Rud Turnbull
Co-Founder, Co-Director, Distinguished Professor
University of Kansas
1200 Sunnyside Ave., 3111 Haworth Hall
Lawrence, KS 66045-7601
Office Phone: (785) 864-7610
Fax: (785) 864-5825
Email: rud@ku.edu
Bio: Rud Turnbull is a non-practicing lawyer (admitted to the Bar in Maryland and North Carolina), policy researcher, teacher, consultant, advocate, and a self-described student of the human condition in policy contexts.
Together with his wife, Ann P. Turnbull, he co-founded and co-directs the Beach Center on Disability at the University of Kansas. Over its 18 years, the Beach Center staff have earned approximately $36.8 million in federal or state grants, for a ratio of approximately $6 of federal funds for every $1 of state funds. Rud has been a principal or co-principal investigator of approximately $23 million in federal and state grant funds.
He is the Marianna and Ross Beach Distinguished Professor and in 2004-05 he was the Gene and Gretchen Budig Distinguished Teaching Professor in Special Education. He has been the senior advisor or co-advisor to nearly 40 students who have earned their doctorates at the University of Kansas (in three different fields).
In the field of disability policy (exclusive of his other scholarship in policy), Rud is author or co-author of 28 books, 51 monographs and technical reports, 118 peer-reviewed articles, 26 non-peer reviewed articles, 77 chapters, and 5 reviews.
Rud's writings cover 18 different issues of disability law and policy. These include the nature and variability of core concepts of disability policy; effects of disability policy on individuals with disabilities and their families; factors that influence the generation and implementation of disability policy; structures of provider agencies that most facilitate or impede implementation of core concepts of disability policy; nature of family-professional partnerships and the role that trust plays in them; perceptions by individuals with disabilities regarding the promises and threats of Human Genome Project; relationships of federal special and general education law to each other; life sustaining treatment and end-of-life decision making; the "new eugenics" and medically assisted dying as applied to individuals with cognitive disabilities; long-term care (Medicaid); family support; access to health care and health care policy; disability and criminal justice (especially capital punishment); ethics of aversive and restrictive interventions; abuse, neglect, and maltreatment of people with disabilities; comparisons and contrasts of American and Chinese disability policy; factors that lead to excellence in disability policy leadership in Central and South America.
Rud has served as chairman of the board of trustees of the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; president, American Association on Mental Retardation; chairman, American Bar Association Commission on Disability Law; secretary, The Arc of the United States; and treasurer, The Association for Persons with Severe Disabilities.
He has testified before Congress on nearly a dozen occasions about rights of persons with disabilities, most recently in 2005 concerning the withholding of treatment to people who seem to be at the end of their lives.
He has served as counsel to committees of the North Carolina General Assembly, in which role he was instrumental in reforming the state's mental health and developmental disability laws, its special education laws, and its guardianship laws (1969-1980).
Rud has served on task forces of the Kansas Judicial Council (related to guardianship law reform).
He has been a Jos. P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation Public Policy Fellow attached to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Handicapped, where, in 1987-8, he did the staff work that lead to the enactment of the Assistive Technology Act.
He has served as the Beach Center's liaison to the Inter-American Children's Institute (a specialized agency of the Organization of American States, based in Montevideo, Uruguay) and is the Center's liaison for policy research and faculty-and-student exchanges at three Chinese universities, East China Normal University (in Shanghai), Beijing Union University, and Chonqing Normal University.
He has been a visiting professor at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), Johns Hopkins University, Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University, and Chonqing Normal University.
His peers in the field of developmental disabilities and special education have described him as one of 36 people who, in the 20th Century, changed the course of history in mental retardation and, during the 19th and 20th Century, as one of the leaders of the field of special education. He is the recipient of national leadership awards from five disability-advocacy organizations. (American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disability; The International Council for Exceptional Children; The Arc of the United States; the National Association of Private Residential Facilities; Camphill Association of North America), and has received leadership awards from other natural or regional associations.
He is a former courtesy full professor of law at the University of Kansas (1980-2003, resigned); former full professor of public law and government, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and former associate with the Baltimore law firm Piper & Marbury (now, DLA Piper).
He is the father of a 40-year old man, Jay, who has several disabilities; a daughter, Amy, a welfare-housing reform research program administrator at the University of Chicago; and Kate, an actress in New York City and San Diego. Both daughters are graduates of the University of Kansas.
Education: His education includes: LL.M., Harvard Law School, 1969; LL.B./J.D., The University of Maryland Law School, 1964 (Editor-in-Chief, Maryland Law Review); B.A., Johns Hopkins University, 1959; Diploma (with academic honors), Kent School, Kent, Connecticut, 1955.
Interests: Rud Turnbull’s research and teaching interests include the following general topics featured on this website: Disability Policy, Family and Professional Partnership, and Positive Behavior Support. In addition, Rud Turnbull has carried out specific work in the following areas, among others: Nature and variability of core concepts of disability policy Effects of disability policy on individuals with disabilities and their families Factors that influence the generation and implementation of disability policy Structures of provider agencies that most facilitate or impede implementation of core concepts of disability policy Nature of family-professional partnerships and the role that trust plays in them Perceptions by individuals with disabilities regarding the promise and threat of Human Genome Project Relationships of federal special and general education law to each other and effects on individuals with disabilities Life sustaining treatment and end-of-life decision making The "new eugenics" and medically assisted dying as applied to individuals with cognitive disabilities Access to health care and health care policy Disability and criminal justice (especially capital punishment) Ethics of aversive and restrictive interventions Abuse, neglect, and maltreatment of people with disabilities Comparisons and contrasts of American and Chinese disability policy Factors that lead to excellence in disability policy leadership in Central and South America