APA Publishes “Good Practices for Improving Representation in Philosophy Departments” (updated)
“One thing that has become clear over the course of many discussions is that almost every thoughtful reader will find something to object to in the document.”
That is from the preface to “Good Practices for Improving Representation in Philosophy Departments,” a guide to help philosophers “create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all—including women, people of color, disabled people, non-native English speakers, first-generation college students, those with serious economic needs or from developing countries, LBGTQ+ people, and people with political or religious views that are underrepresented in the discipline, amongst others.”
Put together by the Demographics in Philosophy / Women in Philosophy project and published in the latest issue of APA Studies on Philosophy and the Black Experience (vol. 24, no. 2, p.8), the report “is the compromise result of many hands” over many years of development and feedback (for example).
The authors “hope that philosophers who are broadly supportive of diversity and inclusion will find value in it even if those compromises haven’t all landed exactly where they prefer.”
The guide includes recommendations on various aspects of departmental work and life, including:
- hiring, retention, and promotion
- teaching
- conferences and events
- research projects
- departmental culture
- harassment
- faculty-student relationships
- faculty-faculty relationships
- caregivers
Those involved with the project currently include Björn Freter (Towson University), Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California, Riverside), anbd Elly Vintiadis (Deree – The American College of Greece), and formerly included Sherri Lynn Conklin (Washington State University) and Nicole Hassoun (Binghamton University).
You can read the whole guide here.
UPDATE: Amy Ferrer, the executive director of the American Philosophical Association, has written in to clarify that while the “Good Practices for Improving Representation in Philosophy Departments” guide was published by the APA in one of its newsletters, it’s a Diversity in Philosophy/Women in Philosophy guidance document. It is not an official APA guide, nor has it been officially endorsed by the APA board of officers. (Language indicating otherwise in the original version of this post has been changed to avoid misleading readers about this.)
What are the good practices that accommodate those with underrepresented political views in this document? I see that there’s a move to accommodate those who have “political obligations,” but that’s about it. Are there any best practices for promoting underrepresented political views like conservatism?
I don’t ask to be antagonistic. I am optimistic enough to think that most non-conservatives admit that conservatives are under-represented and probably unfairly excluded from the profession in some important ways. And I also ask because, well, the stated mission of this document is supposed to include those with underrepresented political views.
As a relatively conservative grad student, I don’t think this is true.
Anerican conservatives don’t enter departments because contemporary conservatism is explicitly anti-intellectual, anti-humanist, etc so one can’t both identify as a conservative in that sense and also be an academic philosopher (without being self-hating).
What you can have, and what we do have, are lots of people with views that range from right to left wing (socially and economically) within a broadly liberal tradition. I don’t think philosophy is underrepresented in any subcategory under that broad umbrella.
What I do think can be an issue is that, despite having representation from these political backgrounds, many people, often who identify towards the social or economic “right” of academia, self-censor. Figuring out how to create better spaces where such censorship is less common is probably where we really benefit when discussing political diversity.
Sure. As you put it in the last paragraph, we can just rephrase the question: What are the best practices that encourage the social or economic right of academia not to self-censor? I may have missed something, but I see nothing addressing this worry in the APA document.
How far does this “right not to self-censor” extend?
Flat-earthers in physics faculties? Anti-vaxers in medical centers? Creationists in biology departments?
Is a right not to self-censor violated when a racist professor knows he will be fired when he calls a Black student the n-word?
I don’t know. I imagine most are willing to admit there is at least a range of positions on the social/economic right that belong in the academic Overton Window that currently aren’t.
Like what? There’s a vast range of conservative positions that anyone can discuss at any time: libertarianism, Burkeanism, Scruton, etc.
What’s missing?
Sure. I imagine someone who publishes defending conservative moral positions (e.g., abortion is wrong, same-sex marriage is wrong) will very likely not get a permanent job if they don’t have one already.
Ok, good. The empirical claim aside (I hav no way to verify what would get one a job), the question then is: why do these “belong” in the academic Overton window?
One reason is that these views (especially abortion) are subject to reasonable disagreement and are somewhat plausible, even if ultimately false.
See, for example, Michael Huemer’s post: https://fakenous.substack.com/p/abortion-is-difficult
I don’t think exploring the difficulties that Huemer lists here is in any way prohibited (see eg the SEP article on abortion). They are firmly within the Overton window. So you must mean some other argument that should be discussed but isn’t.
The mere fact that there’s an SEP article on the ethics of abortion with some pro-life views doesn’t undermine what I said. Most of the few pro-life scholars in that article were already quite senior when publicly making their claims.
Ask virtually anyone who has published pro-life papers while outside a permanent position. These almost certainly hurt their chances, never helped.
That’s an interesting claim. How would you go about investigating it? My impression, as someone who has participated in many hiring searches over the years, is that it is false. It has certainly been false for all the searches I have participated in. But, of course, my sample size is only around seventeen searches at three departments. But that is, at least, better evidence than the supposed views of people who have published pro-life papers while outside a permanent position. Are you saying that you have asked these people whether their pro-life publications hurt their chances of being hired at philosophy departments? And these people said that they did, or at least that they “never helped”? And their evidence for this claim was, what, exactly? That they didn’t get hired? Did they have access to the deliberations of hiring committees?
On the other hand, I do have some pretty good evidence that pro-choice, and other liberal, positions have hurt philosophers’ chances of being hired. One philosopher I know was told, by the chair of the hiring department, that the dean had vetoed their hiring, explicitly because they had published a pro-choice argument. Another philosopher I know was pressed, in their interview with the dean at a campus visit, on their only slightly liberal abortion paper, and asked why they had not defended a more pro-life position than the one they did. Another friend of mine, who publishes extensively on the philosophy of religion, was told by the chair of the department that hired him for his first tenure-track job, that the dean wanted to veto his hire, because he had published one paper that was pushing the problem of evil, even though most of his publications were defenses of theism against the problem of evil. The department had to argue vigorously that the publication in question didn’t represent his own considered view. I myself was told, by a close friend, that one of his colleagues had declared, at a department meeting, that he could never countenance his department hiring me (yes, he named me explicitly), because of my public criticisms of the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality. I wasn’t applying for a job there, and never have, but nonetheless my outspoken views were sufficient for me to be named as an example of someone who should never be hired by them. All these examples, of course, concern universities with religious affiliations. The last one is actually a very prestigious institution. But many universities in the US have religious affiliations (almost all private universities, with only a few notable exceptions, such as Rice). It is, apparently, acceptable at some of these institutions to discriminate against philosophers who have published, or otherwise argued, certain liberal views.
Regarding the cases you mention, appealing to ideological discrimination at religious institutions in response to charges of ideological discrimination at non-religious institutions seemingly invites similar expectations of both. However, non-religious institutions are supposed to be massively different in kind from religious institutions. There are certainly critics of academia that would welcome the implication that there is even a competition between the two on extent of dogmatism.
Regarding the prevalence of ideological discrimination (or whatever we want to call it), can’t we make inductions from, e.g., the “Ideological Diversity, Hostility, and Discrimination in Philosophy” article in Philosophical Psychology? Presumably, those willing to declare their willingness to discriminate in a survey would provide a solid floor for estimations of its prevalence in the field.
https://philpapers.org/archive/PETIDH-2.pdf
Count me as someone with opposing anecdata as Norcross. I’ve been on quite a few search committees in my 20+ years. On at least three of those, a candidate’s conservatism disqualified them from the job. Two were explicitly removed from consideration after campus visits and the third didn’t have their contract renewed as a result. What I found really surprising about each of these instances was that faculty had zero qualms about explicitly saying that the candidate’s (or faculty member’s) political view was disqualifying.
So, I can at least provide an existence proof from the trenches that, at least at some institutions a public commitment to traditionally conservative views will hurt one’s chances.
But was the problem with these candidates their conservative views on taxation, their conservative take on Chesterton’s fence, or their conservative opinions regarding their female, queer or Black colleagues?
Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it? If a job candidate declared that they thought it permissible to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, obviously that should disqualify them from teaching at an institution that explicitly (and rightly) bars such discrimination. I can easily imagine some conservative acquaintances of mine claiming that such disqualification would count as discriminating against the candidate on the basis of their political views. But it would, in fact, simply be a matter of judging that they weren’t qualified to teach at an institution that expects behavior they are unlikely to display. But perhaps you’ll say that merely expressing such an opinion isn’t good enough evidence that they would violate the university’s antidiscrimination policies? Perhaps they would even add, “but, of course, if you hire me, I won’t actually discriminate against LGBTQ+ people”. And if a candidate for a teaching position at a kindergaarten were to declare that they thought it fine and dandy for adults to have sex with small children, but they wouldn’t, of course, do it themselves, if hired, because it was against the rules, it would be unreasonable to rule them out for the job on the basis of their views on paedophilia?
That is indeed the question, but apparently posing it “is an example of the problem.” Funny how that works.
I don’t know how obvious this is. Suppose a job candidate believes that private property is an unjust institution, and that most acts of theft are morally permissible. Would an institution that bars violations of property law on their campus be justified in not hiring them? Peter Unger has argued that theft and fraud are not only permissible but morally required if they are your best way to accumulate money for donating to effective charities. Would it be reasonable to refuse hiring him because he might commit theft and fraud?
This seems like a misleading comparison. Firstly, the harm that raped children experience seems much greater than the harm that university students might experience from a homophobic professor. The analogy might work with job candidates who think it’s fine to beat up gay people in a dark alley at night, or to burn them at a stake, but not with candidates who think it’s fine to prevent them from getting married. Secondly, kindergartens are not institutions devoted to the search for the truth, so there are less dangers associated with excluding people based on their views. It may be unjust to the excluded, but it would not interfere with the purpose of the institutions. Thirdly, the vast majority of the population disapproves of paedophilia. Yet, for better of worse, many people in the US hold conservative opinions. Excluding those opinions from academic institutions alienates many students and the public more generally. I am not saying that inferences from a candidates opinions to their behaviour should play no role in hiring decisions, but there are clearly trade-offs here that don’t exist in the paedophilia case.
“who think its fine to prevent them from getting married”. People keep going to this because it bears the surface level appearance of not being related to the professional interactions between the anti-gay philosopher and gay philosophers in the department. What about those who think that it’s just fine and dandy to fire a philosopher for being gay? That’s a pretty grave consequence for a philosopher.
Firing a philosopher because they’re gay is illegal (Bostock v. Clayton County 2020) and was against the equal-opportunities policy of most universities well before 2020. In the (I think vanishingly unlikely) event that your colleague advocates firing a faculty member for being gay, remind them of the law and the policy, and if necessary report them to HR.
If as a matter of their own politics or philosophy they think it’s fine to fire people on grounds of sexuality, that has no grave consequences as long as they conform to institutional policy and the law.
“If as a matter of their own politics they think it’s fine to fire [philosophers] on grounds of sexuality, that has no grave consequences”…
Would you say the same thing about someone who “as a matter of their own politics or philosophy” thinks its fine to rape children, though they agree as a kindergarten teacher to abide by policies that prohibit that?
Kindergarten teacher, no; university professor, yes. Safeguarding minors raises specific concerns that don’t apply working with adults, and there is no countervailing academic freedom right.
To be fair, you could probably come up with something extreme and specific enough to override my strong academic-freedom presupposition. If, say, you have a job candidate who has defended the rightness of murdering students when you can away with it and of lying when asked if you’ll conform to institutional policy, then I think it’s okay not to hire them! But it would have to be very extreme.
I’m curious about the boundaries you see around academic freedom in this context. Let’s set aside our initial disagreement. Suppose you’ve got someone who openly expresses the view that it’s okay (even desirable) to fire philosophers for being gay. It’s documented in whatever way you need to imagine necessary in order to qualify as documented. Then that anti-gay fires, or attempts to fire, a gay philosopher. Is the documentation of what (under your view) is well within the realm of academic freedom properly invocable as evidence (albeit defeasible) of motive?
It depends a bit on the details. Faculty members qua faculty members don’t normally have the unilateral ability to fire people. They can be part of hiring or tenuring processes, but those are processes that involve lots of people and require reasons to be evidenced and shared with those people. I don’t see an issue there.
