Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Samuel Levine, Professor of Law & Director, Jewish Law Institute, Touro Law Center

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Samuel Levine, Professor of Law & Director, Jewish Law Institute, Touro Law Center
https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-02-03-2026/

In this thought-provoking episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk sits down with Professor Samuel J. Levine, law professor at Touro Law Center, Director of the Jewish Law Institute, and founder of Touro's Disability Rights and Inclusion Project, to explore why advancing disability inclusion requires more than "laws on the books." Levine shares how his work blends legal analysis with broader cultural and human elements, compassion, storytelling, religion, the arts, and lived experience, because, as he and Kirk discuss, you can't "legislate compassion." Levine also describes the personal and scholarly path that led him to write Was Yosef on the Spectrum, viewing the biblical Joseph story through the lens of autism, and explains how community connections and shared purpose have helped the conference grow organically through relationships and advocacy.

The conversation then turns to Levine's third annual Disability Rights and Inclusion Conference, happening March 12-13 at Touro Law Center in Central Islip (Long Island), with both in-person and free online options. Levine previews major highlights, including keynote speakers John Elder Robison (Look Me in the Eye) and Justice Richard Bernstein of the Michigan Supreme Court, and he emphasizes the conference's welcoming, solutions-focused tone. Kirk and Levine also dig into practical advocacy, especially in education, underscoring that families should know their rights (like IEP/FAPE protections) and seek experienced support when schools or employers try to "avoid" their legal obligations. Levine closes by inviting listeners to register through the Touro conference page (search "Touro Disability Rights and Inclusion") and to connect with him via email or LinkedIn, while Kirk shares his plan to participate virtually.

TRANSCRIPT:

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Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, doctor Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Hello again, everybody, and welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a guest that I connected with via LinkedIn as Professor Samuel Levine, a professor of law and a director of the Jewish Law Institute at the Touro Law Center, and he is founder of the Disability Rights and Inclusion Conference, the third annual conference coming up March 12th and 13th. We're going to be talking a lot about that. Welcome, Samuel.

Samuel J. Levine: Thank you so much, Kirk. It's great to be here.

Dr. Kirk Adams: For those of you tuning in for the first time, just very briefly Doctor Kirk Adams, as I said immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the blind AFB, which was Helen Keller's organization prior to that, privileged to have the same leadership roles at the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle. I am a blind person. My retina is detached. When I was five years old in kindergarten, went to Oregon State School for the blind and got my my braille skills and my strong internal locus of control, and then on to public school and fourth grade on through into some banking and finance experience and then into the nonprofit sector. Currently my consulting practice, Innovative Impact LLC, focuses on fun, innovative, high impact projects that will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities with a particular focus on employment. So I'm happy to welcome Professor Levine today. Disability rights and inclusion, near and dear to my heart. And from the aspects of of the law, the legal aspects of super interesting and something I don't know enough about. So we'd love to hear from you, Professor Levine, about the genesis of the A conference and your your background and what what motivates you and energizes you around disability rights and inclusion. Then, of course, we'd love to hear what's coming up on March 12th and 13th.

Samuel J. Levine: Okay. Thanks so much. Thank you for that question. Thank you for the opportunity for me to share this information. And as importantly, Kirk, thank you. It's an honor for me to be able to contribute to your work, your important work, and your leadership in this area. So my day job, as I sometimes call it, is I'm a law professor, as you mentioned, at Touro Law Center. T o r o that's the law school of Touro University. The New York the law center is actually located in or on Long Island. And I teach criminal law, I teach ethics, I teach Jewish law as part of my work as director of the Jewish Law Institute, which compares Jewish law and American law now a number of years ago, based on and drawing from my own personal interests, my own personal connections, experiences in the areas of disability, personal and professional work I've done in the area. I wrote a book called Was Yosef on the Spectrum Viewing the biblical story of Joseph in Genesis, son of Jacob through the lens of autism. And with that, I also launched the Disability Rights and Inclusion Project at Touro at the law school. And the project is dedicated to promoting disability rights awareness, acceptance and inclusion. Over the first few years of the program, we had webinars we had in-person events, we had workshops, we produced some scholarly publications. And just a couple of years ago, we decided to host our first conference on this topic.

