Le Dragon Déchaîné

Interview with Dean Lazarus

On the occasion of the rentrée solennelle of Sciences Po’s campus of Le Havre, LDD has the opportunity to interview Jeanne Lazarus. As the Dean of the undergraduate college, her role involves being in charge of academics for the bachelor program.

LDD: I am very glad to be meeting you, Dean Lazarus. First of all, I attended your conference with the 1As this morning: is there anything that you got from that conference that was new to you? How do you feel about the new cohort?

Dean Lazarus: Yes, well, it was a very interesting time for me. I’m always glad to meet the students— the new students— when they arrive in Sciences Po, and they have, um, a new vision of everything, and especially this year, because we’re implementing a reform of the curriculum. So it was very interesting to get their feedback. I also felt that the atmosphere was very calm and focused on studies; and also people seemed happy to be here. So I enjoyed that exchange with the students.

I’m very glad to hear that. Continuing on the new bachelor program, which is, I think, one of the main objects of your visit here. What do you think was the main challenge in the internal process of figuring out how to work out the new curriculum?

I think um, when we did that reform, the challenges moved along the way. The first challenge was to find a way to change the second year and to have more choices with the majors, the different disciplines. So it was, like, a really technical challenge. We wanted to change the architecture and also get many different things in the curriculum. So we had to find like a tetris, find ways to make everything enter in our programs. And then, I think there is also a diplomatic part because many of the things we are implementing depend on the professors. We need the professors to be on board and to agree on changing some of the courses, some of the assessment of the organisation of the curriculum. So I spent a lot of time discussing with the departments or with some professors. I also wanted to discuss with the students, with the administrative part. So it’s not only creating something new, it’s also taking people on board. So, it was, yes, it was quite interesting, but sometimes we had some difficulties because we thought that some new ideas would be great and that everybody would like them. But then some people raised organisational problems or intellectual problems. So, yes, I would say I really wanted to have a consensus, because it’s going to be for— I hope— a long time, that we’re going to have this curriculum. So I don’t want people to get into that in um, a bad mood. So, and I think that we’ve succeeded on that part. And yes, no, it is the real test; the reality test I would say, with the students starting this new curriculum. So we’ll see what is happening, but I feel that everything’s ready, all the campuses are ready, and until now the first two weeks seem to have been okay.

That’s a whole new reform that was implemented this year, but I also heard a lot about the new report on how to move Sciences Po and both the undergraduate and graduate programs towards a more European perspective. So, from the report of the Europe committee that was published, I think, yesterday or the day before, there is a lot of new information, axes of recommendations. And there’s one that, um, was brought to my attention specifically, which is the choice of having a new European track implemented in the undergraduate college. I saw that the different alternatives that were proposed were either to mix Dijon and Nancy, or to have Paris as a new European campus, but keeping Nancy and Dijon as distinct entities, but also a third one to have a new Brussels campus implemented. What I want to ask you is why were the choices of these alternatives pushed forward rather than simply strengthening the current European minors that were already on Dijon and Nancy, and offering simply more classes in English?

Yes, so this report, um, has been written by the two presidents of this group that has been decided by Luis Vassi or president. So he decided to have around 30 high-level people to think about Europe. And so we had many people who work on the European Commission, who had responsibilities within Europe, from many different countries, and also some deans, like me, who were involved in the discussion, and then they gave some thoughts and direction. But a report doesn’t mean that we’ve made decisions. So now we have those ideas, those directions, and we need to process them, to examine all the advantages and maybe weaknesses of some propositions. The first thing that I must say is that we don’t think about opening a Brussels campus for the bachelor. So if it happens, it’s going to be for the master level. And the question of having two campuses focusing on Europe, is a very old question for the bachelor. So it’s not a surprise that it’s been raised by the committee, and I think that’s something we need to think about, because sometimes for the candidates, it’s not completely clear. And we need to just examine what is working or not working. And for me, that’s very important to say what you said, strengthening what we already have, and that’s also how I did the reform. My idea has always been to keep what is working, and to deepen that, and to add other things. So that will be the spirit of how we will deal with those propositions.

