The Philosophers' Cocoon

Reviewing papers seen at a conference?

In our May "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am working on a paper on a topic in a very narrow area. Except a few people who have interests in this area, I feel that most potential readers hold some negative attitudes toward this area (for example, many do not appreciate questions in this area; some dislike the philosophical methodology that is used in this area).

My question is: should I present this paper at conferences that those who are sympathetic to my view will probably attend? I feel that I will get some helpful feedback. But I worry that those people will be automatically disqualified as my future reviewers since they will know who the author is when they see the paper.

A related question: I always assume that if I know who the author of a manuscript is, I should not review it whether I personally know the author or not. Is this the case? I honestly feel that some papers were so widely presented that most people who were interested in those topics had known who the authors are. Were those papers really reviewed by people who have not heard about them at all?

These are good questions. Another reader submitted the following reply:

You can referee papers that you heard before - the key is to avoid conflicts of interest. Do not referee papers by your supervisor, your students, post docs, or your colleagues. Further, if you know you are predisposed against a paper because you heard it is bets to decline. Paper deserve a fair shot.

What do you all think? Should the OP present their paper at conferences? And is it really okay to review a paper you've seen at a conference? Even if you think you can "avoid conflicts of interest", doesn't this compromise the point of anonymized review, which is to prevent conflicts of interest that people cannot necessarily reliably avoid on their own?

Preparing grad students to teach (Guest post by Tim O'Keefe)

Tim O’Keefe is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Georgia State University’s Department of Philosophy.

Graduate students do a lot of the teaching at their universities, and for those who go on to work in academia, teaching is a substantial and important—for many, the most substantial and important—part of their jobs. But by and large, philosophy programs do little to prepare their graduate students to teach. My own experience was the “sink or swim” model, with a lot more sinking than swimming, and my impression is that that model is still widespread. Although I hope that I’m wrong and things have improved, a 2016 study concludes that, on the whole, “the discipline of philosophy requires no, and offers little, teacher training for graduate students.” (Here is that article, and a version that isn’t paywalled.)

The terminal M.A. program in Georgia State University’s Department of Philosophy is unusual in two respects. Almost all of our students are responsible for teaching their own courses in their second year, with most teaching Critical Thinking, but a fair number teaching Intro to Philosophy or Intro to Ethics. (This past Fall semester, we had 37 sections of Critical Thinking taught by our graduate students, and 10 sections of Introduction to Philosophy or Introduction to Ethics.) And with so much of our teaching done by graduate students in just their second year of graduate school, we’ve developed an extensive teacher training program, because we owe it both to our graduate students and to the undergraduates they’re responsible for.

In “Preparing Graduate Students to Teach: One Model,” George Rainbolt and Sandy Dwyer describe Georgia State’s program. (The article starts on page 4 of the linked APA newsletter.) We don’t claim to have the best way to help graduate students learn to teach, but we’ve developed something that has worked well for us. The article isn’t long, but let me summarize it here.

Spring sounds

Late night writing?

In our May "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have recently found that my most productive writing time is between the hours of 9pm and 3am and no matter how hard I try to write during the day.. it is much more difficult. Is writing late at night sustainable?

Great question. I'm not a late night writer, so I can only speculate, but I guess I'm inclined to think that a lot may depend here on one's professional situation. For example, while it may be easy to write late at night in grad school (when one doesn't have many teaching duties), if one is in a full-time faculty or adjunct position(s) where one has to teach relatively early in the morning, then late night writing may create problems. On the other hand, if you can get all of the courses you teach to be scheduled in the afternoon or evening, then you may be able to adjust your entire schedule so that you can work late and sleep in without it leading to any serious problems. But again, I'm just speculating here. Any late night writers able to chime in with a better answer and/or tips?

Publication times after acceptance?

A reader writes in:

I’m wondering what the reasonable amount of time is to expect a paper to be published after it’s been accepted. I did a search on the cocoon website, but didn’t find anything; but I’m thinking surely you’ve tackled this before?

Good question. My experience is that most journals publish things pretty quickly after acceptance (usually as 'Online First' articles). However, I had a paper accepted at a journal that informed me that it won't be published until about a year from when it was accepted (which I'm fine with), and I've heard stories of some journals not publishing articles for a few years (which seems too long to me). But in any case, I'm not sure what's "reasonable" here. What do you all think? 

Deanonymizing self-references after review?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

When my draft undergoes a refereeing process, I follow the norm in referring to my own past papers as if they were written by another person. My question is this: when I de-anonymize my draft, is it appropriate if I (1) delete some self-references where I repeat some of my past points, to the effect that I refer to myself a bit less that I would if it were a different author; (2) use the first-person pronoun whenever referring to myself if applicable? Other suggestions for de-anonymizing are also welcome!

Good questions. I'm not entirely sure about (1), as deleting a bunch of in-text citations (even if they are to oneself) seem like substantive changes to the draft that was refereed. (2) seems entirely fine to me. What do you all think?

Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy (Guest post by Oisín Deery)

This is the fourth entry in the Cocoon's series, Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy, a series of guest posts by people who entered academic philosophy later in life or otherwise took a non-traditional path into the field. Today's post is by Oisín Deery, Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow Macquarie University and Assistant Professor (on leave of absence) at York University. If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing to the series, feel free to email me at [email protected]!

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My Path into Professional Philosophy

By Oisín Deery

I remember being at a certain conference as a grad student. The two well-known philosophers I was chatting with during a break asked each other whether they’d ever worked at other jobs. One scoffed and said he hadn’t, while the other said she’d spent part of a summer in high school working for a picture framer. I began to feel anxious. When they turned to me, I said I’d been a lifeguard once in my teens and left it at that.

