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.
Tag: philosophy
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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?
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For the 2009 Philosophical Gourmet Report ranking of US doctoral programs, Brian Leiter circulated a list of the faculty at 99 US programs. But for the 2011-12 rankings, the list was of only 60 programs. That’s a 39% drop, in the space of just two years, of departments willing to participate. No wonder Leiter has not published the list in the usual spot under methodology. But it can be retrieved as an rtf document from this page. [Edit: see correction below in my comment replying to Leiter.][Nonetheless] I compared the list of 60 faculties [used for the Philosophical Gourmet Report’s 2011 rankings] to Julie Van Camp’s ranking of departments by their percentage of tenure-stream women faculty. From top to bottom of these women-friendly departments (in terms of having above average percentage of women faculty), here is a list of those that do not participate in the PGR rankings:
- University of Georgia
- University of Oregon
- Emory University
- Villanova University
- SUNY-Albany
- University of New Mexico
- University of South Carolina
- Arizona State
- SUNY Binghamton
- University of Oklahoma
- Loyola University – Chicago
- SUNY Stony Brook
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Kansas
- DePaul University
- Fordham University
- Marquette University
- Temple University
- University of Memphis
- Duquesne University
- University of Kentucky
- Michigan State University
Bravo to all these programs — both for hiring women to the tenure stream and for saying no to the PGR.
[Edit: For background see yesterday’s post on the PGR’s un-women-friendly epistemology.]
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Hey there friends, I’m organizing this conference and there’s still time to get on the program:
Advancing Publicly Engaged Philosophy, March 14-16, 2013, Emory University Conference Center, Atlanta, Georgia, Keynote Speaker: Elizabeth Minnich
Early Registration extended to February 8, 2013. Those who register early pay a lower fee and will be listed on the program as discussants for any workshop they get in. Workshops are filling up quickly. TO REGISTER GO HERE: http://publicphilosophynetwork.ning.com/page/public-phil-conference
The Public Philosophy Network (PPN) brings together theorists and practitioners engaged in public life. Rather than merely try to apply theoretical insights to practical problems, PPN seeks to create spaces for mutual reflections on the meanings of public problems and the practice of philosophy itself. PPN engages theorists and practitioners online and offline, online through its interactive web space http://publicphilosophynetwork.ning.com and offline through its national conferences that occur every 18 months.
A key feature of the conferences is the participatory workshops on a range of issues related to publicly engaged philosophy. Additionally there are plenaries, paper sessions, and organized sessions, though all aim to be participatory models of public engagement. Workshop topics for the upcoming conference are listed below; for full descriptions and the full conference program, go to: http://publicphilosophynetwork.ning.com/page/conf-program-draft
The 2013 conference is sponsored by Emory University and co-sponsored by the American Philosophical Association, George Mason University, Penn State University’s Rock Ethics Institute and Michigan State University.
After registering for the conference, you will be prompted to sign up for workshops, listed below.
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FRIDAY MORNING WORKSHOPS
• Taking Philosophy into the Field of Science and Technology Policy: Toward a Paradigm for Publically Engaged Philosophy, facilitators: Adam Briggle, J. Britt Holbrook, Robert Frodeman, and Kelli Barr, U. North Texas.
