It is an exceedingly popular theme this year – and it’s not surprising. For kids, archaeology is the perfect combination of hands-on, material based exploration combined with a detective story trying to puzzle together a picture of the past from bits of stones, bones, and pottery. It speaks to children’s innate curiosity about the world and their place in it. Add LEGOs to the mix and you clearly have a winning combo.

Turns out it’s not just kids who love archaeology. Documentaries, TV series, and movies on archaeology or archaeological themes are popular. Hardly a week goes by without news of some archaeological discovery making international headlines, like about the giant statues on Rapa Nui or the complex domestication history of cats. Archaeology sells.

People also spend their time and money on exploring archaeology. Archaeotourism – visiting archaeological sites and museums on vacation – is popular. The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt attracted more than 15 million visitors last year. In the US, many of the most famous archaeological sites are in or around national parks, such as Mesa Verde National Park, that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors a year despite their more remote locations.

Why does archaeology resonate with so many of us? Perhaps partly because it taps into our inner child – our joy of discovery. But it also provides us with a unique perspective on the world and ourselves. Archaeology amplifies the voices and lives of normal people – not just the victors or rulers. Through the fragmented items people left behind, archaeologists reconstruct real people’s lives. We uncover the food they ate; the houses they built, the art they created; the toys, games, and instruments they played. We see how they cared for their sick and injured; honored their ancestors; prayed to their gods; and laid their loved ones to rest. We recreate their worlds, politics, economies, and rituals from the traces they left us. And with all of this, we see other ways of living; other ways of interacting; and other ways of organizing societies that often feel very strange and distant from our own today.

Despite this distance, they teach us that although their lives are finite, they can still be felt today, even if only through a piece of pottery with a fingerprint, or a portrait of a person from 30,000 years ago carved into mammoth ivory. Ideas that changed the world like the wheel; ancient cities that emerged and eventually abandoned; political institutions that rose and fell; all of these show us that humans are always changing and adapting. Archaeology provides us with so many examples of different ways of living, surviving, and thriving, as well as responses to challenges of political instability, climate change, and warfare.

Many news stories today challenge our humanity – they show us the worst of us, our politicians, our worlds. Archaeology speaks to the breadths and depths of our humanity, our understanding of interconnectedness of the people and the earth we inhabit. We can marvel at the ingenuity and courage of colonizing the Pacific, navigating areas of open sea the size of north America with low tech but complex knowledge of seafaring and astronomy; and we cringe at the brutality of a mass grave from 6200 years ago, where an entire village of women, men, and children were murdered. We bend our brains to imagine worlds very different from our own – while knowing that they are not figments of imagination but that they once existed, as we do now. Sometimes it reminds us to be grateful for living in our current time and place.

This cultural heritage is worth protecting, studying, and supporting. Funding cuts to the National Science Foundation, National Park Service, and other federal agencies have already curtailed archaeological research worldwide and eliminated hundreds of archaeology jobs, leaving U.S. heritage unprotected. Without this stewardship, cultural heritage in the US is at grave risk; so too is our ability to conduct research elsewhere and train new generations of archaeologists.

Archaeology may never cure cancer – although it does provide insight into the evolution of many diseases and the human body that help other researchers understand these pathogens better. It may also not develop new technologies – although it can play a role in creating more humane and ethical AI technologies. It enriches our understanding of the planet, our species, and ourselves, and challenges us to address current environmental issues in novel (or ancient) ways. While funding has always only been a tiny drop in the overall research funding bucket (0.06% of NSF’s overall budget in 2023), private foundations can’t make up the difference – we need to fight to reinstate funding to our federal grant agencies, research institutions, and universities.

Archaeology reminds us that fragile lives can leave enduring legacies. It demands humility, highlights our humanity, and inspires all of us – not just this year’s First League LEGO teams – “to uncover the past to discover the future”. Let’s not let it fade away.

Though it is certainly not life and death, a parallel confusion is evident in discerning what is real and what is fabricated from news and social media to homework that is completed with little or more than a little help from AI. As a parent and university professor, the confrontation of truth vs. fake is nearly constant.

I grew up in Mumbai/Bombay, India where guns were not plentiful except on Bollywood screens. Parents could send their children on play dates without worrying about whether the adults in the house had guns.

