Passing for What? Disability, Delay, and the Architecture of Academic Recognition

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: The Architecture of Accessibility in the Academy: Structures, Experiences, and the Spaces Between

Abstract

This autoethnographic essay examines how higher education structures obscure and delay disability recognition through emotional and institutional demands. Drawing on critical disability studies, crip theory, and critical whiteness studies, the narrative reflects on the author’s delayed disability identity as a white, cisgender, tenured male professor navigating neurodivergence and chronic pain. Expectations of competence and composure enabled him to pass as nondisabled while reinforcing ableist norms. The essay critiques internalized ableism and perfectionism as institutional survival strategies, exposing how productivity and self-regulation function as gatekeeping tools. Through reflections on diagnosis, access, and teaching, the piece reframes delayed disability identity not as a personal failure but as the result of institutional logics. It also interrogates complicity in practices that harm marginalized students.

Author

• Alan R. Foley, Syracuse University