On SUNY Fredonia, Moral Philosophy, and Forbidden Questions

In this special edition of the Academic Freedom Podcast, the AFA's Keith Whittington interviews Jeff McMahan, the Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, about the current controversy at SUNY Fredonia involving Professor Stephen Kershnar. An applied ethicist and distinguished teaching professor of philosophy, Prof. Kershnar has been placed under administrative review and barred from campus for conducting research and making statements in a YouTube interview about "adult-child sex."  The Academic Freedom Alliance sent a letter to SUNY Fredonia in defense of Prof. Kershnar's academic freedom and partnered with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to draft an open letter from philosophy faculty in support of his right to tackle difficult questions.   In this conversation, Whittington and McMahan explore not only the controversy itself, but also the larger questions surrounding what moral philosophers do, why they ask such controversial questions, and what value they bring to our understanding of society's most difficult issues. - 2/7/22