I had a question that is kind of in the same theme. Many students are raising questions here, as well as in other campuses, about equality of opportunities across different campuses. Last year, when you and Luis Vassy were present in Le Havre for the inauguration of the new common room, you were asked about conferences being organised mainly on the Paris campus and scheduled mostly on Tuesdays, which is a day that is widely inaccessible for us to go to Paris on as accommodation for the night is very expensive for students. Is there any way that this could be resolved? How do you plan on balancing out those opportunities?

Well, I think equal opportunity is a bit different than that. Yeah, equal opportunities means to admit students from different social backgrounds, which is much more important than accessing some conferences.

Sorry, I meant it in general, as access to intellectual events.

And yes, that’s something different between Paris and the rest of the campuses; there are more events in Paris. But still, as we answered last time, for the bachelor students in Paris, it’s not always possible to go to those events because they are very crowded and there are also all the master students on the campus. So, on paper, you may think that the Paris campus students spend their time going to conferences and having access to everything, but it’s not the case for everybody; there are limits to what they get. And in the campuses, you got the proximity of the campus staff, the fact that the teachers are closer to you than in Paris. So, you have things in the [regional] campuses that are different than in Paris; and I won’t say that you lack opportunities. We also organise many conferences and events in the campuses, by the campus administration and also by the students. So there is a long list of speakers and interesting people who come to your campus. You can always invite people: the Sciences Po brand also works for the campus. So, when you invite people from Sciences Po, if you’re in Le Havre, they will come because it is Sciences Po. So you have this equal opportunity I think. But, yes, I know that some events are only in Paris; but then when you will have your bachelor’s, you will be able to come to Paris and to go to that.

Let me just check the time so that you don’t miss the [rentrée solennelle] opening conference. Maybe one last question. At different times where you were there talking in the last year, you emphasized a lot the role of having a secure environment for students’ mental and physical well-being. However you also claim to not be in favour of having credits attributed to students for their participation in sports or arts. How do you plan on getting more students to participate in arts, to participate in sports, and to engage in that student life that is so good for their mental well-being without having it institutionalised in the curriculum?

Yes, well, for the art, it is credited. In the first and second years, we have the artistic workshops that are worth three credits. So, it is completely

credited in the curriculum. For sports, you have credits, but they are optional credits. So it’s not mandatory to have sports. They have credits but those don’t really count for getting your degree.

I meant it more so in the context of associations and artistic BDA events, rather than the artistic workshops.

Yes, but that is, and we already had the discussion last year as you noticed, I think the limit is at one point it is still voluntary activities. So we can’t organize everything in students’ lives. We give a lot of help for student lives: you have rooms, you have money for that, you have organisational help from the campus. So at one point, this is about your will to participate or not. And, I can say also that sometimes, for the well-being of students, it’s also good not to have too many things. Some students are involved in four different associations and they’re exhausted by all the different projects that they have because they don’t want to miss anything; and sometimes it’s too much. But I don’t want to monitor that for you. You are young adults, so you have to do your own experiences on that. And, yes, that’s how we do things. We try to get a balance between what we organise ourselves and what is outside; but you know that you will always find help from us for this organisation. However, giving credits would mean that it is an academic requirement, which is not.

I think we are out of time, thank you so much for sitting down with me, and LDD today.

You’re welcome. Thank you for your questions.

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“It’s About Us”: Thibaut Bruttin Opens the Academic Year on Press Freedom

“Freedom of the press is not a privilege for journalists,” Thibaut Bruttin told students at this year’s Rentrée Solennelle.

“It’s about us,” he said. “Every one of us needs information.”

When Thibaut Bruttin, Director General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), stepped up to deliver the inaugural lecture at Sciences Po Le Havre on Sept. 2, 2026, he came with a warning: the free press is losing ground almost everywhere, and the public has the most to lose.

The afternoon opened the 2026-27 academic year before a packed amphitheater, under a theme that has never been more urgent: the reliability of information in an age of disinformation and foreign interference. Jeanne Lazarus, Dean of Sciences Po’s undergraduate college, gave the opening address, and the Bureau des Arts (BDA) followed with a music and dance performance on press freedom. “I was very moved by the music and dance around freedom of the press,” Bruttin said.

For Bruttin, the afternoon was also a return home. A Sciences Po alumnus, he joined RSF in 2014 and has led it since July 2024. “I am a student of Sciences Po, deep in my heart,” Bruttin said.

