By Ellie Simmers | Assistant News Editor
LYNCHBURG, Va. – As John Elder Robison stood before an audience at the University of Lynchburg as the speaker for the 2025 Annual Rosel Schewel lecture, he wasn’t just sharing his personal story—he was redefining what neurodivergence looks like in a world that often misunderstands those who think differently.
Diagnosed with autism at the age of 40, Robison spent much of his life believing he was incapable of success despite his impressive resume of work in music, engineering, advocacy, photography and luxury car maintenance.
Robison, like many other neurodivergent children, struggled in school, as his different behaviors were often viewed as lazy or defiant by his teachers.
“If I could have passed those classes, don’t you think I would have? Why would I have deliberately failed?,” exclaimed Robison.
Instead, he found himself excelling in the most non-traditional academic setting for a 13-year-old: the University of Massachusetts.
“Even though I was failing high school, I actually spent all my time at the university,” Robison recalled. “I went from breaking an electronics kit I got for Christmas to making it work to taking things apart and destroying them to learning how to fix things.”
Alongside Robison’s fascination and skill in the field of electronics, his fascination with music eventually led him to work on equipment for some of the biggest bands in the world, like Kiss and Pink Floyd.
“Music was the first place where I was really welcomed in my life,” said Robison, reveling in the fact that he wasn’t the “weird” guy, but the guy that could fix Pink Floyd’s equipment; or the guy that could build guitars for Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist of Kiss.
Despite all of his successes and prominence in the music industry, self-doubt followed him.
“I believed that I was a failure because of my disability, even though I was gifted because of my exceptionality,” Robison said.
Robison was convinced that “a real engineer could do this a lot better than me,” and that as soon as someone found out he was a high school dropout, they would want nothing to do with him.
Failing to see that his ability to visualize sound in ways others couldn’t was a rare and invaluable skill, Robison quit the music industry and started a string of ‘regular’ jobs, often allowing his insecurities to lead him to quit those positions as well.
Robison’s self doubts even led him to turn down a job offer from Lucasfilm as a sound engineer, fearing he would be exposed as a fraud.
“I thought there’s no way in the world that I’m going to move to LA and take a job out there doing that. They’re going to find out I’m not a real engineer, they’re going to fire me, and then not only am I going to be broke, I’m going to be starving 3,000 miles from home,” Robison recalled.
Only later in life did Robison realize the truth: he wasn’t just capable, he was exceptional.
“Real engineers design things that work. And we came back and bought more stuff because the stuff worked,” Robison said, recounting a conversation with scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked briefly on classified government projects but eventually quit as a result of his insecurities.
“What we want is results. We don’t want to hear that you graduated from a prestigious school. We want people who can make things work,” Robison said.
Robison has spent the years since his autism diagnosis advocating for neurodiversity, serving on government committees, speaking at the National Institutes of Health, and helping redefine how neurodivergence is categorized on a global scale.
Robison firmly believes that society must move beyond outdated notions of disability and recognize the value that neurodivergent individuals bring.
“To describe 15% of the population, maybe more, as disordered and broken is fundamentally wrong,” Robison argued.
“We are now at a time when we elected a president who promised to get rid of things like DEI because he called them discrimination in reverse,” Robison said, referring to President Trump’s recent executive orders and comments about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.
While Robison made it clear that he understands the importance of DEI programs for other marginalized groups, he challenged the current structure of neurodiversity programs, arguing that it is often framed in a way that discourages people from seeking support.
“For you to get into a neurodiversity support program in most workplaces and in many universities, you have to go to the institution and you have to say, ‘I’m disabled,’” Robison explained.
Rather than eliminating DEI programs, Robison proposed expanding accommodations to all individuals instead of restricting them to a select few.
“The idea that we should only give those services to a tiny group of kids who jump through hoops and maybe force their parents to hire lawyers, that is wrong,” Robison said.
Instead, he argued that schools and workplaces should focus on recognizing neurodivergence as a natural variation rather than a disability.
“We are not broken people. We are perfect examples of a different neurotype,” Robison proclaimed.
For more information about John Elder Robison, visit https://jerobison.blogspot.com/
John Elder Robison is the Neurodiversity Scholar in Residence at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, and one of the founders of the Neurodiversity Program at the school–one of the first of its kind at a major American university. Robison’s books Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Intelligence, Look Me in the Eye, Be Different, and Raising Cubby are the most widely read accounts of life with autism in the world.
