Latina/o & Hispanic Philosophers Database

A group of philosophers are creating additional databases modeled after the Women of Philosophy database.

 

We are a group of volunteers working to create searchable directories of philosophers who are members of underrepresented minority groups in philosophy. Each directory will be modeled on the Women of Philosophy directory at www.womenofphilosophy.com, which is searchable by name, affiliation, position, geographical location, area of specialization, and primary research interests. That database has been very successful, with over 8,000 hits in the first month of its launch. The Latina/o & Hispanic Philosophers Directory, based on this model, will be launched soon. Our aim is to create similar directories for Asian philosophers, Black philosophers, and indigenous philosophers.

All directories will be accessible to the general public by a link placed on the APA website. Participation in the database is fully voluntary.

Our aim in creating these directories is to provide members of these constituencies an opportunity to gain greater exposure and recognition for their philosophical work. We believe that the directories will be a useful resource for editors, hiring committees, conference organizers and other philosophers seeking to locate and learn about the work of philosophers who are members of historically underrepresented groups in the profession. We also hope that these directories will facilitate greater networking and support among members within and across these groups.

We ask that you go to the following link:

http://www.womenofphilosophy.com/hispanic-philosopher-database-submission-form/

and fill out the database form with your information and then click the ‘submit’ tab at the bottom. A moderator will upload your information to the database. You are free to leave blank any question you do not want to answer.  You will have the opportunity to update and alter your database entry after it is published.

If you know of other Latina/o or Hispanic philosophers who might like to have their information published in this database, please forward this email to them. We hope to have as comprehensive and accurate a database as possible.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email any of us. We are excited by this project and hope we can count on your participation in helping to make members of underrepresented groups within philosophy more visible in the profession.

This project cannot succeed without you! We thank you for your help.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Anderson

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, The University of Michigan

Chair, APA Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion

President-Elect, APA Central Division

Tina Fernandes Botts

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, UNC Charlotte

Chair, APA Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers

Ruth Chang

Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University

(Incoming) APA Ombudsperson

Member, Committee on the Status of Women

Sally Haslanger

Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies, MIT

President, APA Eastern Division

Manuel Vargas

Professor of Philosophy and Law

University of San Francisco

Pacific Division Representative, APA Board of Directors

Member, Defense of the Professional Rights of Philosophers Committee

*APA affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

The bell hooks Hotline: A Solution for Not Wanting to Give Out Your Digits

If you text or call the number 1-669-221-6251, you will receive a text with a quote from bell hooks.

So if someone asks you for your phone number, and you don’t want to give it, just memorize the number above and give that instead.  You not only avoid giving out your personal information, but you also spread some education, bell hooks-style.

Article on it here.

 

“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”

Third Biennial Mentoring Project for Pre-Tenure Women

The 3rd Biennial Workshop of Mentoring Project for Pre-tenure Women Faculty in Philosophy, co-directed by Louise Antony and Ann Cudd, will begin accepting applications this fall, and take place June 2015.

Mentees will be assigned a networking group consisting of a mentor and four fellow mentees working in similar fields. Each mentor will be responsible for providing written feedback on the workshop papers of each of her mentees, and for participating in discussion at the workshop. Mentees will take responsibility for providing written feedback on the papers of their group members, and will serve as discussion leader and first reader for one paper and second reader for another. In the long term, group members will actively monitor the progress of each others’ careers, offering philosophical feedback and, in the case of the mentors, advice about professional development along the way.

Visit the site, here, for more information.

APA Prizes

The APA has announced the winners of a number of prizes, including Sally Haslanger (who won the 2014 Joseph B. Gittler Award for her Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique) and Elisabeth Lloyd (who is the 2015-2016 Romanell Lecturer).

Check out the full list here. Congratulations to all!

Sexual misconduct and silencing

There’s a really fantastic and important piece up on Jezebel about silencing and retaliation in connection with Title IX issues on college campuses.

“I look at my entire career, entire education, and I just see the body count,” says Stabile. “I see the faculty members who quit 10 years into the job. I see the women who didn’t finish… and it’s not even that they just leave the university and don’t finish their education. It’s students who wind up killing themselves. It’s students who don’t survive.”

This is the price of valuing a college’s reputation over the well-being of the people who actually work and live there — failing rape survivors becomes an unspoken part of university policy . . .

However, there is hope for reform — college and university faculty members across the country have banded together to create a new organization, Faculty Against Rape (FAR), which hopes to help faculty respond to campus rape and institutional betrayal. According to Caroline Heldman, who is helping to launch the organization, FAR’s three main focuses will be developing resources for faculty to better serve survivors, helping faculty who want to be part of the anti-rape movement organize on campus, and providing strategy and legal resources for faculty who are retaliated against by administrations.

Although many faculty have been advocating against sexual assault for years, the increased media attention on the issue now may help them affect meaningful change. “This conversation is happening nationally,” says Stabile. “‘I’ve never seen this conversation before. It’s a moment where we can move to change things. When I can’t sleep at night or I wake up in the morning thinking about the students I’ve lost, I try to think about that, too.”

Theidon agrees with this sentiment. “I think ten years from now, twenty years from now, people are going to look back and say this is one of the most important social movements on college campuses,” she says. “And I know that if 10 years from now someone asks me, ‘What were you doing back then, Kimberly?’ I want to be able to answer, ‘I was standing up, speaking out, and supporting these women. What were you doing?'”

(Thanks Q!)