Samuel J. Levine: The first conference, which we referred to as Disability rights and inclusion. Colon, a multidisciplinary conference. And the reason it's so important to me to emphasize that multidisciplinary nature of our work. Goes to your point about the law. Because the law. I'm a law professor. I was a prosecutor. I know the importance of the law. I know the potential of the law. But as lawyers, we are particularly sensitive to the limits of the law. And it's my philosophy that if we're truly going to promote disability rights and inclusion, that topic near and dear to your heart and your leadership, your groundbreaking work in this area as you know, we have to go beyond the law because there's only so much our legal system can accomplish. You can have laws on the books, you can have the Ada you can have when it comes to education idea, All kinds of statutes, all kinds of rules. But the reality is that in order to implement the law beyond what's on the books, you have to advocate. You have to bring the lawsuits, you have to pass legislation, but you also have to affect those changes in society. And so the multidisciplinary nature of our project and of our conferences incorporates a variety of disciplines, a variety of perspectives, speakers who tell their own stories, which are so important to get out there to help our audience understand what we're talking about in terms of disability rights and inclusion. Last year.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I've done a lot of public policy work in my day, and the a phrase just rang into my mind that I heard somewhere, somewhere in the hall, those marble halls of the congressional buildings is you can't legislate compassion. So I'm just curious and you can get to it whenever, whenever it fits, but that you, you talked about your role in examining aspects of American law and Jewish law, and I'm just wondering about things like compassion and care. And when you talk about the multidisciplinary aspect of the conference and the different perspectives and voices, in addition to thoughts and scholars looking at things from a legal standpoint, what are some of the other viewpoints and voices that you bring into the conference?

Samuel J. Levine: Great question and great point. Great quotation, by the way. I don't know if that was something you coined or you heard around.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, I heard it somewhere. I borrowed it.

Samuel J. Levine: So. So I'd like to borrow it from you or from me either. I think it's I think it is so important. And that's something that to me speaks to the importance of bringing in, whether it's humanities, whether it's religion. We have speakers talking about society, cultural concepts and those do all go to this broader societal attitude and the compassion that the law, you know, it requires that people do things. But unfortunately, I think this is just, I guess, human nature. Sometimes the law imposes duties, for example, not to discriminate, which should be an obvious reality to us. But the way people are, it's not so obvious. And if people follow the law, sometimes they resent it. They'll do it if need be or if they're forced to do so. And it sounds very much along the lines of that quote that you took from from DC that you can't force people to really care. You can force them to do something, but if they resent it, and we all know this from our different areas of life. If you're a parent, if you're a teacher, whatever area you've experienced, you know that if someone resents the rules that you impose on them, it might actually backfire to some degree, and they'll do everything they can to get around it.

Samuel J. Levine: And I think we see this when it comes to civil rights, one of which is disability rights. We see employers. We see schools trying their best to avoid the question, trying their best to avoid not they won't defy the law, but they'll just avoid the law because they'll find a way out. So I think you're exactly right. And that's why it is so important to have speakers. We have some speakers who come from the arts. We have speakers who are musicians, speakers who are involved in Filmmaking. And some of those speakers are just as effective and just as important, if not more important for our audience because their story really speaks to people's hearts, even more so than the legal analysis, which again, I don't want to in any way belittle the necessity of the law. But we do have to continue incorporating these different voices. And that's why.

Dr. Kirk Adams: How did you how did you identify those other voices to bring into the mix, I assume as a law professor and a lawyer and a former prosecutor, you know, lots of people who can bring the legal thinking to the mix. But how did how did how did you identify artists and musicians and filmmakers that care about these, that care about disability rights and inclusion?

Samuel J. Levine: That's another great question. And what I have found and you've been doing this much longer than I have, so I imagine you're familiar with this. I hope you've had the same experience. I have found that over the years since I launched this Disability rights and inclusion project, and the years before that, when I was personally involved advocating for disability rights and inclusion. The disability community, if we would call it that, is very cohesive community. I mean, every community has got its infighting and it's, you know, bickering and disagreements. But I have found it to be a community where people want to share, where people want to make connections, help you make connections. And it kind of grew organically for me, where I met one person and they said, you've really got to speak to this other people. I think you and I kind of connected in that way. It was maybe through LinkedIn directly, but it was really a result of my meeting people, often on LinkedIn or other forms of social media, or in person or email. And over the years I had connected with so many really impressive and I mean impressive in every way, their personal accomplishments, but more importantly to me, impressive in terms of what you described, their compassion, their kindness, their dedication. So those are the type of speakers I really look for for my conference.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I'm curious, you mentioned before the Disability Rights Inclusion Project. I think you just said said something along the lines of your, your disability advocacy work prior to that. And then what what led you to consider whether Joseph was on the spectrum or not? What what led you to think about that and to be curious about that as a scholar? And what what what came first? The the the interest in Joseph or the interest in disability? Or were they simultaneous?

