Wanted: Disabled Faculty Members

Written by Jay Dolmage and Stephanie Kerschbaum 

We have kindly been given permission to re-post this article from:

Advice Hiring Faculty Members Essay

When one of us -- Stephanie -- was on the job market for the first time more than 10 years ago, she agonized over whether and how to mention her disability (she is deaf) in her job materials. She knew from past experience that by not saying anything, she ran the risk of creating potential misunderstandings during interviews.

When she managed to secure more than a dozen interviews at the Modern Language Association conference, where English departments perform much of the preliminary interviewing for hires, she set to work. In addition to helping arrange for interpreters in a city where she and most of the hiring departments meeting with her had few contacts, she opened every interview by taking time to explain who the interpreter was and how committee members should interact. In addition, before MLA, she spent time ensuring that every single department had contacted the interpreter, arranged payment and logistics, and so on.

While all that work might sound almost impossible to candidates who don’t have to jump through such hoops, the fact is that, for many disabled scholars, the sorts of choices they face around disclosure and negotiating job market accommodations are deeply complex, fraught and, above all, risky. And for none of them is the process easy, uniform or predictable.

Stories like Stephanie’s -- and dilemmas around disclosing a disability or requesting accommodations while on the job market -- are endemic. Almost every academic we know with a disability has a story about accommodations gone wrong, an inaccessible interview situation or a thoughtless ableist comment.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Many organizations such as the Modern Language Association and the National Council of Teachers of English have general guidelines about disability and the job market. The MLA’s guidelines, for instance, ask departments to make sure that interviews are held in accessible locations and to take steps to create a welcoming environment during the interview. We offer a few additional suggestions to help search committees and hiring units to avoid disability discrimination in the hiring process.

The Job Ad and Interview Invitation

The ad and interview are the first steps and, as a search committee or hiring unit, you should:

• Examine the boilerplate text. Recently, the boilerplate text included in job ads has been changing in sometimes subtly yet often overtly ableist ways to add physical and sensory requirements that rarely have anything to do with the job itself. If you are writing a job ad, read David Perry’s work on this discriminatory language.
• Clearly identify whom applicants should contact to request accommodations. You should also ensure that there is a confidential process by which those accommodations can be negotiated. Search chairs and committees need to inform candidates of this process in advance in the interview letter, and the contact person for negotiating accommodations should not be the chair of the search committee or a faculty member in the department. Instead, a clear channel should be identified through which a candidate can request accommodations that may be needed. A useful model here is the way disability services offices inform faculty of accommodations that need to be made in their classroom without disclosing a student’s disability. The system in place should not require a candidate to open a conversation with a search committee member or department chair that reveals personal health information or specifics about their disability.

The Responsibilities of the Hiring Committee

The hiring committee or unit should be well-versed in issues surrounding interviewing and hiring candidates with disabilities. You should:

• Discuss how to preclude any disability discrimination in determining finalists for positions. That might mean, among other things, anticipating how candidates might move, react or perform differently at different stages of the interview process. You should also consider the significance accorded to certain kinds of performance. For example, a person who learns names quickly may make a good first impression, but that hardly is a prerequisite for success in academic work. These and other tacit social tests should not be part of the hiring discussion.
• Consider how different interview processes might disadvantage certain candidates. Committees should work to minimize any disadvantages interviewees who have different communication, social and interpersonal styles might experience. In such discussions, the focus should be on how hiring units, search committees and job candidates might generally make the hiring process not just more accessible but also more effective. For example, if first-stage interviews have only been conducted via Skype or by telephone as accommodations, committees might consider offering all interviewees in the pool a choice as to their preferred modality. That move avoids signaling one choice as the “typical” interview setting and the other as a “special” accommodation.
• Educate yourselves on how disability disclosure may be (illegally) compelled in conversation. Don’t ask after health conditions or comment on people’s bodies. Don’t assume either that anybody whose physical appearance does not reveal a disability is able-bodied. When possible, give candidates options and information that may make it possible for them to address issues that arise. (For example, candidates with dietary needs may be able to determine if a restaurant’s menu will suit their needs.) Engage in conversations with applicants that make clear when there is flexibility should they have any accommodation requests.
• Be aware of common forms of disability microaggressions. People often act amazed by what a disabled person can do, assume that a disabled person needs help doing other things, ask overly personal questions, compare the candidate’s disability to other forms of disability perceived to be “good” or “bad” and so on. In the context of a job interview, such comments and questions can be especially harmful and difficult to handle.

Setting Up the Interview

• It’s important that disabled candidates -- in fact, all candidates -- receive as much information as possible about the interview location and situation. To that end, you should:
• Communicate as much information as possible about interview settings and procedures. That information might include how the interview will proceed and in what formats. Offer detailed information about buildings and locations where meetings may happen. Are all the buildings wheelchair accessible? Are there accessible restrooms in the building? Will interviewees be asked to move across large campus spaces to get from one meeting to another? When disabled academics don’t have full information about the spaces in which they may be giving a job talk, teaching a class or conducting a meeting, they may not know whether accommodations are, in fact, needed, or how to effectively craft or adapt their delivery and presentation.
• Offer applicants choices. Where possible, we encourage committees to offer interviewees some choices. What technologies and resources will they have available or need to use for their job talk or teaching demonstration? What kind of food will be offered? When might they have opportunities for physical and mental breaks? Will there be an office available to them or a room where they will have privacy? Can they choose when something like a public talk will take place in the day? Can they choose where to sit if they are being interviewed or met by an entire department? These may seem like insignificant choices, but they could allow candidates to meet medical and other needs throughout the process.