Here in the U.S., it is different. Plentiful daily gun violence belied the use of guns for protection.  Guns made mass shootings –where more than four people are shot –entirely possible and probable. In the U.S., there were nearly 340 mass shootings from South Carolina to Minnesota to Mississippi.

But beyond the encounters between a police officer and an individual out in the streets, a doorbell ring is taken to be a home invasion and one can never be sure who has a gun and who does not. We are suspicious of each other and have to overcome more than shyness to build community.

In the age of AI, one can never be sure what is real and what is fake, what is disinformation and what is truth. To be sure, mortality is not at stake with the ubiquitous AI use, but the future is.

In schools and colleges, the rise of large language models (LLMs) is making essay writing a breeze with just a prompt. I have struggled with assessing how much a student has written is their own work.  Now that the first semester of the year is half completed, it is critical to examine how to deal effectively with AI use before more knowledge learning is lost.

It is necessary to treat LLMs as new ways of accessing the digital world, replacing search engines, much like the calculators replaced the slide rules.  A 2025 study of more than 12,000 high school and college students shows that 97% of the students use AI in their assignments. It should be noted that not all use of AI is cheating.

As in other domains, we are using AI to solve problems created by AI. It is possible to run the term papers through various plagiarism-detection software and decide to set the checking software at the level of a phrase or of a sentence, or at the level of an inarticulately paraphrased but correctly cited scientific paper. Then, assessing if say a plagiarism score of 10% (on some hastily defined scale) is sufficient to initiate punitive actions. There is little guidance from college administrators or the developers of such software packages.

Perhaps developers are waiting for the real-world training instructors inadvertently provide to improve their packages. Perhaps in less than a year, they will post data with confidence intervals based on the behavioral patterns of students and teachers.

To be fair, cheating has always been prevalent in schools and colleges. And, instead of bribing a classmate to write your essay, you need only write a prompt in ChatGPT.  As always, it is up to the instructor to decide how much thought, agony and learning went into a term paper.

But we lose something when we begin each encounter with a stranger or read the first lines of an essay from a place of suspicion. Instructors wonder if the student did really write this, how much came from them and how much was an LLM, and more importantly, do the students understand what they have written.

There are some dire warnings of the use of AI. As recent research shows it can result in, “The erosion of trust, the hollowing-out of the student–teacher relationship, and the further commodification of learning threaten to precipitate a legitimation crisis for the academy itself.”

One solution may be to go old school on this one and use pen and paper in class.  And also to really get to know the students IRL.

The event was created in 1945 and, for me, became intensely personal in 2011.

On a spring morning that year, I hopped on my bike to visit the farmer’s market, setting off to find asparagus and whatever chance might bring. What chance brought that day was a spill off my bike and a blow to my head (a head that wore no helmet), resulting in a coup-contrecoup that caused a seizure and sent blood gushing from my nose and ears. I woke up in the hospital a few days later and slowly processed that I had been comatose.

For a period following an emergency craniectomy, there was no clear indication that I would ever wake up. With assistance, I was able to sit up and begin the first steps of recovery from traumatic brain injury.

During that recovery, I had to resign from the university where I had worked for 12 years, leaving behind professional initiatives I had launched, managed and grown. I re-learned how to climb stairs and drive. I changed the state I lived in, and I profoundly changed my life. The road to recovery is long. I am on it still.

For some time, the disabling effects of my injury were obvious. I moved and spoke slowly. Severed nerves caused hearing loss in my left ear that makes me an annoying dinner table companion if I am seated to your right. Nerve damage also resulted in loss of a piece of my vision in my left eye. I can no longer pluck a baseball out of the air if it is tossed at me from my left side. My sense of balance was severely impacted. I have a limited ability to stand on one leg. I am left-handed, and my right brain injury decreased the strength and coordination of my dominant hand. My already imperfect penmanship became almost illegible.

These long-term impacts of my injury are losses when compared to my abilities before the accident. But they are disabilities that would have been invisible or negligible in my return to work, where, for instance, I am rarely required to stand on one leg. We encounter such disabilities every day without registering that we do.

In my classrooms, on the first day, I tell the students that I may not see a raised hand on my left and that they should help each other out and call my attention to their classmates who are signaling willingness to participate. They do, and often some of them will, in response, point out their own blind spots or difficulties hearing.

