John Protevi's Blog

Open Letter in support of Jason Stanley and Rebecca Kukla

We stand in solidarity with Jason Stanley and Rebecca Kukla. They have unjustly been subjected to waves of online harassment produced by twisting their meaning and feeding their names to legions of online haters. Their support of colleagues, pointing out that civility should not excuse brutal and dangerous ideas, do not deserve the anonymous third-party abuse they have received. They are valued members of our profession and we sign to make public our defense of their right to live free of such attempts at intimidation.

Should you wish to co-sign this letter, you may do so by commenting below with your name and institutional affiliation. As with these signatories, affiliations are given for identification purposes only.

Eric Brown, Philosophy, Washington University, St Louis

Taylor Carman, Philosophy, Barnard College, Columbia University

Jon Cogburn, Philosophy, Louisiana State University

John Collins, Philosophy, Columbia University

Keith DeRose, Philosophy, Yale University

John Drabinski, Black Studies, Amherst College

Richard Drayton, History, Kings College London

Tom Eyers, Philosophy, Duquesne University

Branden Fitelson, Philosophy, Northeastern University

Leigh M Johnson, Philosophy, Christian Brothers University

Ed Kazarian, Philosophy, Rowan University

Jonathan Kramnick, English, Yale University

Sally Haslanger, Philosophy, MIT

Bonnie Honig, Political Science, Brown University

Bryce Huebner, Philosophy, Georgetown University

Chad Kautzer, Philosophy, Lehigh University

Mark Lance, Philosophy, Georgetown University

Utz McKnight, Political Science, University of Alabama

Joshua Miller, Criminal Justice, University of Baltimore

Donna Murch, History, Rutgers University

Kathryn Norlock, Philosophy, Trent University

Kathryn Pogin, Philosophy, Northwestern University

John Protevi, French Studies and Philosophy, Louisiana State University

Carl B Sachs, Philosophy, Marymount University, Virginia

Eric Schliesser, Political Science, University of Amsterdam

John Schwenkler, Philosophy, Florida State University

David Livingston Smith, Philosophy, University of New England

Mark Steen, Philosophy, Boğaziçi University

Lynne Tirrell, Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Boston

Adriel Trott, Philosophy, Wabash College

Eric Winsberg, Philosophy, University of South Florida

ON THE ALT-RIGHTING OF PHILOSOPHY BY RC

Let's distinguish doxxing from signal-boosting, as the RC people would like us to do. Doxxing is two-fold: 1) revealing the real identity of someone using an anonymous or pseudonymous screen name, or 2) making public what is private. Signal-boosting is taking what was public in a small sphere and broadcasting it to a wider audience. Critics of RC claim they doxxed our colleagues, while the RC people say it was signal-boosting. 

Let's accept it was signal-boosting, even though there is a strong argument to be made that some instances really are doxxing.

IN ANY EVENT, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE SIGNAL-BOOSTING WAS ETHICALLY WRONG BECAUSE IT EXPOSED OUR COLLEAGUES TO STOCHASTIC HARASSMENT. 

Stochastic harassment occurs when someone is exposed to mass vitriol by 3rd parties. The exposer initiates and mediates the harassment but does not directly conduct it. Having the RC story picked up by Dreher, Washington Times, and so on exposed our colleagues to vastly larger audiences and thereby predictably exposed them to harassment. (It seems plausible that the first move, from RC to Dreher, occurred via backchannel emails, though the idea that Dreher was simply a reader, while implausible, is not impossible.)

[EDITED] The real problem here is that our colleagues were falsely portrayed as hating traditional Christianity and Christians, when in fact the real target of their anger was 1) those who made a queer colleague's professional life miserable because of beliefs about sexual orientation similar to Swinburne's, and 2) people who were acting like cursing was less civil than Swinburne's disability claim.

WHEN YOU FALSELY PORTRAY JEWS AS HATERS OF CHRISTIANS IN 2016 AMERICA YOU EXPOSE THEM TO HARASSMENT AND INCREASED CHANCES OF PHYSICAL HARM.

