Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon TODAY (Oct. 8th, 1:30PM PST onward)

Today from 1:30PM PST onwards, there will be a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to improve the coverage of underrepresented philosophers and philosophy (see our earlier posts about the editathon here and here), in honor of Kevin Gorman, whose passionate work on behalf of women in philosophy we highlighted in an earlier post (see also here). The editathon will be in the San Diego Central Library as part of Wikiconference North America, but you may also join us remotely from wherever you are.  If you’d like to join remotely, please send me an email (alexmadva@gmail.com).  (If I don’t get back to you right away, that will probably be because I’m on my way to the event — I’ll definitely get back to you well before it begins!)

We will have Wikipedia-savvy folks on hand to help newbies learn how to edit, but if you are intimidated by the prospects of editing, you can also just email me stuff, e.g., in a Word doc, to hand off to the seasoned editors.  At this point we have a lot of the basic background information about a lot of folks.  Going forward we’ll probably most need external references, for example, discussions of people’s work, awards, or service which appear outside of their personal and faculty webpages, such as a book review that emphasizes the contributions they’ve made, or a short news article mentioning an honor.  If you’re not sure whether something is useful or relevant, please err on the side of sending it my way rather than withholding it!

See our earlier post for working lists of folks about whom we’ll try to write pages (see also here).  (Thanks again to everyone for your suggestions!  I’m sure there are still tons of names being left out, of course, so keep those suggestions coming.)

Sexual abuse in UK universities

makes the front page of the Guardian— again.

The majority of cases reported to the Guardian involve senior male academics, often professors, harassing and abusing younger female PhD students whose work they supervise. There are also accounts from undergraduates and female academics, while a small number of other allegations involve assault, male-on-male harassment and one allegation of sexual assault by a female lecturer.

Many of the accounts indicate that universities are failing in their duty of care to students and staff who are harassed. One female academic who made a complaint of sexual harassment against a more senior male colleague – against whom there had been previous complaints – said she was marched off the university premises and suspended for three months after he accused her of making a false allegation.

Sexual harassment of students by university staff hidden by non-disclosure agreements

Read more

Shitstorm in philosophy (literal edition)

Four philosophers, connected only by their public disputes with Brian Leiter, have received excrement in the post.  It’s genuinely baffling– very hard to see who would both have a desire to send these people shit *and* a desire to use Leiter’s pseudonym on one (just one) of the packages.

 

Full story here.

The Quiet Obliteration of Women’s Autonomy – Trump Edition

The Washington Post broke a story today about remarks Donald Trump made in 2005 while accompanied by Billy Bush, then host of Access Hollywood. 

I want to point out how Trump and Bush’s remarks about women, and the way that newspapers are reporting on those remarks, subtly dissolve the autonomy of the women who are being commented on.

Part I – The Remarks: Below are a good portion of the remarks. You can also listen to them in the link above in the WaPo story. [Heads up: they contain expletives and objectifying descriptions of women.]