Digressions&Impressions

On Being Longwinded

Don't let your question (or your answer) run on forever.--David Chalmers "Guidelines for respectful, constructive, and inclusive philosophical discussion."

Most of Chalmers's "guidelines" are sensible suggestions for the smooth runing of public philosophical discussion. It's sobering to look at them and recognize that I violate a number of them regularly without even thinking about it. Even so I have some qualms about some of the guidelines. (In what follows I leave aside the risks associated with the heavy handed emphasis on civility that is growing in popularity among university administrators and some of my peers. For discussion, see Johnson and Kazarian and Leiter.)* In particular, throughout the guidelines, time is treated as a scarce resource and the norms appear to be designed to guarantee a fair allocation of it (see especially the section on "procedural norms"). But more important than temporal equity is quality. And it is not obvious that temporal equity serves quality. More important, it is by no means obvious that brief (or brief-ish) questions really serve inclusivesess. Let me explain.

If one shares a language and there is considerable mutual trust, then one can be brief, even use short-hand, and still expect to be understood. Brevity or to-the-pointness is, then, a skill that can be developed in the context of a lot of background agreement, philosophical as well as social. I call it a 'skill' because it requires considerable expertise and practice. It is easy to forget once one has mastered it, but it is very difficult to ask a focused philosophical question in real time. So my first criticism is that this norm may well be exclusionary in practice, especially toward novices and those that are not quick on their feet. (Obviously, a lot turns on what it means to 'run on forever.') This criticism can be accomodated by a wise and informed moderator (who can recognize the inexperienced and slow-thinking in our midst).

My second, more important, criticism builds on a feature of the first, but is really distinct. Sometimes one's position on an issue, or more general philosophical sensibility, is very different from a speaker's. But, even then, it may still be mutually illuminating, especially if there a students presents, to have a dialogue between outlooks that are at odd with each other. In such a circumstance, a question may well require considerable 'stage-setting,' in order to make a precise and even focused question possible. Sometimes the 'stage-setting' alone can be already very illuminating to others in the audience. Not all philosophy needs to be about challenging each other's foundational premises or the exploration of alternative frameworks, but it strikes me as a shame if we codify a set of norms that unintentionally, but predictably, makes such an event, which would be a paradigm of respectful, constructive, and inclusive discusssion, even rarer than it already is.

On Triple-Marginalization

Third-world historians feel a need to refer to works in European history; historians of Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate. Needless to say, in philosophy the case is similar, if not worse. The study of philosophy often excludes anything outside of Western philosophy, and this is true even if one studies philosophy in Asia [11]....Often, scholars from India or China are proud of their own long tradition and philosophy and believe that they can make some contribution to philosophy in the West. However, much to their disappointment, they discover that their “inclusion” is not in itself a sign of engagement from outside their own group. They are ghettoized, with no apparent connection to the rest of the academic community. Often the only way the engagement might occur is if they conform to the methods of Western philosophy, using European or Anglo philosophy as a framework to explain their own ideas, thereby enforcing the Eurocentrism that discredits them in the first place. [18]"  Yoko Arisaka (2000) "Asian Women: Invisibility, Locations, and Claims to Philosophy"  [HT Audrey Yap & Tom Digby; see also this piece.]

If, in addition to self-knowledge, one of the main aims of philosophy is to conceptualize and articulate situations, feelings and experiences that would otherwise remain overlooked, even to ourselves,[1] -- and it is --, then in the passage above Arisaka is not doing arm-chair sociology of knowledge, but philosophy. Not everything needs to be made ‘available’ for discussion, but the need for our philosophical activity is especially important if something is made or remains overlooked because of existing injustice or oppression, ruling ideology, existing scientific commitments, bureaucratic practices, taxonomic categories, or even our ordinary psychological functioning (etc.). So, while I do not want to overvalue what words and concepts can do in the face of oppression -- and certainly do not mean to imply that freedom of expression resolves all problems or deny that it can generate its own problems --, words and concepts allow us to name problems or celebrate features of our lives that deserve more attention. We also ought not to underestimate the significance of this task; even the most powerful tyrants never feel so secure as to remove all censorship (explicit or tacit).

Arisaka's analysis is all the more poignant because she makes available for discussion professional philosophy's lack of receptivity and patterns of exclusion. Our present patterns of exclusion tend to reflect the conceptual sedimentations and professional choices of the past. But we should not assume that philosophy's patterns are merely local. Given the significance even generality of the enduring philosophical concepts -- past and present -- they are embedded in lots of other human activities. So, much conventional wisdom or tacit assumptions are the consequence of hard-won philosophical insight, and oversight, of the past.

