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Colorado and the Site Visit Report, Redux (UPDATED)

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 7:  SEE UPDATE

Commentary this time from a philosophy graduate student at Colorado.  I'm curious what readers make of this.   I will permit anonymous comments, but I ask that you choose a stable handle (e.g., "PhD student in the Midwest" or "Untenured faculty, SLAC") and stick with it.  Unlike many blogs, I will adhere to my usual policy of not permitting anonymity to serve as a cover for defamation, irrelevant personal abuse, and the like.  Stick to the substance, pro or con, and feel free to be critical in either direction, subject to the constraints noted.

UPDATE:  Mr. Case's essay has generated a lively discussion, and he indicates in the comments, below, that he will reply to some of the objections.  Meanwhile, Sophia Huerter, another graduate student at Colorado, has posted her own extended response to her classmate's perspective on the situation at Colorado.  I commend both Ms. Huerter and Mr. Case for their serious (and courageous) contributions to this debate, and I invite further (civilized) discussion in the comment section here.  (Since these are both students, not faculty, "civilized" means be kind, and the more critical you want to be, the more likely it is I will require a name attached to the criticisms.  Ms. Huerter and Mr. Case have attached theirs.)

ANOTHER:  Mr. Case sends a long a link to his second essay, replying to some of the original criticisms.  He also writes: 

One…wrinkle was ironed out for the benefit of the popular audience. The article states that conscious, demographic-based discrimination in teacher-student relationships is “clearly wrong.” My own view is more nuanced. I’d rather say “It’s a wrong-making feature” or “it’s prima facie wrong” or something like that. But that kind of language sounds like nails on chalkboards to folks in the journalism business who want it to be quick and punchy.

My column doesn’t address Sofia Huerter’s concerns about affirmative action. I didn’t know she had posted one until after I’d sent this to the editors. It will take me a separate column to do justice to it, and I may write one in the near future.

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50 responses to “Colorado and the Site Visit Report, Redux (UPDATED)”

  1. Enzo Rossi

    While some of the author's somewhat overdrawn concerns about the stifling of free philosophical exchange have some freestanding appeal, I doubt that his overall argument will have much appeal beyond the National Review readership. I say this because, in a bout of insomnia, I attempted to engage with them in the comments thread. All I got was a painful education about the vast cultural gulf between the debate within the academic community as opposed to rightwing American discourse, where all affirmative action is unjust, social context and power structures have no role in personal choices, women shouldn't have serious careers because they need to look after children, and implicit bias does not exist.

    Reply
  2. Dhananjay Jagannathan

    If Aristotle separated philosophy from politics as neatly as Spencer Case suggests, then it's very hard to make sense of the introduction to the Politics in the last pages of the Nicomachean Ethics, which exhorts his readers to the study of politics so that "to the extent possible the philosophy of things human may be brought to fulfillment" (Nic. Eth. 10.9, 1181b14-15).

    But leaving that aside, the question of the relation of philosophy to politics seems to me itself to be a philosophical one, not one to be settled by casual dismissal of certain inquiries. (If one is not entitled a priori to that claim, then at the very least very many distinguished philosophers from Plato and Aristotle onward have occupied themselves with the question, which is prima facie evidence in its favor.) I don't mean to suggest that there aren't answers to be had about this and other boundary questions, only that argument is required. It may be that some portion of work in the areas Case dismisses are occupied more with advancing a political agenda than with advancing our understanding of things human, but he brings forward no evidence for the claim.

    I have only very limited acquaintance with the philosophy of gender and of race, but as with other areas in which I am similarly ill equipped, such as the philosophy of physics, I defer to the judgments of others. And it is plain that many distinguished philosophers are at work in these areas, many of whom have substantial expertise in areas that Case likely has more regard for. Perhaps I am wrong about Case's epistemic situation. It may be that he is widely read in these areas and has determined to his satisfaction that they are empty of philosophical insight. Showing that would be the work of at least a dissertation if not a career and would involve proposing a suitable alternative for the study of these areas since they are plainly part of human life. If that is so, I look forward to reading his work on that subject.

    Reply
  3. untenured faculty

    While the article is peppered with right-wing talking points, I think it makes some important points.

    – The empirical hypothesis that sexual harassment plays a significant role in the gender gap in professional philosophy does not come close to deserving the exalted epistemic status it seems to enjoy within the profession. The article is right to call this hypothesis into question.

    – I basically agree with Michael Tooley in regards to direct observation of discrimination against women. I would go a little further and say that I've actually never heard of a first-hand report of sexual harassment within a philosophy department from any of my colleagues.

    – However, I wouldn't risk calling the received view about the extent of sexual harassment into question. It's politically taboo to do so in a way that a difficulty, empirical, social scientific question shouldn't be.

    – The article doesn't mention the mismatch hypothesis (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/affirmative-action/#8), but it does bring up supposedly problematic attrition rates that might result from strong preferences in admissions. I worry that the same thing is happening at the level of junior faculty, where my impression–and this is just an impression–is that tenure-track women are less likely to get tenure. Of course, the mismatch hypothesis isn't established, and I don't have data on attrition rates for female grad students or junior faculty. But I do think the kinds of impressions the anonymous faculty member cited in the article articulates are worth investigating. If there is a mismatch effect taking place, then the current affirmative action policies could be harming, rather than helping, the cause of gender equity in philosophy.

    Reply
  4. Stephen Biggs

    Case raises a few concerns about the influence that “the feminist left” is having on philosophy. None withstand reflection.

    First, he worries that affirmative action that is designed to increase the ratio of female to male philosophy PhDs is increasing the attrition rate of female students. He supports this claim by noting that a professor at a top program told him it was true at that program. This is not compelling evidence. But let’s suppose that affirmative action in PhD admission in philosophy increases attrition in just the way Case claims. Does it follow that it does not increase the ratio of female to male philosophy PhDs? No. As we all know, affirmative action can both increase attrition rates and increase the ratio of female to male graduates. Accordingly, we need data, not anecdotes, to begin to get a sense of what impact affirmative action has on increasing the ratio of female to male philosophy PhDs. Of course, increased attrition rates may harm some women because there are costs (financial, emotional, etc.) to entering a PhD program and not finishing. But affirmative action also may lead to the graduation of more women who otherwise would not gain admission. At any rate, Case’s discussion of affirmative action doesn't show anything interesting.

    Second, Case worries that the new “Best Practices” document for the CU Boulder Philosophy Department will bias the educational environment in favor of women and other underrepresented groups. Specifically, he worries about passages that encourage faculty to ensure that female students contribute as much as male students to classroom discussion, e.g., by “intervening when such students are interrupted or spoken over”, and that encourage faculty to “pay special attention to the philosophical promise of female students and students from other underrepresented groups”. Are these suggestions likely to bias the educational environment is favor of women? No. Studies of male-female group dynamics show that women tend to contribute less to group discussions about x than men do even when the women and men are equally knowledgeable about x. Some of the reasons are rather straightforward, e.g., women tend to allow longer pauses between speakers. Consequently, unless faculty try to “gender balance” classroom discussion, the educational environment is likely to be biased in favor of men. What about paying special attention to the promise of female students? The literature on implicit bias suggests that most of us are inclined to pay special attention to the promise of male students (white students, taller students, etc.) Consequently, unless faculty try to pay special attention to the promise of female students, the educational environment is likely to be biased in favor of men. Of course, encouraging faculty to “gender balance” classroom discussion and pay special attention to the promise of female students may not fix anything. But, again, Case’s discussion of these points doesn’t show anything interesting.

    Third, Case worries that the “Best Practices” document will inhibit free speech. Specifically, he worries about the following passage: “It is generally better to focus criticisms on particular arguments and theories rather than whole areas of the discipline, which typically contain a wide variety of work.” This passage strikes me as giving clearly good advice, regardless of concerns about sexism or racism. I suspect that many people who dismiss philosophy of language as “boring logic-chopping” would take at least some aspects of pragmatics seriously if they thought more about them. Their dismissal, then, only reveals their ignorance. (The same goes for people who dismiss continental philosophy as nonsensical rambling, etc.) More generally, I suspect that more often than not dismissal of a whole area of philosophy independently of discussion of particular arguments and theories shows ignorance of that area, and encouraging people to think philosophically rather than revel in ignorance strikes me as clearly a best practice for philosophers. Of course, if Case were citing a passage from a document with a different legal force than a “Best Practices” document, there might be a genuine worry here. No one should be required to avoid thinking badly. But it occurs in a “Best Practices” document for philosophers. So, Case’s discussion of free speech doesn't show anything of interest.

    Nothing in Case’s article, then, suggests that the “feminist left” is having any worrisome influence on philosophy.

    Reply
  5. alexander stingl

    I want to point out the (tyocially) shocking comments the original article received…
    From an (semi-)outside observer's point of view (I am German and have been staying in the US for extended periods in the past seven years, and my spouse is an American bioethicist/STS-scholar), the general climate in this country seems to me the larger problem. If comments such as on the site of the original article are an indicator of how a substantial portion (regardless if they are a majority or just a large minority) of this country thinks – and by my observation of discussion boards, etc., this is indeed so – it follows that the resulting academic culture, by existing on top of that in a hyper-neoliberalizing environment, is largely unable to function as an engine of open discussion, ideas, and social change, while also presenting niches and zones of refuge for (white) male professors who are more rooted, in terms of social norms and behavior, in the external society than in intellectual, scholarly, discursive, and open modes of thought….. Given the numerous discussions I had with American friends and colleagues, and, of course, my partner, I am presently of the opinion that the academy and philosophy in particular are so caught up in a culture of fear internally and externally, that it will continue to just get worse, because too few people really seem willing to speak up loudly, controversially, propose unusual ideas, etc…. When the most influential intellectual for most students, who isn't even an American, seems to be Slavoj Zizek (I say this not because I dislike him or anything, I think he makes several important points, but he, too, only 'cooks with water', as we say in German, and he certainly is not a role-model) and then there is a wide gap until someone else's name comes to mind, you get an impression of the larger problem…. Yes, a sober and realistic analysis of the situation of women in the academy and philosophy, of minorities, of the issue of intersectionality, etc. are very, very much needed. But I also believe very strongly that 'best practice' approaches are often counter-productive (My partner and I have written about the 'best' vs. 'better' problem in a recent book) for a variety of reasons. Last year I had a discussion with some of my German students in an interdisciplinary class regarding the issue of 'women's quota', and I think this applies here as well. Some of my students, specifically male and those with an MBA major, argued that, of course, they would hire on the basis of qualification not gender (or else) – may I say, 'oh, my, post-feminism'. It took me a while to explain to them, why, even if I believed them, there would still be biases and obstacles that they would not see explicitly but that would still affect their hiring decisions. To the entire class, I continued to make my point that the main issue isn't that we need to get more women into top positions, incl. tenured professorships. The main issues is that by allowing women and men to be pitted against one another in a cut-throat competition, and by allowing small-minded men to stoke that fight's fire (folks of the type implicated in the recent publicized cases), we continue to let the wool be drawn over all our eyes, so to speak. We don't need 'more women in those jobs', we need far more and fairly paid jobs for both men and women. By allowing the culture fear and those who profit from it to divide us, we keep this culture and its profiteers in power. We need to change not just the culture in philosophy regarding the status of women, we need to change the culture – period. We need to discuss, propose, and fight for what the future culture should be like.
    I am aware that this seems either too complex a task or too superficial a demand, but this is, after all, a comment on a blog entry, I can't create a whole social theory here. But like at least few other people, I am seriously working on ideas and concepts, integrate them into my teaching where I can, advise people to the best of my ability (in and outside of academia), and I also sometimes suffered the consequences when I step on people's toes or rub them the wrong way – and yes, being uncomfortable through my outspokenness left me in an uncomfortable position. Perhaps this is my challenge to some of the readers here, to become a bit more uncomfortable so they are not so much governed by the culture fear. Do I have to spell it out? Sapere Aude!

