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Philosophy’s Third Rail

Darlene Deas

I’m going to talk a bit about reactions to my Women in Philosophy post, sexual harassment, and the APA. I’ll keep it short.

I wrote a fairly benign post about what philosophy isn’t doing to promote itself to girls and women. I was falsely accused of calling feminist philosophers names, of advocating covering up harassment, of siding with harassers, and of claiming that someone was benefitting from the negative campaign. This is exactly the kind of inflammatory and false rhetoric the NRA, the Tea Party, Ann Coulter, and Donald Trump use to whip up the crowd. And, while I’m using myself as a convenient example, this isn’t about me, specifically, as I’ve seen this exact tactic used to mischaracterize or blatantly misrepresent the views of other people who have spoken up about similar issues.   

Apparently, the controversial nature of my last post wasn’t just that some people thought it was poorly timed. Rather, some people believe I was advocating something irresponsible and immoral by first suggesting that there are other concerns for girls and women who may be interested in philosophy that don’t revolve around recent court cases and by advocating for more women in the profession. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across such sentiments in the blogosphere, but it is the first time I’ve seen them so plainly written.

But I was struck most by the commentary of people in the discipline who publicly said they actively discourage women from studying philosophy and find it immoral to encourage women to enter philosophy because of harassment, discrimination, or hostility. 

Breaking News: Sexual harassment exists in EVERY sphere of employment. But, by all rights, according to some philosophers, the logical conclusion to the arguments above should be that women should eschew the workplace altogether since sexual harassment can and does happen in every single industry. Would those people have women return to the quiet vicissitude of home and hearth, or insist that women should only enter female dominated professions like nursing and teaching, or maybe it’s just that, for their own good, of course, women should not enter into male dominated professions until all potential threats of harassment have been removed? Curiously, however, this doesn’t apply to women who are currently employed in the profession.

This is not a step forward for women in general or philosophy in particular. And this shouldn’t need to be said.

While a few people making comments on the web aren’t indicative of anything significant, I began to wonder just how widespread and deep the sentiment that one may have a moral obligation to discourage women from entering the profession is or how much the topic of sexual harassment or discrimination is dominating the profession and how the conversation is occurring in more formal places. So, I decided to do a little looking around on the APA’s website. Surely, the information contained on that site is more or less indicative of the general attitude towards these issues, no? And certainly any links or information that appear on the APA’s website indicate, at the very least, an implicit—if not outright explicit—endorsement and should be taken as fairly representative of the discipline’s view as a whole. While I didn’t find any moralizing about whether or not women should enter the profession in the current climate (whatever that is), I was surprised by what I did find.

What I discovered is that the APA links in several places to What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?as part of its wider dialogue on harassment and discrimination.In the blog’s own words, “This blog is devoted to short observations (generally fewer than 300 words) sent in by readers, about life as a woman in philosophy.” The blog’s owner also goes on to advise, “Extra points will be given to those who combine these in an interesting or original way. Or they would be, if we had points to give.”

While the existence of such a site is perfectly acceptable and some people may find it helpful or informative, I find myself stunned to see it featured on the APA website in the Open Letter on Sexual Harassment, because its main function seems to be more of a gossip blog than anything else (Gossip; OED: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true). Having such a site endorsed as a source of information by the APA in a formal statement seems appallingly unprofessional given how other professional societies represent these issues, and it indicates this passes for legitimate information about the profession. As a point of fact, the open letter says, “APA members need to be fully aware of the pervasiveness and impact of sexual harassment, and we recommend reading the narratives on the blog What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?” The APA might as well link to one of the metablogs, too, as a source of reliable and factual information about the profession. That aside, my assumption is that if the APA is endorsing such a site, then such a site’s importance, prominence, and relevance to the profession is also endorsed more broadly by most members of the APA.

As a point of interest, here is the APA’s public mission statement: “The American Philosophical Association promotes the discipline and profession of philosophy, both within the academy and in the public arena. The APA supports the professional development of philosophers at all levels and works to foster greater understanding and appreciation of the value of philosophical inquiry.”

 Other places where What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy may be found on the APA website include:

Open Letter on Sexual Harassment
Committee on the Status of Women (main page)
Committee on the Status of Women (Advancing Women)
Committee on the Status of Women (Sexual Harassment)
Committee on the Status of Women (bases, Lists, List-Serves, Blogs, and Wikis)

If you’re interested in seeing how the APA website compares with other associations, then have a look at the three sites below: physics, chemistry, and math. I’ve linked directly to subpages that promote women and their work, but you can click around to view other details.

American Physical Society
American Chemical Society
American Mathematical Society

These were not selected at random; rather they were selected for being male dominated disciplines.  You may want to pay special attention to what each organization lists under “advocacy,” and how they highlight their disciplines for outreach and promotion to women and minorities.

Comments are open, but please do try to avoid killing yourself on the third rail. 

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50 responses to “Philosophy’s Third Rail”

  1. Anonymous

    Darlene, you continue to be a wonderful source of hope in a dark time, and a very fine writer to boot. I hope Brian Leiter keeps publishing your work here.

    It is, as you say, scandalous that the APA (which is not run not by a current or former professional philosopher but a feminist activist) irresponsibly maintains a link to the 'What It's Like' gossip site as though it were some source of objective information and not a cherry-picked collection of unconfirmed anecdotes assembled by a noted ideologue for propagandistic purposes.

    We're well past the point where it's reasonable to ask which is more important to these people: actually promoting the interests of women in the profession and encouraging more women to do philosophy, or perpetuating their women-as-helpless-victims narrative. Reading over your comments last week, the answer to that question wasn't hard to find.

    Many of us have publicly asked for evidence on the extent of the so-called sexual harassment epidemic. It turns out that there is no such evidence, and neither the APA nor any feminist groups are interested in collecting it, but they keep on painting this horrible picture anyway because, wait for it, they think the 'What It's Like' gossip rag is all the evidence they need.

    A grad student tried to present your arguments a couple of years ago, and was quickly attacked and hunted down by people who even went as far as tracking his IP address to identify and 'dispel' him from the profession. So it wasn't surprising to see these same sorts of people go after you with slavering jaws a week ago. Being an outsider to the profession, you may stand a chance to raise these simple points without being torn apart or threatened personally and professionally. But make no mistake, many who are deeply invested in the narrative you are debunking will attack you without mercy in their efforts to silence you. I hope you can overcome them and find a way to be heard.

