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 [email protected] 

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

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Elizabeth Harman]

Dear Linda,

I greatly appreciate your desire to clear up the facts and to be transparent about the creation of the Pluralists' Guide, including its report on the climate for women.

You say that surveys were used to generate the climate for women report, and that you feel an obligation to report this information. I'd like to know more about what the "information" was.

A. Did only the members of the advisory board fill out the surveys? (Or did the advisory board assist in distributing surveys to a larger body of people?)

B. What questions were on the surveys?

Were the following the questions?:

(In May 2010, I was informally asked to answer these questions by a member of the advisory board, but I did not respond at the time:)

Indicate how strongly you agree/disagree with each of the following
claims. (The available answers are: Strongly Disagree, Disagree,
Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree, Don’t Know.) Please add any other
information or comments you think are relevant.

1. In this department, women students face more difficulties because
of their gender.

2. In this department, women students take an equally active role as
do men in seminars, symposia, and the life of the department.

3. In this department, women students are equally supported as men
students in their research, teaching, and job applications.

4. In this department, sexual harassment of female students is not a
present day or ongoing concern.

C. Was any effort made to confirm that those filling out the surveys were basing their assessments on the recent climate in the department (in the last three or four years, say), rather than on problems in the department that are now five or ten years in the past?

Thank you for answering these questions!

-- Elizabeth Harman
Philosophy Department & Center for Human Values
Princeton University