Arisaka describes a very common phenomenon within professional philosophy:* if you work outside assumed-to-be-familiar ('core') areas it's your responsibility to supply the common framework that makes comprehension possible. Obviously this entails huge opportunity costs (one is busy re-packaging one's insights into mainstream vocabulary, say, rather than doing research, etc.) and, as Arisaka notes, philosophical (and psychological) distortions. Even when appointments in a non-core-field are made, they often go to folk that are very good at the re-packaging part, and then it's such folk -- hired to appease a Dean or to provide 'teaching coverage' -- that define professional excellence in the sub-field (and, in so doing, deflate whatever  potential for insight that might emanate from outside the 'core'). This is one reason why often at many leading departments the specialist-non-core-hires often do work on themes that do not define a new cutting-edge for philosophy, but seem to reflect past fashions renforcing the sense of non-significance. (Exercise for the reader: trace out research on Plato, Spinoza or Hume (etc.), through the idealist, logical positivist, naturalist, and metaphysical phases. [And 'history of philosophy' is not marginal in Western philosophy!])

LEMM & HISTORY NOT ATTRACTING BLACKS IN THE PHILOSOPHY PROFESSION

 There is a willful, not necessarily a conscious, preference among many members of the philosophy profession largely to maintain the status quo in terms of: the social group profiles of members; the dynamics of prestige and influence; and the areas and questions deemed properly or deeply "philosophical." None of this is good for black folks.--LK McPherson at NewAPPS, Dec. 12, 2011.

I put a screaming headline on this post. That's because I just finished reading “What is the State of Blacks in Philosophy?” (2014) Critical Philosophy of Race, by Tina Fernandes Botts, Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntur Mallarangeng, and Quayshawn Spencer. DailyNous posted a link to the piece, but to my amazement it has not generated any significant public discussion that I am familiar with. So, let me provoke some. According to the paper (this is summarized on DailyNous from which I quote):

• Blacks make up just 1.32 percent of the total number of people professionally affiliated (as grad students or faculty) with U.S. philosophy departments.
• Approximately 0.88 percent of U.S. philosophy Ph.D. students are black.
• Approximately 4.3 percent of U.S. tenured philosophy professors are black.
• Of black philosophy Ph.D. students in the U.S., half are female. That is about double the rate of the U.S. philosophy Ph.D. student population as a whole.
• The distribution of black female Ph.D. students across philosophy Ph.D. programs is much lower than black males. Specifically, 69 percent of black female Ph.D. students are at Penn State.
• The top areas of specialization for U.S. black philosophers are (1) Africana, (2) Race, (3) Social and Political, (4) Ethics, and (5) Continental philosophy.

One bit of terminology: Fernandes Botts et al. use "BIPs" to refer to Blacks in the Profession; I follow this convention. Before I offer some commentary I want to note that the "4.3 percent of U.S. tenured philosophy professors are black" number is based on the number of tenured APA members. I think it would be a  mistake if that number became the baseline for future discussion of BIPs. For, Kate Norlock reminds me that NCES has calculated (based on now ten year old data) that there are about 13,000 full-time philosophy faculty. (These are NOT all tenured, of course. But it excludes nearly all PhD students/ABDs.)* The number of BIPs in the (non-graduate-student) full-time teaching population, is, thus, probably closer to approximately 1%. This is back-of-the-envelope calculation, so should be treated with caution; it excludes part-time faculty! But that rough 1% number matches better, I think, the other data collected by Fernandes Botts et. al.

Correlation isn't causation. But....ahhh...correlation can also not be ignored.  So, to be blunt, every time we treat the LEMM as the CORE parts of philosophy (recall) and every time we mock SPEP-style Continental philosophy, we are, in effect, also (further) marginalizing (insulting, demeaning, etc.) the majority of BIPs. Every time you are a bystander to this, you are very likely complicit to making matters worse when it comes to the status of BIPs.

