Two departments, five keynotes, no women

UPDATE: It turns out the text below is from an ad for the conference, and now inaccurate. There’s now a woman keynote, Holly Smith.

I’ve been forwarded this:

“The Universities of Rutgers and Lund are pleased to invite paper submissions from graduate students for the fourth Rutgers-Lund Graduate Conference.
Keynote Speakers:
(1) Alvin Goldman (Rutgers University)
(2) Martin L. Jönsson (Lund University)
(3) Erik Olsson (Lund University)
(4) Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers University)
(5) Stephen Stich (Rutgers University)
Date: April 17th and 18th 2014
Location: Rutgers University, Department of Philosophy”

Race Equality Survey of Black British Academics

Makes for grim reading. (Thanks, N!)

A Bechdel Test for Philosophy Papers

Proposed here.

Silence, administrative processes, and harm

Reflections on the Oxford harassment case. (The response by Paula Boddington, just below, is also well worth reading.)

‘Flexibility stigma’ bad for all workers

Interesting: this blog post summarizes a paper on what it’s like to be in a department where attempts to work flexibly are stigmatized:

To capture flexibility stigma, our survey asked whether STEM faculty who are fathers and mothers of school-aged children are seen as less committed to their career than their non-parent colleagues, and whether the use of formal or informal work-life policies has negative consequences for careers…

… we find several important consequences of being employed in a department with flexibility stigma, regardless of whether they personally have childcare responsibilities: faculty who report a flexibility stigma in their departments are less likely to intend to remain at their institution, less satisfied with their job overall, and feel like they have less work-life balance than colleagues who do not report such stigma in their departments. In other words, flexibility stigma is bad for all workers in the workplace, not just those personally at risk for being targets of the stigma.