Ron McCallum

Ronald Clive "Ron" McCallum AO (born 8 October 1948) is an Australian legal academic. He is an expert in labour law, and has served as a professor and dean of law at the University of Sydney. He is the first totally blind person to be appointed to a full professorship in any subject at any university in Australia or New Zealand, as well as the first to become a Dean of Law in these countries. He chairs the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva.

Ron McCallum was born in Melbourne, ten weeks premature and weighing only three pounds. He was diagnosed with retrolental fibroplasia. At the time, treating this required placing the baby in a humidicrib with uncontrolled oxygen; while this prevented McCallum from dying, it meant that he permanently lost his sight.

His father, Patrick McCallum, who had suffered from post-traumatic stress due to his participation in World War II, died during McCallum's childhood. He was thus raised by his mother, Edna McCallum, along with his two brothers in the Melbourne suburb of Hampton, in relatively poor conditions.

He attended schools for the blind, where it became apparent that he was intellectually gifted.

His last four years of schooling were spent at St Bede's College in Mentone. The only member of his family to finish Year 12, McCallum achieved outstanding results, and was accepted to study law at Monash University. Though he had originally planned to be a history teacher, he was encouraged by his mother to try law for a year. He studied via other students reading aloud to him or by listening to tapes.

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