Abstract

To be a professional is to accept the obligation to sometimes participate in activities and to engage with people that one might otherwise choose to avoid. Lawyers, for example, must advocate on behalf of despicable clients, professors must teach and fairly evaluate lazy and insolent students, and physicians must minister to persons whose beliefs—and actions—run afoul of their core values. For example, at least three of the professionals who treated Robert Bower—the person who murdered 14 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue—were Jewish. As the hospital president, Jeffrey Cohen—also Jewish—put it, "We're here to take care of sick people. We're not here to judge you". Professionals must behave in this...