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Four UMBC alumnae who have made careers in politics and government look back at an electoral cycle that held landmarks and heartbreaks for women candidates.

By Richard Byrne ’86

The year 2008 saw a momentous breakthrough for African-Americans in U.S. electoral politics. But it was a landmark year for women as well.

UMBC Magazine talked with four prominent political alumnae just after Election Day 2008. We asked them to reflect not only on the tumultuous political year, but also about gender and politics issues in their own careers.

And to add some scholarly perspective, Cheryl M. Miller, an associate dean in UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and a professor of political science, examines how 2008 advanced historical trends for women’s presence in government at all levels. (See “Herstory Lessons”)

Collecting a Caucus

As late as the 1980s, fewer than 25 percent of the members of Maryland’s House of Delegates were women.

Today, however, that number stands at 40 percent – and it is growing. Delegate Adrienne A. Jones ’76, psychology, is not only a part of that fast-increasing contingent of women; she is among its leaders.

In January 2008, Jones was elected for the sixth time to the position of Speaker Pro Tem of the House of Delegates. She is the first African-American woman to serve in that position. Jones also sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which wields significant authority over Maryland’s state budget.

“It is important that women increase their numbers,” says Jones. “Women have a different perspective.”

In 1997, Jones was appointed to the House of Delegates by Governor Parris Glendening, when Delegate Joan Parker’s death created a vacancy in the 10th District. She won the seat in the 1998 election and has held it since.

Jones grew up in Baltimore County and attended its public schools before coming to UMBC. Shortly after graduation, she was hired to work in Baltimore County government. For more than three decades, Jones has served as executive director of the county’s Office of Fair Practices and Community Affairs. (She was named UMBC Alumna of the Year in 2003.)

She believes that her strong grounding in local government prepared her well for her ascent to state politics – and led her to apply for appointment to the state legislature in 1997.

“I thought that my background, in local government, lent itself well for transformation over to the state level in terms of issues and concerns,” says Jones. A reputation as a hard worker and a team builder in Annapolis has also had an impact on her success.

“I don’t have a big ego,” says Jones. “I’m a consensus builder. What’s more important to me is the end result, as opposed to the means. I believe in looking at the potential for other members.”

As she surveys the growing power of women in Annapolis, Jones puts her finger on one key factor. “A lot of it is attributable to House leadership under this speaker, Mike Busch,” she observes.

Jones says that navigating her way through male-dominated state politics as a woman, especially early in her career, was made easier because of her background.

“I am used to dealing with men,” she says. “I have four brothers and two sons, so I’m used to a male-dominated atmosphere. It doesn’t bother me one way or another. You’ve got to get it done? You get it done.”

Having more women legislators in Annapolis obviously means more power for the women’s caucus – and a greater focus on women’s issues. “The numbers help you in terms of counting the votes, which is all important in the House,” observes Jones.

While women legislators do not operate in lockstep on some issues, including abortion, Jones says that “they’re all members of the caucus. Their philosophies may be different. But a lot of times when it comes to key issues affecting women, such as pay parity, we are all together.”

Jones was a strong supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. “I knew her. I met her. And I knew her positions, particularly on health care,” she says. But she was a strong supporter of Sen. Barack Obama in the general election.

“For me as a Democrat,” says Jones, “what is important is our agenda.”

Sen. John McCain’s hope that the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin might sway disaffected Democratic women, says Jones, was incorrect. “Just because you’re a woman doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she says.

“What’s important is your ideology.” Jones says Clinton’s campaign created new momentum for women leaders in politics. “What Hillary was able to do, as you heard often from her, was to get those 18 million votes that she had,” she says. “That had a tremendous impact as far as breaking that glass ceiling.”

She also hopes Clinton’s example attracts young women to careers in public service. “We want them to go into science and engineering, but also don’t forget about public service,” says Jones. “That’s what I think Hillary’s candidacy brought to the American people.”

Climbing Up (Capitol) Hill

Some women come to politics later in life, but Patricia Clark Adora Taylor ’84, political science, had her first brush with ballots in 1958, when she was 16 years old and attending a Florida high school.

“I was just rocking along in high school, having fun, being a cheerleader, when I was chosen from my high school for Girls’ State,” recalls Taylor. Girls’ State – and its associated program, Boys’ State – are youth leadership programs run by the American Legion. The experience swept Taylor into a lifelong interest in politics. She was elected “governor” of her Girls’ State class and participated (as the only female representative) in a conference at the White House.

