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Police Shootings of Blacks in the U.S.; What Can Philosophers Do or Say in Response?
News from the past week:
- July 5th, 2016: Police officer shoots and kills Alton Sterling, a black man, while he was seemingly pinned to the ground, unable to move.
- July 6th, 2016: Police officer shoots and kills Philandro Castile, a black man, after he was pulled over for a broken tail light.
- July 7th, 2016: Five police officers killed by sniper fire durin..
Philosophy Degrees: How Many Are Awarded, And To Whom?
Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has released new degree-specific data on various humanities subjects, including philosophy. Here are some of the findings. All data and images below are from the Humanities Indicators site. (more…)
Penn State’s Efforts at Diversifying Philosophy
Five black women earned Ph.D.s in philosophy from Penn State this year, according to an article at The Chronicle of Higher Education (currently paywalled) that looks at the efforts the philosophy department there has been making to diversify philosophy.
The Chronicle reports that:
According to the latest federal data, of the 370 American citizens and permanent..
Demographic Data on U.S. Philosophy Faculty
Trends show a slow decrease in the extent to which U.S. full-time philosophy faculty at four-year institutions is male and white, according to data obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics by Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) and posted at The Splintered Mind:
Gender data:
1988: philosophy*: 91% male (vs. 75% for all fields).
1993: philosophy..
Philosopher to Sue NYC Police for 4th Amendment Violation
Damion Scott, a PhD student in philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook and an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, claims his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches was violated, as was a city code against racial-profiling, by two New York City police officers, according to an article in The New York Times (via Shelley Tremain at Discr..
Bias, Subjectivity, and Superficiality in Philosophy
The philosophy profession in the United States is overwhelmingly male and white. What explains this? In an essay in The Los Angeles Times, Myisha Cherry (UI Chicago) and Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) offer an explanation:
One of the main causes of homogeneity in philosophy, we believe, is subjectivity and bias in the evaluation of philosophical quality.
They ..
King Award Recipient: “Neither thrilled nor honored”
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (may be paywalled) this morning that Naomi Zack, professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, is the recipient of an award from her university in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. The story made the Chronicle for Zack’s reaction, in which she expresses gratitude for the award but is “neither thrilled nor honored” to r..
A Response to Brian Leiter from the Margins (guest post by Christopher Lebron)
The following is a guest post* by Christopher Lebron, assistant professor of philosophy and African American studies at Yale University.
A Response to Brian Leiter from the Margins
by Christopher Lebron
Take a look around you. It’s a new day. Campuses around the country have put the world on notice that there is no last place of refuge for marginalization. Ap..
Georgetown Philosophy Dept Supports Student Protestors (Updated)
Students at Georgetown University have staged a sit-in at University President John (“Jack”) DeGioia’s office, calling for, among other things, a frank discussion of how Georgetown benefited from slavery, as well as the renaming of a building currently called Mulledy Hall. Christina Cauterucci at Slate writes:
At the center of the students’ grievances is Mulledy ..
Missouri Philosophy Issues Statement on Controversy over Racist Incidents (two updates)
The University of Missouri’s governing board is holding a meeting this morning to decide how to respond to calls by students and others for its president, Tim Wolfe, to resign. The calls for Wolfe’s resignation follow a number of racist incidents at the university over the past few months and are a response to the perceived lack of a satisfactory response to these i..
Where Philosophy Is Missing
Some colleges have no philosophers. Some colleges have philosophers, but not many, yielding a very low philosopher-to-student ratio, particularly when compared to elite institutions or flagship state schools. Such colleges—which include many community colleges, state branch campuses, and historically black colleges and universities—seem to turn out very few stud..
Philosophers On Coates’s “Between the World and Me”
This installment of the Daily Nous Philosophers On series was organized by Janice Dowell (Syracuse).
Introduction
by Janice Dowell
In the midst of growing media coverage of police brutality and racial injustice in the United States, as well as increased attention to matters of race in the philosophical mainstream, the arrival of writer and journalist Ta-N..
Goswami Lawsuit Against DePaul to Proceed
Namita Goswami was denied tenure in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University in the 2009-2010 academic year. She claimed that discrimination played a role in the decision and sued. Her story was covered a few years back in Inside Higher Ed:
“I was teaching exactly what I was hired to do and it was used against me,” said Goswami, a native of India who all..
Philosophers on the Charleston Massacre
About 9 p.m., the Bible study concludes. As the group prepares to share a concluding prayer, Roof suddenly stands, pulls out a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and says he has come to kill black people. He shoots the Rev. Pinckney first, at near point-blank range. Simmons tries to protect the pastor, a father of two young children, but Roof shoots him multiple time..