Corollaries: 

1) Swinburne suffered no comparable harm by having his "disability" claim cursed out on Facebook to that suffered by our colleagues. So RC can't be said to be evening the score. 

2) Even if one were to say our colleagues acted imprudently by not taking sufficient notice of the danger of RC exposing them to stochastic harassment, that has no bearing on the ethical evaluation of RC's behavior. 

The still-invisible dimensions of "Western philosophy"

Of all the reactions to this NYT Stone column saying that if philosophy won't "diversify," then we should rename philosophy departments as "Dept of European and American Philosophy," I thought John Drabinski's post distinguishing the decolonializing project from "diversity" approaches was the best.

 

John pointed out the still-invisibly-white dimension of "Western philosophy" with an anecdote about the incredulous laughter from his students when he points out that while he labels his course "Black Existentialism," the phil dept's offering isn't named "White Existentialism," but just "Existentialism." John continues: "That laugh at the absurdity of visibility cuts to the heart ... whiteness doesn’t just hide from visibility, it is in fact defined by its insistence on being invisible – what Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks calls the colonial measure."

 

Among other reactions, there was Eric Schliesser's post, in which he showed that putting Jewish and Islamic philosophy under the "other" or even "non-Western" category revealed a still-invisibly-Christian dimension. This moved me to the following remarks which I left at his place but reproduce here:

1) Very good way to show Christianity as another dimension of invisibility, along with "white" per Drabinski, hidden behind "Western." I think we should take that as a clue to uncover other interlocking dimensions of invisibility along with those two. "Western" also stands for "still-invisibly-ableist," "still-invisibly-hetero," "still-invisibly-anthropocentric," and so on. I don't include "still-invisibly-male" as that dimension of unthought default setting mode for philosophy is now becoming visible (to many people at least) thanks to the centuries of work by feminists.

 

[After the fact comment: so, in my view, behind our usage of "Western philosophy" -- and even more so, behind "philosophy" -- there's a multiplicity at work: a heterogeneous set of interlocking processes of (de-)racialization, (de-)gendering, (de-)ablizing ... , with concrete bodies politic being crystallizations of those dimensions. I think there are connections here with "intersectionality" that I'm going to try to work out this summer.]

2) When Schliesser notes the racism and genocidal calls of "the others" that you can find when you read outside the "Western" canon, that is to my mind a devastating counter to calls to "diversity." The call has to be to de-colonializing, de-racializing, de-ableizing ... philosophy, not just to broadening our sources. It's to change the way we do philosophy, to bring out the invisible dimensions which serve the social-structure-forming (or at least reinforcing and justifying) as well as epistemic, moral, and aesthetic functions of philosophy.

3) The still-invisibly-Christian aspect allowing "Western" to be used as it is didn't become awkward after slavery and colonialism the way it did after Auschwitz, perhaps because of the long term nature and intricate workings of slavery and colonialism meant the entire society, religious organizations and doctrines included, were so permeated by and so involved in the reinforcement and justification of those power relations that can't we see that involvement in the past, let alone see it now in our current society, still structured as it is by the succeeding permutations of the racism and exploitation that were slavery and colonialism. The documentary evidence presented in the case of the Jesuits at Georgetown show just how direct that involvement could be; the real challenges lie in showing the more indirect cases -- as well as continuing to unearth other direct ones.

 

Eric then replied on Facebook to the effect that we tend to homogenize "the West" and thereby render invisible the fighters against slavery and misogyny within "the West" and thereby risk reinforcing injustice, accepting a crude historicism and incompletely complex narratives. 