The organization he leads runs a large Asia-Pacific bureau in Taipei and publishes the World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries using a tally of abuses against journalists and a survey of experts on each country’s political, economic, legal, social and security conditions. The 2026 edition recorded the lowest global average in the index’s history. When the index began, the average country was 72 out of 100, compared with 54 today.

Violence against journalists is returning, with more than 200 killed in Gaza alone. “Donald Trump has not been elected despite the media; he’s been elected because he repeatedly assaults the media,” Bruttin said. Platforms favor posts from friends over news, newsrooms are shrinking, and polls rank the media among the least trusted institutions.

“We might be seeing the beginning of an extinction event for the press as we knew it,” Bruttin said. He compared journalism to jazz, which still has its clubs and magazines but no longer sits at the center of culture.

In the lecture, he identified two main recurrent trends. The first is a backlash against the universality of press freedom, a view that casts a free press as something for “a white dude in Europe, fairly wealthy, fairly bourgeois.” The Chinese Communist Party has used international forums to present it as a Western idea, he said. Against that claim, he presented the people RSF defends, including Jimmy Lai, founder of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily, sentenced in February to 20 years in prison under the National Security Law, largely for what his newspaper published.

The second trend is the confusion between freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Bruttin pointed to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which names the two separately. In his reading, press freedom carries a duty to gather facts and bring them to the public, and it gives neither journalists nor their employers a license to broadcast their beliefs.

Bruttin called his picture of the situation “fairly bleak,” then turned to remedies. RSF refuses to defend propaganda that poses as journalism, he said, recalling a request from Russia Today for support against legal action in Latvia. “Freedom of the press was not invented for foreign powers to intervene in national political debates,” Bruttin said.

When Russian networks circulated fake videos of Bruttin on X, the company refused to remove them because the man in them looked like him. “Yes, it looked like me because it was an impersonation,” Bruttin said. RSF wants democracies to guarantee “due prominence” for news media online and a “new deal for the press” to fund reporting. “Sometimes we have subscriptions to TV platforms, or Netflix, and we don’t access it, but we just pay for it,” Bruttin said. “Let’s do that with the media.” Both the Russia Today letter and the fake videos on X show foreign interference working through the language of liberty.

The image that lingered came from a story Bruttin told midway through. In Hong Kong, he once met a North Korean woman who realized that a foreign visitor knew more about her country than she did, and she cried from shame. Her ignorance had been imposed by the state. In democracies, nobody needs to impose it: the information is there, often only a click or a subscription away, and people still let it pass. That is the ignorance Bruttin fears, built up one autoplayed video and one unopened subscription at a time.

The index makes the stakes plain: fewer than 1% of the world’s people live in a country where press freedom is rated good, and France, ranked 25th, is not among them. Censorship is the loss everyone can see, with its jailed reporters and shuttered newsrooms; while indifference works quietly, through feeds that crowd out reporting, and it needs no law to take hold.

Bruttin said that as a Sciences Po student 20 years ago, he did not see the need to follow the news every day—a confession that carried particular weight in a room full of aspiring diplomats and policymakers who will depend on reliable information to do their jobs. If free press is to outlast this decline, it will need readers who treat the news as a habit worth paying for. The students he addressed at the Rentrée Solennelle are among those who will decide whether that habit survives. 龍

Are You in a “Very Chinese Time of Your Life Right Now”?

By Claire DIVISIA

In April 2025, a seemingly innocuous post by Twitter user @girl_virus declared: “you met me at a very chinese time in my life.” What began as a parody of a quote from the cult classic Fight Club quickly mutated into a defining cultural trend for Gen Z: “becoming Chinese,” or “Chinamaxxing.” Becoming Chinese has been defined as a social media trend popularized by Generation Z, and particularly prevalent among those living in the West, who adopt norms and traditions typically associated with Chinese culture, or express public praise for China as a country and nation (South China Morning Post, 2026). While the origins of the meme date back to early 2025, it began widespread circulation across Tiktok and other social media platforms in 2026 (Price, 2026). But beneath the viral videos of influencers drinking hot water or unboxing Labubu dolls lies a deeper story: an entire generation’s growing disillusionment with the American Dream.

