Georgi Gardiner, a philosopher at Tulane University, wanted to know why it seemed that the American Philosophical Association (APA) would not be holding events in New Orleans.
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Here’s what the APA says on its Meeting FAQ page:
How does the APA choose cities for meetings?
Sites are selected based on the quantity and quality of meeting space, cost, local amenities and attractions, and ease of travel by air, rail, and car. In addition, relatively few cities have hotels with enough space to accommodate APA meeting. Surveys are used periodically to assess members’ preferences on meeting locations.
Further, the APA strongly prefers only unionized hotels and avoids jurisdictions where there are policies in place that members are likely to find objectionable.
So the APA avoids holding meetings in “jurisdictions where there are policies in place that members are likely to find objectionable.” Of course, any group of philosophers will include at least one philosopher who finds at least one policy objectionable no matter where they happen to be, and yet APA meetings take place. This suggests the answer given to that particular frequently asked question could use some sharpening up.
Gardiner asked for details about APA meeting planning criteria, and was provided with a couple of key pieces of information.
The first is that certain metrics from the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index are employed to evaluate candidate cities for meetings, and falling short on those metrics weighs heavily against choosing those cities. Falling short means anything less than:
- 5 (out of 5) Sexual Orientation rating and a 5 (out of 5) Gender Identity rating in the “Public Accommodations” category
- 5 (out of 5) Sexual Orientation rating and a 5 (out of 5) Gender Identity rating in the “Housing” category
- 10 (out of 10) rating in the “LGBTQ Police Liaison or Task Force” category
- 12 (out of 12) rating in the “Reported 2020 Hate Crimes Statistics to the FBI” category
These standards were adopted in a 2019 APA Board of Officers Meeting, based on a proposal from the Graduate Student Council that was developed with the APA’s Committee on LGBTQ People in the Profession. They were intended to address concerns about discrimination and risk owing to the fact that “legal protections afforded to LGBTQ individuals in the United States vary across states.” For example,
holding a Divisional Meeting in a city without public accommodation protections for LGBTQ individuals effectively requires those individuals to conceal their identities or face negative social, career, and possibly legal repercussions for acting in ways consistent with their identities, such as using the bathroom(s) most fitted to their gender identities.
New Orleans falls short on the Gender Identity rating in “Public Accommodations,” as you can see:
Another criteria used to assess candidate cities concerns access to medical care, particularly abortions and related medical procedures. Gardiner was told that when the APA is considering cities in states that, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, have implemented laws prohibiting doctors from performing such procedures:
though the APA does not have a policy prohibiting meetings in states with such laws in place, APA leadership will need to decide whether it is reasonable to ask people to travel to places where they may not be able to access emergency medical care if they need it, especially if there are other cities where the APA can meet where meeting attendees can be confident of access to the full range of medical care should the need arise.
Currently 20 states have some laws prohibiting abortions during the first 18 week of pregnancy:
Are these reasonable criteria for the APA to employ in deciding meeting locations? Gardiner doesn’t think so.
In a public Facebook post on the subject, she writes:
It feels like it further entrenches academic biases against southern states and places that aren’t coastal elite regions or “approved” cities (like Chicago and St Louis)…
I don’t think academia is inclusive towards people with rural backgrounds, folks from the south, people with southern accents, first-gen, or low-income people. This feels like yet another example of that. Here is how it feels from my perspective: Lest the elite northerners should ever be “forced” to visit us (by, ahem, choosing to attend a conference here), they will instead simply not come to us. And so instead we Southerners have to travel to the Midwest each year to participate in “our” conference…
And this proscription is *just in case* the Northerners should ever need emergency medical care during their very brief visit here, and so might risk being briefly exposed to the conditions that we live with daily…
I am not from the south, obviously. I’m an immigrant. But I have lived in, and loved, the south for over a decade. And I witness a lot of academic bias against anything that isn’t coastal or big-city values…
I do not think this policy is kind towards the people who live here permanently. It entrenches a fear of ever needing to expose themselves to our, ahem, oh-so-dire living conditions. And it doesn’t balance the interests of whether those oh-so-unfortunates in the south now need to travel further to attend conferences each year…
I don’t think the American Philosophical Association should be thumbing its nose at *American* cities. We are part of America too.
Discussion welcome.
Didn’t the 2024 Central Division meeting of the APA take place in… New Orleans?
I ask this without prejudice to the general sentiment being expressed here, which I share, but I’m very confused.
My understanding is that that meeting was scheduled for New Orleans prior to the adoption of the criteria regarding abortion and related medical procedures, and once arrangements have been made there are lots of practical considerations against changing them. Others with more knowledge about the decision are welcome to share what they know.
Thanks, Justin. So can we already know where the meetings will take place four (or five?) years from now? Was New Orleans 2024 actually decided before the 2019 guidelines?
The APA lists the sites of future meetings up to 2027, and they do seem to match Georgi’s impression:
https://www.apaonline.org/events/event_list.asp?cid=6956
Still, opening with New Orleans as an example of a city where the APA won’t meet when that’s precisely where they just met invites confusion.
While the LGBQT+ criteria was adopted in 2019, I’d guess that the abortion-related one I referred to in my reply to you was not adopted before 2022 (when Roe v. Wade was overturned).
Oh right, that makes more sense.
On that note, while I appreciate the difference between abortion bans and restrictions, most US states have some kind of restrictions on abortion. For instance, New York sets the limit at 24 weeks, beyond which abortion may only be performed if the parent’s health or pregnancy is at risk. In California, the limit is the ‘point of viability’. Many European countries, including France, set restrictions much sooner than 18 weeks (now 14, previously 12). What is the rationale for thinking that restrictions up to 18 weeks is beyond the pale but a few more weeks is not? (I’m in favor of very liberal policies on abortion, but I don’t think we’re comfortable enough admitting that even the most liberal states do enforce restrictions.)
> Was New Orleans 2024 actually decided before the 2019 guidelines?
Correct. The cities are booked years in advance. And so non-compliant cities can be grandfathered in. This also applies to Portland.
It’s to their credit that they take benefit-cost analysis into account when deciding how stringent the criteria are. After all, what makes New Orleans ‘unsafe’ is not so ans to trump the cost of reneging on contracts.
As you note in your post though, there are important costs that don’t seem to enter the analysis.
*not so unsafe as to trump…
Is there a list somewhere of approved cities? That might help us get a sense of how broadly these APA restrictions apply. (I’m surprised to hear that Portland was merely grandfathered in for its 2024 meeting, given that Oregon has not passed any restrictive abortion laws recently.)
It changes year to year, but this is the only list that I have.
Also, note that this list reflects the LGBTQ-relevant rule. It does not take the (more recent) pregnancy/health changes into account.
The second factor would expand the list, and vary by state rather than city. (See the map above.)
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1piw3qbf3awho147amomc/APA_Impacted-Cities_LGBTQ-only.pdf?rlkey=trm6le4fpwdbhqn7835va16aa&st=18blqmjj&dl=0
Thanks!
Of course it’s reasonable for the APA to consider practical, safety and dignity implications when choosing where to hold an event. It shouldn’t hold a conference in Alaska, or in a state that has passed a law requiring women to cover their hair; depending on the details, it shouldn’t hold conferences in states with sufficiently egregious anti-LGTBQ laws.
On that measure, though, it’s somewhat difficult to justify the restriction on holding meetings in states with stringent abortion laws. There are medical emergencies that could befall a conference attendee that would endanger their life or health even given ex hypothesi they have a return plane ticket in a few days time, but they are quite low probability. If the APA is concerned about risk at that level, it should be doing things like avoiding cities with above-average rates of crime, which it doesn’t do as far as I know.
There is also an inevitable cost/benefit analysis, since these policies push conferences towards more expensive northeastern and west-coast cities and the higher prices then have to be passed on in registration fees. I note that the APA Pacific normally meets in the week of Easter/Passover, and justifies the difficulty this causes some attendees on cost grounds, which suggests that they’re not systematically opposed to this kind of analysis.
The obvious suspicion is that the APA is bringing in these restrictions (and perhaps others) as a form of political signalling: we don’t approve of southern states’ abortion policies*, so we’re not going to support them by holding conferences there. (There is also an intermediate case where people on APA committees talk themselves into a safety concern associated with a political cause where they would disregard similar-scale but non-politically-charged risks on cost-benefit grounds.) I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I find the line that the APA “strongly prefers only unionized hotels and avoids jurisdictions where there are policies in place that members are likely to find objectionable” is a pretty clear statement that, indeed, the APA does use politics as a criterion (to paraphrase Justin’s point, I doubt there is a state in the Union or a territory in Canada that doesn’t have some policy that some APA member finds objectionable).
The APA could of course just say: yes, we’re a left-of-center organization backing left-of-center politics. Insofar as that’s what North American philosophers want, that’s their prerogative. It’s not what I want, and not what I think best serves our community, for many reasons but chiefly those expressed by Georgi Gardner, which is why I’m not a member of the APA at present.
* I don’t approve of them either; that’s not the point.
The Philosophy of science organization is also arguably “left of center” – you may be too young to be familiar with the details here, but David Hull argued in the 1980s that we shouldn’t hold the PSA in cities with anti sodomy laws (the argument that some members made: they’re not saying you can’t go safely – you just can’t “practice “ while you’re there – was met with Hulls retort: “imagine that a city said you could be Jewish safely but you just aren’t allowed to go to temple” convinced many who weren’t already convinced. This was definitely a left of center policy in 1980s USA. Are you ok with this kind of politics?
By the way I believe Louisiana still has sodomy laws.. so maybe the PSA no longer cares about this….
I think Lawrence v. Texas struck down sodomy laws in 2003.
for the time being, Jamie– let us not forget (especially for the sake of those of us subject to such laws) that at least two current occupants of USSC seats have openly declared that they think both Lawrence and Bostock (and, of course, Obergefell) should be overturned…
[that threat not a reason to not hold meetings in New Orleans in my view: if the threat is realized, that’s another story]
David Hull was right.
“The APA could of course just say: yes, we’re a left-of-center organization backing left-of-center politics. Insofar as that’s what North American philosophers want, that’s their prerogative.”
Isn’t that exactly what the APA is saying here?
“Further, the APA strongly prefers only unionized hotels and avoids jurisdictions where there are policies in place that members are likely to find objectionable.”
So your objection seems to come down to disapproving of these policies that the APA opposes, but you also oppose opposing these policies. That’s a pretty useless moral position to take, if I may say so.
So you’re not a member of the APA because they don’t say a bunch of words that you just put into their mouth and which you’d object to if they did say them?
Considering that filling in a pronouns field is now required to register for APA conferences, I think that’s what they’re saying.
