Eric Harvey is a scholar and teacher with a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East from Brandeis University. His academic research deals with the historical development of the Psalms and with issues of disability in the ancient world. Eric went blind in the middle of his doctoral studies and finished the work with a very different set of skills than when he started. In addition to his core research, he now advocates for accessibility and universal inclusion in higher education and beyond.

In this episode Steve and Eric discuss:

• Thriving despite blindness - the difficult 5%
• How blindness has helped reveal the myth of self-reliance and independence
• Feeling powerless even as an able-bodied person. 
• Shattering your own myths 

Key Takeaways: 

• Many unnamed people have contributed to who you are today and what you’ve achieved, there’s a scaffolding of humanity around you that you’re not aware of.
• Acknowledge the people that enable you. Individualism hides a lot of interdependence beneath. 
• Know what you’re truly capable of, see it from another way, shatter the myths that hinder you from being fully human. 
• You can’t just pour knowledge into someone’s head, you can only be a catalyst of the idea-making process in their own life. 

“Disability… shattered this myth of independence that anybody does anything on their own… We are standing on an enormous mountain of contributions by people whose names and lives we’ll never know...” - Eric Harvey

Connect with Eric Harvey:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/blind_scholar

Website: http://www.blindscholar.com/

Connect with Steve and Jason:

LinkedIn: Jason or Steve

Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking 

Email: [email protected]

Show notes by Podcastologist: Justine Talla

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.