Summer Institute on
Disability Rights and Equality
身心障礙與權利平等夏季學堂
1-10 June 2015
Hong Kong
Themes:
UNCRPD and the duty to provide reasonable adjustments
UNCRPD and disability rights protection in the legal process
Course No. LW 56-104-00 (41)
Keynote speakers and course lecturers
Michael A. STEIN
Michael Stein holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD), and a long time visiting Professor at Harvard, he has also taught at New York University, Stanford, and William & Mary law schools. An internationally recognized expert on disability law and policy, Stein participated in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, works with disabled persons organizations around the world, actively consults with governments on their disability laws and policies, and advises a number of UN bodies. Stein has received numerous awards for his work (most recently, the inaugural Morton E. Ruderman Prize for Inclusion, the inaugural Henry Viscardi Achievement Award, and the ABA Paul G. Hearne Award), and was appointed by President Obama to the United States Holocaust Council. Professor Stein is invited to give lectures on UNCRPD, human dignity, social model and disability rights, as well as workplace equality.
Michael L. PERLIN
Michael L. Perlin is Professor of Law at New York Law School (NYLS), director of NYLS's Online Mental Disability Law Program, and director of NYLS's International Mental Disability Law Reform Project in its Justice Action Center. He has written 23 books and nearly 300 articles on all aspects of mental disability law, many of which deal with the overlap between mental disability law and criminal procedure law. Before becoming a professor, Perlin was the Deputy Public Defender in charge of the Mercer County Trial Region in New Jersey, and, for eight years, was the director of the Division of Mental Health Advocacy in the NJ Department of the Public Advocate. He has represented thousands of persons with mental disabilities in individual and class actions. He has taught mental disability law courses in Japan and Nicaragua, and has taught at law schools in Finland, Israel, Taiwan, New Zealand and Sweden. He has also done advocacy work on behalf of persons with disabilities on every continent. In the fall semester of 2012, he served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist, teaching and consulting at the Islamic University of Indonesia in Yogyakarta. Four years earlier, also as part of the Fulbright designation, he taught in the Global Law Program at Haifa University in Israel. Professor Perlin is invited to give lectures on “sanism” and mental disability rights, therapeutic jurisprudence, lawyering skills, UNCRPD and international human rights.
Anna LAWSON
Anna Lawson is a professor of law at the University of Leeds, where she is also the director of the University's interdisciplinary Centre for Disability Studies. She is an advisor to the UK's Independent Mechanism for monitoring implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and plays an active role in the strategic development and co-ordination of the disability-related work of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Great Britain. In addition, Anna plays an active role in disability organizations. She is Chair of ChangePeople (a national intellectual disability organization led by disabled people); and a former trustee of the Mental Disability Advocacy Centre, Budapest and the Royal National Institute of Blind and Partially Sighted People. She is the author of Disability and Equality Law in Britain: The Role of
Reasonable Adjustment (Oxford: Hart Publishing 2008). Professor Lawson is invited to give
lectures on discrimination, disability equality legislation and reasonable adjustments in education, employment and health.
YU Xingzhong
CHANG Henghao
Professor Henghao Chang (張恆豪) received his Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Hawaii at Mānoa and is currently associate professor and the Chair of the Department of Sociology, National Taipei University, Taiwan. His research interests include disability studies, social movement and sociology of health and illness. He has co-edited the book, Disability Studies: Theories and Policy
Implications, which introduces disability studies in Chinese language. He has also published widely
on topics related to the disability rights movement in Taiwan, experiences of mothers of people with intellectual disabilities, and cultural politics of disability. His current research projects address the hegemony of charity model in Taiwan’s education system. He also works closely with the disability rights NGOs on the implications of CRPD for Taiwan. Professor Chang is invited to talk on the experience of Taiwan.
CUI Fengming
Dr. Cui Fengming (崔鳳鳴) joined Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD) in June 2008. Currently, she serves as the Director of China Program in HPOD. She is also a F. Y. Chang Scholar at Harvard Law School East Asian Legal Studies program, Senior Research Fellow at Renmin University Disability Clinic Center and Honorary Professor of Nanjing Technical College of Special Education in P.R. China. Fengming holds an Ed. M. from Nanjing University in P.R. China and an Ed.D. in special education from Boston University in the United States. Her main scholarly interests, research, and writings cover issues of disability laws and policies in China; equal rights and inclusion in education, employment, and community for persons with disabilities; family support and the development of parent organizations; the development of disability organizations; and disability and general social development. With a special interest in intellectual and developmental disabilities, in addition to relevant research, Fengming is also a fan and carrier of the spirit of Special Olympics through volunteering, advocacy, and active involvement. Dr. Cui is invited to talk on disability rights, comparative inclusive education and China.
