What's So Great About Princeton? Not Professor Peter Singer

Professor Peter Singer, Princeton University


My whole life, I was always told that the elite universities in the nation were the so-called Ivy League universities. Let's see, that would be Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Colgate, Brown, Dartmouth, Princeton, and if I am not mistaken, the University of Pennsylvania. Did I get them all right? Yet, for as long as I can remember, there has been a litany of embarrassments associated with virtually all of these institutions from wacky, radical professors, to student disruptions, to you name it. Let's take Princeton, for example and look at one of their "esteemed professors", Peter Singer.

Peter Singer is a philosopher from Australia. He is also a professor of bio-ethics at Princeton. His philosophy revolves around approaching ethics from a utilitarian perspective. Of particular note is Singer's ideas about animal liberation, abortion, euthanasia and infanticide.

Singer's ideas are, to say the least, convoluted, but in simple terms, he seems to believe that different levels of life are worthy depending on their capacity to have personal interests and life journey goals. In the case of abortion, that means that a fetus is incapable of having personal interests and life journal goals. The same is also true of a newborn baby. Thus, the wrongness of taking a life is measured by the degree that it would interfere with the person's goals.

Are you still with me?

Singer has written a book, "Rethinking Life and Death", in which he states that it is impossible to determine exactly when human life begins. Abortion is justified, according to Singer because the fetus-or for that matter, the newly-born is incapable of having life goals or personal interests. According to Singer, newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood- "rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness". Thus, according to Professor Singer, "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."

In "Rethinking Life and Death", Singer writes..."the fact that a being is human and alive does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life."
(Rethinking Life and Death", p 105.)

Not surprisingly, Singer has advocated for health care rationing in the case of the sick and elderly in reference to the controversy in the Obama plan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html

It may bear mentioning that Singer is the son of Viennese Jews who emigrated from Austria to Australia in 1938. His grandparents, however, perished in the Holocaust. I mention that only to ponder why he would develop such attitudes about "the worthiness of life" given his family history.

But that's not all. Professor Peters has also weighed in on having sex with animals. In a 2001 review of a book on bestiality ("Dearest Pet: On Bestiality" by Midas Dekker), Singer said that sex between humans and animals should remain illegal if it results in harm to the animal, but that "sex with an animal does not always involve cruelty". Thus, mutually satisfying activities are just fine and dandy.
(Peter Singer: Heavy Petting-Nerve 2001)


If Professor Singer happens to read this and would like to correct me on any points, I would be happy to "correct the record". However, I am merely using his own words.

Of course, there are so many wacky professors out there, I could go on all day listing them. This particular learned professor has a right to his opinions and to express them. I am not saying that Princeton should fire Professor Singer. However, I do think it is something to keep in mind the next time someone tells you what a great university Princeton is.