UnKoch My Philosophy Department: Reject Billionaire Donations for Disability Justice!

This week, my paper on billionaire philanthropy and academic philosophy was published in a special, open access issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom, titled Philanthropy, Public Funding, and the Future of Academic Freedom. Along with over a dozen other excellent papers, my contribution underscores the corrupting influence of billionaire philanthropy on academia, focusing on academic philosophy. This corrupting influence is, as […]

Relativism of Distance

We look for stable values mostly for economic reasons: deliberation takes time, attention and other similar limited resources. Thus, even though successful deliberation delivers the right kind of legitimacy we seek, we cannot keep deliberating with everyone every time there is some form of substantial (epistemic, moral, political, aesthetic, whatever) disagreement. Thus, we fix the […]

Canadian Philosophy Departments Can Provide Refuge to Fascism’s Scapegoats 

The US is a rising fascist regime. Migrant workers are being sent to international concentration camps. Trump is threatening to send addicts and Mad People to modern-day “lunatic asylums.” RFK Jr. wants to send “troubled teens” to “wellness farms,” resonant of the Willowbrooks of the past. Brian Kllmeade from Fox News advocated for the mass extermination of long-term unhoused people by […]

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Vanessa Wills

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I would like to welcome you to the one hundred and twenty-second instalment 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 […]

CFA: Disability and Rights: The Possibilities and Limits of Rights Discourse under Neoliberalism, Zoom, 13-14 Jun. UK Time (deadline: 11 Apr., 2025, 5 pm UK Time)

This is a two half-day conference organised by Disability Law and Social Justice Stream of the Socio-Legal Studies Association and Marxism and Disability Network scholars, and kindly funded by the Socio-Legal Studies Association and University of Leicester. The conference will take place online (using the Zoom platform) on: ● Friday, 13th June 2025, 12:30-17:30 BST […]

On Jason Stanley On Fascism and Organizing Inaccessible Conferences

My mother has been in the hospital for the past month, in and out of intensive care; so, my time to post on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY has been constrained. In addition, I have been writing responses to the questions that Robert Chapman and Mich Ciurria pose to me in the interview that they have conducted with […]

Disabling Bioethics: Notes Toward An Abolitionist Genealogy

I am putting the finishing touches on “Disabling Bioethics: Notes Toward An Abolitionist Genealogy,” my contribution to Genealogy: A Genealogy, edited by Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson and Daniele Lorenzini. (Columbia University Press, 2025). I have copied below the pre-copyedited version of the first section of the chapter which appears under the heading “Conceptual Needs of the Argument […]

Resources for National Truth and Reconciliation Day/Orange Shirt Day, September 30th

GENERAL National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Creating a Climate for Change (First Nations Health Alliance booklet) Lee Maracle on the Impact of Austerity on Indigenous Populations (video) First Nations Child and Family Caring Society Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN) Moving to Action: Activating UNDRIP in Canadian Museums (Canadian […]

Elia Nathan Bravo on Witches and Empty Concepts

Elia Nathan Bravo did not believe in witches, not in the classical European sense of  a “sorceress with the power to cast curses thanks to a fidelity pact with the devil.” (Nathan Bravo 2002: 122)  Even more, she was certain that there were no witches, at least as certain as we are that there are […]