by Sherri Conklin, Eric Schwitzgebel, and Nicole Hassoun.
Philosophy needs to diversify. Come join us at the Pacific Division meeting to tell us what departments can do to improve. Join the Demographics in Philosophy Project to help bend the long arc of history towards justice.
First, some data
A growing body of research shows that while the proportions of women philosophy faculty are increasing over time, women still only account for 25% of all philosophy faculty in the U.S. (Conklin, Artamonova, and Hassoun 2019; see also Women-In-Philosophy.org). Black philosophers account for only about 1-4% of all philosophy faculty (Botts et al. 2014). And disabled philosophers are underrepresented as well (Tremain 2014).
These groups’ disproportionately low authorship rates in philosophy journals may partially explain the faculty findings – especially if failure to publish leads to a failure to gain employment, tenure, and promotion (Wilhelm, Conklin, and Hassoun 2017). For example, only 13% of publications in top philosophy journals are by women (Schwitzgebel and Jennings 2017), and fewer than 1% of authors in top journals are Black (Bright 2016).
Another possible explanation concerns the “pipeline” into philosophy. For example, women and Black philosophers receive only about 32% and 5% of undergraduate philosophy degrees in the U.S. (Schwitzgebel 2017a, 2017b) and about 29% and 2% of PhDs (Schwitzgebel 2016). (Systematic data on other groups that are likely to be underrepresented are more difficult to obtain). Possibly, something about how philosophy is taught or how it is perceived in U.S. culture substantially influences the demographics of the major (Garfield and Van Norden 2016; Thompson et al. 2016).
This is a problem from an epistemic point of view: Philosophy as a discipline profits from hearing voices from a variety of different backgrounds. Furthermore, to the extent that unfair exclusionary practices, whether implicit or explicit, may be limiting people’s career choices, it is a problem of social justice.
Disciplinary initiatives to combat the disparities
Much has been done to combat the observed disparities. The British Philosophical Association, in collaboration with the Society for Women in Philosophy-UK, launched a Best Practices Scheme for improving departmental climates for women. The APA introduced a new initiative to diversify course syllabi through the Diversity and Inclusiveness Syllabus Collection. A number of philosophy diversity institutes were launched to help attract marginalized undergraduates to apply to graduate school. These programs include PikSi, UCSD SPWP, and COMPASS (among others – see the APA resource page on Undergraduate Diversity Institutes in Philosophy). Graduate students founded Minorities in Philosophy to promote student initiated change (mapforthegap.com).
In addition, the Demographics in Philosophy Project collates and collects data to document the problem of marginalization in professional philosophy and to identify tools for counteracting it. In 2018, we initiated a broadly consultative project to identify inclusive practices for philosophy journals, beginning with a session on inclusive practices at the Pacific Division meeting of the APA and a series of blog posts from editors of leading journals (Hassoun, Schwitzgebel, and Smith 2018; Kukla 2018; Bilimoria 2018; Hetherington 2018; Hansson 2018; Moore and O’Brien 2018) and culminating in a list of potential best practices, posted here on the Blog of the APA (Conklin, Hassoun, Schwitzgebel 2018).
But what can departments do to combat the disparities directly?
Tell us how to fix the problem:
We have some preliminary ideas about how to improve the situation, but we want to hear from you. We would like to identify concrete suggestions for specific practices that can be implemented by departments to improve diversity without compromising their other goals. We are especially interested in hearing about successful practices.
Give us your suggestions. Raise objections and concerns. Email us. And, if you’re in the area at the time, please come to our session on this topic at the Pacific APA meeting in Vancouver on April 18 (1-4pm). The session will start with a brief presentation on diversity in philosophy departments, but it will mostly consist of open discussion with a panel of representatives from sixteen well-regarded philosophy departments, who will bring their experience to the question as well as, we suspect, in some cases, their strenuous disagreement.
After the session, we hope to partner with departments to collect more data on what works to improve diversity and to develop a toolbox of helpful practices.