• Philosophy Behind Prison Walls, Pedagogy, Praxis, and Infrastructure, facilitators: Brady Heiner, California State University, Fullerton; John D. Macready, University of Dallas; Marianne Patinelli-Dubay , SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
• Creating Public-Public Partnerships: Utilizing Universities for Participatory Budgeting, facilitators: Michael Menser and Kwabena Edusei, Brooklyn College
• Streets, Surfaces, and Sounds, facilitator: Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Univeristy of Washington Bothell
• Race, the City, and the Challenge of Praxis, facilitators: Ron Sundstrom, University of San Francisco; Frank McMillan, Organizer, VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith CommunityEngagement)
• Performing Philosophy: Participatory Theater as a Means of Engaging Communities Philosophically, facilitators: Sharon M. Meagher and Hank Willenbrink, University of Scranton
• Using Non-Cooperative, Experiential Games to Teach Sustainability Ethics, facilitator: Jathan Sadowski, Arizona State University
• Scientific Advisory Committees, Controversial Issues and the Role of Philosophy, facilitators: Paul Thompson, Michigan State University; Bryan Norton, Georgia Tech University; Mr. Gene Gregory, former President and CEO of the United Egg Producers; Kyle Powys Whyte, Michigan State University
SATURDAY MORNING WORKSHOPS
• Philosophy of/as Interdisciplinarity Network (PIN) or Philosophy and Interdisciplinarity: Reflecting on and Crossing Boundaries, facilitators: Adam Briggle, J. Britt Holbrook, Robert Frodeman, University of North Texas; Jan Schmidt, Darmstadt University; Michael Hoffmann, Georgia Tech
• Challenging the Culture of Sexual Violence: Moral Literacy and Sexual Empowerment as Tools of Transformation, faciliators: Sarah Clark Miller and Cori Wong, Penn State University; Ann Cahill, Elon College.
• Engaged Philosophy and Just University-Community Partnerships, facilitators: Dr. Ericka Tucker, Cal Poly Pomona University and Emory University; Dr. Vialla Hartfield-Méndez and Letitia Campbell, Emory UniversitY; Hussien Mohamed, Director of Sagal Radio, OUCP.
• Hip-Hop as Public Philosophy, faciliatators: Roberto Domingo, Stony Brook University; Jo Dalton, French rap-producer, activist, and former gang leader ; Amer Ahmed, Chair of the National Hip-Hop Congress; Michael Benitez Jr., Director of Intercultural Engagement and Leadership, Grinnell College
• Sagacity and Commerce, facilitator: David E. McClean, Rutgers University, Molloy College
• Practical Epistemology and Sustainable Inquiry, facilitators: Karen Hanson and Naomi Scheman, University of Minnesota
• Public Philosophy Journal: Performing Philosophy as Publication, facilitators: Christopher Long and Mark Fisher, Penn State University.
• Equity and Climate Change: Opportunities for Research, Teaching, and Advocacy, faciliators: Andrew Light, George Mason University and Center for American Progress; and Paul Baer, Georgia Tech
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One of my most instructive teachers, one I’ve been quoting for 30 years, one who I met in words but never in person, just left this world. In my 20s Adrienne Rich taught me about how to submerge myself in poetry, to dive into the wreck, to stare in wonder at it, and to think twice or more times about oneself. Her essay on compulsory heterosexuality was one of those illuminating moments. I liked her essays. I loved her poetry, though sometimes I was a bit put off by its polemic. Do art and overt politics mix well? Is Guernica, for example, as political art, something that calls out the horror, not the wonder, of life?
So, yeah, I found myself putting up with her political messaging through poetry, but I was compelled nonetheless. As someone who spends a good deal of my life writing, her words from her poem “North American Time” (in Your Native Land, Your Life) regularly haunt me. Stanza II,
Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
to glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love
but also did not want to kill
We move but our words stand
become responsible
for more than we intended
and this is verbal privilege
Rich is writing about a level of responsibility that is beyond what is usually expected. The usual complaint is “how did I know what someone else would do with my words?” One’s responsibility is to anticipate it. That’s the kind of responsibility that runs through Adrienne Rich’s work and this very poem. Stanza V:
Suppose you want to write
of a woman braiding
another woman’s hair —
straight down, or with beads and shells
in three-strand plaits or corn-rows —
you had better know the thickness
the length the pattern
why she decides to braid her hair
how it is done to her
what country it happens in
what else happens in that country
You have to know these things
All these lines come to me unbidden all the time. Wherever I am inquiring, especially into new areas where I might not know much, I have to learn the context and situation deeply. I can’t just drop in to some scene and start philosophizing without any sincere curiosity and concern about what is going on. I need to know these things.
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As i’ve posted before, the website inviting people to report what it’s like to be a woman in philosophy is a huge gift. In many places, apparently, it sucks. I gather especially in those “Leiterrific” departments that see themselves as doing hard core philosophy. Hmmmm.