Finally, we want to emphasize that the culture of academe itself contributes to disability discrimination. The current neoliberal climate for higher education puts pressure on all academics to be ever more flexible and adaptable. In such an environment, many highly qualified academics may fear that requesting any kind of accommodation might be interpreted as inability to perform, leading them to take their chances without the accommodations that have enabled their success. To ensure that faculty members can request and receive the accommodations they need, committees should openly indicate that access and accommodation are on their radar and proactively signal awareness of disability as important to diversity.

We hope our suggestions will encourage departmentwide and institutional conversations that can build awareness and promote accessible practices while avoiding disability discrimination. Our recommendations can be read, applied, circulated and expanded upon in a very practical way as we head into hiring season. Is your department hiring? Send this article to the search chair and start the conversation now.

About the Author

Jay Dolmage is associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo, and Stephanie L. Kerschbaum is associate professor of English at the University of Delaware. They are both committed to addressing forms of institutional ableism and challenging disability discrimination through their research and scholarly activism.

An Undergraduate Perspective on Recovery

Written by Krishna Udaiwal

In the winter semester of my second year undergrad for philosophy/biology major, I underwent a period of uncontrolled pressure and a breaking point leading to severe depression & social anxiety, as well as cancelling the entire semester before the exams. It was a horrible experience, one which I wouldn’t prescribe to my worst enemies. During the worst of it, there was a breakdown event, loss of interest, severe self-deprecation and quarantine-like isolation. Fortunately, I took the seemingly irrational, but courageous, step to book an appointment with a doctor. Unfortunately, it was over 3 weeks after the initial month of agonizing despair, where hounding social anxiety tried to convince me to cancel the appointment (luckily, I hated using the phone or going outside even more). My decision wasn’t irrational and was the best course of action possible. It was the lowest consecutive time for me, where hearsay cases of micromanaging students ‘faking’ mental health conditions for advantage/grades (in my opinion displaced competitiveness from instructors) and my own lack of self-confidence/ineptitude initially deferred me from making that appointment. When learning of diseases & conditions the first lesson is to never self-diagnose, which is equally true for self-un-diagnosing mental health; you inherently cannot make an accurate judgment. It is essential to speak with a trustworthy source.

Once I spoke to the doctor (or General Practitioner, GP, in mental health lingo) it was obvious to them I needed medical help due to physical & mental signs, although some may not present any signs at all. The signs at my stage were tremors (without any stimulants), inability to look directly at someone, muffled speech, inability to focus or calm myself (these are self-observations post facto). GPs are, as they ought be, limited in declaring specific diagnosis & treatments in a single visit (for long-term diagnoses) as there may be false-positive cases (like hearsay cases) as mentioned before. As such, I was referred to a psychiatrist for in-depth analysis of my condition. For the immediate alleviation of my symptoms, I was conveyor-ed through a passive regiment of steps to recovery including counsellor visits to mitigate immediate risk and the psychiatrist diagnosis for long-term specific severity analysis. In addition, on-going appointments with my GP were booked immediately to ensure my condition did not break me off from seeking help, as very likely. Lastly, I was scheduled to speak with an academic counsellor to contemplate my options regarding my semester (they also immediately understood the gravity of my condition and weren’t intrusive, likely being used to such). Further medical treatments were thereafter discussed with the GP in consequent talks.

My GP was closely linked with the university healthcare network, so a passive & systematic approach was in-place to handle my situation. I could only hope to have a similar regiment should I have approached another unlinked GP, where an active search for information would be left up to the distressed student. Very likely, the student may have a better chance by breaking down the issue into personal rehabilitation & academic recovery.

Personal rehabilitation must necessarily take precedence, as the self-development requires a ready mind, which mental health issues take away. Self-development is necessary & core to studying at University. For my preservation, the actions undertaken were recurring GP appointments, counsellor visits, psychiatrist diagnosis and an appointment with the academic counsellor. The first three were part of personal rehabilitation and I would like to briefly summarize why they were necessary. Recurring GP appointments are, concurrent with the counsellor & psychiatrist appointments, for making the overall decisions in regards to personal rehabilitation options from mental health diagnoses. The treatment options usually include cognitive/speech therapy and medication. With each mental health disorder (anorexia, OCD, depression, etc) there are a multitude of different possibilities, so cognitive therapy and/or medication may work better alone or in combination. The psychiatrist is a specialized doctor who has the training and knowledge to accurately make mental health diagnoses, and to a much greater extent than a GP. Thus, GPs seek a psychiatrist’s diagnosis & recommendations, to determine if cognitive therapy and/or medication may be best. Any treatment prescribed depends on the patient’s approval, where patients may be against medication in some cases. In the case of depression, various medications target different neurotransmitters against potential chemical imbalance. Unfortunately, as causes vary and understanding is lacking, non-chemical imbalance causing depression leads to failed treatment by medication, off-putting many patients due to side-effects. Often, the timeframe towards making a diagnosis may be long, therefore a counsellor is needed to relieve pressure and defuse immediate thoughts of self-harm. A counsellor however is not a doctor nor is allowed to diagnose or prescribe therapies/medications to patients, but is very helpful towards the ongoing recovery. In summary, all three are usually needed for higher chances of rehabilitation.

