Cara Dunne-Yates

Paralympian and Three-Time Cancer Survivor Cara Dunne-Yates to Speak at Illinois Wesleyan

March 18, 2003

Paralympian and three-time cancer survivor Cara Dunne-Yates will be a guest speaker at Illinois Wesleyan University on Wednesday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m., in the Performance Gym of the Shirk Center, 302 Emerson St., Bloomington.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by Illinois Wesleyan’s division of the NCAA Foundation’s Challenging Athletes’ Minds for Personal Success (CHAMPS/Life Skills). CHAMPS/Life Skills is a program designed to provide support and services to students while helping to enhance their lives through educational programming and resources focused on diversity, gender equity, skills, and student well-being. The program emphasizes academic and athletic excellence, personal development, career development and commitment to service.

Dunne-Yates has won three silver and two bronze medals in ski racing, and one silver and one bronze medal in tandem cycling in three Paralympics since 1984. In her talk titled “Revisiting Reality,” Dunne-Yates will address how perceptions of reality and identity are affected by prejudices due to disability. She will also emphasize the importance of discovering personal truths and shaping personal identity with these discoveries. According to Dunne-Yates, differences due to disability are often perceived as negative, and she will discuss how her blindness and cancer have been essential and positive aspects of herself.

Also during her visit to Illinois Wesleyan, Dunne-Yates will present a colloquium titled “Disability Rights and Reproductive Freedom: A Contradiction or a Workable Concept?” on Friday, March 28, at 4 p.m. Her presentation in the Center for Natural Sciences, room C101, will focus on bio-ethical issues in relation to genetic testing and disability rights.

When Dunne-Yates was fifteen months old, she was diagnosed with retinal cancer that resulted in the loss of her eyesight by the age of five. After college, she fought bone cancer in her face that cut short her ski-racing career, and she is currently winning her third battle with cancer, this time sarcoma.

Dunne-Yates graduated from Harvard University as president of her class and earned a law degree from UCLA. She is now a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Dunne-Yates has also been the co-director of the New-England Retinoblastoma Family Foundation, which provides emotional support and resources for families stricken with retinoblastoma.

Dunne-Yates and husband Spencer have one daughter, Elise.