Or to get to the nub of the matter: the way professional philosophy understands what philosophy is may well be part of the problem. The issue has been explored with subtlety by Kristie Dotson in her now famous paper (see also her post at NewAPPS and McPherson's post linked at the  top of this post). I think we need to acknowledge that analytical philosophy, the way it has evolved, and the way we understand the history of philosophy are part of the problem. This is not to deny that we may have inherited Plato's original sins. (See also this post; so, yes, I was probably too optimistic, if not just deluded, in this post.) How much, I don't know. (This is not to ignore problems within Continental and other areas of philosophy; I am just not the right person to speak about them.) That is to say, rather than only focusing on fighting bias (explicit/tacit)), and improving procedures, we should be open to the possibility that our systematic downplaying of those parts of philosophy that seriously question both the philosophical status quo as well as the political/social/cultural/institutional status quo, and philosophical complicity in it, may, in fact, contribute to the very problem here.

When I was an undergraduate I was in awe of most of my philosophy teachers. I admired their intelligence, their argumentative skill, and their intellectual integrity. At the time, I didn't think I could become as good as them, but I wanted to join a club in which I could participate as a peer in the noble quest for the search after truth and justice. Professionally philosophy has treated me better than I expected. In looking at the numbers collected by Fernandes Botts and her colleagues, I now recognize that I was also striving to join and be allowed into a club very much like myself. And while I want to scream like my headline, this belated -- 'what took you so long?!' -- insight makes me wonder how many of my aspirations are tainted.

On The Historian as True Philosopher Vs the Puzzle-solver

There is almost universal recognition, reflected in hiring patterns, that historians of philosophy play a vital teaching role in philosophy departments. We are experts on the core texts that majors and graduate students are supposed to have read, and we are committed to bringing those works alive in a way that non-historian colleagues might not be. But we all are aware of the dangers of accepting a view of our activities as ancillary in relation to those of philosophy in general. To see ourselves merely as keeping alive a tradition that serves as a backdrop for on-going philosophical research, a tradition that students should study but also supersede in their properly “philosophical” work, is to write ourselves out of the mainstream of contemporary philosophy and to undervalue the significance of our discipline.--Don Rutherford. [Emphases added--ES.]

the history of philosophy can defend its position as an integral part of philosophy, namely that part of philosophy concerned with our understanding and assessment of what philosophy has accomplished and can hope to accomplish.

The “history of philosophy as metaphilosophy” is my slogan for this pathway. Metaphilosophy is an inevitable and widely acknowledged branch of philosophy. Just as philosophers reflexively make their own modes of reasoning and norms of rationality a topic of inquiry, so the enterprise of philosophy as a whole—its subject matter, methods and prospects for progress—is a topic for philosophical inquiry.--Rutherford.

In "Don Rutherford’s presentation at the inaugural meeting of the Society for Modern Philosophy, held at the 2014 Pacific Division meeting of the APA," he moves artfully from acknowledging the anxiety over the possible second-class status of historians of philosophy within professional philosophy to concluding audaciously that, in fact, the history of philosophy is the most philosophical enterprise within professional philosophy today. Within the intellectual division of labor, which generates ever more narrow specializations ("specialists" is a key word throughout the essay, and Rutherford offers important observations about increased specializations among 'early modernists'),  a properly conceived history of philosophy can take on one of philosophy's key tasks -- distinct from science, and religion,* intellectual history, etc. -- that is knowledge of generality, that is, a necessary ingredient of philosophy, which he understands in "the broadest terms as our self-understanding as human beings." To be clear (and fair to Rutherford), the "enterprise of philosophy as a whole" is a second-order enterprise that pertains to philosophy's "subject matter, methods and prospects for progress," rather than the first-order, specialist enterprise of contributing to progress by solving some puzzle, re-framing the nature of problem, philosophical limits, generating  a new purported paradox, etc.

Before I turn to Rutherford's explicit conception of history of philosophy as meta-philosophy, I register two notes on the first paragraph quoted above. First, the "hiring patterns," Rutherford describes are more localized than he realizes even in Anglophone (analytical) philosophy, e.g. (a) in England, there is remarkably little hiring in (let's call it) pre-Fregean philosophy, a few splendidly isolated bastions of 'Ancient' excepted; (b) in many European departments, self-described 'analytical' philosophers (in some ways still minority) are very hostile to any 'history' or will only recognize history of logic/physics as somewhat respectable.

