Last week Daily Nous reported about the latest tragedy with respect to the Dianoia Institute at Australian Catholic University (ACU). I wrote about an earlier episode of this calamity in a previous post. You can find that post here. In the earlier post, I identified both the closing of the Dianoia Institute and other philosophy programs and departments, on one side, and the systemic “sexual” harassment in philosophy and the university more generally, on the other side, as “institutional failures,” as well as drew attention to the disparate sorts of responses that philosophers and indeed the philosophy profession offer to address these failures.

I am especially interested in the circumstances surrounding the Dianoia Institute hirings and firings because I was fired from a “continuing” position at a prestigious Australian university after I went to the union and filed a sexual-harassment grievance. My situation is indeed similar in a number of ways to the fired philosophy faculty of the Dianoia Institute, including to the situation of Stephen Finlay, the latest victim of the ACU’s transgressions: the contractual promises and stipulations made to the former Dianoia Institute faculty are virtually identical with ones made to me/with me; I was “unexpectedly” fired and rendered unemployed; I had given away everything to move to the other side of the world; and I was left in “a dire situation whose timing could hardly [have been] worse.”

Nevertheless, my situation is different from the fired Dianoia faculty in several important ways. I was/am a disabled feminist philosopher of disability while most of the ACU victims are nondisabled white men. I do not have the prestigious social or institutional pedigree that the ACU victims variously have; they went to ACU after resigning from comparably esteemed positions. In other words, they likely had significant bank accounts that they could fall back on or family wealth that they could rely upon until they could variously find alternative employment.

It is likely that all of the ACU victims have, by now, been offered/found substantial employment, including Finlay. (Several weeks ago, I saw one fired Dianoia philosopher bemoaning the fact that they were called upon to do “service” to the profession even though their new job didn’t even begin for several months!) Yet few in the profession are concerned about disabled/racialized/trans feminist philosophers who are victimized by the institutional smothering that ensues when one is harassed and “complains” (to use Ahmed’s powerfully evocative sense of the term) about it. We are disposable. We are disposable troublemakers. We make trouble. We are trouble.

I cannot end this post, however, without acknowledging and expressing my gratitude for the generous financial support and comradeship of the Dialogues on Disability Patreon subscribers who defy the structural injustice that conditions my personal and professional situation with respect to philosophy and the subjugated situations of disabled philosophers in general.

If you think that structural injustice–including systemic ableism–conditions current responses and lack thereof to the grievous constitution of the philosophy profession, I would welcome your additional show of support and solidarity for the Dialogues on Disability series. To subscribe to the Dialogues on Disability Patreon, please go here. Your participation in change is deeply appreciated.