As we learned from the updates to the earlier posting, many disability advocates have been strong enablers of the facilitated communication sham and of Stubblefield herself. And it's worse than that, as David Auerbach writes:
Despite saying they were reviewing the matter, Disability Studies Quarterly never added any sort of disclaimer to the article purportedly authored by DJ but written "through" Stubblefield via Facilitated Communication ( http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1717/1765 )
DSQ is published by the Society for Disability Studies. SDS chair Brenda Brueggemann loudly supports Stubblefield and FC, accusing her opponents of "ignorance and hubris": http://lists.disstudies.org/pipermail/sds-discuss_lists.disstudies.org/2015-October/002504.html
DSQ have also not added any disclaimers to Stubblefield's own article in the same issue, "Sound and Fury: When Opposition to Facilitated Communication Functions as Hate Speech" (http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1729/1777), in which Stubblefield defends many FC advocates whom she personally knew, including FC creator Rosemary Crossley (whose testimony in favor of DJ's competence was rejected by the trial judge) and longtime FC proponent Sandra McClennen (Stubblefield's mother)."
Sociologist and disability scholar Mark Sherry argued strongly against SDS's support of Stubblefield. He discusses the background and the conflicts of interest in his article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09687599.2016.1218152
UPDATE: Psychologist James Todd, whom we heard from previously regarding his role in the Stubblefield trial, writes with more interesting perspective:
You are right about “disabilities studies," at the least the kind we get from the Society for Disabilities Studies and its journal, Disabilities Studies Quarterly (DSQ).
The SDS conferences and its journal contain some real scholarship. But it is so infused with advocacy, fabrication, and fantasy that the legitimate items are tainted by association. DSQ also continues to accept FC as genuine communication without apparently even suggesting source validation. I suspect they know doing that would reveal the real source as the facilitator. That is, DSQ is a journal that publishes what any competent editor should assume are forgeries.
A couple other issues.
The editor of DSQ back in 2011/12, Brenda Brueggemann, refused to consider responses to Stubblefield’s article by me or the other people accused by Stubblefield of things like “hate speech” and “slander.” I was accused of both. I got “hate speech” for accurately revealing that the output attributed to supposedly independent Sue Rubin is actually produced by FC. In FC parlance, “Independent” can very literally mean “not independent.”
I was accused of “slander” for accurately describing the nature an FC-advocating course taught at Rutger’s-Newark by Stubblefield’s mother, Sandra McClennen. Stubblefield also didn’t reveal in her article that the supposed target of my “slander” is her mother or that Stubblefield had hired her to the teach the course. Stubblefield had somehow become in charge of the online autism program. Stubblefield might have also pointed out that I would know what I was talking about because McClennen taught the same course right here at EMU, and I have the syllabi for both the EMU and Rutger’s versions.
The DSQ article actually came up in testimony. I said I was not bothered by its accusations, but characterized its apparently deliberate mischaracterizations and failures to disclose as academically dishonest.
The statements from Devva Kasnitz in the SDS discussion you linked are highly disingenuous. Particularly this one: "The jury made this decision with very little of the FC debate in evidence."
Kasnitz was sitting in the gallery during the entirety of my detailed testimony on FC. I described specific errors in specific FC studies, as well as the general situation. Kasnitz also knows that the jury made its decision only hours after my testimony. I’d think it would have been fresh in the jury members' minds.
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