Leslie Cannold, PhD, (born 1 April 1965 in Port Chester, NY) is an author, academic ethicist, columnist, activist, and high-profile Australian public intellectual.
Born and raised in Armonk and Scarsdale, New York, Leslie migrated to Melbourne, Australia in her early twenties. She began writing for The Age as an opinion and education section columnist while raising young children and completing her graduate degrees. She is considered a protege of one of the most influential modern philosophers, Peter Singer, though she does not share his utilitarian views. A twice-published non-fiction author and novelist, Cannold is a familiar voice and face on radio and TV in Australia, discussing ethics, politics, and reproductive rights. In 2005 she was named one of Australia's top twenty public intellectuals by The Age newspaper.[1] In 2011 Cannold was awarded Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies.[2]
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Educated at Wesleyan University where she studied psychology and theatre, Leslie completed a Masters degree in Bioethics at Monash University and worked at the Centre for Human Bioethics during Peter Singer's tenure there. She earned her PhD in Education at the University of Melbourne before commencing employment at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics when C.A.J. Coady was director.[3] As of 2011[update] she maintains adjunct positions at both universities though she left academic employment in 2006 to pursue writing full-time.
Leslie's fortnightly Moral Dilemma column[4] has appeared in Sydney's Sunday Sun-Herald since 2007. Prior to that she was an occasional columnist for The Age. Her opinions have also appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey!, The Herald Sun, ABC The Drum Unleashed, The Courier Mail, and the national broadsheet The Australian. In 2011 she was recognized with an EVA for a Sunday Age opinion piece on sexual assault.[5]
Her books include the award-winning[6] The Abortion Myth: Feminism morality and the hard choices women make[7][8] and What, No Baby?: Why women are losing the freedom to mother and how they can get it back,[9] which made the Australian Financial Review's top 101 books list. Her first work of fiction, The Book of Rachael,[10] a historical novel, was published 2011. She publishes on diverse subject areas including grief, circumcision, HIV/AIDS, genetic manipulation, ex utero gestation and regulating Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). She published chapters in Sperm Wars[11] (2005) and The Australian Book of Atheism (2010).[12]
Leslie's radio and TV appearances include ABC Radio National, triple j, Today Tonight, The 7:30 Report, A Current Affair, The Catch-Up, The Einstein Factor, SBS Insight, 9am with David & Kim, The Circle, Today, and Lateline. For many years she talked life, work and ethics with well-known radio and TV broadcater Virginia Trioli on 774 ABC Melbourne and now appears regularly on Radio 4BC and Deborah Cameron's morning show on 702 ABC Sydney. She is a regular panelist on ABC TV's political talk show Q & A[13] and is the resident ethicist for Network Ten's The 7pm Project.
Leslie is President of Reproductive Choice Australia, a national coalition of pro-choice organisations that played a key role in removing the ban on the abortion drug RU486 in 2006 and of Pro Choice Victoria, which was instrumental in the decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria in 2008. She is a Dying with Dignity ambassador for law reform.[14] In 2011 she co-founded the not-for-profit speaker referral site No Chicks No Excuses.[15]
Cannold self-identifies as a secular Jew.[16] Her partner is Adam Clarke and together they have two teenage sons.[17]