Second, Rutherford takes the notion of a 'mainstream' for granted in his piece; now if the mainstream just is where the jobs are (recall 'hiring patterns'), then we can just grant some sociological interpretation of this and move on (although it would be worth testing to what degree responses to PhilPapers surveys and hiring correlate). But, it is more likely that, in practice, 'mainstream' functions as a kind of disciplinary self-policing tool located in the imaginations and self-understandings of folk that is used locally and more widely in opportunistic ways to articulate what is acceptable and not for a professional philosopher, historian or otherwise, to engage in. (I use 'self-policing' here in order to do justice to Rutherford's repeated 'we.') This matters because Rutherford seems to rule out, in advance, the possibility that some such dissatisfaction with some such imagined 'mainstream' might be the conatus behind history of philosophy or the historian of philosophy (recall this post); to recognize this particular conatus, does not entail that such a historian has the aim to overturn the existing (imagined) 'mainstream directly or indirectly, but it should not be ruled out. Rather than seeing it is an anxiety-producing problem that one can write oneself out of the mainstream, one might see this as liberation, even necessary preparation to a recasting of the discipline. That is to say, Rutherford's way of setting things up suggests initially a conception of the second-order (meta-philosophical) enterprise that leaves the first-order enterprise untouched; it's general, but harmless. On might think that Rutherford endorses such conception (e.g., "our work as historians of philosophy is, first and foremost, to understand the views of historical philosophers on their own terms before considering the relation between them and contemporary philosophical views.")

On the emergence of philosophy of science

What I (try to) do, however, is not philosophy of science. I suppose what I do amounts to old-fashioned Oxford-style conceptual analysis, though again with a new historical emphasis. I should note that I think the word ‘analysis’ in this context is often given much too restrictive a sense (to analyze the concept F is to give necessary and sufficient conditions of the form ‘x is an F if and only if…’ – well, no). In fact I suspect that what I do amounts to the kind of thing that, according to Schliesser, philosophy of science since the time of Newton’s exegetes was deliberately conceived in order to rule out as invalid. On his story, philosophy of science emerged as the exclusive authority of empirical science was invoked by figures like Maclaurin, ‘s Gravesande, Musschenbroek, and Nieuwentyt against the notion that mere reflection on the meanings of concepts can reveal substantive truths about concrete reality.--Alex Douglas, responding, in part, to my post.

Alex's post (welcome to the blogosphere, Alex!) allows me to clarify something about my own position about the emergence of philosophy of science. By 'philosophy of science,' I mean a distinct, second order reflection on scientific practice and images of science (on images of science recall this).* Douglas is right to associate my story with now-obscure figures like Maclaurin, ‘s Gravesande, Musschenbroek, and Nieuwentyt. What these eighteenth century characters have in common is that they were willing to appeal to the authority of Newtonian natural philosophy to settle debate within philosophy/metaphysics proper. (I call such a move "Newton's Challenge!") Maclaurin, ‘s Gravesande, and Musschenbroek also made some contributions to Newtonian natural philosophy, but on the whole they are worth remembering (together with Nieuwentyt) for their reflections on the nature of Newton's achievement. To be clear: none of these four characters were slavish followers of Newton; they recast Newton's position in terms that served their own philosophical ends often in polemical context (often, but not exclusively, anti-Spinozistic). But on my account, their arguments did not go unchallenged. In particular, Diderot, Hume, Buffon, Mandeville (etc.) all offer arguments and considerations that are, in part, a response to "Newton's Challenge" as such and, in some part, directly addressing the detailed arguments offered in its favor. By my lights these arguments by Diderot, Hume, Buffon, Berkeley, Mandeville also contribute to the emergence of philosophy of science as a distinct, second order enterprise. So, the authority of science was debated in the emergence of philosophy science (see here, in part). As an aside, this was, in part, a debate within what is now  known as 'empiricism.'

Big-shot Ivy League professors, Pretty Young Women, and Institutional Norms

When economists are bought directly by Wall Street interests (cf. Inside Job) or -- more subtly -- indirectly by lucrative private and government contracts, astute observers recognize that even when there are very transparent conflict of interest disclosures (which is not the norm in professional economics) that the discipline as a whole may well have lots of structural and tacit biases in which it handles evidence and what questions it considers worth asking. Ideology functions most slyly when presented in the language of science. We philosophers think we are better than this (and some of us even specialize in teasing out the methodological and normative commitments that make the ideology of economics hidden from many of its own practitioners).   

Yet, the dirty secret of professional philosophy is that one can make a fine career promoting justice. That may seem swell. Yet, in practice this amounts to the fact that one can make stellar careers promoting changes in others. There is now an established discourse, which crosses over from the seminar room to the public media, in which one can speak empty words of condemnation about rich people’s lifestyles in the name of global justice, while knowing that the only real world consequences of one’s moralizing will be felt by folk in countries far away. One can do so while (a) being a distasteful character; we philosophers have accepted a methodological stance in which arguments are evaluated, disembodied from a person’s moral worth. Moreover, (b) many philosophers allow on similar methodological grounds that global justice can be promoted while ignoring ‘private sphere’ justice and ‘justice within the profession.’ [Obviously, there are also people that apply concerns over global justice reflexively to themselves.]