Chairs and Deans are more likely to be in a position to make unilateral firing decisions. In some of those cases (e.g., revoking tenure, unionized faculty past the initial period of appointment) there is a detailed evidence process that needs to be gone through, and an appeals process, and I think that reasonably insulates the issue: the person will have to produce a solid paper trail in order for the case to be appeal-proof, doubly so given their views. Even so they might be well advised to recuse themselves if the person was known to be gay, to avoid any appearance of bias. That would be even more so in cases where someone lacks strong employment protections.
I also think someone having strong views of that kind might well be a pro tanto reason not to appoint them to a supervisory role like Chair or Dean in the first place. Those are management roles; the principles in play are different and administrators qua administrators do not have academic freedom rights.
If US academia was differently structured, so that faculty did have unilateral hire-and-fire rights, I could probably be persuaded that sufficiently extreme views (e.g., ‘all gays should be fired, what a shame that’s illegal’) would be a reason not to hire someone into a faculty role. Possibly that’s the case even now for some science subjects, where faculty are doing a lot more team management than in philosophy. I would still feel it was important that the view expressed was fairly directly that the person would want to do something against policy; very often in these discussions there is a slippery slope and people start saying ‘X is against gay marriage, therefore we can infer that they’re in favor of firing gays even though they’ve explicitly said they’re not’, or even ‘X voted for Donald Trump, Donald Trump is transphobic, so X must support transphobia, so X would fire trans people’.
Out of curiosity, what grounds this near-impossible to override academic freedom right to which you subscribe? I thought before you were talking about the importance of neutrality in the institution but now you seem to think there is some very strong personal right at stake here. Or perhaps I’m misreading you.
In the first instance, I was responding to Prof. Norcross’s ‘paedophilia’ analogy. I trust that you agree that however bad it is, even being fired for homopbobic reasons is in in no way comparable to being raped as a child.
I think there are trade-offs involved here. There’s a line somewhere between trade-offs falling on the one side and trade-offs falling on the other side. Perhaps the line goes between opposition to marriage equality on the own side and opposition to equal opportunities for LGBT people on the other side, I don’t know. Though, I do think that laws and institutional safeguards are a better way to ensure such equal opportunities than policing the opinions of individual academics.
For what it’s worth, I also think that being defrauded of your life savings because your colleague thinks they are better spend on malaria prevention is a pretty grave consequence for most people.
I certainly do believe that the anti-gay philosopher’s opinions can affect their interactions with gay philosophers, even if it’s only about marriage equality. However, I think making this a basis for hiring decisions is a dangerous precedent. The opinions of a philosopher who thinks all religious belief is irrational and therefore unethical will affect their interactions with religious colleagues, including colleagues for whom their religious identity is intertwined with a marginalised identity, as it is for many Muslims and Black Protestants. The opinions of a philosopher who thinks that all property is theft will affect their interactions with colleagues who are landlords on the side. Vice versa, the opinions of a philosopher who thinks that the property order is just and any attempt at redistribution is theft would affect their interactions with colleagues who grew up in poverty. Nonetheless, I don’t think that any of these philosophers should be refused hiring on the basis of their opinions.
I don’t know how obvious this is. ”
Oh dear. Well, I suppose argument has to stop somewhere, and in this case it stops here.
At some point, we have to stop pretending that every moral position is somehow up for reasonable debate. Yes, I know that some people think it is permissible to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, and that even some philosophers think that. It doesn’t mean that we should treat such positions as on a par with views about the justifiability of private property.
But many universities in the US have religious affiliations (almost all private universities, with only a few notable exceptions, such as Rice).
The “exceptions” include Harvard. Yale, Chicago, Penn, NYU, Dartmouth, Brown, Stanford, Rochester, Northwestern, MIT, CalTech, Princeton,USC, Carnegie Mellon…
Yes, those few institutions, many of which were originally affiliated with particular denominations of the Christian church, have since become nondenominational, unlike most private universities, which maintain religious affiliations. How much influence those churches have over the universities differs widely. Rice never did have a religious affiliation, so it differs even from the small cadre you named (apparently, and puzzlingly, thinking you were somehow disagreeing with what I said).
“According to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, there were approximately 900 accredited, religiously affiliated institutions of higher education in the United States as of 2010″ (https://christianstandard.com/2019/08/ctheiicc/). In 2010, there were 1,812 private non-profit accredited post-secondary institutions (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1122). So, it seems that in 2010, about half of all private non-profit institutions had a religious affiliation. I don’t know how much that has changed since. That’s striking but quite far from “almost all”. It is true that almost all private institutions had religious affiliations at their founding. But the same is true for all European universities founded before 1826. It doesn’t say much about their present-day hiring practices.
That’s a great sample size, so you may be right. But I do wonder if this evidence is all that powerful.
After all, I imagine committee members who reject a candidate for having pro-life papers might not share that reason with the committee. This could be for two reasons: a) they know such discrimination is wrong, so they keep it to themselves and select another reason to vocalize. Or, b) they’re self-deceived and think they’re rejecting the candidate for one reason, but the real reason is the pro-life papers.
I know those reasons are hard to prove, but they also seem plausible if members are discriminating. Again, you may ultimately be right, but I just wanted to suggest those experiences might not be decisive evidence against my hypothesis.
I was under the impression that most people understood that being pro-life (and publishing in defense of other conservative moral views) is highly risky because, empirically, it seems most hiring committees ardently reject such views and consequently reject those who defend them.
I have a few people in mind who, on paper, should have something more than an adjunct position, but who also extensively defended conservative moral positions. This is obviously prima facie evidence, since the job market is quite ridiculous in familiar ways. But I’ve seen several cases where it really seems those papers tanked their chances at placement. My sense is that others share this observation, but again, I could be wrong!
No really, what paper do you think you can’t write?
I can’t imagine that something like “A new challenge to the violin player argument” would raise anyone’s eyebrows, if it is a new and substantive argument.
But I suspect that therein lies the difficulty: the space is pretty well mapped and on balance tilts progressive. Conservatives claim that the tilt is indicative of bias, but I have yet to see evidence of this.
violinist
For what it’s worth, there are a decent number of anti-marriage folks in philosophy (Elizabeth Brake and Clare Chambers are perhaps the most famous) and to be anti-marriage is to be ipso facto anti same-sex marriage (although there is some nuance there about whether one ought to be anti same-sex marriage in the short term insofar as different-sex marriage is allowed). So I don’t think being against same-sex marriage is a death sentence.
Being against it because you think there’s something wrong with same-sex romantic partnerships is probably more damaging to one’s career (except insofar as you want a job at certain religious universities), in the same way opposing (say) interracial marriages because you think there’s something wrong with interracial romantic partnerships would also probably not go over well (although even that isn’t quite accurate). But it’s not obvious to me that the people who oppose same-sex marriage for these reasons are, like, innocuous or whatever. It starts to sound a bit like this tweet.
But Brake and Chambers are anti-marriage for reasons that are quite fashionable: commitments to political liberalism and worries that traditional familial arrangements are unjustly oppressive. So, people are willing to hear their views out.
Conservatives oppose certain kinds of marriage for much more unfashionable reasons: they’re contrary to natural law, they’re inconsistent with their religious views, etc.
So, your point is well taken, but I imagine you’d agree that the Brake/Chambers way of opposing same-sex marriage is substantially different from the way George/Anderson/Girgis/Finnis/etc. oppose it.
Yes, but this just gets us into the conversation Julian and JuniorAC are having below: when you talk about “conservative” you can be referring to a broad swathe of views, some of which (like “ICE should round up all the foreigners at the point of a gun and put them on a boat back to whatever benighted place they came from”) do seem like they might be inimical to being a good teacher and colleague, such that one might wish not to hire someone with those views.
There are different sorts of reasons to oppose same-sex marriage. It may be that all of the “conservative” reasons to oppose same-sex marriage are innocuous. Maybe none of them are akin to the ICE view I mentioned above. But I doubt it. I think there are “conservative” arguments against same-sex marriage that express views that suggest one might not be a great teacher or colleague. So now we’re just arguing about which conservative (or “conservative”) views fall into that category and which are acceptable.
This is not the place to sort that out, since it’s a big debate (although I will note that “they’re inconsistent with their religious views” is a little vague: do you mean this person opposes same-sex marriage in the sense that they themselves will not get same-sex married, or that they oppose same-sex marriage for everyone because they think the state ought to be a theocracy promoting their particular interpretation of their particular religion?). But, as I pointed out in my original post, it’s not obvious to me that once you get into the weeds, so to speak, you always find something innocuous at the bottom of every conservative complaint about their views being discriminated against in (e.g.) academia.
Good comment. Responding not to antagonize but because I’m interested in discussion. Three counterpoints:
1.
You said contemporary conservatives don’t enter academic philosophy because conservatives are anti-intellectual, and (presumably you mean) one can’t be an anti-intellectual academic (an oxymoron). By “conservative” here I assume you mean “the average voter who self-identifies as conservative.”
On that meaning, the claim “conservatives are generally anti-intellectual,” in the sense of “being against thinking critically, arguing, and philosophizing about Big Questions,” seems false. More accurately, conservatives are generally anti-intellectuals (i.e. they don’t like academics and journalists, who of course tend to be leftwing). Some evidence that conservatives are plenty intellectually curious, like everyone else, is the massive popularity of figures like Jordan Peterson.
There is also a large class of conservative intellectuals (authors, political commentators, and even some philosophers, e.g. David Brooks, Thomas Sowell, John Kekes, Steven Wall) and of course those people aren’t anti-intellectual. They do intellectual stuff.
Conservative intellectuals are sometimes labeled as “anti-rationalist,” or “anti-theory,” and stuff like that. But in that case, conservatives are being said to hold a specific philosophical view (i.e. the view highly abstract ratiocination is not the best approach to ethics or political philosophy, or whatever).
Even far right vaccine skeptics, climate skeptics, and flat earthers aren’t anti-intellectual, really. They’ll argue with you until the cows come home. The sense in which they’re “anti-intellectual” is that they distrust universities, mainstream media, and other mainstream knowledge-producing institutions.
If I reject your explanation for the dearth of conservatives in philosophy, what explanation do I prefer? Idk. Probably there are several factors. For discussion of a few, see Gross and Fosse (2012) “Why are professors liberal?
2.
You said philosophy does have people who span from right to left on social and economic issues. That doesn’t sound right at all. According to the data social scientists have gathered, humanities professors (presumably this includes philosophy professors) are the most liberal/left-leaning profession in the entire country (see Gross and Fosse, 2012. I teach at an R1 with over a dozen faculty and dozens of grad students. I would bet money that none of the faculty have voted for a Republican presidential candidate in their lives (Reagan, HW Bush, W Bush, McCain, Romney, Trump). Probably a couple grad students vote for Republicans.
If you’re talking about scholarship in political philosophy, there is indeed literature available on conservative views, or issues of likely interest to conservatives (e.g. free speech, communitarianism, free will, metaethical realism, abortion, arguments for theism).
But it’s worth noting there’s very little philosophical scholarship on conservatism per se (e.g. what is it? what are its core values/ideas/arguments?). Scholarship on conservatism appears in top political philosophy journals much less frequently than scholarship on other ideologies. PhilPapers catalogues roughly 50 times as many articles on socialism and Marxism as on conservatism; that number is 20 for liberalism; four for republicanism; three and a half for libertarianism; three for anarchism; and two and a half for communitarianism. Political philosophy textbooks typically exclude conservatism from discussions of the major ideologies. (Political science textbooks, by contrast, do typically discuss conservatism as a major ideology, alongside liberalism and socialism.) It is uncommon for political philosophy course syllabi to include paradigm conservative texts, aside from Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (though calling ASU “conservative” stretches the term). Foremost among paradigm conservative texts is Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Burke’s Reflections is the 50th most assigned text in history courses; ranks in the 90s for political science; and ranks in the 300s for English literature. For philosophy courses, it’s the 779th most assigned text.
3.