Gov. Leroy Collins also tapped Taylor for a state Youth Advisory Council to advise him on a most contentious issue of that era in the South. “He was interested in integration in public schools,” she says. “He had to be. It was a burning issue of the times in the late ’50s, and Florida was slow to do it. ”

After high school, Taylor married Chester Taylor, an engineer who had a long career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She traveled all over the world, including substantial travel in the Middle East and Israel – experiences that she wrote about in her self-published memoir, Unveilings: A Desert Journey 1973 to 1983.

But Taylor never gave up her interest in politics and education. When she and her family moved to Maryland, UMBC accepted college credits earned at various military bases and she finished her political science degree in Catonsville after spending her junior year at Tel Aviv University.

Taylor says that Louis Cantori, a professor in UMBC’s political science department who passed away last year, was a big influence on her world view. In particular, he urged her to investigate both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian divide.

“He said to understand the conflict, you must meet Palestinians and talk with them and understand about them as well,” she recalls. “And that was a good suggestion.”

After graduation, Taylor embarked on two busy decades working for legislators on Capitol Hill and for Ross Perot at Electronic Data Systems, as well as earning a graduate degree from Duke University. When Taylor took her first job on Capitol Hill in the mid-1980s, there was still a considerable gap between men and women in legislative offices.

“I had a friend who’d been there in the Kennedy years, and she said that there were almost no women on the Hill. Secretaries here and there. But women in decision-making roles? There were just about none. Then you get to the ‘80s, and women are on the Hill. Some are in legislative staff roles, but not many. They’re still mostly in scheduling, office management, that sort of thing.”

Her first job was working for Florida Rep. Charles Bennett, who served for over four decades in the House. As an aide to Bennett, Taylor wrote legislation that created the Timucuan National Preserve near Jacksonville. In later jobs on the Hill with Pennsylvania Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and Florida Rep. Corinne Brown, she worked on health care and international issues.

“When you work on the Hill,” she observes, “your product is your legislation or your policy, and you always have to be selling.”

When Taylor moved from Washington to Jacksonville earlier this decade, she did not lose her desire to stay involved in politics. During the primary, she was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And while Taylor was disappointed in Clinton’s primary loss, she backed Obama in the general election.

“It took me about a week to get on board,” says Taylor. “You had to get on board, because there was no alternative for people like me who are lifelong Democrats.”

Taylor wrote talking points and speeches for local Obama surrogates, including Florida state representative Tony Hill. “By the end, I was just on street corners,” she says. “Handing out literature, doing everything that you could.”

The Republican Party’s selection of Sarah Palin as their vice-presidential candidate did not sway Taylor. Palin is “lovely and talkative, but she’s against Roe v. Wade. It was the biggest slap in the face. I don’t care if she cooks well, or juggles schedules well, or if she learns her world geography. If she’s against Roe v. Wade, then that’s declaring that women do not have a lifestyle choice.”

While she still admits to feeling “crushed” by Clinton’s loss, Taylor says that the imperative for change likely spurred many women to support Obama. “As disappointed as they must have been,” she says, “they realized they did not want four more years of the Republicans.

“If I stop and think about it,” Taylor concludes, “I could get angry, because I think the media did not treat [Clinton] right.”

Leader of the PAC

Money is the lifeblood of American politics, and a rich vein for such fundraising is the political action committee, or PAC. Various industries and interest groups use PACs to exert influence on elections and navigate a complex net of campaign finance laws.

But PACs have also been maligned for giving those groups outsized influence on American elections. Barack Obama, for instance, made a ban on the acceptance of PAC money a building block of his successful presidential campaign.

As the manager of the political action committee at national accounting firm Deloitte LLP, Courtney Mattingly ’01, history, is a rising figure in the PAC landscape. Deloitte is one of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, and its committee disburses approximately $2 million in contributions per election cycle – raised exclusively from senior partners and managers in the firm.

Despite Obama’s much-publicized move to restrict PACs in his campaign, Mattingly says that political action committees are still the best way for businesses and other constituencies to make their voices heard, especially after campaign finance reform enacted earlier in this decade restricted unlimited contributions (known as “soft money”) from donors to national political parties.

