The Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) took place last week in New York City.
How was it?
In a post (that’s mainly about the interesting subject of the politics intrinsic to philosophy as such; worth discussing separately), Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) writes:
This past week, I was in NYC for the eastern APA after an absence of 6-8 years. Leaving aside the awful conference hotel (the Sheraton midtown has a litany of problems), it’s a nice way to catch up with academic friends or hatch plans with the academic press. But in the fields that I work in, the program is not as strong as the more specialist events. I was a bit sad about the many closed sessions. And with costs involved it’s no surprise that attendance is much lower than during the period when it was a jobs fair back in the day. Sadly, it seems academic book publishing is in a tailspin not unlike the rest of the humanities.
Comments from other attendees of the conference are welcome, as are ideas for changes or improvements to it.
One of the apparently main comments in the paragraph from Schliesser is that a large general conference does not have stuff that is as ‘strong’ as specialist conferences. (“But in the fields that I work in, the program is not as strong as the more specialist events.”) Why think there is anything to be done about that? That seems like a fine and normal state of affairs.
Did you know that you don’t need to post an uninformed comment on a blog to be the change you seek? The APA welcomes your comments!
https://www.apaonline.org/general/?type=CONTACT
And added bonus of contacting the APA directly, or simply perusing their webpage, is that you may learn more about your concern, for example, why some sessions this year were closed and why the hotel selected was selected. The background in these cases would allow one to see that the APA is doing its very best for its members collectively.
Remember how much we hate it when students bother us without reading the syllabus? Please read the syllabus. Or better yet, become an active APA member.
unnecessarily rude
I was going to humor. Regrets if my swing didn’t land there for you.
Hi Jan. No worries. I will note, though, that public discussion has certain kinds of informational benefits that private emailing does not in this context. For example:
– someone who did not attend this year’s meeting may learn something about it from the discussion of those who did that is relevant to whether (and how) they should attend in the future
– someone might find out whether there are particular meeting policies or practices they should learn more about
– someone who experienced a problem at the meeting might find it useful to learn whether others did as well
– someone with ideas for the meeting might find it useful gauge support or opposition those ideas
– The APA may find the space useful for clearing up any misconceptions or answering questions about the meeting discussed here or circulating elsewhere online.
etc.
Or someone might want to post an idea in a public forum so that the APA officers can see all the “likes” it gets, and decide accordingly. To wit:
https://www.visitorlando.com/blog/post/character-dining-orlando/
Why yes, now that you mention it, people are certainly interested in learning about the top places to dine with philosophy’s characters.
What are closed sessions?
Sessions that are cancelled.
I don’t think so. There were workshop sessions, which were open only to participants in said workshops.
I guess we’re supposed to click the link above and ask there.
I also had this question, and I did click the above link, looked around a bit, and didn’t find anything about “closed sessions” on any of the pages about meetings (either in general or the Eastern APA.) Of course, it’s possible I missed something. Because I live outside the US now, I don’t go to APA meetings that often, but it seems like it would be a bad development to have any significant number of sessiosn not open to all conference members. It would be interesting to have a discussion on this here, if anyone has information on it.
“The Eastern Division of the APA is piloting a new session type at this meeting. In addition to traditional colloquium and symposium sessions, the 2025 meeting will feature Papers in Progress Workshop Sessions. These sessions are designed to bring philosophers together in cohorts to workshop papers together, and intended to give philosophers a chance to workshop a paper that is in the very early stages of development. These are closed sessions for participants. If you are interested in being a participant in a workshop cohort, please consider submitting an abstract for the 2026 meeting. The call for submissions will go out in the late spring after the submission deadline for colloquium and symposium sessions.”
The paragraph Martin Peterson posted is on the Program, which is a PDF available on the Eastern Meeting page.
I have no idea whether it would be a good or bad thing if there were a bunch of Closed Sessions in the future, because I haven’t gone to any of them. Maybe some who attended them could comment.
I thought the meetings in general were very good. There are certainly far fewer people at the Easterns now than there were when it was a job market — I would say most people are happy about that.
Thanks to Martin and Jamie. I’d clicked on the Eastern meeting page, including the “information for participants”, but not the program itself. It seems like an odd set-up to me, and maybe not a great use of conference space, but I’m a “let a thousand flowers bloom” sort of guy, so not opposed to trying things out and seeing how they go.
