Random Thoughts

On 'Neurodiversity' Research Centers & Epistemic Justice (posted on LinkedIn 12/19/2025)

I’ve been sitting with a recurring frustration, and I want to name it carefully.

Increasingly, universities are hiring Directors of Neurodiversity Research or launching Centers for Neurodiversity led by people who neither produce neurodiversity scholarship nor situate themselves in relation to the movement that gave rise to the paradigm—often without autistic leadership at the center.

This is not about identity policing.

It *is* about epistemic authority.

Neurodiversity is not a neutral topic area or a branding category. It is a social justice movement and an epistemic intervention that emerged from autistic community spaces as a response to dehumanizing, medicalized, and eugenic logics of normality. To claim authority over “neurodiversity research” without engaging autistic-authored scholarship, without reflexive attention to positionality, and without accountability to neurodivergent communities is not neutral—it recenters dominant frameworks while wearing emancipatory language.

When institutions position non-autistic, non–neurodiversity scholars as authoritative leaders in this space, the result is not inclusion but extraction: the language of a liberation movement is taken up while its politics, histories, and risks are set aside.

Leadership matters. Directors set research agendas. They determine what counts as knowledge, whose voices are amplified, and which futures are imaginable. When autistic scholars are absent from those roles, neurodiversity is too easily transformed from a challenge to power into an institutional asset.

If this tension feels uncomfortable, I think that discomfort is instructive. It invites us to ask harder questions about authorship, accountability, and what it actually means to claim alignment with neurodiversity—not just rhetorically, but structurally.

Neurodiversity was never meant to be perspectiveless. 

That's a Wrap - Closing the Second Year of EDU:3013 (posted on LinkedIn 12/12/2025)

That's a Wrap!

The Fall 2025 session of EDU 3013: Neurodiversity is officially done. Thank you SO MUCH to Alex Newson PhD for closing our course with an insightful talk. If you all are not following the work of this hashtag#ActuallyAutistic scholar, you need to be!

The final unit in the course is titled “Neurodivergent Futures” for good reason. Endings bring a time to reflect on the journey, our purpose, and the future of neurodivergent people.

EDU 3013 is a course created by neurodivergent scholars, rooted in neurodivergent cultural knowledge, and designed for neurodivergent students. As we close the course—and as I reflect on my second year teaching it—some things immediately come to mind:

1) We cannot truly engage in neurodiversity-informed work without understanding the history and the social and cultural contexts from which the neurodiversity paradigm emerged.

2) Neurodiversity-informed work—including teaching—necessitates centering the voices of neurodivergent communities.

3) Neurodiversity-informed teaching makes space for counter-storytelling.

Teaching itself is an intervention. When grounded in emancipatory scholarship, it humanizes. It creates space that pushes back against dominant narratives that seek to flatten. And it allows for the radical work of dreaming better futures.

4) In a space that denies humanity, existing is a radical act. In a system that thrives on apathy, dreaming is a radical act. 

So here is my closing invitation—one that I ask every speaker who joins us and one that I use to end the course: 

*What is a hope you have, and how can we work together to make that hope a reality?*

Be well.

Response to RAND Report (posted on LinkedIn 12/12/2025)

In 2023, RAND released a report arguing that neurodivergent people represent an untapped, underutilized resource whose talents could significantly enhance national security. The report identifies “common strengths” such as pattern recognition, analysis, visualization, problem-solving, memory, and hyperfocus—framing these as capacities that could be leveraged for matters of state interest.

At face value, this may seem positive: a recognition that neurodivergent people possess meaningful strengths. However, this framing risks reinforcing the exact logic that the neurodiversity paradigm emerged to challenge—the reduction of neurodivergent bodyminds to forms of labor or value that can be extracted in service of the state.

Neurodivergent strengths do matter. But when they are consistently articulated through the language of productivity, efficiency, or national benefit, we re-inscribe the same neoliberal and ableist assumptions about whose minds “deserve” support, legitimacy, or inclusion. Such logics ultimately maintain, rather than transform, the systems that marginalize neurodivergent people in the first place.

Moreover, positioning neurodivergent people as “essential to national security” risks slipping into the instrumentalization—or even weaponization—of neurodivergent traits. Historically, state-centered framings of marginalized groups that emphasize their usefulness, rather than their inherent humanity, have paved the way for exploitation and dehumanization.