Philosophers on Rachel Dolezal (updated)
Rachel Dolezal, “in recent years… has portrayed herself physically, and on social media platforms, as a woman of black African-American heritage. However, her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, who are both white and live in the Troy/Libby area in Montana, their daughter is not African-American. They backed up the claim with a copy of their daughter’s birth cer..
The Philosophy of Passing
The story of Rachel Dolezal’s outing as a white woman (insert whatever scare quotes you think appropriate there) is being widely discussed all over the place, including, now, the philosophy blogosphere. I’ll be putting up a post comprised of contributions from several philosophers here by the end of the weekend, but in the meanwhile, Daniel Silvermint (Connecticut) ..
Diversity in Moral and Political Philosophy Journals
Alex Guerrero (U. Penn) looked at four leading journals in moral and political philosophy to see how they have been doing in terms of racial and ethnic diversity over the past decade. Some findings:
- 0.9% of authors 1.6% of editors are racialized as black
- 1.2% of authors and 0% of editors are Latina/Latino
- 4.9% of authors and 4.3% of editors are Asian
- 18.2%..
Intro Philosophy Books and Race
Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) writes in with a request:
I am seeking help with a small research project regarding race and philosophy. This project would be to (a) make a list of introductory philosophy and ethics textbooks and anthologies and (b) review those books to see what content they have regarding race. This is to find out what readings various anthologies con..
Philosopher Attributes Job Loss To Challenging White Hegemony (updated)
Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, a research associate with a term appointment at University College London, is claiming that his contract was not renewed “because his plans to ‘put white hegemony under the microscope’ were considered too much of a challenge to white-dominated academia,” according to an article in The Independent.
Coleman, who crosses out his surna..
Trouble in Baltimore
On April 12th, 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, allegedly ran away from a Baltimore police officer on a bicycle who had made eye contact with him. He was caught, arrested for possession of a switchblade, and dragged into a police van. At some point between his arrest and his delivery at a trauma center 40 minutes later, Gray sustained severe injuries th..
Police Violence, Race, and…?
By now most of you will have heard about the two most recent publicized incidents of police killing unarmed black men in the United States. (Warning: the following videos are very disturbing.) One was a shooting that took place in South Carolina:
The other, even more horrifically, was the allowing of a police dog to maul to death a New Jersey man who had alread..
More on Innate Talent and Philosophy (updated)
Alison Gopnik (Berkeley) has written a piece for the Wall Street Journal about the study by Sarah Jane Leslie et al that we discussed last month on innate or “raw intellectual talent” and academia’s gender and race gaps. In her article, she writes, “From a scientific perspective, the very idea that something as complicated as philosophical success is the result of “..
A “Nonproblematic” Black Philosopher
Mabogo More, who was recently awarded the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association, is profiled in the Mail & Guardian. More held appointments at University of the North – Turfloop, the University of KwaZulu-Natal – UKZN, and the University of Durban-Westville, as well as fellowships at Birmingham, University of Illinois, an..
Minorities in Philosophy: Data Visualized
Data from 860 philosophers who identified themselves on the UPDirectory (previously) as belonging to minority demographic groups has been analyzed and depicted in various graphs and diagrams by Andrew Higgins, a recent graduate of University of Illinois, specializing in metaphysics and digital humanities, and currently working at Heartland Community College.
The..
“Philosophy is for posh, white boys with trust funds”
Seven philosophers are interviewed in The Guardian in the wake of a recent report by the UK’s Equality Challenge Unit that found that “among non-Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, philosophy is one of the most male-dominated, with men accounting for 71.2% of the profession” in the UK. They were asked “Why aren’t there more female philosopher..
Being a Philosopher of Color — a New Blog
A new blog project, What Is It Like to be a Person of Color in Philosophy?, has just launched. From the “about” page:
This blog contains narratives of personal experiences, submitted by readers, of life in philosophy as a person of color. Some of these stories will undoubtedly be accounts of racial bias, whether explicit, unconscious, or institutional. However, o..
Political Philosophy’s “Fantasy World”
ainstream political philosophy is seen as irrelevant… because of the bizarre way it has developed since Rawls (a bizarreness not recognized as such by its practitioners because of the aforementioned norms of disciplinary socialization). Social justice theory should be reconnected with its real-world roots, the correction of injustices, which means that rectificato..
Another Explanation for Philosophy’s Whiteness
In most philosophy classes the religious traditions of the Middle East and Asia are in the periphery as the other to philosophy – the impulses to conformism and irrationality which are to overcome by the self-reflection and rationality of philosophy. But regarding philosophy Africa is treated as the other to the other, as being the birthplace of human beings but not..