Michigan Disability Resistance

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In life in general, as well as in hiring, it also causes us to undervalue, overlook, and even fear those who are different. We can best defeat these destructive biases by actively embracing diversity as a shared goal.

Doing so is not without controversy, though, and recently two terms have become central to our societal discussion of diversity. They sound similar, but they mean two very different things:

Neurodiversity promotes as positive the physiological truth that brains function in non-standard ways in people with autism. It’s based on the assertion that, as evolutionary biologist Heather Heying puts it, “being born with what the world is calling a deficit is almost always going to exist in a trade-off relationship with some often hidden strength.” This view argues that being neurologically different is as much a gift as something to be prevented or “fixed.”

Cognitive diversity is a term that recognizes that there's value in bringing together people who approach things from different angles. In business, these multiple viewpoints can result in expanded problem-solving and creativity capabilities, and so, seeking cognitive diversity when vetting job candidates has become a priority for many companies. It’s a double-edged sword, though, since some firms—notably in Silicon Valley—have been accused of misusing cognitive diversity as a basis for claims that other diversification efforts are unnecessary.

While there’s not a widespread acceptance of the notion of neurodiversity in the medical community, says Liu, neurodiversity underpins autistic self-advocates’ concerns regarding three issues in particular:

• The negative ways in which autism is described, and the resulting view of autistic people as victims. As Scott M. Robertson of Penn State and Ari D. Ne'eman of Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) have written, “Although autistic people acknowledge great challenges with being autistic, they also recognize that autism presents important strengths, talents, abilities, and gifts, such as comfort with structure and consistency, a knack for repetition, and a detailed, intricate world understanding.”
• Most medical research regarding autism is involved in finding a cure, either for those currently living with the condition, or viewing it as an undesirable trait that could potentially be eliminated prenatally, both ideas autism self-advocates find offensive, and in the case of the latter, eugenically questionable. As Ne'eman put it speaking in 2007, “many people on the autism spectrum are not interested in pursuing as a goal making autistic individuals normal.”
• Interventions, such as those based on applied behavioral analysis treatments that attempt to condition away visible signs of autism, tend not to recognize or address the reasons an autistic individual may have for exhibiting common behaviors. Liu notes poet Julia Bascomb’s poem 'Quiet Hands', in which she explains what her motor stereotypymeans to her.

The sketchy

Claims of cognitive diversity—sometimes called viewpoint diversity—have recently been used in response to attempts at correcting the under-representation of minorities and women in Silicon Valley companies. According to TechRepublic, 83% of tech executives are white, and more than 50% of Apple and Google employees are, too. The percentage of women mostly hovers in the 30% range, says Business Insider.

Be that as it may, some in the industry resent corrective hiring practices, and have done so since the 1978 Regents of the University of California vs. BakkeSupreme Court decision that established affirmative action on a national level. In some cases, the promotion of cognitive diversity as a hiring goal addresses concerns of whites, and especially males, that they are the ones being discriminated against.

Perhaps the fullest presentation of the anti-diversity nature of the cognitive diversity proponents was a 2017 Google memo called 'Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber'. Purported to be an even-handed summary of diversity issues, its point of view is quite clear, and it’s laced with troubling assertions. Apple has its own problems, with a now-disavowed 2017 statement from then-Vice President of Inclusion and Diversity Denise Young Smith saying, “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse, too, because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” Smith has since noted her “regret” for her wording in an email sent to Apple employees.

Employees typically recommend people similar to them in racial identity and gender, so it requires dedicated effort to recruit and hire people who don’t already have identities that match up with those of current employees. Counting up variations of “viewpoints”—however one might do so—won’t achieve that. And, to potential applicants from underrepresented groups, statements about “cognitive diversity” will send an unwelcoming message about a company’s real priorities for inclusion.

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Zimbardo, a young Stanford psychology professor, built a mock jail in the basement of Jordan Hall and stocked it with nine “prisoners,” and nine “guards,” all male, college-age respondents to a newspaper ad who were assigned their roles at random and paid a generous daily wage to participate. The senior prison “staff” consisted of Zimbardo himself and a handful of his students.

The study was supposed to last for two weeks, but after Zimbardo’s girlfriend stopped by six days in and witnessed the conditions in the “Stanford County Jail,” she convinced him to shut it down. Since then, the tale of guards run amok and terrified prisoners breaking down one by one has become world-famous, a cultural touchstone that’s been the subject of books, documentaries, and feature films — even an episode of Veronica Mars.

The SPE is often used to teach the lesson that our behavior is profoundly affected by the social roles and situations in which we find ourselves. But its deeper, more disturbing implication is that we all have a wellspring of potential sadism lurking within us, waiting to be tapped by circumstance. It has been invoked to explain the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War, the Armenian genocide, and the horrors of the Holocaust. And the ultimate symbol of the agony that man helplessly inflicts on his brother is Korpi’s famous breakdown, set off after only 36 hours by the cruelty of his peers.

There’s just one problem: Korpi’s breakdown was a sham.

“Anybody who is a clinician would know that I was faking,” he told me last summer, in the first extensive interview he has granted in years. “If you listen to the tape, it’s not subtle. I’m not that good at acting. I mean, I think I do a fairly good job, but I’m more hysterical than psychotic.”

Now a forensic psychologist himself, Korpi told me his dramatic performance in the SPE was indeed inspired by fear, but not of abusive guards. Instead, he was worried about failing to get into grad school.

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It's unclear how many cancer patients lose employment because they're not ready to return to work. But studies show that just 40 percent are back at work within six months. 

