Bentham's bulldog stands with Kershnar
Cowards caved to an insane internet mob
Professor Kershnar has been deprived of on campus duties—as Leiter reports so eloquently points out. This is because Kershnar says controversial things. A clip went viral of Kershnar saying the following
Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she's a willing participant. A very standard, very widely held view is there's something deeply wrong about this. And it's wrong independent of it being criminalized.
It's not obvious to me that is in fact wrong. I think this is a mistake. And I think that exploring why it's a mistake will tell us not only things about adult-child sex and statutory rape, but also about fundamental principles of morality.
Kershnar’s view, as he is quite clear about is the following
“There are good reasons to think that adult-child sex should be illegal.
Consequentialist moral theories can provide an explanation for the wrongness of adult-child sex that is harmful, and while “when both participants are willing, the risk of long term harm is unclear,” at least “in some cases (for example, force, genital contact, and father figures) there is risk of significant harm.” “Child rape and incest both… are extremely harmful.”
On non-consequentialist moral theories, the moral status of adult-child sex is unclear.”
I think Kershnar is probably wrong about this. However, he should not be fired. Expressing controversial views should not be a fireable offense. A culture in which philosophers are incentivized to avoid saying controversial things because they face academic blowback is antithetical to the truth-seeking that philosophy should aim for. This blog has previously expressed some extremely controversial views. I am not in academia and I do not have to worry about outraged mobs going after my career. However, if I were in academia, the treatment of Kershnar would affect my willingness to write on controversial topics.
A few amusing things stand out about this case.
1 Kershnar’s views are not new. He has written previously on this topic. His critics selective quotation of a random short clip out of context is unsurprising given the weakness of their claim. It is also amusing that they, because of either unwillingness or inability to read philosophy, were only alerted to his views by way of a podcast and seem strangely averse to reading Kershnar’s extensive writings on the subject. It would be like trying to cancel Jonathan swift based on a viral dramatic reading of his Modest Proposal.
2 Those trying to cancel Kershnar have not seemed able or willing to provide a substantive refutation of his views—preferring to instead express outrage. Outrage is not a very good counterargument. Calls to cancel and fire people should at least contain arguments against their views.
3 The outrage of so many, including the university making an official statement and the university president, whose lack of a backbone demonstrates that being a vertebrate should not be a defining characteristic of being a human, is demonstrative of the brain rot that afflicts people when discussing issues relating to children and sex. People feel the need to, whenever the topic arises, make it exceedingly clear that they’re very very very very anti child-molestation and pedophilia. The quasi-religious fervor with which people condemn child molestation at the outset of any conversation about it is reminiscent of the way that priests praise god at the outset of many sermons—or perhaps the way that woke people make sure to condemn all the worlds ills that end with ism or phobia at the outset of any serious political decision. It is as if people think that, absent explaining that they hate pedophiles and think they should be killed (often including non-offending ones—which is quite a strange attitude to have—people having desires outside of their control that they don’t act on shouldn’t warrant the death penalty), people will think that they’re either pro pedophilia or a pedophile.
It would be like starting off every serious conversation about criminal justice reform with “Please allow me to reiterate how opposed I am to murder—I think it’s really bad, so bad that I would do anything in my power to make less of it. There is no justification for murder. Anyone who supports murder doesn’t represent me. I have nothing but hatred for murderers. Murder is so bad. Every midnight I open up my icebox take out a picture’s of Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer and then chant shame 27 times, before chanting 23 times that “murder is bad.””
4 Kershnar has been called a liberal professor by right wing sources. I even saw one source, who I can no longer find, calling him a leftist. Kershnar has never claimed to be a liberal or a leftist. If I had to guess I’d say he’s a libertarian given that he teaches libertarian philosophy. He has also written papers arguing for discounting women’s applications and defending Asian romantic preference. These views are not popular with liberals. Kershnar has articles arguing for deeply controversial views on all sides of the political spectrum.
5 The Leiter report is excellent in all of their articles on the subject.
Moronic internet mobs should not get in the way of doing philosophy. Universities should not cave to the aforementioned moronic internet mobs. When they do so, they should present more than just out of context clips and titles of papers—titles written to be intentionally incendiary. They should actually engage with what is being discussed.
Though I guess maybe the psuedo-moralistic internet mob does not have the intellectual firepower necessary to backup their claims. All they have is the heckler’s veto combined with cowardly university policies that cave to random morons on the internet.
Given that Kershnar’s views are not new, for FSU’s position to be justified, it must be the case that they have been employing, for quite a while, a dangerous cause of child sexual abuse, who should have been sacked long ago. However, the university seemed perfectly happy continuing to employ him up until this point. The actions of the university are not consistent with them being actually outraged about Kershnar.
They are, however, consistent with being spineless, gutless, invertebrates, unwilling to stand up for principles of free speech and academic integrity, in favor of caving to an internet mob. This theory also has the advantage of explaining why public statements felt the need to bloviate about the university’s opposition to child sexual abuse.
So let all decent, intellectually honest people stand up against this mob driven anti-liberal lunacy. Let us all stand with Kershnar.