Regarding academic recovery, it depends on your faculty, where different options may be present including cancelling the semester, deferring the exam (& shifting weight all to the exam), or continuing under variable accommodations discussed as per need. Unfortunately, my perspective is limited, as described previously, to what my academic counsellor allowed. I would not expect much creativity from academic counsellors however, as personal experiences & interactions highlight that they aren’t allowed to do much for undergrads anymore, more so within larger faculties.

Lastly, I want to mention during therapy, I learned that ‘suicidal thoughts weren’t normally present’ in healthy individuals. After partial results from treatment, it was apparently true. In addition, the rate of self-loathing thoughts decreased exponentially, as well as their severity, to metaphoric levels between bully-laughed at within a class of students to taking a vacation-nap on an isolated beach. Sure, the isolated beach may lead to some anxiety of unknown lurkers away from the beachfront, but only to such an amount that probability rules in relaxation. Since the hazardous time, I have also experienced that those vile thoughts can be relieved from socializing with trusted compatriots, which may be lacked within the isolated student. The academic environment where learning is secondary to undergrad hierarchy (GPA -> grants, graduate programs, competitive jobs, self-confidence to seek help/opportunities from instructors) reinforces that notion for introverts. After all, it is random chance that guides forming a friendship between two individuals.

I sincerely hope, if you are undergoing suicidal thoughts, you will talk to someone you can trust or a telephone helpline. Please don’t speak to former abusers, whom you have a history with no matter how optimistic. If you feel self-deprecating, seek a volunteer organization where people appreciate you so you can regain some of your spirit, this being my method towards personal well-being post-therapy. If you’re in a temporary crisis mode, or over-stressed, change your objectives to personal well-being immediately! An assignment or test can be deferred or re-weighted, but a breakdown has lasting consequences. You are not the first to be in crisis, and the faculty must accommodate.

If you feel of no consequence, let me know and I can try to brainwas—I mean encourage you towards some social causes I believe could use additional help (after some semblance of recovery of course). For instance, international agriculture, medical aid, food miles, local communities, cycling and botany.

 About the Author

Krishna Udaiwal, BSc, affected 2nd year of undergrad, dealing with the complications one at a time. Still impassioned & always reading on molecular life of plants and miRNA, aiming for MSc. Promoting science communication on Twitter, and always happy to help peers.

Developing Disability Cultural Competence

Written by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson 

Here’s my advice for people with disabilities so they can come out and flourish in the professional environment. Our ultimate goal is to develop disability cultural proficiency. This begins with disability cultural competence, which is learning how to live effectively as a person with disabilities, not just living as a disabled person trying to become non-disabled. Competence moves toward proficiency as one carries out living with a disability over time and working toward achieving a high quality of life while living with a disability.

Developing disability cultural competence begins with identifying openly as a person with disabilities. Cultivate dignity and authority as a person with disabilities. Enter into organizations and communities that offer support, resources, groups, and gathering opportunities for people with disabilities. Find like-minded colleagues and friends who have disabilities.

As a person who identifies as disabled, know your rights, protections, opportunities, information, culture, history, and communities that can support your flourishing as a disabled person. Learn about requesting accommodations in your workplace, accessing resources and information, and getting physical access. Go to the disability resource center or office of disability services and register as a disabled person so you can request accommodations and know what services and technologies are available to you in the workplace. It should be that office, not your supervisor with whom you discuss your access and accommodation needs. You should not disclose to your supervisors your medical diagnosis, but rather focus on the accommodations you require to carry out workplace expectations. And especially, your supervisors should not be deciding whether or not to grant you accommodations for your disabilities.

Learn to use public resources and supportive structures for people with disabilities. Consider accessible reduced entrance fees for people with disabilities, transportation options, and research how to get proper documentation and procedures for other benefits for disabled people in public space venues.

Most important is to know and use the rights, benefits, and protections provided in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or your national and local codes and policies for assuring disability equity and nondiscrimination. Go to the ADA website. Read the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) if your country has adopted the treaty. Find out about its implementation in your employment and public environment.

In short: know your communities; know your rights; know your access needs; know your accessible technology.

 About the Author

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of English and bioethics at Emory University, where her fields of study are disability studies, American literature and culture, bioethics, and feminist theory. Her work develops the field of critical disability studies in the health humanities, broadly understood, to bring forward disability access, inclusion, and identity to communities inside and outside of the academy. She is the author of Staring: How We Look and several other books. Her current book project is Habitable Worlds: Toward a Disability Bioethics.