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In news that went mostly unnoticed at the time but has since picked up some steam, Peter Singer was sued pro se by a woman who alleged they had an affair twenty years ago and that he's had affairs with many other women, including many co-authors, over his career. Her lawsuit was pretty transparently weak due to statute of limitations issues and the affair being consensual--the "damages" she claimed were the loss of the house her ex-fiance bought as he was breaking up with her due to the affair--but the claims in it are nothing short of a terrible look for Singer: propositioning and sleeping with married and unmarried women in his field over a long period of time, giving career benefits (eg coauthorship) to affair partners, misrepresenting himself as having a "Don't ask, don't tell" arrangement with his wife and lying to affair partners about having multiple simultaneous affairs, and more. It was dismissed after a demurrer claiming no actionable claims was granted: that is, no facts were actually discovered or litigated.
In terms of hard evidence, she included several emails between Singer and her in the filing, one of which included him confessing to her that he had multiple other apparent affair partners. They collaborated on at least four op-eds during the affair or its immediate aftermath, and she contributed a chapter to a book he wrote, so it does appear that her portrayal of career benefits for affair partners has some substance.
I read the court filings and have contacted the parties involved; I'm working on a more detailed article about the whole thing. If you'd like to see the court files yourself, the relevant court is here. Search for case number 22CV01792. The accuser also wrote a shorter essay about it on her website.
While she should not be viewed as a fully reliable narrator, the evidence suggests the truth of her claims that they had an affair, that he admitted to her he was having other affairs, and that she got career benefits from the affair. It's a bit mysterious to me that nobody has touched the story, but at least until a somewhat obscure December YouTube video, about the only place I can find the allegations having been discussed is a quiet EA forum thread.
It caught my attention because of that lack of attention despite its clear newsworthiness. It's the sort of thing I think is easy, but incorrect, to dismiss as mere gossip: Peter Singer is one of the leading ethicists of our time, and I believe his behavior follows from his ethics in visible, important ways. More specifically, I think classical utilitarianism as a whole suffers from a lack of respect for duty to the near in ways that this sort of misconduct highlights.
I don't think it's the sort of thing that should, or will, define Singer. I do, however, think that it's the sort of thing that should be part of his life story and so far has conspicuously not been.
Is there any evidence about Peter Singer's alleged infidelity that is not ultimately based on the word of the woman who sued him? I looked at the websites you linked to in your post and did not notice any other evidence, but I did not watch the video so if some additional evidence is mentioned there I may have missed it.
If it's really true that the only public evidence is the word of the woman who sued him then I'm not sure how confident we should be about her allegations. Yes, it would not be shocking if a powerful male figure in a field used his status to seduce and/or coerce women into sleeping with him. On the other hand, it is also not impossible that someone would either exaggerate or even make up accusations against a powerful and controversial figure in their field. I also find it slightly suspicious that the accuser's blog post you linked to spends much more time talking about Peter Singer's ideological faults than his sexual bad behavior. The accuser hardly seems unbiased.
Edit: Additionally, I find some of the claims in the accuser's blog post and lawsuit hard to believe. She claims he has either been sexually involved with or made his sexual interest clear to all of his female coauthors from 2002 to 2020. Peter Singer has published a huge number of articles, op-eds, etc in that time, many with female coauthors, and it is hard for me to believe he has really propositioned all of them.
Yes—the email I screenshot in my Twitter thread on the matter. Unless it’s fake, which I place low likelihood on given that she submitted it as evidence in a court filing, it’s strongly indicative that they had an affair and that she was not the only affair partner at the time.
EDIT: The court filings also include an email from him rebuking her about an interaction they had at a fundraiser meeting for her charity, which he was on the board of. The contents of that interaction and email, as described in the court filing, are not nearly as clear of evidence but are still worth mentioning.
I was insufficiently clear in my comment. Singer seems to acknowledge they had a sexual relationship and that he has had sexual relationships with other women as well. However, accepting that fact does not seem equivalent to accepting all of her claims. For example the claim that he used the promise of professional reward and the threat of professional punishment to control their relationship seems like one of the most damaging accusations and it is not clear to me there is any evidence for that other than the word of the accuser (though it's very possible that I missed something). Likewise her claims that Singer has done similar things with many other women.
Ah—I have no idea whether he explicitly said such a thing and would be quite startled if he did. From my angle, the fact of an affair and concurrent/subsequent collaborative work are already sufficient to establish a degree of fairly serious misconduct, where the spectres of professional reward and punishment inevitably loom given the power dynamics in play.
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