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.
