Academic promotion is a long climb marked by ambition, pressure, and quiet resilience. Each stage brings new challenges and growth. Success isn’t just reaching the summit, it’s knowing when to pause, reflect, and support others on their own journey.

Teaching bioethics means more than sharing knowledge, it’s about fostering ethical awareness, critical thinking, and the courage to face discomfort. The goal isn’t perfection, but ethical competence: acting with integrity in morally complex, emotionally charged contexts.

Grant writing is exhausting: time-consuming, bureaucratic, and often demoralizing. Creative ideas must fit rigid templates, outdated platforms slow the process, and idealized teams are built for optics. When form trumps substance, collaboration and innovation risk getting lost.

Rigid identity categories can fragment more than unite. Human identity is messy, evolving, and overlapping. Real inclusion means rejecting simplistic labels, fostering dialogue, and building structures where everyone belongs, so “safe spaces” become unnecessary.

The CJB/RCB (cjb-rcb.ca) has just published a special issue "MAiD in Canada: A Sober Second Look", edited by Daryl Pullman & Jennifer Flynn. It brings together leading voices in bioethics, law, philosophy, and healthcare to critically examine Canada’s evolving medical assistance in dying regime.

Welcome to the tangled thicket of academic writing, where clarity goes to die and jargon multiplies like gremlins after midnight. Fear not: armed with your vorpal pen, you can hack through the fluff, slay the Jabberwock, and rescue meaning from the clutches of sesquipedalian nonsense.

Students learn not only through formal instruction but by observing how their professors navigate academic life. Modelling ethical conduct, resilience in the face of failure, work-life balance, and intellectual curiosity plays a crucial role in shaping how students understand professionalism.

The Ministry of Language Refinement has issued an updated memorandum on lexical discipline, reaffirming the Party’s commitment to semantic clarity and identity standardization. Citizens are reminded: in Newspeak, there is no ambiguity, only alignment.

Academic talks too often feel like PowerPoint purgatory — 80 slides in 20 minutes, lime-green text, and speakers who mumble while taping Morse code with a pen. The issue isn’t the research, it’s the delivery. Despite being in the business of ideas, academia treats communication like an afterthought.

Only a few days left to apply for an Assistant or Associate professor position in bioethics in the dynamic research and teaching environment that is the DMSP. Come join us in Montreal! #bioethics

Academic life demands constant output, but our lives don’t always cooperate. Illness, caregiving and unexpected crises can derail even the best-laid plans. Real sustainability means learning to listen to our limits and adapting how and when we work.

Pragmatic bioethics asks how justice, respect, and inclusion can be advanced in the real world — not just in theory. It’s about working within flawed systems, navigating complexity, and making progress without perfection. Less dogma, more dialogue. Less purity, more practice.

Sustaining an open access journal means balancing innovation, collaboration, and resourcefulness. Key challenges included securing stable funding and maintaining editorial quality with limited paid staff. Partnerships and community engagement were essential to our journal’s long-term viability.

The Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the School of Public Health at the Université de Montréal is recruiting for a position at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor in Bioethics. Deadline: October 10, 2024 www.umontreal.ca/public/www/d...

From chronic illness to caregiving, mental health to neurodivergence, people navigate hidden struggles. Real inclusion means listening without judgment, adapting with care, and building systems that accommodate and expect difference. Sometimes the most meaningful change isn’t structural, it’s human.

Bureaucracy is a sprawling labyrinth. Surviving isn’t just about filling out forms; it’s about learning the rules of a strange game where logic doesn’t always apply, allies are rare, and every decision sends you down a new path.

Research doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Balancing ideals with pragmatism means knowing when to adapt, when to push back, and how to find space for meaningful work. The challenge is staying true to your questions while navigating the system that decides which ones get asked.

“Where do you find the time?” is a frequent question from colleagues when they learn about this weekly blog. The answer is that this writing is done for fun, as a form of leisure. More fundamental though, writing (and talking) is a means of thinking “out loud”; to not write would be unfathomable.

Public health researchers and professionals run the risk of falling into a missionary complex, being convinced that the people they want to help “need” this help. Mitigating this professional bias requires humility and a continual questioning of intentions, actions and outcomes.

Wanting to help a colleague is a good thing. But if taken too far, this helping can impinge on that person’s autonomy, ignoring their agency and capacity to be responsible. We must give space to our colleagues to do their own work, to reap the rewards of their successes, and sometimes to fail.

Being responsible for our own actions and emotions, and not those of other people, is not always easy. “Own your own shit” is a humorous reminder to not take on another person’s issues. This allows us to identify that for which we’re responsible, and to let others assume their own responsibilities.

The Canadian Bioethics Society accepts nominations for two awards in recognition of those who have made significant contributions to bioethics in Canada. cbs-scb.ca/awards/

Betrayal can be painful, long-lasting, and affect relationships. It’s not just about the betrayer; it’s about the betrayed person’s experience and self-perception. While some argue for second chances, repeat offenders may remain untrustworthy in both their personal and professional lives.

Bioethics needs interesting problems so that it can help find meaningful solutions. Doing interdisciplinary collaborative or “embedded” research is an effective way to identify problems, build rewarding relationships and contribute to making a difference in how science is conducted.