Conservative self-censorship in academia is partly caused by the fact that academia is so politically homogenous. The costs of saying what you really think (i.e. establishing a reputation as a pariah) outweigh the benefits (idk what the benefits even are, other than the catharsis of being honest with others about who you are). Some possible solutions to self-censorship: (1) Improve academic culture, such that viewpoint diversity is genuinely valued. (2) Conservatives themselves should be braver. (3) Improve the political demographics on campuses. Note that option 3 is the only one that would not require asking individuals or institutions to improve their moral character (a big task).
“Even far right vaccine skeptics, climate skeptics, and flat earthers aren’t anti-intellectual, really. They’ll argue with you until the cows come home. The sense in which they’re “anti-intellectual” is that they distrust universities, mainstream media, and other mainstream knowledge-producing institutions.”
Everything else aside, that’s not right. Arguing does not an intellectual make. A petulant child will *argue* but it will not intellectualize
What makes flat earthers, racists, etc. anti-intellectual apart is that their activities are not suitable for discerning truth from falsity, and their (resulting) hostility to activities that are.
Let me be more clear. There is a dominant notion in mainstream conservative spaces that intellectuals and the humanities are bad (except for specific classics that they like) and I would not expect those people to join philosophy.
I don’t think philosophy is ever going to be representative of broader politics with respect to anti-intellectual types or those who believe in innate superiority of individuals based on arbitrary characteristics.
Okay, with that on the table, the rest I stand behind. Philosophy isn’t nearly as viewpoint homogenous as often insinuated. The polls generally reflect self-reported political allegiance, and this skews liberal precisely because most people in American attribute the anti-intellectualism, nationalism, etc to the conservative label. As such, all of the viewpoint diversity comes from people who think of themselves primarily as “liberal” and “moderate” but with incredible diversity in politics.
Depending on the space, I hear lots of economic views from anarcho-capitalists to communists (fewer protectionist populists, largely because these people aren’t idiots).
As far as social views, there are plenty of disagreements I overhear about police violence, definitions of discrimination, racial tensions, abortion, military/foreign policy, etc.
Pretty much any substantive economic or social issue is more than represented in philosophy departments as long as it comes from a broadly liberal democratic value system.
To which I suspect I’ll hear complaints about why liberal democratic value systems are prioritized. At which point I’ll refer back to the first paragraph. But also, I won’t shed a tear if auth-right or auth-left views aren’t represented in philosophy.
I initially replied to you because you seemed to suggest the following:
(A) Conservatives are anti-intellectual.
(B) There is a dearth of conservatives in philosophy.
(C) A explains B.
I think B is true, but both A and C are false.
Maybe our disagreement over A is merely semantic. I invite you to elaborate on what you mean by “anti-intellectual.” When I hear “anti-intellectual,” I naturally think of someone who, as a disposition or personality trait, dislikes critical thinking, curiosity, arguing, reasoning, contemplating ideas, etc. On this meaning, your claim seems obviously false.
As previously noted, there is a large class of conservative intellectuals—authors, journalists, political commentators, and philosophers. So clearly not all conservatives are anti-intellectual.
If you’re only talking about average voters, the claim still seems false. It is not the case that most average voters who self-identify as conservative dislike ideas, or contemplating Big Questions, as evinced by the massive popularity of Jordan Peterson.
If you’re only talking about neo-nazis, flat earthers, and anti-vaxxers, then you are not talking about mainstream conservatives. Indeed, it’s unclear why these groups should be labeled conservative at all, as these groups tend not to identify with any mainstream political party in any way shape or form. E.g. it would not make sense at all to call Timothy McVeigh (the OKC bomber) a “conservative” or a “Republican.” To McVeigh, both Democratic and Republican elites are in cahoots.
Three possible alternative (though much less intuitive or natural) meanings of “anti-intellectual”:
(i) “isn’t happy about the current state of higher ed”;
(ii) “believes highly abstract reasoning is not a good way to approach ethics or political philosophy”; or
(iii) “doesn’t really like talking about philosophy for hours on end.”
If (i) is the meaning you intend, then yes, many people who self-identify as conservative tell pollsters that they have low trust in higher ed. Of course, this is because they believe (correctly or incorrectly) that universities lack viewpoint diversity and fail to promote open-mindedness and open discussion.
The conservative intellectual class has also long been unhappy with the state of higher education in America. William F. Buckley famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the phone book than the faculty of Harvard. Thomas Sowell wrote a 416-page book called Intellectuals and Society, which laments the large influence that intellectuals have on politics. Roger Scruton, just before he died, suggested defunding humanities departments.
Note that Buckley, Sowell, and Scruton do not dislike Aristotle or the life of the mind; they dislike that professors and journalists—for sociological reasons we could discuss—skew so far leftwing. Sowell and Scruton both left academia early in their careers not because they disliked the life of the mind or lacked the academic chops to gain tenure, but because they disliked the reigning culture of academia.
Also note that many non-conservatives are also not happy with the state of higher ed. See for example this podcast with Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Cornel West, and Robert P. George.
If (ii) is the meaning you intend, then yes, many conservative thinkers—e.g. Burke, Oakeshott, and Scruton—express skepticism about the value of highly abstract, rigid ideologies (e.g. libertarianism, or utilitarianism) in political discourse (see for example Oakeshott’s 1962 essay “Rationalism in Politics”). Of course, they do so for philosophical (or meta-philosophical) reasons.
If (iii) is the meaning you intend, then aren’t most Americans anti-intellectual? My wife is a marketer, and very smart (smarter than me). She does not like talking about philosophy for hours. Of course, she is normal. People who choose to go to grad school in philosophy are abnormally interested in intellectual stuff. It may well be the case that people who self-identify as liberal are more likely than their conservative counterparts to be abnormally interested in intellectual stuff.
Did Scruton leave academia early in his career? I thought he taught at Birkbeck for 20-odd years, and still maintained some academic ties even later.
I guess I hallucinated that. According to wikipedia, you’re right:
Though I do seem to recall that, to the extent that he distanced himself from academia beginning in the 90s, his dissatisfaction with the reigning culture was a primary factor contributing to that decision.
Slight correction;
In one sense Sowell has never left Academia since he continues to serve as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. In another sense he left regular academic employment (that is the kind of job that involves some teaching) in 1980 when he ceased to serve as Professor of Economics at UCLA. But at that time he was about fifty (he was born in 1930), so this was hardly an ‘early career’ departure from academia, even if ‘academia’ is defined as involving teaching-related duties.
Sowell’s schooling was interrupted by military service, and on top of that he was a committed Marxist even through his PhD in Economics, as I recall. The doors only began to close in his face when he began to question and ultimately reject his former commitments — and they closed despite his impeccable pedigree.
Moreover, for all the calls to ‘listen to black voices’ in various fields over the years, I have never heard any such people call for any attention to be paid to Sowell’s work, despite the fact that he is a black scholar who grew up in a poor family, and despite the fact that his closest relatives never even completed elementary school, and managed to gain admission to three of the top departments in the country on merit.
It’s not easy to explain away academics’ complete neglect of his work without invoking viewpoint discrimination.
I was simply correcting Closet Conservative on a point of fact. In one sense Sowell never left academia and in the sense that he did, he did not do it till he was about fifty, having held a professorship in economics at UCLA for six years, having taught at Rutgers, Brandeis, Cornell and Howard and having done time as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He had a highly successful academic career from which he only ‘departed’ to take up a cushy number at the Hoover Institute, presumably so as to give himself more time write. (This is not intended as criticism. Had somebody offered me a similar post when I was fifty I would have given it extremely serious consideration.) He started to ‘question his earlier commitments’ fairly early on (his first book on Say’s Law name-checks George Stigler and Milton Friedman as important influences), and for the last fifteen years or so of his pre-Hoover-Institute career he was known as a right-leaning economist/philosopher. But so far from the doors closing on his academic career, they were conspicuously open, a professorship at UCLA being nearly as good as it gets. As for the claim that he has been neglected, a glance at Google Scholar reveals that his books have hundreds of citations. (He does not have a Google Scholar profile. I suspect that he would regard such a thing as beneath him.) Has he been neglected on the Left? Perhaps in certain circles, but I can safely say that I know about him because his is extensively cited and discussed in the work on of my late colleague Jim Flynn, discoverer of the Flynn effect, and a long-time comrade in Left Wing causes (check out his book Where Have All he Liberals Gone?) who lost two successive academic jobs in his early career because of his Civil Rights activism. Jim took Sowell very seriously, borrowed extensively from his work, and said so very clearly. I have no doubt that there are plenty of victims of Leftwing or Woke cold-shouldering, but Thomas Sowell is probably not one of them.
All good points. But I think that, on any plausible construction of a counterfactual world in which Sowell continued to endorse left-wing positions throughout his career while producing work of the same importance and volume that he in fact has, he would by now be one of the most widely-cited figures in economics, and the sort of person whose books everyone in related fields (including political philosophy) would be expected to read.
It’s wonderful that Flynn makes so much use of his work — and indeed, Sowell’s work on variation between cultural groups is probably the most comprehensive alternative to the race and racism accounts. But I have had several conversations with academics with an interest in these matters who are nonetheless either unaware of Sowell’s existence or else have heard of him but don’t know the main lines of argument he advances, etc.
Well Justin, I am prepared to concede your counterfactual – that if Sowell had been more left-wing, he would probably, have been even more widely cited than he is – but notice what a long way we have come from either Closet Conservative’s original claim or from your fallback position.
1) So far from ‘Sowell’s having left academia early in his career’, he has never left it, continuing to enjoy the cushy number of a fellowship at the Hoover Institute right down to the present-day. (He is about 95)
2) He did give up academic teaching forty-five years ago, but this was not early in his career, since at that time was about fifty years old.
3) So far from the ‘doors closing’ on him when he ceased to be a leftist (which he did fairly early on in his intellectual trajectory), he had a highly successful academic career, culminating in a professorship in economics at UCLA.
4) So far from being neglected, Google Scholar suggests that citations to his books run into the hundreds. (I wish that I was a ‘badly’ cited as he is, but since I am about 26 years his junior, I guess that while there’s life there’s hope.)
5) So far from being uncited on the Left his work was extensively cited and discussed by Jim Flynn, one of the leading leftist scholars in the areas of race and IQ , areas which have been of particular interest to Sowell.
Maybe he is a ‘Black Voice’ who should been listened to more, but he has hardly been a voice crying in the wilderness (which the Hoover Institute is anything but), still less a voice harried into the wilderness by leftist pressure. I think you need to search elsewhere for more plausible victims.
And just to be clear, I think such victims are likely to be found.
I wouldn’t personally describe my views as conservative, but I think Naive Grad Student and Julian’s comments here may be good examples of the problem. Someone raised an earnest question about what kind of guidelines could help the field be more inclusive of conservatives, and some of the very first responses equated conservatism with anti-intellectualism and racism respectively. Wow, I can imagine feeling reluctant to enter a discussion about political viewpoints if I was conservative – I have to start by proving I’m not some racist anti-intellectual! That’s a big problem. Maybe if this kind of thing happened less, we could create more space for productive, serious intellectual conservative thought, and that would help give left-leaning philosophers more insight into possibilities for non-hateful, intellectual theorising on the political right.
There’s a rhetorical trick that philosophers are incredibly weak to: assert that some view is being unduly ignored without distinguishing that view from views that are duly ignored.
Usually this goes by presupposing a blanket prohibition against ignoring any view. I try to correct this whenever I see it. I didn’t *equate* anything, I used dramatic examples to demonstrate that something further needed to be shown.
If conservatives are unwilling or unable to distinguish themselves from these other views, so much worse for them.
Hmmm, I guess I disagree with two things here. First, I think it’s reasonable to think that some views A are being illegitimately ignored, while also thinking that some other views B are legitimately ignored, and that this can be reasonable even if I don’t have a theory about how to give a precise definition of A. ( Having said that, it’s not hard to think of examples of conservative views on specific topics that plausibly fall into that category. ) I think the burden of proof you’re demanding goes the wrong way. Second, while I agree “so much the worse” for views that are “unable” to plausibly distinguish themselves from, say, racism, I strongly disagree with the outlook “so much the worse for conservative philosophers who are unwilling to do so”. I think such a demand is incredibly hostile and it would be entirely reasonable to not want to spend one’s energy outlining the details of one’s political views in order to be admitted to and accepted within academic philosophy!
