SYRACUSE, NY, September 01, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Michael Schwartz, PhD, has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Dr. Michael Schwartz is an esteemed associate professor of law at Syracuse University and an advocate for global disability rights. Born profoundly deaf, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brandeis University and a Master of Arts in Theatre Arts degree from Northwestern University. Schwartz began teaching drama at the North Carolina School for the Deaf, Morganton, where he honed his sign language skills. Realizing that the school's policies, which included expulsion of students without due process and compulsory attendance at local Baptist church services, violated the U.S. Constitution, Schwartz reported the school to the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU's success in remedying the problems at the school opened his eyes to the positive impact that legal advocacy can have for marginalized communities, including the Deaf community. He resolved to become a lawyer for social justice.
Schwartz left North Carolina to join the National Theater of the Deaf as an actor. After touring the United States in the leading role of D'Artagnan in an American Sign Language production of Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers," Schwartz enrolled at New York University School of Law where he obtained a Juris Doctor degree in 1981. Upon graduation and passage of the New York State bar examination, Schwartz served as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Broderick of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Upon completion of his clerkship, Schwartz was appointed an assistant district attorney in the Appeals Bureau for the New York County District Attorney's Office from 1983 to 1990 at which point he was recruited as a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Enforcement of civil rights under a Republican administration was not where Schwartz believed the law should be, and he left to start his own practice.
After a few years as solo practitioner, Schwartz joined the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Department of Law as an assistant attorney general under Democrat G. Oliver Koppelman. In this role, Schwartz successfully litigated the state's first case under the Americans with Disabilities Act, establishing the State's parens patriae power to enforce federal disability law on behalf of the state's residents. However, Koppelman lost his post in the general election to a Republican whose ideas for civil rights did not satisfy Schwartz who resigned and obtained a Master of Laws degree from Columbia University Law School. Schwartz would dedicate the next four years of his career as a visiting assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Since 2004, Michael Schwartz has excelled as an associate professor at the Syracuse University College of Law. Shortly after becoming a law professor, Schwartz obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Education with a concentration in Disability Studies at Syracuse University in 2006. In 2015, Schwartz was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Schwartz' Fulbright research focused on the experiences of Deaf patients in the healthcare setting. Professor Schwartz has published numerous law review and journal articles about disability and deafness.
Throughout his career, Schwartz has advocated for the civil and human rights of people with disabilities. In addition to his research agenda, Schwartz is the co-founder of Tangata Group, an international non-governmental organization focused on legal advocacy supporting the empowerment of people with disabilities around the world, enabling them to live self-directed lives. Schwartz looks forward to consulting, researching and writing in furtherance of Tangata Group's disability rights agenda. Assessing the sweep of human history, Schwartz discerns a pattern that gives him hope. For centuries, disability warranted "no thought" where people with disabilities were invisible and marginalized. The civil rights ferment of the late 20th century saw the evolution of disability as an "after-thought" where people are more aware of disability access but often forget to accommodate people with disabilities. Now, enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal and state laws is cultivating an "aforethought" sensibility where people are now thinking proactively about accommodating and including people with disabilities in every aspect of American life. To Michael Schwartz, this is proof that the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward equality and inclusion.
About Marquis Who's Who®
Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America®, Marquis Who's Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Today, Who's Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. Marquis® now publishes many Who's Who titles, including Who's Who in America®, Who's Who in the World®, Who's Who in American Law®, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare®, Who's Who in Science and Engineering®, and Who's Who in Asia®. Marquis® publications may be visited at the official Marquis Who's Who® website at www.marquiswhoswho.com.
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