STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The old country song says take this job and shove it. And in recent days, a number of people said so. Multiple federal prosecutors resigned rather than follow an order to drop a criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Multiple deputy mayors quit in protest, too. So we asked NPR listeners to tell us when they have quit a job that conflicted with their values.
UNIDENTIFIED NPR LISTENER #1: I was only hired to make the organization look like they cared about diversity. My talent, expertise and my voice weren't valued or respected - just the presence and the appearance of my Black face.
UNIDENTIFIED NPR LISTENER #2: I had submitted a competitive state grant for my program. And once awarded, I learned leadership intended to divert grant funds from the project by padding my salary in our budget. I reported this to our grant liaison and quit that day.
INSKEEP: We just heard Emily Noyce (ph) and LaTresse Snead (ph). Now, Rutgers philosophy professor Alex Guerrero has not quit his job, and fortunately for us, he was able to weigh in. He talked with A Martínez.
ALEX GUERRERO: I think for a lot of people, this comes up as a question. You know, should I be in this kind of job? Do I like this kind of job? But also, does this job serve my broader interests? Does it give me a sense of meaning and purpose, or do I feel alienated and disconnected? Or maybe even worse, do I worry I'm really making the world worse by working in this job? So I think those issues have been ones that philosophers have thought about, both in the workplace context and sort of more generally, for how to live a good, ethical life.
A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: So for people that have - say, like in the Justice Department, prosecutors that have decided to resign because they don't feel like what they're doing maybe is serving the public. I think with that - and correct me if I'm wrong, professor - it seems like that goes beyond what maybe they feel is something they don't want to do, as opposed to it goes against their mandate, which would be serving the public.
GUERRERO: Yeah. I think those things can overlap in some cases. So you might well think, look, I have this job. I have this role. I have this power that's been given to me by this constitutional system, but I can only use that in certain ways. There's certain things that if I were to do them with this power would be unethical and illegal. So those, I think, come together, especially when you're asked to do something that you believe to be unconstitutional, where it's really exceeding the power that is given to your role or to your office. And I think in some of those cases, you might think it's prudentially unwise. It's bad. You know, it's illegal. Maybe I'd get in trouble down the road. But you might also think it's immoral.
You know, there's a limit to the kind of power that people in these roles should have over others and over the public. And there's ways of misusing that power that I think really then does become kind of deeply troubling from an ethical vantage point.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And here's the thing, too - I guess not everyone has the ability to make these kinds of decisions. I mean, are people as principled as they can afford to be?
GUERRERO: Right. I think that is really important. There's some cases in which I think people are limited in their career options. Maybe, you know, the job is one that's keeping their family afloat. And obviously, there the calculation is different - ethically, too. I mean, ethics takes into account the cost to you as an individual for giving up a job, and perhaps especially if it's going to make it hard for you to get a job in the future. So I think there's real limits there.
But also, I think we should be wary of overly emphasizing those in some cases, where I think, yeah, it might be inconvenient, might be difficult for the moment. But the more people who push back against these things, the easier it is. So there's a real collective action problem here. If too many people just go along, it makes it very hard for the few who might try to push back, whereas if many people kind of raise their hand and say, hey; this doesn't seem right, it becomes harder to sort of fire or penalize or punish all of them.
MARTÍNEZ: Is there an argument that some people who choose to resign for ethical reasons ought to stay? Maybe the argument is that maybe they can do more good by staying, as opposed to making a statement - a public statement - by leaving.
GUERRERO: Absolutely - I mean, I think especially in cases where you might not be in a particularly high-profile position. Maybe nobody will really notice that you leave. It'll be hard to leave in a kind of noisy, public way. But also, there might be cases where it's really important that people stay and look for ways to fight from within, to try to push back against what's being done, to gum up the works. I think in many cases, the ethical thing to do, actually, is to stay in the role, as hard as it might be, because of the way in which, you know, if you leave, then you might be replaced by somebody who is gung-ho about the immoral thing and will push forward in a much worse way. But also, you might well be able to help slow down the things that are being done.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Alex Guerrero, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Professor, thanks.
GUERRERO: Sure. Thank you for having me.
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