Samuel J. Levine: I'm so.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Curious.

Samuel J. Levine: What was first, I think, was the curiosity about the story. I do have a rabbinic background as well. And and prior to that, even growing up, I had heard the story, like many of us.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah. Thrown into the pit.

Samuel J. Levine: Right to the pit.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Coat of many colors.

Samuel J. Levine: Yeah, exactly. And it's the Broadway play. It's, you know, since they've had the Dreamworks animation. Yeah. Famous book by Thomas Mann. It's just it's a story that does jump out at you. And from a scholarly perspective, it's a story that I always found fascinating and puzzling, because this figure of Joseph has so many talents, has so many skills, and yet seems to have so many challenges, or other people have challenges with him on an interpersonal kind of social level. He gets thrown into the pit. It's the wrong thing to do. But we see what it was that bothered his brothers. Not that it justified it by any means what they did, but we could see that disconnect between him and his brothers and him and his father, who loved him, gave him that coat, and that was also a problem. So. And he eventually he goes to Egypt after being taken out of the pit. And he has all those experiences there, the highs and the lows, the success and the challenges. And I had so many questions. I've studied in great detail the commentators, the midrashim, thousands of years of discussions of what's going on in this story. And at one point during my focus on disabilities, and particularly my focus on autism, an area of particular interest to me, I had that moment where the light bulb went off and I said, oh, I think I get it. I think I see because I know people who have this interesting combination, sometimes called a spiky profile, where they have these particular skills, these particular talents, and at the same time intermingled with that and almost inextricably linked. They have these challenges when it comes to socially getting along with others or other people, understanding what they're getting at. And then I read the story again, and it really fits very well the text. It fits many of the commentators over the years, many of the midrashim that are glosses on the story. And I decided to write the book.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. I'm going to for myself and people not familiar with the Jewish faith, the midrashim is what.

Samuel J. Levine: So a midrash is the oral traditions that kind of flesh out the story. Because the biblical text is often very terse. It'll tell a whole story with a few verses. So the question is, what was going on? Sort of behind the scenes or in between the lines. And the Midrash will often fill in some of those details.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So those are written texts.

Samuel J. Levine: So those are texts in of themselves initially. Oral traditions. And ultimately they were compiled as texts.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And and what what brought you to your interest in autism?

Samuel J. Levine: So that comes from both personal and professional experiences, knowing a lot of people and working with people on the autism spectrum.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, so let's turn toward March 12th and 13th a little bit. So if a person is intrigued and motivated and wants to spend time with a group of wonderful people who care about disability rights and inclusion and bring a lot of different perspectives first of all, how how do people access the conference. How do people register, sign up, learn more. And once they do what what, what can people expect?

Samuel J. Levine: Absolutely. So we have a conference page on our website. Toro is the name of the school, Touro Law Center. There's a page. If you Google Touro Disability Rights and Inclusion, you'll probably reach either the project and or the conference page, and the conference page has the registration link as well as the schedule for the speakers. The conference itself, there's a modest fee for in-person participation. So for the full two days, well, full Thursday and Friday until the 13th is until 230. That includes meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner on Thursday, breakfast and lunch on Friday in person at Touro Law School in Central Islip, Long Island. It also includes for lawyers out there up to a total of 13.5 CE credits. And if you're not a lawyer, you probably don't know what that means. If you are a lawyer, you might be really interested because CLE is continuing legal education and lawyers have obligations if they want to keep their license to practice, which we all do to engage in continuing legal education beyond our graduating law school. So 13.5 credits is a big chunk, at least of what's required. So to me, it's a great way to get those CLE credits. You can imagine different ways of doing it. You can go online and watch programs and sit there and click ahead, or you can do something very meaningful. And to me, this is of course, a very meaningful there is also an online registration option, online viewing. And there's no fee for that. So if you're not able to make it out to Central Islip and this is, open to anyone, anywhere. We have viewers throughout the world who are going to be participating. And you can just log on and sign up for free.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Why don't you just give us maybe 3 or 4 of the speakers just who they are and briefly, a little bit about them, just to whet the appetite, people.

