Jane Fernandes

Jane Fernandes is a Deaf American educator and social justice advocate.

As of August 2021, Fernandes is the President of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Jane Frances Kelleher was born on August 21, 1956, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

She is the oldest child of Richard Paul and Mary Kathleen (née Cosgrove) Kelleher.

Her father was a lawyer and judge serving in Worcester, Barnstable, and Falmouth.

Her mother was deaf and raised to speak, read, and write English; she was also a trained golfer, following in her parents' footsteps.

Jane, who was born deaf, was raised in the same way.

She attended Worcester public schools before any state or federal laws required accommodations for deafness.

She received intensive hearing and speech instruction through a partnership between home and school.

While attending graduate school, she learned American Sign Language (ASL) and become involved with the Deaf community.

She attended Trinity College, earning a B.A. degree in French and comparative literature.

She attended the Middlebury College language school in French over two summers and studied in Cassis, France.

At Trinity, in 1977 and 1978, she received the John Curtis Underwood Memorial Poetry Prize and the comparative literature book prize for her senior thesis.

At The University of Iowa, she earned her M.A. and Ph.D., in comparative literature with emphasis on French poetry in historical depth,

Renaissance and Baroque drama and American Sign Language literature.

She also received the Phillip G. Hubbard Human Rights Award.

After graduating from Iowa, she carried out academic work centered in Deaf Language and Culture.

She coordinated the American Sign Language and Interpreting Programs at Northeastern University before going to Gallaudet University as chair of Sign Communication.

During this time, The Education of the Deaf Act of 1986 came into law.

She married James Fernandes in 1988.

In 1990, Fernandes became the first Deaf woman to lead an American school designed for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, and deaf-blind students, serving at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind in Honolulu until August 1995.

In 1990 they moved to Honolulu, Hawaii where she became the first Deaf woman to lead an American school designed for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, and deaf-blind students, serving at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind in Honolulu until August 1995.

She also established an Interpreter Education Program at Kapiolani Community College and taught Deaf Education at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

During her time there she fostered the understanding of Hawaiian Sign Language as the Sign Language of Indigenous Peoples on the islands.

In 1993, she received the Alice Cogswell Award in 1993 from Gallaudet University for valuable service on behalf of deaf citizens.

Upon resuming service to Gallaudet University in 1995, Fernandes served as Vice President of the National Deaf Education Center.

She led several projects to improve deaf education nationwide, in three areas;

In 1999, she proposed the creation of the Cochlear Implant Education Center at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School which was established in 2000.

Through this program, she stated publicly that American Sign Language and cochlear implant technology are both important to the development of deaf infants, toddlers, and youth.

In 2000, President I. King Jordan named Fernandes provost of the university without consulting the faculty, a move which Jordan called "a terrible mistake".

During this time the university raised $28 million for the Sorenson Language and Communication Center, created the World Deaf Leadership scholarship and obtained research grants from the government and the National Science Foundation Science of Learning grant.

Her main work was on the university’s strategic plan "New Directions for Academic Affairs" which called for Gallaudet University to model what it means to be an inclusive deaf university in all aspects of life; this included students living with deaf or hearing parents, using different languages, having a deaf member of their family, as well as other social differences, such as social, gender or ethnic status.

When Jordan retired, Fernandes applied for the university presidency.

In the application, Fernandes wrote:"Gallaudet's mission holds both personal and professional meaning for me. I am a white Deaf woman, the daughter of a Deaf mother and a hearing father, with both Deaf and hearing brothers, all of whom are white people. The generations of white Deaf and hearing people in my family have never signed; they have always been oral people. Having grown up Deaf, I came to learn Sign Language relatively late, at the age of 23, while I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa. From that time on, I have embraced signing and visual communication as the keystone of Deaf education and now the uniting feature of Gallaudet's diverse, Deaf community. While we respect a variety of communication modes and languages among Deaf people, we must also unite in affirming visucentric public discourse."

Her presidential platform, "Many Ways of Being Deaf," articulated work to be done throughout the university to include, value, and respect students, faculty, and staff of all races and all ways of being deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind.

Naming racism and audism as systemic issues at Gallaudet caused a strong reaction to Fernandes' appointment as Gallaudet University president.

Audism, defined by Tom Humphries, is discrimination based on the ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears.

Scores of students protested against her appointment.

According to The Washington Post, "Students objected to the appointment of Jane Fernandes, who is Deaf and is currently the university's provost because she did not grow up using American Sign Language. Some students also criticized Fernandes for not having warm relations with students."

She previously served as president of Guilford College from 2014 to 2021.