“I think that after the soft money ban, the number of PACs is growing, and it’s growing faster than it was 10 years ago,” says Mattingly. Less than a year after leaving UMBC, Mattingly found work as the political compliance officer for the PAC run by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in Washington, D.C. The federation represents American small business owners, and the job stoked Mattingly’s interest in electoral politics.

“NFIB is really where I cut my teeth in the political stuff,” she says. “I was not terribly politically active before.”

Mattingly moved to a job with Deloitte’s PAC in 2005. She was promoted to manager of the committee in 2007. The job requires a nimble touch in calibrating the lobbying needs of the firm with astute analysis of the political landscape. Though the PAC had a tilt toward Republicans during the years of GOP ascendancy in Congress, Mattingly says that “we’ve tried to make our ratio of Republicans to Democrats more at parity than it had been in the past…. In 2006, it was more in the 70 to 30 range. This year we’re looking at 55 to 45 Republican to Democrat.”

In 2008, Mattingly sought to identify key legislators who are not directly involved with financial industries as potential candidates for the PAC. “I took a lot of interest over the summer tracking the key races,” she says. “How many seats the Republicans would be losing, and looking at some open seats. I was able to recommend a couple Democratic open seat candidates.”

Navigating public attitudes toward PACs is also tricky, but necessary. “We were a little taken aback,” says Mattingly, “when after Obama got the nomination, he told the Democratic party not to accept any PAC contributions. I can understand the tide of animosity against lobbyists after Jack Abramoff. I think people are interested in seeing the amount of power held by K Street be reduced. But I think they’re in for a battle if they try to limit PAC contributions. It’s definitely something that the business community and others will fight as far as the First Amendment goes.”

Mattingly points to EMILY’s List – a political action committee formed in 1985 to help elect more women candidates – as an example of how PACs can be a positive influence for change. “I don’t think PACs are going away anytime soon,” says Mattingly. “And I don’t think their importance is going to be diminished. We will have to perhaps explain what we do and why we do it.”

Mattingly believes that the 2008 election held promises yet to be fulfilled for women. “I think it’s still a glass ceiling that needs to be broken,” she says. “It’s trending in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.”

The recipe, says Mattingly, is more bottom-up movement. “We need to see a base of women getting involved in state legislatures, then moving their way up the ranks. We need to encourage women to keep trying. It might be a Republican woman who does it first.”

On the Move

For Lisa Dickerson ’78, political science, all politics is local. Local transit, that is.

Dickerson has spent much of her career as an executive and a consultant in the business of moving people to their destinations, including three years as the chief executive officer of the Maryland Transit Authority from 2004 to 2007.

“Where you lay tracks, people build communities,” says Dickerson. And transit jobs offer chances for advancement, she adds, particularly for women.

“Anyone can have a career in transit,” she says. “It’s an excellent career choice for women.”

Transit, observes Dickerson, is built on easily quantifiable data: on-time bus and train arrivals, fares collected. She also points out that over half of today’s MTA drivers are African-American females.

“If you can measure it,” she says, “you can achieve it.”

Dickerson’s career has been a varied one, including a job as president of a transit firm serving Baltimore and Washington, D.C. airports and a stint as manager of field operations for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She started her professional career working for Maryland Republican Congressman Newton I. Steers in 1976, even before she graduated from UMBC.

Dickerson says that those varied experiences were part of the reason that Gov. Robert Ehrlich appointed her to the top post at the MTA in 2004.

“I came into the agency with a background in private industry,” she says. “I had run ground transportation at National Dulles and BWI airports. I had implemented MetroAccess service for [Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority]. I believe that the Ehrlich administration was looking for someone with transit experience, and they were looking to have diversity in their executive leadership.”

Since leaving the MTA in 2007, Dickerson has been busy doing consulting work for MTA and other agencies, with a special emphasis on community outreach.

Dickerson holds two other UMBC distinctions: She was named UMBC Alumna of the Year in 2006. And she was the last woman to serve out a full term as president of the Student Government Association (SGA) at the university. She remembers attending a reunion of SGA officers and realizing that no other woman had yet to follow her as elected president of the body in the three decades since she held the position in 1976.

Dickerson says she grew up in a household that nurtured high expectations. “I’m from an all-female family,” she says. “Five girls, no boys. So we grew up being told that we could do anything and be anything that we wanted to be, if you applied yourself – and your Christian values – and got a good education.”

