Robert Baker

Robert (Bob) Baker was raised in the Bronx projects (public housing for poor people). He earned a BA with honors in social science from City College of New York, a PhD in philosophy from the University of Minnesota, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Albany Medical College. At these institutions he studied under many faculty who were refugees from the Holocaust, or from communist dictatorships, or who were persecuted as ethnic, racial, or religious minorities.

Baker’s early essays on racism and sexism were were published in the underground press, including Moving Out, a Detroit feminist magazine. With fellow philosophers Fred Elliston, and Kathleen Wininger, Baker edited an anthology, Philosophy & Sex, (4 editions, 1975-2009) that provided a venue for writings on subjects once embargoed from the respectable philosophical literature. He continues to write about sexism, racism, as well as ableism, ageism, antisemitism, and other forms discrimination, and he worked with interracial research and writing groups to document the origins of structural racism in organized medicine. Their research became the basis for the American Medical Association’s public apology for a century-long history of racial discrimination.

Baker has been four-time National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awardee and has co-directed a grant from the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center designed to train a new generation of East European bioethicists in international standards of research ethics. He has written over 100 articles published in scholarly journals and has co-edited, The American Medical Ethics Revolution and The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics. Both books were cited by the journal of the American Library Association, as an “outstanding book of the year in health sciences.” Baker’s Before Bioethics: A History of American Medical Ethics has been called "a scholarly masterpiece, providing a balanced perspective on the history of medical ethics and morals supported by credible and well incorporated research," (Doody's Health Sciences). "The prodigious amount of research evident on every page of Before Bioethics helps to explain why such a book had never been written before. Baker's magnum opus and it will surely become and remain a standard reference" (Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal).

A later book, The Structure of Moral Revolutions, has been called “a remarkable book [that brings together Baker’s] training in the history and philosophy of science in synergy with decades of experience as a philosopher in the clinical setting and a pioneering scholar in the history of medical ethics. .... his synergy is on full display in this intellectual tour de force that makes a compelling case for philosophers to rethink moral philosophy and for bioethicists to rethink bioethics.” (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews). Fellow philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote that “This book makes the case for an original picture of moral revolutions that is both theoretically exciting and worth the attention of those who want to make our world a better place.”

Baker’s most recent book, Making Modern Medical Ethics, has been praised as a “brilliant counter history to the canonical triumphalist histories of the birth of bioethics. Highlights the role of outsiders and misfits in creating the space in which modern bioethics could eventually establish itself. A must read for those of us too young to remember.” (Søren Holm, Professor of Bioethics, Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, University of Manchester, UK). The book “Skewer[s] the prevailing presumption that bioethics is the invention of the American medical establishment, Baker nimbly explores the margins of its history where moralists, malcontents, and minorities reign. Their bios are scintillating, and their astonishing contributions turn the history of bioethics inside out. Baker's book is as close to a bioethics page-turner as I have ever read.” (Michael L. Gross, Professor of Political Science, The University of Haifa, Israel).

Baker is a Hastings Center Fellow and has been a fellow of the American Philosophical Society, an NEH-NIH EVIST fellow, an Institute for Health and Human Values fellow, a Wood Institute Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He has been an NYU FRN Scholar in Residence, a visiting scholar at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He is a member of the American Association for the History of Medicine, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, and the International Association of Bioethics.

Baker is now William D. William Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Union College. He chose to remain at this small undergraduate college in Schenectady, New York, for most of his academic career, because, as he likes to remark, the college has strong tradition of respecting academic freedom. He and his wife, the artist Arlene Baker, still reside in Schenectady, but retain a small flat in the Bronx, a short drive from the public housing project that they grew up in. Their son, Nathanial, is cybersecurity expert; their daughter, Meredith, is a college administrator and teacher, and is the mother of the Bakers’ two grandsons.