Why had I felt so anxious? I was two years into my PhD program, I was 39 years old (which few of my professors or fellow grad students knew), and I somehow thought I needed to disguise my age and my unconventional background from those people on whom my getting a job—if I got one—might depend. I was trying to fit into a world I knew little about. As a result, I was anxious partly because I was afraid I’d be found out, that I’d receive puzzled looks from these philosophers whose work I admired and perhaps make them feel uncomfortable. I’d worked at many jobs. So, I worried that if I regaled them with stories of working on oil rigs or running a business, they’d not only regard me as strange, as though they’d suddenly noticed I had antlers growing out of my head, but also that they’d think I was mocking their relative paucity of experience.

Maybe it was just me. Perhaps they’d have been fascinated. But I wasn’t going to take that risk. I was playing it safe, trying to fit in, putting big chunks of myself into storage.

I’m now 51 and I’ve currently got two jobs—a continuing position (tenure-track equivalent) in the philosophy department at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the philosophy department at York University in Toronto, Canada. It’s all worked out for me in the end, even though it took me years on the job market in postdoctoral and limited-term positions before I landed my job at York in 2019. I’m so grateful and happy to be a professional philosopher.

How did I arrive at this happy state of affairs? How did I even get to be at that conference, feeling anxious about being found out? It’s a long story. But I’ll try to be brief.

7 Years Later Excerpt #4: Student Evaluations

Given that many of us have just had our semesters conclude, I thought it would be appropriate to share a snippet that focuses on how graduate students should assess the end-of-semester evaluations that they receive from their students. If you have additional or different advice on how to interpret or react to these evaluations, feel free to mention it in the comments.

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At the end of each semester, students will have an opportunity to evaluate their courses. In doing so, they will score you (usually on a 5-point scale) and the course on a wide range of metrics. There is some variance across institutions, but they are typically asked to rate things like how much they learned in the course, how much the instructor helped the students learn, how well the instructor knew the material, how organized the course was, and their perceptions of the course as a whole. If you’re a teaching assistant, the questions will be a little more specific to your interactions with students in discussion sections.

As you will learn after your first semester of teaching, reading these evaluations can be disheartening. Even if the numerical scores are reasonably good, there will almost always be some written comments that are not very complimentary. Sometimes, they will insult your character. Other times, they will disparage your course or your teaching style or make weird insinuations about your personal beliefs. What’s the appropriate reaction to student evaluations?

The first important piece of advice is not to overreact. Student evaluations are notoriously unreliable indicators of the quality of instruction. Here are a few of their documented shortcomings:

• The empirical literature on student evaluations generally shows that they do not correlate with student learning or teaching effectiveness.
• Course evaluations tend to correlate with students’ expected grades. Other things equal, an easier course – where a higher number of A grades are given – will result in more favorable evaluations than a more difficult course. As a result, some have argued that student evaluations contribute to grade inflation and encourage less rigorous teaching.
• Typically, all students enrolled in your course will be allowed to complete course evaluations, even if they do not regularly attend class. Thus, some students who complete evaluations may have a deeply inaccurate sense of what a typical class session is like.
• Student evaluations can be affected significantly by arbitrary factors, such as whether or not students have access to cookies when completing their evaluations.
• Student evaluations tend to be biased against female instructors. Overall, men are perceived as more knowledgeable and as having better leadership skills even though students appear to learn just as much from women as men. These biases may be more pronounced in large courses.
• Even assuming these evaluations are unbiased and reliable measures of student learning, they are still too imprecise to be an accurate way of assessing the quality of instructors’ teaching relative to their peers.

There are also other problems associated with interpreting student feedback even if we bracket these considerations. One common problem, especially in larger courses, is that written feedback on these assessments tends to be internally inconsistent. Sometimes you may see one comment that praises your passion for teaching while another laments that you are not enthusiastic about teaching. One student will regard your lectures as boring while another praises them as extremely interesting. The most recent example of this in my own teaching occurred when I received comments that said one of my courses contained too many readings and contained too much material while simultaneously receiving comments that said the course did not cover enough content. When you have directly contradictory feedback, it is often difficult to know which perspective is more accurate.

Another problem is that students sometimes base their assessments of your teaching on claims that are just plain false. Students will claim you do nothing but lecture even if you devote significant class time to discussion and other in-class activities. They may accuse you of grading short answer responses based solely on whether you agree with their opinion. In some cases, they will make remarks that demonstrate that they do not understand course policies. Written feedback based on demonstrably false claims should be disregarded.

As a teaching assistant, you will also sometimes be held accountable for things beyond your control. Students might comment on your evaluations that they did not like the exam formats or textbook choice, but as a teaching assistant, the primary instructor makes decisions about course content and assessment. You will usually have extremely limited – if any – influence on these choices. Students may also make direct comparisons between you and the instructor: a charismatic and experienced professor may indirectly cause you to be scored lower than you would be otherwise since you will look worse by comparison.

Overall, you should approach end-of-semester evaluations with a healthy skepticism. However, these evaluations do often play a role in tenure, promotion, and the distribution of teaching awards. They will also be an important component of your teaching portfolio if you elect to apply for academic jobs. Thus, they should not be ignored. As a general rule, you should strive to maintain about a 4/5 (or equivalent) on your numerical evaluation scores once you get a few years into graduate school. Evaluations with these scores will generally keep you competitive with other applicants: higher scores are obviously better, but most faculty are aware of the problems with student evaluations. Hiring decisions are unlikely to be made solely based on marginal differences in the numerical scores on student evaluations.