In Dickerson’s view, 2008 broke a lot of new ground for women, as well as African-Americans, in electoral politics. “As far as women and minorities, what we grew up being told, all children, was that any little boy can be president,” she says. “Now we know that anybody can be president. That the American dream is possible. Not just in theory. Not just a dream. But that it is possible for someone who looks like me.”

Despite Hillary Clinton’s narrow loss, Dickerson views her candidacy as a milestone, in particular for the way that it allowed women to confound the simple dynamic of having to seem tough enough for the job. She cites a well-publicized incident during the New Hampshire primary campaign in which Clinton showed her vulnerable and human side after a tough defeat in Iowa’s primary. It was a pivotal moment, says Dickerson, especially since the former New York senator rebounded to win the state.

“I think people respond to the truth,” says Dickerson. “It was a moment when she said, ‘I am myself and I am qualified and I feel.’”

Dickerson says that she felt considerable sympathy for Sarah Palin, too. “There have been so many moments when I thought I’d be asked a question I didn’t know the answer to,” she says with a laugh. “So I could identify with that.”

Dickerson is also bullish on the chances of a female in Oval Office in the near future. Reflecting on her own upbringing in New Orleans, she points out that Barack Obama broke a barrier that many thought would never be shattered in their lifetime.

“I think it will be soon,” she says. “I grew up in the segregated South. So I didn’t know if [Obama would win] until election night. Dickerson spent election night with her two nieces, aged 15 and 13 years, and asked them if they thought a woman would ever be president. “They said, ‘Why not?’ The fact that it is a ludicrous question to the next generation means that it is going to be sooner rather than later.

“Women,” she concludes, “have to envision themselves there.”

Sondheim Scholar Ari Ne’eman has plunged headlong into the maelstrom of controversy over autism. His goal? To give autistics – including himself – a significant voice in the debate.

By Mat Edelson

Staring over a plate of Crispy Beef, Ari Ne’eman is contemplating extinction. Not only his own extinction, but that of everyone just like him.

Spectrum StormsPulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joel N. Shurkin examines the wide range of opinions surrounding autism. Read more.

Everyone with autism.

Ne’eman is dead serious. So much so that he created the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) to take on the medical establishment’s thinking about one of the most complex and contentious diagnostic categories in contemporary medicine.

“We’re willing to spend millions to ‘cure’ autism,” says Ne’eman, who started ASAN as a freshman at UMBC. “There’s a high possibility this research will lead to pre-natal tests and selective abortions.” To back up his assertion, he cites studies showing that 90 percent of pregnancies are terminated when the pre-natal fetuses test positive for Down’s syndrome, Spina Bifida, and other developmental conditions.

Now a junior at the university, Ne’eman has built his network into a prominent voice in the autism wars. Too often, he says, the voices of those with autism are supplanted or diminished by those who do not have it. Ne’eman is especially troubled by those who argue that autism is a disorder to be eradicated – and not a culture to be embraced.

“Nothing about us without us,” is ASAN’s motto. And it is a message that Ne’eman has taken nationwide with an evangelistic fervor that has surprised his mentors and administrators.

“He’s incredibly impressive,” says Carolyn Forestiere, an assistant professor of political science at UMBC. “It feels like every other week, Ari’s in some magazine or on a news program. I’m not talking local; I’m talking national coverage.”

Indeed, Ne’eman’s activism has him flying around the country appearing before educators, legislators…anyone whom he feels needs to hear his message. And National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and New York magazine are among the news organizations that have provided a forum for a young man they’ve described as being at the forefront of the autism advocacy movement.

Ne’eman, 21, says he is compelled to speak so often to so many for a simple reason: He knows what it’s like to have been spoken for.

It doesn’t work.

Exile from Mainstream

By the time he was 14 years-old, Ari Ne’eman came to a realization: If he didn’t start advocating for himself, he recalls, he was “going to rot.”

Ne’eman recounts his story in a nearly deserted Chinese restaurant on Frederick Road that is edging towards closing time. Though his voice is quiet and measured, his matter-of-fact recitation only seems to amplify the pain woven into his tale.

In 2000, Ne’eman was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. It was a term relatively new to the established autistic spectrum at that time. Unlike so-called ‘high functioning’ autistics, who are often diagnosed as toddlers, many individuals with Asperger’s often are identified much later in their development. (In Ari’s case, the diagnosis did not come until he was nearly out of elementary school.)