- Call for Contributions / Appel à contributions: lnkd.in/em3UsFNw - Register for the Bioethics Community Forum / Inscrire au forum communautaire de bioéthique : lnkd.in/ecTfGKSW

Investing time and energy to learn a skill or develop a projet is important, but despite our best efforts, not all projects will come to fruition. Sometimes giving up is the rational thing to do — this is not a failure but the step toward future success.

We've just published a double issue of the Canadian Journal of Bioethics, with an Open issue of texts on research ethics, MAID, clinical ethics, reproductive ethics, genetic testing, and more; and a small Special issue on the lessons for bioethics from the COVID-19 pandemic. 2025;8(1-2). cjb-rcb.ca

The line between the personal and the professional may not always be clear. Sometimes this blurring is healthy and a driver of excellence, but other times it can lead to unprofessional behaviour. Managing these tensions requires reflexivity, humility, and a willingness to redraw the line.

The first few years as an assistant professor can be daunting due to the challenges of a new institutional culture and uncertainties about what to prioritize. A good way to proceed is to break-up this first stage into smaller chunks, dealing with issues as they come while planning next steps.

Civil engagement starts with individual acts of resistance. But to scale up and have a broader impact requires structures to leverage collective action into longterm change. This should be done by organizations independent from but working with government, to build resilient communities.

Peer-review is a mechanism by which members of the research community evaluate the rigour and pertinence of a publication. But not all reviews are constructive, and some are unfairly negative. It’s important not to take these personally and instead see them as an opportunity to improve the work.

The US threats to Canada’s sovereignty have led to an unprecedented groundswell of nationalist sentiment. It’s time for a broad civil defence that mobilizes the skills and energy of Canadians, working alongside the CAF, to defend against all threats, including those from a once close friend.

A good “job talk” presentation is a key part of the hiring process, and often a make or break moment. Often candidates go into too much detail or provide only a superficial overview. Finding the right balance is key to showing the audience who you are, what you do, and why you should be hired.

Where we stand in the world, our personal histories, etc. frame how we understand things. While this is obvious to social scientists, many researchers cling to the myth of academic objectivity. Thus the importance of humility and acknowledging one’s positionality in all forms of research.

Canada Needs a New Civil Defence Corps via @thetyee.ca thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025...

Job applications take time and energy, so be realistic. If you don’t meet all the criteria, trying for a short-term contract may be still be worth it. But this will rarely be the case for permanent or long-term contracts. Reach out to mentors for honest advice, and invest your energies accordingly.

Health and wellbeing are often treated as synonymous. While they’re closely connected, they are nonetheless distinct, referring to different aspects of our lives. Maybe we should focus more on “being” well instead of perpetually chasing after “health”?

Sexism experienced by women in academia is much less overt than it was even a few decades ago. Instead of outright discrimination, it takes the form of implicit biases that lead to women having less opportunities. We must speak out and change how we work, to show that sexism is never acceptable.

US Bioethics colleagues: I'm talking with Cdn bioethics colleagues about how we can support you, even if it's only by providing a space for free speech, such as the Canadian Journal of Bioethics (cjb-rcb.ca). And if you have to publish anonymously, we can do that as well.

In a crisis, we may need to do something but not know how. The existential threat posed by the US government is forcing Canadians to seek out ways to make a difference. We can mobilize politically and through social engagement can together build robust communities. In solidarity, we have power.

That sense of never being good enough is common in the university. Students and professors feel that they’re not keeping up, that the goal posts keep receding. The solutions cannot be individual. Culture change is needed to reset the rules of the game, with leadership from those at the top.

I never thought this project would become a ebook, but the blog has taken on a life of its own and warranted translation into a different format. On the two year anniversary of BrynStorming, it’s my pleasure to launch “Playing the Academic Game / Jouer le jeu académique”, an open access ebook.

Good critique should explicitly guide improvement. Overly nice comments can be just as damaging as overly severe critique – there is no learning. When given honestly, with positive intent, even severe critique can be accepted. Positive critique is objective and never personal.

Supporting students with difficulties that impede their learning is critical to equity, and thankfully normal in universities. The problem is demands for accommodation far outstrip availability of services. We must rethink what support to offer, to who and by whom.

Construction of personal identity can be enriched by journeying into the stories and experiences of other cultures. The danger is in looking for simple answers to complex problems, the exoticization of “the Other”, and the instrumentalization of their cultures for our personal growth.

Emotional labour is part of many professional roles and helps in the good functioning of institutions. But where does this fit as part of professional responsibilities, who does it, and is it valorized? It’s important to recognize emotional labour, and to also set reasonable limits.

Dealing with unpleasant aspects of colleagues (body odour, eating habits, behaviour in meetings) is not easy and something we often avoid. When their behaviour crosses the line and starts negatively affecting our well-being (and that of others), the person has to be confronted, diplomatically.

Project Manager-Research Assistant Application, Hastings Center

It’s important to acknowledge the contributions of colleagues, especially those who excel but don’t “blow their own horn”. A simple “Good job!” can promote a healthy institutional culture; and it’s the least we can do for colleagues who we value and who contribute to a positive work environment.