Ashli Anda is a third year PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her primary research focuses on the justification of proportionality in theories of punishment.
What excites you about philosophy?
I feel conflicted about how to answer this question. I love philosophy because it helps us answer difficult questions but many of the questions that interest me demand practical legal and political solutions. To do the work the way that I want requires getting quite close to the real cases of injustice and suffering that I’m trying to analyze and assess. That’s not exciting. It’s difficult and often devastating. And, of course, I have conferencing and publishing goals because I want to be a professional philosopher but it’s especially important to me to respond to injustices with advocacy.
I think research that stops short of advocacy can be exploitative so it’s important to me to be a scholar-activist. In Viva the Scholar-Activist!, Alvaro Huerta (professor at my undergrad institution California State Polytechnic, University in Pomona) says that scholar-activism “means being a bridge between these asymmetric spaces: institutions of higher education and racialized/working-class communities. It means for the former, with its privileged members, to serve the latter – not vice versa, as is the norm.” Through teaching philosophy, volunteering, and political organizing, I’m able to serve others. I’m extremely fortunate to be in a department where I have two incredible examples of women who work on political philosophy (among other things). They include my advisor, Helga Varden, and my professor, Colleen Murphy. They’ve really helped me realize what kind of philosopher I want to become.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
I’m most proud that I’m still trying to become a professional philosopher. I dropped out of high school and didn’t know anything about navigating college. I went to community college and then transferred to Cal Poly Pomona where I earned my bachelor’s degree. Michael Cholbi, Megs Gendreau, and Ericka Tucker encouraged me to think seriously about graduate school and helped me apply to programs. I got my master’s from Boston College and I’m now at the University of Illinois for my PhD. Things didn’t get easier just because I made it that far. I was temporarily dismissed from my PhD program because I wasn’t making sufficient progress, but I’ve since completed the work and am back in the program. I’ve had lots of difficulties in school for as long as I can remember but I keep bouncing back. I don’t believe that college is only for those people who are naturally good at it. I’m certainly not. So, yes, after all these years I’m proud of myself just for being here.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I like to organize around local and national politics. There’s a pretty great activist community in Champaign-Urbana so I’ve organized with people around housing issues, Medicare for All, and immigration over the past year. I also love spending time with my philosopher partner and our pets Rose, Siege, and Phantom.
What are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?
Two things: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien and Charged by Emily Bazelon. The former is part of a push to finish reading the LOTR trilogy and watching the movies (for the first time ever!) by the end of the year. Overall, I would recommend reading the trilogy (even if there are way too many songs and lots of details about the woods).
Charged is about how prosecutors can contribute to ending mass incarceration. Some of Bazelon’s recommendations include diversion programs to keep people out of jail and prison, ending cash bail, and treatment instead of criminalization of drug addiction and mental illness. Additionally, she thinks prosecutors should abstain from filing the maximum criminal charges whenever possible, avoid trying children as adults, and acknowledge the harmful consequences of immigrants being jailed before their trials. I recommend this to anyone wanting to learn more about mass incarceration and the details of the criminal justice process (from arrest to sentencing).
What books are currently on your ‘to read’ list?
I’m most looking forward to Michael Tonry’s Of One-eyed and Toothless Miscreants: Making the Punishment Fit the Crime? It comes out in October and it’s about proportionality. I expect it to be super helpful as I’m preparing my dissertation proposal.
What’s your top tip for APA members reading this?
This advice is geared toward undergraduates and early stage graduate students. When people tell you to find your writing hours and to stick to them, ask them what their weekly work schedule looks like. Where do they work? What time do they write? Do they like to write with others or alone? What do they do if they don’t finish a task? Hearing more about your professors’ work habits, how they balance(d) multiple jobs and families, and learning about specific resources available across campus can be much more helpful than trying to guess which hours of the day are best for writing.
As a student accustomed to working multiple jobs while in school, it was difficult for me to find and/or set those hours. I still don’t work during a specific time of day, but I found out that structured writing groups work well for me (and it doesn’t matter when they are). I visited the Center for Writing Studies on campus and they run weekly graduate student writing groups. At the start of a meeting, students announce what they’d like to accomplish. There’s also a scheduled break and a check-in at the end. Another thing that really helps me is to have weekly meetings with my advisor to talk about what I’m (supposed to be) writing. If I’ve got ideas, we talk through them and if I feel lost, she helps me get back on track. Basically, my advice is to ask for help and try out lots of different productivity techniques until you find some that work well for you.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