Prior to my accident, I pioneered developments in digitization and in the creation of online information resources. I was an important voice in the development of academic library publishing. And, as this month seeks to acknowledge, I have continued to make substantial contributions to the workplace. I helped scholars realize the potential of sharing their scholarship widely and in innovative formats. I have educated hundreds of librarians, and I now direct the No. 1 ranked library and information science master’s degree program in the United States. I have authored several articles and published two books. All of this has been accomplished despite, or perhaps because of, my non-obvious disabilities.

Shortly after my accident, my then-employer’s risk management office looked at the scores of my cognitive tests and deemed that my executive function was too impaired for me to successfully do my job. When the Social Security administration denied my disability claim (as it tends to do for traumatic brain injury sufferers), it suggested that I could be gainfully employed as a newspaper clipper. But I was apparently not able to run an academic library or a university press.

The opportunities for which National Disability Employment Awareness Month advocates were not available to me.

In 2013, I was hired in a faculty position at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. My salary and my record of scholarship and teaching would indicate to many people that I am normally capable now. Colleagues and collaborators who do not know about my medical history are taken by surprise when I describe my injury and the extent of its impact on my abilities.

During recovery, I had a successful cranioplasty, but my excised skull flap had spent so much time in a freezer waiting to be reunited with my skull that it warped and will never sit flush. I have a permanent indentation that my then-elementary-school son cheerfully described as “Like a cheerio bowl in the head.” To convey the gravity of my injury to a new acquaintance, I sometimes put their hand on the dent in my head, now helpfully covered by hair. There are winces and small gasps in response, but mostly people say, “I never would have known.”

I am normal. I am disabled. Aren’t we all?

Several of the medical professionals with whom I worked with throughout my recovery _— a group of people whose intelligence and dedication are an extraordinary gift to those they serve — told me that I was a miracle.

My emergency neurosurgeon told my family that she had never seen a brain so damaged. I am a teaching case for the emergency orthopedic surgeon who patched together my broken clavicle and shattered elbow despite skepticism from his colleagues that I would ever be functional enough to use them. He shows his students a picture of me, playing with one of my children, and tells the students it’s always best to assume recovery.

Another doctor, who questioned whether my treatment was worth the investment, given the extent of damage, called me over for a celebratory photograph when, two years later, she realized I had just beaten her in a neighborhood 5k race.

My story isn’t meant to downplay the damage caused by traumatic brain injury and its lasting impact. I am asking that we not measure our abilities or those of others against some yardstick of normalcy that simply doesn’t exist.

In keeping with the aims of this month, I urge all of us to respect the limitations of those we work with, and, more importantly, recognize their potential. All of them. All of us.

I was, and I am badly broken. A broken miracle. We all are. We need opportunities, in the workplace and in the world, to demonstrate that.

As a trained social psychologist, I’ve spent nearly two decades serving as a crisis hotline, peer, and grief counselor for hundreds of people from around the world. I’ve been an outcry witness, held people experiencing suicidal ideation, supported families and communities who have lost loved ones to suicide, and have been the only person who knew where to find the notes my friends left behind because I knew them – and because I knew where I would have left my own. 

The statistics on suicide rates in the US are staggering. At one death every 11 minutes, it is one of the leading causes of death, the rate increasing by 37% in the past 25 years. In 2023, 16.5 million people seriously considered and/or made a plan for how to escape their pain. That same year, 1.5 million people made a documented attempt, with 49,000 people dying, most of them Indigenous Americans and people aged 15-85+. The risk is both evenly and unequally distributed among us all. 

Studies show many suicides are attributed to feels of “dread, despair, loneliness and hopelessness.” Other factors include academic performance, economic standing, financial struggles, and of course, mental health. Another major factor is the nature of the society in which we live, and as a society, we must work intentionally to create a world where we don’t just survive, but thrive. 

To be sure, we are living in a moment where resources like the National Suicide Hotline for LGBTQ+ youth are defunded, reproductive and abortion care are gouged and restricted across the US, and $182 billion dollars per year are ‘invested’ in a sprawling, inhumane mass incarceration system, not to mention the increasing presence of ICE and its ability to surveil and detain those deemed ‘not American enough’.

