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APA elections: where do the candidates stand on academic freedom and freedom of expression and inquiry?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT–ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 26–FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION/INFORMATION:  NOTE THAT THREE OF THE CANDIDATES (ANDERSON, TIRRELL, AND MILLER) WERE SIGNATORIES TO THE OPEN LETTER DEFAMING TUVEL

An untenured philosopher writes:

Perhaps these are waters into which you would rather not wade, but after receiving an email notice to in APA Eastern Division elections, I realized that I need to vote for officers who will be staunch defenders of academic freedom, and liberty of speech and philosophical exploration. Yet I am at a loss as to how I can determine that in a consistent way.  Do you know of any resources that would enable transparent (or at least translucent) access to candidate views on such matters?  Perhaps there is a way to set up a place for candidate commentary on these issues.  I'm happy simply to do online searches if that's my best bet, but it might serve the profession well if there were a way to review candidates on these matters.  I fear that philosophy is at a tipping point that could send it the way of many other humanities disciplines if we are not vigilant.

I am not an APA member, but I am sure my correspondent's question is an important one, given how oddly (and again) the APA has behaved on a number of important issues–indeed, given that APA members have been in violation of the APA's own (admittedly absurd) Code of Conduct.   Insight from readers?

UPDATE:  A reader shared the list of candidates: 

Vice-President:  Anita Allen, Ned Block, Robert Gooding-Williams, David Wong

Member at Large:  Luvell Anderson, Jamie Dreier, Anja Jauering, Michelle Moody-Adams, Lynne Tirrell

Nominating Committee:  Sarah Clark Miller, Gideon Rosen, Paul C. Taylor

I have little basis for judging with respect to most of these candidates.  I feel confident, from what I do know, that Ned Block and Jamie Dreier would be good on these issues.   I note that both Anita Allen and Michelle Moody-Adams have held senior administrative posts where, to the best of my knowledge, they were quite good on these issues.   (Allen, who is also a lawyer, has been involved with the AAUP on academic freedom issues, another very good sign.) Lynne Tirrell has expressed views that make me skeptical she would be good on these issues; she was, for example, a signatory to the defamatory open letter about Tuvel.  On the others, I really don't know, though I like and respect several of these folks professionally and personally, but I've never engaged with their views on freedom of expression and inquiry.

UPDATE:  As noted in the comments, Anderson and Miller also signed the defamatory open letter.

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32 responses to “APA elections: where do the candidates stand on academic freedom and freedom of expression and inquiry?”

  1. Christopher Morris

    It would be helpful were candidates able to post a statement of their views on free speech and academic freedom. I don't know if the APA would wish to facilitate this, and time is short. Perhaps candidates could post a statement on their individual www sites or send one to Brian to post on his site.

    Reply
  2. Brian Leiter

    Is there a list of the candidates somewhere? Candidates are welcome to post their views on these topics here.

    Reply
  3. Anon

    Sarah Clark Miller and Luvell Anderson also signed the Tuvel letter. I don't know whether that will inspire more people to vote for or against them, but you might want to note it, as you did with Tirrell.

    Reply
  4. Socratease

    Oh good, all nominees studied at or teach at top 5 schools. They will be well positioned to understand the day to day challenges of being an educator at the other 99% of universities in America. But in all seriousness, I would be interested in hearing their views on the adjunct crisis or the future of PhD programs, in addition to their stances on academic freedom and diversity.

    Reply
  5. Justin Kalef

    Good point, Socratease.

    More generally: philosophy programs are in or near danger at a large number of colleges and universities. Contributing to this problem, it seems to me, is a lack of understanding among members of the lay public, including the educated lay public, and even within academia in general about what philosophy does and what it has to offer. Particularly in the face of bad publicity. We were already seen as a backward-looking discipline that at best curated ideas that nobody cares about: now, given the way we've been represented, we're that plus a hotbed of sexual harassment and sexism, plus a bunch of people who can't decide whether it's write to censor journal articles that raise difficult questions. Meanwhile, those who have done much to popularize science, like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins, pepper their public announcements with disparaging comments about us. We need to fight back against this and promote a positive image of what real philosophers do (fearlessly and rigorously debate tricky and often pertinent theoretical issues and follow the arguments where they lead) and why what we offer in the way of research and teaching is too valuable to be lost. If the APA isn't the organization to fight that fight, what is?

