April is Autism Acceptance month, a time to intentionally include, faithfully affirm and openly embrace autistic people, who make up around 3% of the population. While the Biden administration formally recognized Autism Acceptance month, President Trump has proclaimed it Autism Awareness month, reverting to the outdated and harmful terminology which emphasizes alertness to a threat rather than welcoming of differences. “Awareness” campaigns serve only to perpetuate stigmas and medicalized attitudes rather than promote belonging and inclusion while acknowledging both our humanity and our uniqueness.
Acceptance month centers on an act you take through purposeful learning, reflection and practice. Accepting someone requires educating yourself about their life; unfamiliarity breeds misunderstanding, disdain and fear. We facilitate this education, but April is your time, not ours. Our time was in March during Neurodiversity Celebration Week, a series of events to honor and validate the estimated 4,000 neurodivergent people on campus and our unique experiences, interests and worldviews. Neurodiversity@Cornell, a neurodivergent-led grassroots movement, recently brought together over 200 unique attendees for Cornell’s third annual Neurodiversity Celebration Week to celebrate the infinite variety of human minds on campus and beyond.
Yet the week of celebration came at a time when it felt like there was not much to celebrate. Before Trump reentered office, neurodiversity already struggled for recognition in mainstream diversity, equity and inclusion spaces. Neurodiversity@Cornell is unofficial and overwhelmingly volunteer-based, and staff who contribute are admonished for apparent interference with their primary duties. This departs from the institutional resource centers and dedicated staff available for most other minorities at Cornell. Last year, Cornell administration spent effort punishing students who speak out rather than expanding DEI programming.
Now they’re occupied in Trump’s war on higher education. In response to February threats, Cornell reaffirmed its commitment to DEI principles but made no promise to preserve specific programming or funding. The response to this month’s $1 billion pause instead expressed commitment to “working with our federal partners,” evidently seeking conciliation over resistance. We’re not expecting institutional support for neurodiversity to increase while Trump rules.
Federal language on Make America Healthy Again incites needless fear, claiming autism and ADHD are “health burdens” that “pose a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.” It’s a sinister narrative shift from us as ‘pitiful weirdos’ to ‘threats to lifestyle and values.’ Meanwhile, the administration installed pseudoscientist David Geier to lead a study attempting to link autism and vaccines, a claim that has already been conclusively debunked. An executive order tries to move the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA (the K-12 program for students with disabilities), from the Department of Education to Health and Human Services, meaning a shift from an educational focus to a medical model that pathologizes neurodivergent and disabled people. This change might lead to fewer neurodivergent student admitants and more burnout-induced dropouts, since IDEA enables program adjustments that help neurodivergent and disabled students succeed in high school. Perhaps one of the greatest long-term threats to neurodivergent higher education students is judicial danger to the ADA and Rehabilitation Act, which enshrines disability rights including K-12 and college accommodations crucial to neurodivergent student success. Autistic people are also more likely to be trans and nonbinary than their non-autistic peers, and the queer community is being targeted too.
So, what should the Cornell administration do about it?
Keep prioritizing DEI, not just by releasing statements saying you still value diversity, but in your actions through continued funding and resistance to the administration’s demands. Recognize neurodiversity on the same level as other minorities in terms of support staff, programming, trainings, budget and recruitment. Use the insights we generate into the lives of neurodivergent people to advance our liberation and equity, not to justify our exclusion and attrition from higher education. Don’t conduct research that harms rather than helps, weaponizing science to suit ableist narratives.
What can you, the Cornell community, do about it?
Affirm your neurodivergent peers, students and colleagues: be curious about their experiences and radically accepting of their differences. Attend a Neurodiversity@Cornell workshop, or better yet, partner your club, lab or unit with Neurodiversity@Cornell for a project, event or custom workshop. Learn how to make your spaces and events sensory-friendly, and how to mitigate unconscious bias against neurodivergent behaviors. Talk about neurodiversity openly, whether you are neurodivergent or neurotypical. Use universal design, and be open to atypical/non-dominant ways of being and thinking. Whether you’re faculty/instructors, students and/or community members, there are resources you can and should learn from.
What is the Student Neurodiversity Alliance at Cornell, or SNAC, doing about it?
We resist ruthlessly. We resist through mutual support and hyperfocus on dismantling systemic inequity. We are not a threat to anything other than prejudice and the attempts to frame us as a symptom of a failing world.
We advocate rigorously. We are collaborating with Cornell Graduate Students United, Black Graduate and Professional Student Association and Graduate Women in Science to address inequities in accommodations, belonging and diagnosis. These partnerships center and support the most marginalized within our community, and we expect the same of others.
We celebrate unapologetically. We put on ten celebratory events in the span of a single week, even in the face of political turmoil that endangers our existence. Celebration of a marginalized identity is itself resistance, and we will unashamedly flap our hands, rock our bodies and infodump our special interests. Neurodivergent people have always existed and are here to stay. Commit to learn and learn to accept; then, we can continue the celebration — together.
Rebecca McCabe (she/her) is a fourth year PhD candidate in mechanical engineering. She is proudly autistic and ADHD, and she leads campus neurodiversity advocacy through her roles as the president of the Student Neurodiversity Alliance at Cornell (SNAC) and as a Neurodiversity@Cornell ambassador. She can be reached at rgm222@cornell.edu.
Sierra Hicks (they/them) is a third year PhD candidate in Natural Resources and the Environment, and a proud AuDHDer. They are a staunch neurodiversity advocate, leveraging their roles as a SNAC e-board member, Neurodiversity Ambassador, OISE GPSDC Representative, Neurodiversity Dialogues Coordinator, and SNAC Graduate/Professional Student/Postdoc Sub-community organizer.
SNAC can be reached at student-neurodiversity-L@cornell.edu.
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