 

In response I of course acknowledged his points, and then wrote,

 

"When, upon Chike Jeffers's suggestion I made my Spring 2015 HMP course centered on the Atlantic, and included Montaigne's "Of Cannibals," the De Las Casas vs Sepulveda debate, and Jim Maffie's work on Aztec philosophy, I also included Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, I made sure to stress the internal conflict within "Western philosophy." One point I made went something like this: "we talk about the polemical mode of philosophy, but it's mostly just folks scoring points in a seminar room, but Cugoano against the slavers, that really was war, in the form of philosophy. They weren't his "opponents," or his "interlocutors" -- they were his enemies."

 

4) Elsewhere on Facebook I made this comment to forestall the "lack of specialists" objection to changing our approaches:

 

"The de-colonialism challenge -- or better, rooting out all the "still-invisibly-X" dimensions of the "philosophy" multiplicity -- is a generational and collective project. People today are going to have to retool a little, but the hope is that the kids we turn on to de-colonialized (....) phil in our UG courses will go on to be the specialists we're not. This is not some impossible project. Think of 30 years ago in French Studies. Plenty of ppl trained in Hexagonal literature added a little bit of Francophone lit here and there, and over time it's become a research speciality, mostly with kids turned on by those early profs. And there was an importation of African and Caribbean profs into French departments. I think a similar story would be told in English departments both w/r/t post-colonial / de-colonialized / world lit, and w/r/t cultural studies and so on." 

 

That I should have to make such a point shows the ridiculous self-ghettoization of far too many philosophers, who are -- and I'm using the genderizing term advisedly -- scared of the cooties they'd pick up by actually knowing the first thing about the history of almost all the other humanities disciplines. (Which is not to say they have all successfully confronted the de-colonial project instead of settling for "diversity" qua boutique exoticism -- a "world lit," or "world music" course here and there.)

 

5) So, w/r/t current practice, the dividing lines should not be between Eastern and Western, or between continental and analytic, but between work furthering de-colonializing, de-racializing, de-abilizing, de-gendering, .... and work that is "still-invisibly-white," "still-invisibly-abilized" and so on.

 

[UPDATE, Th 12 May, 10:51 am CDT: is that a forced choice? Is there a tertium non datur? Is there philosophy that is neither de-invisiblizing nor still-invisibly-X but just plain philosophy? I would of course be open to discussion on that question.]

 

PIKSI 2015!

From the website: http://rockethics.psu.edu/education/piksi

The Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute ... is designed to encourage undergraduate students from under-represented groups to consider future study in the field of philosophy. PIKSI will emphasize the on-going project of greater inclusiveness that is transforming the discipline, inviting students to be participants in the conversation.... If you know promising undergraduate women or men from underrepresented groups such as African Americans, Chicano/as and Latino/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans, LGBTQA persons, economically disadvantaged communities, and people with disabilities, please call this program to their attention. In addition, please consider serving as their “sponsor.” Faculty sponsors mentor students, helping them to prepare their applications, and, when possible and appropriate, work with the students after the Summer Institute to help further the gains the students have made.

Playing the SPEP card

The Great Leiter, who once bestrode the philosophy blogosphere as a Colossus, now reduced to SPEP-bashing to deflect from his crumbling mainstream support. Some points: 

1. Many of the most trenchant critics of the PGR, such as Bharath Vallabha, Jessica Wilson, Brian Weatherson, Gregory Wheeler, David Velleman, Zachary Ernst, and Richard Heck have never been SPEP members. 

2. Unless I'm mistaken, neither are Jonathan Schaffer, David Chalmers, Susanna Siegel, Jason Stanley and the other 26 members of the PGR Advisory Board who asked Leiter to step down. 

3. So what we see here is a desperate attempt at wagon-circling: "When in trouble with my base, bash SPEP."

4. This is not to deny that I am a SPEP member or that I have previously called Leiter out on his puerile vendetta against SPEP, as here, where he flails about before taking refuge where many a sophomore has before him, in his Right To An Opinion (tm).