    I'd really like to know from the candidates not only where they stand on academic freedom and inquiry (hard to believe it's become necessary to ask that in reference to leadership in the nation's professional philosophical organization), but also what they propose to do to actively promote the discipline and a general understanding of what it is, and how they will help the APA to apply pressure to our colleges and universities to preserve and expand our departments.

    Reply
  6. Justin Kalef

    (Pardon the typos — writing from my tablet)

    Reply
  7. Philosopher

    Many philosophers agree that (a) the APA Eastern Division Conference features only 30-60% quality philosophy, (b) the APA spends its funds raised from member dues to fund projects in trendy areas like race and gender studies instead of subsidising work by graduate students and junior scholars in all areas of philosophy, (c) the APA has been silent or otherwise unsatisfactory on many academic freedom issues and (d) the letters critical of Professor Tuvel were a travesty.

    The APA needs philosophers; philosophers do not need the APA. Competition from a lobby dedicated solely to advancing professional philosophers' interests is required if the APA does not quickly reform itself to correct the above. Having leaders of the APA be those attacking Professor Tuvel would be a clear sign that the APA will not reform itself.

    Reply
  8. Annonymous

    Some of the comments on this thread focus on candidates for offices in the Eastern Division who signed the letter attacking Tuvel.

    People who are voting for officers in the Central and Pacific Divisions also need to think about whether they want to vote for people who attacked Turvel. One of the candidates for Vice President of the Central Division, Janice Dowell, signed the letter attacking Tuvel. Are there other candidates who attacked Tuvel?

    Anonymous

    Reply
  9. Name Withheld

    Hello, Anonymous.

    To me, there are two problematic recent open letters. The first one is about Tuvel and the second is about Rachel McKinnon (http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2017/05/open-letter-of-support-for-rachel-mckinnon.html). While signing the Tuvel one appears to indicate contempt for philosophy and academic freedom, signing the McKinnon one appears to indicate a willingness to jump on senseless bandwagons without investigating the facts behind them, even when those open letters aren't even urging a clear and coherent course of action. Personally, I would be wary of having signatories of either letter represent the interests of the profession on the APA, unless they explain their reasons convincingly.

    Here's what I found after checking the Central nominees against these lists.

    (Central)
    Candidates for Vice President
    Janice Dowell – SIGNED BOTH LETTERS
    Jennifer Nagel (no)
    Candace Vogler (no)

    Candidates for Member at Large
    Kenny Easwaran (no)
    Jennifer Lackey (no)
    Ishani Maitra (no)

    Candidates for Nominating Committee
    Kristie Dotson – SIGNED THE MCKINNON LETTER
    Kyla Ebels-Duggan (no)
    Alicia Finch (no)
    Sarah Paul (no)
    Christopher Pincock (no)
    Laura Ruetsche (no)
    Meghan Sullivan (no)
    Andrea Westlund (no)

    I don't have access to the list of Pacific candidates, so I can't comment on them. And signing the letters isn't the only insight we have into the candidates' positions on these campus wars. Jennifer Lackey's role in the Ludlow and Kipnis matters could be worth consideration.

    One wishes that the candidates would just say a little about where they stand on the issues.

    Reply
  10. Stephanie Ras

    it will be good if the candidates will share their opinions on this matter

    Reply
  11. a person

    I do not understand how someone can be so unreflective as to sign the McKinnon letter ostensibly in support of academic freedom AND sign the Tuvel letter which is an attack on academic freedom.

    Reply
  12. David Mathers

    ', signing the McKinnon one appears to indicate a willingness to jump on senseless bandwagons without investigating the facts behind them'

    Can you explain why it indicates this, for someone (like me) not familiar with the incident in question? (Genuine, not rhetorical question.)

