Ari Ne'eman

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ari Daniel Ne’eman, born December 10, 1987, in East Brunswick, New Jersey, is an American disability rights activist and researcher. He co-founded the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) in 2006 to let autistic people lead their own advocacy. In 2009, President Barack Obama announced his nomination to the National Council on Disability, and he was confirmed in 2010, becoming the first autistic person on the council. He chaired the Policy & Program Evaluation Committee and served until 2015.

Today, Ne’eman works as a disability policy consultant for the American Civil Liberties Union and is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University.

Ne’eman grew up in a Jewish family with Israeli roots and was raised in Conservative Judaism. He spent part of his childhood in East Brunswick, New Jersey, where he attended East Brunswick High School. He has autistic traits, uses stimming like pacing and hand-flapping, and experiences sensory sensitivities. He was bullied as a child and faced anxiety in adolescence. He briefly attended a segregated special education program in high school before returning to a mainstream school.

After high school, he helped found ASAN, a national group led by autistic adults and youth. He studied political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as part of the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program.

As an advocate, Ne’eman pushed for reforms in education and disability rights. He served on New Jersey’s Special Education Review Commission in 2006 and wrote a minority report urging stronger protections against harmful practices and more inclusive policies. Under ASAN, he fought against aversives, restraint, and seclusion in schools and other settings, and he criticized some autism organizations while promoting better supports, inclusion, and rights protections for autistic people.

Ne’eman has been active in national debates about autism research and policy. He has argued that society should focus on supports and services rather than seeking a cure, and he has cautioned about the ethical implications of genetic research. He also helped lead efforts against the misuses of autism-related advertising and supported policies to expand employment and educational opportunities for autistic people.

In 2016, Ne’eman stepped down as ASAN president and later joined the ACLU as a disability policy consultant. He has advised several Democratic candidates on disability policy and, in 2014, won the Ruderman Prize for disability work. He helped push for the FDA ban on electric shock devices at the Judge Rotenberg Center in 2020 and has spoken out about fair access to medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ne’eman co-founded MySupport in 2014, a platform to help people with disabilities find support workers; it was acquired by Rise Services in 2020. He has described autism as both a difference and a disability and views self-advocacy as a civil rights issue. He married Rabbi Ruti Regan, a disability rights advocate and rabbinical scholar, in July 2017.