So what is Latin American and/or Latino/a Philosophy? This sub-field has been growing by leaps and bounds in the past few years, with yearly conferences, a new journal, many new books, anthologies, encyclopedias as well as articles in English, and there are now job listings in the JFP calling for this area of expertise. The Eastern APA has recently added an Advisory Board in this area as well to funnel proposals to the Program Committee.

Nonetheless, like every other sub-field of philosophy, the exact topics, scope, and boundaries of the field are, naturally, contested. One good place to go for these debates are the essays in the APA Newsletter on Hispanics/Latinos in Philosophy, all available online through the APA. The back issues of these newsletters also contain excellent sources for sample syllabi, book reviews, conference information, and more substantive philosophical essays.

“Latin American Philosophy” is generally agreed to be an area that is not coterminous with all of the philosophical work written in Latin America or by Latin Americans, but to be a particular domain of discussion that extends from Las Casas to Dussel on topics especially written about and important in this region, from colonialism, to cultural identity, to hybridization. The general topics covered by philosophers in this field—topics such as ‘justice’ or ‘human rights’—are often approached in unique and different ways than is done north of the border. The differences in this field can be explained in part by particular experiences that Latin Americans have had, but also simply by the fact of a growing conversation among shared discussants who know the tradition of thought spanning Las Casas, Rodo, Sarmiento, Alberdi, Mariategui, Marti, Ramos, Frondizi, etc. Yet there are also a number of sub-areas within the field of Latin American philosophy, in which work has focused on the metaphysics of the self, value theory, political philosophy, and so on. Thus it is not a unified field by any measure in terms of political orientation or subject matter.

“Latino/a Philosophy” is generally understood to refer to a body of writings mostly by Latinos/as in north America who are generally knowledgeable of and engaged with Latin American philosophy but who are also engaged with particular issues of interest in the north, such as the nature of hispanic of latino identity, immigration, race and racism, citizenship, transnationalism, religion, and the specific forms of sexism particular to Latino traditions.

So check out our new list of recommendations. This is a growing field, but still relatively small, so we have included information both for graduate and undergraduate programs. Those seeking to do graduate work in this field are advised to become aware of all the resources out there, some of which may provide expert faculty nearby their graduate program, or otherwise accessible on email.

Please send feedback and suggestions to us at pluralistguidetophil@gmail.com

Keep up with conference and book announcements and other relevant news, and share your own announcements. And help spread the word!

There appears to be a groundswell of demands in numerous philosophy departments across the country for climate studies, studies that will be specific to departments, that will gauge the climate for women and other underrepresented groups, that will include students, and that will try to collect more comprehensive data while also being more specific to a local context than this guide can be. This is fantastic, and in many cases the folks pushing for and organizing the studies are untenured, or are even students! It indicates what has been under the surface the some time but has lately, for a variety of reasons, come to the surface: the need for a more open gathering of assessments and sharing of information about how we are doing in philosophy in relation to questions of diversity and pluralism.

Some of us have done climate studies before, sometimes in departments and sometimes in whole universities. I hope we can share the experiences of these earlier studies with the newer folks engaging in them, building a base across the generations, as a way to give further impetus to this development. We want to make this site a space for such accounts—please send them to us at our website email address: pluralistsguidetophil@gmail.com.

Let me begin by sharing my own story, which is instructive in a couple of interesting ways. A few years back when I was teaching at a different institution, a female colleague and I decided to conduct a comprehensive climate survey of all the women in our department, including graduate students, faculty, and office staff. This was prompted by our fatigue at being on the constant receiving end of complaints from women, mostly students but some staff, who regularly asked us to ‘keep this private.’ Such steady complaints and reports are part of daily life for many women faculty and faculty of color who find their offices the go-to place for climate of complaints. We often feel like we are perceived to be the social workers of the department. But always with the plea not to tell anyone what we are hearing.

So my colleague and I decided we needed to try to do something proactive. We surmised there was a general climate problem, rather than a single bad apple. This was a department that did not have a long history of having women faculty or students—there had been one senior (and excellent) woman for a long time, but we were the first junior female faculty hired in roughly 25 years. So the department was unused to having women faculty around, did not have a way to talk about climate issues, and did not really understand climate issues. It also contained more than one faculty member who engaged in borderline sexual harassment fairly regularly. So after hearing several complaints, my colleague and I researched surveys, studied the AAUW reports on gender climate, consulted with our local social scientists, and sent out our survey.

We made the survey anonymous, even to us, then assessed the results and published the findings just to our department members. We reported what we took to be significant, general findings. We made suggestions for improvement. We strove for a tone of’ ‘we are a community with shared values and we are all in this together and together we can make things better.’ We strove to avoid self-righteousness or an attitude of holier than thou. In my own conversations I often shared the idiotic comments I had made to male students without thinking, (such as, when I was trying to move a bookcase in my office and a male student poked his head in, I said “I need a man”). We strove to interpret our colleagues as generally sharing our commitment to equality. We stated that our goal was to open up a conversation. We did this. When we were untenured.

You might well wonder, what was the result?  An angry focus on and dissection of our methodology, and a demand to know who exactly had said or done what exactly to whom. We had written our results up in a way to show that there was a department wide climate problem, that it needed a department wide collective response rather than isolated instances of individual sanction. (This is obviously not always the case, nor was it the case later on in the life of that department when an individual was sanctioned, but it was true at that point in time).

