Gender, Race and Philosophy: The Blog

Climate Survey Instrument

Ruth Chang offers this:

If anyone is looking for a template climate survey for their department, the University of Michigan has one for all departments, devised by social scientists who worked with graduate student focus groups. (Thanks to Abby Stewart for sharing this). Here it is.

People who have experience running these surveys strongly recommend that strict guidelines for anonymity and confidentiality should be advertised and followed. For example, if the survey is conducted electronically, online survey software should be used to collect survey answers rather than email; a non-departmental, neutral third party should be responsible for reviewing, summarizing, and anonymizing the raw data; none of the raw data should be viewed by anyone in the department; none of the raw data should ever be made public; if the graduate population is small or if there are only a small number of members of underrepresented groups, the survey should not ask them to declare their underrepresented status so that no respondent can be identified by gender, race, etc.

Another try on “The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy”

Linda Alcoff is having trouble with the Typepad interface, so she has asked me to post the following on her behalf:

Once again I want to thank those who have offered their considered reflections and heartfelt thoughts on the Pluralist’s Guide, and the general issues of inclusivity. The level of information sharing and publicly stated commitments to inclusiveness that the Guide has induced are, surely all must agree, a good thing.

I will restate some of our responses to criticisms below; it has been dismaying to see repeated claims that we have not responded to criticisms when in fact most of the information some are demanding is on the Pluralist Guide site itself and other responses have been posted on this site.

But first, let us be clear on the situation of our profession. There has been a generation of brain drain in philosophy. Continental philosophers go into English and Religion and Comparative Literature departments; critical race philosophers go into Ethnic Studies Programs or law schools; LGBT folks go into English or LGBT programs; American philosophers go into Political Science departments; feminists go into Education and Women’s studies. Some of the best and brightest choose between a career facing constant battles within philosophy, or fame and fortune (relatively speaking) outside philosophy, and make rational choices. We are committed to making philosophy more hospitable to philosophical diversity, and thus to combat brain drain. Otherwise, as folks at the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers put it, why would you encourage students to put themselves into this kind of alienated, embattled environment?

Now let me restate and amplify some points made earlier about the methodological debates, especially concerning climate studies:

1) Methodologies of climate studies are intrinsically difficult, without a doubt. Taking a majority vote of the target group within a department does not guarantee accuracy, as many have pointed out. It is vital to consult those who have left a department, but often difficult to track them down.  Actual climate conditions can vary significantly from person to person, depending, for example, if the person’s area of interest requires them to study with a given individual who is problematic. Identities are complex objects, and the specific mediations of gender identity, for example, such as race, sexuality, disability, and class, can create significant differences in experience.

2) Methodologies of climate studies have been usefully debated. In other words, reasonable people disagree. Rather than impugning dishonest motives or devious goals, differences over methodological issues might be approached as we approach our other (constant) epistemological disagreements.

3) However, many of us who have been involved in climate studies over the years have noticed a pattern of deflection from the content of the study to the methodology of the study. Quick dismissals, demands to know who exactly said what exactly about whom exactly, and personal attacks on the authors of the study are such a common occurrence that this phenomena bears study itself!  

4) The question then is, should climate studies be engaged in at all, given these sorts of inevitable debates, intrinsic problems, and vulnerability to deflection from what should be the real concern? Again, reasonable people answer this question differently. On the yes side, it can be argued that some climate studies have galvanized policy change and a shift in the culture of a workplace. Despite flaws, they can get people talking in ways they did not before. They can be done responsibly to provide useful even if imperfect information. They can be approached as a starting point. They can help people to begin to realize that there may be things that they did not know that they did not know.

This discussion of climate studies needs to be put squarely in a real, non-ideal world context. Actual steps taken should be responsive to actual conditions, and likely effects, rather than based on an idealized approaches. Consider this in light of the demand for ‘evidence’ about the basis of a negative judgment of climate: in my experience, a search for evidence can be motivated by a desire to establish that there is one isolated bad apple, or that the charges are bogus for one reason or another, or to find out who was the whistleblower so that that person can be harassed. In other words, it can be motivated by a desire to avoid making  changes. So it is very important to do any evidence gathering in a way that will not end up adversely affecting whistleblowers. Perhaps the best thing for departments to do would be to forego the evidence gathering and develop some pro-active actions. What these might be may include changing hiring priorities, addressing gender and pluralism issues in pro-seminars, having some recent work in social psychology made available to the whole department in some effective way (Claude Steele’s research is great), and so on.
 
