Truth Commission on Disability Institutions

A Resurgence of Disability Institutions?

Learning from our Nation’s troubled past to avoid future harms

Join HPOD and its co-sponsors, the Boston Center for Independent Living and the Harvard Law School Disabled Law Students Association, on November 3rd, from 12:20 to 1:20pm, in Wasserstein Hall (WCC) 1019 (located at 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138), for a timely discussion of the history of institutions for persons with disabilities in Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Special Commission on State Institutions is the world’s first truth commission on disability institutions led by persons with disabilities. Established in 2023 in response to advocates’ demands for an official reckoning with the unresolved legacies of mass institutionalization in the Commonwealth, earlier this year, the Commission released a groundbreaking report. It concluded that Massachusetts has engaged in “a pattern of practices, intentional and unintentional, [that] have prevented the general public from accessing this history, even when the people requesting that access are institutional survivors, their loved ones, and their descendants.” The Commission’s work has gained widespread attention and has prompted Massachusetts’ Governor to propose long-overdue reforms that would help shine a light on a story of mass human rights abuses that the Commonwealth has prevented society from fully reckoning with.

Today, the Commission’s work holds salience not only the Commonwealth but also the country, especially amid the specter of a return to regressive policies that had enabled systemic institutionalization of persons with disabilities in the past. At this event, two of the Commission’s members–HPOD fellow Alex Green and HPOD’s Self-Advocate Associate Anne Fracht–will facilitate a dialogue with two state legislatures–State Senator Mike Barrett and State Representative Sean Garballey–who have played indispensable roles in creating and empowering this “extraordinary” commission. In this way, this event will help to raise awareness of the Commission’s findings and recommendations as well as outline the continuing relevance, so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.

Learn more at: https://hpod.law.harvard.edu/events/event/history-disability-institutions.

ASL interpretation and lunch provided.

Advance registration requested. Register at: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=9CL6b2hFBUGtQy461HJpV_Iv8GftsvpChPoSVsrjs4NURVBXQ0pXSlRTMUNKWEFVTjVENU5IWU1URC4u&route=shorturl