My high school English teacher, Helen Foley, who helped me become who I am (at least the salutary dimensions), warned me against writing in clichés. These are the antitheses of thinking, she said, and she was so right. In all the years since, when I’m writing and a cliché floats to mind as an effective shortcut to convey what I am thinking, Helen Foley’s words exhort me to actually think and figure out how to write it in my own words. And now I add to that Hannah Arendt’s observation that Eichmann failed to think what he was doing and invoked cliché instead. Peter Levine expands on the peril here.
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I largely agree with this but I would add that everything would be much more efficient if people would just say what they actually think so we can just plain figure out who they are and what they stand for. If you really don’t give a damn about diversity, just say so and stand by it. If you think “real” philosophy is really mostly analytic M&E just say so and defend. If you think it’s okay to flirt with or seduce people you have some power over, just say so. AND if you think people who think like this are horrible human beings, then bring on the snark. If you think the power structure is wrong, say so. I’m all for honesty. Propriety can get in the way of real change.
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If so, then you will want to see some great new data on attrition and placement rates as well as numbers on degrees awarded and time to degree. The Daily Nous provides a nice summary of both.
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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has launched a new interface. I’m not sure what I think of it. I suppose this is better for searching but it seems less inspiring. As a member of the editorial board, knowing how much work goes into this, I applaud the editors and thoroughly endorse the encyclopedia. But maybe we could have something beyond the grey scale and the boxes?
Addendum: Then again I am color blind (really, impaired) so there might be color I’m just not seeing.
Addendum two: Now I’m beginning to see its simplicity and beauty. So, bravo to the SEP designers for being far better at this than I would be.
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Reblogging Progressive Geographies’ post on what’s new in the philosophy blogosphere.
Brian Leiter has long run a widely read blog that provides a lot of news information on the discipline of Philosophy. In that it is very useful. But he also uses it as a forum for his own views which I usually find uninteresting, not useful or sometimes just offensive. Recently he has, for many people, crossed a line. Fortunately a collaborative, and much more open site with a distinguished group of contributors has decided to devote some of its focus to fulfilling part of the news side – New APPS. You can submit news on hiring decisions here. There is also a new site called the Daily Nous which is also going to provide news reports. Both these sites will require information to be submitted to them, so please spread the word.
Given these welcome developments – and in light of recent events (mainly a post…
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In a New York Times op-ed piece, philosopher Srecko Horvat compares a scene from Sarajevo 20 years ago to one today. In 1993
A BOY, his voice heavy with embarrassment and regret, was performing Samuel Beckett in Serbo-Croatian. “Mr. Godot,” he said, “told me to tell you that he won’t come this evening, but surely tomorrow.”
Embattled and under siege, Sarajevo waited for the international community to come to its aid while thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed.
Now 20 years later, Bosnia and Herzegovnia are in the throes of protest and flames over officials’ corruption. But this time, instead of waiting for Godot,
Around the country, protesters are not just occupying streets and public squares but organizing plenums to create alternative governments. In Sarajevo, one such assembly was taking place at the youth center, which before the wars of the 1990s was one of the most popular Western-style clubs in Yugoslavia. During the war it was hit by artillery shells and caught fire.
Now I watched as more than 1,000 people — mothers without a job, former soldiers, professors, students, desperate unpaid workers — gathered here to discuss the future of the country.
Horvat reports the results of these people’s assemblies, which have been powerful. (So read the op-ed.) This reminds me of Arendt’s observatipn of the power that springs up when people gather together and of that slogan that has inspired grassroots movements around the world, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
This does not mean that the international community should ever sit by and say, let them take care of their own problems. But neither should the international community come in and install an alternate regime or force democratization practices that might be counterproductive. As the director of the southwest Industrial Areas Foundation, Ernesto Cortes, Jr., says, Never do for anyone else what they can do for themselves. That’s his “Iron Rule.” So the best kind of help is that which helps communities organize themselves and decide their own futures.
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The Fallacy of Online Surveys: No Data Are Better Than Bad Data A Recently Published Responsive Management Journal Article Outlines Why Online Surveys Continue to Yield Inaccurate, Unreliable, and Biased Data
INTERNET OR ONLINE SURVEYS have become a popular and attractive way to measure opinions and attitudes of the general population and more specific groups within the general population. Although onlinesurveys may seem to be more economical and easier to administer than traditional survey research methods, they pose several problems to obtaining scientifically valid and accurate results. A peer-reviewed article by Responsive Management staff published in the January-February 2010 issue of Human Dimensions of Wildlife details the specific issues surrounding the use of online surveys in human dimensions research. Reprints of the article can be ordered here. Responsive Management would like to thank Jerry Vaske of Colorado State University for his assistance with the Human Dimensions article and for granting us permission to distribute this popularized version of the article.