Clumsiness is one tip-off to Aspberger’s. The ability to speak well, and yet still perform below par in school, is another. And the social dysfunction that accompanies it, though not nearly as marked as it is in so-called “low functioning” autistic children – many of whom shriek constantly and can be uncontrollable – can still be disabling without extensive assistance and therapy.

Such classifications may help clinicians and therapists, but Ne’eman and many others with autism find such labels problematic.

“I never like the terms ‘high’ and ‘low’ functioning,” he says. “If you state that the ‘high functioning’ people are better than the ‘low functioning’ people, then the implicit message is that the ‘normal’ people are better than all of them.”

The most profound consequence of the Aspberger’s diagnosis for Ari was a three-hour roundtrip journey each day to a New Jersey public high school populated by kids with every emotional and mental diagnosis under the sun.

Ari’s mother, Rina Ne’eman, says that the decision to send her son to that particular school – which emphasized social skills over academics – was agonizing. Her son was struggling tremendously in a mainstreamed high school, and extensive research on Rina’s part to find a better environment for Ari came down to two no-win alternatives.

“It became rapidly apparent that it was next to impossible to find a placement that could cater to Ari’s social needs and his outstanding academic intellect,” she recalls. “We had to make a choice. It was unfortunate.” She observes that Ari’s deficiencies in recognizing non-verbal communication were akin to the problem that dyslexic children have processing written language. “Dyslexic children have to work extra hard to learn language cues. Kids with Asperger’s have to do the same with social cues.”

In retrospect, Ari says he did get obtain some benefit from the school. But at the time, he saw it as nothing short of a dumping ground for kids for whom the system’s highest goal was “normalization.” One look at his classmates, kids who never quite ‘fit’ the norm, and he felt the subtext of the place pulse through his bones like dissonant tympani: Forget your own wants, your own desires and dreams; we’re here to teach you how to stay the heck out of the way.

Staying out of the way – or fitting in – had always been hard. As a small boy in private school, his laser-like and inquisitive mind was already light-years ahead of his mates. But Ari was operating in only two dimensions, and his as-yet unrecognized autism wreaked havoc on his social and emotional development.

“He was horribly bullied,” recalls Rina Ne’eman.

Compounding Ari’s problems were a hodgepodge of misdiagnoses common to autistics –including attention deficit disorder – that left him confused and frustrated and carrying a bulls-eye on his back in the schoolyard.

“I was ostracized. I didn’t understand why,” he says. But time has given him some perspective on his young classmates. “To be fair, my interests were vastly different than theirs,” he says. “I wanted to talk about paleontology. It was one of my earliest perseverations. I brought a newspaper to school. In the first grade. They just wanted to talk about when they had seen on TV last night.”

Ne’eman felt himself slowly being pulled away from mainstream education. When the Jewish day school he attended couldn’t easily provide the full range of speech, occupational, and psychological services that can help autistic students realize their potential, Ne’eman moved into public junior high schools.

Much was promised to Ari and his concerned and involved parents in the way of services and support. “Ari was given an aide who shadowed him his first year, helping him in social situations,” says Rina Ne’eman. But it soon became apparent that a shadow wasn’t a substitute for an integrative supportive program. In truth, his public school administrators were insuring that Ne’eman was on his way to becoming, in author Douglas Adams’ insightful acronym, an S.E.P.: Somebody Else’s Problem.

Ari’s transfer to the special-ed high school two years later only confirmed his suspicions that he was being academically exiled. “I was moved into an environment that wasn’t designed to help me,” says Ne’eman. “We were being written off because of what society expects of people with disabilities. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The assumption was ‘these are special education students; they’re not going to be able to achieve at the same level so we’re not going to provide them with access to the same kind of opportunities academically. We’re going to focus on teaching them how to act normal, using a heavy social skills curriculum.’ In reality, it amounted more to day care than a real education.”

A Way Back In

If the system was attempting to put Ari into check, it underestimated its opponent. In the end, his masterful manipulation of the pieces available to him—his teachers, case workers, and administrators—got him back in the academic game.

Playing various professionals in his educational ecosystem off against each other, Ne’eman and his parents had two case managers dismissed until landing a more sympathetic manager.

Then Ari plead his case to school officials to take just one class at the mainstream high school near his home. In the face of his determination, officials acquiesced.

With one foot in the door of that high school, Ari arranged for his mainstream class to be the last one of the day. Thus, he could quietly slip into extracurricular activities including Model U.N, the economics team, and other academic competitions. Soon the faculty advisors to these clubs were wondering who this wunderkind was. And, better yet, would Ari like to take regular classes with them?

