Best-selling Author Ron Suskind to Deliver John Pratt Memorial Lecture May 11


Please join us at 6pm on Thursday , May 11 at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge for a lecture by 
Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling author. 

Suskind's book   Life, Animated (2014), chronicles his family's twenty-year journey raising and connecting to their autistic son.

The book explores the animated Disney movies he loved and how the family began to communicate with their son in movie dialogue. Recite one line, he'd look you in the eye and recite the next. But was he understanding?

The Suskinds are also the subject of an award-winning   documentary feature of the same name (2016). Their story has driven activism and research about the compensatory strengths of those with autism and others who are "differently-abled" due to distinctive neurology or sociocultural backgrounds.


Suskind's company,  Sidekicks, is also leading efforts to build a next generation of augmentative technologies to lift and support these communities.

Suskind often appears on network television and has been a contributor for The New York Times Magazine and Esquire. He was the Wall Street Journal's senior national affairs reporter from 1993 until his departure in 2000, and won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

The John Pratt Memorial Fund and Lecture is dedicated to facilitating the impact of research on practices at the school in order to improve student outcomes.  John Pratt served as Associate Director of the Whitehead Institute for 25 years. He was also a member of the MAB Board of Directors and cared deeply about the work that MAB and Ivy Street School do to help young people with special needs develop the skills they need to transition into successful lives as adults. John would be delighted to have this as part of his legacy.
 
Date:
Thursday, May 11, 2017

Time:

6:00 pm - Registration and Opening Reception
7:00 pm - Program

Address:
 
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
9 Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
 
More details to follow.


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