Use your initial teaching experiences as opportunities to define your teaching style and improve your weaknesses. Look for patterns in your student evaluations, and if you notice that you are persistently scoring low on a metric, then take some steps to address that in future courses. Most importantly, seek feedback from faculty in your department – especially those who observe your teaching directly – about ways in which you can improve. As you get better at teaching competently, your evaluations should improve (unless they were very high to begin with). Finally, remember that it will often be impossible to please everyone: some students, despite your best efforts, will not like you or your class. So do not lose sleep over occasional negative feedback. It’s a persistent feature of almost all evaluations, even those that are excellent overall.

Conference presentations: deviating from an accepted abstract?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I recently had a long abstract (1200 words) accepted to a cool workshop in my area of ethics, and the submission of the actual manuscript deadline for commenting/dissemination is nigh. In thinking through the project (I'm a mid-stage grad student), however, I realized I want to reformulate the central insight. In doing so, I think I make the overall story I try to tell more plausible but maybe lose some of the excitement of the result. The paper as currently conceived would differ somewhat from the abstract I submitted but not incredibly so. Still, I don't want to violate any professional norms or inadvertently and problematically bait-and-switch here.

My paper hasn't yet been sent to a commentator. Any suggestions on how best to proceed here? Should I write up a paper most faithful to my accepted abstract even if I no longer endorse that way of thinking about the issue? Or should I write the different paper I actually think works?

These are good questions. We've discussed before whether it is okay to change your paper after your commentator writes up comments. However, we haven't ever discussed whether it's okay to merely deviate somewhat from the content of an accepted abstract. So, I'm curious what everyone thinks here. Given that the OP is describing a workshop, and the whole point of a workshop is to share and develop one's work, I guess I don't see anything wrong with some deviation here--though I suppose that if one deviated so far from the abstract that it's an entirely different paper, the workshop organizers could potentially get upset. What do you all think?

Author affiliation when changing jobs

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I have a paper submitted when I worked for institution A, revised and accepted when I was in between jobs, and I will receive the proofs just before I start working for institution B. Should I change the affiliation and email? And does it matter?

These are good questions, as I've known a few people in a similar situation and they were equally confused. Another reader submitted the following response:

I work on a Springer/Nature journal, and if you change your e-mail at the proof stage, it may delay the production of the article, and thus possibly delay the publication of the article. I have seen this happen a few times.

Good to know! Do any other readers have any tips to share here?

Spring sounds

Tips for running a reading group?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, S writes:

I am thinking of running a reading group with a few early graduate students, some of which [are] working with myself. But I don't have much experience with this. I can imagine different options for the structure, content, etc. I would be grateful if you could share you advice and experience.

This is a great query. Anyone have any helpful tips on what works well (and what doesn't)?

Who to thank in acknowledgments?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

This may be a silly question with an obvious answer, idk. Suppose you get (lengthy) comments on your draft that haven't changed your draft in any way. The comments are of the nature "what is the implication on this and that" that seeks to extend the discussion. Should you thank them for their comments? What is the norm here?

Suppose also that some of the commentators are big names in the area. I think this should not matter for the answer, but maybe it does for practical purposes?

Thanks in advance!

Good questions. Another reader, Tam, submitted the following reply:

I believe that the done thing is to thank anyone who gave you comments even if you don't change the draft at all in light of them and even if they are totally useless. And regardless of whether it is indeed the done thing, it is the prudent thing, since omitting the person's name could offend them while as far as I can tell it costs you nothing at all to include them. Anyway, many acknowledgements take the form, "I am very grateful to X, Y, and Z for their comments on earlier drafts of this article". So you don't even have to be on record claiming that you changed the paper.

This seems like good advice to me. However, my own approach is even a bit more inclusive than this. I try to thank anyone who in any plausible way "helped the paper come to fruition", where this is understood in the broadest possible sense. So, in the OP's case, even if the lengthy comments someone provided didn't change the paper in any way, that person still helped: they read the paper and provided comments! Similarly, if I have a helpful conversation with someone, or if someone asks a really good series of questions at a conference, I may single them out for thanks even if they didn't read the paper, and of course I may also thank the broader conference audience too, as many people do. These have always just seemed like kind (and appropriate) things to do. Of course, I suppose an acknowledgement section could become overly long with this approach, but that's never been an issue for me. As for thanking "big names", I've heard anecdotally that people may do this a form of signaling, but whatever may be the case, if the person in question actually helped the paper come to fruition in any meaningful way, then it seems to me appropriate to thank them.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Scholarships for disabled grad students?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Tomas Albergo writes:

Are there any significant scholarships for disabled graduate students? I kind of fell apart over the last year because of my neuropathic pain (in my dominant arm and hand, sustained from a surgical error 12+ years ago) and am concerned I’m eventually going to need to take medical leave. But I can’t really afford to do that (re insurance) given my medical situation. I’m likely going to have a serious operation in the next few weeks to fix or remove a broken implanted spinal cord stimulator. Ideally I want to stay in school so that I can catch up on things and have the good insurance I’m currently lucky to have through Pitt. If my situation doesn’t improve, I doubt I’ll be able to catch up adequately once my teaching responsibilities begin again.

This is an excellent question. Do any readers know of any scholarships like this or otherwise have any helpful tips?

A list of grants?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Is there a clearinghouse for grants philosophers can apply for? I have a sabbatical coming up, would like to find grant funding, but am not sure if there's some sort of master database of philosophy grants. I'm US-based; I know about NEH grants, and Templeton, but there must be other bigger ones out there I'm not aware of. (And yes in theory my institution has a person who helps with grants... in practice, not so much). Thanks!

This is good question. Do any of you know of a resource like this? If not, it might be good to crowdsource a list of grants that philosophers can apply for in the comments section below!