We have to be honest about the fact that the process of criticism and debate within philosophy can be distorted or overdetermined by professional competitiveness, individual psychological dynamics, and plain racism, sexism, etc. Yet somehow we have to remain open to criticism, and engaged with debates in a constructive way. We at the Pluralist’s Guide will remain open to suggestions, critiques, and offers of help! And we will continue to try to improve our Guide.

Linda Martín Alcoff
Department of Philosophy

Hunter College/CUNY

Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Trans and Queer Philosophy Programs

The Pluralists' Guide certainly generated a lot of heat, even before it went public. In this short post, I'm not going to address any of that heat.

Instead, I'd like to talk about one of the difficulties we faced in putting this site together, and one that I hope posting publicly will help. 

When we decided to cover under-represented areas, I felt it important, and Paul and Linda agreed, that we should cover GLBTTQ Philosophy. Since I had published in the field and had contacts with other philosophers working in the field, I thought I could make up an advisory  board, send out surveys, and see the results. 

I was wrong. Virtually nobody responded to the survey. Several people contacted me expressing their hope that we could generate such a list, but they did not feel fully qualified to fill out the survey. I had access to several reliable email lists of philosophers working in GLBTTQ Philosophy, but to no avail. In the end, the data generated for what are described on the site as "Tentative Lists" was worked out in actual conversation with the people on the advisory board and through sheer "grunt-work" -- checking on who was at which departments and what they had published, and looking through the meager survey results.

There are two obvious reasons for these difficulties: first, GLBTTQ philosophy is a fairly new field, and second, it is a fairly small field. My impression is that there are no departments that can be described as "strong in GLBTTQ Philosophy" in the same way that a department can be described as "strong in American Philosophy." That is, no department has multiple people working in that field and at the top of their game. This impression was reinforced by the difficulty of finding strong departments, and (depressingly) reinforced by the fact that the data showing which parts of the site are getting hits reveals that nobody's going to look at the GLBTTQ recommendations.

So I end this post with a plea, the same one that that appears on the site: please, if you have reliable information about strong programs in GLBTTQ Philosophy, or would be willing to serve on our advisory board, contact the site through our email: pluralistguidetophil@gmail.com

 

The Pluralist's Guide to Philosophy: the facts

The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy that I have been working on for over four years with Paul Taylor and Bill Wilkerson is not even officially public yet, but it is already getting slandered. A few facts for people to know:

1) The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy is meant to provide a resource of information on which graduate depts would be good bets for students wishing to pursue work in American Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity, or GLBTQ Philosophy. The reports have been generated through expert surveys, and all of the information about methods, advisory boards, etc, is transparent on the site.

2) Our guide is entirely independent of every philosophy organization, including SPEP. Paul Taylor is not a member of SPEP nor a continental philosopher (though I have been trying to recruit him for years...). He and I created the project entirely ourselves, then recruited the excellent philosopher Bill Wilkerson. Many leaders of SPEP, the APA, and other organizations have voiced their encouragement to us because they are concerned that there needs to be more information about philosophy departments out there, and more than one source of information. But we, and they, want total independence.

3) Our methods were painstaking (thus the four years), but obviously limited as anything of this sort is when it is basically an “expert survey.” We tried to make our expert survey better than others by allowing respondents to do research, making our questions more specific so it was less of a beauty contest, and casting a more pluralist net of advisors. Again, information on our advisors, our methods, and our questions is all on the site. The responses are confidential---we don’t know who reported what, though we know who was asked and who sent in a response.

4) One blogger says “some” of our advisors are dead. John Haugeland is up on the continental list of advisors although he is recently deceased, because he in fact assisted in this report before he died.  

5) Much of the vitriol is going to the climate for women report, which reports problems at a few depts. We knew this would generate heat, but what are we to do when we get numerous very negative reports on these depts? Ignore them? We felt a responsibility to report the information we received when it was significant enough to warrant concern. We will update our report every year, so depts have a chance to change their rating. That’s the best we can do.

