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An organizational alternative to the APA focused just on philosophy?

Brian Leiter

So here are the results of Monday's poll to see who might prefer a less politicized organization meeting the needs of philosophers:

Would you leave the APA and join a new dues-charging professional philosophy association that does much of what the APA does, but without the current political agends/projects?  
Selection   Votes 
Definitely  41% 488 
Probably  25% 292 
Undecided  10% 123 
Probably not  11% 124 
Definitely not  13% 150 
1,177 total 
 

There's no reason to think this sample is representative of the population of philosophers at large, but that's OK:  what the poll does suggest is that there's at least nearly 800 philosophy faculty and students out there who are quite open to an alternative, and another 200+ who might be persuadable if a new organization did the right things.  

So questions for discussion here:  (1) what would you want from a new philosophy organization to make it worth joining and paying dues? and (2) would you be willing to invest time and effort in creating it?  For the latter, it would obviously help if you post under your actual name; for the former, that's not necessary.  Please submit comments only once; they may take awhile to appear.  Only comments responding to one or both of these two questions will appear.

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25 responses to “An organizational alternative to the APA focused just on philosophy?”

  1. Amateur philosopher

    This is probably well known, but there's a precedent for this kind of break-away professional society. A couple decades ago, frustration with the po-mo orientation of the MLA led some literary scholars to form the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. How successful that group is, I can't say.

    Reply
  2. JDRox

    1) For it to fulfill the obvious non-political functions of the APA.
    2) Yes, but good luck getting my real name or getting me to do it non-anonymously, since involvement with a non-political APA will be seen as a rejection of the politics of the APA, which is anathema to a significant number of powerful philosophers. (This is how I see it, but maybe (I hope?) I'm wrong.)

    Reply
  3. DS

    1) A new organization is more plausible now that hiring is decoupled from the APA
    2) Wouldn't one strategy be to engage in like a 'voter registration drive' to get more people who share your (Leiter) views as members who could then vote for or run for the positions of power, hence changing the direction of the APA?

    I agree that the APA has become too political/specific goal directed in some ways (it's hard enough to publish as it is–I can't imagine ones identity now possibly counting against them in the process). But could that simply be because the people who don't share those goals have made no attempt to participate in the APA?

    E.g., I have never, for instance, considered running for an office or putting in an application to run the APA blog. Perhaps the fault lies with me then.

    Reply
  4. Brian Leiter

    My impression is that the majority of senior members of the profession have views closer to mine than to those who've captured the APA. Most are just too busy with "other things," and secure enough to not have to worry about the APA mischief.

    Reply
  5. Daniel Kaufman

    I am very much in support of this idea, having left the APA myself due to its obsession with identity-politics related issues. I would very much like to see a professional organization that is entirely professionally oriented, including a far greater focus on advocating for the profession itself, within the university.

    Second, regarding involvement, yes, I would be willing to get involved with a good group of people, in order to create a rival organization. It seems to me that this would be easier than the inevitably bloody battle one would have to wage within the APA in order to reorient it from its current obsession with so-called "social justice". While there would be hard feelings nonetheless, they would be nothing of the magnitude one would see in an internal APA civil war. If people want to belong to an identity-obsessed professional organization, let them. So, long as the rest of us can go elsewhere.

    People would have a clear choice as to what kind of organization they want to belong to. I suspect the sorting would be quite revealing and likely a surprise to the activist crowd, who I suspect think there are a lot more of them then there actually are. I wouldn't even be surprised if eventually, the APA eventually became impossible to sustain, due to its anemic membership, relative to the rival organization.

    The question is how to proceed, at this point. I would love to hear from some of these 800 or so people and begin hashing some of this out.

    Reply
  6. Nightowl

    I voted "undecided." That is because, while I don't necessarily agree with the politics of the APA, or rather, I agree with some of its politics but disagree with others, I don't think it is reasonable to think that an alternative organization would be less political. A "less political" organization will have implicit political commitments of its own. Being "neutral" with regard to professional philosophical politics represents at least to some extent an implicit endorsement of the professional philosophical status quo or perhaps its historical status quo, and acceptance of the idea that certain path-dependencies which have developed do not require active redirection. This is in itself a political position. But it is not often recognized by its proponents as such because it endorses passivity with regard to certain issues. In other words, neutrality is not neutral given the path-dependent nature of professional philosophical politics (and everything else).

    BL COMMENT: An organization not taking a position on an issue in the world at large is often preferable to it taking one particular position; it's a mistake to treat the two as equivalent political acts. However, this thread is not a place for that debate, so let this comment and my reply suffice here.