Look, some people say that conservative views are unduly underrepresented in academia. But the label “conservatism” includes a lot of views. It is not unreasonable to demand clarity on which are meant. This isn’t demanding an a priori definition, only clarity about *what the complaint* is.
For some conservative views the “underrepresented” part is false: libertarians, Burke, Scruton, divine command theory, natural law, property rights. Just off the top of my head, there’s much more.
For some conservative views the “unduly” part is false: white supremacy, sexism, fascism.
Allegedly, there are some conservative views for which both parts are true. But it is usually very tacit what these are.
Very, very often when someone complains about “conservatism” being underrepresented, they mean the second category but don’t *say* that they mean the second category — for rhetorical reasons. If I’m being “hostile” then because conservatives have taught me to suspect this first.
“I think such a demand is incredibly hostile and it would be entirely reasonable to not want to spend one’s energy outlining the details of one’s political views in order to be admitted to and accepted within academic philosophy!”
I didn’t say anything about personal political views. But if one wants to have something discussed in philosophy they must make a case for it being worth discussing. That’s not a new or uncommon demand: look at the introduction of *any* paper that broaches a new or “unduly ignored” topic.
Oh, I thought we were discussing personal political views, since the topic of the OP is inclusion in academy based on various kinds of diversity amongst faculty/students. I misunderstood what you had in mind. In any case, yes I agree that it is much more reasonable to ask for justifications in the context of an academic paper – the exact kind depends on the detail, but providing reasons and explanations is what they’re all about! I was concerned about a prior issue, of lack of inclusivity in the field that a person may experience on the basis of having conservative views (which may or may not be the actual subject of their research).
For personal views I wouldn’t ask for justification, we can agree here. Grad student above talked about conservative views taken in publications, so this is where I was at.
If the hypothesis is that *people* with conservative views are underrepresented, I’d still ask a similar question: what personal political view specifically? — Burkeans? Religious people? Christian nationalists? The former two are not ostracized and the latter not unduly so.
“what personal political view specifically? Burkeans? Religious people? Christian nationalists? The former two are not ostracized and the latter not unduly so.” You are quite narrowing the scope now by only talking about “ostracising”. If religious people (or a particular religious demographic, be it pious Muslims or pious white Baptists from the South) are regularly suspected of being religioous fundamentalists and subjected to aggressive questioning, that might reasonably put them off academia and make them feel unwelcome. Even if they won’t be ‘ostracised’ once they have managed to prove that they are decent people.
I don’t imagine you’ll care, and, to be honest, I don’t really care all that much, but my reaction to reading your posts is, “holy hell are they a case-study in performative undermining.”
I’m afraid I don’t know what “performative undermining” is, otherwise I would respond to this.
Regardless, there are a number of malicious rhetorical slights-of-hand employed by conservatives in these discussions that I am happy to be seen as undermining.
What he means is that in your comments you’re undermining your own case that academia is not unduly hostile to conservative views, by displaying that very undue hostility.
If it is “hostile” to conservatives to (a) respond to “my views are censored” with “which views though?” and (b) respond to a claim that there is a normative right for *any* view to be represented in academia with a series of pointed counterexamples — then I guess conservatives are right that philosophy is hostile. On that standard, they wouldn’t last half a minute in an APA Q&A session.
Give them your full name so they know which sessions to avoid at the APA.
Yeah, if you behave in a q&a even remotely like you’re behaving here (and, apparently by your own admission, you behave exactly like you’re behaving here), they could just cut and paste your contributions into the document under discussion with the heading “Don’t Do This.”
I don’t know your life, but if you have the opportunity to observe a Q&A, you’ll notice that “doesn’t your view include flat earthers?” and “doesn’t your view fail to explain why the holocaust is bad?” are bog-standard objections in epistemology and ethics, respectively.
I’m really a bit aghast at how badly offended people here are at making these routine objections to the assertion of a general right. Some philosophers you are.
Julian has raised a number of interesting points/questions that I’d love to hear debated at an APA session. Honestly, the pearl-clutching and snide dismissiveness have contributed zilch to the present discussion.
You both are welcome to arrange your own session. We just don’t want to come.
Happy to, just don’t come crying about being excluded from the profession afterwards.
I’m not conservative nor am I excluded from the profession. I’m just excluding myself from interacting with you at the APA.
It’s a big enough event, you don’t need to tell me. But if your reaction to pointed rebuttals is avoidance you might not have a great time overall, tbh.
Having a good time entails avoiding your pointed rebuttals!
No, that’s not how you’re being seen. Daniel Greco explains what I mean. But, don’t be afraid, there’s no need to respond, I have no expectation it’d be fruitful. In my experience, people who push the “what anti-conservative bias on campus?” line as aggressively as you are either (a) disingenuous or (b) exceedingly unperceptive (usually (a)).
And in my experience, people who buy into the “anti-conservative bias on campus” line this strongly are either (a) okay with racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like, or (b) hopelessly credulous.
The aggressive and evasive pushback I’m getting on the simple question of *which conservative views are censored* (since it is evident that many conservative views are well tolerated) strongly suggests that it’s (a).
I don’t know if this helps Julian, but it is often treated in casual conversation at my institution — in department meetings, at gatherings with faculty, at gatherings with students etc — that we’re all Democrats, that Republicans are evil/stupid, that abortion is obviously morally permissible and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a retrograde or a misogynist, that sex isn’t binary and to think that it is transphobic, that traditional religious belief is obviously unjustified/irrational. Those are the ones that *immediately* come to mind. I have a colleague who is a practicing Catholic and finds all this very alienating. FWIW, I count myself a moderate-to-progressive Democrat who is basically on board with all progressive views!
I don’t see how this responds to anything Julian has said.
I also don’t see much value at all to trading these anecdotes. (I, too, can recall several instances where senior members of the profession have openly expressed contempt towards progressive viewpoints, making me feel unwelcome and alienated).
I appreciate the kind attempt, but I’m afraid it doesn’t help. I know that conservatives are in the minority in philosophy, I acknowledge that this is unpleasant and potentially alienating. I deny that their minority-status is the result of censorship.
To evaluate claims of censorship, we can class conservative views in roughly three broad categories:
– Those that are subject of ongoing debate. Burke, Scruton, natural law, etc
– Those that are well beyond the pale. Racism, sexism, etc
– Those were past debate / “the marketplace of ideas” has swung progressive, ongoing debate has moved on to details and implications, but the public debate has not. Abortion, secular ethics, etc
Taking this more fine-grained look on the broad term “conservatism”, we find that neither category contains unduly censored views. But for different reasons for each category, which is why the distinction is useful. The first is not censored, the second not unduly so.
I figure that claims of censorship are usually about the third category. But here, conservatives have simply not been able to make a rational case to re-open the academic matter. I realize this will be disputed. But if there were rationally compelling arguments against, say, abortion that are censored in academia then *we would see them elsewhere*. Most likely in one of these alt-ac think tanks that conservative benefactors have set up.
But there’s nothing. Instead we get from this direction a lot of allegations of censorship. I can only conclude that being unable to overcome the progressive arguments is either sincerely perceived as censorship, or that allegations of censorship are disingenuously used to discredit the stronger argument.
If your colleague sticks with his faith against the stronger argument that’s his prerogative and I’d never hold it against him personally (unless he’d take actively discriminatory actions). But prioritizing faith comes naturally with a bit of alienation from a community whose goal it is to fix beliefs by way of argument.
I’m on the record as agreeing with the letter of the request though I don’t think I agree with the spirit (in particular, I don’t agree with the palpable skepticism about whether the request could actually be answered). Here’s what I said in a recent substack post:
“If you think the narrowing of academic debate is a problem, you can’t just point to the fact that some views aren’t represented; you need to make a targeted case that we’d be better off spending more of our intellectual energy discussing the views you worry we’re missing….
I think that in plenty of parts of academia there’s a powerful case to be made that we need more political diversity; we’re missing out on perspectives that are not relevantly similar to holocaust denial, and our research suffers for it. But the case will always turn on a series of messy, contestable claims, with no knockdown arguments or silver bullets to be had. No wonder so many people prefer to stick to the more comfortable realm of abstract principle.”
So that puts people like me in a bit of a bind here. I do think your question can be answered, but it’s a long answer, that comes more in the form of a long list, each element of which will be open to debate, than in the form of a pithy principle that will command broad assent.
I do think some of the examples you’ve already given–Burke, Scruton–are pretty poor ones for making your point, in that you’ll have a *very* hard time finding many philosophy hires at major research universities in the last couple of decades of people defending broadly Burkean views on political philosophy, or anything like Scruton’s views. My view of the political philosophy landscape is that it was until somewhat recently dominated by Rawls, and now largely features criticism of Rawls from the left (eg., as overly focused on ideal theory), along with closely related intra-egalitarian debates about just what it is about which we should be egalitarian (well being? material resources? relations of respect?) I’ll certainly concede that there’s a thriving libertarian subculture, but plenty of conservatives and libertarians are fond of reminding us of the difference between them (e.g., Hayek’s, “Why I am Not a Conservative.”) It’s a substantive judgment that this is a misallocation of intellectual energy–that we’d be better off with more Burkeans , and more active discussion between progressive egalitarians and Burkeans–but one I’m happy to make.
I think the Tuvel affair, which was litigated extensively here, is another case in point. Tuvel was very much not defending a conservative position–she was defending transracialism–but I’m pretty sure I remember talking to graduate students who saw how it all played out and decided they didn’t want to go anywhere near the topic, even if they had views about it. If Tuvel got the reaction she did for defending a trans-friendly position, but which seemed like it could give aid and comfort to the anti-trans movement by supplying materials for a modus tollens rather than the modus ponens she intended, do you think it’s any surprise that junior philosophers sympathetic to the positions of, e.g., Alex Byrne or Tomas Bogardus, decide they’d better just keep quiet and work on something else?
Thanks for that substack link, I thought it was useful and on point. I agree with its substance entirely. I was however hoping to find there a fragment of the “long answer, that comes more in the form of a long list” — but as it stands we just have my skepticism against your optimism.
I think it is useful in this context to ask what it would take, to use your example, for scientists to go back to dropping a ball and measuring its rate of descent.
Supposedly it would take something *new*. Some hitherto unknown or overlooked reason to doubt the presumed laws of motion.
I think the same, mutatis mutandis, goes for philosophy. Everything is in principle up for debate, but to actually *put* it up for debate requires something new. A new argument, new thought experiment, something.
So, you’ll note, I *am* doing here what you demand in the final paragraph of your substack (with which I also agree!):
“It’s not enough to note that some views are beyond the pale and gesture vaguely at crackpots and bigots. If you think we haven’t lost much by marginalizing certain kinds of dissent, then you too need to make a substantive case: that the views in question are sufficiently implausible or intellectually barren that there’s little to be learned from engaging them.”
There’s little to learn because there is nothing new.
As I argued above, there’s evidence that (e.g. on the matter of abortion). conservatives have failed to produce something new. Rather, they seem to be displeased that their old arguments have been defeated. So until I see your long list, I have my skepticism on better authority than your optimism. The same goes for trans rights. Trans-inclusive feminists have explained at length (including on this very website) that the “new” anti-trans arguments aren’t new at all.
As for Burke, my point was that discussion of Burkean conservatism is not prohibited or censored. That is compatible with it being unpopular or unfashionable. Plenty of non-censored views are not popular or fashionable. Try getting a job as, e.g., a Rortyan. I don’t think we want to construe the conservative demand as one to make their views *fashionable*. That would be a plainly absurd demand.
I’d suggest listening to some episodes of Glen Loury’s podcast. He’s an economist who’s done very sophisticated theoretical work on discrimination, though he also has broad interests on the sorts of questions about which social/political philosophers regularly publish. The Manhattan institute recently severed their relationship with him because of his sharp criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. (I bring that up to make plausible that he is intellectually independent, rather than a knee-jerk reactionary.) My guess is that you’ll come away with the following impressions:
3 is not something you’d get from the podcast, but just something you’ll have to admit to yourself if you’re being honest.
