A duty not to take part in the Beijing Olympics (by Jonathan Quong)

[A follow-up email from Jon Quong, posted with his permission.]

Dear Norm,

I've been considering your very thoughtful remarks on the boycott, and I don't have too much to say in response, largely because I agree with the general points you make. I agree that the primary difficulty is interpreting my proposed duty in a way that does not make it impossibly burdensome. I also agree that it's helpful to think about the countervailing considerations in terms of a spectrum of costs that individuals might be expected to bear, with missing a United game (even a European Cup Final!) closer to one end of the spectrum, whereas risking one's life is closer to the other end. How much we can reasonably expect someone to bear is a tough question, and I don't know that it's amenable to anything more than case-by-case judgement.

One small point of disagreement. I don't think my examples do too much work in the argument. The examples (meeting Rawls, rescuing the baby) were not meant to be perfectly analogous to the case of the Olympics - I was not trying to take very obvious examples and pretend that we could seamlessly infer that a boycott of the games was justified. Rather, each example was only meant to provide a clear illustration in support of one of the premises in the argument. Some people, I was assuming, would try to resist the argument by denying one or more of the premises, and so the simple examples I used were meant to show that the premises were plausible, at least in clear-cut cases.

In easy cases (where the burden is low) I think you agree with me that we are under a duty not to benefit from or participate in practices or activities that violate the rights of others. If you also agree that in such easy cases we can be conscripted into doing our duty, then the relevant question for the Games is simply: is it too much to expect the athletes to forego participation in order to fulfil the duty? My own view is that it clearly is not. Imagine a dialogue between a spokesperson for Chinese dissidents and a potential athlete.

Spokesperson: You cannot participate in the games. You have a duty of justice to avoid participating in activities or practices that violate the rights of others and this particular Olympic games involves the widespread violation of human rights. The Chinese government is systematically rounding up dissidents, imprisoning them for years, sometimes in forced labour camps, and even killing some dissidents, all to ensure that when the athletes and media arrive, they will see no protests.

Athlete: I realize many people's rights are being violated in the organization and planning of this Olympic games, and I realize that I am under a prima facie duty not to participate in events where others' rights are being violated. But it's too much to ask me to forego my only chance to compete in the Olympics. True, my sport does have other major events, world championships, professional tournaments, regular competitions, but the Olympic games are so important to my life that I have the right to participate, even though the games I will participate in have been built on the unjust imprisonment and murder of innocent people.

Obviously, I've rigged the dialogue to hammer home the point I want to make, but it seems to me the athlete's position here is implausible. They do not have a right to participate in a competition whose organizers are engaged in systematic human rights abuses merely because this is the most important competition of their career. The national Olympic committee of a given country would not be denying any of its athletes something they had a right to do if it were to boycott the games. The athletes have a duty not to go, and I don't think the burden they are being asked to bear is so great that it trumps that duty.

This view about what burdens we can be asked to bear in fulfilling our duties is, of course, a judgement call, but I am fairly confident about my judgement here. To take the example you use, even if I had been working on my current book for 15 years (it's only been five but it feels a lot longer!) I don't think the effort I put in, or the importance of the book to my life, could give me the right to participate in a conference (the only conference, let's suppose there will ever be) exclusively about my book if this conference was built on the same kind of systematic rights abuses as the Beijing games.

One final point on the issue of proximity. I agree that one's proximity in the causal chain may only matter for the reasons you mention (knowledge, ability to make a difference, and cost), though I'd have to give more thought to this. When applied to the Olympics, however, these three variables all seem to speak in favour of a boycott. We know what is going on in China, the national Olympic committees of western countries have a chance to make a real difference by boycotting (since the Chinese government is sensitive to its international image), and, as I've argued, the cost to the athletes is not sufficiently serious to override the duty.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully to my initial email, and for posting it on normblog.

Cheers, Jon (Jonathan Quong)