A warm hello to the four people who arrived at our blog today by googling “big hairy hoes”!
I hope you’ve had a chance to look around. This site may not be exactly what you were looking for, given that we bloggers come in a variety of shapes and hirsuteness-levels, and as far as I know none of us are gardening implements. But perhaps what you read here may inspire you to direct your googling in a more productive direction.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Quid Quid writes of her interview for a prestigious fellowship.
When I arrived at the appointed meeting spot, it was a cluster of men. Young men, old men. The committee, the candidates. All men.
And do you know where we went for dinner?
Do you?
You do not.
Here’s where we went for dinner.
DICK’S LAST RESORT
If you’ve never had the misfortune of visiting this particular chain, the schtick at Dick’s Last Resort is that all of the waitstaff are incredibly rude to you. The restaurant features dishes like Crab Balls and Pork Bonerz. Each guest is outfitted with a rolled up white paper dunce cap that reads somewhere between Dime-Store Pope and Ku Klux Klan, upon which your rude server will write a rude nickname for you. I think they should rebrand and change their name to Patriarchy’s Paradigm. Go big or go home, you know?
If this sounds unbearable as a matter of course, I invite you to imagine being subjected to this in the company of the people who will make or break your greatest dream for your undergraduate career. Imagine, if you can, being the only woman at the table.
Imagine, if you can bear it, your hat says DOLLY PARTON.
Click here for the rest.
A reader writes:
On at least one occasion, it turned out that interviewers were a lot harsher and more hostile towards me, the only female job candidate, compared to the male job candidates. In the corridors I heard two of the male interviewees were spoken about as promising and brilliant young men that deserve a chance, even those with less high-quality publications than me. I am the token woman (“we must at least interview one woman”). More to the point: the interviewers ask me pointless and hostile questions like “Your research is very wide-ranging. You seem to hop from one thing to the next. Why do you do that?” What do I respond to such questions, and can I deflect them in such a way that the mere asking of them doesn’t give a bad impression to the Search Committee in general?
A growing subset of the discipline is seeking to take a more public stance. These publicly inclined philosophers see a need for government to factor moral and ethical priorities into policy considerations, which they say are too often dominated by economists with their emphasis on quantification.
And, in an age of increasing ideological rigidity, these philosophers argue that their training gives them a unique ability to identify the unexamined assumptions and value systems that can harden political factions. Such a skill is valuable, they say, because problems like climate change are growing more complex at the same time that the public’s ability to think through the implications of possible solutions is diminishing.
“Philosophy could do some good, even a hell of a lot of good,” says John Lachs, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, who has spent years exhorting those in his discipline to become more publicly engaged.
And here’s Martha Nussbaum on the lack of interest in philosophers’ input in the US:
Ms. Nussbaum says governments outside the United States have invited her to travel widely to share her ideas on those and other issues. But she and other philosophers have not had the same experience in America, perhaps because their politics are too far to the left, they say.
“If we are not in Washington, that is because a conscious decision has been made not to invite us there,” say Ms. Nussbaum, noting that President Obama has not reached out to her even though he has known her for years. “The problem is with anti-intellectualism and the general nature of media and politics in the U.S., not with philosophers.”
Feminist Philosophers 