Granted, it’s their *right* to do so, just as it’s also their *right* to not care what North American philosophers want and let policy be dictated by a vocal minority of entry-ists who want to bully everyone into pledging fidelity to their politics. I’m sure they would happily require DEI pledges for conference submissions, as the Society for Personality and Social Psychology currently does. To my ear, granting that it’s “their prerogative” seemingly concedes too much.
Questions about the criteria used to determine the location of future APA meetings are especially timely given that the APA now organizes meetings that take place in Canadian cities. Why is the APA hosting meetings in a country (Canada) where euthanasia of disabled people is permitted (even encouraged) and state-funded?
Because there are hundreds if not thousands of people who would like to attend these conferences who cannot get visas to attend US conferences, and can when they are held in Canada. I don’t think there is any perfect answer here, but I do want to caution against taking such an idealized stance that we are willing to actively exclude thousands of people from even attending these conferences, in exchange for making an in-principle point to Canadian governance structures that I don’t think they would even notice. I agree that there are issues with MAID as it stands, but I also see a staggering number of people who don’t even submit to our conferences, and then end up excluded completely from participation, because they have passports that require a visa to enter the US. They matter also and need to be taken into account as well.
I don’t regard my stance as “idealized’; quite the contrary. Nor do I think we should characterize MAiD and its relations to philosophers and philosophy conferences in the ways that you suggest.
But putting that aside, there are many reasons why philosophers are excluded from APA conferences in the US (and Canada) at present. That prospective attendees
cannot get visas to the US is only one.
For example, the many people who are excluded from meetings in the US because they can’t get visas to the States but would not be excluded from a meeting in Canada because they can get visas to Canada–including graduate students that you mention above–may also find travel to the US or Canada prohibitive financially, lacking the funding to do so. Furthermore, there are lots of reasons (not related to visas) why disabled philosophers (from anywhere) are excluded from APA conferences in the US or/and Canada.
It seems to me that your argument in support of APA meetings in Canada works best as support for the expansion of online conference participation to APA meetings rather than continued and additional APA meetings in Canada.
> It seems to me that your argument in support of APA meetings in Canada works best as support for the expansion of online conference participation to APA meetings rather than continued and additional APA meetings in Canada.
The APA currently has a policy that one of the three main meetings will be online each of the three upcoming years, for precisely this reason.
Rather than find one idealized type/location/modality of conference that is supposedly least bad for everybody, it makes a lot of sense to have a variety of conferences, even if each is in a location or modality that is bad for some people.
I think that means some in Canada, some in the US south, some online, some in big coastal cities, etc.
Kenny, I am aware of the 2+1 arrangement to begin next year. I think it’s long overdue and certainly not my preference. I also think that there are other ways in which the APA has not adequately taken disabled philosophers into account with respect to its meetings in Canada. Here are (only) two ways in which it has not done so:
(1) The APA widely publicizes that it complies with the ADA in regard to its “inclusion” of disabled philosophers and its anti-discrimination protections at meetings, in communications, etc. (((Sidenote: The ADA is by no means a progressive document that the APA should use a guide for its policies but rather it should be regarded as merely a baseline from which they should start; the APA’s policies with respect to disabled philosophers are in any case inconsistent and incoherent, including the language it uses to express these policies.))) But the ADA has no legal force or jurisdiction in Canada. Does the executive of the APA have an obligation to its disabled membership who attend its meetings in Canada to learn about the limited protections that disabled people actually have in Canada? Should the APA begin to explicitly recognize these differences in its communications and explain what they entail for American (or otherwise) disabled philosophers who attend meetings in Canada?
(2) When a symposium on my 2017 monograph took place at the 2019 meeting in Vancouver, it was clear that the APA executive and the meeting organizing committee had done no research on accessibility services available in Vancouver. Even a week before the event, I was asking the APA organizers why nothing had been put in place with respect to the captioning. The real-time captioning at the session was terrible. It significantly compromised the session.
I think that if the APA intends to continue to hold meetings in Canada (a very unsafe place for disabled people), then its officers have a responsibility to learn about Canadian public policies and to inform their membership about them. Publicizing information about visas requirements for meetings is insufficient. Canada is no mere outpost of the United States and disabled philosophers who come to meetings in Canada should not assume that they have the protections that they have at home (wherever that may be).
The reason for not meeting in New Orleans isn’t “academic bias against southern states.” The APA Central Division has met in New Orleans many times, including this year. The Eastern has met in Atlanta many times and once in Savannah. The PPE society meets in New Orleans, as does NOWAR. The reason against meeting there in the future is the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. Maybe the Divisions should no longer consider human rights in picking meeting sites, as I think David Wallace is suggesting, or maybe they should look at some other measure than the Municipal Equality Index, but that’s the actual reason, and not “thumbing their noses.”
I am very skeptical that there is any academic bias against New Orleans’ values. [I’m also very skeptical that New Orleans is inhospitable to LGBTQ people, but what do I know?] To my taste, and I’m pretty sure it is widely shared among philosophers, New Orleans is among the best cities to meet in. Also, Elyse Purcell was exceptionally open to (and active in) trying a variety of meeting places — I believe the Central Division is the only one ever to poll its membership about meeting cities. But it’s quite a lot harder than members typically think to find a feasible location. Gardiner might want to get in touch with the new Secretary-Treasurer, Chloe Armstrong, if she wants the nitty-gritty details.
“Maybe the Divisions should no longer consider human rights in picking meeting sites, as I think David Wallace is suggesting”
I’m fine with considering them if ‘consider human rights’ means ‘consider avoiding states whose policies have concrete and non-negligible impact on attendees’ safety or dignity’, and I’m not averse to the idea that some states’ LGBTQ policies do so impact. I’m opposed to considering them if it’s just a matter of expressive dislike of some states’ policies. I don’t have an informed view as to whether the HRC index is adequate on that metric. I think abortion law is clearer, which is why I used that example: abortion restrictions have (in my view) dire consequences for residents of some states, but only very low-probability consequences for transient visitors.
Hi Jamie,
The past is not guide to the future, for structural reasons.
Two important facts explain this.
You note that:
> The APA Central Division has met in New Orleans many times, including this year.
1.) The LGBT policy was voted on in 2019. Locations are booked many years in advance. Thus we will only now see the impacts of the policy.
The most recent conferences in Portland and NOLA were grandfathered in. The policy will only affect locations from no onwards.
2.) The pregnancy-related locations decisions are even more recent.
Dobbs decision was 2022. So that will affects locations from approximately 2026 onwards, given when contracts were signed.
> Gardiner might want to get in touch with the new Secretary-Treasurer, Chloe Armstrong, if she wants the nitty-gritty details
I have had many emails with Amy Ferrar, Chloe, and others about this.
Thanks,
Georgi
I was pointing out that the reason for not meeting in New Orleans isn’t academic bias against southern states. That’s why the past locations are relevant — not because they are predictive of what will happen in the future.
But I’m happy to hear that you’ve been discussing it with Chloe!
As far as I can tell, Georgi is not claiming the reason for not meeting in Southern states is academic bias against them. However, such bias might be an enabling condition. If there was no bias against Southern philosophers (expressed, for example, in attitudes towards Southern accents in the profession), then the decision-makers would not have disregarded their interests the way they did.
I don’t see how it matters whether it’s a reason or an enabling condition. Since the APA, the PPE Society, and NOWAR all have met in New Orleans regularly, the new APA decision doesn’t seem to be evidence of anti-southern bias at all.
Perhaps, so far, Southern philosophers were just lucky that no substantial reason has come up not to hold such conferences in the South. Now, the APA has adopted a policy which in effect means that no conference can be held there in the foreseeable future. There were some good reasons for that decision. However, there are other reasons which (so Gardiner) outhweigh them. These are for example: the unequal inconvenience for Southern philosophers, and the expressive import of the decision. The decision can be read as saying to, say, LGBTQ and women philosophers in the South: ‘The conditions which you deal with every day are actually unbearable for us Northerners, even just for a long weekend’. The decision-makers did not recognise that their reasons were outweighed because they disregarded the perspective of Southern philosophers. This would be a rather ad-hoc story if we didn’t have other reasons to think there is anti-Southern bias. However, Gardiner says we have such reasons, e.g. in the common attitudes towards Southern accents.
I am not sure this story is true, but it’s not disproven by the fact that there were past conference in the South.
I don’t think the bias against southern states needs to have been explicitly considered in order for it to be playing a role here. In many other contexts, we are familiar with the fact that much problematic behavior manifests in the form of “disparate impact”, where a policy was implemented for good reasons, but happens to be harmful to some group of people, whose specific interests weren’t taken into account in part because of their marginalization in the group in question. Sometimes these disparate impacts are intended, but sometimes they are just as impactful even when they are completely unintended. And as a gay and multiracial philosopher who spent nine years living in a state in the former Confederacy, it was definitely clear that there are many policies that many academic societies have that have the incidental impact of harming people who live in states in the former Confederacy, and there is less pushback against this than there is against the policies that incidentally contribute to difficulties for gay or multiracial people.
I am not sure if I endorse my thought here but I will try to explain my understanding of APA’s approach. (That’s what we do when we teach, right? :))
I disagree that the choice of location has anything to do with “elite northerners vs. the southern states”. It is simply that APA chooses to hold meetings at places that share similar values (at the social level) with APA. Is this inclusive or exclusive? I think it is inclusive because by holding meetings at such places, people from minority groups feel most comfortable and welcomed. Does this exclude people “with rural backgrounds, folks from the south, people with southern accents, first-gen, or low-income people”? I tend to think not. Many of people I know working in southern states actually enjoyed their time having conferences elsewhere. It is a bit hard for me to see why holding conferences at places that share APA’s values excludes these people.
I can see that APA might exclude people “with rural backgrounds, folks from the south, people with southern accents, first-gen, or low-income people” by making travel inconvenient and expensive for them. I think this is a real issue. And it deserves further discussion. Though there are other solutions than holding conferences locally, such as financial support.
Of course, whether APA should only choose locations where the local politics aligns with APA’s values is a separate question.
As someone who lives in the South (3 years so far) and plans to stay here long-term, I don’t agree with Gardiner. While I think she has a point about being more inclusive towards low-income, first gen, or rural individuals, the policy seems driven more by economic protest (e.g., we won’t patronize areas with unhealthy policies for our members) and safety (we want to make sure our members are respected) than cultural bias. The extent to which it reinforces cultural biases seems speculative, and it would not be supported by the anecdotal evidence I have from my friends and colleagues in the “elite” north.
Part of the concern I have is that the argument uses a simplistic division between north and south that, while culturally significant, hides the diversity of cultures and individuals in both areas. The South is part of America as Gardiner says, but the South in Texas (my area) is different from the South in Georgia (and even within Texas cultures differ from area to area). The APA does seem to recognize this, given their use of information about municipalities and state policies to make their decision.
While this point can support Gardiner’s argument (i.e., why should the good people in the South who appreciate healthy parts of Southern culture be penalized for actions by others), it also supports the APA’s position (by challenging the notion that northerners are all “elite” and by indicating that significant portions of the South–myself included–support attempts from professional organizations to respond to the South’s unhealthy policies towards their members).
I believe it is important for different part of the country to engage each other in healthy dialogue, but given how few people in my area would even know that an APA conference was in town, I don’t see bringing conferences to the South as a productive form of such dialogue. My suggestion would be for more academics and academic institutions (including those from the North and South, to use the dichotomy Gardiner uses) to conduct more public facing events that allow for public participation and dialogue. I also see a need for academics to participate in similar events conducted by non-academic institutions. To the extent that there is a cultural bias in place, these actions seem more effective at countering it.
In my 9 years living in Texas it became very clear to me that my peers who lived in the northeast, midwest, and west, were often completely oblivious to the ways that some of their speech and behavior indicated a bias against anyone who happens to live in the states of the former confederacy. Their ways of speaking often sound like the person who thinks they’re not racist because some of their friends are Black.
This seems like mostly a question of framing, is refusing to hold conferences in certain locations an appropriate boycott, or an inappropriate lack of solidarity with philosophers from those regions?
There’s a second question about the appropriateness of boycotts such as these, but I have no useful thoughts on that.
I’m pretty new to APA administration, I’ve never been on a committee until recently. But something just struck me as obvious from looking at the meeting minutes; the most devastating thing that can happen is the APA booking a hotel and paying a crap ton of money for a bunch of rooms (prior to actual registration and attendance), only to have a bunch of philosophers organize some kind of boycott of the city, the hotel, or the state shortly before the meeting. Then the APA is on the hook for the bill and very few philosophers end up going to the conference, which will eventually just bankrupt the entire APA. The easiest way to try and prevent that is to do surveys and such of its constituents about what are deal-breakers for your attendance at an APA (like a hotel strike). The APA then books in a way to maximize attendance and minimize risk of boycotts. Any appearance of political signalling or elite bias is an artifact of the APA trying to represent the preferences of its members.
It sure looks like the original posts’s reasoning overgeneralises to imply that, e.g., it was perfectly fine to have the World Cup in Qatar despite concerns about human rights record. my hot take is that we shouldn’t have had the World Cup in Qatar given the inhumane policies there, EVEN IF this ultimately means that the often globally overlooked citizens of Qatar are deprived of football opportunities that woudl be afforded by having the World Cup there. The APA is reasonable and fair enough to have standards for host venues (where those standards protect basic rights of members). so, for example, the APA should NOT go to a state that says it doesn’t acknowledge gay people, for example, even if the cost is that that state’s citizens don’t benefit from the APA. Sure, the cost sucks for people from such states, but the alternative is scorched earth reasoning (like I worry the original poster’s is) which overgeneralises to: World Cup in Qatar, human rights record bedamned!
Hi Debbie,
> the original posts’s reasoning overgeneralises to imply that, e.g., it was perfectly fine to have the World Cup in Qatar despite concerns about human rights record
There are many, many, many differences between these two cases. Here are some:
1.) The APA policies put more than half of the potential USA conference cities on the “no go” list. This is extreme.
2.) Most cities that are on “no” list in the APA’s LGBTQ policy (written by the GSC) are because the police force doesn’t have a liaison officer or they don’t report hate crimes as an independent category to the FBI.
These are not human rights violations.
Indeed, for most visitors, these facts wouldn’t even register. (If any LGBTQ visitors care, it might well be because they overestimate the importance of the police force (and these kinds of details about that city’s police force) for individual visitor’s well-being, and/or they over-estimate the proportion of crime that is stranger crime, as opposed to acquaintance crime.)
As I note earlier, having a liaison officer might just reflect a heavily funded police force hiring a rainbow-washing PR firm. It isn’t clear why the APA should care about this at all, let alone avoid cities based on it.
Failing to meet these conditions are not harms to visitors, let alone violations of rights.
3.) FIFA can avoid hosting the competition in Qatar without casting doubt on its ability to fulfil its major function. This is not true of the APA avoiding half the potential conference cities in the USA because they deem those areas and states too dangerous for academics to visit.
If that is sincerely the APA’s view, why would they help help departments in those regions with hiring, PhD recruitment, protecting those departments from threats of closure, etc.
Even if the APA does support those departments, despite their view about the danger of the locations, how can APA members in those regions feel any *confidence* that the APA would do this?
In other words, the policy, by being so extreme, may undermine its own ability to perform one of its most important functions.
4.) These cities are in the USA, which is the remit of the American Philosophical Association. If it regards so many states as not visitable on safety grounds, can it still claim to be the *American* Philosophical Association? Hasn’t it just admitted that it isn’t able to represent the whole region that it is supposed to represent?
This is not an issue that FIFA would face by avoiding Qatar.
Openly and visibly queer people have been avoiding places like Florida lately. And for good reasons. The same reasons they have to avoid some countries in the Middle East. It is a risk for a queer person to travel south.
People who are pregnant might miscarry or need emergency care, up to emergency abortion, in a number of unforeseeable circumstances. It is plain that it is, therefore, a danger for them to travel to many southern states. Perhaps this is a mere off-chance, but it is still a risk for pregnant people to travel south.
Prof. Gardiner has not given any reasons that would outweigh these risks, however small one might think they are. Rather, her response to both concerns is effectively “boo hoo” and implying that the people who acknowledge these risks are being dramatic, or biased, or unreasonable.
I would suggest to her to contribute to political efforts to make her state safer for all members of the APA, rather than trying to lobby the APA to put its members at risk. After all, she faces no similar risks when traveling north.
That is a bizarrely personal comment, given that I am drawing attention to a political issue. And I would rather the focus remained there.
But since you brought up my personal circumstances:
Firstly, I already invest a lot of effort into LGBT community in my states (TN and LA). I ran an LGBTQ arts and community centre out of my own house, for example.
> It is a risk for a queer person to travel south.
This is precisely the “the north is safe; the south is not” prejudice that I am arguing against.
There are queer people in the south; there are hate crimes in the north; risk is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon.
> Openly and visibly queer people have been avoiding places like Florida lately.
Which ones? The lesbians in my lesbian bar in Knoxville travelled to St Pete practically every week.
Miami, St Pete, Key West, and Ft Lauderdale are well-known LGBT destinations.
One of the largest lesbian festivals in the country is in Florida (Sexacola, if you want to plan a trip.)
(And if you are avoiding *New Orleans* because you are queer, then I don’t know what to tell you 🤣 I mean, crikey o’ reilly.)
> she faces no similar risks when traveling north
Huh? What are you talking about? This is bizarre.
The list that the APA provided of locations disfavoured by the APA LGBTQ-based policy includes Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Pasadena, Salt Lake City, Savannah, St Louis…
They are all “travelling north”. (Again, though, why are you making this personal?)
Indeed, if you look at the pregnancy-related map above, every single state is travelling North for me. It includes many northern states, including one that touches Canada.
Indeed your wording provides evidence that this is a north versus south bias. (i.e. that overly simplistic “the north is safe; the south is not” rhetoric that infects political discourse.
> trying to lobby the APA to put its members at risk
Members can choose where to travel. This isn’t mandatory travel.
It seems very fear-forward to think that all of us vibrant, joyful, creative queers in the south live in great risk. And naive to think that the North stands in great contrast.
I am glad that this issue is being openly discussed.
You feel comfortable sarcastically deriding everybody who has concerns about traveling to states with policy and legislation that makes them feel unsafe as “elites” who are “biased”. You do so without any kind of argument against or even recognition of these concerns. Yet you act like it’s a personal attack when you are called out on it.
Honestly, perhaps you have a north/south bias that leads you to see northern people as whiny elitists.
But, for as much as you point out that southern regions are internally diverse in terms of policy and safety, you should know that most people in northern regions also work at small colleges with little prestige, sometimes in conservative areas.
There’s no evidence of north/south bias in the APA’s policy. They set down some criteria and perhaps it is the case that more southern places fail these criteria. Even places that you think *ought* to pass them, such as New Orleans.
Do you think these criteria are intrinsically biased against the south? If so, how?
Do you think there is no additional risk for queer or pregnant people in states that have passed adverse legislation? Do you think there are overriding benefits to having APA conferences in locations that carry such risks?
If you want this to be political, you may want to consider having answers to such questions.
To answer these questions, it would be helpful to know something about the magnitude of these risks. For example, how much more likely is it for queer people in these states to be victims of harassment or hate crimes? What are the odds that a pregnant person visiting one of these states could end up in a medical emergency for which they couldn’t receive adequate care in time (but could receive such care in a state without adverse legislation)? Any quantitative evidence would be helpful here.
> how much more likely is it for queer people in these states to be victims of harassment or hate crimes?
The relevant statistic would be for the relevant cities, not states.
This is important because southern cities are often gay meccas, because local LGBTQ people flock to us. (Asheville, Atlanta, St Pete, Miami, Ft. L, New Orleans, etc.) And the APA can only visit cities.
The relevant statistic the APA needs would be for visitors, not people living in the state.
This makes a big difference. The FBI stats for nation-wide LGBTQ hate crimes show that 38% happen inside a home, for example. So they don’t show relevant risks for APA visitors. People at work, esp. sex work, and prisons are disproportionately victims.
These patterns don’t affect travellers, who are more at risk of things like being mugged for money.
But how can we calculate these figures? And why assume that the southern cities will have higher risks than northern cities? And might these rates be rather low, anyway?
Re. hard to calculate: FBI data show nine LGBTQ+ hate crimes in the last five years in Louisiana, four of which occurred in either in a prison or a home.
The number for Illinois is 66.
As I mention in one of my comments in the long Facebook thread, linked above, the actual “risks” will be very hard to calculate.
I don’t think the APA is wise to develop these kinds of policies without some *serious* further thought about it.
As someone who loves Asheville and has the sort of crush on New Orleans that anyone with a soul has upon a shortish initial visit, thanks for doing this work.
Isn’t APA using the criteria they are precisely because they are based on empirical evidence of just how likely such harms are to occur in each city assessed. The statistics on risks for pregnant women are admittedly less well established than those on LGBTQ risks but they are not mere regional stereotypes or exaggerations.
Gosh no. If these were sensible criteria I probably wouldn’t have said anything. The criteria don’t track actual risks.
So even if we give Gardiner the benefit of the doubt when she plays the ‘fake statistics’ card against the APA (I am not saying we should), the fact remains that the demeaning LAWS are what they are in the state of Louisiana, and they undermine the dignity of APA members who step foot there.
I am criticising the APA’s *existing* policy.
People are criticising me for criticising the policy. But they are doing this by saying the APA should have some *other* policy.
This is beside the point, since I am criticising the *existing* policy, which seems xenophobic.
I don’t think people read my actual arguments against the policy before they started criticising me.
(Crime statistics are key to my criticisms, because 2 out of 3 existing APA criteria are about crime, not about laws, and uses and misuses of crime statistics is one my main research areas.)
What do you mean “plays the ‘fake statistics’ card against the APA”?
I am not using ‘fake statistics’. I pulled FBI data from the website.
The APA aren’t using fake statistics, because they aren’t using any statistics. That is fine, since they aren’t claiming to.
People in this thread are alluding to statistics, in many ways mistakenly. But they aren’t the APA.
I don’t need the benefit of the doubt about any statistics.
Instead I want people to read the actual APA policy before they defend it; and to read my criticisms of it (developed in my long comments thread in the Facebook post, linked above), before they criticise me for criticising the policy.
> There’s no evidence of north/south bias in the APA’s policy.
There was also no evidence of anti-parent bias in past APA policies that made it hard for parents to get adequate childcare at conferences. We can move beyond feelings and intentions and look at the actual impacts of behavior.
> Do you think these criteria are intrinsically biased against the south? If so, how?
Bias doesn’t need to be intrinsic to matter. It is the consequences that matter most to the people harmed by a policy, not the intentions in your heart.
> Do you think there is no additional risk for queer or pregnant people in states that have passed adverse legislation? Do you think there are overriding benefits to having APA conferences in locations that carry such risks?
Yes, there is some additional risk for some queer or pregnant people traveling out of state to a state with certain laws compared to them traveling out of state to a state with other laws. But there is also additional risk for queer or pregnant people living within these states for traveling out of state rather than being able to attend philosophy conferences in their home state, even if the destination state has formally better laws.
There is an important set of cost-benefit analyses to consider when you start trying to choose policies to help people who don’t share whatever privileges you share, particularly around the question of whether your policies might accidentally make things worse for the people you are claiming to help.
A lot of times, queer people who have the privilege to live in states that have mostly adopted relatively queer-affirming policies forget to consult those of us who don’t have that privilege (I now do, but for the previous nine years I did not) to see whether their policies are really going to help us in any way, or whether their policies are just designed for their own comfort. Many of the state laws that have been cited as reasons to ban meetings in certain states (such as state laws banning gender-affirming care for minors) are ones that seem to me to threaten much more harm for locals leaving the state for a conference (and potentially leaving their children with one fewer advocate present for a few days) than for adult conference-goers entering for a few days.
There are overriding benefits to the APA holding meetings in a variety of locations to make it convenient for a variety of people to attend. These obviously won’t override every possible objection. But neither does the presence of some harmful laws (which, by the way, even Canada and blue states have some harmful laws on the books).
Trans people. Under a 2023 law, trans people face the risk of arrest for using the correct restroom. See e.g. this news article. It is on the basis of this law that trans advocacy groups have issued a Do Not Travel warning for Florida. See e.g. the analysis by journalist Erin Reed. It’s true that cis lesbians don’t face that risk, but it’s farcical to say that Florida is a safe place to hold a conference because it’s safe for some but not all queer people.
> Openly and visibly queer people have been avoiding places like Florida lately. And for good reasons. The same reasons they have to avoid some countries in the Middle East. It is a risk for a queer person to travel south.
*Some* openly and visible queer people have been avoiding places like Florida lately. But hundreds of thousands of openly and visibly queer people live in Florida, and many hundreds of thousands of others (probably even millions) have been visiting recently.
There are reasons why one might prefer to promote other destinations on one’s list. But these are *not* the same reasons they have to avoid some countries in the Middle East.
To say that sounds like someone who claims that Oakland is as dangerous as Aleppo, or Beirut, or Baghdad during the war.
You have done nothing to establish that the actual risks to actual queer people of traveling to Florida or Texas are as great as the actual risks to actual queer people who live in Florida or Texas of traveling out of state for work. There are *real* risks here, and your discussion entirely privileges the out-of-state queers over the queers who live in these places.
Especially since the laws in question mostly target queer minors, who are not likely to be the ones traveling for the conference, but are likely to be the ones whose caregivers might be traveling for a conference.
SAPA: Some American Philosophical Association
I mean, anything can happen, but I think the medical risks to some conference participants that would stem from Louisiana’s restrictive abortion laws would be too tiny to merit much concern. And my guess would be that most LGBTQ philosophers would not want New Orleans to be taken off the list for their sake. Having attended the recent APA meeting in New Orleans, I can report that New Orleans made this trans philosopher feel extremely welcome!
(Granted, the weight of these remarks should be discounted because I had such a good time.)
“I mean, anything can happen, but I think the medical risks to some conference participants that would stem from Louisiana’s restrictive abortion laws would be too tiny to merit much concern. ”
This is the second or third time in this thread that I’m reading this idea expressed. It’s surprising! Have y’all been around a pregnant person? They care even about “tiny” risks to themselves or future child (even if that entails that they are rationally committed to caring about other tiny risks but they don’t – pregnancy has that kind of effect on people!).
How would restrictive abortion laws impose any risk on their future child?
“It feels like it further entrenches academic biases against southern states and places that aren’t coastal elite regions or “approved” cities (like Chicago and St Louis)…” Chicago? Doesn’t the Central APA meet in Chicago literally every other year?
Sorry for the confusion. St Louis is affected too. I just didn’t notice it in my original Facebook post.
The original GSC proposal included:
> (1) The APA shall not sign any contract to hold a Divisional Meeting in the state of Missouri
until the Missouri NAACP ends its travel advisory;
The actual policy amends it to:
> APA will have a strong preference against contracting meetings….
_____
To address concerns about regional distribution, the GSC write:
> Options in the Central Division’s region include Bloomington (Indiana), Chicago,
Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and Denver.
> Finally, it may appear that the adoption of this proposal would result in an inequitable distribution of
locations for divisional meetings.
> For example, if every Central Division meeting were held in Chicago, this would privilege those living in the Upper Midwest (e.g., Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota) over those in Southern states included in the Central Division (e.g., Texas, Louisiana).
> However, it is doubtful that this is true. As shown above, there is a wealth of appropriate cities for each division.
But this is uncompelling, given that the four approved cities for the Central *exemplify* the problem, not address it.
No approved location for the Central, in their own report, is in the South, Deep South, or South West.
I agree that New Orleans is a decent city and probably suitable for the APA, but as several posters have noted here, there are real concerns about various socially backwards places in the south, which likely don’t have the kind of expected amenities/standards a professional society should expect. We can’t reasonably expect the APA to subject its membership to every backwater Southern Hoop and Holler two-horse town, surely?
I’m 80% sure this is satire but if it’s not, then as Georgi said, we don’t want you around here with that kind of attitude.
I’m 80% sure this is satire but if it’s not, then while I don’t endorse LS Monson’s content or attitude, allow me to add that cancellation threats are bad.
“Don’t come around here no more” is just Petty.
It’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to Georgi’s Facebook post, where she wrote:
“Whenever I hear people say they would never visit, or they avoid, a southern state, I think: ‘Well, good, they probably don’t want you with an attitude like that.’”
I just thought that was a funny passage and an accurate depiction of southerners’ no-nonsense attitude to the people who look down on them. I am not exactly one to ever promote cancellations, and I don’t know where you got the impression that that’s what the comment was about. But if someone talked about your neck of the woods like that, they shouldn’t be surprised to not be welcomed with flowers and open arms. They can still come; that doesn’t mean we have to pretend to be thrilled about it.
I support some (but not all) of the political causes that the APA advocates for. That said, I wish that my professional organization could make those with political views that differ from mine feel welcome too. I agree that it would have been reasonable to boycott South Africa during the Apartheid era, but the situation in New Orleans is definitely not as terrible. Perhaps those of us who live in places under APA boycott could get a 50% discount on membership fees to help offset the inconvenience of always having to travel out of state?
Martin Peterson’s comment here is very reasonable. APA members should get a discount if they are based in states with laws that disrespect human dignity in such a way that the APA isn’t in a position to host events there for the safety of its members, and which will then mean that these APA members will on the whole need to travel further. (I agree New Orleans isn’t as bad as Apartheid south africa obviously, but it is still very bad when you look at Louisiana laws. There is no way various kinds of marginalized APA members are going to be able to attend an event there without being demeaned from a purely legal standponit, as several posters have noted,, and even if the people in the town are nice to them.
I have no doubt Gardiner is right about New Orleans being a welcoming place. I’ve been there before and it was lovely and people were non-judgmental. But the fact remains that Louisana (and some other places with bad state laws) just aren’t fit for purpose for the APA. People have been talking about abortion laws, but consider this for a moment: Open carry of firearms in Louisiana is permitted without a permit, as long as the user is at least 18 years of age. So that’s really insane – and the fact that some other southern states like Georgia have similar laws doesn’t make it any less insane. I hope the APA will consider adding sensible gun safety laws when considering which states to ban — this is after all a philosophical association not the OK Corral, and we need to feel safe enough to know that whoever is waving a gun around nearby at least has a permit for it.
This is an important point that should be discussed more.
Wouldn’t gun violence data be a better proxy for safe/unsafe destinations? Some states with strict gun laws include cities with high gun violence rates, for instance because of neighboring states with looser laws or because they include neighborhoods with high poverty and criminal activity. The problem is if we start using actual data as a proxy, some blue/liberal-ish cities don’t come out too well (Detroit and St Louis come to mind but Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, and parts of LA as well). The reason data is a better proxy than laws is the data reflect actual risk, the laws may not.
That said, I agree it’s an important problem that the APA should consider.
I feel like this just plays into the dynamic Gardiner is already talking about. Permitless open carry is allowed in Louisiana. It’s also not allowed in some Southern states (e.g., Florida). It’s also allowed in a ton of non-Southern states: e.g., Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. (And there are states that require permits for handguns but not for long guns, like Maryland and Rhode Island; I’m betting that people openly carrying AR-15s without a permit requirement won’t make Celeste feel any better; it certainly doesn’t make me feel better.) And getting an open-carry permit in most states that require them is laughably easy. Even if this were a legitimate concern for where to have a conference, I don’t think most people are backing out from conferences in Seattle, Ann Arbor, or Madison because of permitless open-carry concerns. So the fixation on Louisiana certainly sounds like looking for problems specifically with a particular locale, rather than generally.
To be clear, I’m a person who’d love to see handguns outlawed and absolutely no loaded firearms carried around in public, concealed or not. But saying that “Louisiana and some other places with bad state laws” aren’t fit for the APA, especially when supported with this particular law, really doesn’t sound convincing to me.
Although I am very sympathetic to your view in principle, I do wish to point out that the OK Corral gunfight was (allegedly) triggered by the attempted enforcement of exactly the sorts of gun regulations one might wish to have in place. So it is inapposite to suggest that “this is after all a philosophical association not the OK Corral.” If it were the OK Corral that wouldn’t change anything!
Open carry of long guns is also legal in New York.
But in both New York and Louisiana, property owners, including hoteliers, can post their property as a prohibited zone.
Concerns like this are much better addressed with meeting conduct rules than with geographical boycotts.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people who haven’t lived in the South, but just see the laws on the books, have a misguided impression of what it is like to actually live there. Just as many other people have a misguided impression of what it’s actually like to live in a supposedly “dangerous” neighborhood of New York or San Francisco.
There are some real harms of these laws. But they are much less impactful on anyone’s actual safety than you think. They are intended primarily as culture war issues, to provoke precisely the reaction they get.
Thanks for saying this.
“they [such laws] are much less impactful on anyone’s actual safety than you think”
— not my experience.
Not my experience either, agree Katy.
In this passage I’m specifically talking about “open carry” laws. My experience was that when Texas changed from requiring a permit to carry guns to allowing permitless open carry, there was nearly zero change in anything. When the legislature made the university change its gun policy from being gun-free in most places to banning gun-free spaces other than on the basis of things like the presence of compressed air canisters (and then treating gun-carrying as a form of protected class, such that professors were required to be willing to meet students for office hours outside their office if their office was a gun-free zone), the actual change in day-to-day experience of being at the university was zero.
Laws around marriage and abortion policy do of course have very real harms for many people, but my point was that people often aren’t good at identifying which culture-war-supported laws have real impacts and which ones are just for the purpose of having a win on the books.
I want to put in a plug for considering more Canadian locations for conferences. I think a lot of people do not realize how many people cannot attend these conferences, and would like to, because they cannot get a visa to enter the US in a sufficiently timely way. There are a lot of graduate students in Canada, for example, who don’t even submit to the US locations, because they know the wait times for visas are in the 2-4 year range. They will be applying to US PhD institutions, sometimes, or going as visitors to research centers there, but in the meantime, are excluded from participating. I know it is the *American* Philosophical Association, but keeping the conferences in the US and not more often in Canada also means enforcing that American part in a way I don’t think we want to, or should.
I tried to search (pretty briefly) if people with just a US Student visa could travel to Canada on that visa, and got mixed info. At least some sources suggest that it depends on whether you’d be able to travel to Canada on an Electronic Travel Authority in the first place, which would be pretty similar for students in Canada traveling to the US. But maybe that’s not right. Does someone with detailed knowledge about Canadian immigration law and visa practices know more? It does seem to be the case that average visa processing time for a visitor visa to Canada is 2-8 months, and I know of many cases of people applying to go to Canada for things like international sporting events having extremely hard times getting visas, even when they are clearly going to compete in the event. So, except for students who are already in Canada, but who are not from visa waiver countries, I’d be hesitant to think this is going to be a huge benefit. But it would be interesting to hear more from people who have detailed knowledge about Canadian immigration laws and visa practices.
Travelling to Canada from the US is much much easier. I am not sure where you are getting those wait times for US visas. I am coming from an MA program where about 80% of our students are non North American and this is an ongoing issue. When I was program chair for the 2022 PSA, I also got a clear view of how many people had to bow out because they could not get the visa. From ongoing discussions with international grad students and postdocs, they can get to Canada much more reliably than they can get to the US. This is for people already living somewhere in North America. And yes, it would range from dozens to maybe a hundred for the larger conferences, where people could get to Canada locations and not the US.
When we have students from places like Iran, they often don’t even apply for a visa for a conference, even for great acceptances. They will get at most one chance to apply, because if they get turned down it means they will get turned down even with a PhD acceptance in hand to a prestigious program. And they rightly assess that they are likely to get turned down for “just” a conference.
Thanks. The wait times I noted were average wait times to get a _Canadaian_ visitor visa, so the sort that a grad student in the US who isn’t from a visa waiver country would need to get, as far as I can tell. (For what it’s worth, it seems that a student from Iran in the US would also need to apply for a Canadain visa to go to a conference in Canada. According to this page, that would apply to a larger number of countries. I’m a big skeptical that there are massively more students in Canada who would need to apply for a US visa than there are students in the US who would need to apply for a Canadian one, though I guess it’s possible. I guess we’d need to know more to know which way is more of a problem. (I’m not at all opposed to having APA events in Canada, for what it’s worth. I’m just not sure that there are not similar visa issues for a good number of people.)
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/visit-canada/entry-requirements-country.html#visaExempt
This may not be a popular post but I am surprised it’s not been said yet and I think it’s about time to mention it. Let me ease into the point. Would we schedule baseball games in the arctic? We wouldn’t. The arctic is not exactly known for baseball; will we deprive the arctic residents from seeing the big game and hearing the crack of the bat if we don’t bring the world’s best to northern Canada or Greenland? Yes we will. But again the arctic isn’t known for baseball. When you scan the American south, and here this point won’t be popular but it needs said: the american south does not exactly scream ‘Leiterrific’. When you look at the disciplines top metrics (top five papers, OUP books, Phil Annual, etc.) there’s not a whole lot of this in the south -this is not to say there aren’t some good philosophers scattered around down there (I am sure there are!) it’s just that this is not exactly Philosophical Shangri-La. The south has a lot to be proud of, from good jazz music, and blues, and a lot that makes the south distinctive (crawdad boils, monster trucks) but we are fooling ourselves I think if we assume that the south should get equal treatment when it comes to philosophy venues on pain of thinking we ought to have the World Series in the Arctic.
What is a crawdad boil? In all seriousness, I agree the South and especially the Deep South (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and around there) is not philosophically strong at all in general (of course there are a few exceptions), isn’t that just a reason we SHOULD have more events there, as the stronger parts of the philosophical community in the US has a duty to evangelize as it were to these more intellectually isolated and deprived areas?
Are you people hearing yourselves?
Imagine talking like this about just any other demographic group or region of the world.
FWIW I’m again 80% this is satire.
> the south should get equal treatment when it comes to philosophy venues
This isn’t about how frequently the APA visits each region, like filling baseball stadium seats.
The topic is official, institutional APA rules and policies against visiting various regions, on the grounds that the APA deems those locations too dangerous or hostile. That is very different.
You might think we are nothing but a bunch of straw-chewing dum dums, philosophically speaking, and still oppose these APA policies.
Also these policies impact Indiana, Detroit, Portland, Milwaukee, Pasadena… See my Facebook post or other comments here.
(Also, tbh, straw-chewing is great for thinking. I love to take select philosophers into the countryside, talk to insightful locals, and chew corn whilst thinking about the world.)
If meeting in person is still deemed essential, why not at least meet in cities with major airports likely to have one-hop and/or shorter flights for most attendees, or good train service making planes avoidable?
That said, no, I don’t want to go anywhere my friends or I are legally considered less than equal. Lots of places have crime or are farther away, but only some have officially, as the policy, deprived certain people of rights. Why visit or spend money there?
I can think of a hundred reasons why one might want to visit those places even if one disapproved of the local laws. That said, yours is a perfectly fine policy to have; it just bears noting how demanding it is — no conference, workshop, invited colloquium, vacation, getaway, wedding, family visits, etc. in nearly half of the states.
Correct. I find this non-visiting policy much less demanding than the demand that others risk being arrested in the restroom or denied urgent medical care. I don’t think it’s okay to expect other people to put up with such things as a condition of participating in the annual conference of their profession.
This would be bad even if we randomly chose a tiny number of people to assume a little risk: yes, you should spend hundreds of dollars minimum to travel for your job, but if you’re one of the unlucky few, please be careful about being caught in a public restroom or denied care in a medical emergency. The fact that it’s targeted discrimination makes it worse. Not picking that destination is so much easier, in a world where plenty of better destinations await.
Do you think NOWAR and this year the PPE society wronged their prospective participants/members by expecting them to travel to New Orleans for their annual conference? This is an honest question; I’m trying to appreciate how far the argument extends. Like I said, yours is a perfectly fine policy. It’s not mine (obviously, I’ve lived in red states for over six years), but I understand why you don’t want to travel there.
Florida and Utah seem to be the states in which trans people risk being arrested in the restroom: https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/nondiscrimination/bathroom_bans
I would want to consult with trans people who live in Florida and Utah, about whether their ability to participate in APA conferences would be better helped by holding them out-of-state where they might be more confident in public spaces, or by holding them in private buildings in-state so that they don’t have to deal with airports or long road trips to get there, or whether there are other issues that my framing of the problem misses that override either of these.
I expect this group likely has some differing opinions, but it is their opinions that need to be centered here, especially since they are the ones most affected by a policy that says that *all* meetings will be out of state, as opposed to an out of state person who might occasionally be affected by *one* meeting being in that state.
Something that looks like a helpful accommodation for one group sometimes ends up being more harmful for another, and sometimes even for that very group that you thought you were helping.
“That said, no, I don’t want to go anywhere my friends or I are legally considered less than equal.” <—- THIS!!! I along with many LGBTQ+ friends are obviously not thrilled about going to the Southern states, including Louisiana, with discriminatory anti-gay and anti-trans state laws. As much as Gardiner says New Orleans is welcoming, which might track with her experience, the STATE in which New Orleans is in is one where marginalized APA members (especially gay and trans) will not feel particularly safe. Examples:Although discrimination on account of sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited in employment as a result of the ruling in Bostok vs Clayton Co., this protection (while it covers employment law in Louisiana) does NOT extend to housing, health care, education, credit or public accommodations. So an APA member could literally be discriminated against legally in getting a hotel room or if you need to go to the hospital. Not cool. So no, I am afraid to go to many places in the South and for GOOD REASON, and I am hardly alone in thinking this. All of this defending the South (particularly Louisiana, Alabama) as receiving discrimination from the ‘Northerners’ (which by the way is an antequated geographical designation – have you been to Wyoming? Montana?) overlooks the fact that there is a very good reason for many APA members to want nothing to do with Southern states in so far as they continue to have laws that literally denigrate APA members. I am happy for people who enjoy their lives in the deep South, but APA members should NOT be made to feel (as some of the posters in this thread are doing) as though they are perpetuating ‘Northern’ anti-south bias by simply not wanting to go somehwere where you’re not properly recognized!
This sounds very reasonable. Sadly I don’t think the message is getting through. being gay and more generally LGBTQ+ in the south is dangerous, dangerous enough to make it fair enough not to want to go there. Here are some reasons, starting with Alabama. Alabama passed one of the most severe laws concerning transgender healthcare. The “Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act” makes it a felony for healthcare providers to offer gender-affirming treatments, such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy, to minors. Violators could face up to 10 years in prison. That’s not great. Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill (this is the “Don’t Say Gay” law) restricts discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, particularly in elementary school settings. this one was originally aimed at younger grades, but the law was expanded to include all K-12 education. Not ideal. Tennessee passed the nation’s first law restricting drag performances in public spaces, defining drag performances in such a way that many see it as a direct attack on gender expression and LGBTQ+ gatherings (not good). Arkansas was the first state in the U.S. to pass a law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, even overriding a veto by the governor. Louisiana lawmakers (which have similar anti-trans legislation) introduced legislation in 2023 that would have required schools to inform parents if a student wanted to be referred to by a different name or pronouns. The bill was part of broader efforts by conservatives in the state to limit what they consider “woke” policies in schools. There is a difference between perpetuating unfair stereotypes about large groups of people (as some people do about the South wrongfully) and simply being a person who doesn’t feel safe in an area becuase of the literal laws in those states undermine that person’s dignity. I hope posters on this thread will stop being so dismissive of this perspective. you can be reasonably afraid to go to Southern states because of their often times barbaric laws without , through this fear, being ‘dismissive’ of southerners.
For the record, I am absolutely not dismissive of those concerns and I do not believe Georgi is either. In fact, she explicitly acknowledges that many ‘southern’ states have repressive, marginalizing, discriminatory laws that make life more difficult for minorities (and pregnant people), which, to her, calls for solidarity rather than avoidance.
Like I said above, avoiding unsafe states is a perfectly fine—if demanding—personal policy. So, not being dismissive. It’s another question whether it should be *APA* policy though, given the sweeping scope it has, as Georgi shows. Another issue is conflating the existence of laws (or deceptive statistics) with the actual lived experiences of minorities in these unsafe states. Having recently fled Florida for not wholly unpolitical reasons, where I taught at a notably queer friendly college, I would wager that an APA meeting held in Tampa would be a safe if not safer (and a lot more fun) than one held in one of the major metropolises. At the same time, I am concerned about my former LGBTQ+ students—they really do live in a state that is getting less hospitable for them because of DeSantis. Having been a personal target of no less than Christopher Rufo, I know how unpleasant the situation is—and I’m not even a member of a minority. It truly sucks, in Florida and elsewhere. But none of this justifies the attitudes toward the ‘south’ that is implicit or explicit in many comments above or the sweeping APA policy (IMO).
Nicolas your points here are well taken, though I have to dispute one thing with you. You are saying that Gardiner is not being dismissive toward the gay/LGBTQ+ perspective of being fearful of the south and especially deep south. I am not a FB friend of Georgi but the evidence is clear on a number of public facebook posts she has made in the past few days since the Daily Nous article appeared that she is openly mocking this perspective. For example, in a public post she said “The south is *so* dangerous for gay people. A monkey could fall on you” (she said this advertising some boulder climbing event that was gay friendly). I am encouraged to see she has revised this post in response to a comment that said “Just being honest this doesn’t read well Georgi. I would highly advise revising your caption to something more considerate toward queer ppl who still struggle to feel safe here in the south.” The above is all publicly visible. Thankfully Georgi did revise this, which is to her credit, but the original post is exactly the kind of harmful perspective towards people who are afraid of the south for good reasons, which I think we should see less of. And this point is compatible with also acknowledging that lazy stereotypes about Southerners generally are also problematic, which Gardiner is right to press against.
Note that all of these policies you mention specifically target children, apart from Tennessee’s ban on drag performances. Queer adults might reasonably feel disrespected by these bills and want to boycott these states in retaliation. But we have to remember that queer children in these states are the ones who are the victims, and we should be consulting the caregivers of these children about whether these laws make them more hesitant to travel out-of-state for work trips.
To impose the policy without that explicit consultation is in fact to be dismissive of the people who are being harmed by the laws in question.
I share this perspective, at least regarding Louisiana specifically, though I think it’s less clear that the situation is as bad in Georgia and Alabama. This is why I find the original post highlighting New Orleans surprising, as Louisiana is (given its unique history with racism) is in some wayas uniquely problematic. To see why, one needs only reflect on the history of David Duke and his prominence politically in Louisiana. The fact that as recently as 2016 Duke’s clout was enough to allow him to surpass the support threshold to qualify for the debate stage in his ultimately failed senate campaign should be disturbing. The Duke ideology is dangerous obviously and sadly the fact it has had the uptake it has had in Louisiana aligns with what are already disspointingly racist facts about the state as recently as 2021 (see this article in the Louisiana Illuminoator: https://lailluminator.com/2021/05/05/louisianas-racism-isnt-confined-to-history-its-also-present-today-tammy-c-barney/)
These statistics are unambiguously a disgrace. What should we conclude from it? We should conclude nothing at all about every single individual Louisianans. Some members of this state will be from marginalized groups and they will be discriminated against themselves. Some, such as Gardner, claim to like this troubled state. Each person’s experiences should be validated as their own. The fact I want to raise is that Louisiana is quite simply, objectively and on the whole given its laws, dangerous for various minority groups, one reason I would be terrified to spend any considerable time there. Frankly, I would not feel comfortable or safe driving through the state. The APA has its own prerogatives for which states to ban for the safety of its members when it comes to conferences. Hopefully Louisiana will continue to stay on the ‘no host site’ list until structural changes are made both in the laws of the state and in the statistics that show how those laws are implemented.
Yikes. I looked in to this and the evidence here is pretty clear and damning. So I think that the APA’s safety based considerations they appeal to in assessing suitability of host venues needs to take into account that (as I’ve now learned) Louisiana has been ranked the most dangerous or nearly the most dangerous state in the US for 34 consecutive years running. This is based on FBI statistics that look at ‘violent crimes‘ (homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) and ‘property crimes‘ (arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). It makes me think that even if some laws were changed, as some posters have proposed, we’d need to wait until actual violent crime and property crime statistics changed in Louisiana before encouraging APA members to go there for a full conference, which might be four to five days or so in this environment. https://www.ktalnews.com/our_environment/why-louisiana-consistently-ranked-most-dangerous-and-is-climate-change-to-blame/
Maybe the APA should partner with law enforcement to select safe locations. Maybe it could also seek a Raytheon sponsorship (they got a perfect HRC rating).
Seriously though, poverty is bad. APA members are welcome to help the underprivileged people of Louisiana (and other poor states) if they are sincerely concerned about their situation. They can easily find organizations to donate to.
The point about helping the underprivileged people of Louisiana is a good one. This could be a useful charity initiative by the APA. Do you have any specific suggestions how to do best do it? A brief look and I found a link for FeedingLouisiana, which helps to feed people there https://www.feedinglouisiana.org/donate Other ideas?. As for what to do about helping change hearts/minds (and not just feed bellies) of some of the prejudiced thinking there, that is more complicated and I don’t know what the APA could reasonably do, other than to organize a knowledge service initiative where critical reasoning could be taught, maybe in an APA online summer school offered to Louisianans. Other ideas welcome.
I confess that, technically, I lack first-hand experience with Southern states with the exception of having visited Disney World with my family briefly when I was a child. I remember that as pleasant. That said, the posts on this thread have I think, for the first time, really brought to discussion publicly what one might call the ‘geopolitics’ of professional philosophy. I have seen some important arguments on both sides of the original post’s position. At this point, though, I want to at least acknowledge one argument that has emerged and which is indeed alarming, and that concerns the state of Louisiana, as Terrified above notes. So The US News and World Report looks at a wide range of factors in assessing the ‘worst state in America’, all things considered, and indeed in 2024 Louisiana was ranked the worst state in America for the second consecutive year. This is based on considerations not only to do with violent crime (where Louisiana is also the worst) but also health care, education, economy, internet, roads and public safety. As David Wallace noted previously in a post in this thread, the APA can reasonably take measures to be selective in its cities selected for host venues. Given Louisiana’s ranking as the most dangerous and, more generally, the worst state in America with reference to a wide list of rankings, it would be in my opinion very surprising and confusing indeed if Louisana were selected to host an APA conference. This would involve literally choosing the most dangerous state, the so called ‘worst’ state by many metrics and a state that as some posters have pointed out has laws that demean APA members. https://www.brproud.com/news/louisiana-news/louisiana-ranked-as-the-worst-state-in-us-report-shows/?ipid=promo-link-block1
If anyone wants to read more details about this, including my reasoning, please see my Facebook post.
Most of my reasoning is in the comments under the post.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/Yr3jBq1eNzEZF2EQ/
It’s good the Daily Nous started this discussion and I very much hope the APA stands firm against calls to loosen the measures its taken to protect its vulnerable members against the laws of states (South or North) that don’t respect the dignity of its members. The discussion in this thread has led me to reflect on a question I think is very relevant to, and runs parallel with, the debate going on here, which is whether it might just be appropriate to ‘cancel’ certain states. Let me explain. Gardiner’s crusade here seems to be to look to the good qualities of Southern states and encourage the APA to visit there despite the frankly socially backwards laws in some of these states. elle a droit à son opinion! However, when it comes to people who have some good qualities, such as good music or art, despite morally objectionable behavior, it is within the bounds of what is reasonable to ‘cancel’ these people and not to platform them. A similar issue arises here for states like Louisiana which given their laws (morally objectionalbe and demeaning, as some posters here have noted) it might be reasonable to simply cancel Louisiana like we might cancel, say, Kevin Spacey, Kanye West, JK Rowling and Shia LaBouff. Just as we might like some of their art but we for moral reasons don’t support them or buy their albums or movie as the thought goes we might privately appreciate New Orleans jazz but not support holding events that benefit a state like Louisiana with its morally degrading laws.
Louisiana has unjust laws. It also has the highest poverty rate and the second largest proportion of Black people in the country. It might be worth considering whom ‘canceling’ benefits. Chances are the people you’d be canceling are not exactly like JK Rowling or Kevin Spacey.
You know, I was on the fence about whether this was satire. Then I read the pseudonym, and all doubt disappeared.
Helpful thread. One idea that’s not been proposed yet, and which is probably worth considering as a kind of happy middle ground between Gardner’s proposal and the position of those who are fearful of the dangers of Louisiana (both legal and in terms of actual violence) is for the APA to consider hosting the event in Louisiana under specific conditions where some funding is on hand for private security, which is less expensive for large events than one would think. It is regularly used for large concerts and athletic events, and given the dangers of Louisiana there are plenty of private security companies already which would be viable, such as https://nolaprotection.com. This I should not doesn’t address the very serious worries about dignity in the laws of Louisiana, especially in the case of public accommodation laws. I don’t know what to say about these other than that I sympathize with those who would not go to Louisiana on that basis. But for those specifically worried about the serious violence there, APA reasonable security measures could be a way forward, including private security at at least each panel talk and also guarding exits.
