Neurodiversity and Just Societies: Rethinking Difference, Responsibility, and Human Dignity

Discussions will center around the emerging Neurodiversity Framework, which challenges traditional, deficit-based categorical models of neurological difference and reframes them as natural biological variations along a continuum of human diversity. Encompassing neurocognitive differences from autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and learning differences to mood disorders, schizophrenia, and psychopathy, speakers will discuss new research, clinical practice, and advocacy aimed at dismantling stigma and ensuring more holistic, person-centered support.

We will also explore the direct implications for criminal justice systems and how this paradigm challenges assumptions about moral blame, punishment, fixed dangerousness, and culpability of neurodivergent individuals. These long-held assumptions can contribute to forms of dehumanization within legal and cultural institutions. Many conditions—including conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and psychopathy—place individuals on accelerated tracks to justice involvement. Spectrum-based understandings of neurodivergence open new possibilities for early, relational, and remedial intervention.

This Campfire will also introduce the Center for Justice and Mental Well-Being at the Nova Institute for Health. The Center recognizes that justice in all its forms is foundational to human flourishing and mental well-being. A broader understanding of neurodiversity can inform new models of health and social and criminal justice that support regulation, agency, and inclusion—such as the Public Health Quarantine Model—which move toward prevention, care, and social responsibility.