Suggestions, objections, and contributions welcome at dataonwomen@gmail.com. More data on women in philosophy are available here: Women-In-philosophy.org
Follow us on Twitter @PhilosophyData and Facebook
Session details:
Diversity in Philosophy Departments
Pacific APA, Vancouver
April 18, 2018, 9:00–12:00 a.m.
APA Committee Session:
Arranged by the APA Committee on the Status of Women
Chair:
Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California, Riverside)
Speakers:
Nicole Hassoun (Binghamton University)
Sherri Conklin (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Purushottama Bilimoria (University of California, Berkeley and University of Melbourne)
Teresa Blankmeyer Burke (Gallaudet University)
Leslie Pickering Francis (University of Utah)
Subrena Smith (University of New Hampshire)
Panelists:
David Chalmers (New York University)
Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes University)
Steve Downes (University of Utah)
Carrie Figdor (University of Iowa)
John Lysaker (Emory University)
Anna-Sara Malmgren (Stanford University)
Wolfgang R. Mann (Columbia University)
Ned Markosian (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Gregory R. Peterson (South Dakota State University)
Geoff Sayre-McCord (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Miriam Solomon (Temple University)
Yannik Thiem (Villanova University)
Daniela Vallega-Neu (University of Oregon)
Eric Watkins (University of California, San Diego)
Andrea Woody (University of Washington)
Thanks to Kathryn Norlock and Michael Rea for help with this project.
Featured photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash
Academic diversity, even if absolutely necessary in a Scientific Community, in a Philosophic Community is a curse and not a blessing.
The reason is simple: a wise philosopher is after wisdom, beyond knowledge and specialization, and well beyond power and leadership.
If Power is about Equality (or the lack of it), Knowledge is about Liberty, then Wisdom is about Unity, and Sanctity, the unrelentless next step forward of the wise, is about Fraternity.
Very fancy jargon. To be honest, I’m not all sure what it means. But that’s probably because there’s not enough academic diversity in philosophy.
But let me try to make sense of what you’re saying. So you are saying these things?
Claim: “Academic diversity” in a philosophic community creates division, not unity, and therefore not fraternity. (Presumably, that’s why it’s a “curse”? Otherwise, I’m not getting this point.)
Claim: Philosophers are, in essence, after “wisdom” and not power or knowledge. (So this must be is why you chose to modify the word “philosopher” in your second paragraph with the adjective “wise”; not because the philosopher requires that modification, but simply to emphasize the fact that philosophers are after “wisdom” and not these other things.)
Definitions: “Wisdom” means “unity and sanctity”. (Now, admittedly, this isn’t how I would define it. To me, wisdom either means “cleverness” if taken in the original Greek sense, sophia. But if taken in the Saxon way, since “wisdom” comes from the Saxon root “wis”, then in fact, it does mean something like “knowing”. English translations of Greek are sometimes inherently faulty, I think.) Next, by “knowledge” you presumably mean gnostic-knowledge rather than epistemic-knowledge, since you associate it with “specialization” and “liberty”. And I guess “power” means for you an “ability” and/or “strength”, since you associate it with “equality” and “leadership”.
Claim: A “wise philosopher” is after “unity and sanctity”, not gnosis or abilities.
Conclusion: And so “the wise” (presumably, who are “philosophers” since, “philosopher” just refers to someone who is truly a friend of wisdom), would pursue “unity and sanctity” and “fraternity” (presumably, this fraternity includes women as well as men), rather than distractions such as specialization, equality, leadership, and liberty.
If I got this about right, then I think that I follow your conclusion. However, I disagree with it.
I don’t think that philosophers, in the truest sense of the Greek meaning, are really after wisdom (however you want to define it). You see, that would be a fruitless narcissism according to my understanding, especially if you define a philosopher as someone who is herself “wise” as you seem to do. I define “philosopher” as meaning “someone who is skilled at making judgments”, because sophos means skill. In any case, I think that what philosophers are truly in pursuit of is “truth” (aletheia), not wisdom, for people don’t pursue what they already have (except in play). But what philosophers don’t have is is aletheia/truth. And so, I think that philosophers use their “cleverness” to pursue this, and discover the truth. And on that note, I think that diversity is important because it may turn out that truth is not flat, but actually three-dimensional. And what one philosopher uncovers may only reveal a small portion of what the whole truth is.