Samuel J. Levine: Absolutely. Thank you. It's hard to pick any because, as you mentioned, they are also wonderful. We have a couple of keynote addresses, so maybe I'll start with them. Sure. Lunch keynote on Thursday, March 12th is going to be John Elder Robison. And John Elder Robison is a wonderful and remarkable individual. He wrote a book called Look Me in the eye. It was a New York Times best seller. And a couple of decades ago by now it was one of the first really a groundbreaking book describing from a first person perspective his experiences growing up on the autism spectrum, growing up and the challenges he faced and the successes that he was able to accomplish, among others. And he accomplished. He continues to accomplish so much. One of the most interesting, I think, to most readers is that he ended up he's a musician. He's a technician. He ended up working with the band kiss. Oh, and he was the one who designed the pyrotechnics for Ace Frehley's guitar. Wow. The late, recently, you know, late Ace Frehley. So John was the one who designed that. He ended up working with on nuclear submarines.

Samuel J. Levine: All kinds of. Wow. Fascinating. He does autism policy. And his book to me was such an important event because to this day, I think a lot of people are not familiar with autism. And if you're not familiar with the disability, then unfortunately again, this might be human nature or an unfortunate side of human nature. If there's something we're not familiar with, we are sometimes scared of it. We sometimes Or worse. So by writing the New York Times bestseller, An Entertaining book, a fascinating book, it did allow a lot of people to understand and look me in the eye. That title, drawn from the instruction or reprimand that many individuals on the autism spectrum receive, that they're not looking in the eyes of the speaker. You know, look at me. If you and you know what a rude thing to say to someone, I'm sure you've heard all kinds of rude comments, unfortunately. Yeah. Yourself And I think he he was it was a well chosen title for that reason. So he's going to give the keynote speech and he's always.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm, I'm downloading the braille ready file from Bookshare onto Braille sense right now. So I will be reading it soon.

Samuel J. Levine: Yeah, I hope you. I imagine you want to. I expect you will. He's always entertaining, always has something creative to say. And, you know, true to his talents and being on the autism spectrum often has a different way of seeing things that many of us haven't thought of yet and an intriguing way of seeing things. Our Friday lunch keynote speaker is going to be Justice Richard Bernstein. And I wonder if you might be familiar with Justice Bernstein. He is blind by reputation.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. I don't know him personally, but certainly.

Samuel J. Levine: He and he's on the Michigan Supreme Court. Another just wonderful and fascinating individual. He runs marathons. You know, he speaks all around the country. And.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I gotta ask you, what's what's with all these blind people running marathons? Another blind person I know is running marathons.

Samuel J. Levine: And that doesn't include you, I think.

Dr. Kirk Adams: It does not. Now, I did run cross country in high school. That was long ago.

Samuel J. Levine: That's pretty good. Yeah. I'm not sure what to tell you, but I'm not a marathon runner. So I'm with you on that one. So, you know, as I mentioned, accomplished people and kind wonderful, interesting people. And we try to have our keynotes be along those lines of both substantive and entertaining and the conference as a whole, you know, the speakers are all of the above. We really it's an experience. And you're asking about what our audience will experience if they are able. Anyone who's able to attend in person. It is a special experience to be there in person. One of my.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I can imagine you'll if you're able to go in person, you're going to meet a lot of heart centered compassionate, proactive people committed to what it says disability rights and inclusion. So a lot of advocacy. So sounds sounds like a lot of people we would all like to know.

Samuel J. Levine: And just on that note, you know, one of my colleagues at the law school after our first conference that initial multidisciplinary conference, by the way, the second conference, we had the subtitle of Expanding the Conversation, because we really did that was last year's conference. We did expand both the scope and the breadth of the discussions. And then this year we just calling it third annual. But after that first conference, one of my colleagues said to me, you know, that's the most positive law school conference I ever attended. You know, and on the one hand, Yale Law School conferences can be a bit on the cantankerous side, you know. Officers aren't always.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Right. Right.

