About Lennard J. Davis
Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Departments of Disability and Human Development, English, and Medical Education. He is the author of Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (1995); Bending over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions (NYU Press 2002); Obsession: A History (2009); and The End of Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era (2014). He is the editor of the Disability Studies Reader, now in its fourth edition, as well as Shall I Say a Kiss: Courtship Letters of Deaf Couple, 1936-1938 (1999). He is currently working on a forthcoming book, Enabling Acts: The Americans with Disabilities Act and How the U.S.’s Largest Minority Got Its Rights.
What is diversity? Its message is beguilingly simple and effective. Humans come in a variety of formats—with differing genders, skin tones, hair color and types, eye shapes, and sizes in the realm of physical differences, and diverse languages, religions, nationalities, and lifestyles in the realm of social differences. While diversity acknowledges the unique identity of such peoples, it also stresses that despite differences, we are all the same—that is, we are all humans with equal rights and privileges. No one group is better or superior to another.