    Reply
  6. JuniorPhil

    I'm anything but a typical reader of National Review, but like "untenured faculty" I think that Case makes some good points.

    I agree that philosophy of gender and philosophy of race–like "critical theory"–are not aimed at obtaining knowledge but instead at advancing a left-wing agenda. These observations have been made elsewhere in detail. I say this as someone who regards much of the agenda that these groups pursue as correct. But there is a right, intellectually honest, way to pursue social change. So I agree with Case that these now-fashionable disciplines are without merit.

    Case objects to Colorado's "Best Practice" which states that the school "should take steps to assist female students and students from underrepresented groups in expressing themselves in class, by, for example, intervening when such students are interrupted or spoken over while attempting to contribute.” That's an odd thing to object to, since it seems plain to me that we ought to nurture a classroom environment in which each student can air his or her opinions without interruption. I buy that female students are more likely to be interrupted and so that's something that we, as teachers, ought to pay special attention to. Ironically, the demographic most guilty of interruption in my experience has been the feminists! (Which I don't consider too much of a sin; I'll take whatever student participation I can get!)

    Third, I suspect that the anecdotal claims about the extent of harassment in the discipline are far overblown. One reads online about how female philosophers are constantly being propositioned at conferences and are subject to non-stop sexual innuendo in their departments. I've never seen anything like that. I've been at two departments and have knowledge only of one case of harassment, which was non-sexual, and which involved a woman harassing a man. I agree with Tooley there, but in my case airing a view like that would be professional suicide. Feminists do NOT like it when people disagree with them.

    BL COMMENT: Critical theory, like most feminist philosophy I am familiar with, is plainly aimed at the acquisition of knowledge; whether it succeeds is perhaps what you mean to question.

    Reply
  7. E.

    I wonder why some of the posters who doubt that sexual harassment is prevalent in philosophy, because no woman they know has told them about it, think that the women they know would tell them about it.

    Reply
  8. Michael Conboy

    So let me see if I understand correctly.

    1. Asking philosophers not to denigrate their colleagues' work — or at least to focus on specific arguments instead of dismissing entire, diverse sub-fields out of hand without justification — is a threat to 'free speech'.

    2. Encouraging members of underrepresented groups to participate in class discussions is a threat to 'objectivity'.

    3. The idea that philosophers might expand their horizons to view non-traditional areas such as feminist philosophy and philosophy of race as legitimate sub-disciplines is an obscure, mystical notion calling out for 'precise' explanation.

    And all of this against a background where the author feels entirely comfortable assuming such minor details as that feminist philosophy is not legitimate and exists for the sole purpose of promoting left-wing ideology; that the Colorado site visit report was 'rightly mocked'; and that philosophy and politics are entirely separate in any case, so that an inherently political enterprise such as feminist philosophy or philosophy of race could, conveniently, never be a legitimate part of it.

    Great.

    My favorite bit, though, had to be this:

    "…the draconian blanket ban on 'denigration' works to the advantage of insurgent, newfangled sub-disciplines that critics are likely to dismiss as political impostors."

    Aside from the delicious hilarity of the indignant word choice (those 'draconian' feminists! those 'insurgent, new-fangled' — perhaps here the author thought better of 'uppity' — philosophers of race!) it bears noting that, despite the scare quotes, it really is *denigration* that is at issue here. In the same paragraph, the author bravely stands up for his right tell his imagined colleagues that (I quote) "feminist philosophy is all bunk." Not to make any specific, substantive criticism of any particular bit of feminist philosophy — which, as far as I can tell, would be perfectly in line with the aforementioned guideline — but simply to engage in the exquisite pleasure of kicking back, having a brew, and summarily dismissing an entire sub-field to which a number of his colleagues (or, in this case, presumably professors in his department) have devoted their efforts.

    I mean, it really is a classic case of the "I will go to the end of the earth to defend my right to be a condescending asshole" conception of free speech. The argument is basically:

    1. These guidelines tend to protect those whose views are most likely to be denigrated.
    2. But in my esteemed opinion they *should* be denigrated! (cf. something something)
    3. Therefore, nuts to them, and nuts to their guidelines.

    And yet here in these comments we've got a number of philosophers nodding along with straight faces, allowing that he's got some 'good points' even where they partly disagree, and just for good measure randomly voicing their grave suspicions about the legitimacy of claims of harassment in the discipline. ('Randomly' because, you may note, despite featuring tantalizingly in the introduction to the article, the idea that the underrepresentation of women is linked to harassment plays no role whatsoever in any of the 'arguments' that follow.)

    To those people — 'untenured faculty', 'JuniorPhil' — I would remind, first, that your personal experience (I'm guessing as men, though the point applies in any case) *not* witnessing pervasive harassment first-hand isn't worth a thing until you've accounted for the obvious possibility that you may not be a likely target, and (more to the point) that those doing the harassing may be unlikely to do it in plain view. (The 'What is it Like' blog exists in part because of people like you, but I suppose first-hand testimony won't have the 'epistemic status' you desire so long as it's confirming something you don't want to believe.)

    And second, that you should consider the political implications of, when confronted with such a toxic set of views, focusing with an impartial posture on whatever agreement you can find rather than the condemnation that most of it (in my view: all of it) clearly deserves.

    Reply
  9. assistant professor

    About JuniorPhil's comment regarding the extent of harassment: the fact that you have no knowledge of any cases of sexual harassment in your departments does not warrant the suspicion that "claims about the extent of harassment in the discipline are far overblown." For a variety of well-known reasons, sexual harassment frequently goes unreported. It might happen all the time in your department without your knowledge. Matching "anecdotal claims" with contrary anecdotal claims, moreover, does not get us very far. Here's a better suggestion if you are genuinely interested in finding out whether the claims are "overblown": conduct an anonymous survey in your department in which you ask faculty members and graduate students whether they have personally experienced harassment, or have seen it happen.

    Feminists, like any other philosophers, do NOT like it when people dismiss their claims without arguments or evidence.

    Reply
  10. Grad Student

    "- The empirical hypothesis that sexual harassment plays a significant role in the gender gap in professional philosophy does not come close to deserving the exalted epistemic status it seems to enjoy within the profession. The article is right to call this hypothesis into question."

    I don't have a strong, committed opinion on this either way, but there is some data out there that can help inform opinions on this issue. Between 2008 and 2013, men and women both had an average attrition rate during grad school of 17% (http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2014/03/10/Placement-and-Faculty-Data-from-APA-2013-Graduate-Guide.aspx). (The same data shows that women also seem to enjoy slightly better odds at obtaining a tt-job.)

    That data seems to suggest that whatever harassment is occurring (and it is) does not drive women out of grad school at a faster rate than men. I don't have data on hand for women leaving the discipline after earning a Ph.D, but I believe it is out there. A more comprehensive research project may be warranted. (I suspect a large reason for the gender gap is due to gender-ization prior to college and lack of interest in philosophy on undergraduate women's parts, thus leading to less applicants for grad school and the job market.)

    As for critical race theory and feminist philosophy, they both seem to me, given my limited experience, to be approaches to ethics/political philosophy, but I am not at all competent in those areas to be a fair judge. However, if so, it would be odd that they are considered their own area in the same way metaphysics and normative ethics are, given that CRT and FP require left-leaning beliefs and other areas don't require analogous prior commitments (e.g. one may do metaphysics, but one is not committed beforehand to significant views in order to be a part of that area, e.g. one can question the whole enterprise of metaphysics; it's hard to see how one can do the same in FP and call one a feminist). (Notice, consequentialism is an approach to ethics, not its own area; perhaps FP should be considered similarity.

    This doesn't mean it's a huge deal that they (FP/CRT) are their own areas, and perhaps it's warranted. Nevertheless, this would give conservatives some ammo needed to assert that colleges are social institutions for creating liberals (whether that would be a bad thing or not).

    Reply
  11. CL

    Utter shit show. Good for National Review's standards, but that's consistent with what I just said. Where to begin?

    There's this line:

    "Ill-advised policies are being adopted, and criticism of them is not encouraged."

    Sorry, but I don't see that at all. There's been a great deal of critical discussion of the very policies that Case discusses here and elsewhere. The suggestion here is that there's some critical mass of philosophers that represents the field or some salient part of the field that's trying to shut down critical discussion of the policies to create some kind of gender equity (or is it 'gender equity'?) and I just don't see it. Maybe I've missed something obvious, but it's not as if there's evidence in the article of any such push back against people critical of the policy proposals.

    Anyway, I'm just amazed that someone would be against these proposals:

    “We should attempt to gender balance class discussions.”

    “We should pay special attention to the philosophical promise of female students and students from other underrepresented groups” (emphasis mine).

    “We should take steps to assist female students and students from underrepresented groups in expressing themselves in class, by, for example, intervening when such students are interrupted or spoken over while attempting to contribute.”

    What the fuck? If you didn't know anything about gender and group dynamics, I'd be shocked to see you come out against these proposals. What's truly amazing is that Case is an _expert_ on gender issues in the profession and he's still against these proposals in spite of the documented problems we have with including our female students in discussion. (I'm assuming that he's an expert because he's been in graduate school since 2012 (!!!) and writes on gender issues in the profession for the National Review.)

    Here's a line that I love/hate:
    "Instead of being an objective facilitator of learning for all, the teacher must now be an advocate for some. One can no more inhabit both these roles simultaneously than be both a judge and a prosecuting attorney."

    The suggestion seems to be that if professors strive to create gender equity in discussion by taking such controversial measures as intervening when female students are interrupted, this would somehow be bad for other students. I guess the point he's trying to make is that it would be bad for students like him. How would it be bad? How would a more inclusive discussion that included input from female students make the classroom discussion worse? On the plausible assumption that female students have something important to add to the discussion that's currently being missed, this should improve the discussion for everyone involved, including Case. (Maybe he thinks that the people who don't participate or get pushed out of participation have nothing important to add, but that's a totally crazy, sexist so it wouldn't be fair to attribute it to him.)

    It doesn't help the piece that Case trotted out that stuff about people who haven't witnessed discrimination in the field. Here's the thing about that notorious claim. Even if the people who say these things are being honest (which I'm happy to acknowledge in this case), they're just mistaken. Witnessing isn't recognition. You can see discrimination all around you without recognizing it for what it is. We should all know that and so we should all know better than to reason from the premise that we haven't recognized discrimination to the conclusion that we haven't seen it. Maybe the people who don't recognize discrimination for what it is (and mistakenly say that they haven't seen it or witnessed it) are just insensitive, or thick, or haven't developed the necessary recognitional capacities. We are swimming in evidence that lots and lots of us are just very bad at recognizing the discrimination we witness and so we should know better than to say that we haven't seen it. We must have seen it by now because we've all seen colleagues and students ignored during Q&A, talked over or interrupted during discussion, noticed the dearth of female speakers at conferences, heard about the citation rates, read first-hand reports from women in the field, seen the irrational blog comments about the unfair advantages women enjoy, etc. Can we please put to pasture this ridiculous idea that we haven't all seen discrimination? If you really, truly think you haven't seen it, that looks like incredibly good evidence that you wouldn't know it if you saw it. And that's a good reason to keep quiet and listen to others who know better than you.