How to open up "Introduction to Philosophy" classes to Global Philosophy?

My ideal curriculum for an Intro class in Philosophy is the one conceived by Jay Garfield and others and taught by Malcolm Keating and others at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, namely a completely non-Eurocentric introductory class (they have three main foci, namely Sanskrit, Chinese and European philosophy).

 

But, what to do until we get there?

Intro classes are (in the universities I know of) meant both for outsiders who only take one class of philosophy as well as for students who will chose philosophy as their major. Thus, the Intro class has at least also the purpose to put students in the position to follow their next classes.

Thus, in this sense a completely unconventional Intro class might be risky because students and professors might resent the fact that by the time they enrolled for, say, "Medieval philosophy" or "Philosophy of language" they did not know about basic names and theories. 

Now, again, in an ideal world the whole faculty will agree about rethinking its teaching style around the fact that "Plato" and "ethics" should not be more obvious requirements than "Confucius" and "philosophy of ritual", but, again, what to do until we are there? 

• Possibility no. 1: Disrupt the curriculum completely (see above). Cool but unrealistic.
• Possibility no. 2: Leave the Intro class(es) as it is/they are (thematic or historic and Euro-American focused). Students have too much on their plate already. Let's diversify later. Cool but unrealistic: students will have unconsciously swallowed the idea that there is just ONE philosophy that is "normal" and the rest is there to "colour it up".
• Possibility no. 3: Insert snippets of other philosophical worlds. Why, given that this would be done in a non systematic manner and hence not be as powerful insofar as paradigm building? Because it will at least force students to notice that there is not a single way of doing philosophy. Students I have been teaching in North America are more open than I expected to this idea, but they need to be exposed to examples early on to be able to seriously consider it. 

So, 3 seems still much better than 1. But this leads to further problems re. its feasibility. Which texts? Taught by whom? How?…

Stories of 'wins' after adversity?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I work at a decidedly non-fancy-pants institution. I recently had a paper accepted at a rather fancy-pants journal. I have been working on this paper on and off for over half a decade. The manuscript represents an incredible amount of work. The "excerpts" file for the paper alone dates back to 2016 and is well over 100 single-spaced pages. The paper has been rejected countless times, and when I look at previous drafts, the gap between what it was (bad) and what it is now (better) is huge. And while a utilitarian would probably shudder at the blood/sweat/tears to pleasure ratio involved in its construction, it is FINALLY going to be published and I am thrilled.

I would love it if we could have a thread about similar "wins" that people have had recently in the profession. It doesn't necessarily need to involve papers and publications. What are some instances where a LOT of hard work finally paid off despite considerable adversity?

I think this is a great idea, and big congrats to the OP! I think a thread like this could be cool, not just to hear some inspiring stories, but also because it may help those currently undergoing adversity to see that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel (for my part, I really could have used some such inspiration as a struggling grad student, etc.). Anyone have any cool 'win after adversity' stories to tell? 

Grappling with 'mediocrity as a philosopher'?

The other day, we had a thread discussing the situation of reader who is grappling with a loss of intellectual passion. In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Med raises a related query that I expect other philosophers may identify with:

I am curious to see some tips for accepting one's mediocrity as a philosopher but still feeling fulfilled.

I am lucky to have a job at a small public school. I got my degree from a lower ranked program. My papers have been continuously rejected by journals with a couple of exceptions. Some of them just do not have any chance to be published anywhere at this point. Very few people know my name in my field. I teach many "service" courses in gen-ed. My topic courses were under-enrolled and thus canceled a few times. I work in a traditional M&E area, and few students were interested in topics that I am interested in.

I am not an ambitious philosopher, and I feel okay with my current situation, not to mention that I feel lucky to have a job. However, as an early career person, I can feel that there will probably some kind of "existential crisis" for me in the future.

In response, another reader writes:

Once you find yourself getting tired - even before - you should set yourself up to do some serious service work. You may find that you are an effective administrator or dean, even. In that way you can still help the discipline, representing us at the table (the adult table, if I may). You can also earn a lot more money. Just some thoughts.

This seems to be a helpful suggestion, as my immediate reaction was also that the reader might consider going into administration. However, it's not entirely clear whether or to what extent the OP is in a position to go this route. I'm not entirely sure, but I know that some administrative jobs (e.g. Dean or Assistant Dean jobs) require one to have tenure, and it's not clear whether the OP is in a tenure-track position or whether they have tenure. At the same time, I have a feeling that other administrative jobs that might be fulfilling could be available even without tenure--though again, I'm not sure. Do any readers have any helpful tips, experiences, or insights for the OP? It might also be good to hear whether other readers find (of have found) themselves in a similar situation. Have you found yourself grappling with "accepting one's mediocrity as a philosopher"? If so, how have you approached it, and how has it gone? Have you been able to find (sufficient) fulfillment? 

Crowdsourcing job ads thread

A reader writes in:

I wonder how you felt about having a post about job ads. I was thinking even one that might have a pinned link on the side. Many of the jobs are posted on PhilJobs, but there are plenty that are not. UK jobs and postdocs are sometimes only on jobs.ac.uk; European jobs are in other places sometimes as well; society of fellows things, who knows where those are; etc. This seems like a great occasion for crowd sourcing. I’ve been placement director at [redacted] for a while and each year I have to ask the students if they found things in unexpected places. Anyway, I thought it would be a handy resource for people on the market. What do you think? 

I think this is a fantastic idea. It could be cool not to only crowdsource academic job ads in unexpected places, but non-academic ('alt-ac') job ads too. So, that's what I propose we devote this thread to, which I will pin on the right side-bar of the blog in perpetuity (or at least until the comment thread gets so long that it makes sense to start a new one). So, please do feel free to use the comment thread below to draw attention to job ads (academic or non-academic) that philosophers might be competitive for that are not PhilJobs or HigherEd Jobs!

