Jackie Leach Scully (Newcastle University) on a widely reported clash between the rights of two different forms of diversity, those with respect to disability and those with respect to religion:
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Find the full piece at Impact Ethics.
A surprisingly shallow analysis from Scully, though at least she’s upfront about which boat she’s in and so reveals her conflict of interest. I wouldn’t mind betting that she also considers herself a secularist with no faith-based ‘shackles’, though I wonder if she’s capable of interrogating and challenging her own ‘secular’ ontological assumptions.
Do we really have a choice about what we believe?
Maybe we can choose whether to profess our beliefs, keep quiet about them or even camouflage them by pretending to believe something else.
I think Scully’s analysis falls partly in failing to recognise how much the concepts of both religion and disability are socially mediated. But primarily it fails in its comparison.
It’s not a question of Panjabi’s choice of religion vs Sears’ lack of choice of disability (even if there are no devices Sears himself could use to mitigate the problem, which I doubt). Rather it’s a question of Panjabi’s choice of how to practice her religion vs Sears’ choice of education.
It’s a shallow analysis, largely because it’s a blog with a tight word limit. For the sake of clarity, though, I should point out you lose your bet — I’m a longterm committed member of a faith group, to the extent that I served as its national head for 6 years, and much of my bioethics research has involved empirical investigation of the views of faith group members.
My faith is therefore extremely important to me. However, as a religious believer, and as a disabled person, I find that although both are *of course* socially mediated, it’s not in the same way, nor to the same extent. One point I emphasised is that it’s impossible to think about Panjabi’s objection because, on the available evidence, she hasn’t made any serious attempt to say exactly what it is, and given that leaders within the Hindu faith reportedly don’t recognise her stance, there must be some doubt as to the extent to which this is about her choice of how to practice her religion. Sears, on the other hand, has been required to explain in detail exactly why it is that an FM transmitter is currently the only device (and I think any hearing person would have to concede that deaf people are more likely to know what works and what doesn’t) that puts him on anything like the same footing as his peers. So this isn’t about his choice of education: it’s about his right to be treated equally.
Apologies for the (wrong) assumption about your position on faith.
Regarding Panjabi’s objections, I note that she claims to have arrived at them through widespread examination of many faith traditions, so to characterise them as allegedly Hindu is a red herring. She may have picked it up from Amish or Mennonite beliefs. Even if they were, Hinduism is an incredibly diverse faith (in fact it was only considered a single religion by outsiders – it comes from a Persian word that simply means ‘from beyond the Indus river’) and I wouldn’t expect alleged ‘leaders in the faith’ to be able to pronounce definitively upon doctrine.
I also stand by my claim that this is not an issue of Sears’ lack of choice about his disability. I am sure there are many other options he could choose, from other courses to the same course taught by other lecturers (possibly in other institutions).
By wrongfully characterising Sears’ situation as unmalleable by definition you are automatically dismissing many ways of approaching it that don’t bring him into conflict with Panjabi’s practices. One possible option, for example, would be for both Sears and Panjabi to approach the university itself – perhaps with the support of both student and academic organisations – to provide options such as a sign language interpreter or a directional microphone that could satisfy both parties. The university, after all, has chosen to accept Panjabi as a teacher and Sears as a student.
To me your characterisation is a needless and invalid attempt to create a hierarchy of rights with winners and losers when a far more constructive approach would be to look for ways in which the rights of both parties can be respected.
Scully’s is a thoughtful analysis, even given word limitations. The question is which side bears the burden of proof. Too often, people with disabilities are required to explain themselves while those who appeal to their religion need say nothing more. But religions aren’t homogenous. There are many kinds of Christians, for example, and equally many varieties of Judaism, Islam, and, yes, Hinduism. There’s also the matter of the power differential between teacher and student. If another student says, “I’m not wearing that thing–it’s against my religion,” the deaf person can be sorry but her interests haven’t been badly harmed. When the prof says the same thing, her interests HAVE been harmed. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act–and moral decency–requires that disabled people receive reasonable accommmodation. In Mr. Sears’s case, that certainly was not forthcoming.
I don’t think anyone is questioning whether Sears’ rights have been harmed, but rather whether his inability to choose his disability automatically prioritises his rights over those of others.
And I hardly think US law is a reliable guide to ethical behaviour. My understanding is that laws protecting free speech and freedom of religion are used to justify the public vilification of homosexuals and abortion doctors.
It seems to me that your response raises some ethical questions of its own.
Could you choose to discard your own faith were it to bring you into conflict with the rights of others?
Would it be valid to question the sincerity or legitimacy of your beliefs were they to fail to match those espoused by other leaders of your faith community?
As it is Sears who is requesting that Panjabi change her behaviour and not visa versa, should there not be greater onus upon him to justify his position?
BTW, am I the only one who finds delicious irony in the fact that I – a disabled man – am questioning two female academics as to whether the rights of a female academic should be suborned to those of a disabled man?
Perhaps being non-white in a white dominated society contributes to my perspective. You know. Intersectionality and all that.