    My hope is that the author will learn something from this and later look back with regret on the piece. If he really doesn't know as much about the profession and gender as he seems not to know, he shouldn't be writing on the subject. Leave it to the experts. Show a little humility and try listening to the people who know what they're talking about. Like women. Try listening to the women who seem to know pretty well what it's like to be a woman in philosophy.

    Reply
  12. anonymous lady grad student

    @comment 9 ("assistant professor")/comment 6 ("juniorphil"): Even anonymous surveys within a department may not turn up instances of sexual harassment that really occurred. Many departments have very few women (grad students and/or faculty), and I know of at least two instances (one being myself, and there were multiple instances) of grad students failing to report instances of sexual harassment on completely anonymous surveys for fear that the department would find out who reported it (process of elimination works pretty well when there are very few women).

    Also, for what it's worth: I'm a grad student who has experienced sexual harassment multiple times. One of those times–which has definitively affected my career, not just emotionally/psychologically, but also in concrete ways that I could easily list if I could do so safely–I told not a single person in philosophy about, except one person who (a) works/lives on a different continent, (b) has almost no contact with members of my department, and (c) I trust completely.

    I know of many other women who are in this situation. And the fact that I've told none of *them*, let alone any men in the profession, suggests that there are many more who don't tell even their closest friends in the profession about their experiences.

    I realize this is not a post about sexual harassment and that my response is slightly off-topic. But I wanted to emphasize that even anonymous surveying is not enough to uncover many instances of harassment.

    Reply
  13. Female Grad Student

    I am just utterly baffled at the level of outrage in the National Review article about the Colorado proposals–but even more surprised to see anonymous professors supporting it here. It seems disingenuous to complain about the empirical basis for complaints about widespread sexual harassment, when the complaint is supposedly undermined by anecdotal evidence ("I've never seen it myself"). There are very good reasons, as earlier comments have pointed out, for both (1) not reporting sexual harassment (e.g., it wouldn't do any good, it would only harm my career, who would believe a grad student against a senior faculty member who has many friends?, I don't ever want to talk about what happened again, excuses will simply be made ["he had too much to drink, it's no big deal"] , etc.) and (2) good epistemic reasons why those who are not harassed often don't recognize harassment when it happens. Underlying these objections, it seems to me, there is a largely prevailing assumption that without taking measures like in the Colorado proposal or practicing affirmative action (which are not at all equivalent), the playing field is level and our behavior is objective. But that seems to be exactly the flaw that many of us want to correct. The real question is, given the amount of empirical studies that have been done about largely male environments, studies about how talks and interrupts more, who teachers call on to speak in class, etc.–given all of that, why wouldn't we think it likely that women in philosophy tend to get interrupted more, tend to speak less, tend to get called on less, etc.? That is, if studies demonstrate that this is what happens in largely male groups generally, why should we think that philosophy groups are any different in this respect?

    Reply
  14. another asst prof

    untenured faculty:
    "The article doesn't mention the mismatch hypothesis (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/affirmative-action/#8), but it does bring up supposedly problematic attrition rates that might result from strong preferences in admissions. I worry that the same thing is happening at the level of junior faculty, where my impression–and this is just an impression–is that tenure-track women are less likely to get tenure. Of course, the mismatch hypothesis isn't established, and I don't have data on attrition rates for female grad students or junior faculty. But I do think the kinds of impressions the anonymous faculty member cited in the article articulates are worth investigating. If there is a mismatch effect taking place, then the current affirmative action policies could be harming, rather than helping, the cause of gender equity in philosophy."

    I'd like to emphasize something in this comment: evidence of "mismatch" (including attrition) is at most a sign that _current_ affirmative action policies are having harmful consequences. We often forget that AA is something that comes in degrees. If a program admitted every woman who applied, obviously that would be "too much" AA. If another program has a high attrition rate for women, that might be a sign _either_ of too much AA or of poor resources for women, bias in grading, or a million other things. (Like you say, social science is hard.)

    It may also be that some programs admit too many women given their applicant pool, while other programs admit too few. If things like implicit bias, stereotype threat, etc are hurting female candidates, the real question is not affirmative action or none, but how to implement affirmative action. Inevitably some programs will do it wrong, or even "overdo" it, but that's not a reason against the practice simpliciter.

    I agree that this debate, and related ones, perhaps need to be had more candidly, and political taboos now in place in the profession are gettting in the way of that. Or in some cases causing the debate to move to private or anonymous channels, which may also be harmful.

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  15. Jason Stanley

    I think that this article betrays terrible philosophical ignorance. Dhananjay is absolutely right to intuit that feminist philosophy and philosophy of race are the torch bearers of the Aristotelean non-ideal methodology in social and political philosophy. The work of Carole Pateman and Charles Mills has led to the central methodological debate in political theory and political philosophy, namely the debate between ideal and non-ideal political theory (the topic of Sen and Anderson's much discussed recent books). Aside from that, I think work done in these areas has led to the most interesting issues in the philosophy of language (as I argue in my forthcoming book). Whether you agree with the example of pornography or not, the structure described in Langton and West's 1999 paper, "Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game" is an extraordinarily fruitful one to understand a lot of political speech. Work in feminist philosophy also led me to my first book project – I used the structural methodology of feminist philosophical discussions of reason to critique the ideology of epistemic purity. And certainly the topic of that book has been central in analytic epistemology. I regularly mine the work of feminist philosophers and critical race theorists, and perhaps my most fruitful work in analytic epistemology comes directly from that source.

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  16. Earth to philosophy

    Commenters seem to think that it's no big deal to insist that professors be nice about alternative points of view in the classroom and elsewhere. But do they really believe that one must be nice about, say, intelligent design? Given that even as distinguished a philosopher as Plantinga argues for such a position, on what ground can they dismiss it as unworthy of niceness?

    Yet I don't doubt that any number of the philosophers here arguing for gentle treatment of feminism can't or won't bite their tongues when it comes to denouncing intelligent design. No doubt they would regard any restraint on expressing their disdain as infringing on their right to express their exact position on the matter: disdain is a powerful means of communication.

    Indeed, take a look at any number of the comments here that are filled with disdain toward opponents and opposing views. If anyone questions whether, say, sexual harassment is a stupendous problem in philosophy, aren't they being treated as if they are, at best, benighted fools who refuse to listen to oppressed parties? This isn't disdain? This is nice? And how about the countless other contemptuous responses to those questioning feminist agendas in philosophy and elsewhere?

    If it's so easy to be nice about alternative points of view while communicating one's intellectual position, I'd like to see a spot of it in the feminist coalition now demanding it.

    Niceness for me, but not for thee.

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  17. FS

    Criticisms of feminist philosophy made by analytic style philosophers are often, I have observed, straw manned here as criticism on the value of feminist philosophy. This is not what the debate is about, and certainly should not be. Criticism of feminist philosophy generally concerns, and when it doesn't should concern, the place and role of feminist philosophy in American philosophy departments. I took this to the focus of the article’s author.

    I find the borderline ad-homonym (and sometimes quite explicit) attacks on this site distressing. Re Jason Stanley’s "betrays terrible philosophical ignorance". Certainly, work in feminist philosophy has been relevant to and inspired debate in analytic circles. It is not clear to me that the author of the article would disagree with this point. But how much does this support the claim that analytic departments need more feminist philosophy or that other grounds for this call should not be criticized? Again, I think the author is interested in these latter issues. The work of cultural anthropologists, including ethnographic work, has contributed a great deal to the fascinating debates on moral relativism. I would reject the idea that we need to provide ethnographic training to interested students. The impact and contributions of physicists and theologians obviously cannot be overstated. Heidegger, Hegel, and Sartre have influenced and inspired analytic thought from its very beginnings, not just in a negative sense, and continue to, despite their marginality in the discipline. I think the rigor and clarity of analytic philosophy departments, on the other hand, is valuable, and should be preserved as a tradition very different from that of these thinkers. I would also add that feminist philosophy is much bigger than ideal theory and "Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game". Cherry picking the work that has the most overlap with analytic philosophy is misleading, and I am not quite sure what implications doing so is supposed to have for debates over the role of feminist philosophy in analytic departments or the justice and correctness of criticisms of the field in that context.

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  18. Michael Conboy

    re: Earth to Philosophy's call for general niceness, or general disdain:

    First, rejecting a single hypothesis (or family of closely related hypotheses) like ID is rather different from rejecting an entire diverse field of inquiry, such as feminist philosophy.

    Even so, if your colleague argues for intelligent design, no, I don't think it should be too much trouble to engage them with actual arguments. I'm not sure what you think the 'powerful means' of disdain would add in a case like this. Do you think that Plantiga's colleagues go around dismissing him as a charlatan in front of students, colleagues, in his hearing, etc. — or that it would be appropriate to do so?

    That being said, I wouldn't deny the possibility of a colleague with views so repugnantly misguided that something more than polite argument was definitely called for. For example, you might ask, what if a tenured colleague suddenly becomes a 'philosophical' white supremacist? Surely firm disdain, at minimum, as well as counterarguments, would be called for in that case.

    What I do deny is that a reasonable person could think of feminist philosophy or philosophy of race as being on a par with an extreme case like this. This strikes me as so obvious that this paragraph does not require another sentence.

    Lastly, you point out the supposed hypocrisy of calling for civility between colleagues regarding the substance of their research while disdaining anonymous online commenters who question the legitimacy of claims of harassment on the basis that they themselves apparently have not seen it. Two obvious differences here are that such people are not really my colleagues, and what they are discussing is not really their research. A third is that the posts in question overlook such obvious, and important, objections that I have trouble regarding them as reasonable. And a forth, I assert, is that insofar as they undermine the difficulties faced by others on a basis that is patently inadequate, said comments are dickish, and invite, at least, a snarky response.

    But even if all those differences amount to nothing of significance, surely the conclusion is that some commenters here (such as me) should moderate the tone of their comments? I would certainly far sooner admit that than say that similar standards should apply to philosophical dialogue between colleagues.

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  19. Adam Hosein

    A small point:
    I think pretty much everyone in philosophy has been in a situation where their entire area has been dismissed as worthless or peripheral, usually by someone who knows almost nothing about it. For instance, how often do we hear that what X works on isn’t “really” philosophy? (History is “just” history. Language is “just” semantics. Political philosophy is “just” journalism. Etc. etc.) And my impression is that almost everyone feels hurt and demeaned by that sort of comment, from the first-year grad student to the most famous, even people who seem especially tough or aggressive.
    So we might ask: is this really helping anyone? At the level of generality that they are pitched, these comments don’t stimulate discussion about any genuine ideas and often leave people feeling humiliated and excluded.
    I have no doubt that feminist philosophers and philosophers of race get comments of this kind especially frequently. But I also think that everyone stands to benefit from a culture that is less dismissive.