Maybe you’ll say there’s nothing “new” in any of what he says, but I think that could only be a fair description under such a narrow description of “new” that nobody working on social/political philosophy is doing anything new.
I think I’ll leave it there though. This is not a case that can be made in brief, as it depends on substantive judgments about the plausibility of a wide range of views about which it’s unrealistic to expect much convergence in the space of a blog comment thread.
Thanks for the recommendation. I appreciate the frank exchange. It is unfortunate that you’d exit the discussion just when we come to the substance of it. I’m leaving the following for posterity.
I prefer reading to listening so I found two essays by Loury, “Why does racial inequality persist?” and “Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America”. He’s smart for sure, but I can’t really go along with your (2), at least not based on these essays.
On the one hand, he has a thesis that I suppose would be up for open debate in philosophy if carefully presented (viz that Black people must be empowered to take responsibility for their own lives). But on the other hand, he surrounds it with typical conservative self-victimization and conspiracism, betraying a talk radio understanding of left-leaning scholarship. For instance, from the second piece:
“So, for example, if someone says, “There are too many blacks in prison in the U.S. and that’s due to structural racism,” what you’re being dared to say is, “No, blacks are so many among criminals, and that’s why there are so many in prison. It’s their fault, not the system’s fault.” And it is a bludgeon in the sense that use of the phrase is mainly a rhetorical move. Users don’t even pretend to offer evidence-based arguments beyond citing the fact of the racial disparity itself. The “structural racism” argument seldom goes into cause and effect. Rather, it asserts shadowy causes that are never fully specified, let alone demonstrated.”
Utter nonsense! The principle of charity aside, this exhibits a complete ignorance of the – often empirically informed – scholarly literature on structural inequality.
I think this reveals a further problem with conservative scholarship: even the smart ones have dug in their heels so deeply against a caricature of their opponents that they lost the ability to properly engage. This leaves them tilting at windmills they’ve erected for themselves. Of course you won’t be published if every second paragraph is a petulant dig against an academic “leftism” that only exists in the conservative imagination.
As I said above, if you want to challenge an orthodoxy or widen a debate, you must actually critique the actual orthodoxy. For all I can tell, conservatives are incapable of doing so and have moved to playing politics against orthodoxy instead.
If this is the best conservatism got, my case is stronger than ever.
Julian,
Regarding the claims about structural racism, could you share some links that bear upon Loury’s critique?
For evidence-based arguments, we must to turn to sociology. There’s a lot and I confess my knowledge is spotty, but Barbara Reskin’s “The race discrimination system” is a sort of standard reference: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145508
Reskin provides references for the disparities *and* for statistical analyses towards their causes (e.g. econometric measures in the subsection on the labor market). I’m not an empirical person so I can’t really evaluate these measures. But it is evident that Loury’s claims (“don’t even pretend” etc) are false.
In philosophy, Charles Mills’s “The Racial Contract” is a classic. It is not particularly empirical, but it is likewise much more sophisticated than Loury’s polemic would allow. There’s a decent SEP related article: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-phil-race/
I’m a bit baffled by this claim:
“ As I argued above, there’s evidence that (e.g. on the matter of abortion). conservatives have failed to produce something new. Rather, they seem to be displeased that their old arguments have been defeated.”
What evidence is there for this claim about abortion? Indeed, as far as I can tell, the opposite is true: there has been very little in terms of novel arguments for abortion produced recently, and a bunch of novel stuff published against abortion. (I suspect this is the part where you say you think the arguments against it are low quality and the arguments for it are high quality. But my point was just about the “nothing new” claim.)
There’s been few new arguments for abortion for the same reason that there’s been few new experiments confirming quantum mechanics—the scholarly debate has moved on to margins and implications. I think the mainstream work on abortion now focuses on access and equity. But I don’t work in the area myself, so I don’t know everything.
I’m honestly not sure what new work you refer to. There’s nothing, for instance, in the JoCI which is where you’d expect such allegedly maligned work to appear. There’s perhaps the Hendricks stuff? He does this funny thing of probing margins and implications had the prior debate gone the other way. Nothing per se wrong with that (why not explore the consequences of discredited hypotheses), but it’s not work suitable to re-open the debate. Perhaps there’s something I’m not aware of?
Let me first state that it’s just shocking that you’d make confident claims about the state of the ethics of abortion despite *admittedly* not working in that area.
Next, if you think the ethics of abortion is like quantum mechanics, I guess it’s not terribly surprising that you don’t work in this area.
Third, given that you don’t work in the area, I’m not surprised that you don’t know about the relevant work. Yes, there’s Hendricks’ impairment argument against abortion and his pregnancy rescue case against abortion, but there’s tons of other literature, including (off the top of my head) Miller’s equality argument against abortion, Blanchette’s differentiation argument, Blackshaw, Miller, and Rodger’s argument about infanticide, Kaczor’s elimination argument, David and Rose Hershenov’s healthy interest argument against abortion, and so on.
Lastly, the quantum mechanics analogy is especially shocking since it doesn’t seem to recognize that (by my informed reading) most on both sides don’t seem to think Thomson’s violinist is a good argument. Of course, most philosophers (i) aren’t sufficiently informed about the ethics of abortion and (ii) think that it comes down to the issue of personhood. In light of this, you might claim that personhood arguments settle the matter in favor of the pro-abortion view. But you (admittedly) aren’t familiar with the relevant literature and if you were, you’d know that the arguments are *far* from clear.
All of this is to say that your example is terrible given your admitted ignorance of the relevant literature (and also terrible if you weren’t ignorant of the literature). Maybe pick a better example in the future.
Fair game, I did not know some of this work.
But if there is so much published work against abortion, where does this leave the claim that there is sufficient bias in favor of abortion that good arguments against it cannot be published?
We’ll, there’s the Peter’s, Honeycutt, De Block, and Juss study that found a willingness to discriminate among politically left philosophers, as well as the Yancey studies on philosophers unwillingness to hire conservatives (among others).
This conversation also illustrates the issue: you confidently made claims about the state of the debate about abortion that just weren’t accurate. I suspect many philosophers share this inaccurate view, and that this isn’t the only topic theory which this is a problem.
If I’m following your argument, it seems your position is that nothing we find in publication rates could count as evidence of informal censorship. You started by saying:
You suggested that abortion is a prime example of an issue which is dismissed in academia because of the successful filtering of the marketplace of ideas. Even though you see no new scholarship on the topic, you can conclude that there is no evidence of censorship.
But then you were given convincing evidence by Knibbe that new abortion scholarship is being done. You responded that:
Since there is new abortion scholarship, there can’t be informal censorship going on. Thus you conclude, again, that there is no evidence of censorship.
It seems that your “marketplace of ideas” argument could never fail to exonerate from the charge of informal censorship. And this is true for any political view whatsoever. For any view X, whether conservative, libertarian, or progressive, one could argue that a lack of publications on X are explained by the proper functioning of the marketplace of ideas rather than censorship, while the presence of publications on X also shows that censorship is not occurring.
Is it your position that, in general, what is being published on is never evidence one way or the other for informal censorship?
Someone made the claim P that there is bias preventing work against abortion from being published. I argued against P.
I was wrong about something in my rebuttal. But the reason I was wrong is also a reason against P. So I’m happy.
As I said earlier, if there is bias against some conservative topic X, there would be little work on X in philosophy but more good work on X outside of philosophy, eg in the alt-ac conservative sphere. So if you want to prove bias to me, that’s what you need to show: No work here, good work there. That would demonstrate that something is absent from philosophy for reasons other than merit.
So I don’t think it’s right that my “position is that nothing we find in publication rates could count as evidence of informal censorship”.
This is a very odd standard. (i) Some topics exist in academia or not at all. I write on somewhat obscure texts in the history of philosophy; I know of no one who has published on these texts outside of the pages of academic journal articles. So I don’t see how your standard could be generalized. (ii) One of the mechanisms we have for recognizing “good work” in academia is through peer review. When fringe theorists point to publications in disreputable and non-academic places, they are rightly told that those are poor sources. We don’t have any systematic way of evaluating those kind of sources for quality. But, supposing someone took the time to gather together those sources for you, you’re suggesting you’d read them, evaluate them, and then, if they were good, that would convince you to change your mind about the occurrence of censorship on that topic? Reading a bunch of high-quality Substack articles is what would convince you? And you’d accept that standard for any under-represented topic? E.g., If someone said afro-pessimism, trans philosophy, or open borderism were being informally censored based on publication rates, you’d say we have no way of knowing that without first finding good non-academic instances of those topics?
I’m saying I would accept this as evidence of bias, not that I’ve given necessary and sufficient conditions for bias.
When something broadly philosophical is absent from philosophy, my null hypothesis is that it lacks merit. It is either not sufficiently interesting or presumed to be refuted. If you want to show that absence entails bias, that’s the hypothesis you need to refute. One way to do so would be to show that there is meritorious work on this elsewhere. There might be other ways.
For example, it is evidence of racial bias that what is now called “epistemic injustice” was not discussed in academic philosophy before Fricker introduced it *despite* there being meritorious and philosophically interesting work on the same topic by Audre Lorde and others.
You know this is all very funny to me. Ten posts above you, I’m arguing against someone claiming that progressives illicitly infer bias from mere disparity. Here, you are faulting me for not accepting the inference from mere disparity to bias.
Your current argument, summarized:
P1. Either new dissenting arguments are published or else new dissenting arguments are not published.
P2. If new dissenting arguments are published, then there is clearly no intellectual monoculture in philosophy.
P3. If new dissenting arguments are not published, then there is clearly no intellectual monoculture in philosophy: the absence of such new arguments proves that any dissent on the issue is akin to maintaining that the Earth is flat. Such dissent should be laughed at and ignored.
C. Therefore, there is clearly no intellectual monoculture in philosophy.
There have been many new experiments confirming quantum mechanics in the last few years. People test foundational predictions of quantum mechanics all the time: it’s a major driver of empirical work in quantum optics.
“But prioritizing faith comes naturally with a bit of alienation from a community whose goal it is to fix beliefs by way of argument.” Through most of history, some religion or another has been hegemonic in communities where philosophical inquiry takes place, including in the communities where many of the classics we are still reading were produced. These communities treated as obviously true, e.g., the existence of the Olympian gods (even the ‘atheist’ Epicure believes they exist, though they are composed of matter and unconcerned with the affairs of mortals), Sunni Islam, Catholicism, etc. Some questioned these faiths while they were hegemonic. But it was the questioners who were alienated from their philosophical communities. I am an atheist, but I think it is rather overly whiggish to think that the current hegemony of secularism in academic philosophy represents the true, eternal essence of philosophy, rather than being the product of contingent historical forces.
Over time reading this forum/blog, one learns with whom it is worthwhile to have an extensive exchange, and with whom this will usually descend into unnecessary antagonism. The 100+ comment posts are usually a good place to get some suggestion.
” I didn’t *equate* anything, I used dramatic examples to demonstrate that something further needed to be shown.”
But something further always needs to be shown. When you hear about underrepresented minorities, do you go around pointing out that some minorities are rightfully underrepresented (say, apocalyptic cultists) and then you insist that the fact that minorities are underrepresented doesn’t show that they should be more represented, and that something further needs to be added?
Or do you understand, judging from context, that the intended meaning of ”underrepresented minorities” always excluded apocalyptic cultists, and included groups like women, people of color, disabled people, people with economic problems, etc…?
Women, people of color, disabled people, people with economic problems etc are not characterized by a set or shared beliefs. Conservatives are.
The lack of people with a particular set of beliefs in an endeavor aimed at fixing the right beliefs is a completely different matter than the lack of people with unrelated characteristics. The latter is prima facie evidence of injustice whereas the former is not. (This is not to deny that there couldn’t be injustice in the former, just that, as I said, something more needs to be shown.)
This should be obvious to anyone who thought about this for 2 seconds.
Would you say the same about other underrepresented groups that have a set of shared beliefs, say, Muslims?
I’d make it about other groups that are *characterized* by a set of shared beliefs. Read me more carefully please.
There’s a pretty good case that a religion is characterized by a set of beliefs. (You could make the case that shared activities and cultural practices are also partially constitutive of religion, but you could say the same for some US political groupings too).
