DERPs and Their Exclusionary Conferences

It’s a big weekend for DERPs and their conferences. You may recall (as I indicated here) that DERPs is the acronym for Disabled Exclusionary Righteous Philosophers, the term that I coined to refer to philosophers who (apparently without shame) variously organize, attend, participate in, promote, or fund inaccessible– that is, exclusionary–and unsustainable philosophy conferences. Here […]

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Karin Boxer

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I would like to welcome you to the one hundred and twenty-seventh installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for […]

Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, October 15, 2025

“I have read almost all of your interviews and they are always wonderful. …  I am really looking forward to the next installment of Dialogues on Disability.” — Adrian Piper “… a major contribution to our understanding of the field and the people in it.”  — Vanessa Wills “I’ve learned so much about ableism in philosophy […]

Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change 6 (#PhiDisSocCh6)!

As readers and listeners of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY may recall, I organized the first five editions of Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change conferences (links to the videos of which are available here) with the support of Jonathan Wolff under the auspices of the Alfred Landecker Chair in the School of Government at the University of Oxford. […]

Is Canada a Safe Haven if You are Disabled and LGBTQ+?

Some Canadian and other LGBTQ+ philosophers have circulated posts on various platforms about a document issued by Haven, a group at University of Toronto-Scarborough that works on immigration policy and border issues. The document, entitled “A Guide for LGBTQI+ Asylum Seekers Crossing the Canada-U.S. Border,” is intended to provide guidance to American “LGBTQI+ individuals who are exploring […]

In-Person Philosophy Conferences as a Mask for Academic Imperialism

In an article published at CBC News on Friday, Natalie Stechyson writes the following: some employers in both the private and public sector are mandating that many workers have to come back full time.  As a growing number of Canadians once again find themselves cramming public transit and clogging highways to get to their workplaces, you might be wondering: […]

This Labour Day…

Spend some time thinking about the disabled philosopher that you didn’t hire/didn’t retain/didn’t tenure/didn’t promote/didn’t give a living wage/didn’t enable to flourish in their vocation.

Quote of the Week (and It’s Only Thursday): Hypatia’s Ableist Legacy, co-authored with Nora Berenstain

This week’s quote-of-the-week post (though it’s only Thursday) addresses the historical legacy of ableism at Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. To open our discussion in the post, consider an excerpt from Shelley’s introduction to The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability. The introduction, which is entitled “Situating Philosophy of Disability in/out of Philosophy,” offers a summary […]