That is to say, one can become a “hero” to others by being a “moral philosopher.” One’s career can become so cherished by others because they discern in you “political” causes worth promoting, even if you turn out to be scumbag in your personal life. I am quoting from an anonymous essay -- [HT Feministphilosophers; after first linking, Leiterreports removed the link] -- that has, human nature being what it is, inspired speculation into the author's identity and the "big-shot Ivy League professor" described in it. I have no idea who the author is;* her account rings true to my experience of what goes on in the profession and I have some suspicions about the identity of the big shot. Even so, here I want to focus on a feature of the essay that may well be ignored because of the all-too-human ways in which sexual politics get played out (especially in online fora). The essayist writes:

On the Culture of Sexual Harassment, Wisdom and Progress in Philosophy

Our agency may have a role in determining what reasons we have in the first place.--Ruth Chang

[Stoic] Wisdom consists in the special disposition of character. As this disposition is the (only) condition for wisdom, the virtuous (or expert) disposition of the sage need not be accompanied by the awareness of the fact that it is a virtuous disposition...This sequence, where the disposition comes first, only to be followed by the awareness of being in that condition, the Stoics compared with the initial unawareness of someone who becomes an expert in an ordinary craft.--Brouwer The Stoic Sage, 84

The two most prevalent ‘unsympathetic’ reactions to all the press about sexual harassment or sexually inappropriate behavior I’ve had – all from senior male philosophers, some of some fame – are both of apiece with what we do as philosophers and therefore not altogether surprising. But I find them pretty dispiriting.

The first is that we all have to remain neutral, that we can’t express even conditional moral disapprobation or sympathy for a party until we ourselves have the proof in hand and we can make our own judgment about the matter. Allied with this reaction is the intellectual reflex to think of all the counterarguments to any allegation or counter-interpretations to data with which we are presented. We are trained to be this way – to see the world in terms of arguments for and against a proposition, and to withhold judgment until all the arguments and data are in.--Ruth Chang.

This wonderful interview with Ruth Chang has been shared widely on philosophy blogs and Facebook. The whole interview is worth reading not just for those of us interested in philosophy of economics and decision theory, but also because Chang's approach is a nice exemplar of, what I recently called, the turn to analytical existentialism (while noting that her work is not reducible to that!) Of course, the interest in her remarks is driven by what she says about the culture of the profession. 

Chang's account remind us of what's wrong with the systematic dispositions (our intellectual reflexes) that are a consequence of contemporary professional philosophical training in what we professionals take to be the very best exemplars ("senior male philosophers, some of some fame.")  She need not name names because (to paraphrase Hobbes), we can read the truth of what she says in ourselves: when we obtain PhDs in professional philosophy, we have become experts with dispositions that can generate systematic reactions that are out of tune with what is required from us by ordinary decency, let alone justice. 

A Reflection on Jenkins' Open Letter to Junior Philosophers

But here’s a thing. Philosophers, even senior philosophers, are very far from being a unified bunch with respect to their opinions on current issues in the profession. Whatever you said, there is a decent chance that a number of senior philosophers out there were thinking (or even saying) if not it, then something isomorphic to it. In fact, whatever you said, there is a decent chance that a number of senior philosophers out there who will regard you as more hirable, tenurable, and so on, for having said that. There exist senior philosophers on hiring and tenure committees who are impressed by junior folks who have Things To Say about important issues in the profession, and who regard a willingness to do this as a desirable quality in a potential colleague. So while it’s true what you’ve said could do you professional harm, you never know: the opposite could be true....Even the de facto loci of concentrated professional power and authority are up for discussion and debate, along a plenitude of dimensions. This is a cat that’s not going back in its bag any time soon.--CSI Jenkins, "An open letter to junior philosophers who’ve seen something and said something"

I read Jenkins' piece and shared it on my facebook page yesterday. Jenkins is a big deal in the profession (Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor at UBC), and (with an awe-inspiring publication record) on her way to being a bigger deal.* Her "open letter," which makes quite a few empirical claims, is as much an encouragement to the young and junior (these are not co-extensive, of course), as a status report from within the professional elite, and -- perhaps I am reading between the lines --, a call to senior figures to step up, and a plausible form of self-fulfilling prediction: "as contributions to these critical and exploratory conversations become more varied and greater in number, over time there is correspondingly less focus (and less burden) on any one individual who has something to say."

