SU professor urges people to stay curious
Dear Editor,
I’m a professor who happens to be blind. You may have noticed me walking with my guide dog, a yellow Labrador retriever trained by Guiding Eyes for the Blind. My blindness is only a part of my humanity: I’m also a father, husband, baseball fan and owner of two incredible horses. Like all of you, the list of “other” things I may be is much longer than anything appearance suggests.
What makes any life beautiful seldom has anything to do with what I look like. This is a common enough assertion. Yet when I look around Syracuse University (yes blind people look around) I see too many people making first glimpse assumptions about others. I’m only a blind person. She’s just a woman of color. He’s tall, probably just a basketball player. As the novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr. would say: “and so on.”
Lately there’s been important talk about diversity at Syracuse. Efforts are underway to foster dialogue about the critical importance of inclusion. Faculty are engaging in workshops, students are talking about Trevor Noah’s wonderful memoir and a new committee is examining SU’s approach to disability issues. These things are good.
Yet they’re of little value unless we take a genuine interest in each other. This may be naive but “naive” is etymologically derived from youthfulness. Let’s be young and curious.
I’ve had a hard time as a disabled professor. Some days my dignity has been in question. We’re not great at disability inclusion. We’re not great at welcoming anyone who appears “different.” One aim of higher education is to make us critical thinkers, all of us, yet we shy away from engaging deeply with why first assumptions about people are so easy.
They’re easy because often fear trumps curiosity.
Unless you’re a history major you probably won’t remember that Franklin Roosevelt tackled fear during the Great Depression by creating a program that put artists and writers to work celebrating local communities across the United States. Roosevelt knew that when we take an interest in each other, we’re strong.
I want to see us be strong together. Please, when you see me walking with my guide dog, say hello. Introduce yourself. I’m never in so much of a hurry I can’t take time to talk. That’s what a campus is for.
Sincerely,
Stephen Kuusisto
Professor, Director of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach
Burton Blatt Institute, College of Law