“Sure,” answered Ne’eman, coyly adding that it would sure be helpful if the teachers would pass their request directly to his case manager.

By the 11th grade, Ne’eman was fully mainstreamed again. Almost. His advisors felt it was unrealistic for a special education student to take any Advanced Placement courses. But he argued in his way into two such classes and studied three more on his own, scoring five out of five in a menu of A.P. courses including comparative politics, European and American history, and English Literature.

At the same time, Ari became more adept at negotiating social conventions. Soon, he felt comfortable enough to take his first steps as an activist. Ne’eman’s parents hired a consultant to help him transition back into the mainstream. The consultant was planning to attend an educational conference on special education reform at the College of New Jersey, and knowing Ari’s erudition, he invited Ne’eman to sit on a panel and address the attendees.

“I was nervous, but I knew what I wanted to say,” recalls Ne’eman. “I wrote out a speech before hand but I kept making revisions. At the last minute I tossed it out and just spoke for fifteen minutes off the cuff, and it worked out really well.”

That’s an understatement. Ari left the conference with a Blackberry full of speaking engagements and a path to his eventual appointment by New Jersey’s governor, Jon Corzine, to the New Jersey Special Education Review Commission.

But as his mother picked him from the conference, they had a more immediate journey in mind. They were heading down I-95 that evening, to visit a university that had caught Ari’s eye.

They were headed to Catonsville. There, the offer of a Sondheim Scholarship, a political science/public policy education, and the chance to publish research as an undergraduate was an irresistible lure, a place—perhaps the place–that would allow his activism to blossom.

Ari Ne’eman knew that at UMBC, his voice would be heard.

Debating Difference

“I am abnormal,” admits Ari Ne’eman, between sips of green tea at the restaurant. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

How abnormal Ne’eman and others with Asperger’s Syndrome are is the cause of considerable debate. (See “Stormy Spectrum.”) But he argues that such debate misses the point entirely.

Some medical professionals feel that Asperger’s is closer to a social learning disorder than it is to the sensory hypersensitivity and language issues more aligned with classic autism. But talking to Ne’eman over dinner, it becomes clear that the diagnostic lines are fuzzy.

It is not that Ari sounds or acts differently than—and here’s that subjective word again—”normal” folk, but he’s had to work at it. On the sensory side, he observes that certain random input used to drive him to utter distraction. As a kid, for instance, the fabric on the roof of the interior of his dad’s car used to make him cringe, but he was unable to ignore it.

“It drove me nuts,” he says. “I hated riding in that car.”

Other issues dealt more with language interpretation. Extreme literalism is an Asperger’s trait, and though Ne’eman can laugh about it now, certain idioms used to baffle him.

“It’s common for many of us. When I was younger, I found the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’ an extremely bizarre expression,” says Ari. “One time I read in a TV magazine the phrase ‘Rumor has it that a character will disappear during the next season.’ So I thought that a villain named ‘Rumor’ was going to make this other guy disappear.’ It was a problem at the time.”

That it isn’t a problem now is at the heart of Ne’eman’s proselytizing for what he calls neuro-diversity. In short, neuro-diversity advocates argue that instead of trying to medically eliminate autism (and, by proxy, Asperger’s itself), resources and research should be redirected towards providing education, therapy, skills, and services, regardless of where someone is found along the autism spectrum.

Given his druthers, Ari would replace labels and restrictive systems with integrated medical, technological and academic support that lets people with autism dictate their career and life paths. Instead of ranking people, says Ne’eman, “I’d rather put forth a model where we assess people on the basis of their objective traits and their needs.

Not surprisingly, there is a vast chasm between Ne’eman and other neuro-diversity advocates and the parents of children so severely affected by autism that the family’s waking life consists of endless shrieking tantrums, relentless hyperactivity, and an almost-complete disconnect from the world.

When asked why scientists shouldn’t devise methods to prevent this kind of disorder in developing children, Ne’eman deflects the question away from prevention and toward his own concern for those who have already been diagnosed – and who may be diagnosed before they are even born. While people with autism do have high rates of mood disorders, he says, the answer is to treat those symptoms, not eliminate the patient.