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  20. Jason Stanley

    Just two comments on FS: First, plenty of those who self-identify as working in feminist philosophy are analytic philosophers, and furthermore some of the very best analytic philosophers. So I take issue with the contrast between feminist philosophy and "the rigor and clarity of analytic philosophy departments" drawn in your comment. Secondly, feminist political philosophy has been one of the two sources of *non* ideal political theory (so-called "philosophy of race" being the other). Dhananjay's point is that this is in fact the classical political philosophy tradition, non-ideal theory.

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  21. thefinegameofnil

    The APA is an organization many of us pay dues to. An organ of the APA, the Committee on the Status of Women, issued the report at issue. That committee has a website: http://www.apaonlinecsw.org/. There, on the very front page, one finds a piece titled 'A Call for Climate Change', which is worth quoting at some length (endnotes omitted):

    "When we say that Leiter's list gives us the "top departments," what are we really saying? For whom are these the top departments in which to study philosophy? Do we really only care about the guys?

    What is the problem with philosophy? This cannot be approached rationally, as Sally Haslanger has so effectively argued. Among other problems, there is a pretty obvious but largely unarticulated concern about the fact that the humanities, in general, has strong feminine gendered cor relations. The humanities are soft, qualitative , vague , and concerned with style. Philosophy's own self image does not fit well here, and thus it has a fear of its own feminization as the numbers of women in the field increase…

    We need also to consider the connection between the climate for women and the attitude toward feminist philosophy. I believe that women who believe they can avoid gender stigma by avoiding feminist philosophy are fooling themselves. They may rightfully choose to work in other areas of philosophy than feminist philosophy, but the assessment of their work may yet be compromised by the derision with which feminist philosophy is viewed nonetheless. One possible reason that feminist philosophy is rejected by so many in an a priori fashion is that it threatens to make philosophy accountable for its sexism. We thus need to make these connections manifest, and defend feminist philosophy as a valid enterprise…

    The Leiter Report has been a serious problem. It works to reward convention and punish departments that take the risk of supporting an area of scholarship that is not (yet) widely accepted or respected in the profession. Hiring in the areas of critical race philosophy or feminist philosophy is not going to improve a department's ranking. As a result, philosophy departments are trying to outdo themselves in conformism and "tailism"—tailing the mediocre mainstream rather than leading."

    The piece then went on to deliver a plug for 'The Pluralist's Guide to Philosophy'.

    There's much talk of suspending judgment on the relative worth of feminist philosophy or critical theory or whatever else. That's well and good for theoretical inquiry, but we in philosophy have to decide regularly how to use the limited resources available to us.

    There's also talk of deferring to expert authority. Is deference to alleged experts appropriate in the face of manifest self-interest towards, ifn't bias in, promotion of some areas and corresponding demotion of others? If I'm a feminist philosopher, then my status (and that of my students, co-authors, etc.) in the profession is elevated whenever feminist philosophy is elevated, and, correspondingly, that of philosophers not working in feminist philosophy is diminished, as there's only so much money to go around for tenure-track positions, only so many courses a department can offer in a given term, only so many applicants to a doctoral program who can be accepted, etc.

    We have on the very home page of the organization an exhortation, "We have a political challenge here that needs to be approached politically."

    Turn to the Colorado Report's clearest example of that politics in action:

    "If some department members have a problem with people doing non-feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy…they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for the plurality of the discipline. Even if they are unable to achieve a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students in formal or informal settings on or off campus."

    You can, and should, praise field X, and favour those engaging in it, but you're not allowed to deem it unfruitful, even upon serious reflection, even when someone has asserted that we need more people in philosophy doing X (and correspondingly fewer philosophers not doing X). If Squealer wrote copy for the APA, that's what it'd look like. Never mind that it covers doing philosophy via Ouija board, revelation from The Great Marshmallow Man in the Sky, taking Mein Kampf to be a seminal philosophical text alongside those of Aristotle and David Lewis, etc.

    If the Report's authors weren't known, we'd take it as parody, which is sad because there are real allegations of conduct proscribed by federal law. No surprise should attend the fact that it's treated as a bad joke.

    BL COMMENT: It is surprising that Alcoff's usual bullshit is featured so prominently on that page, I had not realized that.

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  22. Adam Hosein

    Another small point:
    It it’s worth emphasizing what the guidelines recommend and what they don’t with respect to classroom discussion. We can surely all agree that (at least part of the job) of a teacher is trying to include all students present in classroom discussion. As noted above, and widely discussed, there is by now significant data that teachers are more likely to ignore the hands of members of certain groups, allow them to be talked over more, and so on. And when that happens the teacher is failing to include those students in classroom discussion.
    So the guidelines say: given this data, why not make a special effort to *check* that you are giving these students are fair hearing? Perhaps, after a good faith effort, you’ll find that you are already doing as much as you can: if so, great! But what could be the harm in making some effort to make sure that you are? It doesn’t involve censoring any views, nor ignoring other students, and it might mean doing a better job as a teacher.

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  23. Tamler Sommers

    Regarding Adam Hosein's first small point: yes, we've all been in situations where our fields have been dismissed as worthless and/or peripheral. But I disagree that "almost everyone" feels hurt, humiliated, demeaned, or excluded by these comments. I have no data on this, but my sense is that most people have enough confidence in themselves or their topic that they can take the inevitable dismissive comment from a colleague in stride. Often it's a back and forth, a running joke between colleagues–whose field is more worthless? You ask whether this is helping anyone. I think it is. First, if everyone feels OK about the banter, it allows for an easy-going, good humored professional atmosphere. Second, when you work in a field, you take the importance of certain aspects of it for granted. A dismissive comment, even an uninformed one, can make us question them in a healthy way. They certainly have for me.

    All that said, I agree that we need to be sensitive. If a person has reasons to feel insecure for other reasons, these remarks can be harmful and wrong. There are contexts where we should definitely keep our opinions to ourselves. But in other contexts, and if the people making them have good hearts, aren't mean-spirited (they just legitimately believe the subdisciplines are worthless), the remarks can have value and I wouldn't want them banned formally or informally.

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  24. Derek Bowman

    It's much easier to take such comments in stride for those who are in a position of security in their career. But the current conditions of academic employment preclude such security for most junior scholars.

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  25. Tamler Sommers

    Derek, that's true, it's easier for people with tenure. But you don't need a position of security to feel confident about your field and work. In fact, my guess is that individual temperament is a better predictor than position within the profession for how hurt and humiliated you'll feel about such comments. And let me clarify–I'm talking about dismissive comments directed at an entire field, not at a person's work within the field. It's one thing to trash experimental philosophy or metaontology or feminist philosophy or whatever in front of people who work in those fields. It's quite different to trash their particular papers or projects. (And obviously I'm against that unless the people are good friends.)

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  26. Adam Hosein

    Thanks for your comments, Prof. Sommers. I agree that it would be nice to have more data. A few thoughts:
    1. To clarify, as I understand them the point of these documents is not to ban anything: it’s just a set of recommendations about how it would be good to treat each other. But, yes, if everyone acted as recommended there would be fewer of the relevant comments. Would that be bad?
    2. It would still be entirely compatible with very in-depth and foundational critiques of each other’s work. You could still say “You always claim in your work that empirical issue X bears on the philosophy of Y. I’ve never seen why this would be: can you explain it?” What you might avoid is (standing in front of the new graduate students) “The work you do has no value and in any case shouldn’t be done here.” Obviously, there is need for judgment here, but that’s inevitable. And even if some people are fine with the latter sort of comment that doesn’t mean everyone else should have to get up every morning and be told at their place of work that they don’t belong there.
    3. Yes, we might lose the opportunity for a joke about our lives. But, hey, our lives are ridiculous and include plenty of opportunities for jokes. I just think that for many people that particular joke isn’t funny any more.

    (Especially, as Derek Bowman says, many people who aren’t necessarily in a position to complain about it.)

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  27. Jason Stanley

    I think a general point about subordinating speech is that it relies on power relations. It's not really possible to use speech to subordinate someone with much more power than you. It's a very different phenomenon. The asymmetry of subordinating speech is something Rae Langton discusses, and emphasizes requires explanation. So if those working in feminist philosophy or critical race theory have less power than those working in metaphysics or philosophy of language or ancient philosophy, dismissive remarks about feminist philosophy are subordinating speech, whereas, as Professor Sommers points out, dismissive remarks about philosophy of language are not. Kieran Healy has already done the research showing status assignments are highly field biased to suggest an asymmetry of this sort.

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  28. Spencer Case

    I know what you mean about the comments by the NRO readership. You are welcome to engage me directly at scase@nationalreview.com.

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  29. Spencer Case

    Thank you for your clear-headed and substantive objections to my article. I hope to address some of these points in a follow up article at NRO.

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  30. Anne Jacobson

    It is highly believable to me that Tamler Sommers only receives the sort of remark one can take in stride. I think this indicates that his experience is not a good one from which to generalize about the experiences of those whose department lives the report seeks to improve. For one thing, the dismissive remarks may be said behind one's back, so one hears only through students or other faculty. In addition, they may be presented as reasons for students to avoid classes, or as reasons not to admit students or as bearing heavily on hiring. Jason Stanley above mentions another feature.

    The problems these cases present may be quite independent of who is feeling insecure.

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  31. Spencer Case

    I've been a graduate student since 2009, a PhD student since 2012. I will respond to some of your points in a follow-up piece.

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  32. Tamler Sommers

    Anne, I didn't say that I only receive the short of remark that one can take in stride. I made the empirical claim that a substantial percentage of dismissive remarks about subfields are taken in stride. I was objecting to an earlier claim that almost everyone feels hurt and demeaned and humiliated by these types of remarks. I just don't think that's true. Obviously in some cases, dismissive remarks (to one's face or behind one's back) can have damaging effects. But what I said is completely consistent with that.

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  33. thefinegameofnil

    Accepting for the moment that, as Jason Stanley wrote, "if those working in feminist philosophy or critical race theory have less power than those working in metaphysics or philosophy of language or ancient philosophy, dismissive remarks about feminist philosophy are subordinating speech", and that this conditional's antecedent obtains (in spite of, say, the regular, significant presence of feminist philosophy and critical race theory on the APA Eastern Division Conference's program), what's the argument for castigating subordinating speech when it comes to feminist philosophy or critical race theory?

    Sally is a philosopher and she arrives at the considered opinion that feminist philosophy isn't a fruitful research program, and that philosophy is better served by allocating its limited resources to other sub-disciplines. (By the way, telling Sally to go and read, e.g., Rae Langton's work won't do, since Sally has read Langton's Sexual Solipsism and finds that it's an unsuccessful effort to use an odd speech act theory to defend Catharine MacKinnon's extremist views on sex and pornography; she believes that Ronald Dworkin was right that Langton's conception of free speech presumably guarantees an encouraging and supportive audience in all matters with negligible likelihood of miscommunication, that Les Green was right in arguing that Langton's is an account sorely wanting for a plausible theory of authority on which to make pornographers' speech acts authoritative and exercistive, that pornographers don't generally have in mind the subordination of women in publishing pornography, etc. And she doubts the claim, "It's not really possible to use speech to subordinate someone with much more power than you", on grounds given by Judith Butler of all people against Langton about how pornographers can apparently be "silenced" by parody of those who aren't powerful at all. Sally is a reasonable and well-read philosopher so there's no point in telling her to survey more feminist philosophy).