Alex Louise PEARL
Alex Pearl is currently undertaking a funded Ph.D. in Law at the University of Leeds with Professor Anna Lawson. Her main research interest is disability and human rights, particularly the right to legal capacity for disabled people contained in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She has written and presented on this topic. Her other research interests include international human rights, mental health and capacity law, issues of personhood, critiques of neoliberalism, equality and non-discrimination law, and feminist discourses including the vulnerabilities and capabilities frameworks. Alex will give a session on Article 12 of the UNCRPD.
Simon T. M. NG
Aims and objectives
The Summer Institute is an interdisciplinary training programme on disability rights and equality serving the professional and educational needs of the academics, professionals and policy-makers as well as the workers in non-government organizations in the Greater China Area — China Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan — with regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The main themes of the Summer Institute 2015 are (a) UNCRPD and statutory duty to provide reasonable adjustments in education, employment and other areas; and (b) UNCRPD and disability rights protection in the legal process.
The promotion of disability equality requires concerted efforts. Governments in the Greater China area have been taking serious steps to reform laws and policies to bring them in line with the UNCRPD requirements. Academics and NGO workers are also working to advance knowledge, raise consciousness and ensure that reforms are well-informed and suitable.
By making use of the geographical convenience and openness of Hong Kong, the Summer Institute will bring in a number of world leading scholars and regional experts in disability laws and policies to provide an education that is solidly grounded in theories, professionally informed, globally connected and contextually relevant.
Format, dates and contact hours
The Summer Institute, conducted in English, consists of a structured series of keynote lectures, seminars and dialogue sessions. It is organized into two terms. Students may enrol on either:
(a) Full Course, which lasts for eight full days of learning from 1-10 June 2015, with one and a half days off.
(b) Term One, which lasts for five and a half days from 1-6 June 2015, focusing on the UNCRPD, equality and the duty to provide reasonable adjustments in employment, education and health, etc.; or
(c) Term Two, which lasts for three days from 8-10 June 2015, focusing on the protection of disability rights during the lawyering and legal processes (with special reference to mental disability and therapeutic jurisprudence).
The Summer Institute will take place at the University of Hong Kong in Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
Participants
Applications from the Greater China region (Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and China Mainland) are welcome. Applicants from other areas may also be accepted.
Participants are expected to
(a) have attained university level education; (b) be able to attend courses in English; and (c) have experience working in the area of
disability rights and equality either as NGO workers, academics (including graduate students), professionals in related fields (lawyers, educators, counsellors, equal opportunities officers, etc.), as well as policy makers, legislators and their assistants.
A class size of no more than 50 is expected. A course fee is charged but travel, accommodation and living expenses are not covered. There are scholarships (up to 35% fees deduction) available for NGO workers, graduate students and junior academics.
Course fees schedule:
LW 56-104-01 (41) Full Course HK$14,000 (38 hours) LW 56-104-02 (41) Term One HK$10,000 (26 hours) LW 56-104-03 (41) Term Two HK$5,000 (12 hours)
For updates and enrichments
www.facebook.com/HKSIDRE
Guest Speakers/ Lecturers (Additional)
We are pleased to announce that two more guest speakers will be presenting at the Summer Institute on Disability Rights and Equality 2015:
Michael Waterstone
Michael Waterstone is J. Howard Ziemann Fellow and Professor of Law with the Loyola Law School, LA, USA. He is also Visiting Professor (2014-15) at the Northwestern University School of Law. He holds B.A. (summa cum laude) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and J.D. (magna cum laude) from the Harvard Law School. Professor Waterstone is a nationally-recognized expert in disability and civil rights law in the United States. He is one of the co-authors of a leading casebook on disability law and his recent articles are in the Harvard Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, and Northwestern Law Review, amongst others. He is an associated colleague with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, an affiliated researcher with the Burton Blatt Institute, and has consulted on projects with the Human European Consultancy, the National Council on Disability, the World Bank, and the Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped. In 2012, Professor Waterstone received a grant from the Japan Foundation to work on shared understandings of US and Japanese Disability Law. He was also elected to the American Law Institute in 2012. He is invited to talk on disability cause lawyering. Based on the literature on cause lawyering and interviews with leading lawyers, the presentation will focus on the experiences of American disability cause lawyers, as well as their counterparts in other states and at the international level.
Huang Yi (黃裔黃裔黃裔黃裔)
Huang Yi earned her LLB degree in International Economic Law from the East China University of Political Science and Law, and LLM degree in International and European Human Rights Law from the University of Leeds, UK. She is now doing PhD degree in University of Leeds, and her research is centred on Article 12 of UNCRPD and adult guardianship in China. Her research interests cover: equality/discrimination/anti-discrimination law; comparative law, rights of disabled people; mental health law and mental capacity law; legal capacity and adult guardianship. Yi will do a presentation on the law, policy and practice of reasonable adjustments in China.
Simon T M Ng Course Leader
Assistant Professor/ Senior Programme Director in Law HKU SPACE
