First, one of the core modules, called ‘Critical Whiteness and Critical Eugenics’ which focused primarily on the history and legacy of Eugenics at UCL (Galton and Pierson [sic]) was thought to be too narrow for a core module.--Jo Wolff at DailyNous.
A year ago I noted, in response to a petition "to create a permanent, tenure-track position in the Department of Philosophy for Dr. Nathaniel Adam Tobias," the following:
Nearly all Anglophone and European philosophy departments don't do better than UCL [=University College London] when it comes to the number of appointed "Black academics." The situation is dismal. Anything that puts the (harsh) spotlight on this disgraceful situation ought to be applauded. But, human nature being what it is, we prefer such a spotlight on others, not ourselves. A bit of additional reflection suggests that our self-interest and principles match up: outsiders shouldn't interfere with our contextually sensitive, hiring decisions (which involve our expert judgments). After all, when the spotlight is gone, we are stuck with a lifetime colleague.
Hiring decisions are not just contextually sensitive, they also involve a discovery process about the candidate by the search-committee and (this is often forgotten) by the candidate, that is, one discovers one's aspirations and needs, and it is a discovery process about the the hiring department (this is often forgotten, especially, by european universities) by the candidate as well as by the hiring department itself (which may discover its own disunities, or the falsity of the plattitudes it tells about itself to others and self).
Critics of UCL should probably put their money where their mouth is: hire Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman who crosses out his surname to “highlight the stigmatising expressive meaning” of the “badge” given to his forebears by slave owners, into your own department or, more creatively, start a crowd-funding source to give UCL more time to keep him on soft-money. If UCL were open to this, I would certainly contribute to such a crowd-funding source.
I am, however, critical of part of Jonathan Wolff's comments explaining why UCL is letting go (firing?) Coleman. Because I have criticized Wolff (who is a well known political philosopher) before, I just want to say (to my suspicious readers) that to the best of my knowledge we have never had any professional/personal interaction, and from what I have read I believe his intentions are noble. Perhaps, surprisingly, I am not critical of his claim that there was "no business case for a new post." While there is a deplorable tendency to reduce university decision-making opportunistically to business case decision-making -- it's deplorable because it's often promoted by a rent-seeking managerial class whose lifestyles are subsidized by exploited workers--this is indeed the harsh reality of modern university life.
But I do want to challenge the claim that a focus on the "history and legacy of Eugenics at UCL (Galton and Pierson) [sic]" is "unduly narrow for a core module." Here we see a kind of unintended consequence of the professional success of Rawls, Nozick, and Cohen, who managed to transform political philosophy from a neglected subject into a respectable, technical topic inside professional philosophy and higher education. For, they did so by nearly completely effacing and re-modeling the earlier focus on the complex and contested ways in which demographics, political economy, biology, social institutions, inheritance, family-planning, education, and, alas, race interact each other in blueprint or dystopia for better societies (from Plato to, well, Pearson.) With climate-change-inspired concern about demographics, these old issues have a new resonance and urgency.
In fact, Wolff's reports on the committee's thought make me wonder how widespread the (arguably culpable) ignorance is of the fascinating and complex issues surrounding the life and works of Galton and Pearson. I have reported how I managed to get a PhD in Philosophy (in a department -- The University of Chicago -- that prided itself on its broad historical coverage) without having much knowledge of the role of many still famous professional philosophers, economists, statisticians, biologists, psychologists, and sociologists in the extremely broad eugenics movement(s) (which was both a Progressive and a Conservative/Fascist cause)--a chance encounter with two then marginalized economists, David M. Levy and Sandra Peart changed my perspective forever. The exception was a quest lecture (by the historian of statistics Stephen Stigler) on (as I remember it, although I believe Stigler's emphasis was elsewhere) Pigou's discovery of what later became known as Simpson's paradox in his criticism of (I believe) Pearson over Galton/Pearson style statistical arguments that connected eugenic policy proposals to public health, alcoholism, social work, English-Scottish relations, etc. (Here's the bit that made it into Stigler's important book.)
In fact, after having become something of an expert (by philosophy standards) on the history and philosophy of economics, I cannot think of a more appropriate and serious way to start a ‘MA in “Race” Difference and Domination’ than by exploring the complex and fascinating lives and works of Galton/Pearson and put them in institutional and political context. It would be an eye-opening and troubling course that almost certainly will scrutinize enduring myths that professional intellectuals and academics tell themselves about the past and present. The only shame is that the folk most of need of such a course are the ones likely to think it is too narrow.*
*There are two ways to think of 'core' modules: some offer a Smörgåsbord tasting menu-overview of what's on offer in a field, others take some representative work(s) in which key issues can be studied in depth and thereby students will be disciplined into a shared field of study.
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