    On that basis, Sally speaks openly and dismissively of feminist philosophy's ability to advance philosophical understanding to her colleagues, she's generally against her department hiring philosophers working in feminist philosophy, she doesn't think that courses in it should be offered on a regular basis, the NEH should fund other work, etc. Sally clearly runs afoul of the APA Colorado Report's Orwellian suggestion that those who "have a problem with people doing…doing feminist philosophy…should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for the plurality of the discipline. Even if they are unable to achieve a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students in formal or informal settings on or off campus." But Sally denies that feminist philosophy is relatively powerless, pointing, e.g., to the number of job ads calling for specialization or competence in that field, but adds that if feminist philosophy were relatively powerless, then that would be all to the good. Just as, say, philosophy of journalism (http://chronicle.com/article/We-Need-Philosophy-of/49119/) and Philosophy of Jacques Derrida are unlikely, Sally tells us, to be philosophically central or even useful, ditto for feminist philosophy. She thinks that it's perfectly just for such disciplines to be relatively powerless; a world in which critical race theory and metaethics are on a disciplinary par is a worse world than one in which, ceteris paribus, metaethics is dominant with respect to critical race theory.

    What argument can be given to Sally that she's mistaken? In the passage quoted earlier from Linda Martin Alcoff, we saw one rationale, namely that "women who believe they can avoid gender stigma by avoiding feminist philosophy are fooling themselves. They may rightfully choose to work in other areas of philosophy than feminist philosophy, but the assessment of their work may yet be compromised by the derision with which feminist philosophy is viewed nonetheless." What other argument, if any, can be given that subordinating feminist philosophy or critical race theory or any sub-discipline for that matter, assuming that's what Sally does, is something to be avoided and even condemned by the APA?

    There have been a few polls so far on how readers of this blog assess various fields, e.g., logic, philosophy of language. A dismissive option has been included in these polls and they would be of little use otherwise. But according to the APA Colorado Report, it's wrong to do that. Why?

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  34. Anne Jacobson

    Tamler, I didn't mean to suggest that you receive only the sort of comment one can take in one's stride, still less that you said you do. Still, I could easily believe you do. It seems to me unlikely that people are going behind you back to tell students that they shouldn't take your courses, since you are involved in whacky experimental philosophy. My sense is that you have too much respect from those who could do that. Of course, I could be wrong, but finding that grad students have been warned off a course of one's isn't really something one takes in one's stride unless one is insecure.

    One thing I was trying to understand was why you were giving the general characterization you do. There may well be a difference between the remarks that one can take in one's stride and those that do leave people with negative reactions. The difference may be in the context and the intent of the speaker; Jason Stanley also suggests there are differences in power carried by different sub-fields.

    I think there are a lot of pretty bad tales of insults and exclusivity on the blog, What is it like to be a woman in philosophy.

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  35. slacprof

    #33, I'm a little confused as to why Sally would possibly take anything Judith Butler has to say seriously if she takes feminist philosophy to be an obviously unfruitful research program. If anything Butler has to say in her work is useful/true/etc. then doesn't this in itself show that some feminist philosophy (inasmuch as Butler counts as a philosopher) IS worthwhile?

    This is my confusion about dismissals of "feminist philosophy." Since feminist philosophers (like feminists generally) routinely disagree with one another because of different interpretations of feminism, different concerns about how feminism interacts with concerns about other kinds of systems of oppression, etc., how can it possibly be that the whole thing is bunk? So arguing from a feminist perspective against porn is bunk. And arguing in favor of porn from a feminist perspective apparently must be bunk too! Are all of the not-overtly feminist works responding to arguments about pornography bunk too–or is only when one specifically concerns oneself with gender inequality in taking up that issue that one's work becomes useless?

    Further, I'm also confused about Sally's reading of the debate between Langton and critics. Does she think that debate was not even worth having? So Green and Dworkin shouldn't have even bothered to respond to such drivel? (Or maybe only should have responded in the way that we should respond to global-warming deniers or something like that–you've got to respond to show the masses how wrong they are even though intellectually speaking the nonsense doesn't actually warrant serious consideration?) I'm not that familiar with Langton's work. But is it really *that* awful? (And the feminist work by Sally Haslanger, Elizabeth Anderson, Debra Satz, Helen Longino, Anita Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Judith Butler (!), Louise Antony, Ann Cudd, Nancy Fraser, Alison Jagger, Eva Kittay, etc, etc, etc. is *that* awful as well?)

    Seriously?

    I haven't actually paid any attention to the polls mentioned, but now I am curious. Is it really the case that people are regularly suggesting that the ENTIRE field of logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, etc. are so worthless that they shouldn't be taught and people who work in those areas shouldn't be hired?

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  36. Tamler Sommers

    Hi Anne,

    I thought I was just objecting to a generalization–the claim that such remarks are almost always hurtful and demeaning etc. I didn't mean to make one myself. The point I was trying to make was that an all-out prohibition (even a moral prohibition) on dismissive remarks about subfields is probably not best way to handle the fact that they are sometimes harmful since those situations are highly context dependent. But I take your point, and Adam's and Derek's, that certain people are not in a position to complain if they feel demeaned. And as Jason points out, certain fields might have fewer powerful people who back them and so are more vulnerable to the damaging effects of dismissive remarks. So we should take all that into account when we start trashing other people's fields. As long as I can still bash Kant on a regular basis, I'm happy.

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  37. thefinegameofnil

    You'll recall that Rae Langton was twice mentioned as an exemplar of fruitful work in feminist philosophy as to her work on pornography and subordinating speech. You'll moreover note that I spoke of the "grounds given by Judith Butler of all people". Butler's prose and thinking are not quite analytically rigorous (http://perso.uclouvain.be/mylene.botbol/Recherche/GenreBioethique/Nussbaum_NRO.htm). So, if even the exemplar of fruitful work in feminist philosophy can be found by Sally to not be fruitful, why shouldn't Sally be able to openly dismiss the pursuit of feminist philosophy in favor of other fields? The APA Colorado Report tells us that Sally is doing something unconscionable by criticizing feminist philosophy as an unfruitful research program. Where, other than in Linda Martin Alcoff's claim that a dismissive view of feminist philosophy is misogynistic, can we find an argument for silencing Sally?

    If the APA Colorado report's suggestions were codified in some form, perhaps as professional guidelines of the sort now under consideration by the APA, then Sally wouldn't even be able to state her position without violating those APA norms. Shouldn't we all think as philosophers that this is a very serious problem with a report issued by an organization that we pay dues to? Shouldn't we reasonable philosophers all have problems with what was aptly described as Alcoff's usual bullshit being featured so prominently on the webpage of the organization that issued the report we're now discussing? What kind of a discipline would we be if Sally couldn't state her conclusion that feminist philosophy hasn't been, and isn't likely to be, a fruitful area of research compared to many others, and then give reasons in support of her view? Sally will tell you that there is limited funding in philosophy and that far too much of it goes to feminist philosophy, which should be remedied by no more of it going towards feminist philosophy. Are we even allowed to have that discussion under the APA Colorado report's Orwellian suggestion?

    Regardless of whether you agree with Sally that feminist philosophy doesn't deserve future funding, shouldn't she be allowed to argue her case? As for what 'feminist philosophy is bunk' means in the mouth of a particular speaker I don't know, but I was very explicit about what Sally believes, namely "that feminist philosophy isn't a fruitful research program, and that philosophy is better served by allocating its limited resources to other sub-disciplines" and that just as "philosophy of journalism (http://chronicle.com/article/We-Need-Philosophy-of/49119/) and Philosophy of Jacques Derrida are unlikely, Sally tells us, to be philosophically central or even useful, ditto for feminist philosophy. She thinks that it's perfectly just for such disciplines to be relatively powerless; a world in which critical race theory and metaethics are on a disciplinary par is a worse world than one in which, ceteris paribus, metaethics is dominant with respect to critical race theory." Whether feminist philosophy is awful isn't the point and the parenthetical concerning Langton was used because she was raised earlier and we should be mindful of the fact that someone can read a lot of feminist philosophy and find it wanting in just the way that someone like Sally does. While the APA Colorado report has an injunction from Squealer that those who find feminist philosophy wanting "should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for the plurality of the discipline", we should realize what a truly dangerous attitude that is.

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  38. slacprof

    thefinegameofni, I am not necessarily defending the Colorado report's suggestions. I haven't really formulated an opinion on much of the report.

    BUT, perhaps one reason in favor of it is the weakness of your Sally case that I am trying to point out. You seem to be trying very hard to make this dismissal of feminist philosophy seem very reasonable–i.e. a person who has actually read the literature rather than the much more typical "I haven't read her new book, but it's just seems implausible" (yes I was told that as a graduate student by a professor regarding a particular feminist book I was appealing to in a paper; no argument as to why the author was wrong was even possible given that the speaker didn't read it! I suspect that is the more usual manner in which feminist philosophy tends to be dismissed.) But it is extremely hard to see how Sally's dismissal of the entire field of feminist work (diverse as it is)–while she herself thinks Judith Butler's response to Langton is correct!?–is actually going to come out to be a reasonable position. Since it seems Sally takes seriously Dworkin's work and Green's work on porn, but by hypothesis of her dismissal of ALL of feminist philosophy, not any work (pro or anti porn) that looks at porn from a specifically feminist position. And the same, I suppose, for any other topic at all that feminists concern themselves with and for every single feminist philosopher I mentioned above plus many others. Are you seeing why Sally's position is actually not looking reasonable at all? It begins to look like her position is essentially–any work that takes seriously the idea that there are pervasive and ongoing inequalities based on gender (or race? sexuality? disability? since feminists routinely integrate those axes of social difference into their work), that we should center the perspectives of those who suffer those inequalities in scholarly thinking about those issues, etc. is crap. This is supposed to be a reasonable anti-feminist philosophy position?

    This is why I am pushing for a better understanding of Sally's view of things. Because I can absolutely see how someone could genuinely and reasonably think Langton's work (or any other particular highly regarded philosopher's work) was not fruitful (not that I am agreeing with Sally on this point.)* But, I have a lot of trouble seeing how someone could genuinely and reasonably think the work of every single philosopher on the list above was not fruitful (as well as many not on the list). As feminists so often disagree with one another, I also have trouble seeing how it could be that feminists are never right about anything such that none of their work is useful (or perhaps to be charitable, so little of it that it would be worth abandoning the entire field despite losing even the few decent pieces of work that would have come out of it.)

    Now perhaps people should be able to argue that x area of philosophy sucks even though their views are completely unreasonable without there being any norms against doing so. Though I'm not sure I see much compelling in that idea. Does this hold in other areas? If Bob goes around suggesting that metaethics is crap and wields his influence in his department to make sure anyone with a hint of specializing in metaethics won't be hired because he thinks one famous book arguing for ethical realism was really bad, should this be treated as acceptable within the profession?

