Academics Stand Against Poverty

Global Poverty and the Limits of Academic Expertise

Onora O'Neill

Academics are not a natural kind. They have varied expertise and aims, and most have no expertise that is particularly relevant to problems of poverty and development. This presumably is why the essay in this issue by Thomas Pogge and Louis Cabrera—a virtual “manifesto” of the newly formed Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP)—shifts to and fro between addressing “academics” and addressing “poverty-focused academics.” Even those academics whose work touches on poverty and development—a quite small minority—are mostly expert in some but not in other aspects of these topics. Some are expert in international law, but not in economics; others know about international trade, but not about aid; some study corruption, but know nothing about nutrition—and so on. A few know a lot about normative argument, but their credentials are sketchy when it comes to empirical evidence. Many more are interested in empirical evidence, usually of a specific sort, but are uncritical of or confused about normative argument. (I suspect that many suffer from a lingering positivist hangover, which suggests that there is no intellectually respectable way to support normative claims, and indeed that this fear may lie behind the appeals to the importance of academic neutrality that Pogge and Cabrera discuss.)

Onora O'Neill, Baronness O'Neill of Bengrave, is a member of the UK House of Lords. She is a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University, and has written widely on such topics as political philosophy and ethics, international justice, and bioethics. Her books include Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics (with Neil Manson, 2007), Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (2002), Bounds of Justice (2000), Towards Justice and Virtue (1996), Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (1989), Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Development, and Justice (1986), and Acting on Principle (1975). oon20@cam.ac.uk