Join the Simpson Center for the Humanities on Thursday, Feb 26, 2026, 4 – 5:30 p.m. at the Communications Building, Room 120, for a special lecture with Professor Heng-hao Chang on Post-Colonial Reflections on International Disability Rights: Adaptation and Localization in Taiwan.
Taiwan is a unique site of innovation in disability rights. Despite being barred from becoming a States Party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) according to the diplomatic exclusion faced by Taiwan, it has become a model for the localization of the CRPD through its use “domestic review mechanisms.” Furthermore, Taiwan demonstrates the ways in which fundamental divides within human rights discourse, such as Western individualism and East Asian familialism, can be bridged using strategic adaptation that reimagine disability rights as a post-colonial hybrid.
Heng-hao Chang is a Professor of Sociology and former Dean of the College of Social Sciences at National Taipei University. A dedicated advocate for disability studies and the disability rights movement, Chang is a co-founder and past Chairman of the Taiwan Society for Disability Studies and currently serves as the Executive Editor of the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice.
This event is made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, East Asia Center, Center for Human Rights, Taiwan Studies Program, Disability Studies Program, and the Harlan Hahn Endowment.
This event is free and open to the public. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by Feb 6, 2026, to the Simpson Center: 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu.
For more details, please visit the Stimson Center’s webpost for this event.