    Reply
  13. Name Withheld

    @David Mathers: I can't speak for 'a person' above, but here's what happened in the incident in question.

    Rachel McKinnon, a trans philosopher, has a very loud presence on social media, and tends to make what many others see as controversial points (like contending that anyone who identifies as a woman should be able to compete in women's cycling events, as McKinnon does, with no questions asked, and then to accept trophies) in a forceful, very confident, take-no-prisoners attitude, and then puts pressure on others to join in the attack on whoever dares to oppose the contentions. A browse through McKinnon's Twitter and Facebook feeds will make the pattern pretty clear.

    Partly because of this prominence on social media and in-your-face, no-holds-barred style of argument, McKinnon has become a frequent subject of discussion on some blogs run by feminists McKinnon and others refer to as 'TERF's: Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists. Nasty things have been said back and forth between McKinnon and the TERFs, as you'll see if you read through their discussions. This has happened in the public sphere, but the TERFs have largely chosen to remain anonymous.

    Out of this ongoing battle, and McKinnon's solicitation of allies in this online war against the TERFs, the McKinnon open letter emerged. The letter suggests that a YouTube series McKinnon produces to, among other things, give advice to trans people and their families constitutes an extension of McKinnon's academic work, though there might be room for doubt that anything in the videos is actually philosophy. No intellectual arguments are presented, no theories seem to be critically examined, etc. The open letter goes on to suggest that McKinnon's colleagues and department chair, and also the dean and other administrators and even the rest of us in the philosophical community, are wrongfully complicit in an attempt to deny academic freedom to McKinnon through our silence.

    It seems that some of these TERFs wrote to McKinnon's university, asking for McKinnon to be fired (apparently because McKinnon apparently invited young trans people whose families don't accept their gender identity to contact her personally for support in the YouTube video in question, which some of the TERFs found objectionable). But I don't know of any basis for thinking that anyone at McKinnon's university is taking these letters seriously or that McKinnon's position is in some kind of jeopardy. There also doesn't seem to be any evidence that McKinnon has been asked by colleagues or employers to tone down the academic or non-academic speaking or writing. Moreover, the TERFs with whom McKinnon is engaging don't appear to be academics, and they're anonymous. So what we have here is an open letter that doesn't clearly demand that anyone do anything in particular, and there doesn't seem to be any real threat to McKinnon's academic freedom regardless. It doesn't even seem that McKinnon is inclined to speak any less often or less forcefully about any of these matters.

    The only thing the open letter seems to do, in other words, is urge people to be very supportive of McKinnon in a loud social media war between different factions of the identity-politics left in which little or nothing in the way of original philosophical or otherwise academic work is at stake, and in which McKinnon's interlocutors seem to be anonymous non-academics who wouldn't care what the rest of us say anyway, and in which none of this seems to pose any threat to McKinnon's ongoing philosophical work, institutional standing, freedom of speech, or even likelihood of continuing to speak loudly and forcefully about it all.

    I'm sure many of the people who signed the McKinnon letter did so with the best intentions and assumed there was something more at stake. But perhaps we should expect better than knee-jerk reactions to invitations to sign open letters when the signatories are candidates for office in the APA at this pivotal time for the profession. But perhaps those who signed the McKinnon letter could explain why they did so.

    Reply
  14. curious

    I would also like to hear about why those who signed the letter for McKinnon did so, and in particular what exactly they expect her colleagues in philosophy to do to support her on twitter in order to not be "complicit." Is it just this dust up with TERFs that requires we sign a statement of support or is there a more general category into which this falls? What should we have done for Peter Singer, for example?

    I am also curious about the point made above, that "someone can be so unreflective as to sign the McKinnon letter ostensibly in support of academic freedom AND sign the Tuvel letter which is an attack on academic freedom." Perhaps all philosophers are for academic freedom? But not all philosophers think freedom of speech is unproblematic, and so there may be a view here that unites the two letters that I am missing.

