CO-DIRECTORS 
Steven J. Taylor, Ph.D., Co-Director
Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education
Director of the Center on Human Policy
Coordinator of Disability Studies
School of Education
Email:
staylo01@syr.edu Steven Taylor is Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education, Director of the Center on Human Policy, and Coordinator of Disability Studies at Syracuse University. He is also the Co-Director, with Arlene Kanter, of the newly established Syracuse University Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies. Professor Taylor specializes in qualitative research methods, the sociology of disability, Disability Studies, and disability policy.
Professor Taylor is the author or co-author of seven books, including
Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods (3rd Edition),
The Social Meaning of Mental Retardation,
Life in the Community,
The Variety of Community Experience, and
In Search of the Promised Land: The Collected Papers of Burton Blatt, and numerous chapters and articles published in
JASH and
Research and Practice in Severe Disabilities,
Disability & Society, the
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography,
Social Policy,
Exceptional Children, the
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the
American Psychologist,
Qualitative Sociology, the
Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, and other journals. His writings have been translated into Swedish, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Professor Taylor serves as Editor of
Mental Retardation, which is published by the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR), and was recipient of AAMR’s Research Award in 1997. In 1998, he was Visiting Professor at Keio University in Japan. He received Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement in 2003.
As Director of the Center on Human Policy, Professor Taylor has been Principal Investigator on over a dozen major grants and contracts funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the Office of Special Education Programs, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other public and private sources.
Arlene S. Kanter, J.D., LL.M., Co-Director
Professor of Law
Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor
Director, Disability Law and Policy Program
College of Law
Syracuse University
Email:
kantera@law.syr.edu Professor Kanter is a recipient of Syracuse University's most prestigious teaching award, the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Award for Excellence in Teaching. From 1989-2005, she was the Director of the Office of Clinical Legal Education, which now houses six clinics, and Director of the Externship Program, which places students in Syracuse and in other cities nationwide and abroad. In 2005, Professor Kanter became the co-director of Syracuse University's Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, which is the nation's first multi-disciplinary university center of its kind. She is also the Director of the College of Law's Disability Law and Policy Program, and founder of the nation's first joint degree program in Law and Disability Studies. Professor Kanter teaches courses on disability law and policy, education and special education law, ethics and professionalism, and international human rights and comparative disability law. Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Kanter taught at Georgetown Law Center and practiced law at a national disability rights organization in Washington, D.C. where she represented clients, including before the United States Supreme Court and Congress. Professor Kanter publishes and lectures on domestic, comparative, and international disability law. Her most recent publications include a co-authored casebook,
CASES AND MATERIALS ON INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND COMPARATIVE MENTAL DISABILITY LAW (Carolina Press, 2006), an article, The Globalization of Disability Rights Law, 30
SYRACUSE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW & COMMERCE 243 (2003), which has been republished in two books, and Ethics in Externships: Confidentiality, Conflicts and Competence,
10 CLINICAL LAW REVIEW 473 (with A. Anderson and C. Slane), which has been recognized as one of the top ten downloaded articles from the
SSRN Legal Studies Research Journal. Her investigative research with Mental Disability Rights International culminated in a report on Turkish mental hospitals,
Behind Closed Doors: Human Rights Abuses in the Psychiatric Facilities, Orphanages and Rehabilitation Centers of Turkey, (available at
www.mdri.org) which was covered by the
New York Times and other international press, and which has resulted in dramatic reforms in Turkey's mental health system. Professor Kanter is a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, and of a committee working with the United Nations on a proposed international treaty on the rights of people with disabilities.