Petition for New AALS Section on Law Profs with Disabilities & Allies

Nicole Porter (Toledo) sends this letter from Katie Eyer (Rutgers):

As many of you know, for the past two years, we have been moving toward launching a proposed AALS Section on Law Professors with Disabilities and Allies. I am pleased to announce that we are at the stage of having a petition and bylaws drafted, and can now collect signatures for provisional recognition. We need 50 signatures from 25 institutions in order to obtain provisional recognition, but we are hoping to obtain more to demonstrate to AALS the strong support for the proposed Section. (A note: under AALS rules, these signatures must be from full-time faculty or professional staff).

Please sign this form to support the recognition of the Section on Law Professors with Disabilities and Allies by AALS. You can email the form to me at [email protected]. Electronic signatures are acceptable. Anyone who signs will automatically be added as members to the new section and added to the Section listserv. I’d love to get enough signatures to submit to AALS by Wednesday April 14. But even if you are digging through your email later and still want to support the proposed Section, please send along your form even after that deadline. Please also feel free to forward this message on to your own faculties or other groups that may have interested members.

We are still awaiting final word from AALS on whether we will be able to have programming at the 2022 Meeting, but are hoping to be able to do so. We have already identified an awardee that we are hoping to honor (more on that soon once we know for sure if we can honor her this year), and are hoping to launch with a program titled “The Forgotten Demographic: Law Professors With Disabilities in Legal Academia.”

This has definitely been a group effort to get this launched. Many thanks to all of those involved in moving it forward, including our inaugural leadership (in addition to myself: Megan Wright, Chair-Elect; Stacey Tovino, Secretary; and our Executive Committee, Katherine Macfarlane, Pamela Foohey and Nicole Buonocore Porter). Kat Macfarlane deserves particular credit as the person who really nurtured this idea in its early stages and kept it moving forward. Thank you also to the others who have already expressed an interest in joining the leadership moving forward (and if you have not yet expressed such an interest, but are interested, please let me know, since we are keeping track of these names!)

Apologies for those of you who have received this message (or a version of it) on multiple lists. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions, and I look forward to hearing from many of you!

All my best,
Katie

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