Teaching Smarter Not Harder

By Samuel Duncan

I was originally going to post this as a comment to Trevor’s post on teaching competently, but I decided that it merits its own post. Trevor makes some excellent points about teaching and what it’s reasonable to expect from yourself as a graduate student. The workaholism and perfectionism that academia drills into our heads is not a good way to approach teaching or indeed most tasks. In this post I’d like to discuss another way that the workaholism that inspires so many of our unreasonable expectations also gets in the way of not just competent teaching but good or even exceptional teaching. I am convinced that many philosophers wrongly assume that when it comes to teaching, more work always equals better teaching. This means that we see teaching strategies that would save us work as compromises between excellence and giving ourselves a reasonable workload. And so we often weirdly resist novel teaching strategies because the fact they save us work makes them seem like a cop out. I know I certainly did for a long time and for precisely this reason. However, this is a mistake on so many levels. One thing I’ve found in the last few years is that teaching strategies that save you time and effort can often be much better for students’ learning than more labor intensive options such as traditional lecturing. Let me give a couple of examples.

In my ethics classes I’ve replaced exams with an ethics bowl competition at the end of the semester. (I should admit here that I completely stole this idea from my friend Ryan Windeknecht, who’s one of the best philosophy teachers I’ve ever known).  If you don’t know what the ethics bowl is you can find more information here. Briefly, it’s a formal debate where two groups each consider an ethical dilemma, comment on the other group’s presentation and field questions from the audience (in this case their classmates). Now this saves me a lot of work. It takes up about six class meetings– five for the ethics bowls and one for an in class prep session for the groups– which means I don’t have to prep for those five meetings or put in the emotional labor of being “on” in front of a classroom. Like many of us in philosophy, I’m not naturally an extrovert and teaching is more than a bit of a performance for me. I generally enjoy it quite a bit, but it’s also emotional labor in the truest sense of that often misused term. I also don’t have to grade exams since I score the teams in class as do their classmates and come up with an average between my scores and the scores of their classmates. And we all know what a miserable chore exam grading is. Most grading isn’t fun but exam grading is really just the worst in my experience. In my book, if most grading is a chore like cleaning your bathroom at home, then exam grading is cleaning the bathroom at a truck stop or a stadium.

So the ethics bowl saves me quite a bit of work, but I’ve also found that students tend to like it. Pretty much every semester at least one student and often multiple students will say that it was their favorite thing about the class in the evaluations. It’s also very good for student learning. Applying the moral theories we’ve learned to real life cases and answering questions and challenges to their approach both helps the students to understand the moral theories on a deeper level and to better appreciate both their merits and faults as methods of moral reasoning. I’ve found that the ethics bowl is probably the single most effective strategy I know of for getting students– both those in the groups and the audience– to engage in real ethical discussion and debate.

Or take logic where I’ve almost entirely adopted the “flipped classroom” model. For most class sessions, I put fairly brief recorded lectures online where I go over the reading in more detail and discuss what I think are tricky points (the lectures are usually about 30 minutes). We then devote the entire class period to working through problems that cover the material from the readings and lectures. I put students in informal groups (usually just based on where they happen to be sitting) to work through the problems and periodically break to go over a set as a class. During the time they’re working on them I’ll make the rounds in class and see if they need help or want feedback on their proposed solutions. In the short term this approach did involve a fair amount of preparation for me since I had to record lectures and come up with exercises to supplement those in the book. However, in the long term it saves me quite a bit of work. Relying on recorded lectures is easier than having to prep for class each day and again it’s a class period where I don’t have to be on and in character in the way I would if I were lecturing. 

However, I’ve found that this is a really effective way to teach a subject like logic. Students get nearly instant feedback on their solutions. We can also work through many more problems than we could if I gave them problem sets primarily as homework (I do still give some fairly brief homework assignments reinforcing the material we cover that we go over at the beginning of the next class). This is a huge advantage since I’ve personally found that for logic or any other similarly “mathematical” subject doing problems is the most effective way to learn the material. In fact, to a great extent it just is what learning the material is.

Anyway, those are just two examples, but I think there are a lot more cases where approaches that make our lives as philosophy teachers easier would also be more effective as learning strategies. I’d love to hear your own. If they’re really good I might just engage in the sincerest form of flattery again.

Grappling with loss of intellectual passion?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, X writes:

I am not interested in philosophy/intellectual work anymore, it seems.

I’ve been devoted to (formal) philosophy for about a decade, and was really passionate at the beginning, with ok success (some ideas people liked, books with ok presses, a few decent papers in good generalist venues, some invitations, visiting appointments, great track record of getting good grants for my career stage).

I feel that’s about to change. Some bad experiences with administration, plus two pandemic years, plus a few relocations, make me unmotivated. I do the bare minimum to keep up with my commitments. My new papers keep on being rejected (from very good journals, but still), and I can’t be bothered to work on them. I don’t feel there are extrinsic challenges left (in the profession) that are enough to be attainable and motivate me to do this for another 40 years or so.

All I can think about is *hobby* (which is outdoorsy, time-consuming, very expensive, and intellectually challenging). I already took last summer completely off work, but wasn’t recharged enough coming the new academic year.

Suggestions?

