Summer Program for Women in Philosophy at UC San Diego

The Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego is pleased to announce a call for applications for the 2014 Summer Program for Women in Philosophy, which will be held at UCSD from July 28 to August 8, 2014. The two-week program will feature two intensive courses and a variety of workshops, all geared towards providing an engaging philosophical learning experience and preparation for applying to graduate school in philosophy. Participants will be provided with housing and meals, will have transportation costs covered, will have all course and workshop materials provided, and will receive a $600 stipend. 

Full information at http://spwp.ucsd.edu/ 

Cultural mismatch and the norms of academic philosophy

There's no point in reciting the distressing statistics about the comparatively low numbers of women and minorities who pursue academic study in philosophy. Even though nearly everyone in the field recognizes that this is a problem, there still seems to be plenty of disagreement about its causes and potential solutions.

But one idea often floated in that discussion is that there's something about the culture of academic philosophy that women (and perhaps minorities) find off putting. That this 'cultural mismatch' might play a large role in explaining the small numbers from these groups was rolling around my head as I read Stevens et al's article on first-generation students and the culture of higher education.

Teaching in a gender imbalanced setting

The Feminist Philosophers blog has a smart discussion going on of how to teach effectively when the gender balance in a class skews strongly male. It makes a nice complement to some of our past discussions about gender equitable syllabi and dealing with sexist (and other -ist) comments. Check it out!

Responding to hateful ideas

Patrick O'Donnell draws my attention to a pair of posts (one, two) by Mary Anne Franks at PrawfsBlog. The issue: "What role should one's own views play in the response to homophobic, sexist, or racist sentiments, expressed either by students or in the class material itself?" Doubtless this is a problem philosophy instructors sometimes encounter.

There are a number of considerations in the air in Franks' posts and in the comments. Franks contrasts two general approaches:
(a) To respond negatively to students expressing such sentiments would amount to expressing one's own sentiments, a violation of the detachment or neutrality instructors ought to manifest.
(b) Detachment or neutrality in the pedagogical sphere is impossible. Neutrality is violated simply by the texts we choose, the topics we address, etc. Thus, no special worry is raised by responding negatively to students who express hateful sentiments. In a sense, it would be ethically irresponsible and show a lack of integrity concerning one's own values not to respond negatively.

Achieving the gender equitable syllabus

I'm not sure what to do about the inadequate representation of women in academic philosophy. There are certainly many explanations for it, one of which is that the relative lack of women on philosophy syllabi signals to women that they are not welcome in the profession and should not aspire to membership in it.

I simply don't know enough to say what role this phenomenon has in explaining the inadequate representation of women in our field, but it strikes me as plausible enough that we philosophy instructors should make efforts to include the work of women philosophers in our courses. Even if this turns out to have only a very small role in explaining the inadequate representation, it does no harm to include the work of women philosophers in our courses when appropriate.

This post at Feminist Philosophers motivated me to look at my own syllabi for gender equity and representation. The results: