A senior feminist philosopher (not the philosopher quoted in the earlier post) writes with some interesting comments that she gave me permission to share:
The level of attention this petition (or better, pledge) has gotten irritates me. It's true that gender balance among keynote speakers is worth pursuing, but there are far more important problems surrounding gender in philosophy in particular, and power dynamics in the profession more generally. I don't want to participate in the wave of enthusiasm that is making this look like a lynchpin issue and eclipsing other issues. It feels like this is mostly about people making a pubic display of their feminist credentials and checking the list to see who has those credentials and who doesn't; it has little to do with making a real difference to those who are seriously disempowered and face real obstacles in the field, as far as I can see.
Furthermore, I think it's a bad idea. I am a big supporter of the GCC and think it has had a positive impact because it is well-designed and conservative in its claims. I think that putting pressure on people to turn down all invites that don't meet some gender balance criterion is ill-conceived. Conference organizing is hard, and lots of times one has to try to line up keynotes without knowing anything definitive about who else will be coming. How will this work in practice now? You need to have invited everyone before you can invite anyone? Or secure yourself a woman before you move onto inviting men? This seems ridiculous and burdensome, and often it will fall apart - someone will back out, etc. My view is: If you get invited to a conference with an egregious gender imbalance (or any kind of egregious oversight), speak up. Encourage the organizers to consider some awesome woman you know to be doing good work in the area. Try to do the same thing for philosophers from other underrepresented groups. If the organizers are pricks about it, consider not going. But this formulaic kind of rule strikes me as unhelpful and insensitive to the realities of conference organizing.
UPDATE: In response to some e-mails: it is unfortunate that this is a subject on which so many prefer to speak without attribution, though their reasons are quite understandable. Anyone who has witnessed the general tenor of responses at the New APPS blog when any dissent is voiced about their self-righteous high-mindedness can understand why most prefer to steer clear. I am happy to both vouch for my correspondent and endorse her claims, since I'm either bullett-proof...or the bulletts all pass through the existing holes. It would be nice if one could call out sanctimonious stupidity without being smeared, but that's not likely given the players.
AS IF TO MAKE THE LAST POINT do see the remarkable response to Neil Levy's wholly sensible and correct comment here, and also Matt Smith's observations later in the same thread, which I quote in part (he does, however, have a more favorable view of the Lance & Schliesser petition, I should note):
Reasonable, good people can disagree with this particular petition project without thereby demonstrating an unwillingness to promote the goal of equality. Furthermore, reasonable, good people can disagree with *particular arguments* for that goal and for this project without thereby demonstrating that they stand in the way of that goal. Not to put too fine a point on it, people can disagree with Lance and Schliesser without thereby demonstrating that they are stupid jerks who need to be told off.
I was interested in Leiter's (and others') response to this project and came over here to read New APPs. What I found was vitriol and pettiness.
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