In any case, the argument against gratuitously disrespecting religious beliefs looks fairly closely analogous to the argument against gratuitously disrespecting political beliefs. (“Gratuitously” being the operative word in either case.)
I think I phrased the view carefully enough to not be gratuitous.
The view, to be clear, is this: _The lack of people with a particular set of beliefs in an endeavor aimed at fixing the right beliefs is not prima facie evidence of injustice._
Examples in favor of the view abound. I listed some stark ones in my first post in here, which caused quite the strange ruckus.
My worry with “Muslim” is that while its primary meaning may be religious, it (like “Jewish”) is often also used as a cultural designator and then includes people with very heterogeneous beliefs.
I think we should be cautious about the scope of “fixing the right beliefs”. Philosophy of physics, for instance, really doesn’t engage with issues of ethics or politics; it would be concerning if the environment of philosophy of physics was exclusory with respect to those issues. I agree that it is more complicated in normative areas.
Also, while “Muslim” might in part be a cultural designator, I am keen not to discriminate against Muslims even on a narrower conception of that term.
I guess it depends on whether the relevant conservative beliefs include things like young earth creationism, that bear on physics. But sure, perhaps we can amend the principle:
_The lack of people with a particular set of beliefs in an endeavor aimed at fixing the right beliefs *about a related subject matter* is not prima facie evidence of injustice._
We’d then expect areas like metaphysics, Phil sci, or logic to be overall more hospitable to conservatives. That seems right — inductive confirmation that it’s the beliefs that are the problem?
Inductive confirmation that the beliefs contribute, at most. And I have heard dozens of casually anti conservative comments in metaphysics, Phil sci and logic contexts; I’ve even made some myself, before I properly thought through the issues.
I mean, conservatism is attached to an administration and president that is actively waging a war on academia and immigrants alike, if being a conservative makes us wonder about your racist and/or anti-intellectual beliefs, it’s because the shoe fits.
In theory I think most of it does, since ‘underrepresented groups’ isn’t defined and could include conservatives, but it fairly obviously wasn’t written with that in mind.
The main transferrable idea I see in it (which is something I’ve been trying to be aware of myself) is not gratuitously implying exclusion. There are genuinely complex issues if the class is actually on an ethical/political topic, but there’s just no good reason to make a comment in an unrelated class or research colloquium that presupposes everyone is a Democrat (or Trump-hater or Remainer or whatever), and yet it happens a lot.
Here is the part where I thought conservatives were supposed to be included:
“people with political or religious views that are underrepresented in the discipline”
I don’t know of many non-conservative people whose political views are underrepresented in the academy. It seems the obvious group of people whose politica views are underrepresented in the discipline are conservatives.
I agree; I just meant that in theory you can just instantiate “underrepresented group” as “conservative” in the document and get a bunch of recommendations,, but in practice I don’t think that instantiation, or the political / religious one more generally, was really the main case the authors had in mind.
Consider the nature of conservatism, the problem is that you can’t creat an environment in which both conversatives and marginalized groups feel safe. Can you de-underpresent anti-abortion supporters while still have a comfortable place for women?
The language of safety is a bit strange. I do think underrepresenting conservatives would make things more uncomfortable for non-conservatives. But being uncomfortable =/= being unsafe. Doing philosophy sometimes requires us to disagree with one another over very important issues, and that can often be pretty uncomfortable and awkward. That doesn’t mean anyone is in danger and should fear for their safety.
The discussion of rights of marginalized groups might be merely philosophical for you, but it is not the case for everyone.
That doesn’t change the fact that it’s not a safety issue.
This thought reveals ignorance. Faculties have power. A male faculty in Texas writes openly that he will not give his TAs a sick leave for abortion. Don’t you think in some cases, the best time for abortion would be delayed? –fyi, giving birth can be life risking.
Nothing we’ve said justifies Bonevac’s policy.
To accuse someone of “ignorance” for disagreeing with you is deeply uncharitable.
I think you can absolutely make philosophy more representative on abortion and have it be a comfortable place for women.
Somehow the introductory courses in philosophy, when done well, are great at demonstrating that reasonable disagreement can exist on the issue despite good intentions. How is it even a question that such opinions among faculty all of a sudden makes the space harmful.?
“Somehow the introductory courses in philosophy, when done well, are great at demonstrating that reasonable disagreement can exist on the issue despite good intentions. How is it even a question that such opinions among faculty all of a sudden makes the space harmful.?”
The problem is that one can typically adopt an intellectual position of neutrality, but yet cannot be neutral on practical questions.
For example, a university can refrain from taking an intellectual position on, say, the ethics of abortion, but will still need to make choices in the student health plan, excused absences, mental health support, and so on. Unavoidably, contested choices *will* need to be made.
The same goes for individuals. They can teach and write from a position of neutrality, but in their day to day life need to practically interact with their colleagues who are gay, Black, women, getting abortions etc.
It is not the presence of certain purely intellectual opinions that people are worried about. It’s the potential HR-nightmare of someone acting on them.
I still don’t quite follow. The question isn’t whether or not a university should hire someone who wants to impose their moral beliefs on their students’ or colleagues’ behavior. The question is whether people who believe abortion is wrong, to varying degrees, make departments unsafe.
You would obviously need both someone who believes abortion is wrong and who also wants to impose that belief on the behavior of others to have issues. And it is the latter bit, not the former, that is problematic.
Anyone who thought they could impose their morality on their students or colleagues would present just the same problem regardless of ideology.
As far as screening for that type of person, it’s simply a question of humility. I think anyone who takes moral questions seriously enough to publish their opinions needs to be very openly humble and admit their fallibility for me to trust them with students at all.
Luckily, many such people exist.
“You would obviously need both someone who believes abortion is wrong and who also wants to impose that belief on the behavior of others to have issues. And it is the latter bit, not the former, that is problematic.”
I agree entirely!
“As far as screening for that type of person, it’s simply a question of humility. I think anyone who takes moral questions seriously enough to publish their opinions needs to be very openly humble and admit their fallibility.”
I think you are still intellectualizing too much. It’s comparatively easy to be intellectually humble, considering possible counterarguments, politely exchange rebuttals, even change one’s mind.
But you always have moral beliefs that inform how you act. However intellectually humble you are about interrogating your mores, they sometimes spring into action. Someone might do something you find abhorrent. No matter how humble you are, you might feel compelled to do something. You might think *not* doing something is itself a wrong.
To be crass, maybe you observe someone torturing a small animal. Do you think “ah well, gotta be humble. It’s not clear that this is wrong. They might get more pleasure from it than the animal gets pain, so from a utilitarian perspective…”? I don’t think you would, even if this is an argument you routinely discuss and take seriously in abstract ethical theorizing.
So the problem is that if you want a department that includes minorities and conservatives, then the conservatives need not merely be intellectually humble, but also not act on their conservatism. That’s a pretty tall order! It goes way beyond humility, a willingness to consider the other side, and so on. I imagine it is particularly grating for them that progressives do not need to do something similar.
Thus, we demand of conservatives with certain views on queer people, abortion, Black people etc. we ask of them that they cannot act on these views if they want to participate. These “heterodox thinkers” to commit to social norms that they sincerely oppose. I strongly suspect that THAT is the real problem many conservatives are having — and it has nothing to do with their intellectual viewpoints.
Right now, in fact, they seem to be eagerly engaged in the political project of forcibly dismantling these norms.
Sorry I messed up the grammar in the last paragraph.
I’ll continue to not be able to take this discipline seriously until it can say, unequivocally, that professors shouldn’t date their undergraduate students. Not “strongly discourage,” but say, “This should be professionally unacceptable, period.” It is absolutely unfathomable to me that isn’t clearly stated, but is couched in this language that “sometimes these relationships happen and can be significant and long-lasting.” Also the incredibly passivity of “If such a relationship does occur…” as though people just accidentally find themselves having sex with their students and then must deal with the fallout. Particularly when those proposed steps to deal with the relationship will be incredibly difficult to apply in a variety of circumstances — for one example, if the department is small, making simply ‘taking classes with someone else’ impossible.
I don’t anticipate reading whatever responses I get to this comment (and probably won’t, for my own sanity), but just a reminder that for some people in the discipline, this is mind-boggling, not normal.
Why is this a philosophy issue in particular, rather than something that should involve university wide policies?
Certainly, universities themselves should have such policies. But a disciplinary policy/norm of this kind could serve other functions over and above those served by individual institutional policies or make up “gaps” for institutions that lack such policies (e.g. clear discipline-wide policies could undergird refusing to admit known predators to conferences even if they haven’t violated any policies of their particular institutions).
This should be the policy for every academic department- no faculty or administrator engage in any form of sexual contact with any student or assistant- and should be grounds for dismissal.
But this won’t be the policy any time soon because far too many senior faculty and university administrators have engaged in purportedly consensual sexual relationships with students or research assistants (as if the power disparity, the professional and economic dependence of the students and assistants could somehow NOT preclude meaningful agency and consent), not to mention the pervasive sexual harassment of subordinates (grotesquely described as ‘flirting’ in many instances), and the epidemic of rape of female students and research assistants by males in positions of authority. (q.v., https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/news/the-alarming-statistics-of-sexual-harassment-in-academia-and-how-to-prevent-it/124044/, and https://elephantinthelab.org/sexual-harassment-in-academia/).
There is another aspect of this that is perhaps peculiar to academic philosophy- to set a standard that no faculty or administrator engage in any form of sexual contact with any student or assistant is, of course, to adopt a categorical, absolute moral stance.
There is quite and aversion to categorical, absolute moral stances in philosophy departments, no matter how many individuals continue to be hurt, countless students have their professional careers derailed, some will commit suicide.
But none of that should trump an abstract principle, right?
This sort of blanket statement needs to be written carefully to avoid causing more problems than it solves. When I was at Texas A&M, the system created such a policy with no input from the campuses, and they wrote it fairly broadly, saying that any employee of the system that has a “romantic, sexual, or amatory” relationship with an undergraduate at the campus they are employed at will have their employment terminated. They wrote in a few specific types of exceptions – for instance, undergrads who are employed by the campus in a work-study program are exempted as long as their relationship with a fellow undergrad who they didn’t meet through their work position, and there was also room for people with a pre-existing relationship to get an official letter from the dean of the employee’s unit recognizing their relationship as exempt from the rule.
However, whoever wrote this rule apparently didn’t understand what a graduate student was, because the rule as written now prohibits any graduate student who is employed as a TA or researcher (i.e., basically every PhD student and most academic masters students) from any sort of relationship with any undergrad on campus – and in a town the size of College Station, this basically means that grad students have to be very careful to not flirt with anyone in their age range at any bar, for worry that this flirtation would count as a violation of the policy that could get them fired.
I don’t know if the system ever came up with a workaround for this, or if they just intended the rule to be overly strict so that large numbers of individuals would be in violation, in hopes that such an overly restrictive policy would make their hands legally clean, at the expense of destroying the dating life of all grad students.
I realize that your proposal was about professors dating “their undergraduate students”, so you probably intended it to refer to undergrads enrolled in a class taught by the professor, but I do think it’s appropriate to still take some care to write in cases where administrators should consider exceptions, like when a person in a pre-existing relationship enrolls as an undergrad, or if a young physics professor dates an older agriculture undergrad who then later decides to enroll in a physics class, or something like that.
Relationships between teachers and students were a common sight in virtually all the universities I have visited, especially if in “teachers” we include “TAs” and “grad students”. Yet everyone looked like they were doing just fine, so what is this pearl clutching about?
McGinn’s “genius project” and the like.
But really, what are the good practices that accommodate those who support genocide and ethnic cleansing?
Similar to how you accommodate those who support the mass slaughter of the unborn and the industrial-scale torture of animals: in 90% of classroom contexts it’s not salient, so don’t talk about it and don’t create a hostile environment for those who support it.
And if you have to talk about it for pedagogically relevant reasons? Then practice the principle of charity and avoid tendentious characterizations of anyone’s views. (I’m pro-choice and eat meat, as it happens.)
Totally similar cases.