    Reply
  15. Name Withheld

    Curious, I think the simplest explanation of what unites the two letters is nothing more than a wish to prevent harm to those seen as insiders and a desire to signal that virtue to others.

    In the Tuvel case, we had an article that fit badly into some recent political history. A number of social conservatives, a few years ago, resisted the intense push to swiftly remove all obstacles against the full and uncritical acceptance of transgender people at their word by asking, provocatively, whether this wouldn't also entail that transracial claims like Dolezal's have merit. The conservatives were clearly, unlike Tuvel, using this argument as a reductio against the transgender legislation everyone was pushing for. The backlash against it, led by non-philosophers who just didn't want to get into the issues and probably didn't have even the beginnings of a theoretical basis for grappling with the complexities of the arguments, was to create the slogan "Transracialism is not a thing" and use it disparagingly to shame anyone who raised the comparison. Very few people dared to press back against the slogan, especially when it was buttressed with unsubstantiated claims that 'transracialism', if it were 'a thing', would be harmful to both transgender and nonwhite people. Tuvel, perhaps not knowing this history, presented an interesting article that happened to step on a landmine put in place for political reasons that had nothing to do with the relative merits of transgenderism versus transracialism. Word got out that someone had stepped on it, and the in-crowd who had swallowed the 'Transracialism is not a thing' pill without any chewing seem to have heard the alarm that innocent transgender people were being endangered and that they needed to boldly do their duty by signing the letter. And they definitely didn't want to be the person who was asked to sign the letter but didn't. So, they signed.

    Later, many of these same people heard another alarm bell go off. It was another innocent transgender person in distress: this time, an identifiable victim. What was there to think about? Of course they signed.

    It's true that academic freedom is defied in the first letter and used as a justification in the second. But that doesn't seem very important as anyone's motivation in signing the letter. I also doubt that the crafters of the McKinnon letter are die-hard defenders of academic freedom. But when one is writing such a letter and hoping for a bunch of signatures, it's good to find positive-sounding phrases to include. I really don't see that there's anything more profound to it than that.

    Reply
  16. a person

    The view that unites the two letters is that transgender identities and by extension trans people's speech about issues relating to trans phenomena are sacred. I have read both Tuvel's paper and watched the McKinnon video, and there is no non-spurious case to be made that Tuvel's paper is harmful speech while McKinnon's isn't. Both are controversial in some respects, but neither constitute hate speech. Both should be protected, however, Tuvel's paper should be particularly protected by academics because it is a piece of academic writing. The McKinnon video is not "public philosophy" – it contains arguments but there are many videos on Youtube that contain arguments but do not constitute public philosophy.

    Also, I would suggest to everyone to refrain from using the term TERF: it a pejorative and it is not self-ascribed. It is a political term of art. Some feminists, like philosopher Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, argue that it is itself a slur. It is certainly true that it often functions very like a slur and is used with slurs: https://terfisaslur.com/

    Reply
  17. Oliver Traldi

    I agree with Name Withheld above. This is probably about "allyship" or something similar – I don't mean as the best explanation for the double signatures; I mean probably even in the minds of those who signed both letters. They were both on the "side" of transgender people, which is a priori the right side. The two letters may seem to endorse competing principles, but why would a *philosopher* need to appreciate a tension like that, when it's so obvious what the right side always is?

    Reply
  18. David Mathers

    @13

    I don't think signing a letter against demands that someone be fired and asking university admin to condemn threats to expose them to violence (petition text accuses her opponents of 'threatening to spread her name and contact details to a wide audience to make her an easier target for violence') is something that demands a hugely high standard of proof. The harms of not doing so if there is actually some chance they will be fired, or a serious campaign of intimidation by threat going on, seem to outweigh the harms of doing so if there really wasn't anything to the story in the first place. What exactly are the harms of the latter? Mild waste of administration time? Some people falsely getting the impression there are more attempts to silence trans scholars than there actually are might be one consideration, I guess.

    I have once or twice seen Professor McKinnon commenting on social media, and she did indeed seem like a take-no-prisoners ideologue, but that doesn't seem to me to change the calculus significantly.

