Today’s News from the University of Kansas
From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu
Headlines
‘Sovereign Skies’ details America’s battle to enact civil aviation policy
LAWRENCE — Prior to 1926, American airplanes operated without regulation. It was like an aerial version of the Wild West, where any person could fly any machine. The story of how that all changed is captured in a University of Kansas humanities professor’s new book, “Sovereign Skies: The Origins of American Civil Aviation Policy.” The book also deals with the larger question of how to incorporate new technologies within existing structures, whether those are governmental or social.
Practitioners, families, students, researchers invited to 2021 KU Autism Conference
LAWRENCE — The Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training, part of the University of Kansas Life Span Institute, will host the conference Autism Across the Life Span on April 23. The virtual event will address the needs of families, professionals and educators interested in autism spectrum disorder. The one-day event will feature 16 breakout sessions on behavioral health, interventions, research and neuroscience, and transition.
Full stories below.
————————————————————————
Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
‘Sovereign Skies’ details America’s battle to enact civil aviation policy
LAWRENCE — The 1922 dedication of the Lincoln Memorial gathered a historic collection of luminaries, including President Warren G. Harding, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, Chief Justice William Howard Taft and even Abraham Lincoln’s surviving son Robert Todd Lincoln.
But as Harding was delivering his remarks, an intruder approached. Local pilot Herbert Fahy ignored official requests to keep airspace above the event clear, instead circling over the crowd in his Curtiss JN-4 biplane, drowning out the commander in chief and causing a nervous panic in the spectators below.
“What I love about that scene is how powerless the president and federal government were to do anything,” said Sean Seyer, assistant professor of humanities at the University of Kansas.
Prior to 1926, airplanes operated without regulation. It was like an aerial version of the Wild West, where any person could fly any machine. The story of how that all changed is captured in Seyer’s new book, “Sovereign Skies: The Origins of American Civil Aviation Policy.”
“That same plane crashes two weeks later and kills Fahey’s passenger,” Seyer said. “Imagine if that happened at the Lincoln Memorial with the president, vice president, members of Congress and the Supreme Court? It would have been so devastating to the government and the nation.”
But regulation hardly proved to be a simple fix. Questions persisted regarding who specifically should maintain authority over an airplane and what the policy would look like for a machine that could cross physical and political borders.
“I hope readers get this notion that the federal government was not immediately seen as the place to regulate the airplane. I also hope it causes people to think more about the role of politics in technological regulation,” Seyer said of his debut book.
“Sovereign Skies” deals with the larger question of how to incorporate new technologies within existing structures, whether those are governmental or social. The professor explains that so much of what happens today with regulatory organizations involves rule-setting behind the scenes. Conversations about what to do with technologies are no longer within the political realm.
“I think they need to be,” Seyer said.
“We should discuss things like nanotech or cloning. Those need to be policies that are asked in the presidential and candidate debates. They must be discussed within this larger dialogue instead of the assumption that these new technologies are just going to happen, and we have to adjust.”
According to Seyer, it was quickly recognized that an airplane could fly over national borders as well as state borders, and questions as to how U.S. regulation would fit within an international system shaped the nation’s regulatory approach from the beginning.
“What I’ve done with this book is brought in that international component, which was vital to how interested parties developed ideas about how to react to the airplane,” he said, noting the process was in motion well before the Air Commerce Act of 1926, which is often posited as the starting point of aviation regulation.
Ironically, Seyer didn’t fly in an airplane until he was in graduate school. But when the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, native finally got the opportunity, the occurrence proved significant.
“Even to this day, when the plane is taking off, I still experience the amazement that human beings are doing this,” he said. “I can’t believe how some view it as so routine. You know, it’s only been 100 years since the first powered flight, and it has become something that people merely complain about: the long lines, the security, the cost, the lack of perks.”
Seyer reveals that every time his plane takes off, he recites the line “I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth” from the John Gillespie Magee poem “High Flight.”
“One of the things I discuss with my students when I teach my Aviation in American Culture class, and when we talk about the 1920s and ’30s, is this notion of the golden age of aviation. This is when it was supposedly the best. And a lot of it is based on exclusivity — it was only available for certain individuals because it was so expensive. But I challenge that by asking, ‘Isn’t more people having the access to flight better?,’” said Seyer, who has been at KU since 2014.
“I wish people would more historically contextualize how amazing the feat of flying truly is.”
————————————————————————
The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.
Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.
Tweets by KUnews
————————————————————————
Contact: Jen Humphrey, Life Span Institute, 785-864-6621, [email protected], @kulifespan
Practitioners, families, students, researchers invited to 2021 KU Autism Conference
LAWRENCE — The Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training, part of the University of Kansas Life Span Institute, will host the conference Autism Across the Life Span on April 23.
The virtual event will address the needs of families, professionals and educators interested in autism spectrum disorder. The one-day event will feature 16 breakout sessions on behavioral health, interventions, research and neuroscience, and transition.
“While we always are excited for this annual meeting as it brings together our community, we are particularly eager for this year’s,” said Matt Mosconi, director of the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training. “While we look forward to in-person meetings in coming years, this virtual environment will provide a means for more people to be involved and for us to gather, learn and continue our broader mission of advancing understanding and support for families affected by autism spectrum disorder.”
Registration for the conference is $95 for professionals, including investigators, tenure-track or research faculty, and clinicians. Families and self-advocates can register for $50, and the cost is $40 for undergraduate and graduate students. Scholarships are available for families and self-advocates.
With presentations from nationally recognized researchers including KU faculty, the conference will offer research presentations as well as practical and informative guidance for people who are currently working and caring for children, teenagers and/or adults with autism spectrum disorder. Topics include technology and social skills, genetics, early childhood, self-determination, supported decision-making and more.
Keynote presentations at the conference:
1. “Understanding Repetitive Behaviors and Interests in Autism,” by Jim Bodfish, vice chair of research and professor, Hearing and Speech Sciences Department and the Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences Department at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Bodfish’s research program strives to maintain a close link with autism clinical service-delivery programs.
2. “Preparing families to support transition-aged youth on the autism spectrum,” by Julie Lounds Taylor, associate professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Taylor’s research focuses on promoting positive outcomes in adulthood for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The KU Life Span Institute brings together scientists and students at the intersections of education, behavioral science and neuroscience to study problems that directly affect the health and well-being of individuals and communities in Kansas, as well as across the nation and world.
————————————————————————
KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-3256
Fax: 785-864-3339
[email protected]
http://www.news.ku.edu
Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]
Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs
