Alcoff, Leiter, and Pluralism Revisited
Regan Penaluna recounts the controversy over the Pluralist Guide to Philosophy in “A Latina Takes On the ‘Philosopher King-Maker‘” at Talking Philosophy. (via Ben Hale)
UPDATE: There have been concerns expressed about the accuracy and completeness of this report. Comments are open.
For what it’s worth: my concerns aren’t about accuracy or completeness. They are about the fact that the information that Alcoff claims to stand by in this report has been deleted from the Pluralist’s guide altogether. This, taken together with the above discussion (in which she responds to criticism quite differently than she does in the blog post you linked to), is extremely confusing. I found the discussion at the sgrp blog frustrating enough that I don’t want to get involved with this again, but I’m concerned about publicizing this new blog post in which the (bad) information that was finally deleted from the Pluralist’s guide is restated, this time with different claims about methodology.
But I think this pretty much speaks for itself: “Alcoff defends her decisions. She says there was a lot of conflicting information about the scandal at the University of Oregon, and she believes that there are enough supportive faculty members at the University of Oregon for a woman to do good work there. With respect to Rutgers, she says that faculty members and students at Rutgers told her in confidence that there were recently problems there. To remove Rutgers from the list, she believes, would be irresponsible.”
Even granting the claim that faculty members and students at Rutgers told her there were recent problems, “There were recently problems at Rutgers” is enough to keep Rutgers on the “needs improvement” list, despite it being the case that there is obviously at worst conflicting information (given the letter from Rutgers graduate students) about Rutgers? While a clear and public sexual harassment scandal at Oregon isn’t enough to get it on the list (or even just to remove it from the “recommended” category?
I don’t think we need to know anymore. It is unfortunate that this is cast as a Leiter vs. Alcoff thing, because Leiter used legitimate complaints about the climate section of the guide as leverage for his own grossness. But we need to be clear that that shouldn’t interfere with the fact that there were extremely serious problem with the methodology of at least the climate section of the guide.
Here is the link I meant to include: http://sgrp.typepad.com/sgrp/2011/07/more-facts-on-the-climate-survey.html
Oh, you don’t need to cite me as the source. I’m just human news aggregator.
When the Pluralist Guide was initially published, it placed the University of Oklahoma on the ‘needs improvement list.’ Later they were removed without explanation. Out of pure curiosity, does anyone know if an explanation was ever provided for that change?