Monday, April 2, 2018
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM (ET)
VCAM VCAM 001 Screening Room
Event Type
Lecture
Contact
Distinguished Visitors Program
Link
https://ems-web.quaker.haverford.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?EventDetailId=63538
Distinguished Visitor Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Gallaudet University
Genetic
engineering could be used to reduce or eradicate disability, which some regard
as a source of human suffering. Yet others, including members of the signing
deaf community, regard disability as a difference rather than a harm. Potential
parents in this community who prefer to create deaf children express fear that
human germline editing technologies, such as CRISPR, will ultimately extinguish
their kind. Dr. Burke will ask whether it's morally justifiable to use such
editing technologies to ensure that deaf parents can create deaf children. She
begins by asking, “What is a flourishing deaf life?”
Teresa Blankmeyer
Burke is
associate professor of philosophy at Gallaudet University, the world’s only
liberal arts college for deaf and hard of hearing people. The first signing Deaf woman to receive a
doctorate of philosophy, Burke’s boundary-stretching research resides at
intersections of bioethics, philosophy of disability, and Deaf philosophy.
Topics she has published on include moral justification regarding the use of
genetic technology to bear deaf children and the ethics of signed language
interpreting. She is currently working on a monograph titled "Out of Hand: Deaf Bioethics in the Genomic Age." Fluent in American
Sign Language (ASL), Dr. Burke is part of the ASL Philosophical Lexicon
Project, which develops technical philosophical vocabulary in American Sign
Language. (The project website: philosophy.aslcore.org)
Professor Burke also performs bilingual poetry in ASL or English.
Tea at 4:15 p.m.
Sponsored by the Bi-Co Health Studies Program in conjunction with the Distinguished Visitors Program