This isn’t specific to last week’s APA conference, but if anyone is looking for ideas for innovative sessions at philosophy conferences, here is a database of ideas:
https://sites.google.com/site/georgigardiner/projects?authuser=0#h.6ouzg3i9ye67
I am grateful for further suggestions, as we pool these ideas. Please email them to me! I will credit you.
This database will become a standalone webpage, as a resource for conference and programme organisers.
My general, related feedback is to consider sending out CFPs for interactive, innovative standalone 75-minute workshops, rather like the Teaching Hub does, but for research.
But innovations like this are difficult and take time to gain traction. At first, I think very few people would volunteer to facilitate.
It would take a few years for people to see this as “a thing that we can do”. But maybe the CFP would help establish the idea, as something that philosophers can do together.
The “many closed sessions” that Eric Schliesser is referring to here must the new “paper in progress workshop sessions”, which are described on pp. 7-8 (which are pages 9 and 10 of the overall PDF) in the program here. The way that these worked is that there was a small group each of a variety of subfields that each met periodically throughout the conference, with each of the members of the group getting to workshop a paper at some point in a small group setting.
Let me note several points to give folks context here:
These were a pilot and the APA welcomes feedback about them. It’s certainly possible that there are significant disadvantages to the closed-format sessions or that the envisaged advantages didn’t materialize as much as was hoped. But talking about the “many closed-format sessions” without the above context is, I think, misleading about the nature and quantity of these sessions.
Thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the Eastern APA this year.
Alex Worsnip (Program Chair)
For what it’s worth (little!), I think using this space for collaboration with small groups is a really nice innovation and something that I would have loved to have participated in at an earlier stage of my career. I can’t really afford to go to the APAs given the distances involved, but I wanted to say that this struck me as a really positive development, so thanks to the people who came up with the idea and put the work in to make it happen.
ps. apologies for the several typos after a long evening of teaching prep. I of course meant ‘must be the new paper in progress workshop sessions’, ‘a small group in each of a variety of subfields’, and ‘participants were able to discuss their work…’
I don’t go to APAs (I don’t live in A or have the funds to keep up my membership in the A) but when I saw the call for applications for these sessions, they struck me as a good idea, both for the reasons you mention and others, Schliesser’s concern notwithstanding.
One possible fix (which perhaps requires some administrative overhead, although I can think of ways of making this relatively easy) is to make the closing optional: if the participants don’t want a closed session, the papers could be disseminated more widely and anyone interested in attending could pre-read the papers and attend.
Details would need to be worked out (e.g. is the requirement that all attendees read all the papers and attend all the sessions, or can kibitzers just read papers they’re interested in, etc.) but maybe it would work. The Pre-RoME conference on animal ethics is sort of like this: each year they choose some papers that everyone reads and comments on but the attendees aren’t just the paper writers, but also other people interested in the topic.
Again, I don’t have any firsthand experience with this, but if my above suggestion isn’t viable and it turns out the only workable options are closed sessions or no sessions, I suspect I’d prefer the closed continue. Indeed, one of Schliesser’s other concerns (big conferences are not so great compared to small ones) is partially alleviable by having these kinds of closed sessions, because of the commitment device you mention.
Thank you for your service as program chair!
I was skeptical of the concept of these closed workshops when I saw them described above, but when you point out that the APA might be a good opportunity for people who don’t necessarily have a community for feedback on writing at home, it seems much more valuable (as long as there are rooms to spare). I suspect that some disgruntlement might be avoided if the main program just lists a room as “for pre-scheduled workshops”, with only the individuals who registered in advance getting the detailed schedule of the space – if people don’t see what they’re missing out on, they might not be as jealous.
Just on the point about rooms/space: these sessions did not constrain us in the number of “regular” sessions we wanted to put on. In fact, *not* counting the workshop sessions, the number of regular sessions this year was greater than it has been in any year since before the pandemic, I believe.
Thank you for chairing the programme! I don’t have a problem with the closed session per se, but (perhaps because they mostly seemed to be on in the morning?) when looking at the meeting app for the day it was easy to get the impression that a very large proportion of sessions were closed. At first, that was a little off-putting.
