About 6 or 7 years go, I gave a lecture at Princeton University about bioethics. This was just after Peter Singer received his tenured chair at Princeton and the appointment was still a matter of heated controversy.
As a planned part of the lecture, I discussed Princeton’s then newest professor and his advocacy of infanticide. I just learned that someone posted that part of the speech on YouTube.
At the end of my discussion about Singer, I went, shall we say, off script and lost my cool. I found it (and still find it) utterly appalling that PRINCETON would bring somebody who advocates the killing of babies to the country’s most prestigious university.
Part of me regrets the outburst. And part of me doesn’t. It isn’t what I said that bothers me, it was how I said it. I have come to believe that anger doesn’t generally work well in communicating, even though it can feel good at the time.
In any event, I post it for your consideration, warts and all.