Disability World Staff Note Contributions of David Pfeiffer, Disability Studies Pioneer

As we prepare this issue of Disability World, the news of Prof. David Pfeiffer's untimely death and admiring recollections of his pioneering role in disability rights advocacy and the creation of disability studies are pulsing across the internet between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Most recall David's gentle humor, as when he retired from Suffolk University in 1997, announcing that he was "relocating to the middle of the Pacific Ocean" to become a policy analyst at the Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

He took with him the responsibility to edit the Disability Studies Quarterly, periodical of the Society for Disability Studies, a group he helped to develop. Under his guidance, the journal became available free on the web, an accomplishment he took pride in, noting how it would have pleased his mentor and DSQ's founding editor, Prof. Irv Zola.

Official and unofficial remembrances of David are being collected for a forthcoming tribute in DSQ (send to Beth Haller: bhaller@towson.edu), but in the meantime, we note some of his passions that made it to print: on the international level, he was opposed to and dismissive of the latest iteration of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Impairment, Disability and Handicap, known as the International Classification of Functioning and Health; on the domestic level, he was dedicated to unearthing and preserving little known histories of the earliest contributions to the independent living movement (check out 2001-2003 issues of www.ragged-edge-mag.com); and within academic circles, he was supportive of and mentored those working to establish disability studies courses and programs at the university level.

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