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Support the APA!

magicalersatz2 Comments

Here’s an important message from Sally Haslanger:

As you may know, the APA has been going through some important and positive changes. I have just returned from the November Board of Officers meeting and believe there is tremendous good will for improving the situation for women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups in the profession.

However, one major roadblock is that the APA is still barely breaking even financially (which is better than it was before!). We need a strong National Office in order to make positive change, but a strong National Office that is positioned to take action costs money.

I realize that in the recent past many have stopped renewing their membership to the APA (or have never become members at all). This is totally understandable. I urge you, however, to become a member (or renew) at this crucial time. Your membership may be tax deductible, and in some schools you can be reimbursed for the cost. Here is the membership link:
http://www.apaonline.org/general/register_start.asp

Even more to the point, the new APA website has an option that allows you to make donations to a fund for diversity and inclusiveness.

http://www.apaonline.org/donations/
So far, very few have taken advantage of this opportunity. But this is where we can really make a difference. Small (and large!) contributions add up. Donations will go to supporting proposals that the APA is not currently in a position to fund. If you are an APA member, you will also soon be notified of a Request for Proposals from the APA to support substantial efforts to address these issues.

Please consider making a donation and, through your networks, urge others to do so as well. You may not be positioned to organize a program that increases diversity and inclusiveness – few of us are! – but let us together support those who can make a difference to our profession.

Thanks, in advance,
Sally
President, Eastern APA

2 thoughts on “Support the APA!”

  1. Dear Honoured President and other people in the Profession,

    Unfortunately, I cannot support the APA even if its values are in sync with my own. It is no laughing matter that every one of you professional philosophers in TT jobs uses adjuncts, and TT job holders have no courage to advance causes of the overproduction of Ph.D.s in our field or the benefit of adjuncts. This post is not to distract from the issues in the profession about gender, but the overall support of the APA does not lobby or advance the issues of the continual existence of immoral Ph.D. programs that exploit grad students for easy labor. The continual silence of the APA on the issues of overproduction of Ph.Ds and the persistent exploitation of adjuncts makes me wonder why calling for its support is complicit with the suffering of many.

    The only solution is for a complete moratorium on graduate departments accepting students and massive coordinated strikes of adjuncts against philosophy departments insensitive to the unspoken evil of adjunct labor. As it currently stands, I am glad that website like philjobs.org forced the APA’s hand to lose money for JFP. Providing capital to an ineffective professional organization is one way we adjuncts can strike back.

    Max Ferdinand

  2. I couldn’t agree more. What I also find deeply offensive is the socially hierarchical nature of many philosophy departments where adjunct and limited term professors–professors with Ph.D.s and high credentials–aren’t treated as colleagues and peers by TT professors but more as graduate students. Perhaps the TT professors rationalize that adjunct and limited term professors are substantially intellectually/academically inferior to them and that we live in a meritocrasy, and so in this way seek to escape their guilty consciences for exploiting other Ph.D.s. Of course rationalization is not ethical justification.

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