    Reply
  2. random listener

    Oh for Christ's sakes, Darlene. You're on the internet. People will have strenuous objections to things. At this point, you're just feeding the flames or, as the kids' these days say, "feeding the trolls." Feeding the trolls is bad. This is just going to provoke more hurt feelings and misunderstandings instead of encouraging people to come together over something you obviously care about, which is positive publicity for women in philosophy. (Although to be fair, I have seen quite a bit of positive publicity around my campus too.)

    By the way, I would assume that some professors aren't pushing graduate study on women because they're not pushing graduate study on _anybody_. The job market is horrendously bad, graduate school is lonely and difficult (especially financially), and philosophers don't always the best social circle make. I've heard many many professors say they discourage their students from entering the field for these reasons alone, so it's not surprising that adding things like gender-based difficulties on top of everything else would also cause professional philosophers to discourage their female students from going. Because they don't think anybody should go.

    And lastly, while sexual harassment exists everywhere, there _are_ structural issues in academia that _potentially_ makes it a different or even more salient kind of problem. This is the combination of bad job market (it's not easy to leave a hostile work environment) and the doctoral student-doctoral advisor relationship, which depending on many factors students can feel like they're trapped in. This is an empirical question that I don't know the answer to (and of course would cut across all fields in academia), but I thought I would mention it.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    Another fantastic and powerful post, Darlene. Thank you and I hope you become a regular presence here.

    There was an extended discussion about the reliability of the 'What It's Like To Be A Woman…' blog, and the appropriateness of the APA making such regular reference to it, this summer on a different blog. Many issues were hashed out, but the contortions of those who took the views opposed to yours were nothing short of bizarre. You might find a read through the thread useful in coming to grips with the psychology and rationalizations of your interlocutors: http://dailynous.com/2015/06/16/apa-issues-letter-on-sexual-harassment/

    Reply
  4. anonymous

    Hi Darlene,

    I don't think your post would have received the (comparatively few) negative responses it did if it had just been like: "I would like to celebrate women in philosophy; here are some of the women whose work inspires me; please comment and add the names of female philosophers who inspire you to this list!"

    But it wasn't like that.

    What was it, then? It was a comment on what might be called the exposé movement in philosophy. That is, it was a comment on the exposé movement that pirouetted into the first sort of post described above. (A cynical and uncharitable reader might say that the pirouette was there for plausible deniability of intent; perhaps that accounts for some of the heat in the negative replies.)

    What was the comment's thrust? It was, as far as I can tell, first that it's a shame that the exposé movement is taking up "so much" of the online informational space that exists for the topic of women in philosophy—it's a shame, that is, that it is crowding out other sorts of information regarding female philosophers. Further, it was that the exposé movement's energies are misdirected; that it is "absolutely tone deaf" to recruiting young women to philosophy.

    I applaud the idea that part of what will help balance the gender ratio in philosophy is the concerted attempt on the part of professionals and knowledgeable non-professionals to go out of their way to make the many excellent female philosophers' names and work better known. Striving to ensure equal gender representation on syllabi is a huge part of that, but there are other ways (like making online lists and inviting people to contribute).

    So far, then, I'm on your side. But I have two main objections to your post. First, I disagree with your assumption that the exposé movement exists to recruit women in philosophy. That's simply not what its purpose is; I take that to be altogether obvious. So, then, it seems the best way to take your point about "tone deafness" would be as that the manifest purpose of the exposé movement is not the one that should be dominating the sphere of discussion regarding women in philosophy. Rather, the focus should be on fixing the gender ratio.

    I'm not sure whether the exposé movement really does dominate the online sphere of information on women in philosophy. But I think whether that is so is comparatively unimportant. The second thing I disagree with about your post is the tamping down that it seemed to seek to administer to the exposé movement. It's not time for that movement to recede or give way to a moare positive picture of women in philosophy. It's time to do both things at once with equal energy. Let's celebrate and increase the renown of awesome female philosophers without in any way attempting to silence or quell those who would seek to expose the undeniably problematic climate issues that still stain our profession.

    If your purpose was to make a contribution toward fixing the gender ratio, you would have done better, in my opinion, to have made a post like the one I described at the start.

    Reply
  5. Scott

    Commenter 4 @ 10:17,

    Darlene's first piece last week was clearly intended to call into question the wisdom of making what you call the 'expose movement' the first or most prominent thing people, and women in particular, read about philosophy. Had she written the piece as you recommend, it would not have not have achieved that purpose.

    I'm sure you would have preferred a piece that merely celebrated women in philosophy without criticizing any aspect of the expose movement. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing in the expose movement or its representation that can be criticized.

    Reply
  6. Rankings vs Feminist Stories

    So let me get this straight. The APA has the following statement on ranking undergraduate and graduate programs:

    "The American Philosophical Association does not rank departments of philosophy and their graduate and/or undergraduate programs nor does it sponsor or endorse any rankings of philosophy departments or programs that are compiled by others." (Found here: http://www.apaonline.org/?rankings)

    They APA just won't do it even though the methodology of rankings of U.S. News, Princeton Review, and Phil Gourmet are all public, knowable, and subject to peer review and critical evaluation. And even though such rankings could be useful to departments to argue for support from administrators for such things.

    But the APA will foster, promote, "sponsor" and "endorse" a gossip blog about women in the profession where the stories are anonymous, not vetted, encouraged to be "creative," and not subject to peer review or outside verification or criticism.

    The leadership of the APA should be removed and replaced. Every one of them who signed that letter should be replaced.

    Reply
  7. Anon

    Serious question, Darlene: would you consider running for office in the APA? You'd have my vote.

    Reply
  8. Yet another anon

    I thought that the comparison Darlene's original post made to other fields' public representations of women in the field was interesting and informative.

    But I think that a lot of the reaction she received was because she, to my read, was unnecessarily hostile and dismissive toward efforts to reduce sexual harassment in philosophy. For example, referring to them as "blame and shame" seems not only trivializing but outright insulting. (Anyway, what's the alternative to "blaming" someone like McGinn for his actions?)

    Especially coming from someone who isn't actually in the field, this rankled. Darlene, if you are genuinely puzzled by the strong emotions your post evoked, I think this is why.

    Reply
  9. anonymous

    Hi Scott,

    I don't think that that alone was the *clear* intent. It was also a post about celebrating female philosophers.

    I realized after submitting my post that one way to understand her remarks about the exposé movement was as suggesting that the movement is actually impeding the goal of fixing the gender ratio. Perhaps that's what you're thinking might stand to be criticized about the movement as well?