At first, I felt offended by the unfriendly and unwelcoming of the only reply I received to my comment, because I assumed it came from one of the three authors of the article.
However, I later found out that the reply came from someone who wanted help to “become an academic philosopher” as stated in your own comment to the article.
The good news for you is that you already are a typical PhD backed up scholar recognized as an academic philosopher.
The bad news for you and your colleagues is that you don’t become a Wise Philosopher: You either are one ore you are not, regardless of your habitat: the street or the academy. I come from the street.
Even if you referred to my comment as a “very fancy jargon”, I have to give you some credit because, after this first blow, you were honest enough to recognize that “you were not all sure what my comment meant”.
But immediately after, you not only tried “to make sense of what (you thought) I was saying”, even if you proved not to understand it at all, but you then went into your own jargon, where you tried not only to teach me some of your own academic philosophy, but also tried to sell me as much of your AlethesSophia.as possible. Finally, you came up with the cherry of your own cake and said: “If I got this about right, then I think that I follow your conclusion. However, I disagree with it.”.
In my humble opinion, the only valuable contribution you made in your reply, I have already included in the “more of the same” version of my original comment shown below.
“More of the same” version of my original comment:
Unless you made a mistake, the very post sign of your article is not calling for diverse specialists but reads: WE WELCOME PEOPLE.
Academic diversity, even if necessary, in a Scientific Environment, in a Philosophic Community is a curse and not a blessing.
The reason is simple: a philosopher is after wisdom, beyond knowledge and specialization, and well beyond power and leadership.
1. Such as Power relates, among many other things, to Respect, Desires, Temperance, Faith, Equality and Beauty.
2. Knowledge relates to Coordination, Projects, Prudence, Hope, Liberty and Truth.
3. Wisdom relates to Welcome, Vocation, Fortitude, Charity, Unity (the Unity that the French ideologists despised) and Good.
4. Sanctity, the unrelentless next step forward of the wise, relates to Surrender, Yearning, Justice, Love, Fraternity and “Oneness” (that the Greek Philosophers being polytheistic couldn’t possibly include in the 3D Human Equations of their time, and we can formulate as 4D today).
Since apparently you didn´t understand my initial comment, I hope this time you have more food for thought.
However, since I love challenges and love to explore every opportunity that life presents to me, and, you have just made me an offer that I can’t possibly refuse, I will keep on going:
As a natural step forward, this professional engineer (half technician and half scientist), relentlessly came to be an amateur philosopher bursting with questions to ask and things to say. Somewhere along the way, and many years ago, I discovered that I was really trying to “listen-admire-meditate-talk-listen-admire-meditate-talk….” mostly with either dead or virtual people, and this of course proved to be impossible.
Thus, besides “listening-talking-listening…” to myself I started commenting and replying to most of the “personal letters” that I received disguised as essays and articles, that even if not addressed to me, appealed to me. Unfortunately, very few of the people, whose letters I commented and replied to, were interested or had the time to engage in “our epistolary game.”
I also found out that instead of “listening-admiring-meditating-talking-listening-admiring-meditating-talking….” to others and “listening-talking-listening….” to myself, I was “reading-interpreting-understanding-meditating-writting-reading-interpreting-understanding-meditating-writting….” to others, and also to myself.
Therefore, I had also given up on the spoken word, and replaced it all together by the written letter.
Then I decided that I came to be more of a “thinking scientist in search of knowledge”, than a “meditating philosopher in search of wisdom”, thus I was back to square one, and, also that I had the right to state that the whole of human philosophy, for the very same reason, have never gone beyond square one either.
