Toward a Broader Spectrum of Thought

Author: Notre Dame Magazine

“I’m trying to get people to think differently about people who think differently,” says Rob Hahn ’91, whose son Bobby has a high-functioning form of autism. When Bobby was denied admission to Notre Dame, his father asked why. What Hahn heard, first at Notre Dame and elsewhere in the years since, suggests to him that colleges do not adequately value “neurodiversity” in their student bodies. Hahn developed “The Neurodiversity Challenge,” a mission that emerged from his personal experience, to advocate for increased representation in higher education and business of people with conditions on the autism spectrum.