Shelley Tremain has offered this proposal for discussion:
Over the last year, and the last few months in particular, there has been a growing recognition that professional philosophy is remarkably homogeneous with respect to race, disability, gender, and sexuality, that is, a recognition that various groups are underrepresented in the discipline, some severely, and an understanding that action, in the form of concerted efforts, is urgently needed to rectify this unacceptable state of affairs. Most philosophy departments remain predominantly populated by non-disabled white male faculty. The percentage of philosophers of colour and disabled philosophers employed in full-time positions in philosophy departments does not even remotely resemble the percentages of these groups in the population at large. Nor are the contents of edited collections and symposia and conference line-ups representative in this way. The “Count Me In” conference campaign aims to change the unseemly current composition of professional philosophy by challenging organizers and co-ordinators of conferences, summer institutes, symposia, speaker series, not to mention the editors of collections, journals, and anthologies to increase the diversity of their projects. Justice, equality, and fairness demand it, and only by engaging in these efforts can professional philosophy put into practice what it professes in theory.
Discussion has already begun on another thread, but we wanted to move it to its own post.
Catarina Dutilh Novaes writes:
"Count me in" campaign is a great name!
I just have a couple of questions as to what practical measures could be taken. When it comes to gender, the vast majority of people self-identify as male or female (there are, of course, cases of people who reject the binary), and it is typically common knowledge whether a person is male or female (often by their first names, but otherwise other public elements, such as the use of personal pronouns 'he' or 'she'). So it is rather straightforward to make a list of women in a given area (as I've done for philosophy of logic and philosophical logic) so as to increase the visibility of these women.
But I am not sure it would be as obvious to make a list of other minority groups (just to mention lists an example of a practical measure). Let me mention race, for example; it is clearly a concept relative to a given social context. I always say that half of the people who self-identify as white in Brazil would be considered black by US standards ('dividing line' is somewhere else). As for disabilities, it is often not public knowledge whether a given person (philosopher) has a disability. That is, I wonder how an attempt to increase diversity in philosophy would deal with the essentially epistemic problem of identifying who falls under the category of an under-represented group in the case of race and disabilities, if not through personal acquaintance or testimony. In other words, I wonder whether such lists would be feasible and desirable in these cases as well (I really don't know, it's a genuine question here).
Shelley Tremain responds:
I'm glad you like the suggested name. Some of the considerations you've pointed out were suggested by my own remarks, @6 especially. I think the place to start might be identifying the purposes, aims, and goals of efforts such as a Count Me In campaign would be. These might themselves provide ways to circumvent or by-pass some of the epistemic and other difficulties you mention. For instance, suppose one of the aims we identified is that representing diversity with respect to colour/race works toward achieving the the goal of subverting white supremacy and privilege wherein whiteness circulates as a universal norm. It seems to me that the appearance on the program of a conference to be held in the US of someone who in the context of the US is deemed to "be black" (though at home in Brazil she is considered, and considers herself, white)serves that aim and works in the service of achieving that goal. Suppose another aim we identified is that such a campaign should aim to provide role models in philosophy to members of currently underrepresented groups. In this case, it seems to me that we would want to come up with names of philosophers who are candid about their identities as "disabled philosophers," in other words, self-identify publicly, and do not comply with the messages constantly bombarding them, according to which they should adopt a medicalized understanding of this identity and in turn make efforts to conceal it, or at least regard it as a "private" matter. In the case of providing role models for disabled students, an obvious place to start would be identifying disabled philosophers who work in the areas of philosophy of disability and disability theory/studies.
I hope this conversation is just getting started ...
Please spread the link to this post and invite comments as we shift the discussion to this post.
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