Harlan Lane

Who is Harlan Lane?

Harlan Lane is Distinguished University professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States, and founder of the Center for Research in Hearing, Speech, and Language. His research is focused on speech, Deaf culture, and sign language. Lane was born in Brooklyn on August 19, 1936. Remaining in New York City for college, he obtained both a B.S. and an M.S. in Psychology from Columbia University in 1958. He subsequently received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard and a second Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Sorbonne. In 1991, Lane received a MacArthur Foundation "genius award".

Lane - a hearing man - has become an often controversial spokesman for the Deaf community and critic of cochlear implants. He has written extensively on the social construction of disability and states that "Unless Deaf people challenge the culturally determined meanings of deaf and disability with at least as much vigor as the technologies of normalization seek to institutionalize those meanings, the day will continue to recede in which Deaf children and adults live the fullest lives and make the fullest contribution to our diverse society."