Yet few collective and constructive responses actually resulted from our efforts. Just an attack on methodology and an insistence that we tell which individual accused which individual about what exactly. I have heard this story repeated elsewhere. Bad news is often met with a firing squad set up for the messenger, and in our more sophisticated era, a firing squad can be set up for the methodology by which the message is established. This is obviously a defensive response. This is not to say that methods should never be of concern, or should be free from debate. Of course not. We are philosophers, after all! But it is to say that even if one does a comprehensive internal survey of all faculty, graduate students, and staff within a department the result may be, guess what, an attack on methodology as a way to disengage with the substantive issues of climate.

My colleague and I, nonetheless, received tenure, but she retired early (very early!) just a few years later. I suspect the climate was getting to her.

The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy is not meant or able to replace or replicate such comprehensive internal climate surveys. It is meant to produce results that may, however, prompt such a survey. Go for it. My story is about 18 years old. We are in a different time and place, and who knows what will happen? Let’s find out, and let’s share our results together on this site. We will construct a new page for this information as it comes in.

It has come to our attention that false and misleading allegations about the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon have been circulated on various blogs, and we are writing with the intention of correcting this misinformation.

The claims made about our department are summarized succinctly by Brian Leiter, who alleges that they were reported to him by an anonymous graduate student at our program and subsequently confirmed by two faculty members:

1. that “there is a faculty member suspected of being a serial sexual harasser”;

2. that “it was graduate students who had to raise a stink about it, due to departmental and administrative lethargy on the matter”; and

3. that “a feminist philosopher on the faculty urged quiet about this incident lest it cost the department an award for being ‘women-friendly.”

Concerning (1), an administrative review was conducted by our Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity (OAAEO) in response to concerns brought forward by a now-retired member of the faculty regarding a current member of the faculty. The concerns were that the faculty member in question had violated the university’s policies concerning conflict of interest and sexual harassment. After a thorough review of the allegations, including interviews with two dozen students, some faculty members, and alumni, our administration concluded that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that there were policy violations as alleged. The announcement of the conclusion of this administrative review was made on 3 August 2011 by the University’s Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. Prior to that time, no authoritative information concerning the review had been made public. Since Oregon administrative rules restrict public dissemination of information about personnel reviews, the details of this review are not public knowledge and have not been shared with faculty or students in our department.

Concerning (2), the claim that this review was instigated by graduate students, or that the department and administration did not respond in a timely way to the allegations, is false. The administrative review was requested by the department head in response to concerns raised by a faculty member. Graduate students learned only later that the review was in process, in many cases as a consequence of being interviewed as part of the review. Since the review process is confidential and intended to protect due process, many of our graduate students expressed frustration at the lack of public information. Unfortunately, the confidential nature of the review process has encouraged some to believe that the administration has not responded appropriately. In our view, the confidential process of such reviews is essential to protecting the privacy of those who bring concerns forward, those who are accused, and those who provide information or evidence concerning the allegations.

Concerning (3), the claim that a faculty member in our department “urged quiet about this incident” is false and misleading. Since personnel reviews are not a public matter, no public announcement or other authoritative information was disseminated to faculty or students concerning this review while it was underway. The majority of our faculty first learned of the review when graduate students expressed frustration about the lack of public information or administrative response. At that point, our department was asked by the administration to cooperate with the review process by respecting confidentiality and due process. Due process requires that hearsay and unverified allegations not become the basis for public judgment. In this spirit, many members of our department urged that the review process be allowed to take its course, so that unverified allegations not be taken as the basis for public condemnation. Unfortunately, the blog postings to which we are responding did not respect this request.

All faculty, staff, and graduate students in our department were invited (on 2 May 2011) to comment directly and confidentially to a representative of SWIP-UK concerning the department’s nomination for their “women-friendliness” award. Although many graduate students were aware of the ongoing review at that point, either by being interviewed or by way of rumor, the majority of the faculty were not. When faculty members did learn of the review, they expressed the need to respect the due process of those involved. The department also organized an informational meeting between the graduate students and representatives of the administration and OAAEO, as well as holding a department-wide meeting to increase understanding about the review process and formulate next steps for our response as a community. No faculty member made any effort to suppress information for the purpose of winning an award.

Our department takes seriously the task of fostering a positive climate for all members of our community. Our dedication to feminism and to philosophical pluralism is reflected in our academic curriculum as well as our department culture. The latest NRC assessment of research doctorate programs ranked us as the most diverse philosophy program among public AAU institutions, and the third most diverse program in the country. We are also the only philosophy doctoral program in the United States to require that students complete courses in feminist philosophy. As a department, we are committed to the safety of our women students, to fostering an environment that is healthy and appropriate between faculty and students, and to encouraging the flourishing of all women in our community, faculty as well as students. Although the administrative review is now complete, we take the recent events in our department as an invitation to work energetically and proactively toward improving the climate for women in our community even further.

Sincerely,

Mark Johnson, Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bonnie Mann, Associate Professor of Philosophy

Scott L. Pratt, Professor of Philosophy

Beata Stawarska, Associate Professor of Philosophy

Ted Toadvine, Department Head and Associate Professor of Philosophy

Alejandro Vallega, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Rocío Zambrana, Assistant Professor of Philosophy