The neurodiversity paradigm arose to counter precisely these dynamics. Its central claim is that neurodivergent people possess intrinsic worth outside of productivity, utility, or strategic value. Recognizing neurodivergent strengths is important, but doing so must not come at the cost of reinforcing the very systems that have long benefited from our exclusion.

Neurotypical Perspectivelessness (posted on LinkedIn 12/10/2025)

What is Neurotypical Perspectivelessness? 

Neurotypical perspectivelessness (Denisen, publication forthcoming) refers to the dominant cultural tendency to treat neurotypical experience as the neutral, universal, and unmarked standard by which all other minds are understood and judged. It describes a lack of perspective-taking—not on the part of neurodivergent people, but on the part of institutions, practices, and individuals who assume that neurotypical norms are self-evident, natural, or value-free.

This perspectivelessness renders neurotypical expectations invisible while positioning neurodivergent ways of sensing, thinking, communicating, or organizing life as deviations that must be corrected, accommodated, or explained.

The concept builds on longstanding analyses of unmarked normativity in critical disability studies (e.g., Garland-Thomson, 1997; Minich, 2016) and aligns with critical neurodiversity’s emphasis on revealing and destabilizing the “view from nowhere” claimed by neurotypical norms.

Defining Neurodiversity Research (posted on LinkedIn 12/03/2025)

Quick note: Including neurodivergent people in your sample—or even making them the focus of your study—does NOT automatically make your work neurodiversity research.

By definition, neurodiversity research deliberately centers the voices, experiences, and interpretive authority of neurodivergent people and is grounded in the foundational principles of the neurodiversity paradigm.

This means directly addressing epistemic justice, and centering neurodivergent voices in your research questions, methodological choices, interpretation, and dissemination of findings.

Neurodiversity research is typically:

- critical, 

- collaborative, 

- co-creative, 

- and qualitative, though not exclusively.

At its core, it is about doing research with neurodivergent communities—not on them.

Epistemic Violence (posted on LinkedIn 11/03/2025)

Pointed question: 

What happens when you take something from a marginalized community, 

- do not do the work to understand it,

- do not give them credit, 

- and then use it in a way it is not meant to be used?

It's called epistemic violence.

This is exactly what happens when well-meaning individuals adopt the language of neurodiversity while ignoring—or actively reshaping—the scholarship, histories, and community labor that built it. They don’t amplify the paradigm; they dilute it. They don’t honor the movement; they appropriate it.

It’s also why it is so harmful when institutions establish “centers for neurodiversity,” “certificates in neurodiversity,” or “neurodiversity” courses that do not center the voices, labor, and expertise of neurodivergent people.

Using the term while sidelining the very community that built it reproduces the same extractive logic: taking the concept, stripping it of its political and liberatory roots, and repackaging it in a form that serves institutional comfort rather than community empowerment.

The Limits of Good Intentions (posted on LinkedIn)

“Ideology - the received wis­dom - makes current social arrangements seem fair and natural. Those in power sleep well at night -  their conduct does not seem to them like oppression.” - Delgado (1989)

I have been working to create more neuroinclusive campus environments for about six years now, and I have found that one of the biggest barriers to inclusion is not fixed by better-feeling chairs, acoustic-sensitive room designs, or even accessible lesson planning. These things are certainly important - and necessary - in building inclusive spaces, to be sure, but they are generally surface-level fixes. 

I’ve found that the biggest barrier is not material or logistical, but attitudinal — it’s *well-intentioned people*.

Let me explain. One of the ways systems of oppression persist is by convincing us that sexism, ableism, and racism are primarily perpetuated by a handful of bad people. Thus, the supposed “fix” is to root out these bad actors, allowing the supposedly neutral system to function as intended.

As Delgado, Crenshaw, King, Broderick & Lalvani remind us, this is not the case. Systems of oppression reproduce themselves not through a few bad actors, but by shaping how we understand concepts such as race, gender, and neurodiversity. When we frame ableism or sexism as moral failures, we reinforce the illusion that “good” people cannot be complicit in oppression. This makes it profoundly difficult for even the most well-intentioned individuals to confront the ways they may participate in exclusion: “I can’t be ableist—I’m a good person.”

Embracing neurodiversity as a framework means recognizing that true emancipation requires intentionally reckoning with how we’ve been socialized to think about marginalized experiences. A few new chairs and a shiny ‘neurodiversity’ center are nice gestures, but true neuroinclusion demands intentional reflection.