This phenomenon started with consumerism. For years, “Made in China” was a label looked down upon in the West, but today, these products, from Labubu dolls to Temu furniture, have become desirable. Market data shows that Pop Mart, the company behind the viral Labubu figurines, made roughly $870 million in just the first half of 2024 (Bharade & Liam, 2025). Meanwhile, Chinese e-commerce giants like Taobao have surged to the top of App Store charts in the US, Canada and France in 2025. But the spread of “Chineseness” hasn’t stopped at viral products; it has entered people’s lifestyles. Mandarin learning on Duolingo spiked by 216% in early 2026, at the same time as Tiktok users migrated in a cohort of over 700 million ‘refugees’ to RedNote (Xiaohongshu) (Perez, 2025). Searches for “Traditional Chinese Medicine” also reached peak popularity this year as young Westerners trade coffee for hot water and embrace Chinese routines like eating congee and wearing slippers around the house. For many, these practices offer a sense of discipline and wellness that feels missing in the chaotic, high-stress environment of Western late-stage capitalism.

Why is this happening now? The answer is as much about Washington as it is about Beijing. While China is enjoying a rise in popularity, favorability for the West, notably the United States, is plummeting (Schulman & Silver, 2026). Following the 2024 US election and a series of controversial reforms, trust in Western institutions has severely eroded (Eddy & Shearer, 2025). In 2014, 75% of people in France viewed the US favorably (Statista 2025a); by 2025, that number dropped to 36% (Statista 2025b). As the “American Dream” feels increasingly unattainable due to rising costs of living and political instability, China’s model is being re-evaluated by Gen Z. While the West faces recession fears, China has reached a 90% urban homeownership rate (Jin, 2023) and eradicated extreme poverty for 800 million people (World Bank Group, 2023). Beijing has also gotten smarter about its image, employing increasingly efficient soft power tactics through social media. Instead of rigid political propaganda, they are harnessing the “attention economy” by inviting influencers to share “authentic” experiences of the utopias they encounter in China’s big cities like Chongqing and Shanghai. This “memetic warfare,” using memes and viral content to fight ideological battles, has successfully rebranded China as the cool, efficient alternative to a declining West.

However, we need to look at this trend with a critical eye. Most Americans “becoming Chinese” aren’t engaging with the actual, complex reality of life in the PRC. Instead, they are consuming a “hyperreal” version: a curated, frictionless fantasy designed to absorb the West’s grievances. By over-idealizing China as a response to their own political frustrations, many are falling into a trap of what the sociologist Colin Campbell calls “imaginative hedonism.” The Western audience selectively chooses aspects of China to praise and daydream about, deriving pleasure from it, instead of actually engaging with the actual, complex reality of the state (Urry, 2002). This binary thinking, leading “anti-US” sentiments of the Western youth to evolve into “pro-China” ones often overlooks serious issues, such as the treatment of ethnic Tibetan and Uyghur minorities, in favor of the smooth, one-dimensional facade portrayed through memes and short-form online content.

In a similar vein, this trend risks the commodification of racial differences. When we reduce a country’s culture to a “trend” or a “meme,” we engage in a form of cultural consumption that famous author bell hooks described as “eating the other” (hooks, 1992). We treat Chinese culture like a “spice” to liven up our own lives without actually respecting the history or the struggles of the people behind it. We can wear Adidas CNY jackets and drink Tsingtao beer, but we don’t have to face the systemic discrimination that many of Chinese descent actually experience in the West. Ultimately, this trend is just an “era” that will also come to an end as the Internet moves on to another culture to center on, as easily disposable as a SHEIN piece of clothing. China is just an “Other” that will ultimately be “eaten, consumed, and forgotten,” inscribing itself in a long history of Edward Said’s Orientalism (Said, 1973).

Perhaps the most concerning part of this correlation between “becoming Chinese” memes and the tendency of falling into a dualist nature of discourse of “good VS. bad” is what it says about our current capacity for nuance. While the trend is broadly a force for good, combating decades of anti-Chinese propaganda from the West, we seem to have lost the ability to hold two truths at once: that the Western model is currently failing many of its citizens, and that the alternative rising to meet it has its own, deep flaws.

