👉 What: Touro Law 3rd Annual Disability Rights & Inclusion Conference
📍 Where: In-Person at Touro Law and Online via Zoom
📅 When: March 12th and 13th 2026
📰 More Information: https://tourolaw.edu/academics/disability-rights-conference
On Thursday and Friday, March 12-13, 2026, Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in Central Islip, New York will host a hybrid convening that belongs on the calendar of anyone serious about building a more inclusive society: “The 3rd Annual Touro Law Disability Rights & Inclusion Conference.” You can attend in person at Touro Law or online via Zoom. The program is structured for legal professionals, academics, students, advocates, and community members, and it offers up to 13.5 CLE credits for full attendance (7.5 credits on Day 1 and 6 credits on Day 2, including ethics/professionalism credit).
This conference is organized by Professor Samuel J. Levine, a Professor of Law at Touro and the Director of Touro Law’s Jewish Law Institute. Levine’s career helps explain why this event reaches beyond narrow legal doctrine. He is trained both as an American lawyer and as a rabbi, earning a B.A. from Yeshiva University (1990), a J.D. from Fordham Law (1994), an LL.M. from Columbia Law School (1996), and rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University (1996). Before moving fully into academia, he served as an appellate prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and clerked in the Southern District of New York for Judge Loretta A. Preska and Judge David N. Edelstein. In other words, Levine knows what law looks like on the page, and what it looks like when it meets real people in real institutions.
He is also a deeply established scholar. His work spans legal ethics and professional responsibility, criminal law, law and religion, and the interplay of Jewish and American law. He has authored two books (including a Volume 1 and Volume 2 comparative work on Jewish law and American law, as well as Was Yosef on the Spectrum?: Understanding Joseph Through Torah, Midrash, and Classical Jewish Sources) and published well over 60 law review articles and book chapters. He has served in leadership roles across multiple sections of the Association of American Law Schools, and he has been a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics. This combination, practice, scholarship, ethics leadership, and comparative legal imagination, is part of what makes his disability-rights programming at Touro distinct.
The Conference Series: Built For Durability, Not Headlines
This is the third annual conference in a series rooted in an ongoing institutional commitment. In 2019, Touro Law’s Jewish Law Institute launched the Disability Rights and Inclusion Project to promote disability rights, awareness, acceptance, and inclusion. In the years that followed, the project hosted numerous programs, among them an evening with Dr. Temple Grandin (2021), and that steady work became the runway for an annual, multidisciplinary conference series.
The first annual conference took place March 7-8, 2024, bringing together scholars and leaders to surface innovative programs and strategies to advance disability rights and inclusion. The second annual conference followed on March 6-7, 2025, framed explicitly as an effort to “expand the conversation” across researchers, lawyers, advocates, employers, service providers, and educators, while centering lived experience, including people with disabilities and family/caregivers. Touro also demonstrated that it intends for this work to last: proceedings from the inaugural conference were published through the Touro Law Review, and nearly all sessions from 2024 and 2025 were recorded and made available online, creating a practical archive for learning and teaching.
That is what “durable” can look like in higher education and legal culture: not one panel, not one statement, but an evolving platform that keeps the conversation public, accessible, and advancing.
Why 2026 Is “From Courtrooms To Culture”
The 2026 agenda is built to move across the places where disability rights and inclusion are won, or quietly lost: workplaces, courts, schools, community systems, faith traditions, global innovation, and the cultural narratives that shape how people are treated before the law ever enters the room.
The conference opens on Day 1 with welcome remarks by Dean Elena B. Langan and Professor Levine, setting the tone for two full days of panels and keynotes.
Day 1: Employment, Self-Advocacy, Courts, Education, Services, And The Arts
Day 1 begins by grounding inclusion where many people feel it first: the workplace. A morning panel focuses on inclusive hiring and organizational practice, ranging from modernization of universal design in recruitment, to the role of the Helen Keller National Center in strengthening employer and legal partnerships serving DeafBlind and vision- and hearing-loss communities, to a neurodiversity-focused perspective on the hidden labor of navigating work environments and building inclusive culture beyond recruitment.
From there, the conference makes an intentional pivot to voice and lived experience. A self-advocacy session includes a presentation by attorney John Kelly with his brother Owen on building an inclusive life, and a presentation by Bret Parker, Esq., Executive Director of the NYC Bar Association, titled “The Last Workplace Secret: How and Why I Told Everyone That I Have Parkinson’s.” Disability disclosure, when, how, why, and what happens afterward, remains one of the most practical fault lines in professional life. The conference puts that reality on the main stage.