For those interested in the comparison between human injustice and non-human injustice, a new paper on it has just been published. It cites most of the extant literature on the topic and is thus a nice way to get acquainted with the conversation so far.
I’m wondering about this — I’m sympathetic to your statement above, but my (pragmatic) intuition is that there is a substantial moral difference between accommodating a moral position that would be nearly universally rejected, and one about which there is a great deal of disagreement.
I have no principle to offer, but if, say, one of my students is strongly pro-life, and another of my students believes that everyone who isn’t born in the US is subhuman and worthy of death, and expresses that view regularly in my class, I probably need to respond differently in those two cases.
I guess I’m not sure such accommodation is enough to properly answer WiseGuy’s question — assuming the question is asked in good faith, it seems to highlight a deep moral issue that (at least) I have not resolved to my own satisfaction.
Perhaps rather than fretting about the (very, very American) political valence of individuals’ views, we could instead concentrate our calls for “viewpoint” diversity on ensuring that a diverse set of AOSes are represented at the department level.
Just a thought.
I don’t think it’s outrageous that a discussion of diversity in American universities ends up discussing things with an American valence. But in any case, the issue of diversity doesn’t reduce to diversity of AOS – underrepresentation of women and underrepresentation of feminist philosophy are (related but) different issues, for instance.
The APA doesn’t just represent the US, and much of its membership is non-American.
But beyond that, it seems to me that AOS is something we wear on our sleeves, and is directly relevant to our collective ability to do better philosophical work. We can reasonably expect that those interested in, e.g., abstracta will have different views depending on which AOS they’re coming from, since metaphysics, aesthetics, mathematics, and meta-ethics are all interested in very different abstract objects.
Political party membership, however, or political beliefs, require a degree of scrutiny that’s hard to achieve. And, as we’ve seen, that discussion fragments pretty quickly because individuals and their beliefs are pretty idiosyncratic. And it’s not obvious that intervening to favour “conservative” political and moral philosophers will do much directly to enhance the diversity of views relevant to the philosophical community.
This comment thread has convinced me that I simply need to speak up more when I have a heterodox politically charged opinion.
I simply reject this notion that the field is that unwelcoming to diverse views and I think people enjoy boasting about how unfairly homogenous philosophy is without testing it themselves.
A lot of the cases of people being unfairly treated based on politics seem to be cases where a clearly bad faith or pompous person writes an article somewhere and immediately gets defensive to responses.
I’m confident that almost anything said in good faith, despite disagreement, will be widely acceptable within my department at the very least.
Readers may be interested in some related old posts on this subject:
– Illusion and Agreement in the Debate over Intolerance
– Which Ideas Are Students Protected From? Which Are Faculty Fearful to Defend?
– Are We Being Chilled Or Should We Just Chill?
Sorry, you can’t simply dismiss our case here by just reducing us to enjoying boasting about unfair treatment, or that unfair treatment is just a fair response to being bad faith or pompous.
It is pretty obviously the case that if you published a series of papers defending an array of positions normally associated with conservative views–pro-life, the traditional account of marriage or gender–you will be hard-pressed to get a permanent job if you don’t have one already. People in your department–who already know you– may still get along with you. That’s one thing. But landing a permanent job is quite another.
There’s a reason many who publish pro-life/traditional marriage papers are either already senior, adjuncting, or in a different profession altogether. There’s also a reason why you can find papers defending progressive views on these issues in top journals while the ceiling for gender-critical papers is Philosophia or the Journal of Controversial Ideas, and why defenses of traditional marriage end up virtually nowhere and critiques of those defenses end up in Ethics.
The reason: there is a pervasive ideological bias in our discipline that welcomes some views and not others. That bias means that only those who have job security already or are willing to do without it will defend these positions in print. Anyone with these positions who wants to work in this profession would do well to keep them to themselves until they get job security.
Good luck finding a job as a mediaevalist or aesthetician. There’s a reason why most aestheticians are hired as some other specialist first. And, as it happens, those subjects don’t fare too well in the topmost generalist journals, either. And that’s a subfield-wide difficulty, not just one faced by some subset of views in those subfields.
On the “traditional view on marriage”, you have a bigger problem than ideological bias. A hiring committee that is not at all ideologically opposed to exploring conservative arguments might still have the entirety *prudential* worry that you’d be having gay colleagues. No department – ever – wants to deal with an HR-situation.
Which brings me back to my initial point against you. I worry that satisfying the demand for the toleration of conservative *viewpoints* is actually a covert demand for the toleration of discriminatory *actions*. But these are very, very different demands, as JS Mill will tell you.
It would, therefore, do advocates of “viewpoint diversity” (both conservatives and their heterodox liberal allies in this) good to acknowledge and address the worry.
“On the “traditional view on marriage”, you have a bigger problem than ideological bias. A hiring committee that is not at all ideologically opposed to exploring conservative arguments might still have the entirety *prudential* worry that you’d be having gay colleagues. No department – ever – wants to deal with an HR-situation.”
This is dangerously strong medicine. Suppose there’s a gender critical philosopher on the faculty. A hiring committee that is not at all ideologically opposed to trans rights might still have the entirely *prudential* worry that if they hired a trans philosopher, that philosopher might not be happy having a gender critical colleague.
“Which brings me back to my initial point against you. I worry that satisfying the demand for the toleration of conservative *viewpoints* is actually a covert demand for the toleration of discriminatory *actions*.”
That only follows if you infer, from the fact that someone thinks the rules of an institution should be different, that they will not follow the actual rules of the institution. And that inference doesn’t follow, is inimical to academic freedom, and would license all manner of invidious discrimination. If someone actually says they will discriminate between students or colleagues on impermissible grounds, or won’t otherwise follow institutional policy, don’t hire them. If they are hired and then break institutional policy, discipline or fire them. But don’t punish people for thoughtcrime.
As you yourself sometimes argue, while institutions can remain intellectually neutral, their policies cannot be. Declining to have a policy is in itself a policy decision. Individuals have a similar problem.
If you have a trans philosopher and an anti-trans philosopher in the same department, they can each publish their trans-inclusive and trans-exclusive philosophy, respectively, without this being a problem. The institution need not get involved.
But besides this, they are still two people who need to share a space. The trans philosopher might need to use a certain bathroom. The anti-trans philosopher might have a problem with this. That’s an HR matter, unless one of them backs down.
Similarly, gay people might want to bring their spouses to events. Someone might take medical leave for an abortion. Black people want to do things that racists don’t abide.
In each of these cases, predominant current policy is that it is the conservative who ought back down. I am not convinced that conservative complaints about viewpoint diversity are about anything but this requirement to back down.
I agree with most of this but I don’t see how it’s relevant to the point I was replying to, where you claimed it would be okay not to hire someone because of a prudential concern that it would *hypothetically* lead to HR issues, based on the new hire’s political views.
Ok, I can elaborate.
“If someone actually says they will discriminate between students or colleagues on impermissible grounds, or won’t otherwise follow institutional policy, don’t hire them.”
There’s a lot of air between thoughtcrime and someone announcing “I intend to break this policy”. There is for example someone saying or implying “I think this policy is illegitimate, I will obey it only to the strictest letter, complain every time, and will not shut up about it until it is repealed.”
I’m not saying anyone who publishes, say, technical arguments against gay marriage should be taken to imply this. There’s a difference between intellectual argument and policy proposals.
I used this example with you before, you didn’t respond then. Someone might have certain metaphysical views on pain, e.g. that it can be observed externally. That’s unproblematic. But if they have, on the basis of these views, advocated for certain policies, e.g. that painkillers should only be administered when the patient can prove that they are in pain, then we might be reluctant to have them in a setting where these policies are practically fraught — even if they protest that they would of course heed the letter of the existing policy while it is in place.
If you have direct evidence that someone will treat a policy as illegitimate then I agree that is a reasonable thing to consider in hiring. I think it is almost never reasonable to infer that from someone’s first order views.
To change the political valence a bit: it is against the law in the US to consider sex or race as a factor in academic hiring. I would not wish to employ someone who was going to disregard or outright break that law in cases where they thought they could get away with it. I would consider not hiring someone who had said that they thought the law was illegitimate and academis have an active duty to subvert it. I would have no qualms hiring someone just because they said that affirmative action was a moral necessity and the law ought to be changed.
I think it worth remembering that academic hiring normally involves a large amount of data about past teaching and peer interactions. If a candidate is in fact treating people badly, there are better ways to determine that than extrapolation and hypothesis from their politics.
(I’ll pass on the pain example: academic and medical contexts bring up very different issues and I have no experience of medical workplaces.)
You pass on the pain example, yet often you do not pass on trans healthcare examples.
I can only say to you what you said to me: I agree with most of this, but don’t see how this is a problem for me. Someone’s theoretical views are not such evidence, but the conservatives who cry the loudest often provide other evidence.
It depends on what you mean by “politics”. Purely theoretical positions? We agree, it shouldn’t matter.
But, for instance, someone says publicly that they will not share facilities with a trans person and agitate against any policy that says otherwise. It looks like you are saying it would be *not* be a violation of that persons academic freedom to not hire them on these grounds, if one’s department has a trans inclusive policy. Right?
If they refuse to follow policy, sure. Otherwise it depends what ‘agitate’ means. I’m in favor of internal democracy in universities! (would you think it ok not to hire someone because they thought the department’s policy should be changed to be *more* trans inclusive?)
Yes to internal democracy, but there ultimately remains a fundamental asymmetry here between progressive and conservative positions. Likely, this asymmetry underwrites this whole ill-fated debate.
I confess, I would have a very, very hard time working with a colleague who thinks that my marriage is illegitimate and who is involved in *active policy efforts* to change the law accordingly, even if he does not personally harass me. I would likely look for another appointment elsewhere.
I thought very carefully about the implications of this. Sorry if it got long.
Any department has a choice here. Would it prefer to have people like me and the many others whose ways of life are threatened by conservatives, or prefer to have the conservatives?
Many departments have made that choice, and often not in the way the conservatives like. It was likely made on merit: many minorities add more to the scholarship than a few conservatives. Meritocracy favors progressives.
You might think I’m the unreasonable one; that I ought not force this choice and should suck it up instead. But, as said, there’s an asymmetry here, straight from On Liberty: conservatives’s conduct aims to interfere with parts of my conduct (my marriage) that only concern myself. I have a right to my conduct, they don’t have a right to theirs. They’re the ones who should suck it up.
Maybe you still think that I should suck it up in the name of academic freedom. But I can’t and I won’t. An ideal theory about the aptness of my attitude or how it intersects with academic freedom won’t change anything. I’m telling you a fact about how I and others behave.
What happens if we flip the valence, let a conservative say everything I said? That I threaten their way of life, that they have a right to their conduct, and anyway they can’t stop their conduct any more than I can stop mine? I disagree on the theoretical right (and am happy to see academic debate on this disagreement), but it ultimately is unimportant. Me and mine will still make our choice of going elsewhere. Mot as a power play, a punishment, a move against academic freedom — but from a deep seated sense of necessity. This debate won’t advance until the implications of this sense are understood.
You might move now to generalize and attribute to me a silly view like this: any demand by a minority, however unreasonable, should be met. No — there are plenty of unreasonable demands where people can and should suck it up and otherwise shouldn’t let the door hit them on their way out. I’m trying to tell you that a threat to one’s way of life is a very specific thing and one that is very difficult to appreciate if one does not face it oneself. This fact ought to be taken into account in this debate.
On trans healthcare: you have sometimes (often?) defended people like AB who use metaphysical arguments to advance policy goals bearing on trans healthcare. I suspect you’d not make the same defense of someone advancing a policy bearing on clinical pain management based on their reading of Dennett. But we need not press this.
So, to sum up: you don’t want (some) conservatives as colleagues, and that isn’t because of an academic-freedom-compatible concern about professional norms or similar: you don’t want to work with people who are pursuing (some) political goals you strongly oppose. You recognize this is in conflict with academic freedom and you don’t care. You recognize that the valence could be swapped, so that, e.g. (my example) someone with pro-life views could refuse to hire a philosopher who did pro bono work for Planned Parenthood; your response is that there are more of you than there are of them.