In my practice as a facilitator and educator, I create and uplift resources, spaces, and programs to support the collective, holistic well-being of my communities and networks. And so, since we cannot rely on our federal government to lead the way, allow me to offer other ways of navigating these challenging times:

• Seek out Mental Health First Aid classes. These classes are available in-person and online. Participants learn how to identify mental health issues and crises, provide initial help and stabilization, and find and contact appropriate resources. The national 998 Suicide and Crisis hotline is also still active.  
• Explore resources like the Open Path Collective, which hosts skilled therapists at sliding scale. They purposefully recruit counselors from diverse backgrounds who are well-versed in both individual mental/emotional conditions, as well as the social conditions that may either help or exacerbate them. 
• Practice learning about and discussing mental/emotional health. I have created a list of media and resources to help begin exploring these topics and be patient; exploring feelings like shame and guilt take time and care.

In a time where ‘Breaking News’ alerts seem to constantly warn of war or deliver another sobering story about gun violence, it is reasonable to be heartbroken and frustrated, to want out.  I understand the pain, the heartbreak, the feelings of despair. I was born as Hurricane Hugo, the first of the superstorms, decimated my island of St. Croix, graduated into two recessions, and have lived my entire life in a world at war, not to mention in the fist of colonization. I’ve also experienced cycles of active and passive suicidal ideation for most of my life. 

At this point, I view it almost as a companion, one I can predict will arrive to spend time with me, sometimes content to quietly observe, and at others, insistent with its purpose – as a warning that I am not the only thing maladapted and unwell. I have suffered greatly, yes, but have been saved by the care of brave, diligent friends, my training and awareness of the resources available to me, and my stubborn insistence on not being beaten by a hostile game I never agreed to play. 

We are not powerless, however. It is important to remember that this is a blink in the eye of human history, that we have agency in how we respond – where we re/direct and pool our attention, effort, care, and skills. Those of us who live, love, and create on the margins of a society that only ever wanted us for the bodies, minds, and spirits it used to build itself know that there are always other paths.

When I reflect on what we can do as a society to address rising rates of suicide, Octavia Butler’s guidance as a skilled, prolific social historian, worldbuilder, and humanitarian ring powerfully true: “There is no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers – at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.” 

Recall that in New Orleans, in the face of the catastrophic hurricane assigned the name Katrina, it was the levee system that did not hold, that burst sending water gushing back into the Lower Ninth Ward and other impoverished areas. Our project team was exploring what happens to wetland ecosystems when levees systems like the one that broke (i.e., an elevated humanmade barrier or embankment constructed to stop the natural flow of water often to create dry developable land) breach naturally over time. During her presentation, four years before Katrina, the plant biologist said she knew with certainty that if a massive storm hit, the levee systems in New Orleans would not hold. Four years prior to Katrina, she urgently shared this information with government officials, warning them of the imminent threat particularly to poor, elderly, and Black residents if the levee system broke. But instead of taking action to bolster the failing system, she was told: “We have the body bags ready.”

What have we learned in the twenty years since Hurricane Katrina? Twenty years after the dehumanization of the Superdome, the false and racialized narratives conflating looting with survival, the gutting helicopter footage of primarily poor and Black Americans seeking refuge on sinking rooftops, the government, at local, state, and federal levels collectively left the most vulnerable communities to drown and then fight for their lives on their own.

Surely, we’ve made advances since 2005 to increase disaster response. We certainly have. Yet it’s difficult to see that progress as the current federal administration systematically dismantles the upstanding science agencies designed to keep Americans safe. Innovations that include: advances in extreme weather modeling and forecasting, efficient warning systems, effective evacuation mechanisms, comprehensive disaster recovery plans and strategies. For example, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency foundational to our knowledge and understanding of extreme weather events has been decimated and the experts that created and perfected hurricane modeling and tracking have been fired. Likewise, it is the knowledge of experts at the National Weather Service (also part of NOAA) used to issue timely severe weather watches and warnings. Further, these lifesaving warnings and evacuation orders, that allow people time to plan and escape are being silenced.