The “Chinese Era” of social media proves that we are desperate for a different way of living, but we won’t find it by simply swapping one idealized superpower for another. True progress requires us to stop looking for a “default” model, critiquing both systems honestly, and fixing their issues. Until we can move past the binary of “Western failure vs. Eastern success,” we aren’t actually protesting the status quo, we’re just continuing to scroll through it, with no action taken.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bharade, A., & Liam, E. (2025, May 19). A fluffy, $85 toy is taking Asia by storm and sparking legions of knockoffs. Inside the meteoric rise of Labubu. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-rise-labubu-monsters-popmart-toy-adults-china-sold-out-2024-11

Eddy, K., & Shearer, E. (2025, October 29). How trust in info from news outlets and social media has changed over time. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/29/how-americans-trust-in-information-from-news-organizations-and-social-media-sites-has-changed-over-time/

hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and Representation. South End Press.

Jin, K. (2023). The new China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism. National Geographic Books.

Perez, S. (2025, January 15). Duolingo sees 216% spike in US users learning Chinese amid TikTok ban and move to RedNote. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/15/duolingo-sees-216-spike-in-u-s-users-learning-chinese-amid-tiktok-ban-and-move-to-rednote/

Price, J. (2026, January 15). 2026 is the Year Everyone Wants to “Become Chinese”: What to Know About the Viral TikTok Trend. Complex. https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/backwoodsaltar/viral-tiktok-trend-2026-become-chinese

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. Vintage.

Schulman, J., & Silver, L. (2026, March 26). US favorability down, China favorability up in many countries. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/15/views-of-the-us-have-worsened-while-opinions-of-china-have-improved-in-many-surveyed-countries/

South China Morning Post. (2026, February 22). Why Americans are ‘becoming Chinese’ [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmeoCECiyVE

Statista. (2025a, November 28). Public views on U.S. favorability, by country 2014. https://www.statista.com/statistics/233020/global-views-on-us-favorability/

Statista. (2025b, November 28). Views on the United States and China worldwide 2025, by country. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1480392/opinion-us-china-world-country/

Urry, J. (2002). The tourist gaze. SAGE.

World Bank Group. (2023, September 25). Lifting 800 Million People Out of Poverty – New Report Looks at Lessons from China’s Experience. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience

Countdown to 2026 Fifa World Cup: The Universality of Joy and Rupture of the Fifa World Cup Final 2022

By Patrick LUO

Source: the Atlantic

December 18, 2022. World Cup Final in Qatar. Argentina vs France. Penalty shootout to decide.

The Argentines must score this kick to win. Moments later…. The players run towards Montiel, the decisive kicker….. The French stood with their faces dejected. Outside of the stadium: Argentina in tears of joy, France in tears of bittersweetness; the world in ecstasy.

In total 1.5 billion watched that tournament final on their televisions — that itself is almost 20% of the global population of 8 billion. This snapshot demonstrates that the World Cup Final is more than a game; rather, an experience that takes humanity to unprecedented emotional depths.

Indeed. A tournament final can unite polarised and fractured nations together through collective emotions.For Argentina, the tears of joy unite them in a rare glimpse of joy amidst one of the worst modern economic crises. Inflation had reached 3 digits and many citizens lost hope as their savings were wiped out along with their purchasing power. Moreover, Argentina went through periods between democracy and military juntas. The last junta from 1974 to 1983, saw more than 20,000 jailed, tortured, killed or disappeared. Therefore, this victory also reminded Argentines that their country was not just instability but grit and passion, through the player’s hard won victory.

For France, the tears of bittersweetness united them amidst the question of what counts as French, given France has become a much more multiethnic society. The latter was proven the winner as the French players from mostly migrant backgrounds fought until the very last minute of the final.

Liberty in taking initiative even when losing,

Equality in players being selected for merit,

Fraternity in players united in pursuing that one trophy that was so close, yet so far.

The final itself wasn’t just about national narratives, but individual narratives that prove that football ensures the most deserving talents don’t go to waste.

For example, Messi — the captain of the winning Argentine team in that final — almost stopped practising football completely as his family was unable to pay for his growth hormone deficiency treatments — a condition that stops height growth. Thanks to his talent and relentless drive, a Spanish Club — FC Barcelona — promised to recruit him and pay for the treatment.

For Mbappe, the French player who scored two goals in that final,he started from the most marginalised outer neighbourhoods of Paris. However, he found the spark with portraits of all time greats, which turned into relentlessness that attracted the French national team’s focus.

