Visibilizing Intellectual Disability in the Classroom

Persons with intellectual disabilities (ID), who comprise 1% to 3% of the U.S. population, have historically been excluded from mainstream higher education on the premise that they lack adequate qualifications. Moreover, universities have at times not only excluded but directly harmed persons with ID, such as through university human subject research programs. For example, in the 1950s and 60s, notorious experiments by Harvard Medical School faculty involved feeding radioactive oatmeal to intellectually disabled residents at the Fernald State School without their knowledge or consent. By contrast, today there are hundreds of “inclusive” higher education programs throughout the country for students with ID, in no small part due to a growing awareness of how many institutions of higher education either directly harmed or excluded persons with ID. Despite limitations on the inclusivity of some of these programs, they have created meaningful pathways for this historically excluded group to benefit from higher education.

Despite these inroads, universities could do more to address the disparities that persons with ID continue to experience. For example, many university students have limited curricular options to gain the knowledge and know-how necessary to address these disparities. Few medical students are taught how to treat this population, despite their federal designation as a “medically underserved population.” Few public health students are taught how to design health care systems or collect data to address the disparate health outcomes this group faces. Few policy students are taught about the experiences of persons with ID who receive publicly funded services, although services for this group account for an outsize portion of state and federal governments’ expenditures. Few law students are taught how to represent clients belonging to this population, despite their overrepresentation in the criminal legal system. Similar curricular gaps persist across other fields, including history, literature, design, and psychology, where persons with ID often remain invisible.

As a result, even as persons with ID have more access to higher education than ever, the viewpoints of this historically marginalized and underrepresented group are largely absent from the educational experiences of university students, generally. Many university students with and without ID will go on to inform laws, policies, and programs that shape the lives of persons with ID. Limited curricular options that address head on issues that persons with ID face ultimately diminish universities' ability to prepare future leaders for the social, legal, design, and policy challenges posed by this group and risks perpetuating existing patterns of exclusion in society at large.

The Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD) has intentionally worked to address such gaps at Harvard University. For example, HPOD’s Executive Director Professor Michael Ashley Stein has routinely invited persons with ID to co-teach individual classes in his courses on international disability rights law and policy offered at the Harvard Law School, School of Government, and Extension School. Also, HPOD’s Chair Professor William Alford has regularly invited athletes with ID to co-teach individual meetings of his Harvard Law School reading group on sports law. I, too, include guest co-instructors with ID in the Harvard Law School reading groups I offer, including HPOD's Self-Advocacy Associate Anne Fracht.

These efforts aim to tackle the historical exclusion of persons with ID by involving them in Harvard University’s offerings not as passive participants, but as active agents empowered to define their own narratives. While universities are increasingly opening their doors to students with ID, there are not similarly abundant pathways for persons with ID to serve as instructors. Despite the limited curricular offerings relating to persons with ID, by placing persons with ID in positions of authority as guest co-instructors, our hope is that these efforts might inspire other instructors to do the same, and ultimately, over time help transform Harvard University into a standard-bearer institution committed to demonstrating the capacity of persons with ID not only to benefit from inclusion in university life, but also to contribute meaningfully to it.