I know it can be awful, intimidating, and all that. But I dare say than anyone complaining on the “what it’s like” blog also needs to be complaining to your university ombudsman and the local police. If you are too afraid to rock the boat for your own career, then you are, I fear, part of the problem.
[This post has been slightly edited in light of anon grad student’s comment below.]
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People are drawn to philosophy possibly for fame but never for fortune. Perhaps the most famous philosopher of all time in the West was Socrates, and he left his family drachma-less (or whatever the equivalent of pennies were in those days), having been sentenced to death for the work that he did. Another highly famous philosopher, Marx, relied on his friend Engels for sustenance, whiling away his days in the library in London as his family starved.
But at least these two philosophers became famous, more than anyone on any reality show ever will.
No philosopher today would be mobbed by throngs in an airport and few, if any, invited to the Sunday morning news programs. In the wider world they are mostly obscure figures, save for the occasional op-ed in the New York Times.
Fame-seeking is not, I hope, why anyone goes into philosophy. And I don’t think it is why Socrates or Marx did. If fame is the aim, especially long-term fame, then note that in philosophy the odds are just really bad.
Moreover, most Really Famous Philosophers did not have academic gigs. So trying to become a Really Famous Philosopher by getting an academic job isn’t a sure route.
So if you are in the midst of thinking about a job in philosophy and where to go to study to get one, think about this: why do you want to do this? If not for fame or fortune, then what?
But we haven’t really dispensed with fame or fortune. In the little corners of the universe we might inhabit, there is ample opportunity to reap a decent living and become well respected, good-enough analogues of fortune and fame. If you are inclined toward philosophy, it might be very tempting to lean toward graduate programs that promise more rather than less remuneration and respect from the profession as a whole. So you might be inclined to consult the whatever-ific rankings that are out there.
But again, if what you really want is fame you should go to film school or if it is fortune go to business school. The odds are surely much better. But if (more likely, if you’re reading this) you are captivated by certain deep problems or promises, and if these things keep you up at night, go to a program where you will be guided well. (If you can sleep well even as these problems somewhat niggle at you, then you probably don’t need to be doing this.)
The whatever-ific rankings that are out there will not help you find the right program. If you are to become a philosopher in the deep sense, then reputational rankings (such as the Leiter reports) will just tell you what faculty and institutions are well-regarded (/famous in this little corner of the universe) not which faculty and institutions are conducive to your particular interests. Instead of consulting rankings, consult the library. Find out who out there is approaching the questions you want to approach. Then look for what programs teach these texts, or even better have faculty who wrote those texts.
If you know you like philosophy but you are not sure what particular area you want to study, much less with whom to study, then find a program that is pluralist and strongly connected to other humanities programs in its university. In general, the higher it is on the reputational rankings, the fewer areas of specialization it might offer.
There is little worse than arriving at a program and realizing that you will not learn there what you want to learn, having just packed up and moved half way across the country.
If you want to do philosophy, attend to your own voice first. What is it you care about? What do you want to pursue? It is very likely that what is on the tip of your tongue is what the rest of us need to hear and engage next. So find the place that will help you find your voice. It is that voice that might inadvertently be the one that achieves some fame for having spoken something that actually speaks to us.
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Great news for philosophy and public life: the New York Times has a new online blog on philosophy, moderated by Simon Critchley of the New School for Social Research. The first edition just appeared, and in it Critchley looks to Plato’s Theaetetus to ask, “What is a philosopher?” The interesting answer is that a philosopher is one who takes time to think about things whereas other busy professionals try to take as little time as possible to do any one thing, just rushing through so as to get as much done as possible, and in the process becoming all gnarled up.
Socrates says that those in the constant press of business, like lawyers, policy-makers, mortgage brokers and hedge fund managers, become ‘bent and stunted’ and they are compelled ‘to do crooked things.’ The pettifogger is undoubtedly successful, wealthy and extraordinarily honey-tongued, but, Socrates adds, ‘small in his soul and shrewd and a shyster.’ The philosopher, by contrast, is free by virtue of his or her otherworldliness, by their capacity to fall into wells and appear silly.”
I like the general distinction, but at the same time am aware of how the academic system robs even we supposedly otherwordly philosophers of the leisure of time. There is a constant pressure to rush through things to get things done.