    In any case, it seems quite wrong to me to think that a good reason to discourage online attention to and promotion of the exposé movement would be that if there is less of such attention and promotion, there will be more women willing to explore and/or enter the profession. Whether that conditional is true or not, making it a reason for discouraging the exposé movement's promoters in the way described is like saying people should be less informed about worker exploitation at Wal-Mart so that there can be higher lower class employment. As I said in my original comment, I think we (collectively) need to be equally as invested in informing people about female philosophers' work as we are in informing them about the current state of climate in the profession.

    Now, perhaps you have some other sort of criticism of the exposé movement in mind; but I can find no evidence in Darlene's post that she might have intended to any such.

    Reply
  10. Anon3

    Darlene, as you rightly point out, inflammatory rhetoric and blatant misrepresentation. But you go on to describe the controversy about your last post as being about this: "Rather, some people believe I was advocating something irresponsible and immoral by first suggesting that there are other concerns for girls and women who may be interested in philosophy that don’t revolve around recent court cases and by advocating for more women in the profession."

    So my question is this: do you really think that this is an accurate representation of the objections being raised by the majority of commenters on your last post? Do you really think, for example, that the objection was just that you were merely suggesting that there are other concerns for girls and women interested in philosophy?

    Reply
  11. Daniel A. Kaufman

    I actually think it is perfectly fair to ask whether "Shame and Blame" is an effective tactic, with regard to increasing the number of women in philosophy. And I think that one should be able to make that case, without being accused of lending aid and support to harassers, as so many of Darlene's critics — in what I described as almost a parody of SJW Twitter mobs — have done.

    The point is not whether those found guilty of harassment and worse should be put through whatever punitive processes are in place to deal with such people. Of course they should. The question, rather, is whether focusing on these cases should be at the heart of our efforts to recruit more women to philosophy. Darlene thinks it should not, and I agree with her.

    I am reminded of the sorts of tactics used by Peters Singer and Unger to persuade people to be more ethical — I am thinking of the sort of thing you find in "Living High and Letting Die" and "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." These are also varieties of shame and blame — although more, blame and shame — and I and many others not only find them completely unpersuasive, but actually counterproductive. (Bernard Williams criticized Singer *explicitly* on these grounds, in "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.") In fact, so obnoxious is much of the tone and content of this sort of work that it inclines me to behave in exactly the opposite fashion recommended, as well as to dig around in the biographies of the authors, in order to discover the sort of hypocrisy that one always finds in the backgrounds of self-righteous scolds.

    What it does not do, of course, is focus attention on the issue at hand. Which, if you care about it, should bother you.

    Darlene is absolutely correct that this obsessive focus is toxic and sure to drive women away from philosophy, not towards it.

    (Dan K. Missouri State)

    Reply
  12. Woman in Grad School

    For someone upset about being interpreted uncharitably, you're being extraordinarily uncharitable yourself.

    No one thinks that women need to return to hearth and home to avoid harassment. So why might women in philosophy think harassment in philosophy is particularly risky? Because philosophy's TERRIBLE job market, small size, and hierarchical structure make harassment riskier to report and harder to escape. Leaving a toxic work environment often means leaving the discipline. Single people often have unusual amounts of power over you. Upset the wrong person as a student and kiss your career goodbye.

    The primary purpose of WIILTBAWIP? is not gossip. ("Someone stole my wallet" is not gossip either.) The primary purpose is awareness. Because of the risks, anecdotes and warnings are often shared among women but don't reach men. The APA links to the blog because many people in the discipline were shocked to hear that these things have happened to many women. If people think these things don't really happen, they dismiss students and colleagues that report them. Awareness is important.

    I don't share the concern that many of the posts on the blog are misrepresentations for some unknown purpose (well, "perpetuating their women-as-helpless-victims narrative," according to poster #1, because if there's anything women love it's being seen as victims). There's a possibility that some are inaccurate. But I can't imagine why most would be—you know that sexual harassment happens in philosophy, since it happens everywhere. Since the blog is intended to convey a general impression of the problem ("it happens") rather than tell people specifics about any particular situation, the possibility of a few inaccurate anecdotes doesn't seem like a reason not to use it as a resource.

    This post makes it clear that your concern is not just that young women are "unable to find" information about women philosophers, but that they are likely to find discussion of problems that you think is unnecessary ("gossip"). People were disagreeing with the second part. No one was objecting to "suggesting that there are other concerns for girls and women who may be interested in philosophy that don’t revolve around recent court cases." WE are women interested in philosophy. We are pretty familiar with our concerns. We remember the concerns we had as undergraduates.

    Reply
  13. anon

    I sometimes wonder whether it's possible nowadays to write a post of over 100 words about these topics, on a blog with an even mildly diverse audience, and fail to piss off a significant number of people who will think your blog post is terrible in some ways (even if they are willing to grant that you yourself aren't terrible).

    Reply
  14. Why the crickets?

    I really do wish that some of the commenters criticizing Deas would take the trouble to answer one of her most telling points: that the manner in which the APA handles the question of sexual harassment, including, importantly, its multiple links to a site with no checks on the reliability of its highly damning stories, is utterly unlike how other professional organizations from comparable disciplines handle that issue. How do they explain this glaring discrepancy?

    I'd think that her critics might be embarrassed by their silence on the point — which is maybe why they need to fill the void with noise on far less basic issues.

    Reply
  15. Darlene Deas

    I'm just surprised no one pointed out the typos.

    Reply
  16. Scott

    Woman in Grad School, you claim that the purpose of the What It's Like blog is to promote 'awareness' among men and women in the profession. And in particular, you claim that its purpose is to send the message that "it happens", 'it' being harassment. But you also say that everyone already knows that harassment happens everywhere.

    So what is this 'awareness' that it's meant to spread? For women, it reinforces the impression that harassment and other bad things happen in the profession, which they already knew. But because it has no fact-checking, and is accompanied by no statistics on the frequency of harassment, it's roughly as helpful as watching sensationalist TV news would be in figuring out one's odds of being murdered or kidnapped by the mere frequency of the stories that make it on the news, except that at least on sensationalist TV news, we have some good reason to believe that all the allegations of murder have been checked out and there really was a murder or at least a death. I can see how the blog would instill dread and a general sense of distrust in female readers contemplating a degree in philosophy through sheer repetition of claims, but without a sense of how likely it is that a given woman will actually encounter those problems, the best way to deal with it and get on with your life, the odds that people will rally to your side, etc., the site seems to make no positive influence at all, unless the idea is to drive women into feminist philosophy cliques, which would happen to strengthen the position and affiliations of the people running and promoting the blog at the expense of the interests of philosophy. Actually, though, I know at least one woman who read the blog and found many of the stories to be petty and not harassment at all, and actually said "Is that all everyone's been going on about?" and felt relieved. So, I guess it might have some positive but unintended consequences for women.

