Philosopher Stephen Kershnar from the University of New York at Fredonia now faces some small disciplinary actions after he openly argued in favor of pedophilia on a recent podcast. Just look at some of what he says during the podcast:
“Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she’s willing participant,” Kershnar says on the podcast as part of a thought experiment. “It’s a with a very standard, very widely held view that there’s something deeply wrong about this. And it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that this 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 supporters say his larger body of work supports the idea that sexual conduct with minors should be criminalized, but he never clarifies this in the podcast. He does eventually say that “unwilling sex with underage individuals,” or “out-and-out rape,” is a “severe wrong and should be severely punished.” Yet he also says that “if we’re in the area of legislation, rather than morality, here’s a rule of thumb: if you don’t know whether something has expected good or expected bad consequences, the thumb on the scale should go to liberty.”
Kershnar continues, “If we don’t know whether willing sex with a 15-year-olds is going to have net good or bad consequences, it’s like, ‘Yeah, well, go ahead and ban it.’ The idea is that people trying to criminalize something bear the burden. And even having harsh opinions on this, before we condemn people for engaging in this, on the basis of probabilistic utilitarianism, we should know that it does pose a risk for those and only those willing participants. I don’t think we know that.”
It is almost an hour long and pretty disgusting. I did not add it here but if you have the stomach, you can view it on YouTube. Of course, the platform has no interest in removing it because they have long taken a pro-pedophilia stance.
The school issued a statement vowing to ‘investigate’ the situation and to keep the creepy professor away from students in the meantime:
A message to the SUNY Fredonia community from President Stephen H. Kolison, Jr. pic.twitter.com/9UG3H5nvZR
— SUNY Fredonia (@FredoniaU) February 3, 2022
A student-led petition with some 14,000 signatures pushes Fredonia to take further action and fire Kershnar.
“A philosophy/ethics professor at Fredonia has expressed his support and encouragement of pedophilia and adult-child sexual relationships, in interviews, his own academic papers, and even class material,” the petition says. “While the university can and should foster a difference of opinions, these views are directly harmful to a community already dealing with instances of sexual assault and struggles with consent.”
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