Samuel J. Levine: But and but I think what's important for him to recognize. And I made this point to him. It's not that everyone agrees because, you know, we referred before to the infighting and there's without calling it infighting, there are disagreements. That's that's the way it is. And that's great. We can have different points of view, but everyone there is dedicated to moving things forward, and no one is there to pick on someone else or to belittle someone else's perspective. They may disagree, they may ask challenging questions. And that constructive criticism is great. But it's never intended as negative criticism. And I think that that's a really important aspect. And I think that helps create that atmosphere that we all walk away. And at this point, there's we've developed this sense of community. At the conference, some of the speakers return, some of the audience returns, and you really do get to know each other. The online experience is not quite the same, but by so many of our online audience that they've also appreciated. We do try as best as we can. We take questions from the online audience that they can send in. And as we're doing the Q&A, we start with some of the people in the room. But we always check the questions online and if we're able to, we read those out to the speakers as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. So if I could ask you to put your law professor hat on for the few few minutes. So for those of us who are passionate about disability rights and inclusion and advocacy, but we're not immersed in the details of the law, the court system, the the policies that frame legal activities around disability. What? What should we be aware of? What are there things we should be really cognizant of paying close attention to in these times? Are there areas that we should be putting on our advocate advocacy list is what what what's what in the landscape should we be thinking about?

Samuel J. Levine: I think the first thing to know is that there are rights out there. And unfortunately, tragically it's not uncommon that it's the people who are responsible for recognizing those rights who I alluded to before try to avoid it. And that happens very often at the school level, the education level. That's actually the area of advocacy that I've been myself personally most involved in. And as it turns out, Turoe actually has a special education advocacy clinic where our students are trained to work in that area. And it's an area that, for better or for worse, it's kind of unfortunate, but it's a growing field because there are so many schools that don't live up to their obligations under the law to provide a free and appropriate public education. No more, no less. That's the law. That's the statute. That's federal law. Every school has to comply with it. And yet we just have so many endless stories of students who aren't being provided those rights. And the reason that schools get away with it is typically because the parents don't know their rights. Kids aren't going to know their rights. How would they? But the parents don't even know their rights. And if they do, if they try to assert those rights, the school is not too strong a word to say that the school lies to them. And this isn't every school, this isn't all the time.

Samuel J. Levine: But it's a that's a story that we hear over and over and over again, where the school just denies that this is something that they're required to do. So what's a parent to do when they're in that situation? And my answer is and my advice is my strong advice is that there are lawyers out there. There are special ed attorneys out there who are experts in this field. And it doesn't mean you're going to win. Lawyers can never guarantee that to you. But it does mean that they're familiar with how it works. And I can tell you this is true of any area of law. If you have a lawyer on your side, then it changes the entire playing field. Now, the adversary, whoever that may be, whether it's a school in this situation. But, you know, anytime if you're asserting your own rights, they might think they can take advantage of you. They might have their own lawyers try to take advantage. If you've got a lawyer on your side who can counter what they're saying and point to the statute and point to the provision that they're not following. That changes everything. All of a sudden they take you much more seriously. Yeah, they're often going to settle instead of intimidating you into not going any further.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I'd like to dig into that maybe a little bit. So the you know, the IEP, the individual education plan that students with disabilities are entitled to, which lays out the responsibilities of the educational institution, the school, the school district to to provide that student with with what they're entitled to. So important. It's a key, key element. And, you know, the the school may not outright deny, but they certainly may, you know, brails the thing for me. So I was totally blind as a first grader. There was no question I needed to learn how to read Braille. But there are kids who have some usable vision. And oftentimes schools dissuade parents from asking that Braille instruction be included because it's, you know, it's expensive, it's complicated, and it takes time and effort and individual instruction. And they may be told, well, you know, they can use magnification, they can use audio. But as one example, you know, a parent, my parents when I my retinas. Yeah. They had never met a blind person before. They were in their mid 20s. You know, I was a kindergarten student at a public school. They were told, you can't you can't come back here just to go to the state school for the blind children, which which, you know, pros and cons, but that that's what happened. But parents don't necessarily know what's available. What's best for their child? Not every family has the wherewithal to research and advocate and get prepared for that type of thing. Are there resources prior to contacting attorney that that you would recommend?

Samuel J. Levine: Well, nowadays, you know, some of the benefits of our online universe is there are all kinds of resources out there. So yeah, you can find IEP. We actually have on our website, we have a wonderful presentation. It was directed toward the private school system, but we did record the presentation. About IEP advice. And obviously ours is not by any means the only resource out there. So I do recommend for parents to check online first so you can get what's out there. But to your point, you're exactly right about the challenges to having an IEP a designed properly. And then we're going through the same procedure that we talked about with the law. You can have a law on the books. You can even have an IEP that's designed very well. It can even say okay, this student will receive instruction in Braille five days a week. What happens when the school doesn't comply with the IEP that you've agreed to, that they've agreed to that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right.