Just last month Congress unconscionably voted to cancel funding for the Center for Public Broadcasting which supports the very public radio that broadcasts critical extreme weather information to impacted areas, especially in rural regions that may not have access to other information sources. Finally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), designed to help Americans navigate unexpected disasters that leave their lives in disarray was merged with the Department of Homeland Security and lacks leadership and expertise. We saw the consequences of these unconscionable eliminations decisions that allowed incompetence and dysfunction to lead the response in Texas during the floods that took too many lives; urgent calls unanswered, critical funding inaccessible, emergency warning systems failed. The slice of human tragedy we witnessed in Texas is a warning of what is to come on much larger scales as climate change increases the likelihood and severity of extreme weather events. We must act now.

What can we do? How do we maintain hope and possibility as publicly available climate data and tools are erased from federal websites, limiting the ability to make evidence-based decisions? As agencies like the National Science Foundation terminate grants that engage in climate science research because they “no longer effectuate agency priorities;” an experience I know too well, having lost my NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award that supports science teachers and students as community-based climate action researchers.

What we do is we reimagine, we resist, we collectively stand up. For inspiration, I look to sources of bravery and determination in and outside of science including: Data scientists saving and archiving tools that the government has tried to erase, scientists at the National Institute of Health and on, issuing powerful statements of ethics and solidarity; persistent Americans, especially in red states, who attend town halls demanding that politicians answer to them, their constituents; residents of Los Angeles peacefully marching in solidarity with their immigrant neighbors and in defiance of a president who they will not allow to mischaracterize them; artists who reject the attempted erasure of their creativity because U.S. history and politics, in its truth telling, isn’t supposed to be comfortable.

As a professor I see the young people across this nation fighting to be heard, demanding the future they desire and envisioning it into being. We must stand up for science because science can be used to keep us all safe, especially the most vulnerable among us. On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we stand together as those who not just refuse to be silenced but who demand and reimagine anew.

The City Secretary’s office was confused. They turned me, a licensed attorney trying to turn in evidence of ethics violations, away. 

While I overcame this snafu in a return trip to City Hall, over 14 months later, the City’s Inspector General’s office did the exact same thing again. On February 18, 2025, City-employed investigators turned me, my clients, and our evidence away. The blip of a reason that we received after a supposed 64 week “investigation” was that our allegations were “unsubstantiated” due to a lack of “definitive testimony or sufficient documentation.”  

In 2024, according to Quarterly Reports, the City’s Inspector General’s office received 412 ethics complaints, closed out 471 ethics complaints, and only sent 2 of the 471 ethics complaints it processed onto a formal hearing before the Ethics Advisory Commission.

In 2024, 6 out of 15 seats on the Ethics Advisory Commission were vacant, and 2 out of the Commission’s 4 regularly scheduled meetings were cancelled.

The Ethics Advisory Commission is the only body empowered to actually provide Dallas residents due process on their ethics complaints. The Ethics Advisory Commission has the power to weigh evidence, witness testimony and credibility in a public hearing, and make open and public determinations as to whether City officials violated the Ethics Code. 

“Justice delayed is Justice denied” is not an adequate description for a City Ethics process that allows only .04% of all ethics complaints filed to ever see the light of day in a public hearing. Or for a City Ethics process that took over 14 months to let my client’s well-supported ethics complaints die on the bureaucratic vine.

What do I mean by well-supported ethics complaints? 

As one simple example, we submitted two sworn affidavits confirming that an Environmental Commissioner, while representing the City at a public event, gave the middle finger to two environmental advocates.

This was not “definitive testimony” according to the City.  

The City never required the accused Commissioner to swear under oath that she did not flip off my clients. 

In the old days, justice was determined by witness counting. Under that archaic standard, the sworn testimony of two witnesses warrants not just a hearing but a guilty verdict when stacked up to exactly zero witnesses denying the allegation under oath. 

In Dallas, how many witnesses are required for an ethics complaint to be “substantiated”? Three? Five? Ten? 

The public will never know. The City’s investigation standards (if any exist) are hidden behind closed doors.

This was not the most serious issue we presented. We had video recordings of a Commissioner behaving badly, a threatening letter a Commissioner submitted to the employer of one of my clients, and police reports, police body camera footage, and a court transcript documenting abuse of power.  

But even this was not enough for the City to allow the Ethics Advisory Commission to decide whether these Commissioners violated their ethic obligations.