Then the program turns to the judiciary. A “Judicial Perspectives” panel brings together Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Justice Rachel E. Freier of the New York Supreme Court, and Judge Loretta A. Preska, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, a rare and consequential lineup for a conversation expected to address accessibility, accommodations, and equal justice.
Day 1 continues with “law and society” themes, including presentations on disability policy and autonomy and on mental health and involuntary commitment. The lunch keynote is delivered by John Elder Robison (William & Mary), author of Look Me in the Eye, offering a neurodiversity-centered perspective that blends lived experience and scholarship.
The afternoon expands the frame again: corporate law through a disability lens, the right to spiritual care for people with disabilities, and disability inclusion in elite law-firm culture. An education panel moves into tuition support issues in religious schools, vocational education feedback for learners with learning difficulties, and inclusion in Jewish educational and religious contexts. A services-and-supports segment includes philanthropy and investment perspectives, participatory research on autistic individuals’ mental health priorities, and data-driven approaches to managing ADHD in daily life.
And because culture shapes policy long before policy shapes culture, Day 1 also includes artistic presentations, one on music and neurodiversity and another on film as a tool for reframing public perceptions of disability through the lens of the ReelAbilities Film Festival. Day 1 concludes with a dinner keynote by Hardeep Rai, founder and CEO of The Kaleidoscope Group, described as an international advocate for neurodiversity in business whose organization invests in ventures led by disabled entrepreneurs.
Day 2: Religion, International Perspectives, Culture, History, And A Keynote That Embodies The Stakes
Day 2 opens again with Professor Levine and moves into themes often left out of mainstream disability conferences: religion, theology, and the structure of rights and duties in faith-based legal traditions. From there, an international panel draws presenters from multiple regions to discuss the evolution of self-advocacy into broader neurodiversity advocacy, critiques of institutional misunderstanding, uses of VR and AI for empowerment in travel and education, and inclusive emergency preparedness initiatives for people with disabilities and older adults.
The midday keynote is delivered by Justice Richard Bernstein of the Michigan Supreme Court, described as blind and a prominent disability-rights advocate, speaking on “Overcoming Obstacles and Breaking Down Barriers.” In a conference that spans law and culture, having a sitting state supreme court justice who is blind is not symbolic, it is a reminder of what representation and access look like at the highest levels of legal authority.
Day 2 also features two panels under the umbrella of cultural and societal perspectives, with presentations ranging from “third-party accommodations” and individualization in disability law, to law teaching with dyslexia, to a historical examination of early twentieth-century treatment of people with intellectual disabilities. It also includes a presentation from the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Program (U.S.) on proactive inclusion for non-visible disabilities, and closes with Professor Levine’s remarks tying together the themes of the two-day program.
My Invitation To You
This is what I value most about the conference that Professor Samuel J. Levine has built at Touro Law: it refuses to treat disability rights as a niche subject or an “awareness” moment. Instead, it brings the conversation where it belongs, into the places where decisions are made and lives are shaped: the workplace, the courtroom, the classroom, our faith communities, and the cultural stories we tell about who belongs. When a program holds space for judges and lawyers alongside self-advocates, researchers, educators, and artists, it signals something important: inclusion isn’t a side topic. It’s a measure of our institutions.
If disability rights and inclusion are part of your work, or should be, make plans now to join March 12-13, 2026, either in person at Touro Law or online via Zoom. Bring a colleague. Share it with your network. And if you’re seeking professional development, the opportunity to earn up to 13.5 CLE credits makes participation even more practical. The details matter, the voices matter, and the time is now, because the gap between “what we say” and “what we do” closes only when we show up, learn, and carry the work forward.
What To Know If You’re Deciding Whether To Attend
Dates: Thursday-Friday, March 12-13, 2026
Format: Hybrid , in person at Touro Law (Central Islip, NY) and online via Zoom
CLE: Up to 13.5 credits total (Day 1: 7.5; Day 2: 6, including ethics/professionalism)
Leadership: Welcoming remarks include Dean Elena B. Langan; conference organized by Professor Samuel J. Levine
Logistics: Discounted lodging is available at a nearby Marriott; tuition assistance/discounts available for Touro staff, students, and faculty.
” Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a strategic advantage. “
Dr. Kirk Adams, Ph.D.
Advocate, Leader and Keynote Speaker on Disability Inclusion & Leadership
Leading the Way to Accessible Innovation
Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI)
Executive Director
Strengthening individual and organizational capability for creating diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.
Innovative Impact, LLC Consulting
Managing Director
Impactful Workforce Inclusion Starts Here
American Foundation for the Blind
Immediate Past President & CEO
To create a world of no limits for people who are blind or visually impaired.
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