They are: Linda Martin Alcoff (Hunter College/CUNY), Henry Allison (UC San Diego, emeritus), John Campbell (Berkeley), Derrick Darby (Rutgers), Catherine Elgin (Harvard Grad School of Education), Susanna Siegel (Harvard), James Van Cleve (Southern California).
I'm glad to see a longstanding omission finally corrected (Henry Allison, who turns 86 next week: see, e.g.). I'm utterly shocked that someone like Alcoff, with an extraordinary record of misconduct and damage done to the discipline, could be elected to any supposedly "honor" society. But, as I've noted before, this is too often the "American Academy of Each Other's Friends in the Arts & Sciences," compounded by the relentless "diversity" push of recent years (Professor Alcoff is Latina, and as I've been told by several members, the selection committee is not bound by the vote of the membership in "diversity" cases--which matters here because, given the current make-up of the philosophy section of the AAAS, she would not have garnered majority support).
ADDENDUM: This appears to be the first year that "Philosophy" has been divorced from "Religious Studies," which are now each separate categories.
ANOTHER: A senior philosopher I respect, but don't always agree with, writes (and kindly gave permission to post):
I have to say, I strongly disagree with your post about Alcoff. She is hugely influential across the humanities, as her Google Scholar page clearly shows:
You list various things she has done outside her publications that you find problematic as reasons to exclude her from the American Academy. But, with all due respect, that is batshit crazy. The only thing that should matter for inclusion in the American Academy is the scholarly impact of one’s work. For what it’s worth, I consistently tell people that however much they disagree with your blog or whatever, you should clearly be in the American Academy based on the impact of your scholarly work. Honestly, your post about Alcoff comes across as political and ideological intrusion into academic merit of precisely the kind that you rightly denounce, which is very much the basis of much of my genuine respect for you. I don’t think it’s incompatible with your views to modify or rethink this post. You don’t like her extra curricular actions. That’s fine! However that is totally irrelevant to judging her impact as a scholar. Please make that clear!
I appreciate the forthright objection and the opportunity to clarify my view. I agree that there should not be "political and ideological intrusion into academic merit," although I do fear that ship has sailed for various reasons in the American Academy--but I agree with the ideal. Ironically, I actually agree with a lot of Alcoff's politics (although not her obsession with demographic diversity), and I don't think the AAAS should be assessing people's political and moral views in electing members. What makes this case different, in my view, is that "her extra curricular actions" damaged, it seems to me, the field she is now being honored by. Recall the most egregious incident: she produced a public report maligning some top analytic departments as having a bad climate for women (based on no evidence), and promoted some non-analytic departments as having a good climate for women, including at least one with longstanding sexual harassment problems!
Google Scholar does measure citations quite well, but it does not measure academic merit. In Professor Alcoff's case, most of her work is cited by scholars in fields outside philosophy, so perhaps a different section of the Academy should have honored her? But that is minor: I offer no opinion on her scholarly work, with which I have only slight familiarity. Perhaps others share my correspondent's view about how to weigh actions like Professor Alcoff's. I do hope that the American Academy makes clear going forward that it is "scholarly impact" and academic merit that matter most. (ADDENDUM: My original correspondent wrote to say that while he thinks legally adjudicated professional misconduct [e.g., sexual harassment] should be considered, he did not think any misconduct not subjected to legal or law-like adjudication should be. I will say, I'm not unsympathetic to drawing the line that way, in which case the actions by Professor Alcoff should not be relevant.)
UPDATE: A reader points out that philosopher Sally Haslanger, a friend and political ally of Alcoff's, is now on the membership committee for the entire Academy.
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