We knew the City’s process was a joke from day one. 6 weeks after I turned our USB drive into City Hall, I received an e-mail asking for the drive. The City didn’t know it already had our evidence. It took 6.5 months for the City to ask to interview my clients, and then required my clients to sign gag orders agreeing not to speak directly with the Ethics Advisory Commission about their complaints during the investigation. The City then closed out our complaints without a hearing without providing us any process to appeal that decision.

In 2023, the City ran a contest to name its Ethics Hotline, choosing the “Speak Up Line” as the winner. The “Speak Into The Void” line would be more accurate. If you call, there is a 99.96% chance your ethics complaint will be closed without a hearing, and there won’t be anything you can do about it. 

Beyond these natalist policies, the GOP is also looking to encourage the strengthening of the family unit, which, in their opinion, means having parents stay at home with the children (we know they mean the mother). 

How are they going to achieve this? By restricting who has access to child care tax credits, of course.

As society swings from the “girl boss” feminism of the 2010s to a more conservative outlook for the future, there has been a surge in social media content idealizing so-called “traditional” gender roles — as in, the submissive woman, in her “feminine energy” at home with the children while her husband (or boyfriend) is hard at work, channeling his “masculine energy.” 

TikTok peddles “Stay At Home Girlfriend” content, where women like influencer Kendel Kay (@kendelkay) make millions of dollars per year creating content that glamorizes the “soft life,” one where their man “pays for everything” so they don’t have to work. (I guess making millions off of content creation simply makes it a great hobby?)

In 2021, YouGov reported that over one third of partnered women are somewhat financially dependent on their partners. I can see how some women might think this would never happen to them. I thought so too.

 It wasn’t until he said, “I think I want to separate,” that I realized how much of my own power and autonomy I had given away, how enmeshed my dreams and projects were in that relationship, and how unstable I would be without it. My mom would later tell me I thought I was building on rock when really my foundation was built on sand. 

Thirty percent of women in the U.S. can’t afford some of their bills. Could I even afford living on my own? I had just recently gotten a full-time job after being unemployed, and frankly, financially irresponsible, for months. Fortunately, I was able to recoup, pick myself up, and put a roof over my head, but that doesn’t mean I’m not currently in debt. 

Call me jaded, but I, for one, will never let a man have that much power over my well-being again.

To be sure, choice feminism tells us that as long as we are choosing to do or not do certain things, we are being good feminists. But I do think decisions can be influenced by society. We don’t live in a vacuum. The media you consume, the political context you live in — we can’t ignore these things. And the more we are aware of these influences, and what is at stake, the better decisions we make.

Do whatever you want. Choose to be a SAHG. But recognize the risks you expose yourself to when giving away that much of your autonomy. Financial abuse occurs in 99% of domestic violence cases and can be a significant reason why victims stay in or return to abusive relationships.

They will continue to glamorize this lifestyle. You will continue to be pushed toward it. And maybe it is something you want. But make sure you look after yourself and your well-being. Have a strong safety net. Build a strong community around you. Just in case things don’t pan out the way you want them to.

When I became pregnant, I became obsessed with learning everything about a healthy pregnancy, labor and delivery. As a Black multiracial woman, I was aware of the harrowing birth stories of Black women who had negative birthing experiences. Serena Williams famously discussed how she fought for her own life as medical professionals dismissed her concerns after birthing her daughter. In California, infant mortality rates of Black women are three times higher than white infants, and though Black women account for 5% of the state’s pregnancy, they make up for 21% of pregnancy related deaths. 

My concerns led me to an experienced midwife as my primary care opting for a homebirth. Yet, my labor did not go as planned. My water broke and after 16 hours of labor, I failed to progress. Exhausted and defeated, I ended up at the hospital. Despite knowing that Black women and other women of color are treated poorly by healthcare professionals, I was not prepared for how my own story would unfold. 

Upon arrival, I was sent to triage. I explained to the white female nurse that my water broke about 24 hours ago and I had been laboring all night, but my contractions slowed. “How do you know your water broke? Are you sure you aren’t just dehydrated?” She questioned me. I informed her that my midwife had just had an IV in me. Offering me water, she informed me that the birthing rooms were “crowded” and they might not have “room for me.”  From the ultrasound she said it looked like the baby was fine. She then proceeded to do two cervical checks. Given that my water ruptured, the multiple checks only increased my chance of infection. 

