Rebuttal To Levinson’s Denial

 I personally witnessed a conversation between Ken Levinson and Bill
Graham at the Chicago O’Hare airport on July 28, 2006 at an airport
gate.  I was scheduled to take the same flight from Chicago to Dulles
airport as both Levinson and Graham and they were unaware of my
presence.

I sat only a few feet away and watched them both hold a long
conversation, wherein Ken Levinson very clearly said that the deaf
community is “immature.”  He spoke the words “not mature” with his
mouth and used the signs for NOT MATURE.  There is no doubt about this
in my mind that he said that.

The topic of discussion was the protest.  Apparently he was alluding to
the fact that the deaf people on the Board of Trustees are mostly oral
deaf and that those oral deaf people are more “mature” than the others.
The conversation between Levinson and Graham was mostly an oral
conversation, which was supported by only a few signs.  Levinson’s
point was that he believed that culturally (non-oral) deaf people are
not mature enough to take over the governance of Gallaudet or take over
running the Board of Trustees.

During that conversation, Levinson made disparaging remarks against
both Ben Soukup and Harvey Goodstein and said at one point that the
Board was going to have to “bite the bullet” and remove one of those
members. (I’m pretty sure the bite-the-bullet remark was directed at
Goodstein.)  It seemed clear to me that Levinson was doing Jordan’s
dirty work, and spreading malicious gossip about both Goodstein and
Soukup which were intended as warnings to both of them they must follow
Jordan’s party line.

Since Jane Fernandes lied to the Washington Post, saying that she had
meetings with protesers all night and into the morning hours when HMB
was taken over, and since Jordan has lied to the media about protesters
not being sincere negotiators, when in fact HE was the person who never
discussed the issues, we must conclude that nothing coming from the
Jordan administration, including the Board of Trustees, is credible or
believable.  The Board and the administration are corrupt.

Levinson’s denial about comments that were attributed to him are not
credible.  He should be removed from the Board immediately.  Brian Riley, October 23, 2006

—————————————————-

Statement from Board of Trustee Ken Levinson

Sunday October 22, 2006 8:15 p.m.

“I want to reassure the Gallaudet Community that the recent negative
statement attributed to me about deaf peoples’ abilities is totally
inaccurate. As a long-time member of the University’s Board of
Trustees, I know better than most that ‘deaf people can do anything.’
a statement I have made several times publicly, most notably at
President Jordan’s retirement announcement. My work with the deaf
community has always been about working together toward our common
collective goals. I strongly believe everyone has the ability to make
significant contributions to this world. This is another thinly veiled
smear tactic used by some to further divide our wonderful community and
to discredit the Board’s appointment of Dr. Fernandes as president. It
is completely misleading, and it is false.”

(End of Levinson statement)