For the host country of the final, Qatar, the development of futuristic stadiums and the improvement of transport systems and of housing have moved it beyond the caricature of a small oil-rich nation, but rather a small oil-rich nation that can host a seismic and global event like the World Cup.

For the Global South, the message from Qatar was “If they can host the world, the world could reshape the view of that host country”.

The next edition of the World Cup Final will take place this summer in 2026. Teams, players and hosts will change, but never the stories of joy, redemption, suffering and pride.

Reframing Disability: From Individual Burden to Structural Failure

By Gabriele CEPAVICIUTE

The 1994 American comedy-drama film “Forrest Gump”, directed by Robert Zemeckis, tells the story of a man who moves through life by constantly adapting to the world around him. Early in the film, a young Forrest, wearing leg braces and being chased by other children, is urged forward with the now-iconic line: “Run, Forrest, run!” The braces fall off, and this moment is framed as liberation. What follows is a life defined by movement: running through school, into the Vietnam War, and even across the country. For many viewers, this is an inspiring story of perseverance and “overcoming” limitations such as disability through determination. However, this raises an important question: if disability is understood as a “challenge”, is it really the individual who faces it, or is it something society has imposed?

Disability is often presented as an individual struggle, an obstacle to be overcome, yet much of this “struggle” does not emerge from the body itself, but from the environment in which that body exists. A wheelchair does not prevent movement, but stairs do. Individual learning needs alone do not exclude the student, but rigid education systems do. If disability was purely an individual limitation, there would not be such consistent patterns of exclusion. According to The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), children with disabilities are two to three times more likely to be out of school than their non-disabled peers. Similarly, workplaces that lack basic accomodations—such as flexible schedules, assistive technologies, or accessible infrastucture—create barriers that have little to do with ability or willingness to work. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 16% of the global population lives with a disability, yet employment rates for this group remain between 30% to 50%, compared to about 75% for non-disabled individuals. What is framed as a personal limitation is therefore the result of collective decisions about whose needs are prioritized.

Despite this, the dominant societal response to disability is not change, but emotional reaction. People with disabilities are often met with sympathy or admiration, to the extent that even ordinary actions, such as going to the grocery store independently, are framed as extraordinary. While this may appear as compassionate, it is ultimately passive. It acknowledges difficulty without questioning its cause, allowing observers to feel moral without requiring them to act. In this sense, the expression of “overcoming” plays a crucial role, because to describe disability as a “challenge” suggests that difficulty is inherent, while describing individuals as “overcoming” frames the obstacle as internal rather than structural. In contrast, accessibility demands something less comfortable—it requires redesigning spaces, policies and redistributing resources. In many European cities, historic buildings remain inaccessible due to preservation priorities, highlighting how exclusion is maintained in the name of tradition. Accessibility, however, shifts responsibility from individuals to institutions, where decision-makers often do not experience these barriers themselves. This is why sympathy is more common—it costs nothing. It is far easier to turn to emotions and admire individuals for overcoming obstacles than to remove those obstacles altogether.

Finally, if the problem is structural, then the solutions must be structural as well. Accessibility cannot be treated as a luxury, but must be integrated into society as a natural part of it. This includes designing spaces that are accessible from the start, rather than rebuilding them later, and consulting people with disabilities directly. Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests that up to 40% of the population benefits from accessible design at some point in their lives, including elderly individuals, parents with strollers and those with temporary injuries. This challenges the assumption that accessibility is a “special accommodation”, instead of being a public good. The goal is not to make people with disabilities better at adapting to the world, but to create a world that does not require constant adaptation in order to belong.

There is a reason why “Forrest Gump” remains so widely known. Much like its famous line, “Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get,” the film presents uncertainty as something to be accepted rather than questioned. It offers comfort, especially to those who are not required to face systemic barriers themselves. It reassures audiences that perseverance is enough, and that individuals can succeed without the world changing. However, this comes at a cost: it shifts attention away from structures that make succeeding inaccessible in the first place. Disability is not a personal failure to overcome, but a reflection of a world that has been built without everyone in mind. And if this world can be constructed, it can also be changed. For this reason the “challenge” is not in the people who have a disability, but the society that creates these barriers.