I appreciate your thinking of safety here, but this isn’t practical. For one thing, APA conference participants, under your proposal, would be safe at the venue, but will still need to walk in the streets of the city, and in some cases to drive through and lodge in Louisiana and encounter the known violence reported by some in the thread. But secondly, the NolaSecurity example you mention above will do nothing about the public accommodation issue, where gay/trans people can be discriminated against for basic things like accommodation. No security guard will be able to be useful for this I am afraid. There are other legal issues in the state that render APA members discriminated against which the private security solution will be ineffective against.
I was about to say something tongue and cheek about the ridiculousness of the very idea of having security guards at APA events in certain dangerous states (I mean what is this anyway?) but on second thought I am starting to think it is a good idea, not only in Louisiana but elsewhere in the South (as well as in some other states) where gun laws are dangerous. Here is the thought: we already have private security guards at nearly all large events like concerts, and also at large political events, such as both the republican and democratic conventions. So there is a precedent for this, and if APA members had the knowledge that they could be guarded, at least from the point of the venue, from the ordinary public from dangerous states, this would go some way toward alleviating worries about risk (and in these states we should also hopefully consider metal detectors at the conference venue). I also think the APA should consider booking hotels large enough to accommodate anyone coming to the APA at all, so that anyone traveling to these states for the conference will be protected by armed guard throughout not only the conference but also through their accommodation. This limits risk only to driving through these states, or getting from the airport to the conference hotel.
Nothing says progressive politics like hiring a private security firm to protect overwhelmingly white philosophers in a majority black city.
this is a good matter to bring attention to and there is much to discuss and think about.
that said, if there’s a narrative that makes me want to barf more than the “why won’t those darn coastal elites be nice to ‘the south’/appalachia?’” i don’t know what it is.
i want to be clear, i am not a coastal elite. i’m neither coastal nor elite. i attended public school in one of the rural non-southern full ban states and all publics postsecondary. it is also entirely clear to me that my lack of elite status has negatively affected my prospects post-grad school. i’m 50 and have never owned a house or even a condo and that’s not because i live in nyc (or in a city) and it’s a good idea to rent.
having established all this, the problem is not that there aren’t cultural and class divisions rooted in geography in academia and the country more broadly. there are! the problem is thinking that the issue is north/south. the problem is not regional. it is urban/rural. “the south” is not special. appalachia is not special. there’s not some cultural divide between north and south. it’s an economic divide of urban wealth/rural poverty (of course there’s lots of urban poverty too but that doesn’t fit the narrative either does it?).
the narrative of the aggrieved (white) southerner or appalachian is a myth to the extent that it is about anything other than the same economic problems that plague the rest of the rural u.s. it’s been a political goldmine for jd vance and it plays on the same manufactured sense of victimhood that the lost cause narrative does and that the rather reprehensible “intellectuals” of the so-called southern agrarian movement (i suggest reading the intro to 1930’s “i’ll take my stand”) takes as their center. stop giving ‘the south’—a nebulous concept at its strongest—a special place here.
on a personal level after two recent years living in the southern appalachian zone, i tend to think that the tolerability of living in ‘the south’ is in inverse proportion to the degree to which white people are the dominant ethic group. and i’m a white guy.
yeah i noticed this too. the original post tried to frame things as if there is some big northern states, southern states divide. not true. it’s urban/rural as you say. there was a time that it was northern/southern, but that time was the damned civil war mason/dixon line. i think we should be gentle on the original poster Gardiner however as she is not from the states and as far as I understand only recently moved to Tulane and is probably trying to defend the area. ‘northern elites’ langauge though is literally nonsense in the US. the highly educated folks in america who get labeled elites line up with urban areas, one of the most highly educated and elite of which is the southern california area around LA. This is geographically far south in america. and as some posters have said before, there are rural areas in the north that, for example, the APA is not itching to go, for example, north dakota.
agree completely about gardiner’s intent and likely familiarity with these tropes. the narrative pervades the country so much that it’s part of the air we breathe.
It’s worth noting that the prompt for the post was New Orleans, not the best example of *white* *rural* poverty. But that point doesn’t fit your narrative, does it?
i suspect that the argument is that it is the largely the white population of e.g. louisiana that dictates these reprehensible laws and that it is their profits that will suffer due to boycotts like this. that’s a different issue than the safety of conference attendees of course but both are valid. if reactionary state legislatures get pushback in the way of decreased tourist dollars, perhaps they will soften some of these positions. but the apa is never going to have that effect by itself. perhaps a more effective strategy would be widely publicize the apa boycott in order to try to get other associations (and not just academic ones!) on board.
i will say though that the notion that southern universities and colleges are widely looked down upon also seems wrong to me. and not just wrong but a kind of misdirection that misses the real issue.
if we consider uga, georgia tech, duke, unc chapel hill, uva, washington and lee, davidson, rice, ut austin, tulane, ut knoxville, vanderbilt, washington-st. louis, emory and so forth southern schools, it’s not clear to me that there’s any sense that these are third tier schools. in fact, i’d so far as to state that every single one of these schools (and others!) have better notably reputations than all but two universities in the intermountain and pacific northwest (u washington and uc boulder). both of these schools are of course flagship public schools. i struggle to think of any privates in these states (washington, oregon, idaho, montana, wyoming, nevada even, new mexico, utah, the dakotas) that get close to davidson, much less rice or vanderbilt (maybe reed?).
the issue again is that it is the “provincial” universities that are considered third tier both by academics and by the college-attending public. so while we can certainly say that there are regional schools in the south with less than stellar reputations, we can that say about almost every state in the union. in addition, it is not the case that the proportion of regional schools with mediocre reputations is higher in the south than it is in the midwest or west (excluding california).
all of this is to day that again i think the issue is being misrepresented in the claim that somehow southern schools aren’t getting their due. what aren’t getting their due are rural, provincial, regional schools throughout the nation. again, the south isn’t special.
Perhaps the original commenter isn’t the same Professor Gardiner (?), for I confess my ignorance of this philosopher’s oeuvr, but it seems to me that Professor Gardiner has only been in New Orleans for a couple of months. Nevertheless, it appears that Professor Gardiner has only recently established residence in New Orleans, and yet she articulates her perspectives with the fervor of a seasoned native. I was born there, and as the kids say today, our culture is not your costume. For whatever reason, there appears to be a desire to “claim” New Orleans and to speak for our State to “outsiders”, a tendency that strikes me as somewhat fetishistic, although I refrain from speculating upon its underlying motivations. As a native (no longer living in NOLA as of approx. 7 years ago), I believe the situation is, as so many things are, a mix of the perspectives expressed in the heated disucssion here. I find the position of the APA to be entirely judicious; however, despite Louisiana’s manifold virtues, as elucidated by astute commentators like Scared above, it is my firm belief that it is neither Professor Gardiner’s prerogative nor that of anyone else to pressure vulnerable LGBTQIA+ people (in the age of Donald Trump, no less!) to do anything that makes them feel unsafe, nor to preach to them about the risks they ought to be prepared to accept.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
(I think Professor Gardiner is new to New Orleans but not to the South, FWIW.)
I suspect you didn’t read the policy or my criticisms of it.
The APA placed New Orleans on the “no go” list because the city police force didn’t have a LGBTQ liaison office.
I am arguing that this is a bad rule.
This rule also took out Pasadena, Salt Lake City, Honolulu. (The other rule about police reporting removed Miami, Tampa, Savannah, and Portland.)
One doesn’t need to live in these places to criticise these rules. Also, note that these rules aren’t based on crime rates or any attempt at objective measures of safety.
I am objecting to APA policies, and the alienating, insensitive wording in their documents. Replying to this by saying “our culture is not your costume” is just weird.
I am not pressuring people to do things that make them feel unsafe. (Although many of these fears are simply xenophobia.) I am pointing out that the GSC introduced bad policies. Local (and perhaps national) LGBTQ groups are now looking into this, to see whether they can find precedents for these kinds of policies. I am not the one with the extreme view here; the APA’s policy is extreme.
> Professor Gardiner’s prerogative nor that of anyone else to pressure vulnerable LGBTQIA+ people
I recommend that you google where the major national LGBTQ groups (The National LGBTQ task force, etc.) met this year. Yep: Miami, New Orleans… All the places that I am being criticised for pointing out are safe enough to visit. Note, too, that my arguments are based on analysis of crime data, which is my research area.
I am a citizen and I have lived in the south for a long time, and I have contributed a lot of time and effort into LGBTQ community and activist groups here. But that is none of that is a requirement for political speech. Indeed, it isn’t even relevant.
1/5
I get the sense that people who are criticising me haven’t read the actual APA policy, the APA arguments for it, or my arguments against it.
So let me explain: If this policy just concerned ‘public accommodation’ laws (such as bathroom access laws), I would not have said anything. If the APA had consulted with LGBTQ groups in the affected area, or if any APA documentation (submitted arguments, minutes, etc) suggested any acknowledgement that LGBTQ people live in the affected areas, my attitudes would be very different.
This is not the case.
Two of the three conditions in the LGBTQ-based policy concern law enforcement. That is, they are about the police force. This means that they are concerned with ‘stranger danger’ crime. And (as far as I can tell by looking through the available crime data and the APA documentation about the policy) this is not justified by any crime statistics.
But those two conditions had a big effect: Of the 31 potential cities, the three LGBTQ-based requirements initially placed 13 cities on the “no go” list. Only three of those cities (Detroit, Charlotte, and Milwaukee) were on the “no go” list because they failed the public accommodations requirement. (That is, the requirement that might actually make a difference to APA members.) The other ten (Honolulu, Kansas City, Miami, Pasadena, New Orleans, Portland, Salt Lake City, Savannah, St Louis, and Tampa) were on the “no” list because the city police force didn’t have an LGBTQ liaison officer or because they didn’t meet a specific crime reporting condition.
Not hosting an academic conference in a city because that police force doesn’t have a liaison officer seems like the epitome of white feminism.
(People are jumping to defend this policy, and criticising me for criticising it, but I don’t think they actually read the policy!)
2/5
Meanwhile, the idea that some cities in the USA are too dangerous to visit because of fears of ‘stranger danger’ crime seems xenophobic.
The APA exclusionary conditions are not themselves about crime rates. They are instead details about the police. As I note in comments above, I suspect one could not find data about the relevant crime rates. This is because almost all hate crime (as is typical of violent crime) is acquaintance crime. The bulk of it occurs in homes, workplaces, and online. APA members visiting a city do not face these risks, and so overall crime rates (or hate crime rates) aren’t the relevant data.