It took five days, but we finally got a clear statement of what I (and I imagine others here) suspected was at the root of your objection all along: faced with a clash between academic freedom and the desire to exclude from academia people whose politics you find inimical, you will go for exclusion, and academic freedom be damned.
To anyone reading this with heterodox politics: all I can say is that by no means all academic philosophers feel this way – indeed, by no means all *progressive* academic philosophers feel this way – and I think the tide is going in the right direction.
To Julian: I think this concludes the usefulness of this discussion. Even more so as you are still (and not for the first time on DN) attributing to me things that I have never said: I have never defended (nor indeed criticized) Alex Byrne’s metaphysical arguments on gender, but only his academic-freedom right to make them, and I would similarly defend the academic-freedom right of a philosopher to advocate an approach to pain management based on a crude misreading of Dennett.
Sorry but that’s not what I’m saying at all. I outlined the Millian argument for why this isn’t symmetric “disagreement” and explained that there are two rights in play here. The conjunction of these two rights generates the empirical phenomenon that conservatives misconstrue as bias.
To wit, everybody has their right to academic freedom and their right to free association. Your position seems to be that the former takes precedent over the latter, which strikes me as a highly illiberal position — one always has the right to walk away.
Which I’m also doing now from this conversation.
Of course one has a right to walk away. But if your reason is that you don’t accept a foundational principle of your employer, you should be walking to a different line of work. If you don’t accept a largely unrestricted right to choose, walk away from pro-choice activism; if you don’t accept the divinity of Christ Jesus, walk away from the Christian Church; if you don’t accept a largely unrestricted principle of academic freedom, walk away from universities. In each case, your employer’s attitude should be: we wish you well in pursuits more suited to your principles. Or, more bluntly (and as you put it yourself): don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
That’s all good and well, but I’ve been trying to explain to you that your “unrestricted principle of academic freedom” equivocates two views:
a) if you can’t have your most strongly held beliefs routinely questioned, walk away.
b) if you can’t have your individual existence routinely threatened, walk away.
The first says something correct, we can all agree on that.
The second one is certainly A View, but a contested one. It seems to me that in that contest, universities made a practical policy choice: they don’t want all these people to walk.
“It took five days, but we finally got a clear statement of what I (and I imagine others here) suspected was at the root of your objection all along”
Yep. This is the disingenuity I spoke of. The actual view isn’t “there’s no anti-conservative bias,” it’s “the anti-conservative bias is justified!” That might be right, it might not, but it’s tiresome when people aren’t just up front about it. So, good on you for sticking with it for five days! (Not that it matters (nor that anyone should believe me, since I’m pseudonymous), but I’m not conservative, and do find many conservative views…problematic).
Also:
“often you do not pass on trans healthcare examples.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever said anything about trans healthcare online; certainly I don’t do it ‘often’. Are you sure you’re thinking of the right person? (I’ve sometimes commented on second order questions like other philosophers’ academic-freedom right to write about trans healthcare.)
How about people who have said, publicly that one would not be willing to work with anyone who has the wrong political views on a range of topics? Should that affect hiring decisions?
Or: how about people who have signed open letters calling for the retraction of articles that have passed peer review and been accepted for publication, in cases where there is no evidence of providing fake data, etc.?
If it’s legitimate to remove candidates from consideration on the grounds that they seem apt to act unprofessionally, then one mustn’t pick and choose cases in a partisan manner. The cases I mentioned are egregious and yet quite common, and it is often no secret who has done these things.
Justin I’m not doing this with you anymore.
Thank goodness!
Seriously, this whole thread is wild to me. Like, a month ago this very website had a post about Alex Byrne essentially committing a crime by editing/writing a US government document on sex and gender. And the comment section, of course, had people –named, tenured professors — just raking him over the coals. This current comment section is a great example of how quickly the move is made from “it’s not happening” to “it’s a good thing it’s happening” and back again.
Moreover, one of the people who went the most nuts savaging Byrne in that other post’s comments is the very same guy who’s loudly denying, throughout the comments on this post, that there’s any pressure in the discipline against arguing for any serious position.
What’s an example of a heterodox view you hold that you’d be ready to share with us under your own name?
This is, of course, a ridiculous ask. Being argumentative on this forum, I prefer my mild anonymity. I would not want this handle, which I use on this board frequently, to be connected with my name.
Not because the ideas are altogether embarrassing, but because I don’t write professionally here and tend to be relatively flippant in a way I’d like to keep separate from my professional resume.
But, I’ll be more than happy, among my department to speak up admonishing student protests that I think are misguided or acting harmfully. So, I tend to be pretty hard on Palestinian protests despite feeling sympathy for the motivations.
I am willing to speak up about my belief that many abortions are probably murder. Although I am not anti-abortion simpliciter (because I’m not anti-murder simpliciter).
I’m also willing to discuss trans athletes with more scrutiny than my more progressive peers.
So, there are three areas where I think I’m heterodox.
However, I’m not going to give up my online anonymity (although I am happy for mods to see my name through my email address) because I prefer the ability to speak here without putting it on my professional profile (as with ALL of my socials).
I understand, no worries. But you can also understand how this undercuts, if only slightly, the value of your testimony and what we can be asked to infer from it regarding censorship. We still don’t have direct evidence that you’d be willing to speak up. I believe you and I appreciate that you shared examples. But anonymity should be used with circumspection because the pragmatic implications of your words are different under and without a pseudonym.
I think consideration of the representation of conservatives is important, but I also think that there is a lot more diversity on the left than we tend to see in philosophy departments. I don’t think we represent progressives. Even when we share commitments, we often differ in priorities.
It’s also worth noting that one doesn’t have to be a conservative to hold an opinion that is also held by many conservatives. If I thought that gun rights kept us safer, I’d be agreeing with a lot of conservatives, but I wouldn’t be changing teams.
An excellent point. Very few of us in philosophy today would describe themselves as conservative or libertarian (I do not, for instance), but for every conservative who is marginalized, there are far more of us who just fail to have the full slate of progressive positions, or who have entirely progressive positions but not the exact progressive positions one is supposed to have at some moment, or who are at the moment undecided.
The harm done by the pressure to be orthodox only falls to a small extent on the conservatives among us, just because there are so few of them. Much more total harm falls on non-conservatives, especially since many of those people will have more to lose, socially and professionally, by being labelled as unorthodox. Any open conservative who manages to stay afloat in a typical philosophy department today will, naturally, tend to have developed a thicker skin!
And beyond the harms done to the faculty, there are even greater harms done to the integrity of the discipline and to the education of our students.
Still, the conservatives in philosophy can reasonably be seen as a canary in the coal mine. If we see that they are faring well, then we can take that as a good sign for the rest of us.
On the other hand: if things have gone so far that some members of the profession imagine that the virtual absence of any unorthodox views on matters to do with race, gender, immigration, etc. is due to their being refuted in the way that the flat earth model has been refuted, well… we’re clearly in trouble.
Am I the only one who finds it very odd that conservatives here are complaining about micro-aggressions and more or less demanding an affirmative action program for themselves? So I guess the thought is that while it’s ridiculous for women and minorities to complain of such things or ask for preferential hiring it isn’t for you to make the same complaints or demands? Please help me to piece together your reasoning for why that is though. Is it that while women and minorities are tough enough and smart enough that they can and should be expected to just push through conservatives are so fragile and untalented they cant possibly succeed without a helping hand or lower standards? Gosh that really doesn’t seem all that charitable to conservatives. If that’s not it, then please help me to see why you’re the one special group that should be shielded from micro-aggressions and get an affirmative action program.
I don’t see anyone talking about micro-aggressions.
This might be helpful: imagine that a criminal case is about to be heard in a court of law. You want to make sure that the trial is a fair one. Which would you find unacceptable, if either?
A. Not all demographics (sorted by race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.) are well represented among he judge, jurors, and lawyers.
B. All those demographics are represented evenly, but the judge and all the jurors already decided in advance of the trial that the defendant is guilty, and there is no defense counsel because nobody is willing to run the gauntlet of public opinion for defending the accused. So the jury will only hear the arguments of the prosecution.
One might say that A is sub-optimal in some respects. But it would be consistent with a fair trial. B, by contrast, would not be much of a trial at all.
In academia, it’s ideas that are put on trial. The problem is that, on many of these issues, the situation is like Case B.
In reality what it’s like is that conservatives will screech and moan bias any time any jury delivers any verdict they don’t like. If a conservative argument or conservative fails, then it’s always just because of liberal bias. On the other hand conservative successes are never evidence against bias. Students are much more likely to read Nozick or Plantinga than Marx in an American philosophy class but that’s just proof of how incredible those guys are and not that system isn’t biased.
To put it another way it’s just the intellectual equivalent of J6 over and over again. When you lose or fail it’s not your fault and it doesn’t show you’ve made bad arguments or done something wrong. It is always and only because we mean old liberals are keeping you down and have rigged the system against you. And of course we need to be punished for our bias and meanness. When you succeed well it’s not because we’re ever fair. No it’s because you just so awesome you beat the rigged system. It’d be funny if it weren’t for the fact that people who believe this are currently rampaging through academia and every other corner of American society.
I’m sorry I should have said even demanding even more affirmative action programs for conservatives on top of the ever proliferating number of PPE programs and places like Hillsdale and Grove City.
Which brings me to another point: Can you point to one I mean one case where someone in power interfered with a search to get a left winger who didn’t actually fit the job description hired because of their views and political connections? If you can do. If you can then was a conservative professor driven out of his job for blowing the whistle on that? Please do tell me about that case if you can. That’s what real political bias looks like. Your anecdotes you heard from a friend or even your certainty that only bias can explain you not getting a job despite the fact all your profs at Bill Gothard University think your dissertation on the moral duty of Christians to oppose carbon taxes is brilliant… well if you can’t see why those are weak sauce I’ve some theories of my own about your difficulties in academia.
“Which brings me to another point: Can you point to one I mean one case where someone in power interfered with a search to get a left winger who didn’t actually fit the job description hired because of their views and political connections?”
Those who oppose race/sex affirmative action cases often ask the parallel question.
Of course, it would be extremely unlikely for someone to say in writing to a job candidate, “Sorry, we were just about to hire you, but we went with someone else merely because of your sex/race/political orientation.” Nor would the people on the search committee make a public announcement to that effect.
Again, I’m not really sure who you’re addressing, but I for one am neither conservative nor, frankly, having any difficulties in academia. I (like I think others on this thread) am concerned about underrepresentation of conservatives for broadly the same reasons I am concerned about underrepresentation of women or ethnic minorities: that is, universities ought to be open and welcoming to interested and talented people of every background and should not narrowly serve only an inappropriately constrained subset of their wider community.
This is a tangent, but I’m curious: what’s your beef with PPE? This is the first I’ve heard someone object to such programs, let alone suggest they’re connected to conservativism.
I’m not actually sure there have been many conservatives complaining here: most of the complaints have come from people like me and Justin Kalef who aren’t conservatives.
But to answer the main question: I think the right approach to conservative underrepresentation ought to be pretty much exactly the same as for other forms of underrepresentation (e.g., women in philosophy), i.e.
1) the mere fact of underrepresentation is not itself evidence of discrimination, since (even leaving aside average differences in aptitudes) there are lots of between-group differences in interests and preferences; but
2) if there is underrepresentation, it is good to look at your practices to make sure that they are not discriminatory;
3) even if there would be underrepresentation just because of preference differences, workplaces where a group is quite underrepresented can intentionally or accidentally become hostile environments for members of that group (e.g., humor that presupposes listeners are men, or Democratic voters), and this should be guarded against;
4) hiring practice in particular ought to be based strictly on what is required for the job (in philosophy, mostly teaching and/or research excellence) and candidates should be neither favored nor disfavored on account of membership of an underrepresented group;
5) in some (not all) areas of academia, various axes of diversity can matter to hypothesis formation and testing and underrepresentation can stunt scholarship (e.g., underrepresentation of women in human biology, underrepresentation of conservative viewpoints in some bits of empirical political science) and so there is a case for actively courting diversity insofar as can be done without discriminating (in practice, this mostly increases the strength of the case for not discriminating *against* members of that group).