Mishka Zena

PRESIDENT GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY The new president will be charged with implementing the University’s mission and vision, approved by theBoard of Trustee in 2007 -Leading the Gallaudet community in discussions and taking actions to implement inclusive bilingualism on camp -Organizing a program of enrollment management that includes outreach, recruitment, and retention of students. -Building relationship that [...]

I. King Jordan retired from Gallaudet last December.  After stepping down as its president in Dec of 2006, he took a break for one year before he resumed teaching at Gallaudet. How many people noticed this tidbit about his retirement? Jordan is the only known university president who began his  presidential career as a result of a massive protest, [...]

After the victory of Unity For Gallaudet, naysayers claimed that Gallaudet would become more exclusive, insisting that Fernandes was ousted for ‘Not Deaf Enough’ based on the stakeholders’ ’intolerance to deaf diversity’. They predicted with culturally Deaf people overtaking Gallaudet,  it’ll be a place where deaf people using other communication methods won’t be welcome.   Yet Gallaudet continues to promote more diversity among its stakeholders than [...]

I first observed this pattern during the Gallaudet University Protest. Some supporters of the Jordan/Fernandes Administration on campus would be throwing out derogatory mental diagnoses of the Deaf leaders and certain Deaf protesters of Unity for Gallaudet. They’d say “Oh that person has severe psychological problems”, or “That leader has a history of…..”, etc. I thought to myself, what a [...]

My response is a loud YES to the possibility of a Deaf blogger being sued.  I can vouch for this personally as I’ve been threatened with lawsuits. I was asked to cover this issue by another blogger in response to the supoena of Kathleen Seidel for her post criticizing the actions of personal injury lawyers going [...]

Jordan wasn’t invited to DPN-20 Gala, as reported by several sources. Yet Gallaudet University is funding the Jordan Chair in Leadership I’ve been pondering over the irony ever since. During the protest, Jordan renounced DPN publicly, stating that he never supported DPN in the first place. That declaration was a direct slap to DPN protesters and leaders, along [...]

Reviewing what I covered last year, I was staggered by the sheer volume of the blogs produced, especially in the first half of the year. I eventually gave up adding topics after a while, so this list will suffice for now.  Overall, this should give you a better idea what topics were explored.  Covering the trial [...]

During the Gallaudet protests, the emphasis among the protesters was Deaf Unity. All together, deaf people of all types, deaf of deaf, deaf of hearing, mainstreamed, oral, hard of hearing, deaf people using cochlear implants, and cued speech users united along with their hearing peers to stand up against management by intimidation and flawed administration. [...]

Recently dissension bubbled up in the Gallaudet Community regarding Jordan, Fernandes, and Kimmel coming back to teach. As tenured employees, they are entitled to teach. Yet given their attacks on Gallaudet via the news media, their desire to return to a university for which they bear deep contempt and hostility is puzzling. Whatever, they do [...]

A Year After Protests, Gallaudet Sees Progress, but Key Dispute Remains. The Chronicle of Higher Education Quotes of Dr. Jane Fernandes:   “The protesters objected to my vision that Gallaudet needed to become an inclusive deaf university, where all kinds of deaf people are valued and respected,” Ms. Fernandes told The Chronicle in an e-mail message [...]