Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy

6 Replies to “Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy”

1. I note that the keynoters are all men….and only one submitted paper by a woman is accepted? And only one paper even submitted on “feminist theory and issues”? Plus, in some of the work we’ve been doing on citation data, political philosophers are especially bad in citing women. I submit that this needs reflection and discussion. Wouldn’t one think that women and feminist philosophy would be well-represented in political philosophy? If that isn’t the case, what is the explanation?

2. Sorry…my error. Two papers by women accepted. Obviously can’t count! 🙂

3. I very much share your concern and I think that harder work on our parts to identify good political philosophers that are not white men would result in a more diverse group of speakers. I am quite disappointed in our lineup this year in this respect. I have spoken up about this and gotten a commitment from my co-editors that we will all work harder in this respect in the future. I earlier mentioned here the usefulness of a list of philosophers broken down by area, sex, race, junior/senior status, etc. for purposes such as this and I look forward to the good folks at PhilPapers helping us all out before too long by providing such a thing. I hasten to add that the way we have decided to run this series starting next year, the local host has more of a say in who the keynotes are and how things are run. As a result, the Syracuse conference in 2015 has Liz Anderson and Seana Shiffrin as the keynotes and next year’s conference does include a woman keynote as well. Still, I think we have lots more work to do and I believe we will be doing that work in the future. Two more things: I think concerned people speaking up about this issue and bringing some pressure to bare (as non-confrontationally as possible compatible with pointing out the problem), as Sally did here, can be quite useful. I would urge folks who choose to speak up to write to all three co-editors of OSPP (or, all editors of whatever venue it is that you are speaking up about). Additionally, with continuing series such as OSPP, the most important assessment, it seems to me, is likely not how we do in any particular year on these matters but how we do overall. I hope and expect that judged by that measure, we will improve.

4. I see three.
   You probably missed the paper co-authored by Jon Quong & Rebecca Stone. So, maybe 2.5.

5. Yes, I’m not very good at counting!! 🙂 Sorry.
   There is a project currently underway to have lists of women philosophers by area (we aren’t waiting for Phil People, though that will, no doubt, be more complete) and the lists will soon be available on the APA CSW website. Some are already there – and we are planning to regularize the format and build them up to be more complete, etc. See:
   http://www.apaonlinecsw.org/blogs-and-wikis
   I also think we need to encourage women to submit their work to places they might avoid for whatever reason. Thanks David! –Sally

6. Thanks Sally, that is great. I would think the OSPP web page could point people to that webpage. Is there going to be an opportunity for people to sign themselves on to the page even if they are not APA members? If so, let me know when it goes up and I’ll post about it on PEA Soup (or feel free to skip the middle man and post it there directly).