In November, 2015, President Donald Trump was speaking at a rally in South Carolina when he began to criticize a New York Times journalist, Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting his joints. Trump’s beef was that the man had allegedly disclaimed having reported that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 911 attacks...Read More

Fifteen years ago, I wrote The Power of Neurodiversity:  Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain.  At the time, few people knew the term neurodiversity, and the sales of the book were slow.  However, in the past several years, neurodiversity has emerged from obscurity to become a word that seems to be on everybody’s...Read More

This video is #8 in my series Introduction to Neurodiversity, based on a course I taught at Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity in Education. It focuses on the gifts, assets, and strengths of those with intellectual disabilities. This is the neurodiversity that really needs the most publicity concerning the things that people with intellectual...Read More

When children are diagnosed with special needs (e.g. dyslexia, ADHD, autism etc.), the initial efforts to support them almost always revolve around helping them to fit in with the environment around them.  This of course is very important, but it leaves out a much-needed corollary to these efforts and that is:  changing the environment to...Read More

The concept of neurodiversity emerged in the 1990’s as a way for autism advocates to affirm their identity as people with neurological differences rather than as disabled individuals.  The idea has spread as other advocates (including myself) have sought to articulate the ”diversity rather than disability” message to a broader segment of the population than...Read More