SATURDAY June 28, 2003
10:15-11:45am
Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 62
High St., New Haven CT
"Human Variation and Fairness in Sports and Games"
In the past three decades, feminists and disability
advocates have challenged the eligibility requirements, rules of play,
and comparative funding of various sports. The debate they have provoked
dovetails in interesting ways with the debate over the use of steroids,
blood-doping, and other "artificial" means of enhancement.
Both raise important questions about the relevance of variations in
human function to the purposes of sports. Does a golfer who cannot walk
the fairway lack one skill tested by the game or does he lack the
opportunity to display the skills tested because of unnecessary
barriers? Does therapy for injured or disabled athletes that leaves them
"better than new" give them an unfair advantage? Should
disabled athletes be allowed to compete in mainstream sports with
prosthetics that are incidentally performance-enhancing when
non-disabled athletes are allowed to compete in those sports with suits,
shoes, and other apparel that are designed to be performance-enhancing?
To address such questions, we must assess the diverse
purposes that sports serve. The case for allowing a disabled golfer to
use a cart, or for banning the use of performance-enhancing drugs or
apparel, may depend on whether sports in general, or particular sports,
are seen as tests of various skills, as occasions to display such
virtues as tenacity, ingenuity, or equanimity, as communal activity, or
as entertainment. Proposed rules or reforms may serve to increase the
accuracy of the test, the intensity of the competition, the
inclusiveness of the activity or the suspense of the entertainment.
Panelists will address such issues as the meaning of
fairness in sports, the social construction of competitive classes, the
claimed naturalness or artificiality of various forms of enhancement,
and the merits of different strategies for increasing the participation
of excluded individuals and groups.
Anita Silvers Ph.D.
Dept. of Philosophy
San Francisco State University
Anita Silvers, Professor of Philosophy at San
Francisco State University, has published seven books, including
Medicine and Social Justice (with Rosamond Rhodes and Margaret Battin),
Americans With Disabilities: Exploring Implications of the Law for
Individuals and Institutions (with Leslie Francis), Disability,
Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and
Public Policy (with David Wasserman and Mary Mahowald), Sociobiology and
Human Nature (with Michael Gregory). and The Recombinant DNA Controversy
(with Michael Gregory). She has written more than one hundred book
chapters and articles on ethics and bioethics, social philosophy,
aesthetics, law, feminism, and disability studies, In 2002, Silvers
co-directed (with Eva Kittay) an NEH Summer Seminar on "Justice,
Equality, and the Challenge of Disability". The California Faculty
Association honored her with its Equal Rights Award for her work in
making higher education more accessible to people with disabilities.
Miller Brown Ph.D.
Dean of the Faculty
Trinity College
W. Miller Brown, a philosophy professor and a highly
respected member of the Trinity College faculty since 1965, serves as
the Dean of the Faculty. Brown has lectured and written extensively in
the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of sport. He has been
a visiting scholar at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, and
was a member of the Society of Fellows of the University of Durham in
Durham, England. He is active in the community, having served as, among
other things, a lecturer for the past 13 years in Hartford's Classical
Magnet Program. Prior to joining Trinity's faculty, Brown was a teaching
fellow at Harvard University (from 1963-1965) and a lecturer in French
at Boston University (from 1960-1963).
David Wasserman Ph.D.
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy
University of Maryland
David Wasserman is a research scholar at the Institute
for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He
currently works on ethical and policy issues in genetic research and
technology, assisted reproduction, health care, and disability.
Leslie Francis Ph.D., J.D.
College of Law, University of Utah
Dr. Francis teaches philosophy, law and ethics at the
University of Utah.