    Reply
  7. Avalonian

    Just to echo the sentiments expressed by JdRox: for anyone without tenure, public membership in this new society might be dangerous. Knowing the individuals involved, I can say with relative certainty that if the tenure committee at my current institution discovered that I had "gone rogue" this would (absurdly) count against me. This might be the single biggest obstacle here.

    Since the large majority of the 800 are probably early-career philosophers, it would be nice to hear from others about what could be done to shield those folks from subtle and not-so-subtle forms of retaliation.

    In a way, the APA has us in a terrible trap. Since no-one will currently infer anything about anyone's politics from their membership in the APA, it will never be dangerous to be a member. Not so for this new… Judean People's Front or whatever it is.

    Reply
  8. Brian Leiter

    Interersting, your current department must be quite pathological if you have this worry. Can you send me an e-mail, confidentially of course, I'd like to hear more about the situation (bleiter@uchicago.edu). Thanks.

    Reply
  9. Daniel Kaufman

    Avalonian:

    I don't want to minimize the kind of risk you are talking about. I was pretty openly heterodox in my early career, and senior faculty in my department tried to get rid of me on the basis of it, using what then was the common strategy of attacking one's "collegiality". (I recall in my third year review, one faculty member suggesting that I be denied tenure, because I failed to use gender-neutral language in my published work.) I fought them, hard, and won. Remember that just because philosophers are in some weird bubble universe, doesn't mean that Deans and Provosts and Presidents are. If you meet the tenure and promotion requirements, in a clear, demonstrable way, it is very difficult for a department to deny tenure and promotion to you, *if* you are willing to fight them up the administrative ladder. Was it unpleasant? Yes, and I was newly married and had a brand new baby at the time. Was it worth it? Absolutely yes. I established an understanding in my department and in the broader university community that I was not someone to mess with, and in the long term it earned me a great deal of respect on campus. Today, my antagonists are long gone, and I am senior member of the department, having been Dept. Head and also having chaired enough search committees to have had a substantial influence on the department's evolution.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are far too scared of these miserable people. They have a loud bark, but fold quickly, when confronted with someone willing to hit back hard.

    Reply
  10. Samuel Elgin

    I can only speak for myself. I was in the (apparent) minority in saying that I would not leave the APA and join a new due-charging professional philosophy association. That’s simply because I wouldn’t leave the APA. If there were another professional association, I would probably be a member of both.

    Of course, as your first question indicates, whether or not I choose to join would depend on what the organization looked like. It’s a fairly boring answer, but my interest boils down to two things:

    1) I’d like to have the opportunity to present papers I’m working on and receive helpful feedback.

    2) I’d like to attend talks of top professors in my field where they present their current research.

    I suspect that a lot of people from different subfields would be similarly motivated. So the success of the organization would (partially) depend upon its ability to attract many top professors to speak from a wide variety of subfields. Given that more first-round interviews are happening via skype, I doubt that it would be necessary for this organization to fill that function.

    Reply
  11. Christopher Pynes

    I would certainly like to see either a change in the APA or a new organization that promotes philosophy and philosophers. One thing that I believe can't be underestimated is where this new organization is located.

    It must be located in Washington, DC.

    There are so many education organizations there. Political Science (APSA) and History (AHA) are just two examples. Not to mention all the other educational advocacy groups and associations. If philosophers want to have input on education policy, there has to be an office in D.C. Not two hours away, but in D.C. That's where people make contacts and have influence. There would also be lots of opportunity for working with other groups.

    The APA's 2015 independent audit shows that it has less that 5 million dollars in total assets. That's not a lot. It wouldn't take that much money to either create a rival organization or to have a gift to the APA large enough to minimize, as Dan K said, the bloody battle, to right the ship of the APA. It really does seem to be a poor institution. You can read the financial here: https://www.apaonline.org/page/financials

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  12. Dan

    (A remark similar to Avalonian's.) On re-orienting the APA vs. creating a new organization: one downside of the latter, it seems to me, is the potential harm to prospective tenure-track philosophers seeking venues to present research. If I have APA talks (in metaphysics, say) on my CV, no one (I would think) assumes anything about my own level of commitment to the APA's political agendas. If a "new APA" (NAPA) is created and I have NAPA talks on my CV, I would predict that others would assume, or at least suspect, that I oppose the APA's agendas. So even if NAPA would allow those of us who disagree with the APA's orientation to go elsewhere, there my be incentives for (some of) us to not go.