    Reply
  19. David Mathers

    At the very least, it seems a huge stretch to me that signing the letter would say much about whether someone should have power at the APA. (Whereas I'd regard signing the anti-Tuvel letter as a major black mark.)

    Reply
  20. Name Withheld

    David Mathers, it would be one thing if the McKinnon open letter just said something like "We understand that you may have received requests to investigate and dismiss Professor McKinnon. We hope that you will not cave in to this pressure, and we support the right of all professors to take controversial positions without political pressure being used against them."

    But this is not what the McKinnon open letter urges. Instead, it says "[McKinnon's YouTube presence constitutes valuable philosophical outreach to a public audience. Attempts to harass and silence trans scholars are antithetical to the values of academic freedom and respect. In the face of these attacks, silence and inaction on the part of Professor McKinnon’s colleagues at the College of Charleston and in the broader philosophical community would constitute complicity. We urge you to use the institutional means available to you to help and support Professor McKinnon in this dire, challenging, and threatening time."

    Leaving aside the dubious claim about McKinnon's YouTube presence constituting "valuable philosophical outreach" (it looks much more like advocacy to me), and the strangely limited claim that attempts to harass and silence *trans* scholars are antithetical to academic values, this letter blames McKinnon's colleagues and the rest of us in the philosophical community for "silence and inaction", even going so far as to say that we are complicit in the attacks on McKinnon. In other words, it's saying that we all ought to have spoken and acted. But what should we have done? Clearly, the implication is that we all, especially McKinnon's colleagues, had an obligation to join this online scuffle between McKinnon and her anonymous feminist interlocutors, and take sides in an identity politics battle. That doesn't square with the way you characterize the open letter.

    Reply
  21. recent grad

    I'd vote for David Wallace if he ran. He seems to be one of the few out there who is clear, level-headed, and who doesn't seem to pick sides in philosophy's culture wars.

    BL COMMENT: I would have thought part of his clear, level-headedness is that he's usually on the right side!

    Reply
  22. David Mathers

    I wasn't trying to give a full characterization of the letter. I agree that the rhetoric you quote is silly for some of the reasons you give. It just didn't seem that material to me; does someone have to agree with every single assertion in a petition to sign it or just the stuff it's actually calling for and the basic reasons behind it? Obviously there are certain Xs where you shouldn't sign any petition that claims X, not matter how peripheral that X is, but it doesn't follow that signing requires full agreement with any absolutely everything a petition says. I mean, I personally would have paused before signing a petition that makes the silly accusation of 'silence' against the whole profession, but it doesn't seem to me to be particularly unreasonable to think 'oh, these things tend to be a little excessive in their rhetoric' and plow on. (I don't really think it's terribly important whether McKinnon's youtube video constituted 'outreach' or just 'expression of some of her views on a topic on which she is, presumably, expert (that is, I presume she has written on philosophical issues around trans issues at some point)).

    Reply
  23. 0.00

    I think this is basically right, and I'm appalled and astonished that philosophers have acquiesced to it. The most important thing about this whole issue is that almost all public disagreement with the new orthodoxy has been shut down. I'd bet money that most philosophers recognize that that orthodoxy is, philosophically speaking, a mess. But almost no one will say so. Tuvel *agreed* with the orthodoxy and wanted to expand it in a way deemed politically incorrect, and look what happened to her. Even philosophers who agree with the orthodoxy or are agnostic about it or who would rather not discuss its content ought to be alarmed by how easy it was to make disagreement and even honest discussion of the view socially unacceptable. But if they are, almost no one will say so. This is one of the reasons I think the new open letter on the *Hypatia* thing by Julian Vigo (see: another one of BL's recent posts) is so important. I wish there were some way to conveniently figure out how many philosophers from the U.S. have signed. My guess is: not many. I'd be happy to be wrong about that. (Though it's not a good indicator, really, for a number of reasons.) I mean, I'm making this comment only because I can do so anonymously. For various reasons, I just can't really deal with a massive, organized, deranged public hating based on false accusations of bigotry right now. So, like most everybody else, I betray philosophy–and democracy–with my silence.

