“Disability Rights as Human Rights,” a public conversation, will feature University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie and Eva Kittay, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at State University of New York - Stony Brook, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 4 p.m. in room 207 of White Hall.

Rushdie and Kittay will be joined by Emory English professors Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Benjamin Reiss for this panel discussion presented by Emory’s Disability Studies Initiative. Garland-Thomson and Reiss serve as directors of the DSI.

This event is co-sponsored by Emory's New Leaders/New Thinkers Fund, Hightower Fund, Center for Ethics, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, and the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Visiting philosopher Kittay is also a senior fellow at the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, as well as a women's studies associate. Her primary interests include feminist philosophy, ethics, social and political theory, metaphor, and the application of these disciplines to disability studies. She has won an NEH Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete her forthcoming book "Disabled Minds and Things that Matter: Lessons for a Humbler Philosophy."

Other events featuring Kittay will be held the week of Feb. 23. On Monday, Feb. 23, Kittay will speak on “Normalcy and a Good Life: Problems, Prospects, and Possibilities in the Life of People with Severe Cognitive Disabilities.” The event will be at 4 p.m. in 102 Center for Ethics.  A Roundtable on Care Ethics, featuring Emory law professor Martha Fineman and Emory philosophy professor Mark Risjord with Kittay, will be Wednesday, Feb. 25, in 102 Center for Ethics.

The Disability Studies Initiative at Emory is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching, across departments and schools, on social, cultural, historical, political, and legal dimensions of disability.