Mark Damian Duda
Executive DirectorThe above is from
http://www.responsivemanagement.com/news_from/2010-05-04.htm
and note this:
Self-Selected Listener Opinion Poll (SLOP)
Paul J. Lavrakas
A self-selected listener opinion poll, also called SLOP, is an unscientific poll that is conducted by broadcast media (television stations and radio stations) to engage their audiences by providing them an opportunity to register their opinion about some topic that the station believes has current news …
Click here to see full text : http://srmo.sagepub.com/view/encyclopedia-of-survey-research-methods/n524.xml
SLOPs happen in philosophy too, not by broadcast media but by blogs with a bent. Any survey that invites readers to participate is by its very nature badly designed.
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From the Feminist Philosophers blog, written or at least posted by themistokleia, clearly in response to many of the thoughtless (yes, thoughtless) comments made here in support of the pseudonymous Jane Brownstein’s position: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/02/criticisms-of-the-site-committee-report-on-colorado.html
[Trigger warning for discussion of assault]
Throughout my time as a philosopher, I’ve heard quite a bit of talk regarding ‘epistemic responsibility’ when it comes to discrimination, harassment, and assault. I’ve heard it much more frequently over the last few weeks, and so I feel compelled to say a few words about it. As it happens, I think I have a very different view of the nature of epistemic justification and the conditions under which agents can be said to have it than those who bring up epistemic responsibility in these sorts of conversations, but I want to address a slightly different question: What does moral responsibility require of us when allegations of discrimination, harassment, or assault are made? To be clear, what follows is not an endorsement of a presumption of guilt—rather, it’s an endorsement of action, sympathy, and compassion in the absence of certainty. It seems to me…
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Just to round out my current round of complaints about the rankings of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (and then I really will finish those article revisions!), I want to point out another way in which bias shows up. The “top” 25 programs overall have smaller percentages of tenure-stream women faculty than even the already-dismal percentage in doctoral programs throughout the profession. Only eight of those 25 do better than average.
Julie Van Camp estimates that the national average is 22.7 percent. I’m rounding up, so let’s say that anything above 23% is better than average.
Below is the list. For all the programs listed in the APA’s guide to graduate programs, I’ve used their self-reported numbers. For those who did not submit their data to the APA (shame, shame, shame), I’ve used Julie Van Camp’s numbers. The latter I list here with an asterisk. I’ll italicize those better than average.
- NYU 21%
- Rutgers 21%
- Princeton 17%
- Michigan 26%
- *Harvard 21%
- Pittsburgh 22%
- MIT 18%
- *Yale 16%
- *Stanford 25%
- *UNC 17%
- *Columbia 35%
- UCLA 25%
- USC 20%
- CUNY 18%
- Cornell 33%
- Arizona 23%
- UC-Berkeley 27%
- Notre Dame 16%
- *Brown 27%
- *Chicage 20%
- UT-Austin 17%
- UCSD 17%
- UW-Madison 22%
- Duke 20%
- Indiana 22%
Of the next 26 that made the top 51, 16 are better than average.
So, what to make of this? Is the problem that these “top” schools are not that interested in hiring more women? Or is it that they are deemed “top” because they are not hiring more women—and hence not doing the kind of “non-philosophical” work those women tend to do? Linda Alcoff writes that the PGR “works to reward convention and punish departments that take the risk of supporting an area of scholarship that is not (yet) widely accepted or respected in the profession. Hiring in the areas of critical race philosophy or feminist philosophy is not going to improve a department’s ranking. As a result, philosophy departments are trying to outdo themselves in conformism and ‘tailism’—tailing the mediocre mainstream rather than leading.”
Additionally, could the fact that 85% of the evaluators were men have anything to do with the problem? There’s not a lot of use in speculating, since the report never pretends to be objective. It is a reputational ranking based on views of those who have, in certain circles, a good reputation. So it is all circular.
And now I worry that it is also sexist. I am not saying that the group of evaluators are themselves sexist but rather that unconscious biases are bound to slip in to a survey that is shoddily constructed.
Can this survey be saved? No, dear colleagues, it is time we walked away. I urge anyone who has been involved in this exercise, whether by turning over your list of faculties or serving on the board or as an evaluator, to stop.
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On 11/25/2007 I posted on the dilemma of being a mother and a philosopher, having one’s attention trained in seemingly opposite directions, and what the connection might be to the dearth of women and mothers in philosophy. The comments that poured out in relation to that post are amazing, even six years later. (And some of you will see your younger selves there.) If you care about these issues, give it a read.
I’m wondering now how it seems for younger women / parents in philosophy. So have a look at that old stream and comment here. Are accommodations at conferences any better? Are departments supportive? Are partners helpful? Do you feel that tug between thinking and parenting? Does that have to be an opposition or can it be a productive relationship?
gonepublic by Noëlle McAfee 