Eric Bayruns Garcia is an Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at California State University, San Bernardino and he did his doctoral in the philosophy program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Eric works on epistemological questions raised by race and racial injustice.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
I am most proud of my involvement in attempting to diversify philosophy and academia at large. As part of my graduate school fellowship at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Graduate Center, I was lucky enough to serve as a mentor in the CUNY Pipeline Program which aims to diversify the professoriate by helping CUNY undergraduates from underrepresented groups apply to Ph.D. programs in the humanities, social sciences and sciences.
I am also proud of serving as a Graduate Assistant and Teaching Fellow at both the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute at Penn State University’s Rock Ethics Institute (PIKSI-Rock) and PIKSI-Boston which is hosted by MIT. PIKSI aims to diversify philosophy through helping undergraduates from underrepresented groups apply to philosophy Ph.D. programs. And I helped start the first Minorities And Philosophy (MAP) chapter in New York City in my first year of grad school at CUNY. This MAP chapter along with the others in the New York area (Rutgers, NYU and Columbia) have been very active in promoting diversity in philosophy.
I take pride in this involvement because programs such as CUNY’s Pipeline Program and PIKSI have put undergraduates from underrepresented groups in a position to pursue a career it might have been more difficult for them to pursue.
Finally, I am very proud of the fact that I have been even a small part of making student’s lives materially better by helping them get into Ph.D. programs. Many folks in philosophy do not realize that for many underrepresented students graduate student stipends, as meager as they are, often represent a major material and financial improvement it their lives. For example, I’ve had students who were homeless or living in shelters or in other far from ideal situations who were equally talented as any graduate student I’ve ever met in philosophy.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently working on a series of papers that take up how racial injustice causes bad epistemic outcomes such as false belief, lack of belief, unjustified true belief and improper degree of confidence in a belief. One of these papers, “Expression-Style Exclusion,” was just published in Social Epistemology. One overarching goal that these papers share is to make plausible the idea that social-political phenomena can interestingly bear on purelyepistemic phenomena such as knowledge and justified belief.
Another thing that I am working on right now is laying the groundwork for a project on Dominican philosophy. Latin American Philosophy as a field has not taken up philosophers from or philosophical regarding the Dominican Republic. This project focuses on the political philosophical writings of Juan Bosch who is a highly regarded political activist, writer, historian, and theorist in Latin America. What’s more is that he was the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic (he was ousted by a US-CIA-backed coup during the JFK administration months after being elected). He has a theory of oligarchy and its relation to capital accumulation that I hope to make explicit. But, many of Bosch’s works have not been translated into English and as a result Edgar Valdez and I are translating these works into English.
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
The relationship between capitalism and the concept of race.
What is your favorite sound in the world?
My favorite sound in the world can be found either on Dead Prez’ “Malcolm, Garvey, Huey,” Boogie Down Productions’, “Love’s Gonna Get’cha,” Anthony Santos’, “Por Mi Timidez” or Juan Luís Guerra’s, “Farolito”.
What do you like to do outside work?
I enjoy playing American handball. American handball differs from what is known as European or Team handball which is a completely different sport. American handball is played on courts that are identical to racquetball courts and it has the same rules as racquetball, but in handball one hits the ball with one’s hands rather than a racquet. What folks think are racquetball courts were actually first designed as handball courts after Irish immigrants brought the sport to NYC at the end of the 19thcentury. I grew up in New York which is the mecca of handball. There are over 2,299 handball courts in NYC.
What is your favorite book of all time? (Or top 3). Why?
Paul Taylor’s Black Is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics. I highly recommend it because it is one of the few works in analytic philosophy that takes up the relation between aesthetic value and racial injustice.
Who do you think is the most overrated / underrated philosopher?
I think that Alain Locke is likely the most underrated philosopher of the early twentieth century. Both in prose and argumentative style, Locke’s work on the nature of race and ethnicity was ahead of its time.
Where is your favorite place you have ever traveled and why?
Cuba. One reason among many is that one can easily find the most incredible impromptu musical performances of Salsa or Son music in the street.
What’s your top tip or advice for APA members reading this?
You should write about what you care about because this work will turn out the best. This was the best advice I received during grad school.
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.