    The problem I have in mind doesn't require anything as drastic as a tenure committee that would deny someone tenure over this. Imagine a hiring committee for a tenure-track opening looking at two CVs, one of which has APA talks and the other NAPA. Depending on the make-up of the committee, they may lean toward preferring the first application.

    Reply
  13. Brian Leiter

    I think folks may be reading too much into the idea of a philosophical organization that doesn't spend money on every "diversity" fad of the moment. I support affirmative action, although not for diversity reasons. But I don't support reserving journal slots for members of certain groups. Someone who supports every diversity initiative on the face of the earth could join a new philosophy organization, it's just the organization would not be using member's dues to do anything than support philosophy meetings etc.

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  14. Steven Hales

    Even if you think that every APA diversity initiative is a wonderful idea, there is still a deep problem with the APA's focus because of opportunity costs. Non-wealthy colleges and universities have drunk deep of the STEM/practical majors Kool-Aid, and philosophy programs hang by a thread. There are not just fewer and fewer tenure-track jobs, but fewer jobs of any kind, including adjuncts and VAPs. Philosophy is increasingly seen as a boutique field instead of a vital component of a well-rounded education. This is an actual existential crisis for philosophy that is easily overlooked by those at R1s with billion-dollar endowments. Making sure that every component of our profession has the exact same percentages of women, men, blacks, whites, gays, straights, whatever as the general population will mean nothing when there are no faculty positions for those people to fill. The APA's central mission at this point in time needs to be the promotion and preservation of philosophy in the academy, full stop.

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  15. lindos

    An organization we don't dare not to join. A political reliability our CVs need to display, that things may go well with us. Do we really live in East Germany, or do we only think we do?

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  16. Anon for Obvious Reasons

    I entirely agree with Steven Hales' post. I would like to share a related anecdote:

    I recently posed the following question to the executive director of the APA: "What, if anything, is the APA doing to address the problem of the overproduction of PhDs relative to academic jobs?"

    Her reply (I paraphrase): "We do not believe there is a problem that needs to be addressed…[followed by a brief bit of hackneyed nonsense about exciting 'non-academic' career paths}."

    To the question at hand: I would join, support, and participate in an alternative professional organization…but I wouldn't publicly participate in *creating one*, for some of the reasons give by posters above. I suspect that what's needed is for a critical mass of well-positioned tenured philosophers to provide any such organization with their imprimatur, at which point many of us junior and under-employed folks will come out of the shadows.

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  17. Jon Light

    Not trying to throw anyone under the bus, but wouldn’t just getting a new director—with a less idkosyncratic platform—be easier than making an entirely new organization?

    Or has too much been done “structurally” now in terms of committees, newslettes, funding, etc. that it’d be too hard to reverse?

    Reply
  18. Justin Kalef

    It seems to me that there are two main ways an alternative organization could be understood. The first is as an organization for those who reject the political direction of the APA. The second is as an organization for those who don't think the official organization of an academic discipline should have a political agenda or orientation at all.

    The second seems more viable, though perhaps the APA itself could move more in the direction of the second without the civil war mentioned above (I don't know). There are some plausible reasons here that should be compelling even to those who agree with some of the political orientation of the APA (as I do on some points). For instance:

    – The public value of the research we in academia produce lies in the neutrality and the checks and balances that are meant to be a strong commitment of the discipline. There is a quickly-growing doubt outside academia about whether the disciplines and their members continue to be committed to their role as disinterested arbiters. Many disciplines have already jumped the shark on this and, I strongly suspect, they will be in increasing disfavor and jeopardy over the coming years. The political orientation here is not important: the lack of viewpoint diversity, the hostility (or perceived hostility) toward certain viewpoints, and the politically controversial disciplinary assumptions are. Whether one agrees with the dominant sociopolitical views in the profession or not, this threatens the future and credibility of the discipline.

    – The public value of the teaching we produce lies (plausibly) in the fact that we supply a wide range of students with skills and habits that will make them more apt to be objective and self-critically reflective. If critics of our profession can make a plausible case that our frequent claims to produce this education are a sham and that we are really in the indoctrination business, the credibility and security of many departments, and of the discipline as a whole, are put at risk. An easy target for such critics would be a politically committed professional organization.

    – It also seems to be forgotten all too often that political tides have a way of shifting. At some point, perhaps not too far in the future, there will be a change and the dominant view within the university and its overall orientation will become conservative rather than progressive. There are many ways in which this might happen, many stemming from the growing tension between the direction of those of us within academia and the interests of the unprecedented number of tuition payers who find themselves increasingly at odds with the viewpoints they see us promoting unquestioningly as they foot the hefty bill. When that change comes, the last thing I'd want to see is a bunch of hard-right professors, administrators and APA officers pushing a radical conservative agenda on everyone while pointing to the state of play now and saying, "What are you complaining about? This is just what you did when you were dominant back in the 2010s". It's a safer play all around to stick to the rule that we keep politics out of the profession qua profession, now and forever.