    * I also think there is an interesting slippage here between work being fruitful vs. wrong vs. awful. I would think that there is a lot of valuable philosophy out there which is wrong, but still fruitful. Or at least I routinely disagree with positions/arguments and still am glad I have read them, think they were worth publishing, find they help me to clarify my thinking about issues, etc. And sometimes I even think a trend or area is not fruitful in terms of getting things right, yet I don't take that area to be so awful as to be completely unworthy of any respect by the discipline (such that people working in that area just shouldn't be hired and courses should not focus on those areas) even if I didn't learn anything from it and don't find it to be all that valuable to read. Perhaps I am odd in this way? But in any case, if we distinguish being fruitful from being right, I think Sally's position gets even more difficult to make seem reasonable.

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  39. thefinegameofnil

    The APA Colorado Report's Orwellian Suggestion is simply indefensible to me. "If some department members have a problem with people doing non-feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy…they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for the plurality of the discipline. Even if they are unable to achieve a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students in formal or informal settings on or off campus." That's a part of the Report I have a very definite judgment about.

    I don't see how that could possibly be defended generally. As to feminist philosophy, we have seen a claim from Linda Martin Alcoff that being critical of feminist philosophy is akin to misogyny. Imagine that: Sally's evaluation of Rae Langton's defense of Catharine MacKinnon on pornography as poor could spell doom for Ruth Barcan Marcus on substitutional quantification simply because Langton is a woman and Barcan Marcus was too.

    Then, as to feminist philosophy and critical race theory, Jason Stanley offered the thought that "if those working in feminist philosophy or critical race theory have less power than those working in metaphysics or philosophy of language or ancient philosophy, dismissive remarks about feminist philosophy are subordinating speech" and we assumed that this conditional's antecedent obtains but were led to ask why subordinating speech against feminist philosophy or critical race theory should be thought a bad thing if those fields are less fruitful than others and philosophy is a discipline of very limited resources as it indeed is.

    You seem to find it difficult to believe that an entire field should be dismissed as relatively unfruitful because that field enjoys a diversity of views. But there are lots of different views in Derrida Studies with sharp disagreements and yet one can still reasonably dismiss the entire field as relatively unfruitful. It is certainly possible for a diversity of views within a subject to be wrong, one and all. If one thinks, for example, that metaphysics is nonsense in the way that some logical positivists did, then it is no answer that metaphysics can't be nonsense because there are many feuding camps seeking to answer the metaphysical questions that positivists dismissed as non-cognitive. If you're an error theorist when it comes to norms and especially ethical norms, then it's not going to be disquieting that there's a surfeit of ethicists who disagree with one another vehemently and who try to answer first-order ethical questions using very different approaches. As to the response, "As feminists so often disagree with one another, I also have trouble seeing how it could be that feminists are never right about anything", the issue isn't whether feminist philosophy (one can be a feminist and a philosopher without doing feminist philosophy) is ever right about anything. Surely not only feminist philosophy but the philosophy of basket-weaving as well as turnip philosophy get things right now and then; that is the wrong standard to apply. In an ideal world of unlimited resources the practical question of how to allocate very little money in philosophy would not arise but we live in a non-ideal world and we have to make judgments, not about whether a field ever gets anything right but as to how fruitful, valuable, and so on a field is in advancing a discipline. Universities make hard choices in deciding how much each department gets and departments then have to make hard choices in deciding how to allocate that limited money.

    Defining philosophy is tough but you gave us a rather clear and uncontroversial picture of what feminist philosophy is about, to wit, it is "any work that takes seriously the idea that there are pervasive and ongoing inequalities based on gender (or race? sexuality? disability? since feminists routinely integrate those axes of social difference into their work), that we should center the perspectives of those who suffer those inequalities in scholarly thinking about those issues". Why can't Sally or anyone else take a look at some feminist philosophy works, famous and not, take a look at that description of the field's ambitions, and determine that this isn't at all something that she would like to see more of? Because, she reasons, seeing more feminist philosophy means seeing less of other fields, more jobs for feminist philosophers means that those not working in feminist philosophy are less likely to find employment, more funding for feminist philosophy means less funding for other fields, etc.

    It strikes me as reasonable (or at least not unreasonable) to argue that feminist philosophy (or critical race theory or Derrida Studies and so on) is an enterprise rather less likely to advance philosophical understanding than other fields and to reasonably dismiss feminist philosophy on the basis of such argument. This doesn't entail that feminist philosophy is what Harry Frankfurt called bullshit in a famous essay of his; it aims at truth or knowledge or understanding or progress but achieves it rather less often than other fields do. A university or college is making a decades-long investment when it authorizes a tenure-track hire in philosophy. Why should it be wrong for Sally to argue that the bet placed shouldn't be put on feminist philosophy? Why shouldn't it instead be the case that philosophers can argue in favor of the fields they prefer and dismiss the ones they judge worthy of dismissal and that there won't be something that Squealer could have written in support of Napoleon from the APA condemning dismissal of any field especially feminist philosophy? Let's remember that we're talking about a blanket ban on ever dismissing any field as unfruitful in the name of re-education until one appreciates pluralism. When someone unreasonably dismisses a field, that's cause for debate. But to claim that no field should ever be dismissed, especially feminist philosophy, needs to be argued for and there's no argument so far except for Alcoff's when it comes to feminist philosophy. (I'm discounting the approach that takes everything to be equally fruitful because I take it as established that different fields have varying degrees of success. I have yet to see philosophers resort to games of chance to settle which area a candidate should be appointed in).

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  40. slacprof

    I think your continued use of the example of Derrida studies is very interesting because, presumably, whether Derrida studies (diverse as it may be) is fruitful, intellectually interesting, etc. will depend primarily (though not solely) on whether Derrida's work itself and the topics and approaches it involved is any of those things. If Derrida's stuff was awful, then of course Derrida studies is extremely likely to be awful, right? But in that case, the analogy seems to suggest that the reason feminist philosophy is likely to be unfruitful, is because the topics and approaches it involves are not fruitful or interesting or worth intellectual pursuit or are all going to be wrong no matter how varied–i.e. it is just not worth thinking about gender, racism, inequality, oppression, sexual violence, the place of women in our society, inequalities within the family, etc. nor worth taking up any of the approaches feminist take to these issues and others. Just a little different than the Derrida case, doesn't it seem. It's one thing to suggest that Derrida's work/approaches were wrong-headed, unfruitful, even silly. It's quite another to suggest that there is just nothing about gender or sex-based inequality or all the rest that is even worth thinking about in a scholarly way, not even in a field with a serious gender-imbalance and ongoing concerns about lack of inclusion, sexual harassment, and in some cases hostility to women. (Perhaps this sheds light on why one might think that dismissing feminist philosophy in its entirety as worthless might be thought to be misogynistic. Why is that not a good enough argument exactly?)

    "Why can't Sally or anyone else take a look at some feminist philosophy works, famous and not, take a look at that description of the field's ambitions, and determine that this isn't at all something that she would like to see more of? Because, she reasons, seeing more feminist philosophy means seeing less of other fields, more jobs for feminist philosophers means that those not working in feminist philosophy are less likely to find employment, more funding for feminist philosophy means less funding for other fields, etc."

    Again, I'm not particularly interested in defending the Colorado suggestions as I don't have much of an opinion on the matter. It's not at all obvious to me, though, that this in itself would count as a dismissal, though it might depend on the details. Suppose one says "There are so many people working in ethics and political and so few comparatively in history. So I'd like to see fewer jobs go to ethics/political people and less funding as well." This is no way a dismissal. One could say this and still think that ethics/political is actually the most important/fruitful/interesting field of philosophy. Similarly, even if one said something like "I think metaethics in the last decade or two has really been going in a wrong-headed direction. So even though of course there are important issues in metaethics, I prefer to see jobs and funding go to all the other areas of philosophy rather than metaethics." This still doesn't look like a dismissal to me. Now on the other hand one has considered the aims of ethics, looked at some famous works in ethics, and concluded that the entire field is not worth taking seriously and to be discouraged (if not treated with disdain)," well then that is a clear dismissal.

    In my view what you have described Sally as doing falls somewhere in between that clear case of a dismissal and the other clear cases of non-dismissals I offered. So I'm not sure Colorado's suggestions would apply to what you describe Sally as saying.

    As to whether there should be a professional norm against dismissals of the clear sort, again I don't have a strong opinion. But the idea of having such a norm doesn't seem at all crazy to me. I mean, is this really the standard philosophers want to hold themselves to in terms of evaluating the worth of an area of philosophy: "I read a handful of famous texts in this field, looked at its self-described aims, and decided it's worthless and no more jobs or funding should be given to anyone doing anything in the whole field"?

    In any case, in terms of actual practical effects on what people say in the profession about feminist philosophy and in what context, I suspect this whole discussion about Sally is largely beside the point. The types of dismissals I'm personally familiar with and which one can read accounts of on blogs and are almost always of the sort, "I haven't read it, but of course I already know it's worthless." *That* sort of dismissal, I strongly suspect, is what the report is actually primarily aimed at since, after all, it was NOT a philosophical piece, was not putting forth a general moral norm, was not doing much of anything that a philosophy text does. At least as I understand it, it was trying to diagnose problems in a particular department and offer suggestions as to how to solve those problems. I would think that what matters in that context would be something like whether it will help solve the problems without putting an undue burden on anyone involved. So no, I don't see why any argument of the sort you are looking for supporting this as a general principle for the discipline regarding all subject areas is needed at all.

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  41. thefinegameofnil

    Derrida Studies is a field that many believe can, or even should be, reasonably dismissed; others think it is a great area of inquiry. Under the APA Colorado Report, which I have emphasized repeatedly because that is what was addressed by Spencer Case's article, one shouldn't dismiss Derrida Studies or any other field of philosophy, ever. If we think that there are ever any reasonable dismissals of a field, then that would put the lie to the APA Colorado Report when it comes to the tragically Orwellian Suggestion.

    A critic of feminist philosophy like Sally need not believe that "it is just not worth thinking about gender, racism, inequality, oppression, sexual violence, the place of women in our society, inequalities within the family, etc. nor worth taking up any of the approaches feminist take to these issues and others". She could think that while these issues are very important and even worth fighting the good fight for, they are not philosophically fruitful. Hunger is an acute social and political issue too. Over 800 million people don't have enough food to eat, poor nutrition kills almost half of all children who die before their fifth birthday, etc., but these terrible facts don't make philosophy of hunger philosophically fruitful. Contributing to the end of sexual violence or hunger or ending the use of land mines that kill and maim indiscriminately and so on are all noble and worthy ends, far more worthy than publishing something in the Journal of Philosophy or authoring an OUP hardcover with glowing reviews that is essential for every decent college library to have in its stacks. But we are talking about an academic discipline, philosophy, and what is fruitful with respect to that academic discipline. As emphasised previously, one can be a feminist and a philosopher and yet dismiss feminist philosophy; the political cause and the philosophical field are two different things. Unless one supposes that feminists can be misogynists, which strikes me as incredible, I think that this alone should explain why dismissing feminist philosophy should not be thought misogynistic, especially by people with doctoral-level training in philosophy.