4. See also.

5. Here too. 

6. Okay, last one, for now.

Three critiques of the PGR

Attempt at a non-exhaustive typology: in the recent discussions of the PGR, I think we can find two main critiques (excerpts and comments below the fold):

1) the closed ecosystem critique (exemplified by Bharath Vallabha's piece; and

2) the restriction on method or "premature dogmatism" critique (exemplified by Jessica Wilson's piece).

I'd like to propose a third critique: 

3) the class structure or "Moneyball" critique

A hypothesis: what the PGR has done is alert students with undergrad degrees from traditionally prestigious schools (Harvard, Yale ... those with a correlation but not guarantee of high SES for their students) to graduate school market opportunities undervalued by the traditional prestige markers (NYU, Rutgers ... -- this is the "Moneyball" angle). This is open to empirical testing, but I would guess that the UG prestige-school percentage of grad students at NYU, Rutgers and other non-traditionally prestigious but high-performing PGR schools does not resemble today what it was in the pre-PGR days.

Now of course there is co-evolution here: the faculty and friendly admins at those benefitting from the PGR's rankings could leverage that into more hires of those likely to further increase PGR ranking, and so on. Still, the above would be the outlines of the class structure / Moneyball critique.

On the ranking of multiplicities

Adapted from this talk at the 2013 Eastern APA on conference organizing; I'm here addressing the question of ranking philosophy departments. I think this would hold even for specialty rankings, and if it does there, it would hold a fortiori for overall rankings.

---

A one-dimensional "merit" measure used to rank-order departments runs into two problems at least.

First, it sets us up for implicit bias via schemas of "what a good philosophy department looks like"; this reliance on familiar looks then reinforces the replication across time of the over-representation of certain philosophical areas and methods in our profession, what Jessica Wilson calls "premature dogmatism."

Second, merit ranking seems to me to involve a questionable metaphysics in which "merit" is seen as a property inherent in individuals that can be discerned, extracted, and then compared to others on a single scale. You could simply express this as an attribution error: you're making network position into a property of an indvidiual department.

That is, there are complex relations among departments – position in hiring and citation networks and so on – that account for perception of merit, and it's a mistake to make those positions into properties of individuals. What my wife says about hiring holds for ranking: "You can't take rejection personally; there are too many variables at work. [Wait two beats.] In fact, you can't even take acceptance personally!"

We could express the same point in Deleuzean language and talk about multiplicities and individuations. That is to say, there is a multi-dimensional matrix of philosophical qualities that each person and each department individuates. A "multiplicity" is a Deleuzean technical term that I'm loosely adopting here; let's say that here it refers to the multiple dimensions of philosophical quality each of us and each of our departments condenses in teaching, talks, essays, books, and so on. For instance,

1. Rigor, clarity, elegance, and innovation of expression;
2. Breadth and depth of the field coverage;
3. Historical awareness of predecessors / analogues;
4. Originality of conceptual innovation;
5. Originality of the problematic: is one attempting to refine  slices of an established field or to establish a new field?
6. Etc …

Okay, why the ellipses? This is what Judith Butler, at the end of Gender Trouble, calls "the embarrassed 'etc' ": it indicates the inability to ever completely list the dimensions of a multiplicity. 

For now, let me offer an image whose benefits – and limits – show why I think a one-dimensional ranking is bound to do violence to the irreducible plurality or real multiplicity of philosophical quality.

Imagine philosophical quality is like a multi-faceted prism: turn it one way and look down one axis of sight and you'll see all the other dimensions seen from the perspective of that aspect; turn it another way and you'll see the other dimensions from that perspective. (If I knew music better, I could probably come up with a musical analogue here, something about a tune in multiple keys, maybe.)

Before anyone objects about holograms being exactly that which produces a single image condensing multiple perspectives, the limit of the prism image for our purposes here is that a hologram will put equal weight on each perspective [I think! I'm no expert on holography, so bear with me if the details are off], whereas there's no way to turn "scores" along all the dimensions of philosophical quality into a single ranking without making some judgment as to the importance of each dimension, and that's going to stack the deck for the ranking.