6) There is an inevitable problem of change occurring in departments between the time our report is finished and when it is made public. This is unavoidable, but updating the report every year will help announce new developments. We will also have a space for updated information about specific departments on the site itself, but this will be moderated by us to try to ensure its factual basis.

6) As viewers of the site may note, there are many departments not listed. We listed departments with positives in two categories: Strongly recommended and recommended. Some departments did not make the cut, and some departments did not have enough of a response to generate any information. It is true that our advisory lists are less than 100% comprehensive in their collective knowledge of the profession. That is inevitable. Suggestions for new board members, as well as self-suggestions, are always welcome. We can be reached at pluralistguidetophil@gmail.com 

We expected a defensive response to this attempt to provide more information on philosophy departments, but it is still disheartening that the vitriol is not fact-based, nor evidently concerned to support attempts to make philosophy more inclusive.

We have been helpfully offered the use of this blog site over the next three months as another avenue for fact-sharing, as well as comments and discussions, and we welcome the opportunity for exchange. 

Linda Martín Alcoff

 

 

 

 

Conference on Bias

HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN, GERMANY INSTITUT FÜR PHILOSOPHIE
SYMPOSIUM SERIES:  FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY AND…

THE INAUGURAL EVENT ON BIAS

25 – 26th August 2011

Location: Kleiner Senatssaal (Humboldt-Universität Main Building, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin)

The concept of bias has played a key role in shaping feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. It is not, however, an uncontested concept. Feminist philosophers disagree amongst themselves on how the concept should be understood, and whether bias is inevitable. They further disagree on how feminists should respond to and deal with bias. For instance, are biases always detrimental to our knowledge seeking activities? Or, can certain explicit biases (like feminist and anti-racist ones) make our epistemic practices more robustly truth-seeking?

More recently, political and ethical discussions have started making use of the concept of bias. Both philosophers and psychologists alike have begun examining certain sorts of widespread implicit biases about members of stigmatised social groups. The holders of these biases are generally unaware of them, and often have sincere and explicit egalitarian beliefs. On one understanding, implicit biases are unconscious prejudices that unduly affect our ways of both positively and negatively perceiving, evaluating, and interacting with others. The recognition and analysis of such biases has wide-ranging consequences for feminist philosophy and politics, as well as for every other movement seeking social justice. Implicit biases may explain why members of particular groups still find it hard to ‘make it’, despite the lack of overt obstacles to positions of power and authority.  Given its centrality to a number of feminist debates, this conference examines the notion of bias (broadly conceived).

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:

Louise Antony (University of Massachusetts, Amherts, USA): "Different Voices or Perfect Storm? Explaining the Dearth of Women In Philosophy"

Jennifer Saul (University of Sheffield, UK): "Formal Equality of Opportunity and Affirmative Action"

Matthew Drabek (University of Iowa, US): “A Model of Feedback Bias in the Social Sciences”

Catherine Hundleby (University of Windsor, Canada): “Bias and Fallacies of Argumentation: The Case of Androcentrism”

Kristen Intemann (Montana State University, US) & Inmaculada de Melo‐Martín (Weill Cornell Medical College, US): “Bias and the Commercialization of Scientific Research: Can a Feminist Conception of
Impartiality Help?”

Peter Kirwan (University of California, Irvine, US): “Implicit Bias: Mapping the Dark Matter of Social Psychology”

Heidi Lockwood (Southern Connecticut State University, US): “Why does Diversity Matter in the Academy”

Susanne Pohlmann (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany): “Accountability and Underpinning Attitudes of Biased Beliefs”

This conference also serves as the inaugural event for the new Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Symposium Series Feminist Philosophy and…. It will be followed by further regular events on topics relevant and of interest to feminist philosophers and all philosophers working on issues to do with social justice. Planned future topics include Feminist Philosophy and: Gender, Pornography, Race, Sex work.

Attendance is free but places are limited. To register, email feminism-hu@gmx.de by 11th August 2011. For further information about the Symposium Series and the event on Bias, please contact Prof. Dr. Mari Mikkola (mari.mikkola@hu-berlin.de).

