pluralism versus balkanization

In the previous post on pluralism by Mark Lance, he focused on three qualities in assessing the level of departmental pluralism:

1. Historical coverage.  There would be people working in all the main areas of "common" history - ancient, medieval, early modern, Kant, etc. - as well as "both" other histories.  An idea department would have people working specifically on figures in early analytic, history of logic, pragmatists, 20th c French philosophers, post-Kantian German idealism, and more.

2. Integration of multiple historical figures, multiple approaches, multiple styles into work in contemporary philosophy.  The idea department would be stocked with people who are eager to engage with Foucault and with Carnap in their work on epistemology. And so on for all the various areas.  If metaphysics is treated as a uniquely "analytic" (or "continental") field, that is non-ideal.  Same for ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, etc.  Ideal is for the production of philosophy to come from a place of pluralism.

3. Social engagement.  A department with five ghettos that collectively cover everything but with no serious engagement across them, is not ideal.  Not close.  Ideal is a department in which the cognitive scientists talk to the Heidegger experts, in which the NYU educated metaphysician talks regularly with the Deleuze expert, in which the epistemologist from Arizona seeks out the New School social epistemologist.

I think this final point is so incredbily important and one we must operationalize a bit more. The "five ghettos" type balkanization is I think what led to 95% of what has been toxic about the so-called analytic/continental split for the past four decades or so. While balkanization doesn't necessarily lead to rancor/animosity/upheaval/resource competition/philosophical blindness/general idiocy/etc., it is a pretty good precondition for all of these problems. And even when it doesn't lead to these things, it is I think still very bad for students in all sorts of ways, producing even more "party line" students from schools where one would think just the opposite would occur.

Since it is so important, and since a balkanized department can be so incredibly toxic to everyone involved, I'm trying to think of ways to further operationalize the pluralization/balkanization distinction. Here's a first stab at some notable goodmaking features (again, just for pluralism, we're not talking about absolute ranking of depatments!):

1. Individual faculty with publications from diverse AOC and AOSs that cross invidious divides,
2. Faculty who co-write with people with different AOC and AOSs, 
3. Lots of faculty with radically different AOS and AOCs who serve together productively on MA and Ph.D committees of students who go on to thrive,
4. A pluralistic speaker series attended by the whole department where a spirit of good will and collective purpose reigns,
5. Well attended reading groups and classes that focus on thinkers who bridge the gaps (McDowell, Braver, phenomenology cog science work, etc.),
6. Well attended reading groups and classes that involve issues as treated by different traditions (e.g. a Davidson, Putnam, and Derrida versus the Language of Thought, Heidegger and Brandom versus representationalism, etc.)

I realize that examples of (5) and (6) could probably be found very easily with respect to ethics and aesthetics.

Actually, by the above metrics my own department (and I include John Protevi, who's appointment is in French, but who is a humongous resource to philosophical community and education at LSU) is very pluralistic with respect to different appropriations of Heidegger, pretty pluralistic with respect to the philosophy of mind, and a little bit (but still enough to be slightly praiseworthy) pluralistic with respect to metaphysics. On the other hand, we are massively balkanized with respect to ethics and aesthetics (we've got a couple of very good people in diverse traditions, but manifest complete failure with respect to the above tests for issues concerning value theory), and scattershot with respect to everything else.This particular kind of balkanization, (which is probably much hard to fight in a smaller non Ph.D program), certainly explains my inability to come up with better examples for (5) and (6) above.

I think Lance's kind of anti-party line pluralism is a very, very good and important thing, and that by further operationalizing them we can come up with a clearer vision of how to better embody these virtues in our own communities. So any additions either to Lance's initial list or further ways to operationalize the virtues would be much appreciated.