She then asked what my ethnicity was. I weakly answered, “I’m Black and Chinese.” At that moment, my (Black) husband walked in. Glancing at us, she stated, “Well don’t be surprised if your baby comes out looking white. My friend just had a baby with a Black man and the baby looks Native American.” My husband and I locked eyes, both of us taken aback by her comments.

Finally, they tested for my waters and it came back positive. Relieved, they transferred me to a birthing room where my midwife and doula joined me and my husband. While I was getting situated the nurse continued to double down that my water had not broken. “It’s not certain your water broke, and this is kind of a mercy admit.” I was exhausted and visibly contracting. A single hot angry tear rolled down my cheek. I could not answer her or even look at her. “Do you want to switch your nurse? I feel like you are upset with me,” she said directly to me. It was unbelievable how she managed to center herself in this moment. 

After receiving the epidural I was in and out of sleep for hours. Finally, it was time to push. Our baby arrived and we enjoyed our “golden hour” before we were transferred to a postpartum room.Unfortunately, our joyous moment was short lived. 

To our surprise, our daughter was sent to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The doctor explained that our baby was having trouble breathing, likely due to fluid in her lungs. Upon looking at my chart and discovering my water ruptured before arriving at the hospital and that I broke out into a fever right before the delivery, it was likely the baby was fighting an infection. He also said she was at risk of jaundice. They put her on antibiotics for the course of seven days. 

Three days after delivery, a new doctor took the place of the doctor who admitted our daughter. He was a white doctor of German descent that I will refer to as Dr. B. He changed the plan of the last doctor. He directed our daughter to be under phototherapy to prevent jaundice, despite our other doctor saying she was under the threshold for that treatment. He drew her blood daily and ran multiple tests. He repeatedly asked me to use formula and expressed disapproval when I said I was breastfeeding.

One morning, Dr. B walked over to me and hurriedly gave me a report. I attempted to ask him follow up questions but he walked away while I was speaking to him. Eventually he returned, not to speak to me, but to direct the nurse to put the baby back in the phototherapy light. I let the nurse know I’d like to speak to the doctor before continuing treatment. Dr. B returned and sternly said to me, “What is up with you not putting the baby back in the light?” He became agitated and walked away shouting for everyone to hear, “CALL SOCIAL SERVICES!” In that moment, I shattered, sobbing loudly as I fumbled for my phone to call my husband, shocked and terrified at this interaction. A sympathetic nurse placed her hand on my shoulder. 

Before this exchange, I had been poised and articulate to not be dismissed as a nonsensical, emotional, hormonal new mother. Despite my distress, I don’t remember crying until this point. Even given the postpartum bleeding, cramping, and sleep deprivation, something in me, maybe a motherly instinct, kicked in. When I spoke to doctors and nurses I was calm. My husband also spoke in a measured tone in the NICU. We did not want to look too “angry or irrational.” And certainly, we did not want to give them any reason to take our daughter away from us. I don’t mean to sound hyperbolic, but our time in the NICU felt very carceral. 

My husband returned and immediately contacted the charge nurse to find out who Dr. B reported to. This resulted in the “Patient Experience Coordinator,” Ana, to come speak to us. While we reported to her what I just experienced, Dr. B returned. Ana invited him to sit down with us for a conversation. Dr. B replied that he did not have time for a conversation but could answer questions. My husband then asked him about our daughter’s test scores. Dr. B quickly replied that he did not have the scores and told us to “forget about the numbers.” Then he added, “You are professors, right? I am a professor too. You wouldn’t want your students asking you questions.” We replied that we do want our students to ask questions as inquiry promotes learning. Dr. B responded with another example, stating that when he goes to the mechanic he trusts the mechanic’s expertise. We found these analogies offensive and inappropriate.

Dr. B directed the nurses not to update us. Every morning, we had to request our daughter’s results from the medical records office because Dr. B withheld information. Dr. B severed any trust between us and created a hostile environment for me, as I no longer felt safe interacting with him. Though it was an internal hospital social worker who later came to meet me, his decision to threaten me with social services without context resulted in one of the single worst moments of my life.

After the series of negative interactions that took place that morning, I left back to the room, crying and upset, releasing the angst I have felt since going into labor. I wanted to be alone but my mom insisted on seeing me. Once I saw her face I broke down in tears immediately. She pulled me close to her and I sobbed into her shoulder. “You’re still my baby,” she said, rubbing my back. I felt so much comfort in that moment. My mother’s love was transcendent. 