    Getting these reasons out there and repeating them will help show why a politically committed profession and professional organization is a bad bet for all of us, whether we like the politics or not. If a new professional organization did turn out to be necessary, then it would also make joining or building that organization much less of a political declaration.

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  19. Anon PhD

    I would join such an organization and put in effort to support it. This might be a bit easier for me, however, since my professional path may insulate me, in various respects, from dealing with the disapproval of some diehard APA folks.

    Just to be clear, though, some commenters seem to think that any alternative to the APA must try to be entirely apolitical. But this need not be the case. It would be desirable, in my view, for an alternative to the APA to, e.g., adopt a policy condemning sexual harassment, or to address the problem publicly, as other academic professional organizations have. My dissatisfaction with the APA stems not from political orientation per se but from, among other things, the failure of APA leaders to accept that their ideological positions are controversial and not widely-shared, as well as their inability to attend to matters that fall outside of their narrow ideological ambit.

    Reply
  20. Alexander Guerrero

    I voted 'definitely not.' I think it's worth saying something, though, to challenge the claim that the APA is now highly politicized or obsessed with identity-politics or social justice. (I know you said this isn't the thread for that discussion, but I think it's entirely relevant to the question of what some other alternative organization might be like, whether it would be controversial to join or support it, and so on.)

    The main evidence cited by Daniel Kaufman in his blog post for the claim that the APA is now highly politicized and ideological is (a) the APA blog, (b) some small grants given, and (c) that 6/12 newsletters focus on racial/ethnic identities or non-Western philosophy.

    Let’s grant that the blog has been problematic. But that is hardly a central thing. It doesn’t relate to the conferences, policies, or much else. I think big, heterogenous organizations that want to have a blog or a social media presence often run into the following problem. They can publish only milquetoast pieces that draw almost no notice or engagement, and then there is the question: why? Or they can publish more provocative stuff, which will get engagement and discussion, but which will invariably offend and annoy some members of the organization, and which will seem to be 'picking sides' in complicated and contested debates. The APA blog has gone the latter route, but in a (to my mind) problematic way, by not having enough balance. Honestly, it's not as bad as one would think just for reading the most provocative pieces discussed here; there have been pieces raising hard questions about affirmative action, questions about philosophy outside the academy, teaching philosophy in the traditional way, and much else. But there has been something of a slant, I'd say. I doubt the APA-higher ups thought too much about that, but I hope that they will work to balance things out going forward. That seems like one place to push for reform. It's a new venture, after all.

    The small grants are almost all geared toward increasing the number of people from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups who go into philosophy. (Full disclosure: I’ve received one such grant.) This seems like a pretty small potatoes thing, and hard to argue with, particularly if people are at all concerned with the long term health of the discipline. It’s bad to still regularly be in rooms of 15 white men to talk about the nature of law or justice or mass incarceration or whatever. There are like twenty reasons for that. I agree with you that "diversity" with nothing else is not much of a rationale. But surely it is easy enough to supply those rationales? And surely it is part of the mission of an academic professional organization to make sure that the profession is appropriately inclusive to all manner of people, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, age, and so on? I'd hope *that* isn't the ideological agenda that people are objecting to. Do people really mind if some money goes to help Latinx kids in Texas take an interest in metaethics and Hegel?

    And as for the Newsletters, they are mostly for giving a forum for work that doesn’t get much airtime in mainstream journals. I haven't read all of the newsletters, of course, but my sense is that most of them focus much less on these ideological issues and questions, and much more on work in, say, Legal Philosophy or Native American Philosophy or Latin American Philosophy. At any rate, that is true for the three that I've had some involvement with and which I look at somewhat regularly (the Philosophy and Law, Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, and Native American and Indigenous Philosophy newsletters). I don't see much of a particular ideological underpinning. Just glancing at the latest issue of Philosophy and the Black Experience, for example, there is a long piece on the Christian theologian/philosopher Howard Thurman, and two pieces on Tommy Curry's work (which is hardly the standard contemporary ideology of anyone, I think). The Feminism and Philosophy and LGTBQ Issues in Philosophy might be closer to the ideology that some think has taken over the APA, but I haven't read enough of them to know. And even that would be only 2/11!

