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Allies for Inclusion: Disability and Equity in Higher Education Karen A. Myers, Jaci Jenkins Lindburg, and Danielle M. Nied San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. ASHE Higher Education Report, 39(5), 2014, 132 pages, $29.00 (softcover)
Very little is written for a broad higher education audience about disability. Allies for Inclusion: Disability and Equity in Higher Education, part of the ASHE Higher Education Report Series, begins to fill this gap. The monograph is an accessible introduction to disability in the context of higher education, with a particular focus on the experience of students and strategies for creating inclusive campuses. The authors of this book make a strong argument that all members of college and university communities have a shared responsibility to create campus environments inclusive of people with disabilities.
The book is organized into an executive summary, five core chapters, and brief introductory and concluding chapters. In the first core chapter the authors begin with an overview of 1960s civil rights efforts around racism and sexism, then move to a discussion of federal legislation pertaining to people with disabilities, beginning with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and concluding with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The chapter continues to provide reviews of seven court cases relating to disability in higher education settings. While the included material is foundational, the chapter would have benefitted from the inclusion of more recent court cases and Department of Justice directives, particularly those pertaining to comfort animals and self-harm and extensions of the ADA. It also would have been useful to...