    I thought Sally was someone who "clearly dismissed" feminist philosophy but that is a minor issue. I believe that we should be able to have candid conversations about what we believe to be fruitful in philosophy and what we do not and the APA Colorado Report clearly opposes that. You raise the issue of sexual harassment in philosophy and that is a very serious one. As I wrote earlier, "If the Report's authors weren't known, we'd take it as parody, which is sad because there are real allegations of conduct proscribed by federal law. No surprise should attend the fact that it's treated as a bad joke." It's tragic that instead of focusing squarely on sexual harassment, we end up with the APA Colorado Report's Orwellian Suggestion, with a heavy emphasis on feminist philosophy. Moreover, if the Report's authors, who are all trained philosophers, meant to circumscribe their remarks, they could, and should, have made appropriate qualifications; they did not. Instead, the Orwellian Suggestion is risible precisely because it reads like something straight out of Animal Farm. We should sometimes exercise a prerogative of philosophers and laugh at such absurdity. Even limited to Colorado, it is still absurd, and just as much in need of justification as a suggestion of general applicability, but I have made this point several times now and the interested can scroll up. As for the casual dismissals of a field, they should themselves be dismissed in just the manner I think you have made clear is appropriate.

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  42. Geoff

    Perhaps the wording of the relevant portion of the site visit report could be improved. I doubt it was intended to proscribe well-informed, intellectually responsible arguments that feminist philosophy is somehow problematic. If it was, then I don't endorse it. But snide denigrations of feminist philosophy are very easy to encounter if you hang around with professional philosophers and graduate students (see the article by Spencer Case for a great example). As slacprof says, they are typically offered casually by people who are in no position to know what the hell they're talking about. They're damaging and stupid. Our discipline is not well served by people in positions of esteem feeling free to offer them in public. It's not a threat to anybody's free speech (as Case rather absurdly alleges) to have a disciplinary norm against such nonsense.

    Of course Sally is entitled to her opinion. If she wants to share it with her colleagues and have it taken seriously, let her do some work and make it defensible. The first thing she's going to need to do is say what she means by "fruitful research program". Is she talking about citation counts? Influence on other fields? On those measures feminist philosophy is doing pretty well, probably better than some "core" areas. Judith Butler, Sandra Harding, Carole Gilligan, many of those listed by slacprof, etc. etc. etc. are widely known, read, and cited throughout the humanities. Catherine MacKinnon was a key figure in shaping sexual harassment law and is like one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in the universe. Heck, I have a colleague in the public health department who is using Miranda Fricker's work on hermeneutic injustice to frame some of her research agenda. I wonder how many meta-ethicists they are reading over there? Whether Sally likes it or not, feminism is a big deal out there in the world, and many of its central intellectual figures are philosophers. So she's not going to get very far arguing that feminist philosophy isn't "fruitful" in this sense. I don't think that this is quite what she means by "fruitful", though, since you've elaborated her thought using phrases like "advances philosophical understanding" and "philosophically central" and "useful". But these are quite vague, to put it charitably: whose understanding are we talking about? central to what? useful to whom? In what ways? Start trying to answer these questions and I think you'll see that Sally's got her work cut out for her.

    So, either Sally has a clear, cogent, well-informed critique of feminist philosophy, or she doesn't. If she does, then I'm all for her making it — let's see the arguments. If she doesn't, then she really ought to keep whatever opinions she has about it to herself in professional settings.

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  43. anonymous person

    To those who are assuming that the "best practice" that targets broad sweeping dismissal of entire areas of philosophy is all about not attacking feminist philosophy: as someone in a position to know this, I can assure you that you are wrong. Indeed, both the site visit report and the best practices have been read by the general blogosphere as purely about protecting feminism's interests. But this recommendation, as well as the site visit recommendation along the same lines, are both equally (perhaps even more) designed to protect those working in other, more "mainstream" areas of philosophy from having these sweeping dismissals aimed at them. I won't say more without compromising internal matters to the department (and there's been enough of that already, so I won't).

    Also, having been a member of both civil and wholly uncivil departments, I cannot understand why people are objecting to this. It is the default in a minimally civil department. All of us should want to be a part of a minimally civil department. I don't work in feminist philosophy (my work is very far away from it indeed), but it really is very hard to imagine people objecting if this had been suggested to help a department that was divided between neo-verificationist-minded philosophers of science and ambitious metaphysicians, for example. It is hard not to conclude that it is those who feel threatened by feminist philosophy who are objecting to such a simple call for respect.

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  44. thefinegameofnil

    Whether it is the case that dismissals of feminist philosophy "are typically offered casually by people who are in no position to know what the hell they're talking about…[and are] damaging and stupid" is an empirical question that casual observation does not help very much to answer. Moreover, if dismissals are damaging but based on reasonable claims, then I don't see why they should be banned.

    As you say, how fruitful work is isn't something to be judged based on citation counts; Derrida Studies seems to do well on that measure. I do not doubt for a moment that "Judith Butler, Sandra Harding, Carole [sic] Gilligan, many of those listed by slacprof, etc. etc. etc. are widely known, read, and cited throughout the humanities", but many philosophers believe that philosophy should not be like those other subjects, e.g., cultural studies, literary theory, etc. Recall Linda Martin Alcoff's assertion, "The humanities are soft, qualitative, vague , and concerned with style." Many philosophers believe that is not how either philosophy or the humanities should be. You mention Sandra Harding and while I know little of her work, I do recall that she was the feminist philosopher of science alleging that Isaac Newton's Principia was a "rape manual" in her purportedly scholarly work and that she did work on standpoint theory important to feminist and post-colonial epistemology, which assumes epistemic relativism but is apparently premised on the idea that oppressed peoples are less biased and more objective, which seems on its face contradictory. I hesitate to take someone like that as a measure of any field of philosophy doing well although Harding surely appears to have done well for herself.

    A field's centrality is difficult to measure, as you suggest, but consider that one could get on quite well in philosophy with no exposure to feminist philosophy. That is not the case for central fields. Knowing about the debates over the analytic-synthetic distinction is central and knowing standpoint theory is not. The former is very important and the latter is not only of little importance to date but it is hard to even fathom how it could become important philosophically. None of this is to deny that oppression is bad, of course, but that does not make for a fruitful philosophical area of research. The philosopher who doesn't know anything about Kant's First Critique or Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism or Grice and Strawson's In Defense of a Dogma or Putnam's The Analytic and the Synthetic is missing something important; the philosopher who hasn't read Sandra Harding isn't. Approaching ethics without engaging previously with Kant and Hume and Mill and Rawls and Ayer and Hare is a bad idea; approaching it without having engaged Carol Gilligan may not be. We would like to see a fruitful feminist philosophy having desirable consequences areas of philosophy that are not feminist philosophy or cultural studies or literary theory or the like. We do have one claim, right here, of fruitfulness of the kind that Sally should find highly relevant, though. Jason Stanley wrote earlier, "Work in feminist philosophy also led me to my first book project – I used the structural methodology of feminist philosophical discussions of reason to critique the ideology of epistemic purity. And certainly the topic of that book has been central in analytic epistemology." But I cannot recall mention of any works of feminist philosophy in Stanley's work. Perhaps my memory is faulty and my search skills on the fly are poor but perhaps a better explanation might be that the influence of feminist philosophy was too attenuated to mention.

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  45. MA Graduate Student

    I'm perplexed that more attention hasn't been given to this paragraph from Spencer Case:

    "When Michael Tooley, a philosophy professor of distinction at the University of Colorado Boulder, stated on his website that he had not witnessed discrimination against women in philosophy — and, indeed, had witnessed discrimination in their favor — another philosopher denounced his “inability to ‘see’” as a “disgrace.” I have spoken with other philosophers who say they agree with Tooley but feel that expressing those views before their peers is, at best, more trouble than it’s worth, and, at worst, a liability.'

    The discussion around how to interpret and judge the suggestions by the Colorado report seem secondary to me when it seems so many people do not acknowledge the fundamental fact of the matter which is just how pervasive the problem of sexual harassment is. I think it would be much more useful to emphasize this point, rather than going back and forth on whatever else.

    So let's look at what is being said. Spencer Case, Michael Tooley, and a host of other philosophers would agree with Tooley that they have, "not witnessed discrimination against women in philosophy." And one of the links he cites as evidence of the "bullying" that makes it hard for the aforementioned group of individuals to vocalize their "opinions", a post by Philosophy Professor Eric Schliesser, he dismisses without any engagement.

    Yet in the link he cites, there is a reference to an article written by a PhD Philosophy graduate from Boulder, Annaleigh Curtis, who writes that: "When I saw the release from CU Chancellor Philip DiStefano about the university's concerns about, and actions regarding, sexual harassment in the philosophy department last week, I was not surprised by the allegations.

    Also in the link, Professor Eric Schliesser references a past post of his regarding being told by one of the professors at Colorado that they "have a culture of sexual harassment."

    Furthermore, the Colorado report itself states that it found, "There have been at least 15 complaints that have been filed with ODH, and a significant number of faculty and graduate students have directly witnessed or been subjected to this harassment and inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior." And that because of this behavior, "Some assistant and full professors (both male and female) report responding to this situation by working from home, dropping out of departmental life, and avoiding socializing with colleagues."

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  46. Chike Jeffers

    I'd like to point out an irony in the fact that Case claims philosophy of race "exist{s} to promote left-wing ideology." David Boonin is a faculty member at UC Boulder and he recently published a book in philosophy of race, specifically the applied ethics side of the field. Part of what Boonin takes to be significant about his book is its eclecticism with respect to political positions. He takes what may be seen as left-wing positions on reparations and hate crime laws, right-wing positions on hate speech restrictions and racial profiling, and a position that is not standard on either the left or the right on affirmative action. How then does Case, a student in Boonin's department, reach his faulty conclusion that philosophy of race exists to promote left-wing ideology?

    Beyond this particular irony, Case's claim is very easily proven false by considering the range of positions in the field on, for example, the biological reality of race. No summary of the debate on that issue could leave one with the impression that there is a particular political position that the field requires you to take. This last point is also relevant to the mistaken impression expressed by Grad Student above that work in philosophy of race and feminist philosophy only contributes to ethics and political philosophy. That leaves out the centrality of metaphysical debates in philosophy of race and, of course, metaphysics and epistemology (not to mention philosophy of science, philosophy of language, etc.) are important topics in feminist philosophy as well.

