Paul K. Longmore

Paul K. Longmore (July 10, 1946 – August 9, 2010) was a professor of history, an author, and a notable disability activist who taught at San Francisco State University.

Life Paul Longmore lost the use of his hands to polio when he was seven-years-old and required breathing assistance from a ventilator at night and for part of the day. He received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Occidental College, graduating in 1968 and 1971, respectively, and majoring in history and minoring in political studies. In 1984, he received his doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, where he majored in history and minored in early American history, U.S. intellectual and cultural history, and political philosophy. were soon reversed in a policy change that became known as the Longmore Amendment.

He was a major figure in the establishment of disability as a field of academic study, an endeavor analogous to the establishment, in previous decades, of race, class, gender, and queer studies. Longmore was a co-founder in 1996 of San Francisco State's Institute on Disability, a program he later directed and propagated to other colleges and universities. He was also a major campaigner against the assisted suicide movement in California, and was the first professor awarded the Henry B. Betts Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). which is now under the direction of disability historian Catherine Kudlick.

His final book was published posthumously by a team of scholars, led by Longmore Institute Director Catherine Kudlick. Telethons: Spectacle, Disability, and the Business of Charity was published by Oxford University Press, with a release date of December 28, 2015 and a publication date of January 26, 2016.