The English Crip and the Native American: Navigating academic disability from a transatlantic perspective

Since the inauguration of President Trump for his second term in January 2025, there has been a significant effort to dismantle initiatives in the US government based around Diversity Equality and Inclusion (DEI) (Aratani, 2025; Epstein and Brajesh Upadhyay, 2025; Zurcher, 2025). This is in sharp contrast with the significant funding available to support learning in Universities for students in the UK (Disability Rights UK, 2024) and the continued (albeit moderated) commitments legislatively and practically in the UK (Sibieta & Snape, 2024). Consequently, there is a significant difference in life on both sides of the Atlantic for those in Education who would identify as having a disability. Building on the work of Wolbring & Lillywhite (2021), this paper will consider the lived embodied experiences of two academics who identify as disabled, one an early career academic in the USA and the other an established academic in the UK. Drawing on a series of conversations, it will explore the experience through the dual lens of Critical Disability Theory and auto/ethnography. It will consider the intersectional identities of the two academics (one a first-nation American, the other a gay man) through the evolving perspective of Intersectional Theory (Cho, Krenshaw & McCall, 2013), Crip Theory (McRuer, 2006) and the lived experiences of indigenous disabled people (Soldatic & Gilroy, 2018). It will attempt to map out the lessons that can be learnt transatlanticly from two very different approaches about the lives and value of disabled academics from a broadly authoritarian right-wing government in the US and a more centrist / left wing government in the UK and how the policies of the two governments are impacting the lives of disabled academics.

As well as considering what the current environment is for disabled academics, it will also consider what the likely consequences are to be for both countries and the disabled academics who work within them and how academics at the intersectional margins in particular, can forge bonds that will nurture growth on both sides of the Atlantic.