However, the engineer and model maker in me, didn’t give up and decided to start from scratch, and after searching for and finding a coherent model of humanity, propose scientists and philosophers in particular to switch all together from theory to model thinking, not to think anything new, but only to think all over again, and this way go beyond the deadly trap of the perceiving and acting of the leader and the understanding and thinking of the specialist, into the admiring and meditating of the wise and eventually the contemplating and praying of the saint.
The 4D model that I chose was already part of my own culture, and even if I could explain it in a saga of books, is simple enough to be formulated in a set of analog phrases:
I am a selfish individual, inhabited by an altruistic person.
I am Sancho Panza, inhabited by Don Quijote.
….
I am meant to become a body driven by a mind, inhabited by a spirit driven by a heart.
I am meant to become a substance driven by its rationality, inhabited by a subsistent driven her relationality.
I am meant to become a leader driven by a specialist, inhabited by a wise driven by a saint.
I am meant to become power driven by knowledge, inhabited by wisdom driven by sanctity.
I am meant to become a technician driven by a scientist, inhabited by a philosopher driven by a religious person.
I am meant to become action driven by thought, inhabited by meditation driven by prayer.
You certainly are the same.
….
Even if I want to establish a conversation with you, I am already starting to write you a paper, so, it’s about time to invite you to talk about model thinking and trying and resurrecting the spoken word, now that the same technology that out fashioned her, is ready to bring her back in full glory.
As I had said, you’re very poetic — that is what I mean by “fancy jargon”. But nobody can reply to your comment if nobody understands what you intend to be saying. Still, I took a shot and gave you an analysis (and even structured a quasi-argument for you); I guess I kind of do it sometimes for sport. Please excuse me if you took offense to merely a playful gesture. I expected you to correct me if I got your terms wrong. After all, it’s your argument and it’s your terms, right? What’s structure without meaning?
Well, since you say you’re not an academic philosopher, in your opinion, then, what do you think it is that “academic” philosophers do? Just curious. I wouldn’t know either, since I’m not one.
In any case, I find it insulting to be a “Sancho Panza, inhabited by Don Quijote.” Probably because I’m not “a” Sancho. But even if I were, I would then want to be authored by Sancho Panza and not “a” Don Quijote. But maybe that is just me. And if that is just me, then that is also a reason for me to support diversity in academic philosophy and to wish to be a part of it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think that I’m after truth after all; I probably have enough of it, actually. What I really want is justice.
Now please tell me what you mean by “resurrecting the spoken word”. You can email me directly if you wish, so that you don’t clutter up this blog with unrelated topics.
If a shortage of women or blacks in philosophy adversely affects instruction by limiting viewpoints, does it not follow that the same is true when diversity is arbitrarily limited in other ways, such as by requiring instructors to have particular political views? Faculties are very concerned about having racial or sexual diversity even if this means loosening standards for hire, but they exclude anyone whose political views they disagree with regardless of their academic merit. My impression is that they avoid dealing with this hypocritical double-standard simply by not acknowledging it.
William, I have not personally seen any cases of excluding a hire in philosophy due to political viewpoint. Generally, we do not even know the political viewpoints of the people we hire.
I want to be an academic philosopher.
The first step for increasing academic diversity, on my view, is for everyone to help me, Kendi, become an academic philosopher. ^-^
My one little vote from the general public peanut gallery is that it’s not really that wise for minorities of any kind to be demanding entrance in to the old white men boy’s club of academic philosophy.
What I see from the outside is that, generally speaking, the old white men established leaders of the field are not really capable of reason, or of teaching reason.
If reason is defined at the application of disciplined thought to the advancement of human welfare, we can observe that the “establishment” has overwhelmingly failed to address the single biggest most imminent threat to human welfare, nuclear weapons. With apologies to the editors, I offer this prominent academic philosophy blog as a handy example of this illogical oversight.
If a person wishes to be a philosophical leader, great, then lead, chart a new course, a course based on reason instead of tradition and a clearly failed academic status quo.
Why fight your way on to a sinking ship?