MOMiCon – A Noteworthy Conference for Several Reasons

http://momicon.org | April 3, 2016 | UC Berkeley | You can read their full mission statement here.

A non-exhaustive list of reasons why this conference is noteworthy:

–All the speakers are women

–It’s abbreviation is a smart pun

–The conference is attempting to show how academic events can accommodate mothers better:

“The Misconceptions of the Mind Conference (MoMiCon) has two aims:

(1) to bring together a small group of nationally-recognized female social scientists to present their work challenging common (mis)conceptions of the mind, engage with each other in cutting-edge intellectual dialogue, and generate high-quality video content to share with the public as scientific outreach,

and (2) to serve as a model for how to run a small, high-profile workshop-style conference while accommodating the needs of women who are academics with young children. The hope in focusing on this group is to start a broader conversation about how academic norms and institutions can change to accommodate scholars with different needs throughout their academic careers, thus reducing barriers to excellence in scholarship and facilitating academic outreach”

–The sessions look really interesting:

Keynote – Alison Gopnik
The “Parenting” Misconception: Why “Parenting” is a scientifically inaccurate and practically
dubious way to understand the relations between children and the people who care for them

COGNITIVE MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND
Tania Lombrozo – Learning isn’t just about getting the right information

Linda Wilbrecht – Teenagers are not lacking their frontal lobes

SOCIAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND
Abigail Marsh – Human nature is not fundamentally selfish

Marjorie Rhodes – We’re not born racist

Keynote – Mary Ann Mason
Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower: How does family formation affect
academic women and men across their career, from graduate student through retirement.

AFFECTIVE MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND
June Gruber – Positive emotions aren’t all positive

Iris Mauss – Pursuing happiness can make us unhappy

Amy Cuddy – Feeling powerless is not being powerless

Guest post: Turkish academic in solitary confinement

An anonymous Turkish academic has sent the following:

Three academics were detained after they signed a petition to ask the government to  to stop the war in the South East of Turkey and start a process for peace. One of the three, Esra Mungan, is a professorrom the Psychology Department at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.  A few days ago, she was put in solitary confinement for reasons unknown. One of her students translated the message she gave to a visitor.

Esra Mungan (Boğaziçi University): “(…) I am under solitary confinement in the same conditions as those who are sentenced to aggravated imprisonment. In the interrogation, they asked me about the 14 items that were published in the newspaper Akşam. They say that I received instructions from KCK (Group of Communities in Kurdistan). A real scholar does not receive orders from anyone. And that’s the reason why we are against YÖK (Council of Higher Education, the institution that is responsible for the supervision of universities and was founded after the coup d’état of 1980). We don’t take orders from anyone; we have been fighting against this for years. We don’t want the Council of Higher Education to control our institutions, we want to manage our own universities (…) For the first time in my life, I haven’t read for 50 hours. Being without books was a psychological torture for me. (…) I think about the classes of my students the most, I have 54 students. I teach memory. I miss my class a lot. (…) I am physically rested, yet broken down psychologically. I used to go to the university at 8 AM and I was the one who used to turn the lights off. What is important here is that my students are deprived of their right to education. I cannot teach my thesis students, their right to education is taken away. I teach 13 students at MA level. It was very pleasant but my students are left in the lurch. (…) I was educated in Germany from age 2.5 until 15. They constantly taught us about the Nazi period and how bad it was. As a result of my education, I learnt to say no to the things that I believe to be wrong in spite of the public opinion. In Hitler’s Germany everybody said ‘yes’ but it turned out to be wrong. This period reminds me of Hitler era in Germany. Freedom of thought is important; I don’t do anything that I don’t believe in. I have dealt with the issues of everyone, I have been sensitive, I tried to improve the conditions of subcontracted workers at the university.”

Other academics who signed the peace petition have already lost their jobs, some have been attacked by students or members of the public, and some are awaiting  investigation or trial. All are highly vulnerable and should not be named or contacted about this publicly by international supporters (unless they say so themselves).

In January four students were arrested for signing a petition in support of academics who were being investigated for signing the first petition.

For another story on the topic, go here.

An open letter to the Harvard 19: Do Better

From Kamilah Willingham (the whole letter is here):

The message you’re sending is clear: don’t bother reporting unless you have a written confession, a witness, and — oh, wait, we had those things! This raises a great question, actually: what would it take for you to believe a sexual assault survivor?

. . . If you believe that people should not refrain from undressing and probing the bodies of unconscious peers, you have no business teaching law. The notion is insulting to the man you defend, as well as anyone who prefers not to be fingered while they’re asleep.

. . . I am tired of being treated as if I don’t matter. I am hurt by how much more easily you believe a man when he says “she’s lying” than a woman when she says “he sexually assaulted me, and I deserve better.” I am angry with you for forcing me, as my assailant did, to assert my value. But, most importantly, I am not alone. I am only one of the increasing number of survivors who reject the silence that you have endorsed in this situation and are trying to impose. You will not succeed in silencing my story — I’m just one of many survivors in our community whose very real pain you will have to reckon with.