    As for men, it isn't very helpful either. I'm a man who would love to help decrease harassment and also promote the interests and numbers of women in philosophy. What am I supposed to get out of reading the blog, exactly? I just looked at it now, and here's what I've found. Post number one is a second-hand report of someone at a different school from the writer who apparently emailed a philosophy joke to colleagues that mentioned rape. Post number two is written by an apparently distinguished woman in the profession who says she urgently needed to move to a different city for a year and asked around desperately to see if she could get a visiting professorship, and was told that there was no such thing available, but the person she asked mentioned that he or she knew of a $100K/yr position working as an administrative assistant at a publishing house there. Personally, I'd have been grateful to hear about such an opportunity to lucratively make ends meet for the year if there was nothing else, but I guess the writer felt it was beneath her. Then the third thing is a story about a woman who claims she was at first encouraged in philosophy by a professor who then, upon meeting her in person, told her she didn't have what it takes. Was this an instance of sexism? I can't tell. I have no idea how accurate the story is, I don't know what basis the professor had for saying that (if he did say it), and it seems weird that he would have encouraged her at first, knowing she was a woman, if he was later to discourage her for purely sexist reasons. But sure, I guess there might have been sexism there. Or there might not. There's absolutely no way for us to figure it out on the basis of the story. But if you tell enough of those stories, and you make sure they're all by women, then they start to look bad even if they're not.

    What 'awareness' am I meant to get from reading this? I'm not being willfully obtuse. I really can't see what the point is even supposed to be, other than to make women feel that they're in a terrible position in philosophy and that they will never be safe outside of a specifically feminist environment.

    Reply
  17. Mark Engleson

    Isn't it something of an abrogation of responsibility for a professional society to defer on a subject to an anonymous/pseudonymous blog? This strikes me as a way of saying something without really saying anything — and being able to deny it was said. The APA can take advantage of the content of What It's Like without having to actually make a statement. But this allows the APA to maintain the dubious position that they only named blog "as an example" and never endorsed any specific content. Rhetorically, it's a chicken-you-know what move. If the APA would never publish the material themselves or specifically endorse particular pieces of content, they shouldn't try to hedge by referring to the whole site.

    My beef isn't with What It's Like, to be clear, it's with how APA is doing this.

    Reply
  18. Philosophet

    Good lord. You obviously have an agenda, and I stand by my previous comments. I never attempted to "silence" you as you preposterously claimed; I criticized your argument. That's how the Internet works; someone makes a claim, and others respond critically. Get over yourself.

    As far as the latest iteration goes, you seem to be selling the same goods. You think the APA shouldn't link to the What is it Like blog because this isn't the sort of thing other professional organizations do? That's not a good argument. I'm glad the APA is acknowledging the real problems in philosophy. Whether that negatively affects how many women end up apply to philosophy programs is beside the point. We need to acknowledge the problem if we are to have any hope of eventually solving it. The APA is not philosophy's tool for public relations; it is our professional organization.

    Reply
  19. Woman in Grad School

    I did not say that everybody knows it happens everywhere. I said "you know," with 'you' referring to Darlene, as I used it throughout my post. Darlene was explicit that she thinks harassment happens everywhere, and I read her as thinking that the kind of treatment described in WIIL happens everywhere.

    I think in some minimal sense everybody does know that harassment happens everywhere. But obviously not in the sense that they'd find some initial plausibility in *any* specific allegation of harassment within their discipline. For example, if it seems plausible to you that a compilation of stories of harassment in your discipline are really all just women's misunderstandings, I'd say you don't actually understand that sexual harassment happens everywhere, at least not in the sense required to do anything about it.

    For people without extreme suspicions of women's motives and perceptions, I think WIIL is helpful in showing the damaging effects of familiar problems (no women on syllabuses), and also how bad things can get. I think this can be helpful in making people less likely to dismiss allegations from people they know because they seem "unrealistic."

    Reply
  20. Scott

    Philosophet, why doesn't the APA also link to a blog involving unsubstantiated, anonymized, non-reviewed reports of income tax fraud among philosophers? Come on, we all know that many people commit income tax fraud. With so many professional philosophers, there must be a great deal of income tax fraud in the profession. Income tax fraud costs us millions of dollars and is a threat to governmental services.

    Whether such a blog would have any merit whatsoever in helping anyone at all get a clue as to the extent of the tax fraud problem among philosophers is surely beside the point, isn't it? The fact remains that it's one of the real problems in philosophy. If that casts us in a bad light by giving members of the public the false impression that there's any empirical evidence of a particular tax fraud problem in philosophy, well, that's part of the healing process that we must go through. We need to acknowledge the tax fraud problem if we are to have any hope of eventually solving it. The APA is not philosophy's tool for public relations; it is our professional organization.

    Reply
  21. Peter Godfrey-Smith

    This comment is more about the earlier exchange, which I just came across. In those lists that people give, spanning all levels of seniority and including people round the margins of philosophy as well as those in the middle, Ruth Millikan never (or hardly ever) seems to get a mention. It makes no sense. She is a major figure and not in some attenuated sense of 'major.' Anscombe, Korsgaard, Millikan.

    Reply
  22. Philippe Lemoine

    As I have already noted on Daily Nous, people who reacted negatively to Darlene's post often seem to assume that making philosophy look better and making philosophy be better are mutually exclusive, but that is hardly obvious. If sexual harassment really is endemic in philosophy, then presumably increasing the proportion of women in the profession is one of the most effective, if not the most effective, way of solving or at least reducing that problem. Thus, if making philosophy *look* better helps to increase the proportion of women in the profession, then it also helps making philosophy *be* better.

    In any case, it's not clear that sexual harassment really is endemic in philosophy, so I think that, instead of linking to "What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?", the APA could put together a task force charged with creating a victimization survey to determine whether sexual harassment is widespread in the profession. It seems that people who claim that sexual harassment is endemic in philosophy rely on their own experience, but everyone should acknowledge that, just because one has been harassed oneself or knows many people first-hand who say they have been harassed, it doesn't follow that sexual harassment really is endemic, even if one has no reason not to believe people who say they have been harassed.