I have a way of working that tries to thwart this pressure. I have a very long “to do” list. Under the subheading of philosophy, are ten items. Two have to do with a book project, two are articles I need to finish writing, two are reviews of others’ books, one is a book I’m reading out of my own philosophical interest, and the rest are about courses I’m preparing. If I’m interested in checking something off, it’s a hell of a lot easier to move over to another part of the list and get my passport renewed than finish a book proposal. Under that mindset, I will spend most of my time doing inconsequential and unsatisfying things. So instead, I strive to make sure I spend X amount of time on any one thing. I aim to spend some fixed amount of time, even if it’s just 20 minutes, on any given project. When I sit down with that book or that paper, there’s a kind of leisure involved. I’m not trying to hurriedly get this thing done. I have the leisure of time, no matter that it’s a mere 20 minutes to read a bit of my current favorite book, Michael Naas’s Derrida From Now On. For those 20 minutes, that’s all there is. I’m not worried about finishing; I’m thinking about the sentence before me and I’ll pause to write a note to myself about how what he is saying intersects with something I’ve been working out on another project. For that bit of time, I am not in a rush. When the timer goes off (yes, I resort to such a thing), I may press it for another twenty minutes, and then again, and again, all afternoon long.
One doesn’t have to have a Ph.D. in philosophy to pursue one’s work this way, or so I would think. (And I think this is part of what Critchley is suggesting.) Could other jobs be done this way? Not in most jobs where the bottom line is the bottom line. But the most productive and creative organizations seem to have something like this mentality built in, just like Google’s policy of having its employees work on something of personal interest for a certain amount of time per week. Take the time; see what emerges. Hmm, that might be gmail, or google books, or google earth, or something even more astounding.
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Here’s a glimpse of my recent contribution to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Feminist political philosophy is an area of philosophy focused on understanding and critiquing the way political philosophy is usually construed, often without any attention to feminist concerns, and to articulating how political theory might be reconstructed in a way that advances feminist concerns. Feminist political philosophy is a branch of both feminist philosophy and political philosophy. As a branch of feminist philosophy, it serves as a form of critique or a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricœur 1970). That is, it serves as a way of opening up or looking at the political world as it is usually understood and uncovering ways in which women and their current and historical concerns are poorly depicted, represented, and addressed. As a branch of political philosophy, feminist political philosophy serves as a field for developing new ideals, practices, and justifications for how political institutions and practices should be organized and reconstructed.
While feminist philosophy has been instrumental in critiquing and reconstructing many branches of philosophy, from aesthetics to philosophy of science, feminist political philosophy may be the paradigmatic branch of feminist philosophy because it best exemplifies the point of feminist theory, which is, to borrow a phrase from Marx, not only to understand the world but to change it (Marx and Engels 1998). And, though other fields have effects that may change the world, feminist political philosophy focuses most directly on understanding ways in which collective life can be improved. This project involves understanding the ways in which power emerges and is used or misused in public life (see the entry on feminist perspectives on power). As with other kinds of feminist theory, common themes have emerged for discussion and critique, but there has been little in the way of consensus among feminist theorists on what is the best way to understand them. This introductory article lays out the various schools of thought and areas of concern that have occupied this vibrant field of philosophy for the past thirty years.
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Wonders of the digital era — someone has digitized and uploaded a twenty-year-old interview with Rick Roderick, whom I first met when he was getting his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Texas. I was an undergrad in history, but conversations with him ultimately moved me to philosophy, not for the love of Plato or Kant, but for the love of changing the world. Rick died way too young, in 2002, of too much stress and cigarettes. He always knew he was going to die young. I’m glad the digital era lets his words and voice live on in this 30-minute piece. Even with production values that were low twenty years ago, the tape is mesmerizing. Rick was a true Texo-Marxist American intellecutal, as moved by Woody Guthrie, Faulkner, and Dostoevsky as he was by Adorno, Marcuse, and Guy Debord. Click here for the video.
(There are other tapes of his lectures on the web but none so far that I’ve found to be Mac friendly. And from what I gather, none are this candid.)
gonepublic by Noëlle McAfee 