Landmark College Responds to Misguided Comments About the Potential of Students with Learning Disabilities
Landmark College leadership, friends, and alumni joined neurodiversity advocates across the country in pushing back on President Donald Trump's comments that those with learning disabilities should not be President. Trump made the comments in reference to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has dyslexia. Unfortunately, the comments were made the first day of the nationwide Neurodiversity Celebration Week.
“The President’s misguided and uninformed remarks ignore what we’ve known for years: that people who learn differently make incredible leaders, precisely because they’ve gone through life having to work harder, and work differently, than those around them,” said Landmark College President Jim Dlugos.
“We know that countless leaders, from business and politics to the arts and sciences, have achieved great things because of, not despite, their learning differences," Dlugos continued.
Notably, Vermont's 81st Governor Peter Shumlin, a founding trustee of Landmark College, is dyslexic. In September 2015 remarks to Landmark students, Shumlin said that “I would not be an effective governor if I did not learn differently."
But, Shumlin continued, “(Landmark College) understands that you have a bright future, that you’ll be an extraordinary leader in whatever you choose, and that the fact that you fought twice or three times or ten times or a thousand times harder than the person next to you to get to the same place is what empowers you to be the best leader we can possibly find.”
Biomedical industry executive David Lucchino '95 said that " my dyslexia was a superpower,” in a 2023 interview with Landscape magazine, Landmark College’s alumni publication. “It led me to become a visual problem solver, a listening and verbal learner, a reverse thinker.” Lucchino tapped those skills to found and serve as CEO of multiple leading biomedical companies over the past three decades.
The response from Landmark College leaders was featured in news coverage in the Brattleboro Reformer and on WCAX-TV, CBS affiliate in the Burlington-Plattsburgh media market.
You can watch the full remarks given by Governor Shumlin about his dyslexia and the importance of Landmark College below.