“We think there’s value in addressing how many of us are more likely to be severely depressed, [and/or] suffer from tremendous anxiety,” argues Ne’eman. “But the way to address that isn’t in saying: “Well, we’re going to take a certain class of people and prevent them from existing. These things don’t come out of nowhere. There’s a susceptibility because of biochemistry, but also we’re anxious because of the significant number of communication issues and social rules that we’re expected to perceive and follow.”

Ne’eman places great faith in advances in communication technology that may redefine the capabilities of people with autism. He points out that across the autism spectrum, keyboard-oriented communication devices have allowed non-verbal people with autism to prove that lack of verbal skills does not equal impaired intelligence. Such results have compelled educators to reassess what disabled people are capable of achieving, he says.

“A friend of mine with autism, up until age 12, was assumed to be… the term then was ‘mentally retarded,'” he says. “That evolved into ‘has mental retardation.’ That evolved into ‘has an intellectual disability.'”

Ne’eman breaks into a smile. “Now he’s graduated from Syracuse University. He’s expressed his ability by being able to communicate.”

Clear parallels between the autistic and deaf communities also intrigue Ne’eman. To those looking in from the outside, both groups appear to be laboring under severe handicaps. Yet many in the deaf community consider themselves not to be disabled, but rather part of a unique culture with its own form of complete communication. (In the deaf community’s case, American Sign Language.) Wipe out their disability, they claim, and you’ve committed the medical equivalent of genocide.

Neuro-diversity proponents make a similar contention. People with autism have much to offer the world just as they are, these advocates insist. The spotlight should be on helping them to communicate their unique ideas, creativity, and viewpoints.

There’s little doubt that Ne’eman has succeeded in getting his message out. Ari chose UMBC over schools such as New York University, he says, because he was convinced that his outside advocacy work could flourish while he studied the intricacies of public policy and government.

His instincts were correct: In his role as president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Ne’eman has been interviewed and featured in numerous media outlets: ABC’s Good Morning America, Salon, Education Week and in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary titled Positively Autistic.

Ne’eman’s closest mentors at UMBC see him as an amazing intellect – and as a work in progress. “He’s one of the brightest students we’ve ever seen. Uncommonly prepared,” says Carolyn Forestiere, with whom Ari conducted comparative politics research as a freshman.

He’s since presented his own position papers on autism at several educational forums. His article on how popular culture portrays people with autism will soon be published in the International Journal of Inclusive Education.

Listening to Ne’eman is much like being in the presence of a tenured professor capable of deftly marshalling facts to support his position. And his assurance in the rightness of that position can be fierce and unyielding to the point of impatience with alternative arguments.

When a talk show host openly wondered why Ne’eman wouldn’t take a pill if he could to cure his autism, Ne’eman could hardly hide his disgust. “That’s an unfortunate perspective,” Ne’eman told the host. “(Autism is) part of who we are. I think there’s something deeply unethical and very troubling with rewiring the fundamental aspects of how somebody thinks and perceives the world.”

“He doesn’t suffer those he considers to be fools gladly,” says mentor Simon Stacey of UMBC’s Honors College. Stacey points specifically to Ne’eman’s dismissal of many parents who claim that their infants developed autism as a result of childhood vaccinations. While almost all medical evidence rules out a link between the two, Ari cuts little slack to parents who still seek to establish such a connection.

“If you get him started on [these parents’ concerns], he’s really quite vitriolic, almost,” says Stacey. “He needs to temper his comments a little bit. This is a big movement that he needs to get on his side and behind him.”

Ne’eman acknowledges he’s gradually becoming more politic as he progresses toward his degree and life after college. But he is no less focused on his future goals. He has just received an appointment to Maryland governor Martin O’Malley’s Maryland Youth Advisory Council, and he is beginning to look to his post-UMBC career. Law school, applying for a Rhodes Scholarship, post-grad work in International Relations…all are possibilities.

What is definite is Ari’s desire to remain what he calls ‘a change agent’ – someone helping to redefine the face and the future of people with autism.

“I feel like I’ve set up a good foundation,” says Ne’eman, of both his advocacy and his education. “As long as I stick to my ideals, the core values that I hold, I’ll be able to continue to make a difference. That’s really what I’ve always aimed to do.

“I think that’s one of the most important things anyone can do in this world.”

Mat Edelson is a national award-winning freelance medical and investigative journalist based in Fells Point. His current book, with Chef Rebecca Katz, is One Bite at a Time: Nourishing Recipes for People with Cancer, Survivors, and Their Caregivers (Second Edition, Ten Speed Press).