Gourt Home::Gourt :: Frank Bowe
"Father of Section 504"
Frank G. Bowe (born 1947) is the Dr. Mervin Livingston Schloss Distinguished Professor for the Study of Disabilities at Hofstra University. As a disability rights activist, author, and teacher, he has strung together a series of firsts:
Dr. Bowe was the first executive director (CEO) of the first national cross-disability consumer advocacy organization, the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD). The Coalition’s signature achievement was securing the long-delayed implementation of Section 504, the world’s first civil-rights provision for persons with disabilities. Bowe conceived and led the nationwide protest that led to issuance of landmark regulations for Section 504 in 1977. A year later, he wrote the first full-length text on social policy and disability, Handicapping America (Harper & Row). In 1980, Dr. Bowe was the first person with a disability to represent any nation in the planning of the United Nations (UN) International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP-1981).
Dr. Bowe is deaf. In the mid-1980s, he chaired the U.S. Congress Commission on Education of the Deaf. COED made 52 recommendations for improving education and rehabilitation, many of which have had long-lasting effects. What is not well-known about that work is that he was, in 1986-1988, a highly visible chairperson who was deaf and who appointed deaf persons as COED staff director and chief counsel. The example he set was not lost on the students at Gallaudet University across town when, in March 1988, they launched their famous Deaf President Now protest.
Section 504 led, in 1990, to the Americans with Disabilities Act. That same year, Dr. Bowe was the principal architect of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act, which requires that TV sets receive and display closed captions. The 1996 Telecommunications Act requires that broadcast and cable programs themselves be captioned. More recently, in 2005 and 2006, he gave invited testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce and conducted demonstrations of high-speed broadband communications for both the House and the U.S. Senate.
Dr. Bowe’s textbooks are in use at colleges and universities around the country and in several other nations. Making Inclusion Work (Prentice Hall) and Early Childhood Special Education (Thomson Delmar Learning) are two examples. He is also author of Universal Design in Education (Greenwood Publishing), of the encyclopedia entries on deafness and disabilities in Scholastic’s New Book of Knowledge, and of several hundred articles in professional journals in public policy, special education, rehabilitation, and technology.
Selected Quotes
Among the quotes most associated with him are:
America handicaps disabled people. And because that is true, we are handicapping America itself. (Handicapping America, 1978, p. vii)
The present status of education for persons who are deaf in the United States is unsatisfactory. Unacceptably so. This is the primary and inescapable conclusion of the Commission on Education of the Deaf. (Toward Equality: Education of the Deaf, 1988, p. viii)
Teaching
As a professor at Long Island’s Hofstra University, Dr. Bowe has helped to prepare more than 2,000 special-education teachers. He was given the Distinguished Teaching (University Teacher of the Year) Award in 1996. The Schloss distinguished professorship is another indication of his long-time excellence in higher education. For five years, he was program director for special education. He has also chaired several committees at Hofstra and served on doctoral dissertation committees at NYU and other universities. In 1996, he spearheaded a campus-wide project to make information and instruction more accessible to and useable by students, faculty, staff and alumni at Hofstra. The professor serves on the editorial board of five professional journals and as governmental affairs consultant for the National Association of the Deaf (United States).
Awards
Dr. Bowe is named in numerous Who’s Who publications, including Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in Education, and others. In 1994, Dr. Bowe was inducted into the National Hall of Fame for Persons with Disabilities. In 1992, he received the Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States, signed by then-President George H.W. Bush.
Education
His Ph.D. is in educational psychology (research) from New York University. He holds a M.A. from Gallaudet and a B.A, summa cum laude, from McDaniel College (nee, Western Maryland College). NYU gave him a Distinguished Alumni Award, Gallaudet awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.), and McDaniel College has recognized him with two alumni achievement awards.
Links and Sources
"Disability Meets the Boom" *
"The Time Will Come to Rise Again" *
Television Decoder Circuitry Act *
Pennsylvania bios (PSU) *
"Frank Bowe"