Canadian Cry-babies and MAiD

My fellow BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY blogger, Mich Ciurria, often uses the term cry-baby to refer to the privileged nondisabled white men who populate philosophy in the US and complain about the (flailing) democratization of the profession there. Yet Canada has its own share of cry-babies in philosophy, in academia more broadly, and elsewhere, as a survey […]

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Abigail Gosselin

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

How Canadian Philosophy Plays a Vital Role in the Project of Eugenics: Or, Gender, Schafer, and Other Nondisabled White Male Bioethicists

The annual in-person meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association (CPA) begins at Dalhousie University tomorrow. Given that Dalhousie has played, and continues to play, a formative role in the development of bioethical and legal arguments that promote MAiD, eugenics will be “in the air” once again at the CPA meeting, not least because two of […]

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 […]

Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 8 a.m.

“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 […]

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Kristin Rodier

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

MAiD in Canada and Its Discontents

If you read Canadian media, you might have come across news items that indicate how the new leader of the federal New Democratic Party, Avi Lewis, has ‘voiced concerns about the trajectory of Canada’s “medical assistance in dying” (in a word, MAiD) regime’. As I wrote in an earlier post at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, when I […]

Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 8 a.m. ET

“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 […]