Diversity in philosophy syllabi surveys - invitation to participate

I am inviting philosophers of all academic ranks who teach undergraduate courses in ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language to complete a survey to study diversity in philosophy syllabi.

There has recently been a lot of discussion on diversity in philosophy syllabi, which is broadly understood as work by philosophers who are underrepresented. For example, a diverse syllabus might feature work in non-western philosophy, or work by women philosophers, or work in approaches that are non-dominant in philosophy (e.g., feminist philosophy, or the philosophy of disability), but there is no clear-cut definition of what diversity means; for instance whether work by non-native speakers of English should also be considered as adding to a syllabus’ diversity.

The aim of this study is to get a sense of what diversity in philosophy syllabi means for philosophy teachers, what obstacles philosophers face to make a diverse syllabus, and what they do to make their syllabi more diverse. Even if you think your syllabus is not diverse, I am interested in learning about your views of what makes a syllabus diverse and what diversity means.The survey consists of a mixture of open and multiple-choice questions.

It is up to you how much you fill out in the open questions. It will examine both your general views on diversity in philosophy, and more specifically for ethics, political philosophy or epistemology (depending which of these courses you teach).I will make a summary of the findings available on the Philosophers’ Cocoon, a philosophy blog and will submit the findings to a peer-reviewed journal.

http://rug.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_e9iFgelnoz5u0F7

Comments

[Applied Ethics Professor]

Two concerns:

(1) The survey collects information on age, gender, and minority status. Before submitting the survey, I would like an assurance that if my answers to open-ended questions are quoted in a talk or paper, my age, gender, and minority status will not be listed along with the quotation.

(2) Many applied ethics courses include readings that are not by philosophers (e.g. legal cases, newspaper articles, business case studies). It would not be unusual for fewer than half of the readings on a business ethics syllabus to be by philosophers.

If you ask how many readings *total* are on a syllabus, and you then ask how many readings on the syllabus were by female and minority *philosophers*, you may get misleading data. For instance, it would be a mistake to assume that the readings not by female philosophers have male authors, since they may be written by female judges, journalists, or scholars in other fields.

[Helen De Cruz]

Dear applied ethics professor, thank you for your concerns. (1) certainly not. I would only name your location and position (e.g., assistant professor, US).
(2) I see - I think that it would be OK in this case to just mean authors rather than philosophers (I have a broad definition of what a philosopher is anyway, but even then it would probably not encompass the people you mention!)

[Helen De Cruz]

I should clarify, I am asking about minority status merely to get a broad statistical sense of how many people who are minorities are participating, and also to do certain statistical tests that I can't talk about now because it might influence people's responses, but this data will all be aggregated and individual people won't be identified in this way.

[Ellen Berrey]

Shameless self promotion, but might be helpful:
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/26/diversity_is_for_white_people_the_big_lie_behind_a_well_intended_word/

Or see my more serious academic elaboration of the argument in my book: The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice (Univ of Chicago Press 2015). I'm a sociologist.