Dear Peter Singer

At Exeter, we are exposed to a wide variety of views in the Assembly Hall, some of which may be uncomfortable, controversial and difficult to hear. While I unequivocally agree that this diversity of viewpoints is a strength, I also contend, just as most would, that there are limits on whom to allow onto campus to speak to our student body. Having said that, students should be aware of the actual beliefs of those who address them in a required appointment, especially where these beliefs run repugnant to the values this school holds dear. Unfortunately, Peter Singer, last Friday’s Assembly speaker, holds such beliefs. He represents some of the most blatantly discriminatory and ableist opinions out there, and has provided a pseudo-intellectual framework for the continued mistreatment of disabled communities, among other concerns. Of course, this is an extraordinary claim, one which requires extraordinary evidence. Thus I present the following:1. Singer has condoned infanticide, particularly of disabled children. Singer, in his famous Practical Ethics, presented the case that parents of infants with severe disabilities should be able to kill their own children. Singer asserts that certain lives are “not worth living” or bring with them such significant difficulties to parents and children that the compassionate option would be infanticide. Even where said lives would be worth living, such as in cases of hemophilia, the killing of infants with disabilities could still be permissible if it allows for the birth of a child with the prospect of a better life. Take note that all of this is Singer’s own personal judgement; he doesn’t bother to ask those who actually live with these conditions. He even repeatedly referred to infants as “replaceable” in Practical Ethics. 2. Singer has engaged in rape apology (when a person with disabilities is the victim). The professor wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in 2017 in which he defended Professor Anna Stubblefield, who was accused of the rape of a student with disabilities. After criticizing the legal system that found Stubblefield guilty, he proceeded to claim that Stubblefield neither harmed nor wronged the victim, whose name is DJ. In his own words: “If we assume that he is profoundly cognitively impaired, we should concede that he cannot understand the normal significance of sexual relations between persons or the meaning and significance of sexual violation...It seems reasonable to assume that the experience was pleasurable to him; for even if he is cognitively impaired, he was capable of struggling to resist, and, for reasons we will note shortly, it is implausible to suppose that Stubblefield forcibly subdued him. On the assumption that he is profoundly cognitively impaired, therefore, it seems that if Stubblefield wronged or harmed him, it must have been in a way that he is incapable of understanding and that affected his experience only pleasurably.”3. Singer has compared the lives of the “profoundly intellectually disabled” to those of chickens and pigs. He has also asserted that killing a human is more morally wrong than killing an animal, in that humans have higher conscious capability than said animals. More concerning, Singer has claimed that killing a “profoundly intellectually disabled” individual is not morally equivalent to the murder of other humans. In doing so, he places the lives of individuals with disabilities on the same plane as those of animals, denying their very personhood. In essence, Singer believes that some humans are not truly full people.4. Singer, in our very own Assembly, compared “speciesism” to racism, sexism and other forms of hateful discrimination. Thus, Singer compared one who eats meat and one who engages in the most vile forms of hatred present in our society today. The comparison itself is absurd and represents at the very least a failure to acknowledge that there exist legitimate reasons for humans to place their own interest first. More probably, it involves a level of blindness to the plight of those who have to actually deal with racism and sexism every day.This is the man who you were required to listen to and who many clapped for—a raging ableist and a man blinded by his own dogmatic opposition to the sanctity of human life. Though certainly he is very bright and accomplished, his beliefs are unjustifiable, which leads me to ask why he was brought onto campus. I have no doubt that the administration had noble motives in bringing him here, and I do not accuse the school of willfully and knowingly looking past Singer’s ableism. To clarify, I am not angry—merely confused and concerned.