If you are like me and received your philosophical training at the tail end of the twentieth century, there are probably significant gaps in your education. My undergraduate, Master’s, and Ph.D. programs focused heavily on the philosophical canon; “diversity” showed up mostly through feminist philosophy courses, and those were courses I had to actively seek out. It meant that once I was standing before a classroom of students as the instructor, I had little to no knowledge of Africana philosophy, Latin philosophy, or Indigenous philosophy. Textbooks didn’t (and still don’t) offer much help because they mirror my education of mostly European and United Statesian philosophers. When I ventured into including a more diverse set of thinkers, I relied heavily on a side education I received while a Ph.D. student—a Women’s Studies certificate I was awarded by taking extra courses (offered outside my department). Through those courses, I read the works of Audre Lorde, Maria Lugones, and Chandra Mohanty among others. Even as I included their writings in my own courses, it was with the understanding that they primarily represent feminist philosophical arguments and that more work was needed if I wanted to reach a point of competency in non-European philosophy.
Diversity remains an issue among those earning degrees in philosophy, too. Recent APA membership data reflects that philosophy isn’t terribly diverse in terms of gender or race. Only roughly one-quarter of APA members are women. The current situation with race is a bit more complicated: the data on philosophy majors who are Latino/Hispanic students and Asian students is proportional to their representation among the U.S. population. The same holds for Native American students; however, the situation is different with Black students who remain underrepresented among philosophy majors. At the advanced degree level, the data on who earns a Ph.D. in philosophy in the U.S. shows that only five percent of U.S.-born Ph.D. students do not identify their race as “white.” Addressing the problem of “diversity in philosophy” then involves not only who is studied in courses but also who is teaching them.
Theories abound about why the field remains relatively white and male compared to other disciplines in the humanities: some point to the confrontational posturing philosophers have been known for, a disposition that is still a male-gendered behavior. Decades ago, Charles Mills famously noted that women in philosophy courses experience the discomfort of being talked about while Black students experience race as not acknowledged at all. A proposed reason that non-white students may not pursue higher degrees and eventually teaching positions in philosophy may come down to my opening statement: Do non-white college students know about the history of philosophers who look like them? We know that representation in content matters.
A recent program in philosophy is working to address this. NEWLAMP (Northeast Workshop to Learn About Multicultural Philosophy) is organized by philosophers committed to introducing fellow professors to philosophy from underrepresented traditions. It rests on the understanding that countless instructors across the country fit the same description as me in that exposure to Latin philosophy, Africana philosophy, or Indigenous philosophy was spotty at best in our own training. It means that few of the predominantly white philosophy instructors on U.S. college campuses may be proficient in teaching diverse philosophical traditions. NEWLAMP aims to rectify that by giving philosophy instructors the tools to diversify their syllabi.
I was one of the participants in NEWLAMP’s 2023 program at Rutgers University hosted by Alex Guerrero. This year, NEWLAMP focused on Mesoamerican philosophy, Latin American philosophy, and Latinx moral, social, and political philosophy. The experts—Carlos Alberto Sanchez, James Maffie, and Stephanie Rivera Berruz—taught us Aztec metaphysics, early twentieth-century Mexican thought, and feminist Latin and Chicana traditions.
Colonization was a common theme throughout in interpreting and contextualizing the philosophies. Jim Maffie invited us to practice the “hermeneutics of suspicion” as we read the “primary” sources on ancient Mexican culture and its “thick Spanish, colonial, Christian gloss.” We learned about the Aztec monistic conception of teotl, a self-generating, eternal, sacred energy or force. Carlos Sanchez introduced us to the Hyperion Group of Mexican phenomenologists like Jorge Portilla and his “The Suspension of Seriousness.” Portilla’s thesis involves a phenomenon specific to Mexican culture called relajo, or a deviation from a moment of seriousness through disruptive laughter. Stephanie Rivera Berruz explored with us a variety of feminist thought through works by the Puerto Rican anarchist feminist Luisa Capetillo, Chicana feminist Gloria Anzuldúa’s concept of mestiza consciousness, and others.
At times during the workshop, the conversation turned to the many political implications involved. For instance, what does “doing justice” look like to complex cultural phenomena and philosophical concepts developed in places still enduring the effects of colonization? What does it mean that mostly white professors in U.S. colleges are the means through which students learn this philosophy? Especially if it represents their own heritage? Finally, more than one of the professors present lives in a state with either current or pending legislation that forbids minority studies that are critical of European and American treatment of non-white populations. Some participants asked, “Is this material even allowed?”
When faced with the diversity issues that continue to plague philosophy, some within the field admit to resigning themselves to viewing the problems as endemic to the discipline itself while others fail to see it as a significant problem at all. Still others are working to rectify the relative whiteness and maleness of philosophy in the United States one book, one thinker, and one course at a time. My fall syllabi will include aspects of the various philosophical themes I learned about at NEWLAMP this summer, a welcome addition to my courses on a campus where white people make up less than half the student body. Clearly, addressing the relative lack of diversity in philosophy demands sustained, structural changes on multiple levels, but diversifying the syllabi in philosophy courses is an easy and essential improvement that can be made right now.
Margaret Betz
Margaret Betz is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. She is the author of The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt and, the recent book, Modes of Protest and Resistance: Strange Change in Morals Political.