One might say that my experience was an anomaly, that most people in the healthcare industry care about their patients. Though this might be true, this “bad apple” argument dismisses the pervasive systemic racism and sexism that affects all facets of our society. As a former teacher and now education researcher, I know that Black girls are treated disproportionately to their peers, and unfairly characterized as aggressive or defiant, which many experts, including Monique Morris and Kimberle Crenshaw have discussed at length.  Yet presently we face the demonization of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” which is set to ameliorate some of these disparities. Sadly, this “baby bonus” does not ensure proper healthcare and systems set up to grow healthy families.

I am blessed that today I have a healthy toddler. I’m grateful for my mother’s love, my husband, my support team and friends who held me up during this challenging time. It is their source of love and strength that inspires me to continue to hold up others and advocate for better systems toward equity to help us thrive as a collective.

This paradox presents a challenge for educators like myself. On the one hand, children with disabilities face diminished access to equitable education due to cuts to Medicaid and the Department of Education. On the other hand, ADA regulations offer a vital and long-overdue step toward digital accessibility in our public schools and universities.

ADA Title II regulations, updated in April 2024, require public entities to meet digital accessibility standards. At the public university level, many professors, staff, and administrators are beginning to grapple with what it means to ensure that digital content in classrooms is accessible — by 2026 for entities serving a population of 50,000 or more, and by 2027 for those serving fewer. This effort is guided by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA, a widely recognized set of standards designed to make digital content usable for all.

To be sure, this mandate places significant demands on staff, administrators and faculty. I have heard colleagues at various universities voice their frustrations. Many feel overwhelmed by the workload of updating course materials, uncertain where to begin, and even questioning the necessity of the effort, wondering, for example, whether it is needed if there are no blind or deaf students currently enrolled in their classes. This is why ensuring that instructors and staff understand both how to make materials accessible and, more importantly, why it matters is not just helpful—it’s essential.

Over one billion people worldwide have a disability, according to the World Health Organization. In our classrooms, many students live with disabilities, some visible, others less apparent, including those related to neurodiversity, chronic illness or mental health.

Individuals with dyslexia may rely on screen readers or audio versions of course materials. Students with ADHD may benefit from simplified layouts to maintain focus. Captions can support students who are learning in a second language or studying in noisy, shared spaces. Likewise, students with color blindness may struggle to interpret color-coded charts or slides, and benefit from designs that use text labels or patterns in addition to colors.

Accessibility is not just for a few; it’s for everyone. When we design with inclusion in mind, we create learning environments that support the diversity of our students.

Accessible syllabi, lecture slides and course websites are more than just boxes to check—they create equitable opportunities for learning and ensure that everyone can fully participate in education.

During an accessible design workshop my students and I conducted with middle school students and their parents, a parent who works at a university shared how the session reshaped her perspective on accessibility and Title II. What had once felt like a burdensome workplace requirement became a meaningful practice. By learning about the challenges people with disabilities face when software is inaccessible, and engaging with videos and hands-on activities, she gained a deeper appreciation for the importance of making content accessible.

As universities rush to update digital materials to meet accessibility standards and create workshops for faculty, staff, and teaching assistants, it is crucial to focus not only on meeting legal requirements but also on remembering why accessibility is essential. It’s not just about mandates; it’s about promoting equal access to education.

Institutions can take this moment to invest in accessibility training that goes beyond compliance and fosters understanding. Using videos, case studies, and hands-on activities can help illustrate why accessibility is important. This mandate presents an opportunity for universities to reimagine their approach to education, ensuring access for all learners.

In addition to considering software accessibility, it’s also important to reflect on accessibility within our teaching practices. These changes benefit not only neurodiverse students but all learners. Simple adjustments, such as offering additional formats for lectures, like recorded videos or written summaries can make content more accessible. Providing flexible assessment options, such as project-based assignments, can support students who struggle with traditional testing formats.

As federal budget cuts jeopardize the education, research and services for people with disabilities, the future feels more uncertain than ever.

ADA and its Title II provisions are more vital than ever. Public universities and institutions must remain committed to creating inclusive learning environments for all students.