The Week the World Heard Gallaudet (Geography; 28)
Since the tragic uprising in China, the Western world has gained new appreciation for the vision and power of organized student protests. One year before the cataclysm in Tianarimen Square, another student movement, sprung from equally cherished rights and hopes, focused world attention in a breaditaking week of peaceful struggle. From March 613, 1988, Gallaudet University in Washington, DC-(the historic institution for deaf education) was shut down by its own students while an astonishingly insensitive Board of Trustees passed over qualified deaf candidates to appoint yet another hearing president. Jack R. Gannon chronicles the triumphant story of that drama in The Week the World Heard Gallaudet. Gannon has packaged a moment-by-moment narration of events alongside extensive color and black-and-white photographs. Political cartoons and noteworthy quotes from supportive sources are highlighted as well. The reader of this volume not only relives those historic days, but also learns far more about the world of the deaf and the sociopolitical struggles they must still face in our culture. In a larger sense, the story of Gallaudet is another chapter in a history of the American civil rights movement. Gannon's treatment of his subject is thorough. Readers with little or no previous awareness of deaf history and culture will quickly feel a part of this sweep of events. One crisis after another builds to the climactic resignation of the newly appointed president, Dr. Elisabeth A. Zinser, and board of trustees chair, Jane Bassett Spilman, and the appointment of Dr. Irving King Jordan as Gallaudet's first deaf Presidem In an epilogue, Jordan reviews the great gains the deaf world has made in the last year resulting from new sensitivities toward them and new political power. The Week the World Hear GalLaudet is an inspiring lesson in the possibilities of protest movements when leadership, vision, and resolve come together at the right moments and events of history. Such a victory for the deaf at Gallaudet is surely a victory for the basic human rights of us all. --FromIndependent Publisher