-19 vaccine would be permitted to return. Religious or medical exemptions were available, but Kelley, who had chosen to be vaccinated himself, said he still found the mandate overly coercive. Then, when the university…

Sara Luterman/Caregiving reporter April 10, 2024 Commentators have recently singled out the Supreme Court justice, who has type 1 diabetes. Disability lead s say it’s not a reason for her to resign. *Correction appended. Increasing calls from some Democrats for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire because of her age and diabetes diagnosis are biased and misguided, according to disability leaders who say she’s more than up to the job.  For months — particularly with the November election approaching — left-leaning commentators like former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan have expressed concern that because Sotomayor is 69 years old and has type 1 diabetes, she may need to be replaced on the…

Zachary Morris Nanette Goodman Stephen McGarity Edward Mitchell is 34 years old and lives in Jackson, Tennessee, with a spinal cord injury caused by a hit-and-run accident that happened when he was 17. He has plenty of expenses that all Americans have, like groceries and utilities. But to maintain his independence, he also has to pay for home modifications to accommodate his wheelchair, personal nursing care, dictation tools to help him write and adjustments to his car so he can drive himself to work. He is just one of the 20 million working-age adults living with disabilities in the U.S., for whom it takes more money to make ends meet because of…