    Imagine that you have been physically assaulted or know a lot of people who told you they have been physically assaulted. I’m sure that, from this fact, you wouldn’t draw the conclusion that physical assault is widespread in your community, unless perhaps you live in a very small community. Before you agree that physical assault is widespread, you would ask for a different kind of evidence, presumably something like a victimization survey. And you wouldn’t ask for that kind of evidence because you don’t believe the people who told you they have been physically assaulted. Even if you believe them, which presumably you have every reason to do, what they tell you doesn’t warrant the belief that physical assault is widespread. I think it's exactly the same thing with the prevalence of sexual harassment in philosophy.

    I don’t see how anyone could disagree with that unless they assumed that, for some reason, philosophers are immune to moral panics. To be clear, I am *not* saying that the concern over sexual harassment in philosophy *is* a moral panic (I honestly don’t know whether sexual harassment is widespread in philosophy, which is precisely why I'd like the APA to administer a victimization survey), but only that it might well be one.

    Coming back to Darlene's post, as I explained above, even if sexual harassment *is* widespread in philosophy, it might be that trying to make outreach material directed at women less negative — which isn't the same thing as denying the existence of the problem — is a way of solving the problem by increasing the proportion of women in philosophy. It seems to me that, at the very least, that's something worth thinking about and I don't see what's wrong in asking the question. If, on the other hand, sexual harassment in fact isn't widespread in philosophy, then presumably we shouldn't give the impression that it is.

    Reply
  23. Darlene Deas

    You seem to have a misunderstanding of exactly what role professional organizations play, and more specifically that of the APA. Here is the APA Mission Statement (which was quoted in my blog post, which I'm not sure you actually read): “The American Philosophical Association promotes the discipline and profession of philosophy, both within the academy and in the public arena. The APA supports the professional development of philosophers at all levels and works to foster greater understanding and appreciation of the value of philosophical inquiry.”

    And, just to clarify, I don't reference you in the post, nor did I have you in mind when I wrote it.

    Reply
  24. Anon3

    Darlene, you are clearly reading and responding to these, but so far you haven't answered a pretty simple and direct question I posed, so I'll ask it again:

    Darlene, as you rightly point out, inflammatory rhetoric and blatant misrepresentation is a problem. But you go on to describe the controversy about your last post as being about this: "Rather, some people believe I was advocating something irresponsible and immoral by first suggesting that there are other concerns for girls and women who may be interested in philosophy that don’t revolve around recent court cases and by advocating for more women in the profession."

    So my question is this: do you really think that this is an accurate representation of the objections being raised by the majority of commenters on your last post? Do you really think, for example, that the objection was just that you were merely suggesting that there are other concerns for girls and women interested in philosophy?

    DD COMMENT: I've already addressed this in my post. If you have a point to make, comments, as you know are open.

    Reply
  25. Scott

    Woman in Grad School,

    You say to me, "For example, if it seems plausible to you that a compilation of stories of harassment in your discipline are really all just women's misunderstandings, I'd say you don't actually understand that sexual harassment happens everywhere, at least not in the sense required to do anything about it."

    I hope you're not suggesting that I think that there is no sexual harassment in philosophy (it happens everywhere, and there are one or two well-known recent cases where it has happened in philosophy), or that I'm dismissing *all* the stories on the 'What It's Like' blog as "really all just women's misunderstandings." Neither of those claims is true of me, at least.

    But the point remains that not all the stories on that blog, even if true, would constitute sexual harassment. I already gave you examples of the top three stories there today. Let's start with a baseline. What Colin McGinn did, in repeatedly making suggestive and often lurid comments and suggestions to a student who relied on him for support, stating or strongly suggesting that she needed to have sex with him, that's a paradigm case of sexual harassment. But sending an email to everyone in the department with a link to a comic strip in which a famous philosopher tells a 'your mother' dozens joke to another philosopher? That's a bastardization of the term 'sexual harassment' and threatens to remove its force. It's also not sexual harassment to respond to an email from a stranger who desperately needs work in a city by mentioning that there's an administrative job that pays $100,000 per year, or, aside from exceptional circumstances, to advise someone that he or she doesn't have a future in philosophy.

    Let me ask you again: what about that blog is meant to be informative? And to whom and in what way, exactly?

    Reply
  26. Anon3

    The point is this: part of engaging with people is being able to listen to criticism, and that's a very bad representation of the criticism you received. Either you honestly thought that this was a good description of the objections people were making – which seems very hard to believe – or you were doing exactly what you accuse your opponents of doing (engaging in blatant misrepresentation). Either way, it looks very unlikely that there is any point in anybody who disagrees with you raising their concerns.

    Reply
  27. Philosophet

    @ Darlene: I think there is a difference between a professional organization being a tool for public relations and a professional organization promoting the interests of the profession. As part of promoting the discipline of philosophy the APA advocates for its members. Part of advocating for its members involves addressing philosophy's climate problems. A public relations firm would work to hide these problems and sweep them under the rug, but this is not appropriate behavior for the APA. Instead, the APA should acknowledge the issues and highlight the work that is being done to rectify these problems. Part of this work includes blogs like What is it Like because you can't change a problem that no one acknowledges.

    Some, including you, deny that philosophy has a special problem with these matters. Given my experience (including my years of employment experience outside of philosophy) I'd disagree, but I would welcome more robust studies. But one thing is certain: there is a general perception that philosophy has a serious problem with harassment. I know this because administrators and colleagues in other departments have asked me about it numerous times. They aren't reading What is it Like. Instead, they are reading the Chronicle and other newspapers that report on the high profile harassment cases, and connecting this to their own interactions with philosophers.

    Finally, you did seem to have me in mind when you wrote, in closing a previous post, that some philosophers were saying that "you have no right to speak about philosophical issues." I never said that, and no one on that thread said anything approaching that. The fact that you interpreted my comments so uncharitably leads me to suspect you intentionally misrepresented my objections. Or perhaps you just don't like disagreement. Of course the perspectives of outsiders can be helpful. But when someone inside some practice or discipline says critical things about their experience in that practice that surprise me, I take that person's testimony seriously, and I do not pretend to know more about what it is like on the inside than the people who have spent years of their lives there. In dismissing the What is it Like blog you are once again dismissing the lived experience of people in a profession you only know from the outside. That is epistemically irresponsible.

    Reply
  28. Alex

    Is that not tu quoque? What does being a hypocrite have to do with being right nonetheless?

    Reply
  29. David Wallace

    Darlene writes

    "I was struck most by the commentary of people in the discipline who publicly said they actively discourage women from studying philosophy and find it immoral to encourage women to enter philosophy because of harassment, discrimination, or hostility."