    BL COMMENT: I did not sign the Vigo letter, because I thought it made a mistake in going so far beyond the immediate issue and raising objections about which I'm mostly agnostic. That's just to say not signing the Vigo letter isn't highly probative. Signing the anti-Tuvel letter is probative, and not in a good way!

    Reply
  24. Name Withheld

    Thanks, David. I agree with you that many people who signed the McKinnon letter probably didn't agreeing with everything the letter said. But again, I want to hold candidates for APA offices to a higher standard than others in this respect. We need APA officers now who are judicious and unlikely to jump on feel-good bandwagons like this one.

    Leaving aside the points of the letter you find silly and immaterial, though, I think there's a broader issue of whether just anyone who gets attacked on social media ought to get an open letter. In a perfect world, people could write and say what they want about hot-button issues and elicit nothing but reasoned discussion. But we're not living in that world. Transgender activists are part of a long list of people, including atheists, environmentalists, Trump supporters, Clinton supporters, etc. who attract hostility when they speak publicly. When Simon Blackburn wrote his introductory philosophy textbook, he had radical church groups writing nasty letters at him and his university, some of which contained death threats. Should he have got an open letter, too? Should his colleagues and the rest of us have been blamed for our complicity in attacks on an atheistic colleague?

    Part of my concern is that these letters could provoke outrage fatigue. There seem to be good reasons for saving open letters for things that are really extraordinary and demand a response. Otherwise, people will say, "Oh, right, another day, another open letter from philosophers." Another part of my concern, as I mentioned, is with open letters that don't have a clear and plausible goal. It's one thing if a university president has done something stupid and calling attention to it could lead to a retraction of whatever it was. But again, what exactly is anyone supposed to do in light of the McKinnon letter, even if it's successful? Do you really think the anonymous feminists who attack McKinnon are going to be put off by an open letter? Why would they even care?

    The only thing I can see coming out of this is that everyone feels good signing something and rallies sympathetically, while the object of the open letter gets warm feelings and more time in the spotlight for something that has nothing to do with the quality of his or her philosophical work. Is this something philosophers qua philosophers ought to be encouraging, barring extraordinary circumstances? I don't think any of us like to see anyone being attacked. I've undergone attacks on my own and had to deal with the fallout. So, I understand that it can be tough. Still, I think a little restraint in this culture of open letter signing would be a good thing now.

    Reply
  25. Matt

    "I'd vote for David Wallace if he ran."

    Leaving aside David Wallace for now(*), I worry that this remark perhaps shows a misunderstanding about how these elections work. (There is a huge amount of misunderstanding about what the APA does and how it works among philosophers, so this is maybe no surprise.) One cannot just decide to "run" for a position like those being voted for here. They are, to the best of my understanding, picked by the "nominating committee" and the board. (This shows, perhaps, why the nominating committee is arguably the most important position here – it picks people to be considered for the other positions.) Now, you can't be drafted into the APA, so you must agree to be considered if asked, but you can't really just decide to run for one of these(**) positions – you have to be put forward by one of the other groups. So, people should especially consider who they are voting for on the nominating committee (and perhaps the board), because this is the group that will set the slate for the other elections. At least, that is how I understand things here.

    (*) I'd also be glad to see Wallace considered for such a position, though I have no idea if he's an APA member or not. For obvious reasons, that's a requirement.

    (**) This differs from the various committees, for which self-nominations are possible and not a problem.

    Reply
  26. David Mathers

    'Part of my concern is that these letters could provoke outrage fatigue. There seem to be good reasons for saving open letters for things that are really extraordinary and demand a response. Otherwise, people will say, "Oh, right, another day, another open letter from philosophers."'

    Ok, this seems like a more reasonable downside risk. (I take it that the *potential* benefits of such an open letter would be 1) stopping the admin from thinking that it really would be less trouble to just get rid of the faculty member who's attracting trouble from activists (or otherwise try to shut said faculty member up) and 2) someone who's received threats of violence getting a show of support from colleagues.)