It requires reckoning with the systems that shape our assumptions about what counts as support, access, and inclusion — and asking how those very frameworks may still reproduce exclusion, even when designed with the best of intentions.

Counter-space & Neurodiversity Centers (posted on LinkedIn)

Can the formalization of counterspaces—such as Centers for Neurodiversity—lead to meaningful change?

The growing number of such centers on college campuses is heartening, as it reflects an increasing recognition of the needs of neurodivergent students.

Yet, history reminds us that institutionalization can also lead to de-radicalization, as the movements these spaces represent often become dependent on the very systems they seek to subvert in order to survive. In this way, their existence may ultimately sustain the structures they once sought to challenge, rather than signal a truly radical shift in practice.

There is, nonetheless, room for celebration: the slow but recognizable acceptance of neurodiversity and the needs of neurodivergent people marks a meaningful cultural shift. Still, this optimism must be balanced with caution—and with an awareness of the hegemonic forces that continue to reinforce the status quo.

Counter-space & Neurodiversity Centers (posted on LinkedIn)

Can the formalization of counterspaces—such as Centers for Neurodiversity—lead to meaningful change?

The growing number of such centers on college campuses is heartening, as it reflects an increasing recognition of the needs of neurodivergent students.

Yet, history reminds us that institutionalization can also lead to de-radicalization, as the movements these spaces represent often become dependent on the very systems they seek to subvert in order to survive. In this way, their existence may ultimately sustain the structures they once sought to challenge, rather than signal a truly radical shift in practice.

There is, nonetheless, room for celebration: the slow but recognizable acceptance of neurodiversity and the needs of neurodivergent people marks a meaningful cultural shift. Still, this optimism must be balanced with caution—and with an awareness of the hegemonic forces that continue to reinforce the status quo.

Response to RFK & HHS 'Cure' for Autism (posted on LinkedIn)

It's hard to predict what will come out of HHS today, but I do know this: autism is not a disease to be cured. It is a fundamental part of who we are. It is embodied experience. It is valuable. It is human.

Reflections on Inclusive Education (posted on LinkedIn)

I have been working almost exclusively with ND learners in a college setting for a little over 5 years now, and, through this experience, I have had the pleasure of engaging with many wonderful learners and educators. 

The more I have developed in my practice - as a scholar, educator, and ND person - the more I am becoming convinced that 'teaching for neurodivergent learners' (aka neuro-inclusive teaching practice) is not meaningfully different from what I would identify as just good teaching practice. 

I think we have been socialized to think of teaching and learning from a very narrow view point that has historically privileged certain cultural groups and certain ways of being and thinking (re-reading Thorndike, Terman, Goddard, Strong etc. has further emphasized this). The work of emancipatory teaching practice is un-learning much of those assumptions and re-centering learning as a collective, relational process geared toward developing critical consciousness.

There is no magical practice or set of practices for supporting 'ND learners' - however you wish to define it. There is no panacea. The work is in recognizing and addressing our own socialization as well as deconstructing the larger structures and systems which continue to produce inequity in education.

On Teaching Neurodiversity History (posted on LinkedIn)

One of the tensions I am working through at the moment is how to effectively teach the history of neurodivergent folx in the US without re-traumatizing students from the communities who have historically been the targets of deeply harmful stories.

We recently talked about the case of Carrie Buck v. Bell and the rhetoric that legitimized what was done to her (in the context of dominant hegemonic narratives). Students usually experience a strong sense of outrage followed by a sense of betrayal for having just learned about both the case and the deep history of eugenics in the US school system (higher ed. included) - something that they have felt was intentionally hidden from them, especially as neurodivergent individuals. 

This is usually followed by a sense of shock and dismay as they begin to realize that Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was talking about people just like them. They also begin connecting the dehumanizing language used by eugenicists to statements that have been levied towards them, usually coming from people they loved and trusted who meant well but were unaware of the legacy of ableism in the US. 

I think it’s this well-meaninged ableism that causes the most harm. 

Framing the discussion in terms of movements and counter-movements seems to help some - emphasizing that the communities that were the targets of dehumanization were not passive - but even that feels hollow at times.

And, yet, this work is so necessary. We cannot move towards emancipation without reckoning with the past, and failure to attend to historical context guarantees reproduction.