As one of the few born-deaf professors in the country, Michael Schwartz has never let his handicap stop him from communicating with those around him. He is an assistant law professor and director of the Public Interest Law Firm, a civil rights clinic at Syracuse University’s College of Law. Schwartz works with an interpreter both in class and in his office. While he can read lips and has been able to speak from a young age, an interpreter helps him communicate more clearly, in situations where it is harder to communicate. He did not learn to sign until later in life, and grew up using speechreading and oralism.
Schwartz believes that his deafness only affects him as far as he lets it. “Disability isn’t my deafness, Schwartz says, “disability is how society is set up so that I’m at a disadvantage.”
Ambitious from a young age, Schwartz went to Northwestern University as an undergraduate student. He then went to the National Theater of the Deaf, where he learned how to mime. “I thought that I was going to become an actor,” Schwartz explained, “then I shifted to another direction and went to New York University.”
Schwartz made quite a shift indeed. He got a degree in law from NYU and became the assistant district attorney of New York County. After fighting for civil rights and even being arrested at a protest, Schwartz said, he got a master of law degree at Columbia University.
After that, he now had a new dream: to become a law professor. Schwartz worked for a time at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf teaching political science, but eventually left. “I had four degrees, and RIT said I wasn’t qualified,” Schwartz explained.
In 2004, while working on his doctorate through the School of Education with a concentration in disability studies at Syracuse, a job opened up. Today Schwartz, who successfully defended his doctorate to receive it on April 4, is an assistant law professor and supervises 10 third year law students.
Steve Simon, director of the Office of Disability Services, works with Schwartz and other deaf students to provide for their needs. “Ensuring academic equity for students who are deaf involves providing services that create equal access to information that is ommunicated in the classroom and in other university sponsored activities,” Simon wrote in an e-mail.
There are approximately 20 deaf or hard-of-hearing students at Syracuse. It is difficult to gauge an exact number because many students either choose not to identify themselves or need little or no assistance from the Office of Disability Services, Simon added.
Those like Schwartz who need interpreters look to Aurora of Central New York’s Marjorie Clere Interpreter Referral Service. Aurora, as per a contractual agreement with the university, refers one of the freelance interpreters they work with to the school for students and staff. They also provide interpreters upon request for SU-sponsored events and speakers.
One such interpreter, Liz Wilcox, a Syracuse native, works with Schwartz on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was inspired to learn sign language by a deaf friend and effortlessly communicates with Schwartz in sign language, almost instantly translating the rapid hand movements into words.
Learning sign language is very difficult, said Angelo Coppola, director of MCIRS. To become nationally certified, one must pass a grueling examination that includes both a written test and a sign language performance. “Being a certified sign language interpreter, to equate it, would be comparable to being a U.N. interpreter,” Coppola said. Wilcox, who is not yet certified, said she hopes to take the test soon.
Coppola went on to acknowledge that many people don’t address deafness because they are unaware of it. “It’s an invisible disability,” he said. “The only time it becomes visible is in communication.”
Schwartz agreed, saying people don’t know he is deaf when they see him walking down the street. Communication however, can often exclude him from others. “When I’m with a group of hearing people and I don’t have an interpreter, I feel isolated; I feel left out,” Schwartz said. “When I’m with other deaf people, I don’t feel disabled.”
One way to ensure equality among deaf students and faculty is to learn basic sign language, Schwartz said.
Although Schwartz may be different than other professors at SU, he doesn’t let it bother him. He still gives students the best education they can get and moves through the world as a normal, functioning person. “I identify myself as a member of the deaf community. I am familiar with all of the markers of that identify a community, particularly the deaf community,” Schwartz said. “If I’m walking down the street and (people) looked at me, they would not know that I was deaf.”