Another reader, Y, submitted the following response:

I can't help but empathize with X, although I may come from a different place. My motivation took a dip 2 years ago when covid started & I graduated and no longer have an adviser who held me accountable and gave feedback (and encouragement) & I was relocated & racism was rampant. For me, I do research because I want to achieve new understanding and to be part of the conversation that I am interested in. That has kept me going. I suspected that getting rejections play an important role in X's case among all the other unfavorable conditions. It has substantially helped my motivation to get positive feedback from referees and get my papers accepted. This is not necessarily advice to X since what do I know, but maybe it would help to put more effort into getting new papers published and see if that gradually improves the motivation---before considering options of quitting.

This is an excellent query, as I sense more than a few academics are feeling this way nowadays. Indeed, I've heard at least anecdotally that an increasing number of academics are leaving the profession post-COVID due to similar experiences, and I've personally known about a handful myself. I'm not sure, but maybe the OP is experiencing burnout? This is actually a genuine syndrome, and although I'm not a psychologist, I guess I'd suggest the OP look into it more if they haven't already. While I appreciate Y's response, and it's entirely possible that publishing more stuff would improve X's outlook and motivation, I'm curious whether other readers have any other suggestions. Indeed, I'm curious whether there are other readers out there who have grappled with similar situations as X (and Y), how you dealt with the situation, and how well your approach worked.

Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

Hiring friends with grant money?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Is it permissible to use your grant money to hire friends who are not experts in the funded area (though still can contribute) to support them financially? Thanks in advance!

Another reader immediately submitted the following reply:

That is unethical and in some places it is illegal. Don't do it

I'm not sure there is much more to say here. Although I've heard anecdotally that nepotism may be common in certain places, it's widely considered to be an unethical practice and I definitely wouldn't want to run the risk of getting in serious institutional or legal trouble for misusing grant money. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

7 Years Later Excerpt #3: Teaching Competently

In the previous post in this series, I discussed how to approach leading discussion sections. This time around, I'm broadening the scope to the fundamentals of teaching competently. I'll have at least one more post on teaching after this. Afterwards, I'll probably turn to some other aspects of graduate school, such as long-term planning or job market preparation. 

---

When you first start teaching, you might think you should aspire to do it well. By teaching well, I mean teaching in ways that captivate students, educate them effectively, assess their mastery fairly and comprehensively, provide ample support to students in need, and respect university guidelines and regulations. In the abstract, this all sounds great, and it’s an admirable ambition to want to teach well. However, for those new to teaching, it’s not realistic. Teaching well requires a level of skill and expertise that early career teachers will almost never be able to achieve. Even the few newcomers to teaching who have the ability to teach well should probably not try to teach well at that stage of their careers. This notion might strike you as counterintuitive, so let me elaborate a bit.

Teaching well is difficult and requires a substantial amount of time if you aren’t an experienced instructor. I recall anecdotes of graduate students telling me about how they devoted 30-40 hours per week to teaching a single course of 25-30 students. Those courses may have been amazing, but this behavior is not admirable or prudent. As a graduate student, you must balance teaching responsibilities with a variety of other goals: making progress toward your degree, submitting papers to conferences and journals, participating in department events, and so on. Devoting 30-40 hours per week to teaching a single course does not leave enough time to adequately prioritize these other commitments – at least not if one wants to maintain good mental health and avoid burnout. Moreover, once you finish graduate school, you will never be able to devote that amount of time to a single course. If you obtain a faculty position, you will probably teach at least 3 courses per term, and they might all be different subjects: you definitely won’t be able to devote 30-40 hours to each one. That means you should aim to develop teaching strategies that can later be extended to contexts where your teaching load is significantly higher.

Here’s the general point: trying to be an exemplary teacher when you’re just getting started with solo teaching is not an appropriate goal. Instead, you should aim to teach competently. As I use this phrase, teaching competently means to teach in a satisfactory or acceptable, but not outstanding, way. Teaching competently involves the same general goals as teaching well but sets the standard for success a bit lower. You don’t need to captivate students to teach competently: it suffices to maintain the motivation of those who are engaged and avoid turning off the remaining students. Teaching competently does not require that you be a master of test design and assessment –  something that requires many courses’ worth of exam creation and refinement – it is enough to design your exams so that course content and exam material align and that students have clear expectations regarding exam content.

Job market 'branding'?

A reader writes in:

[I] have all kinds of questions about the job market. One of them is related to a conversation that was trending online about a week or so ago concerning “brands”; namely, whether job candidates need to have a defined one these days. Is there already a Cocoon thread on this topic?

I don't believe we've ever discussed this issue before, and I'm curious to hear from readers. Should job-marketeers try to "brand" themselves? If so, what does that involve? As someone who has served on a number of hiring committees at a mid-sized liberal arts university that values research, my sense is that at many jobs, hiring committees probably care most about whether you have a clear area of specialization, do interesting work, and can teach in areas the department needs. However, I do wonder whether "branding" might be more important for R1 jobs somehow, where they might be looking to hire a "trailblazer", so to speak. Do any readers have any tips or insights on this?

Public philosophy is an oligopoly--and here why this is a problem

Some recent takes on the Enlightenment resonated strongly with the broad public. This includes Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress  (2018), and David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021).

I'm not going to write a detailed analysis of these books (I have done so for Graeber and Wengrow, which will appear at some point). Suffice it to say here, while I think there are some merits in both works, they also suffer from deficiencies in the conceptualization of what the Enlightenment is, its influences, and also the broader implications. 

And this is not a surprise, given that any scholarly domain of expertise requires significant research and experience, which neither of these authors can profess on the Enlightenment. Maybe you, like me, would love to see a book on the Enlightenment reach the big public that is written by an actual specialist in 18th-century western philosophy or history. Sadly, no Enlightenment scholar has been able to resonate so well with the public as these two works (if I am mistaken and there is a NYT bestseller book on the Enlightenment, please let me know!) 