Months after surgeons removed part of her jawbone due to cancer, Adrienne Frank was still recovering. She needed a feeding tube because she couldn’t eat, had trouble speaking and was suffering a lot of pain.

And more treatment was on the horizon: She had received her sixth oral cancer diagnosis in 11 years when doctors found that the cancer had spread to her soft palate.

But Frank’s 12-week employee medical leave, guaranteed by the same federal law that provides time off for parents of newborns, was about to end. And Frank knew she couldn’t perform the administrative duties required of her job in higher education.

“I wanted to go back to work,” said Frank, 35. “I was begging them, please give me more time so I can get a handle on all this.”

Instead, she was fired. Frank lost her income and her health insurance. She was stunned, but also saddened, she said in a recent interview. “I was more hurt, I think, to have someone say: We don’t care enough about you to help you through this.”

As cancer survival rates improve with advances in detection and treatment, advocates say workplace laws have not kept pace with the needs of patients and the demands of medical care. Surgery can leave patients with short-term disabilities, while chemotherapy and radiation can produce side effects such as “chemo-brain,” a difficulty with concentration.

In a tight labor market, many employers have an incentive to keep employees on the job, especially because recruiting and training replacements is so costly, said Deb Krause, a vice president with the Minnesota Health Action Group, an organization of employers that educates and advocates on health care issues.

“The reality today is more people live with cancer than die from cancer,” said Krause. “It does make sense for them to invest in their employees and to help them get back to work and to be healthy.”

More employers are investing in cancer detection and prevention efforts, for example, or helping workers get second opinions or treatment at centers of excellence. Some give time off to caregivers and offer voluntary critical-illness benefits that help pay bills, Krause said.

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Golf is dying, many experts say. According to one study by the golf industry group Pellucid Corp., the number of regular golfers fell from 30 to 20.9 million between 2002 and 2016. Ratings are down, equipment sales are lagging, and the number of rounds played annually has fallen.

Part of the bust can be blamed on the fallen fortunes of a single person: Tiger Woods. Golf boomed in the 1990s and early 2000s as the charismatic superstar raked in titles. Then, beginning in 2009, it faced a one-two punch of recession and bad press when its star golfer’s chronic infidelity came to light.

But the bigger story involves the sport’s aging demographics and the athletic tastes of Millennials, who just aren’t that into an expensive, poky sport that provides few health benefits. Unless the golf industry can change its ways, the decline will mean a lot of empty greens across the country. How that land is used—or isn’t—could reshape America’s suburbs for decades to come.

Golf courses and country clubs currently consume massive amounts of relatively underutilized land in cities and suburbs. Across the country, as courses and clubs begin shutting down, hundreds of thousands of acres of land could soon start opening up for infill redevelopment. While not so great for golfers, this could be a boon for cities, especially those facing a housing crunch.

Consider that the average 18-hole golf course is 150 acres. At standard densities, that means that your average golf course can host at least 600 new single-family detached homes. Mix in townhouses and apartments, and a single shuttered course could provide housing for thousands of new residential units. This is land in desirable communities: Golf-centric subdivisions built in the 1990s and 2000s feature courses threaded among affluent McMansion-style developments, meaning that the new housing could go in areas with access to high-quality schools and work opportunities.

Developers have started to take note of this trend. As communities struggle to figure out what to do with their shuttered golf courses, developers in suburbs across the country are putting together million-dollar commercial redevelopment plans, often buying sections of foreclosed golf courses at bargain prices from banks. In a Kansas City suburb, one golf course is set to be converted into an industrial park. On another golf course in suburban Jacksonville, plans are underway for a mixed-use retail, office, and hotel development.

In fact, at present, it seems like just about everything except housing is going onto the old courses. This is partially due to present zoning: Many golf courses were broadly zoned for commercial uses to allow for allow for things like clubhouse restaurants and bars, meaning that they can be redeveloped into shopping centers and office buildings without much hassle.

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Thank you, Peter and good morning, everybody, or good afternoon wherever you are. Let me backtrack a little bit on the restorative framework. There's a larger umbrella, I think, that's probably relevant to many of you on the call. That restorative justice, I think, is deeply related to and it's called community justice. When we think about community justice, we think about community safety, community well-being, and that community in life depends on the community's capacity or to engage in collective action in three ways, as far as I'm concerned: Socialization, informal social control, and external resource leveraging. 

A central feature of socialization and that informal control is what the criminologists might call shame. There's an Australian criminologist by the name of Braithwaite who has determined that there are two types of shame and this is where the restorative framework begins to enter the picture. He first calls disintegrative or stigmatizing shame is where shame is not … You don't simply shame the act but you also shame the person. The second type of social shame he calls reintegrative shame that features the expression of rebuke and community disapproval followed by gestures of re-acceptance back into the community as a norm and as law abiding citizens. 

Disintegrative shame by contrast divides the community by creating a class of outcasts. Now, in this country we know this stigmatizing shame pretty well. I mean it's a lot of what our criminal justice system is predicated upon. 

Enter this idea of reintegrative shame in through a concept called restorative justice, which I'm assuming, many of you on this call have either practiced, have heard about, have read about, it's gotten fairly well integrated over the last 30, 40 years. We now see it not just in our justice systems but we see it in our schools, in our institutions. Where things to separate from traditional justice is that a restorative view, [inaudible 00:05:31] crime, delinquencies, social violations as not just a violation against the state, rather it's a violation of relationship in one's community. That accountability is not just the breaking the law, it's rather for the harm associated with your actions.