    Reply
  27. David Wallace

    I'm not an APA member. I also have less than 12 months institutional experience of US academia, and work in a highly atypical sector of academic philosophy. (But thanks for the vote of confidence even so!)

    Reply
  28. Eric Rasmusen

    Here's what needs to be done. Someone needs to write an email to be sent to all of these candidates saying something like this:

    Dear xxx,
    You are running for office in the APA. Many of us are interested in free speech issues these days, so I've put together a few questions I think people would like to hear your answers to. I'm sending this to all the candidates. I'll have the answers posted on the web verbatim on a special web page, and then I'll let people know the web address via outlets like the Leiter Reports. If you don't wish to answer, let me know, and that's what I'll post for you. If you don't reply at all, I'll send this a second time and then report that you didn't answer.
    The questions are:
    [Here, write the appropriate questions. I don't know what they should be. Usually the more specific the question the better. Some idea:
    1. Would you sign the Tuvel letter at http://kjkjkljl if it was circulated today?
    2. Was it a mistake to invite Swinburne to the Ass. of Ch. Phil conference?
    3. Should the associate editor of that Tuvel journal who repudiated the article be removed from the board?
    I'm doing this hurriedlya nd I'm not an insider, so don't use those exact questions— think about what YOU want answered. Whoever does the work of getting this out is the one who gets to choose the questions. I am happy to help by posting the results on my website; you don't need a blog or anything to post a webpage, just an FTP site you control. You can reach me at erasmuse@Indiana.edu.

    Reply
  29. Kate Abramson

    FYI. This is Eric Rasmusen: http://rasmusen.dreamhosters.com/b/?s=homosexual
    Rasmusen has, in my view, every right to post whatever bigoted nonsense he would like to post. [nb: the link above is from a public blog] But philosophers contemplating dealing with him might be well advised to know with whom they are dealing in dealing with Rasmusen should they chose to do so in the manner he invites above, and I know there are some readers of this blog who are not anti-gay bigots.

    Reply
  30. Justin Kalef

    Okay, then, I'll do it. I'll send an invitation to comment on these issues to all the candidates I can track down, and then post their responses to me here in this thread.

    Here's what I'm thinking of sending them. I'll wait a bit before doing so, in case anyone would like me to change the prompt a little.

    "Dear ___________:

    "There has been some discussion, on the Leiter Reports blog and elsewhere, of the importance of this year's APA elections. I notice that you are a candidate for the position of __________, and hope you are willing to supply us with some insight into your thoughts on various issues of concern, and to clarify, if possible, what relative importance you give to them. Unless you specifically tell me not to, I will post your answers in full in a threat on the Leiter Reports blog.

    "Many of us are particularly keen to know your views and intentions on issues of academic freedom (one recent case that comes to mind is the pulling of Tuvel's article from _Hypatia_), the precarious state of philosophy in many colleges and universities and what should be done about it, the protection and promotion of philosophy's reputation through the mass media, and the ability of faculty and students to express unpopular views without fear of professional or academic repercussions.

    "Some of these desiderata and values are in obvious tension, at times, with various strategies for promoting diversity and inclusion, which are also of value to the APA. These tensions generate important professional and ethical issues. It would be helpful if you could articulate where you see these tensions and say a little about how you would resolve them in your role of ___________.

    "Many thanks…"

    Does that leave out anything important? Also, does anyone know when our votes must be cast? I'm having trouble accessing the APA site.

    Reply
  31. O.L.

    Justin, I think it's good overall, but two thoughts:

    1. I don't think Tuvel's article was pulled from Hypatia.
    2. By using it as an example it may allow the respondent to reply very vaguely ("I am a strong believer in academic freedom. The end."). I am not an APA member but if I were I would be far more interested in the candidate's position on the Tuvel situation specifically, with no dissembling or ambiguity.

    Reply
  32. anon2

    Also, the typo in "I will post your answers in full in a threat [sic] on the Leiter Reports blog" is a bit unfortunate, and might be misconstrued…

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