“Rather than being a problem, disability is an opportunity”, claims Dan Goodley, a professor of “Critical Disability Studies” at the University of Sheffield in a video for the British Academy (BA) (a registered charity that received £339,073,050 from taxpayers between 2021-25).
I wrote a bit about Goodley a bit yesterday. He has led or worked on projects costing the taxpayer approximately £2.4 MILLION, as well as being a Fellow of the BA, “the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences”.
I only ever intended to use Goodley as one example (out of multiple) of how terrible the British Academy is.
However, I had to show you the utter drivel he comes out with in his video for the BA, an institution that claims to “mobilise” the humanities and social sciences to “shape a brighter future.”
Titled “Disability as a driver of change: depathologising the university”, the video features Goodley saying things like:
“Rarely in public discourse is disability offered as a productive expression of human intellectual, cultural, and political life, and this negligent approach to the transformative potential of disability is apparent in the university.”
“Depathologisation works in concert with disabled artists, disabled activists, and disabled intellectuals, whose politics have learned much from their own engagements with decolonising activists and postcolonial theorists, depathologising the university creates conversations with black scholars and others who have decolonised the university, and it pulls in disability politics as a key resource, depathologisation is therefore but one theory and practice-a praxis that sits with disability as the driving subject of critical inquiry and social change.”
“We must and can find support and solace with others, so that we can depathologise university together. And while a disability impairment or a neurodivergent identity is always a personal matter, we should not forget that the potential for activism community that’s opened up is always a public matter. We cannot do this alone, and we need each other to disrupt the university.”
There’s also Goodley’s claim that “disability is an opportunity”…
… certainly if you’re looking for taxpayer-funded grants!
What a load of nonsense this is (from a professor who had “Left politics” in his X bio):
It can’t be said enough: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!
Goodley’s grants (approximately £2,443,528):
UK government/public body funding (ESRC, EPSRC, Research England, DIUS):
ESRC — £731,114 (Humanising Healthcare, 2022–25)
EPSRC/UKRI TAS Hub — £147,414 (2022–23)
University of Sheffield/Research England — £17,000 (2022)
ESRC — £443,000 (Living Life to the Fullest, 2017–20)
ESRC — £425,000 (Big Society, 2013–15)
ESRC — £255,000 (Does Every Child Matter, 2008–10)
Prime Minister’s Initiative 2/DIUS — £40,000 (2008–10)
ESRC — £300,000 (Parents, Professionals and Disabled Babies, 2003–06)
ESRC — £85,000 (Self-advocacy, 1998–2001)
If you also count the European Social Fund grant (£425,000, “Jobs not Charity,” 2003–05) — EU public funds rather than UK taxpayer money directly, but publicly-sourced — that brings it to £2,868,528.
Then there’s:
Leverhulme Trust — £489,867
Wellcome Trust (WAARC) — £1,007,109
Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award — £2.9m
SCOPE — £51,500
BAAF — £8,500
More:
Disability (as he defines it) is an opportunity for grift....
Disability as people who live with it define it, is not.
Should be No such thing as Tax-payer funded ' Grants ' to cash-rich Universities !