    It could be great to have an APA Newsletter on Conservative Issues and Conservative Thought in Philosophy. It would fit in that many of these newsletters exist because more mainstream journals exhibit various biases to certain kinds of work. That seems plausibly true in the case of some kinds of conservative thought, at least with some journals. I'm not a powerful APA person, but I bet those who are might well be open to such a thing. (And then whoever gets to edit it would see how little actual power comes with the ability to edit and publish an APA newsletter!)

    Is that it? Maybe also some of the misguided increasing journal diversity through quota stuff that won’t actually go anywhere?

    Seems like a lot out of a little. The APA does a ton of stuff unrelated to any of this, and the conference programs, book prizes, fancy lectures, etc. are hardly all going to some one narrow ideological place.

    Reply
  21. Daniel Kaufman

    To Jon Light:

    Is it clear that the problems we are discussing, here, are due solely — or even mostly — to the ideology of the current Director? That's not at all clear to me.

    To Anonymous PhD:

    I get what you're saying, but I think that you assume too much self-control on the part of people. To allow politics, but to expect political generosity is to expect a lot. Indeed, someone in the discussion over at EA asked me about Codes of Conduct, and I'm not even sure how I feel about them. The APA has one and obviously doesn't enforce it at all (or at least not against the activists).

    Steven Hales: You are absolutely right. Indeed, if you ask me, the two things a professional organization for philosophy should be focused on is (a) the overproduction of Ph.D's given current employment realities; (b) serious, sustained promotion of philosophy, in the university. The APA's current M.O. is essentially to fiddle, while Rome burns.

    Chris Pynes: Agreed re: the location of any new organization.

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  22. MIchael Weisberg

    I don't have very strong views on the APA vs. a new APA, but I do think some of the points in this thread are really important. Some professional organization should be doing a lot more to make the case that Steven describes. I think the only way for the APA to do this credibly is to be a single APA–not three regional APAs–and devote more time and attention to simultaneously doing real lobbying and re-thinking the conferences. I think there should be one conference (along with support for specialized workshops) and it should have all the functions that high-profile organizations have at their conferences, and the ensuing press /NGO/government coverage that the AHA and the APSA and etc have. Every time I mention this people say it is impossible, but I think that shows lack of imagination.

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  23. Daniel Kaufman

    No one disputed the value of the many non-political functions of the APA. The point just is that we'd like them without having an organization that seems keen on the promotion of hardcore identity politics in everything else that it does.

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  24. lindos

    @Guerrero:
    "And surely it is part of the mission of an academic professional organization to make sure that the profession is appropriately inclusive to all manner of people, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, age, and so on? I'd hope *that* isn't the ideological agenda that people are objecting to."
    It depends on what counts as "appropriate," what being "inclusive" means, and how those things are pursued. If you don't think there are issues there, think again.

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  25. Justin Kalef

    Hi, Alex. You wrote:

    "It could be great to have an APA Newsletter on Conservative Issues and Conservative Thought in Philosophy. It would fit in that many of these newsletters exist because more mainstream journals exhibit various biases to certain kinds of work. That seems plausibly true in the case of some kinds of conservative thought, at least with some journals."

    I think that would be a great step toward allaying the doubts of those who feel the APA has become too slanted in one political direction. But do you think it's plausible that such a Newsletter could be added? I don't know the players very well, so I don't know.

    I must admit that I have a reservation about your idea, though. To me, what makes philosophy great — and what qualifies our product as the fruit of an impartial and rigorous process of reasoning — is the fact that the best minds on one side of an issue must argue their way past the best minds on the other side of the issue in a dialectical process. It seems we would lose a great deal by going down the road of having opposing journals and subcultures devoted to progressive thought and conservative thought, respectively, without both sides meeting dialectically. One would imagine that, pretty quickly, both groups would fall into the bad habits of ignoring opposing arguments and mischaracterizing their interlocutors. And then conservative philosophers (say) could declare, "Those in my subdiscipline have argued the whole thing through painstakingly, and we are now unanimous that abortion is immoral and should be outlawed", and they'd be right because their subdiscipline would now be something called "conservative philosophy". That really seems to me to get away from the main point of doing philosophy in the first place, but quite possibly I'm misunderstanding your suggestion.

    _My_ suggestion is that our professional organization, newsletters, and journals should all be fastidious about keeping away from taking any stand on any sociopolitical or other issues other than, perhaps, taking the stance that philosophy ought to be promoted; but individual philosophers should be free, qua individual philosophers, to be as political as they wish in whatever direction they wish.

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