Gender, Race and Philosophy: The Blog

Summer Immersion Program in Philosophy at Brown University 2016

The Brown Philosophy Department is now accepting applications for the Summer Immersion Program in Philosophy at Brown University.

SIPP@Brown is a two-week undergraduate program for members of groups that are underrepresented in philosophy departments, including women and students of color. The 2016 program will run from July 17 to July 30 and will feature seminars taught by Brown faculty and the SIPP@Brown research conference. Each student will receive free lodging on Brown's campus, a $500 stipend, and reimbursement of up to $500 of travel expenses.

To learn more about the program and the application procedure, visit www.sippatbrown.com. The application deadline is March 15. Questions about SIPP@Brown or about the application process should be sent to [email protected]

Rhodes Must Fall protest at Oxford

http://oxfordstudent.com/2015/10/24/students-wear-red-in-matriculation-protest/

Students wore red as they matriculated on Saturday in protest at what they say is the University’s continued celebration of colonialism and lack of diversity.

“The wearing of red by matriculating students draws attention to this bloodshed and related oppression, and highlights Oxford’s red-tape culture, which slows down change.  Rhodes Must Fall Oxford also hopes that the wearing of red underscores the need for passion and transformation to raise awareness of these issues in the coming year at Oxford.

“Rhodes Must Fall Oxford looks forward to a year of transformation at Oxford, and hopes that this matricul-action is a sign of things to come.”

Bar On asks "Should We Occupy?"

We invite discussion of Bat-Ami Bar On's paper "Should We Occupy?"

Abstract:

In this essay I ask what is the responsibility of philosophy graduate programs, philosophy faculty, and professional organizations of academic philosophers toward individuals who are interested in pursuing a philosophy Ph.D.. I am especially concerned about responsibilities toward members of groups that are underrepresented in philosophy as an academic discipline who are being actively recruited into the pool of applicants to Ph. D. programs. I ask my questions against a background of bad news about the state of philosophy as an academic profession and the academic humanities more generally, and a reasonable anticipation that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and so the job prospects of philosophy Ph.D. aspirants are not good. Because of endemic academic inequalities, philosophy Ph.D. aspirants who are members of groups that are currently underrepresented in philosophy are likely to be even worse off than others.

Comments may be anonymous, but please be respectful.  We urge people to read the essay before commenting.

If you have trouble with the link above, you may also download it here.

Double Jeopardy - A report on women of color in science

Joan Williams (UC Hastings), Katherine Phillips (Columbia), and Erika Hall (Emory) have produced a report on women of color in science called "Double Jeopardy." 

"We interviewed sixty scientists who were all women of color. Women of color face “double jeopardy” because they encounter race as well as gender bias (Epstein, 1973; Almquist, 1975). This study explores how the experience of gender bias differs by race. We use the interviews of women of color in science and a survey that quantifies the experiences of White, Black, Asian-Americans, and Latina women in STEM fields to document the little-explored differences between the experiences of White women and women of color, and between different groups of women of color."

After a richly detailed report, they offer recommendations for change:

"This report concludes by introducing a new approach to organizational change to interrupt gender bias, called Metrics-Based Bias Interrupters (Williams, 2014). In contrast to traditional one-off bias trainings, and traditional sensitivity based organizational change initiatives, Bias Interrupters uses a four-step iterative process: 1) identify how gender bias is playing out, if at all, in basic business systems (recruiting, assignments, evaluations, etc.), 2) develop objective metrics to measure bias, 3) implement a bias interrupter to interrupt the bias, 4) see whether the relevant metric improves and, if it doesn’t, strengthen or modify the intervention. A compilation of Bias Interrupters is provided at the end of this report."

Thanks to Carla Fehr for the link.