And, anyway, as I note above, other states and cities (most notably Illinois, where Chicago is) have higher rates of reported hate crimes, compared to Louisiana.
Stranger danger is political. It is based on stereotypes, not statistics.
(As many of you know, the uses and misuses of crime data, especially gender based crime, is one of my main research areas. In my view, it is good that the APA policy doesn’t actually use crime data, because crime data are very hard to use well, and people usually mess it up. We just don’t have good crime data. But I do love analysing crime data and social statistics.)
On crime statistics, by the way, the biggest crime risk to LGBTQ (and all other) APA participants is almost certainly male APA members who have been drinking. I’d be shocked if it was anything else. Rather than hiring armed guards, maybe the APA could print some flyers about the dangers of getting drunk and committing acquaintance rape? That would be cheaper and more effective.
3/5
A few of you mention boycotts. It is worth emphasising that neither the LGBTQ-based policy (introduced by the Graduate Student Council) nor the pregnancy-based considerations (which are not a formal, written policy yet) are presented as a boycott.
In my view, this is good. If we see ourselves as engaged in a boycott, we risk reducing our political power to that of consumers. As consumers, philosophers power is measly. There aren’t many of us and we aren’t big spenders. Our place in the hotels and restaurants would quickly be replaced by much larger, wealthier groups, such as corporations.
Instead, our main power is our ability to discuss ideas. We can facilitate discussions and offer perspectives. When philosophers engage with the public, we can do good. And, in doing so, we can also learn so much from locals, and expand our understanding.
Thus I think it is a mistake for the APA to boycott, as a political stance: It would replace our power and our calling — that is, discussing ideas — with something much weaker, namely our purchasing power.
But, anyway, this isn’t a boycott. At least, not according to the APA’s documentation. People raised a lot of topics in the thread, from access to gender affirming medical care to laptop ownership rates(!). But they aren’t relevant to the APA’s formal position. Indeed those kinds of considerations seem like *good* reasons to visit, because philosophy is a social good.
Relatedly, overall assessments of the desirability, liveability, politics, or intellectual merits of the various states (or where people are from, or what childhoods are like in various states) felt like a distraction. That isn’t what this policy or my criticisms of it are about.
4/5
The APA’s LGBTQ-based policy + post-Dobbs consideration is best understood as about three topics:
a.) safety wrt pregnancy
b.) access to necessary public services, such as bathroom
c.) safety wrt to hate crimes against LGBTQ members
As many people point out above, using consideration (a) seems to massively outweigh the interests of a few members (namely, the pregnant ones who don’t live in a Dobbs-affected state and who want to travel to an APA conference during their pregnancy, and who either encounter a problem or who decide to not attend for fears of encountering a problem) over the neglected interests of a *lot* of other people, namely all the APA members in the relevant states. And those people are, of course, the ones who are most affected by the Dobbs decision in every other way too.
Consideration c is not justified by crime statistics. But even if it was, the actual policy is wholly ineffective, since it just stipulates two internal policy considerations that the police need to meet. It has no bearing on APA member safety.
I discuss more of this reasoning, at considerable length, in the Facebook thread (linked) above. I encourage people to read it.
In that thread, I express a lot of frustration. I also deride the policy and the associated APA paperwork (check the thread for the links). In my view, it warrants that derision. The APA punches down. The documentation is alienating towards large areas of the USA. The GSC called the entire state of Missouri ”severely dangerous” on APA letterhead! It suggests paying money to LGBTQ APA members who choose to attend a conference in the grandfathered-in locations (namely, Portland and New Orleans), as compensation for choosing to go there. If you do read it, then note that wherever the GSC document claims to protect all APA members, remember that it only means a subset of them, since it seems to overlook those of us who actually live in the relevant regions.
5/5
As I express in my long thread (which I hope people read), if 2/3rds of the necessary conditions involve law enforcement, you didn’t consult any LGBTQ+ groups in the affected areas, the reasoning and resulting policy don’t even attempt to reflect actual, relevant crime risks in the slightest, despite claiming to be about crime risks, and the combined policies weren’t publicised even though they “no go” more than half the potential conference cities, the policy warrants reviewing.
I also express concerns about how the APA can hope to represent the interests of departments in the affected areas, especially concerning graduate recruitment and protecting the departments against closure threats, given these policies and attitudes. I think this is a far bigger concern than conference location. (Personally, APA conference location seems far less significant than the offensive way the documents were written, the shunning of large parts of the country within the APA’s remit, and conflicts between the reasoning in the policy and the APA’s role of protecting the interests of philosophy departments in the USA.)
Please see the thread for my further arguments and reasoning.
Having just read this thread in full, there is a lot to digest here. One point I want to note is that it’s not particularly useful to be situating the discussion about APA policy in connection with New Orleans specifically. The elephant in the room here is that New Orleans will be very at least a foot further under water by 2040, just 15 years from now, worse than that in 2050, and that even takes into account the post-Katrina investments. The famous 2019 Nature paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z does not paint a pretty picture for New Orleans, and based on this and other of our best science, there is no point in much further investment in New Orleans as this city is on an unavoidable path to being completely underwater in just 60 or so years.
https://earth.org/data_visualization/sea-level-rise-by-2100-new-orleans/
Not all coastal or US or Southern cities have this kind of outlook so it will be better to either focus on Louisiana venues potentially far north of NOLA or look elsewhere for better reference points.
It’s not just the global sea levels rising that are a problem here for New Orleans, it’s also that Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are collapsing, and this makes the area more vulnerable even than otherwise to the rising sea levels. A bit of looking around turned up a paper in Nature on this (by Tulane scientists no less!). I think the APA should consider what it can do to help APA members based at universities where relocation will become increasingly relevant. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45487-6
I check in on this blog periodically after being a philosophy major at Tulane in the 90s, and I am surprised to see everyone talking about New Orleans! I think the fear of flooding above is a bit overstated, given that it is possible to build large dams which I hope they do. But anyway, what I think is actually from the point of view of people who have lived here along time actually worth being worried about (I don’t know if it’s common enough for the APA to have a policy about it, that’s up to them) but there is a New Orleans serial killer who has been released recently (Warren Harris Junior). Look him up. He’s a nasty piece of work (killed at least three back in the late 70s) and they’ve decided to turn him loose in the city. Great! :/ I remember hearing stories about him before (they called him the Bayou Butcher). I hope he relocates before the crusaders on this site bring the APA down to the Big Easy.
Just a quick fact check on this. Harris was not known as the Bayou Butcher. He was known as the French Quarter Stabber. You are correct that he’s been released in the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Harris_(serial_killer)
I offer a consideration from a Latin American philosophical perspective. Mexico and Colombia have recently decriminalized abortion, but other countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador and Peru have complete ban. I know many will not wish to go to these countries for Philosophical conferences, because we disagree in principle with these laws, and even if we are not, let us say, at risk of a medical procedure. Consider why some of us will not support sport in Saudi Arabia, even if we are not subject to laws criminalizing homosexuality there. Likewise, I will not attend World Congress of Filosofia in Saudi Arabia, if it is to be held there, out of same principle. The is not a fear of the risk to my safety. Now, to the point, are we ‘xenophobic’ by wishing not to attend philosophy conference in Nicaragua, El Salvador or Peru? Saudi Arabia? Or are we justified in taking this stance as one of principle not safety. I think we are, I proudly will not attend philosophical conference in Nicaragua until they change their law, and World Congress shall not to go Saudi until they change theirs. If this is in agreement as reasonable, then we may set debate of crime statistic aside in case of New Orleans and Louisiana and consider a parallel argument of principle. Must those who take principled stance against laws of this state be demonized as xenophobic or can they be dignified as protesting these areas? This is a separate issue from whether the APA policy as stated is correct, but it is an issue needing addressed because it is important not to demonize as xenophobic those who shall not support , of principle and setting aside personal concern for safety, areas with laws that undermine dignity of some of us, of more vulnerable of us.
Thank you, Robusto. Your reasoning is both helpful and sound. It is crucial for the APA, like any learned society, to consider the well-being of its most vulnerable members and to accurately identify who these individuals are. In this case, this includes LGBTQ+ members who face discriminatory and demeaning laws in certain U.S. states. These vulnerable APA members should not be compelled to attend conferences in such states, nor should they be made to feel ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic’ for choosing not to attend.
While it is true that some individuals from southern states may be inconvenienced by having to travel out of state for the APA conference each year, their interests should not take precedence over those of more vulnerable members who should not be forced to endure legal discrimination in order to participate.
One might point out that some APA members choose to live in states where they face discriminatory laws. That is their right, and they have the agency to make that choice. However, by the same token, LGBTQ+ members should not be pressured by the APA to subject themselves to such discrimination simply to attend a conference.
> endure legal discrimination
I don’t know how many times I need to repeat this: The existing APA policy isn’t about legal discrimination.
Please read the actual APA policy before you defend it.
Worried about a straw-person here: “I don’t think the American Philosophical Association should be thumbing its nose at *American* cities. We are part of America too.”
Electing not to go somewhere on grounds aimed at protecting its members needn’t involve ‘thumbing its nose’? That’s very uncharitable to the APA. All cities are trivially part of America. Is your position that no American city is such that the APA has a right to, in the interests of its members, not host there – else it be thumbing its nose at that city? David Wallace in a post here was exactly right in saying “Of course it’s reasonable for the APA to consider practical, safety and dignity
implications when choosing where to hold an event. It shouldn’t hold a
conference in Alaska, or in a state that has passed a law requiring women to cover their hair; depending on the details, it shouldn’t hold conferences in states with sufficiently egregious anti-LGTBQ laws.” The reasonableness of the above should really not be in dispute here. The quoted passage from the original poster George Gardiner seems as far as I can tell not to not acknowledge Wallace’s obvious and trivial point.
I really don’t think people read my criticisms and arguments before criticising me for making them. Maybe this is my fault for posting my reasoning on Facebook (linked in the DN post) rather than directly to Daily Nous.
I am not criticising the APA for having *any* such policies.
I am criticising the *specific* policies and the reasons given for those policies, including especially the fact that (1) the APA wording (about which members it is protecting) only makes sense if they think no LGBTQ people live in those cities (they completely overlook us in their documents; the sentences are literally false once you remember that we exist), (2.) they didn’t consult with any relevant groups in the affected areas before deciding on the criteria, and (3.) the criteria is largely based on stranger-danger crime worries, which doesn’t reflect actual risks to LGBTQ people.
As I note in many places, most of the cities were disqualified based on two criteria about their police force. And the five criteria combined remove a *huge* percentage (well over half) of the overall potential cities.