A different topic, but the Pacific APA recently cancelled an entire event dedicated to Israel-Palestine with no justification. There was even a CFP and folks were lined up to present. Depending on the rationale, this might be a reason to boycott the APA. But it’s a black box and can only leave one suspicious. At a minimum, it’s an embarrassment for philosophy to cancel an event on one of the most pressing issues in the world. The APA should be ashamed.
I’m the Secretary-Treasurer of the Pacific Division of the APA. No session on the Pacific Division program as described here was arranged or cancelled, and we would have been happy to include such a session on the program had it been proposed. It may be that a session organizer from an affiliated group intended to organize such a session but missed the deadline to submit the session for the program; I believe that happened in a couple of cases this year. Unfortunately, we are unable to accommodate late session requests this year because of the limited meeting space available to us, but session organizers are welcome to submit sessions for future meetings.
Still very suspicious. Here is a link to the CFP.
https://philevents.org/event/show/125830
Concerned citizen
Why don’t you contact the contact person on the CFP and findout what happened, from his perspective. Here it is:
John J. Park: [email protected]
Then you can report back here.
Were papers accepted? Was there a provisional program for the session?
One thing that might help here is that there are two programs at each divisional meeting, the divisional program and the affiliated group program. The program chair and your colleagues on the program committee in each APA division are responsible for the divisional program. That program is the work of members of the APA.
Then there is the affiliated group program. The divisions provide space for affiliated groups (e.g. the Kant Society) to meet and we communicate information about such sessions to meeting attendees through the meeting program. But affiliated groups are independent of the APA and are not subject to its governance. Sessions organized by affiliated groups, including their content, are the responsibility of the group and not of the APA. For more on affiliated groups see here: https://www.apaonline.org/page/affiliatedgroups
In making a big program of 300+ sessions for 1,200 people we need to have some deadlines. Each summer we send out emails to affiliated group contacts asking for their sessions (in the Pacific division, each affiliated group can submit up to two sessions) with a deadline of October 14th. We also post the call on the APA website. We also maintain an important dates and deadline page: https://www.apaonline.org/page/importantdates
We encourage any affiliated groups that miss the deadline to organize sessions for next year’s meeting.
As you can see from the PhilEvents listing you link, this was a Concerned Philosophers for Peace affiliated group session. As Becko notes there are regular sessions and affiliated group sessions and the program committee organizes only the former. Affiliated group sessions are run by the affiliated groups. Not to be too snarky, but casting suspicion in a vague way without a bit more legwork to figure out what actually transpired (in the face of a good explanation of how these session get scheduled) is a bit unfair to people who mostly volunteer their labor to put APA meetings together.
Why not follow Gorm’s suggestion below and report back on what you have found out?
I have made this comment on surveys for a number of APAs, so I will share it publicly here. I find it really problematic that there are no scheduled breaks between sessions — like, 15 mins to use the restroom, or grab a bite to eat, or hell, get from A to B (making the conference even harder on people with disabilities). I suspect the sentiment is “but we’ve always done it that way!” even as many other conferences don’t do it that way. Am I the only one who is bothered by this? We are physical beings. Why do we pretend otherwise?
Because of feedback like yours, for the last several years, the meetings of all three APA divisions have included 10-minute breaks between sessions and one-hour lunch breaks. It’s been a good change and we appreciate folks who encouraged it.
Still very suspicious.
Rebecca, I am confused. I am looking at the APA Pacific program right now. I see a 9-noon session, with back-to-back papers within. Then there is a one-hour lunch break, yes. Then a 1-4 session with back-to-back papers within. Then a 4-6 session. Then the group programs start: 6-8 and 8-10. Other than lunch, where are the 10 minute breaks that you mention?
That is confusing, Roberta. That is a draft program generated by our bespoke program-generation software that is not super flexible. If you look at the official PDF program from last year (under Recent Meetings, here: https://www.apaonline.org/group/pacific) for example, you’ll see the correct times. Those are the times in the official meeting program App and in the official paper/PDF meeting program, which will appear in the next month or two.
Oh wow, ok! I am glad to hear that these changes have been made, and thank you for clarifying. But having the online program say something different (will it be that way up until and during the meeting?) is indeed confusing.
I was at the Eastern. There were 10’ breaks between sessions. Not enough to grab coffee but enough to go to the bathroom or from A to B.
FWIW, I had a great time at the APA.
Thanks, organizers!