Samuel J. Levine: Worked out with them. And it has to be agreed to, by the way, from both parents and school. You sign off of it on a as a parent. So it's not as if it's the school designed it and then you're stuck with whatever they say. You have to come to an agreement and it's your right to say, I disagree with your conclusion, and I'm going to take you to due process, and you have to prove to me that this plan is actually meeting your legal obligation to provide fape the free and appropriate public education with all that entails. And if you can't, and as you mentioned, there's pros and cons, but if you can't, then you have to find a setting that can provide it. The ideal that our system promotes and this is complicated. But we do have a general approach to educate a student in what's called the least restrictive environment.

Samuel J. Levine: So if a student can be mainstreamed, if a student can remain within the general student population and receive the appropriate services, that's usually considered the best outcome, the better policy, because that way the student does find a way to integrate into as they should be included into the general society. If the students challenges cannot be met, if the school is unable and it it you mentioned the money and that's not an acceptable reason not to provide fape. It's not an acceptable reason to not follow the law. You know, we don't have the resources. We don't have the money. And you're exactly right there to that. Well, you know, this type of instruction is kind of expensive. So how about if we just do it another way? Well, if that other way is not meeting the students needs, the answer is no. We're going to do it the right way because you're going to educate the student the way they are supposed to be educated under your legal obligations. And I just want to emphasize, for parents out there, for individuals, you know, the other setting, which I'm not as experienced in directly in my Involvement in advocacy, but I'm very, very familiar with more generally is the employment setting. And there are, of course, anti-discrimination laws under the Ada when it comes to employment. It's important for parents who are helping their children. It's important for individuals who are helping other individuals and for individuals themselves. If you like the term self-advocate or not, some people do, some people don't. But if you're advocating for yourself, it's important to understand your mindset as not asking for favors, not asking for the school to do something that they shouldn't have to do to bend over backwards for you.

Samuel J. Levine: And that's something else that school officials are unfortunately often very good at and making it sound like, well, we're already doing this. So are you really asking us to do that too? And the answer has to be, that's exactly what I'm asking. And that's exactly what I'm telling you to do, because that's what you have to do. I mean, just imagine anyone else doing their job and saying, oh, come on. You want me to submit this report? And you also want me to do the other report? I did one of them. Isn't that enough for you? So I think it's important to have that mindset that this is something that these schools and the employers and society as a whole. I just had a long talk about accessibility with someone who works in the field, and they're just stunned by how often they go into a setting and they see what's allegedly the accessibility plan. And they look at it, and they've been through this enough times to take one look and say, this is nowhere near what you need to do under the law. And the response is often, oh, come on, do you really think we have to go that far? The bathroom's pretty good. You know, the schools are kind of, you know, they're pretty much work. This ramp is, you know, you didn't have the bar where you thought, and you know, she's stunned by that response. But on the other hand, she's also used to it by now. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So we've we've we've come a long way and we've got a long way to go collective actions, the way to get things done. So Disability Rights and Inclusion Conference, March 12th 13th at Touro University in Central Islip. Do I have that right?

Samuel J. Levine: That's exactly right. The law school is Central Islip. The main university actually is set in in Times Square. Three times square is this wonderful, pretty new building.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's a that's a pastoral setting. So yeah. Tell people one more time how to get in touch with the conference and with you.

Samuel J. Levine: So feel free to reach out to me directly. The best way to reach me is my email. That's SLevine8, S L E V as in Victor I N E, followed by the number eight. All one word. I guess there are seven other SLevines at Touro. @. And then it's just the Touro.edu. T O U R O . EDU. [e-mail]. You can feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I find that to be a very convenient way to reach out to people. So Samuel Levine Touro law professor, you can find me there pretty easily. Facebook as well. And on the Touro Law Center website, if you Google Touro Law Center disability you'll find the conference page pretty quickly.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Wonderful. And if people want to get in touch with me to talk about any or all topics related to disability rights and inclusion, happy to talk with you. LinkedIn is great for me. Also, KirkAdamsPhD on LinkedIn. I also have a website, https://DrKirkAdams.com, have a newsletter you can sign up for. My email address is there, and I'll be taking advantage of the virtual option to participate in the Disability Rights and Inclusion Conference March 12th and 13th. Thank you so much, Professor Levine. I learned a lot. I took a lot of notes. I downloaded a new book. And I just really appreciate your time and your your wisdom. And for those of you listening, we'll catch you next time on podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams.

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