Disability Justice Advocate to Speak at Fisher

Lydia X. Z. Brown, a queer, disabled, and East Asian advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer, will deliver a talk on the intersections of identities in higher education. The talk, which is free and open to the campus community, begins at 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 6, in Basil 135 at St. John Fisher University.

Brown is the director of public policy at the National Disability Institute, which works to advance economic opportunity and freedom for people with disabilities. They are also the founding executive director of the Autistic People of Color Fund, which advocates for disability, racial, and economic justice with a focus on building generative economies and just transition while providing mutual aid, peer support, and community-funded reparations. They bring nearly 15 years of experience as a committed advocate, community organizer, and policy expert at the nexus of disability rights and disability justice.

Brown has spoken, facilitated, and consulted internationally and throughout the U.S. on a range of topics related to disability rights and disability justice, especially at the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and has published in numerous scholarly and community publications. Their work addresses the deep interconnections between ableism and other forms of systemic discrimination, marginalization, and oppression, and has often focused on interpersonal, state, and corporate violence, deprivation, and exploitation targeting disabled people at the margins of the margins.

They hold a lecturer appointment in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Disability Studies Program at Georgetown University, as well as serving as self-advocacy discipline coordinator for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Fellowship program at the Georgetown University Medical Center. They are also an adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University. Brown serves as vice chair and past president of the Disability Rights Bar Association and disability justice committee representative on the board of the National Lawyers Guild. They are currently creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot.

Additionally, Brown was formerly policy counsel for privacy and data at the Center for Democracy and Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability; and director of policy, advocacy, and external affairs at the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network. They are a former member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, visiting faculty at Tufts University, and chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council.

Brown’s talk is made possible through the support of New York State’s Enhancing Supports and Services for Students with Disabilities for Postsecondary Success (SWDPS) grant program, and is sponsored by Student Accessibility Services and TRIO SSS at Fisher.