    To self-plagiarise a comment of mine on DN: It’s quite widely (and I think, quite rightly) felt that it’s wrong to tell women “don’t drink; don’t go out clubbing; don’t have casual consensual sex”, even if the motivation is to reduce the chance that they are exposed to sexual abuse as a consequence. (Indeed, even the more nuanced view that we should teach some risk-awareness and self-defence to women who want to do these things sometimes gets criticised for diverting attention from the abusers.)

    By the same token, it doesn’t seem that we should be discouraging women from entering philosophy, even if there’s a risk of harassment in doing so. This leaves aside Darlene’s point that other sectors also have discrimination and harassment: even assuming this is unusually high in philosophy, discouraging women on that basis is at least prima facie open to the same criticisms.

    Reply
  30. Darlene Deas

    Anon 3 and Philosophet: The first paragraph of the post is not in reference to any comments made on this blog. The comments I'm referencing were made on other blogs and Twitter. My description of them is accurate and fair. I'm sure you could easily find the Twitter comments, if you're inclined to verify.

    Reply
  31. Daniel A. Kaufman

    Tu quoque is only a fallacy, if one is using it to support some sort of argument (or to refute one). I did no such thing. Rather, I was talking about the effectiveness of certain persuasive tactics.

    Reply
  32. Scott

    Philosophet, you seem to think that there are exactly two options: either we prominently talk, and talk repeatedly, about sexual harassment in the profession and bewail its extent and go on about how horrible things are (allegedly) for women, or else we engage in a dishonest cover-up. But that's a false dichotomy. The sensible and moral option is neither of those things.

    Let me give you an analogy. There are several deaths within the discipline (Brian Leiter posted something about one of them here just today), and sometimes those deaths are presaged by illnesses, including cancer. There's no reason to think there's anything about philosophy *in particular*, or even academic life in particular, that makes deaths more frequent or cancer more likely. But nonetheless, it happens. And if we could reduce the rates of cancer among philosophers, that would certainly be a good thing. I think we all agree with that.

    But imagine how it would look if the newspapers kept running headlines in which it was said that yet another philosopher has died, confirming in the minds of many philosophers that the discipline has a serious fatality problem, and that many people within the discipline are unsure whether to advise people to go on in philosophy because of the death rate of 100% for philosophers of certain generations and the unacceptably high levels of cancer in the profession. Imagine if, together with that, there were a special task force on cancer and fatalities in philosophy, and that anyone going to the APA website was directed to a blog called 'What it's like to be a philosopher' that featured nothing but first-person narratives of bereavement from those whose colleagues had died and stories from people who reported developing cancer or other horrible illnesses while being a philosopher.

    Wouldn't you think people would get the impression that philosophy has a *particular* problem with death, cancer and other horrible illnesses? Wouldn't ordinary, rational people assume from this that someone, somewhere, has some objective evidence that the death and cancer rates in philosophy are really, really horrible for some reason, and vastly beyond what those rates are pretty well anywhere else, and that all this stuff is a reaction to that objective information?

    True, the news reports and blog and APA website wouldn't *say* that, but it would be a pretty clear implication.

    As it happens, we don't have that kind of inane self-generated negative publicity surrounding death and cancer. And yet we all know that philosophers, like everyone else, die and sometimes suffer from cancer. Is that a sign that we're acting like a dishonest PR firm and trying to 'cover up' our cancer and death problems, or that we think that cancer and death are just fine and dandy? No, not at all. We're honestly presenting the facts as we see them, without trying to imply that there's good evidence for a particularly bad death and cancer rate in philosophy when there just isn't.

    Similarly, since the decent evidence for thinking that there's a *particularly* bad problem of sexual harassment in philosophy compared with other disciplines or professions is PRECISELY ZERO, a sensible thing would be to not create the false impression that there's some horrible sexual harassment epidemic, *comparatively speaking*, particular to philosophy. And that's what Darlene is advocating.

    However, it *would* be advantageous to engage in some dishonest PR work to unfairly make it seem that there *is* a particular problem in philosophy despite the absence of evidence, *if* one were engaged in a particular subdiscipline of philosophy that would benefit from more women being terrified by misleading anecdotes. This would be particularly advantageous if members of that subdiscipline were frequently cross-listed in other departments that were committed to an ideology that would be strengthened by women being terrified of being victimized, so that if philosophy enrollments dwindle, their careers will be safe. The only subdiscipline I can think of that fits that description is feminist philosophy, and it fits it to a T. Maybe we should look into whether there's an overlap between proponents of the 'What It's Like' blog and those involved in feminist philosophy. If there is, then we should perhaps direct our accusations of being involved in dishonest PR that way.

    Reply
  33. Philosophet

    @David
    You don't say who you are responding to, but I don't think you have given a reductio of the arguments of those who think we shouldn't encourage women to enter philosophy at this point in time.

    People could object to telling women not to go out clubbing for at least three reasons: such advice might be thought to constitute tacit victim blaming (women are often blamed for their own assaults because they were out clubbing or wearing a short dress), it might be thought to divert attention (instead of focusing on improving the world the advice giver is focused on changing the behavior of targets) and it may be thought to be paternalistic (some dismiss any advice as encroaching on or undermining the others' autonomy).

    None of these objections necessarily have much force when directed at those who refuse to encourage women to enter into philosophy. People who take this position might be working hard to improve the conditions for women in philosophy but may be stymied by those who deny there is a problem or seek to cover it up. They may have absolutely no interest in blaming women for choosing philosophy in the first place. And they may question the assumption that giving advice constitutes paternalistic interference.

    Reply
  34. s. wallerstein

    Philosophet,

    If suggesting that women not go out clubbing is paternalistic, why isn't suggesting that women not go into philosophy also paternalistic?

    Reply
  35. David Wallace

    I was responding to the quoted comment of Darlene, really. I think all of your three responses could apply equally in either case, so they don't serve to distinguish the two cases (and my observation doesn't attempt a reduction, it just points out an apparent analogy).

    Reply
  36. Daniel A. Kaufman

    I'm curious to know whether, beyond self-reporting and anecdotal evidence, do we have *any* statistically sound evidence that sexual harassment in philosophy is worse than in other disciplines or in other professions?

    If the answer is "no," then that does *not* mean that we should not do what we can to eliminate the harassment that *does* occur, but it would be a reason not to use "crisis" language, and it also would be a reason not to discourage women from entering the profession.

