Wednesday, May 11, 2016

New Op-Eds on Ethnic Diversity in Philosophy

A couple very cool op-eds today on ethnic diversity in philosophy:

Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden in the New York Times:

  • If Philosophy Won't Diversify, Let's Call It What It Really Is
  • And John E. Drabinski, on his home page, with mostly supportive but partly critical read of the Garfield and Van Norden:

  • Diversity, Neutrality, Philosophy
  • -------------------------------------------------

    Related posts:

  • Philosophy Is Incredibly White, but This Does Not Make It Unusual Among the Humanities (Sep. 3, 2014)
  • What's Missing in Philosophy Classes? Chinese Philosophers (Los Angeles Times, Sep. 11, 2015)
  • 2 comments:

    Charles Young said...

    There is a precedent (of sorts) for the Garfield and Van Norden (Hi, Jay!) rebranding idea.

    In the 1980's, the Journal of the History of Philosophy (JHP) received a submission in the history of African philosophy. Despite its title, the JHP had never published (or, for that matter, even received) a paper in that area. What to do? The JHP first ran the paper by some experts and learned that it was a serious and worthwhile piece of work. The JHP nonetheless elected not to publish the paper, and instead worked to secure a home for the paper in an appropriate journal.

    The Journal's Board of Directors then faced up to the problem of the Journal's title. Tradition carried the day; the Journal is still the Journal of the History of Philosophy. But the web and print versions of the Journal now make it plain that JHP will consider for publication only papers in the history of Western philosophy.

    Eric Schwitzgebel said...

    Thanks for that, Charles. Disappointing!

    I know when David Glidden was running History of Philosophy Quarterly, he actively sought to include non-Western philosophy in the journal.