This is a symptom of a larger phenomenon, an oligopoly within pop culture. As backed up with detailed data in this post by Adam Mastroianni, a few franchises (reimaginings, live-action remakes, sequels, same universe movies) dominate pop culture and the phenomenon has worsened significantly over the last decades. A few winners take up an increasing portion of the market share, leading to a decrease in diversity of output.

Sometimes philosophers are still asked "Why don't you do public philosophy?" as if this is a supply-side issue. It is not. There has never been more public philosophy available than at present, many of it is publicly available. Magazines such as The Philosophers' Magazine, Aeon, Psyche, and many others feature public philosophy from a wide range of thinkers. Podcasts such as Hi-Phi nation, Philosophy without Any Gaps, and What's Left of Philosophy  offer professionally produced, engaging and intellectually stimulating content. Individual philosopher YouTube channels make philosophy accessible to everyone, including Ellie Anderson's continental philosophy series, Greg Sadler's Speculative fiction series and Bryan Van Norden's Chinese philosophy class lectures. 

So, when the public turns to Jordan Peterson to look for life advice, rather than to philosophers, it is not because of the supply side. There is really no reason to shame, say, an Aristotle scholar into doing public philosophy in the hopes that her work will reach a disaffected teen who is wondering how to live the good life, and faute de mieux, turns to Peterson. There is already a lot out there (of course, we should welcome and support this hypothetical Aristotle scholar if she wants to do public philosophy!)

We should also recognize that there are very, very few academics who can make it as public intellectuals, for reasons that are totally unrelated to the intrinsic merits of their work, or even to their communication skills. 

What's happening is that public intellectuals are working in an ecology where a small number of winners get a disproportionate share in public attention and media capture. This is on the supply side part of a more general winner-takes-all mentality. For publishing with the four major fiction publishers, for instance, it was fine a few years ago to be a decent "midlister" (i.e., someone who sells books that make a profit for the publisher but will never reap high figures). But now, a beginning author must exude that ineffable quality of being a rising star, of a potential NYT bestseller author to even get a deal with an agent (and hence a publisher). As a result, many authors are querying in vain, and some have turned to self-publishing. Few self-published authors can break through into traditional markets, though several have a decent readership and make decent money from their work. 

Fortunately, as academics we can still survive and thrive as small fish. Our scholarly books get contracts based on their perceived academic merit rather than on sales potential (especially in academic presses, which are often heavily subsidized). And many of us do reach/have a significant platform beyond academia. This platform is valuable. We should support colleagues and provide institutional support for people who wish to engage in public scholarship. But it is important to note how skewed the field is, and to adjust expectations accordingly. 

It is worth thinking about why people are happy with this oligopoly--differently put, what explains the increasing homogenization in pop culture. Mastroianni speculates: 

As options multiply, choosing gets harder. You can’t possibly evaluate everything, so you start relying on cues like “this movie has Tom Hanks in it” or “I liked Red Dead Redemption, so I’ll probably like Red Dead Redemption II,” which makes you less and less likely to pick something unfamiliar. 

Philosophy is difficult. While the public struggle with philosophical questions on a daily basis (on e.g., the meaning of events in their lives, the abortion debate etc), trying to actively seek out philosophical resources that are publicly accessible is hard. People also have many other non-material needs, such as entertainment, comfort, a bit of joy, spiritual assurance, and philosophy is not a sure route to any of these things. This is why, although I think many people would benefit from engaging with philosophy, their bandwidth for it is very limited. Moreover, without media attention and platform, it is hard for the public to reach sources they might resonate well with.

I've got no easy solution how to fix this problem, but I think it is worth fixing.

We benefit from intellectual diversity in the public sphere. When diversity is mentioned, it is often in the context of viewpoint diversity (which often means that a few contentious polarized positions get a platform, e.g., on abortion and gender), but I'm interested in the broader phenomenon of a shared intellectual authority, as Helen Longino and other have detailed. 

It is no coincidence that many of the most high profile public intellectuals are at research-intensive universities, often Ivy League, where they largely compete with other similarly advantaged people for the limited attention from the public. Competition is fierce, which also provides bad incentives for giving unnuanced hot takes on recent issues. Public intellectuals at smaller colleges are sidelined, and we are the poorer for it. Public philosophers with a significant platform, who get 5-figure speaking fees (I know that this in fact happens!) should try to lift up more voices, especially when asked to speak about areas far outside of their expertise. But because the goods of being a high-profile intellectual are so significant (connections, money) there is little incentive to do so. 

I'd be interested to discuss what we can do to make more of the excellent public philosophy that is being done to trickle toward the general public. Contrary to perception, it is not a zero-sum game. If more people get interested in public philosophy, they might be tempted to engage with more public philosophical works. This would be to great mutual benefit, I think. 

Tips for navigating high-profile, public-facing opportunities as an introvert?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am writing for a friend. Really, though! I have a friend who is a wonderful philosopher at a private R2. When they received tenure (recently), they were recognized by several of their external letter writers as doing “cutting-edge” work in their subdiscipline. They are starting to get requests from high-profile, mainstream venues to talk about their work and even collaborate (think: interviews at fancy interdisciplinary journals, books distributed by Harper Collins, requests to work with what I think are called “internet personalities” (lol), and an offer of funding to start a research center in their subdiscipline). Insofar as my friend wants their work to be widely read and impactful, this is all great! Except, my friend is strongly introverted. As such, navigating the high-profile and high-stakes social dynamics in these contexts is both overwhelming and intimidating. Which has me wondering if there is someone who can help with this part of the job.

Do some academics have agents? Or maybe professional assistants? Someone who can help navigate public-facing work and engagement?

