A Princeton professor who supports infant euthanasia is now facing backlash from disability rights activists.

A group of protestors will be demonstrating Thursday at Princeton University, urging the school to publicly denounce bioethicist professor Peter Singer, a 69-year-old moral philosopher who has written numerous books in which he says killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person.

Organizers with New Jersey's Alliance Center for Independence don't want Singer fired, but are demanding that the school hire another professor whose disability theories differ from Singer's.

“We understand the importance of academic freedom,” said Alan Holdsworth of Liberty Resources, Inc. “But Princeton has a policy on ‘Respect for Others’ which ‘deplores expressions of hatred directed against any individual or group.’ If Singer’s comments about killing disabled babies don’t qualify as hatred toward a group, then I don’t know what does.”

Singer says doctors should take "active steps" toward ending a disabled baby's life because this approach would be more humane than withdrawing life support.

On his FAQ page, Singer says:

“Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do.  It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.”

Singer has taught at the university since 2005 and has tenure. Among his other controversial beliefs are that humans and animals are equal and that animal experiments can be justified.

The university declined to comment for this story.

Earlier this year, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said the university would theoretically allow students to hold a campus rally in support of Osama bin Laden because he believes "that it is a fundamental advantage for a university to be able to tolerate even offensive kinds of speech and to respond to bad arguments when they are made with more speech rather than with disciplinary actions."

The Ivy League school last fall faced protests about campus buildings and programs named after Woodrow Wilson, who once served as the university's president, because of his support for racist and segregationist views during the early 20th century.

In addition to asking the university to condemn Singer's teachings, the groups demonstrating Thursday want the university to reinstate a former graduate student who says the university did not accommodate her dyslexia.

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