I was incredibly moved by Jenkins' piece, and some time I'll try to articulate, perhaps, why this is so beyond the vain idea that I felt strangely vindicated by it.

But what I found especially interesting, even startling was Jenkins' suggestion that, in fact, a candidate's participation in the meta-discourse about the profession (its mores, its methods, its norms; its patterns of exclusion, and even local injustices, etc. ) can now play a legitimate role in the evaluation of hiring committees (i.e., "who regard a willingness to do this as a desirable quality in a potential colleague") in possible negative and positive fashion.

W.E.B. Du Bois, economist, philosopher, true lover of humanity

I have told you of those seventy-five landholders in Lowndes County--owning $25,000 worth of land, building new and better houses and working steadily and saving. And yet, gentlemen, not a single one of those men under the new constitution of Alabama has the right to vote: they cannot say a word as to the condition of the roads that pass their farmers, the situation of the schools, the choice of teachers, the kind of county officers or the rate of taxation. They are just as absolutely disfranchised as the worst criminal in the penitentiary and as I am in Georgia. You can twist this matter up and down and apologize for it and reason it out--its wrong, and unjust, and economically unsound, and you know it. (Du bois, 1906 "The Economic Future of the Negro," 242)

During the nineteenth century, philosophy, political economy, and moral sciences were overlapping disciplines that remained in fruitful, albeit increasingly fractured, conversation through the first half of the twentieth century. As philosophy became professionalized (as a species of scientific philosophy), it lost all memory of this; John Rawls educated himself into these matters and was the last to have a deep and wide knowledge of the issues. The oldest generation of active economists (who were still required to take history of economics in their graduate education) are the last disappearing store of knowledge about any of this.

One myth about the shared history of philosophy and economics is the idea that the historical overlap between the two is essentially constituted by utilitarianism.* W.E.B. Du Bois was no utilitarian, yet at the start of his career he was a distinguished economist trained in Berlin in the German historical school, then led by Schmoller and Wagner.** The passage above is, as Prasch suggests (320), directed at the economist John Bates Clark -- whose name is still remembered in professional economics because of the very influential medal named after him --, who had argued that economic development had to be prior to expansion of the franchise. Du Bois points to the enduring moral and economic truth: economic activity is embedded in (developing) political frameworks, which play a non-trivial role in generating patterns of economic outcomes.

A philosopher picks up the phone

In response to Richard Heck's comment as reported by Not a philosopher: "Nor (I hope!) is it true that sexual assault, or fear of sexual assault, by teachers or colleagues significantly contributes to the shortage of women in philosophy. In that sense, this is a story about a philosoph*er*, but it is not a story about philosoph*y*. There are no lessons for us here as we try to reform our profession, so, in that sense, there is nothing for us, qua philosophers, to dicuss. [Sic]"

Sexual assault and fear of repeated sexual assault by faculty led me to leave philosophy for 15 years. And repeated incidents of being groped by drunken colleagues or receiving inappropriate "here's my very private phone number" emails from colleagues I haven't seen for 20 years have led me to seriously contemplate leaving again. But, oh, right, I'm just ONE woman. Of course my departure wouldn't be a "significant contribution" to the shortage of women in philosophy.--Heidi Howkins Lockwood, at NewAPPS.

Somewhere in the late 1990s Prof. Andrea Woody came to The University of Chicago as a post-doc.  At the time, the university was a powerhouse in History and Philosophy of science. However, feminist philosophy of science was not part of the curriculum. So, it created quite a buzz when Prof. Woody offered a course in the area.* With a few other advanced PhD boys, I audited the course. We behaved badly; we interrupted, corrected, and baited Prof. Woody. Undoubtedly, it hadn't helped that we had heard disparaging comments about feminists/m, and that none of the senior faculty audited the course. (For a taste of the ongoing hostility toward Feminism in philosophy, see this thread at the Leiter Reports.) Prof. Woody relentlessly and patiently met us at the level of argument in a low key fashion. She studiously avoided getting into pissing contests with us boys, ensuring that we didn't prevent her students from engaging with the material. (She certainly never told us that she had her name on a highly cited chemistry paper that she must have co-authored as an undergraduate.)