    One more thing. Given the profession we are in and given the close connections with the social sciences that many in our field enjoy, if such a study has not been done, why? Especially given the claims of a crisis — I would think that getting this information would be the first order of business.

    Dan K. (Missouri State)

    Reply
  37. Philosophet

    @ S. Walllerstein: I don't think giving advice is paternalistic. I'm happy to agree with Mill here; if I believe some course of action will harm some actor, I have good reason for "remonstrating with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him…"

    So I don't think it is paternalistic to advise women to avoid a dangerous club. But I think offering that sort of advice may be objectionable for the other two reasons I gave above.

    Reply
  38. Factive

    @philosophet writes: "there is a general perception that philosophy has a serious problem with harassment. I know this because administrators and colleagues in other departments have asked me about it numerous times. They aren't reading What is it Like. Instead, they are reading the Chronicle and other newspapers that report on the high profile harassment cases, and connecting this to their own interactions with philosophers."

    It seems to me that the high profile news stories and the general perceptions are, to a significant extent, the product of a very vocal minority within the profession, who have a lot to gain from creating a climate of moral panic.

    Reply
  39. Scott

    Daniel,

    Many of us have been asking for years for any evidence at all that there is a *worse* problem in philosophy than in other disciplines, or a worse problem in academic life than outside of it. I have never seen a shred of evidence presented other than anecdotes and references to the 'What It's Like' blog. My prediction is that you won't receive any answer to your question, either. The only thing to conclude, I suppose, is that the people behind this movement are committed to creating this impression regardless of whether it's true and that they don't have any objective evidence at all. If they had any, they'd surely tell us.

    Reply
  40. Anonandon

    Philosophet writes, "But one thing is certain: there is a general perception that philosophy has a serious problem with harassment. I know this because administrators and colleagues in other departments have asked me about it numerous times. They aren't reading What is it Like. Instead, they are reading the Chronicle and other newspapers that report on the high profile harassment cases."

    How do you know they haven't read WIIL, or read a facebook post from someone linking to WIIL, or read an article on a famous case like Mcginn's that references WIIL as evidence of a the (alleged) widespread problem in the discipline? I agree that the general perception of philosophy is that has a serious problem with harassment, though there is no good evidence that it is any worse than, say, political science or astronomy. Nonetheless, that perception remains and that perception is precisely what Darlene opposes. Do you really think that perception is not influenced by the fact that the most highly trafficked philosophy blogs and the APA itself devote a large amount of energy to bemoaning the evils of harassment?

    It's strikes me as crazy that the APA endorses a blog posting anonymous, unverified accounts of harassment. I couldn't imagine other professional organizations doing something similar. Now, as Philosophet says, that is not in itself a good argument against endorsing WIIL. To get an argument with some rational force, you need to assume that some of these other professional organizations are more effective than the APA. However, given the woeful state of the field in the eyes of the public, administrators, donors, and pretty much anyone else who help fund work in philosophy, it seems pretty easy to assume that at least some of these organizations are more effective than the APA.

    To be honest, though, the APA is a lost cause. It's a tenured old boys and girls club, oblivious to or uninterested in the fact that fewer and fewer philosophy instructors have tenure (even full-time benefits). It will put out whatever statement makes the elites feel relevant to the current cause celeb, while departments are wiped out and programs continue to flood the market with PhD's because they need graduate students to teach the intro courses that the TT folk abhor.

    Reply
  41. Anonymous

    Philosophet, I don't see how you're entitled the distinction you're trying to draw between s. wallerstein's nightclub case and the case of going on in philosophy.

    You say the distinction rests on two points: tacit victim-blaming, and diverting attention.

    But if you say that advising women to steer clear of philosophy (leaving aside the fact that apparently there's absolutely no evidence that philosophy is any worse than anything else) is not tacit victim-blaming, then why is it any different in the nightclub case?

    And if you say that it isn't diverting attention from the problem to advise women to steer clear of philosophy, then why is that any different in the nightclub case?

    It all seems parallel to me.

    Reply
  42. Scott

    I suspect that most people who have formed the opinion that philosophy has a particularly bad sexual harassment problem, despite the total absence of evidence, have not actually read through much of the 'What It's Like' blog. If you go there and read through the top stories, you'll find that very few of them seem to involve harassment at all. Most of it is petty ranting about things that, even if true, wouldn't be harassment or sexist.

    But it doesn't follow from that that the 'What It's Like' blog isn't instrumental in causing the moral panic and the reluctance of some women to take philosophy. People who hear about the existence of such a blog are probably unlikely to follow up and read all the posts there carefully, but its mere existence is probably enough to give the impression that there must be a problem. Why would people start a blog on the topic, a lay person might reasonably wonder, if not in response to significant evidence of a problem? And why aren't there similar blogs for other areas? There *must* be something up with philosophy… right? Or so they would think.

    Another widely-read source of the rumor that there's something particularly bad in philosophy is the out of control hit piece by Rebecca Schuman in Slate. Note that Schuman actually serves as the education columnist for that publication. In case anyone missed it: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/02/sexual_harassment_in_philosophy_departments_university_of_colorado_boulder.html

    If you click on the highlighted words in Schuman's piece, you get redirected to the 'Feminist Philosophers' blog and – you guessed it – 'What It's Like to be a Woman in Philosophy'. And the main source of evidence for the article is, wait for it, a very controversial report on Colorado by the APA's Committee on the Status of Women, whose Site Visit team consisted entirely of women who work in feminist philosophy and who later broke their word and released their scathing report to the administration who predictably, in turn, released it to the media. If you read through the report, you find that these feminist philosophers also took the opportunity to demand that members of the department refrain from saying critical things about feminist philosophy. The Executive Director of the APA, whose own self-description lists her pre-APA career as being a feminist activist, spoke out in favor of the report, praising its writers and defending them in the face of some grumbling when they leaked the document. The site visit report didn't stand up to analysis, though: http://spot.colorado.edu/~tooley/SiteVisitReport.html While there does seem to have been one member of the department, maybe two, who were involved in harassment, the report was clearly a significant overreaction, and it was translated into a nasty and well-publicized smear job of philosophy at Schuman's hands.

    The APA and the 'What It's Like' blog didn't write the Schuman hit piece on philosophy. But their existence allowed the hit piece to be written and taken seriously.

    More important, even after Schuman had written her loony and inflammatory rant, what was needed was for the APA to jump into the fray and correct the horrible and inaccurate impression it created. Given that all the humanities disciplines are under serious threat, one would have thought that standing up for philosophy would be exactly what the APA had to do. All it would have taken would have been an official statement from the Executive Director, or anyone else at the APA acting in that capacity, saying that we take allegations of sexual harassment very seriously but that, while there was at least one case in Colorado and another incident that was given great publicity, they are as far as we know fairly isolated incidents and that there is no basis for thinking that there is a general problem in philosophy. Moreover, the statement would have gone on to say (or so one would have expected), the fact that these harassers are being dealt with now represents how seriously opposed the great majority of us are toward sexual harassment, and we're glad that we've now dealt with these isolated problems, but that we find the unsubstantiated claims by Schuman irresponsible and damaging. There would have been nothing irresponsible in that.

    So where was the APA in response to this? What exactly is the APA doing even now to stop our reputation from being blackened? Rather than doing anything to remedy the reputation problem brought about by irresponsible journalism and misleading blogs, it links to the most prominent such blog. That's inexcusable, and worse than if it just linked to the 'What It's Like' blog without having already given fuel to the anti-philosophy attack in the mass media and then failed to respond to that attack.

    Reply
  43. Michael B

    Ignoring the trivial response that a single case is a problem since that is not addressing the substance of the issue, if I were a statistician tasked with answering the question, 'Is there isn't a sexual harassment problem in academic philosophy?' the first thing I would want to do is specify what counts as evidence of a problem.

    Would anyone like to say what measures they would want to see, and what levels of observations they require, to reject the null hypothesis that: 'there a sexual harassment problem in academic philosophy'?

    I don't expect anyone to give perfect answers or be held to what they write in blog comments. And I hope no one would ever rely on a statistic to do their thinking for them. But I see a statistical flavour to some posts and this seems a fruitful direction to take the disagreement between those who think there is, and those who think there is not, a sexual harassment problem in academic philosophy. It might also help those who don't know what to believe.

    Reply
  44. Scott

    Hi, Michael B.

    Since the claim made or implied is that there's a *particular* sexism or sexual harassment problem in philosophy, what's required is some comparative evidence that juxtaposes findings among philosophers against findings among people working in other fields, or against findings outside of academia.

    Even if all the stories on 'What It's Like' were true (which they might be), and even if they were all stories documenting clear cases of sexism or harassment (which is definitely not the case), that would still give no evidence at all of a comparative problem for philosophy. Nor does there seem to be any evidence anywhere for that. You'd think that if someone had such evidence, he or she would have spoken up by now. We've been asking after it for years.

    As has already been mentioned, it would not be that difficult to gather such information if the APA wanted to and were willing to invest the resources. This could be done in cooperation with a variety of other disciplines and compared against on-the-job harassment levels in other non-academic sectors. Surveys (in which the definitions of 'sexism' and 'harassment' are clearly specified and kept constant) would be one part of such a study. Another would be the frequency of substantiated reports to the police or to Title IX coordinators by discipline across a range of universities and colleges.

    If anyone has done that work already then great, let's see it.

    But if not, and it really seems that it hasn't been done, then let's admit that we have no basis for thinking it's any worse in philosophy. As Dan Kaufman said, that doesn't mean that harassment isn't a serious problem that needs to be stopped. But it does mean that everyone who has given others the impression that there's a particular problem in philosophy has either been misled about the state of research or else is dishonestly fueling a moral panic, or both. Even if there does turn out to be a serious problem in philosophy after all, it's very irresponsible and damaging to claim that there is a particular problem somewhere if one has no basis that there is one.

    It also follows that the APA should stop linking to the 'What It's Like' blog and that we should take steps to counteract the negative influence of that blog unless and until its central message that philosophy is bad for women has been substantiated.

    Reply
  45. anonymous

    @ Michael B:

    The null hypothesis is not that there is a comparative problem in philosophy. The null hypothesis is that there are certainly some cases in philosophy, just like anywhere else, but that there is no reason to think there are any more or fewer cases than elsewhere, proportionately speaking. Those who maintain that there's a comparative problem in philosophy have the argumentative burden, since so far there's no evidence for that, it's prima facie unlikely that any particular discipline is much worse than average when there's no supporting comparative evidence, and moreover there's an obvious reason why the particular people promoting that view would believe and promote it even if it were false.

    Reply
  46. Anon3

    I've just gone to the Chronicle and searched for 'sexual harassment.' I've done a quick count of cases in which a professor (or similar) has been accused of sexual harassment (as opposed to merely making comments about it, as in the Kipnis case). Over the past year, here are the stats:

    Medicine – 2
    Provost – 2
    Athletics – 2
    History – 1
    Astronomy – 1
    Physics – 1
    Music (marching band/choir) – 2
    Philosophy – 3
    Administrator (CIO) – 1

    Also, @Scott: "And why aren't there similar blogs for other areas? There *must* be something up with philosophy… right? Or so they would think" A quick google search shows there are in fact similar blogs in other areas. See for example http://stemfeminist.com/, http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com.

    Reply
  47. Anon3

    Also, for an interesting comparison – the American Astronomical Society (which has of course recently had a high profile case of sexual harassment) has materials online very similar to philosophy. There is a letter to members on sexual harassment, a statement on sexual harassment, and the Committee on the Status of Women website lists, under official information, a link to the Women in Astronomy Blog, which has numerous posts on gender bias, sexual harassment, etc – many of which are people describing their experiences.

    Reply
  48. Darlene Deas

    Thanks for the links. I'd just add that the ASA letter is quite different in tone than that of the APA. I'll let readers determine for themselves the most salient differences. As for the Women in Astronomy blog, the biggest difference there is the posts are not anonymous. People have attached their names to them, and they cover a wide range of topics related to the field. This is in sharp contrast to the Phil WIL blog.

    Reply
  49. Michael B

    Hi Scott,

    Thanks for replying. OK so you would like to see the state of things in academic philosophy in relation to e.g. other academic disciplines, and other areas, like public sector, industry etc.

    And, even if academic philosophy is no worse in prevalence(?), sexual harassment is a serious problem given its nature and we should work to stop it.

    Is that a fair summary? If so, I think these are all very reasonable things, but I can't say I know much about these things and am quite happy for someone to point out a blind spot to me. (Or you to correct my misunderstanding of your response.)

    Cheers.

    Reply
  50. Michael B

    Hello anonymous,

    You are quite right of course, thanks for pointing that out in case anyone else missed it. I'm sorry I mistyped and posted a comment to correct myself straight after but I don't think it's appeared.

    I meant to write that the null hypothesis might be, as you rightly say: 'there is not a sexual harassment problem in philosophy.'

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