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  47. alexander stingl

    @the finegameofnil:
    In consideration of your statement,
    "The philosopher who doesn't know anything about Kant's First Critique or Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism or Grice and Strawson's In Defense of a Dogma or Putnam's The Analytic and the Synthetic is missing something important; the philosopher who hasn't read Sandra Harding isn't. Approaching ethics without engaging previously with Kant and Hume and Mill and Rawls and Ayer and Hare is a bad idea; approaching it without having engaged Carol Gilligan may not be."
    my immediate reaction is that this represents exactly the importance of feminist philosophy.
    Hume, Kant, Mill, Ayer, Quine, Grice, Rawls, Putnam are here deemed necessary for philosophy, while Harding and Gilligan are not. Perhaps the latter as individuals are not necessary for a philosopher to know, but what about the guys on your positive list: What kind of people is it representative of, who are the people missing? You cite a typically Western canon of white man; so, where are different points of view represented here, I ask? One main issue that feminist philosophy as well as post- and de-colonial philosophy are about is "What is your position, the kind of person you are, the place you argue from do influence your ideas and how and why you present them, and so on?" So a list of white male philosophers presents a white male philosophy. Let me recur to another white male thinker, Max Weber, for a moment, to make my point, actually: He, too, didn't believe that scientific/philosophic thought can be totally objective (cf. Wissenschaftslehre); objectivity is an ideal to strive for, but whether or not it can be achieved is another matter. If you claim that philosophy from Hume to Putnam managed to do that, to be objective and not be influenced by the membership these man had in – what Dussel, Lugones, and others have so aptly called – the coloniality of power, then I disagree vehemently with you. Moreover, let us turn the point around in the following way from feminist philosophy's point of view: Perhaps it is precisely that you needn't have read Harding or Gilligan, but that the idea of canonization and of 'genius'-writers is something that feminist philosophy would argue against for itself and, perhaps, for philosophy in general. What if the message is: It is not necessary to read feminist philosopher X, but it is necessary to understand something about feminist philosophy to understand how and why Hume and so on wield this authority and why taking this Western, white, male philosophy as necessary over other types of thinking without reflecting on the position it comes from is problematic and restrictive.
    This doesn't have to amount to the point where one must renounce Hume or Kant, but it means to reflect on where their statements and ideas are coming from, and how their thought and our contemporary reception of it are affected by their position (in time, space, and so on). For example, I consider myself a Kantian, and I disagree with those (among them several feminist philosophers) who claim Kant as a philosopher and historical figure was a misogynist (btw, it's an argument I have made unfolded in discussions with people who disagree with me here), but I agree that he was a 'shoddy racist', and I agree that his geopolitical view of the world cannot but be viewed in terms of a racist ideology, which is important to understand for many aspects of his philosophizing.
    The point about the list cited, Hume to Putnam, is precisely that it is drawn up so casually and presented as a given, without reflection on how it is premised. One can dismiss these premsies as being social, psychological, and so on, and attempt to defend the idea of a purity of (philosophical) thought – but I am convinced that that only leads to unrefelcted scientism, positivism, bald naturalism, and even the homo oeconomicus from economic theory. Ok, if that is your theoretical position, fine. But that – the notion of 'pure thought representing the world' – is what I, from a Kantian(!) point of view and feminist philosophy and decolonial perspective from their respective points of view disagree with, and there are good – and I believe better – arguments for our points of view.
    Philosophy as a discipline must be more reflective of these premises (that has nothing to do with a misunderstood political correctness, btw), and to off-handedly draw up a canonic list of white men as necessary without realizing the composition of this list (or the issue of canon) is what philosophy in its many university departments suffers from: Many philosophers 'don't think', in a sense; they don't think about composition of their canon, about genealogy, about alternate points of view but in canons, while the composition of the canons shapes their present points of views and they do not question the premises (past and present). However, thought is never pure, and to uncover where, how, and why it is (and perhaps should be) messy and muddled, is a premium task of philosophy. Feminist philosophy as a whole has done a lot to help us understand that in ways that no individual white man has. And I, who I am myself a German man, learned this from reading far an wide, including above all feminist theory and decolonial authors (with whom I just as often agree as I do not, but am glad to be able to have genuine, reflected discussions), and without fear of straying beyond any canon. What feminist philosophy teaches us in philosophy is 'not to be afraid' – important in times when the neoliberalization of higher education and research thrives on a culture of fear.

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  48. slacprof

    " As emphasised previously, one can be a feminist and a philosopher and yet dismiss feminist philosophy; the political cause and the philosophical field are two different things. Unless one supposes that feminists can be misogynists, which strikes me as incredible, I think that this alone should explain why dismissing feminist philosophy should not be thought misogynistic, especially by people with doctoral-level training in philosophy."

    Can one be a feminist and dismiss the *entire* field of feminist philosophy? I don't see this as at all obvious.

    Oh sure, I can think of some really out there beliefs that would make it plausible. Someone who is a devoted feminist and also thinks philosophy as a discipline is entirely bunk could certainly dismiss the entire field of feminist philosophy without inconsistency. Or someone who thinks philosophy is of great value, but thinks it should be concerned with matters of no relevance to actual life could certainly be a feminist and reject feminist philosophy (along with all of applied ethics and political philosophy, and probably some of philosophy of religion and maybe even phil science and epistemology as well.)

    But can someone who upholds the value of philosophy generally and has no beef with applied ethics/political really dismiss ALL of feminist philosophy (such that, as you described Sally, she will read some work, find it unfruitful, and then advocate that no more of it be done at all)? Can one really consistently identify as a feminist (with a non-mistaken view of what feminism is) and believe that philosophy (and presumably academia more generally) would be better off if virtually all feminist work were just excised from the discipline? So Okin's own work on justice within the family and multiculturalism and sexism is gone. Much of Nussbaum's work will have to go. I believe someone upthread mentioned Pateman and Mills–they're work on race, sex, and the social contract is out. Questions about what if anything liberal theories can say about dependency or disability are no more. Iris Young on oppression–nope. Does even The Subjection of Women get a pass?

    And on Sally's view as I understand it, it's not just that these people happened to be wrong, but rather that issues they raised just ought never to have been considered philosophically, the debates they began were not fruitful, etc.

    I'm not sure what, on this view, applied ethics would look like. Presumably the topics of prostitution, pornography, abortion, sexual harassment, rape, gay rights, marriage, affirmative action, reparations for slavery, the nature of race, the nature of gender, surrogacy, treatment of severely disabled individuals, etc. are worth thinking about on this hypothetical feminist's view? (Otherwise, it would seem to be getting back to the view that applied ethics/political should be excised from the discipline.) So Sally's view would have to be something like: of course these questions deserve philosophical attention–or maybe only some of them–but nothing fruitful can ever come out of considering them from a feminist perspective. So only anti- or non-feminist accounts are fruitful? It's okay to take up race as a philosophical issue, but only if you don't center the perspectives of racial minorities? Or it's okay to write and teach about abortion, but only if you make no mention whatsoever of gender inequality, gender difference, women's perspectives on what happens to their own bodies, etc.?

    It this what a "feminist" dismissing feminist philosophy looks like?

    (Of course, feminist philosophy consists in much more than work in ethics and political; I don't mean to suggest otherwise. But I think the absurdity of dismissing the entire field is best seen by considering all of the work/topics/ideas that would have to go in these areas.)

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  49. thefinegameofnil

    With thanks to our host for fostering this civil discussion, I want to address the points made by both alexander stingl and slacprof, with my thanks to them too for trying to understand that there is another side in the debate.

    With respect to stingl's comments, of course I realise that most great philosophers have been white men and of course that is partly due to contingent facts and others one may refer to as hegemonic. He writes that "a list of white male philosophers presents a white male philosophy." That is where I think that things go off the rails. There is an interesting point that philosophers were people influenced by their times and life circumstances and then a mistaken belief on the part of some that because, say, Hume was a figure at a certain stage in the Scottish Enlightenment, who was white, who held somewhat conservative political views, who held another white man like Thomas Hobbes in high esteem, who influenced the father of economics and another white man Adam Smith, etc., Hume spoke only for white men like him.

    stingl wrote, "What if the message is: It is not necessary to read feminist philosopher X, but it is necessary to understand something about feminist philosophy to understand how and why Hume and so on wield this authority and why taking this Western, white, male philosophy as necessary over other types of thinking without reflecting on the position it comes from is problematic and restrictive." I think that Hume wields the authority he does in virtue of what he wrote, from the time that he was a boy genius (yes, that term is apt) to when he was a fat old genius (also apt), not because philosophers decided that they needed more white men in their syllabi. David Hume had something interesting and powerful to tell us about necessity and laws and causation; Sandra Harding has something to tell us about how Newton's Principia is usefully viewed as a rape manual. We should certainly be interested in the history of ideas and thinkers but that is not at all to suggest that feminist philosophy is a fruitful way to investigate history.

    He also wrote, "What feminist philosophy teaches us in philosophy is 'not to be afraid' – important in times when the neoliberalization of higher education and research thrives on a culture of fear." Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi taught me not to be afraid but, that aside, this sort of description is what many philosophers find deeply troubling about feminist philosophy; books answering that description belong in the rightly maligned self-help aisle at the bookstore.

    With slacprof's comments I find it useful to make a distinction I made earlier. I wrote, "There's much talk of suspending judgment on the relative worth of feminist philosophy or critical theory or whatever else. That's well and good for theoretical inquiry, but we in philosophy have to decide regularly how to use the limited resources available to us." To think that an area of research is not fruitful is not necessarily to think that it has exactly zero worth. We can play a skeptical game where it becomes very difficult to attach zero credence to even very very very very…very low probability events. But we must go about our lives and make real choices, where the reasonable thing to do seems to be to most support those fields in philosophy which one believes to be most fruitful. Sally of course takes a dim view of feminist philosophy's fruitfulness but others do not. My point in criticizing the APA Colorado Report's Orwellian Suggestion was that Sally's view should not be banned; her arguments should be welcomed and debated and if Sally and others can persuade us of their view then so be it.

    As for slacprof's other remarks, they show great misunderstanding of my position. It is not wrong to think and write about applied ethics but applied ethics is an application of ethics. Nor is it wrong to talk about reparations to the descendants of slaves but applied political philosophy is an application of political philosophy. The person who comes along and writes papers based solely on critical race theory is doing work in a very lopsided way and I would not expect such a person to be able to give good responses for the facially tough issues, e.g., President's Obama's daughters would be eligible to receive reparations via their white grandmother, let alone to be able to address a real "plurality" of thinkers in political philosophy. Back to feminist philosophy, of course women are treated differently in many ways, many of them wrong in the history of human beings, but one is entitled to argue that "centering" philosophy on pregnant women or fetuses or misogynists or papists or whoever is liable to be philosophically unfruitful in arguing about abortion and more generally too. Some philosophers disagree with the doctrine of double effect and others do not but no "centering" is required to understand or refute such arguments.

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  50. Another slac-ker

    I think two issues are being run together here. First, would it be preferable for people to not dismiss fields of inquiry that they consider unworthy? And second, is it the proper place of a sort of umbrella organization like the APA, or its agents, to make or even suggest these things as matters of protocol?

    To take a more general case: there are a number of physicists who dismiss the merits of philosophy as a whole. It seems pretty clear that those general dismissals are wrongheaded at least to a significant degree and harmful to the public reputation and standing of philosophy. Would it be preferable for those scientists not to say those things about us? Yes. Should we call them out on these comments? Certainly we should.

    But would it be proper for some broader academic organization to use its power to put pressure on scientists to stop disparaging philosophy? Absolutely not. If these scientistic critics are reasoning poorly, and they are, then it falls to us to point that out. It would not only stifle the free academic expression of the individual scientists if a quasi-sanction or official finger-wagging were made in their direction, but it would harm us. When our discipline is criticized as inferior, we need to consider that criticism and respond plainly to it if it is unjust. If we instead ask the nearest grownup to make them stop, we lose not only credibility but integrity and rigor for all the reasons Mill discusses in On Liberty.

    All this is true regardless of the merits of feminist philosophy, on which I have read too little to have an opinion. However, it would be fallacious to conclude from the mere existence of a subdiscipline that that subdiscipline is worth something. Anyone with a little imagination and knowledge of university politics should be readily be able to see how a field of study could come into being and flourish for other reasons. I have no opinion, by the way, on whether that is relevant in these cases.

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