Discussion of Black Underrepresentation in Philosophy

See the discussion on the Leiter Reports prompted by Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman's original post (also posted on this blog) and Lionel McPherson's comment:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/06/is-there-any-hope-for-the-racial-diversity-of-the-philosophy-profession.html

Please feel free to discuss the issues here too.

Blacks in Philosophy

Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman has brought to my attention the following important facts and raises a call for action:

1. Only 50 out of 14,000 professors in Britain are black 

The data in item #1 is reported here http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/27/only-50-black-british-professors?intcmp=239, and here http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2011/may/27/black-professor-shortage-failure-to-nurture-talent. To my knowledge (and I am a citizen of Britain), none of these 50 black professors specialises in philosophy.

2. Fewer than 125 out of 11,000 members of the American Philosophical Association are black

3. Fewer than 30 out of 11,000 members of the American Philosophical Association are black women

The data in items #2 and #3 are drawn from Kathryn T. Gines. Being a black woman philosopher: Reflections on founding the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers. Hypatia 26(2): 429-43.

Together, these facts add weight to the conclusion that there is a global lack of blacks in professional philosophy. I urge the philosophical professioriat to take immediate and positive action to combat this global lack. Please do convey my entreaty to your readers.

Comments?  Suggestions?

The Mentoring Project

Sent on behalf of Ann Cudd and Louise Antony.

Colleagues,
We invite applications to a mentoring workshop for junior faculty women in philosophy. This workshop will be held June 19-21 at the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-directed by Louise Antony and Ann Cudd. The workshop is designed to help women advance in the philosophy profession. Mentees will be placed in networking groups led by a senior women in their field. Each group will meet in four (or five) working sessions, to discuss, in turn, a work-in-progress provided by each mentee. There will also be panel discussions of professional issues facing women philosophy.

For more information and instructions for applying, please see the project website: <http://www.philosophy.ku.edu/mentoring-project/>.

You may contact Ann Cudd (acudd@ku.edu) or Louise Antony (lantony@philos.umass.edu) for more information, as well.

The Workshop is being sponsored by a grant from the American Philosophical Association, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Kansas.

Please bring this to the attention of junior women faculty in Philosophy.

Sincerely,
Ann Cudd

Ann E. Cudd
Professor of Philosophy
Associate Dean for the Humanities
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Kansas

PIKSI Call for Graduate Assistant Applications 2011

PIKSI 2011 GRADUATE ASSISTANT
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The sixth annual meeting of Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute
(PIKSI) will take place from July 31 – August 6, 2011, at the Rock Ethics
Institute on the campus of Penn State University in State College, PA. At
least two graduate students will assist Ladelle McWhorter, who will direct
the Institute. In addition, one graduate assistant will come from the Penn
State philosophy department. We expect that, as was the case in previous
summers, the home institution of the other graduate assistants will fund
their positions. (The philosophy departments of the University of Memphis,
Binghamton University, Villanova University, Michigan State University,
University of Colorado at Boulder, Stony Brook University, Dalhousie,
American University, and DePaul University generously supported PIKSI
graduate assistants in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.)

We invite those of you teaching in graduate programs to nominate graduate
student assistants for PIKSI. The applications will be screened according to
the graduate student’s accomplishments as a researcher, a teacher, and
mentor; the relevance of her or his research to the topics of the institute;
and the home institution’s willingness to fund the student (approximately
$2000, including travel, housing, and stipend).

Applications should include a cover letter from the graduate student in
which they discuss why they would like to be a graduate assistant for PIKSI,
the graduate student’s CV, a letter of support from a faculty member, and
documentation of institutional support, if available. Please email complete
applications to Ladelle McWhorter, Philosophy Department, University of
Richmond, 28 Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA 23173, by March 7, 2011. If you
have any further questions please contact Eva Feder Kittay, PIKSI Board
Chair, at eva.kittay@stonybrook.edu <us003667@mindspring.com> or Ladelle
McWhorter, Director of PIKSI Summer 2011, at lmcwhort@richmond.edu

Stereotype Threat website

This is an excellent website on stereotype threat with useful information, bibliography, etc.

http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/