Introduction
Activism in academia has a complicated history. The university as an institution has at times been likened to the ‘ivory tower’–disengaged from and ignorant to worldly concerns in favor of loftier, purely intellectual pursuits. Educators, university administrations, and student bodies have long fought a tug-of-war game over this characterization, though, trying to politicize or depoliticize the curriculum or fighting for rights of free-speech and license for faculty and/or students to engage in expressly activist activities like protests or boycotts.
Despite ambiguity over what exactly counts as activism, and how it does or ought to relate to one’s duties or profession as an academic, important and timely questions continue to be raised for contemporary bioethicists. Questions like: should bioethics academics be activists? Are they already de facto activists by virtue of their role in pedagogy and opportunity for publication, or does activism presuppose actions taken outside the professional context (I.e., protests and marches, petitions, open letters, etc.)? Do the duties of a bioethics academic and the activist complement one another, or are they sometimes in conflict? Moreover, how should the personal inform the philosophical or the political? How should academics with personal stakes in political or philosophical subjects bring their experience to bear in appropriate ways? These questions are of serious importance for bioethicists, who are often assumed to occupy the dual roles of both an activist and academic.
Assigned Readings
Thesis: Tom Shakespeare first discusses his own experiences as a person with achondroplasia and father to two children who inherited this disability. Inspired by his own personal experiences and history, Shakespeare was led to take part in disability rights activism throughout his early career, although gradually he grew disillusioned with aspects of the movements of which he was a part. The more he studied certain ethical topics (especially from a philosophical perspective) for which he was an advocate, the more nuanced and qualified his own positions became, and this created tension among fellow activists who saw him as failing to be a fully committed ally.
Shakespeare offers two archetypes of thinkers: the barrister and the judge. The judge “explores all the evidence, and weighs it up carefully, before coming to her opinion.” The barrister, by contrast, knows in advance the position they intend to defend, and developing the argument is a post-hoc process. As he sees it, the judge reflects the role of the academic, and the barrister that of the activist, and these roles are in tension. Shakespeare concludes that activists (barristers) and academics (judges) have a role to play in contemporary bioethics, but that the discourse needs to welcome all views—“not only those which accord with the current outlook of the disability rights movement.”
Thesis: Eva Feder Kittay addresses in her article a personally fraught question: should a parent of a cognitively disabled child attempt to engage in philosophical discourse about disability rights? On the one hand, her role as mother to a person with a disability gives her privileged access to the experiences of living with and alongside someone with a disability, and places her in a strong position to describe and advocate for her child. On the other hand, the act of constantly debating the merits of her child’s worth or moral status is psychologically and emotionally exhausting, and others cite her parental relation as biasing or compromising her philosophical judgment. In response, Kittay likens the position of the parent of a child with disability to that of women who entered the field of philosophy during the women’s liberation movement. In securing their seat at the table of academic philosophy, women faced “sexist presumptions that have long been predominant in philosophy” and chose to inquire whether these kinds of presumptions were themselves a threat to the integrity of philosophic inquiry. Kittay also describes an impact on social justice her work has whereby she “socializes the academe” to educate and prepare them for acceptance towards persons with disabilities. She concludes by extending the feminist slogan “the personal is political” to reflect the title: “the personal is philosophical is political.”
Discussion Questions
- Does Shakespeare’s barrister-judge analogy seem fitting? Is nuance and impartiality the appropriate aim of the academic and explicitly partial lawyering the appropriate aim of the activist? Are these the aims actually followed by academics and activists in practice?
- Can activists incorporate the kind of nuance Shakespeare developed in his career as an academic? What would it look like for an activist to always uphold nuanced discourse–do you think they would be effective persuaders? How should one weigh competing imperatives to effectively proselytize movements one believes in vs. maintaining perfectly balanced discourse?
- Kittay argues that “If my position as Sesha’s mother skews my epistemic relation to questions of cognitive disability, the distance that McMahan and Singer maintain skews it in another direction.” What do you think this suggests about the right balance between personal investment and philosophical distance or impartiality in a given subject?
Additional Reading
Lindemann, Hilde. “Bioethicists to the Barricades!” Bioethics 33, no. 8 (October 2019): 857–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12614.
Rogers, Wendy. “Bioethics and Activism: A Natural Fit?” Bioethics 33, no. 8 (October 2019): 881–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12558.
Rogers, Wendy A., and Jackie Leach Scully. “Activism and Bioethics: Taking a Stand on Things That Matter.” Hastings Center Report 51, no. 4 (July 2021): 32–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1270.