As a shy introvert myself, I think this is a great query! My sense is that some philosophers who do high profile, public-facing work do have agents, I don't know much beyond that. So, I think it would be great to hear answers to the OP's questions. Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

Free online translations of non-Western philosophy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Newish CC Prof writes:

Since I've seen several discussions here of resources for teaching non-western philosophy.

One hurdle I've found as I tried to figure out how to do that more is availability of texts. I'm committed to not making my students buy textbooks, and have no discretion on what textbook I'd make them buy if I did.

Serviceable public domain translations of all the "canonical" western figures are easy to find online. Every recommendation I've seen for translations of Chinese, Indian, African, etc. figures has been a book I'd have to ILL and then get sketchy with the departmental scanner.

Are there freely available English translations to be had online outside "the Western canon?"

This is a great question, and two readers submitted helpful replies. Chris Stephens writes:

Robert Eno has translations of many classical Chinese philosophy texts available on line for free student and instructor use. https://chinatxt.sitehost.iu.edu/Resources.html

And Andrew writes:

I'd recommend that recent Hackett editions. They are affordably priced and well-structured, e.g., Confucius by Edward Slingerland, Mengzi by Bryan van Norden. Back in the day, I think they'd even send an evaluation copy if you asked. What I've used but found a bit harder to work is Ames & Hall translations. Alternately, there are free translations on ctext.org but those are usually the 100+ year old ones.

These comments are helpful, but only point to online resources for translation of Chinese texts. Anyone know of any good online resources for free, public-domain translation of 'non-Western' texts more generally?

How can we help you? (May 2022)

Now that it's been a couple of months since our last "how can we help you?" thread, it's time for a new one.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query.

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon's mission) that you could use help with, including but not limited to:

• Life and work in the COVID-19 era
• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Work-life balance
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Fire away - we're here to help! 

Important reminder: if you submit a comment in this thread responding to someone's query, I won't post it, as this makes it difficult for me to keep track of everything in the comments section, particularly which queries I've started new threads on and which ones I have not. However, if you do post a follow-up comment, chances are good that I will post it in the new thread I start on the relevant query. So, do feel free to submit responses. Just know that they won't appear in this particular thread and might instead appear later in a new post!

Grappling with long review times

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student writes:

I have had multiple incidents of getting “too late” reviews. I foresee that this will keep occurring because the wait times at top journals can be extremely long and the reject rates are extremely high. I was wondering how does one deal with such cases and if there are any strategies with avoiding such scenarios. Sending to lower ranked journals with fast times isn’t an option for me because I’m at a top-5 programme and I face a two-body problem (and so need excellent publications to stand a good chance at solving my two-body problem).

1. The typical ‘you got scooped’.
I send out my paper from 1 journal, to the next. Some journals took incredibly long, like 7 mths, and even 1 yr to review (these were the first-round review times). Now, after 2.5 yrs later (the 5th journal I’m trying), I get a reject. The reviewer says that a similar idea has already published more than a year ago, and so my paper won’t contribute to the literature. Should I give up on this paper?

2. The author changed their views.
Philosopher X argues for theory T1 and argues on various desiderata that T1 is superior to T2. Various philosophers respond by trying to show how T2 can also accommodate the desiderata. My paper goes further to show that T1 cannot accommodate the desiderata for the very reasons that X thinks that T2 cannot accommodate the desiderata. I send out my paper from 1 journal, to the next. 2 years later (at the 4th journal I’m trying), I get a reject. The reviewers say that if my paper were sent earlier it would be accepted without revisions. However, philosopher X has changed their views about a year ago. So, my criticisms of T1 are no longer relevant. The debate is no longer between T1 and T2.

I really empathize with this student's predicament. I got scooped in a similar way in grad school, so this is something that I worried about lot early in my career after grad school as well. The peer review process can be so long, and so unpredictable, and when so many people in the profession are working on similar problems, it's hard not to worry about other people publishing arguments like yours before you do. As for authors changing their views, this isn't a problem that I've encountered, but I definitely see the issue. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I have any great tips. My strategy was to shoot for lower-ranked journals where I could get my stuff out more quickly, but as the OP states this doesn't seem like a viable path forward for them. The only other tips that I can think of, unfortunately, are for the author to check to see whether the reviewer for paper 1 is right that the paper is too similar to one that already came out, and if not, to keep sending it out. Otherwise, I was always told that the only other path forward is to keep writing new papers. But of course this strategy just runs into the same problem: your new papers might get scooped as well. This is, as I see it, mostly just a really unfortunate feature of peer-review today that we all deal with. It makes peer-review itself quite a bit of a lottery--which is unfortunate in that it makes our careers even more highly dependent on luck than they already are.

What do you all think? Do any of you have any better, more helpful tips for dealing with these issues?

Tips for teaching historical courses?

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student asks:

Does anyone have any tips about preparing to teach historical courses?

I'm a grad student working pretty much exclusively on contemporary issues, but I want to be able to teach historical classes at the undergraduate level. Doing that well seems to involve not only being familiar with the historical texts, but also important secondary literature. So if you want to teach a class on Hume, for example, you would want to know the texts from Hume you're going to teach, but also some of the major interpretive views that are well-respected and could help guide you and your students.

Does anyone have any tips for doing this kind of preparation (i.e., getting a solid, but not research savvy grasp on a historical figure and some of the major secondary literature on their work) in a time-efficient manner?

Good questions. Personally, when it comes to historical figures and undergraduate courses, I like to stick to primary texts and try to simply work through them with students. I worry a bit about "poisoning the well" as it were, in terms of exposing them to other people's ideas from secondary sources. But, of course, at the same time as an instructor it probably is a good idea to at least know what the going contemporary interpretations are. Anyone have any helpful tips?