In the context of the present academic situation all of our responses are going to necessarily be ambiguous. I think that Public Philosophy is important and applaud all who have been at the forefront of organizing and nourishing the Public Philosophy Network. So it is with sincere apologies that I point out that responding to the crisis by making philosophy public and practical is still responding within the framework that has been developed institutionally as the university has corporotized. This framework has been identified and analyzed for more than a decade (a short bibliography below). Among its characterisitcs is the demand that the university be "productive" in the standard capitalist sense. Since (in addition to teaching which places it in the "service" sector) the academe is in the knowledge business, the measures of productivity include the transfer of the knowledge and its uses. Practical and public philosophical knowledge can meet this measure of productivity.

This does not mean that resistance is impossible. But, it seems to me, that we need to figure out some of its goals. At the level of naked self-centered interest - our jobs are on the line. We can be "downsized" just as workers in other industries have been. This is what they tried to do in Nevada (where the department is attempting to save itself by becoming practical and developed an ethics, law and politics interdisciplinary degree, Binghamton's bread and butter for a long time (our program is Philosophy, Politics, and Law and it goes back to the beginnings of law and society programs, which are usually dominated by the social sciences). This is what they succeeded doing elsewhere (see Middlesex University, where the justification was low undergraduate enrollments and the program was closed, though most of it got relocated). But assuming that saving our jobs is not our only motivation, I would like to suggest that we remain unconvincingly old-fashioned and committed to the crucial role that philosophy and the humanities have in a democracy.

For me this does not mean that we reorient what we do (which we will anyway to respond to the crisis) but that as we do so, we worry seriously about equality and especially about class. The humanities (including philosophy) will survive longer in ivy and ivy like privates because they are still the mark of having the right kind of upper class education (connected to a sense of leisure, the obligations of philanthropy to the arts, and of course and the like). The humanities are most threatened at present in public institutions. And there are gradations here too and state specific  and within states system specific problems (all of SUNY, for example, is shifting its financial orientation toward STEM and within it a focus on "health"). I do not know how to translate this worry into practices either for the purpose of knowledge production or teaching. I hope that maybe as this conversation thread develops, we will find some interesting ideas we can try out.

Bibliography

Donghue, Mark. 2008. The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. Fordham University.
Kirp, David et al. 2003. Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher
Education. Harvard University Press.
Martin, Randy. Ed. 1998. Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work in the Managed University. Duke University Press.
Slaughter, Sheila and Garry Rhoades. 2004. Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. John Hopkins University Press.
Tuchman, Gaye. 2009. Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University. University of Chicago Press.


----------
Bat-Ami Bar On
Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies
Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Chair, Judaic Studies
Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000

http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~ami


On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 07:30, McAfee, Noelle C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Good morning, all,

I woke up to this article on public philosophy from the Chronicle in my inbox:



Noelle McAfee


On Dec 14, 2011, at 10:36 AM, Elizabeth Minnich wrote:

Ah: This is all very close to home! What a great discussion. I think we could piece together something approaching an analysis of the situation of philosophy in higher education by drawing on the differing angles of approach in our various responses. For example, there are economic/political pressures: Higher education is being defunded more and less purposefully to push it further into for-profit hands, and that obviously has effects, as do other instances of increasing corporatization and privatization including the huge problems with student indebtedness (thence, among other things, pressure to behave in school and enter the job market afterwards with desperation....), and ever more "contingent" faculty (way over 50% by now; closer to 70%) Studying philosophy is hardly in synch, as they say, with such developments (e.g. there are more 'practical' economics majors, and business...). Bat-Ami Bar On is quite right. But of course we can also turn inward and ask about changes in administrative powers and goals; what's happening with the humanities in general; what philosophers have been doing, as others have said. No surprises: we know this is a complex situation that can be illuminated as a whole given space enough and time.    

What I'd not do, at this point, is what the piece Joan sent around (thanks, Joan!) sort of does, i.e. join choruses of self-blame that recite once again the usual charges against academics in general: elitist, too specialized and narrow, too much jargon, isolated, writing only for each other, boring in class, impractical and all around useless in "the real world." These are virtually auto-pilot by now, and they join together all sorts of critics who ought not be joined, from anti-intellectual sorts to those with their own agendas for higher education to genuinely concerned academics to parents who want what they believe will help their children to students who need excuses as well as those who are deeply engaged and thoughtful to higher education officials and policy-makers, and journalists.....Cite any of those charges, and most people will nod.  Given how weakened higher education is and how well all sorts of people and sectors are being turned against each other over economic crumbs, it is particularly scary to me to hear such very different groups joining the same chorus of criticism.  Even if all those charges have some merit (which they, like most cliches, do), of course they are too sweeping and do not take account of very real changes, as well as realities on the ground (as Kathryn Norlock nicely points out), of many sorts that counter and/or reframe them.  (But I do hear them, over and over, from faculty as well as everyone else:mind-numbing, that, and very risky.) 

Noelle MacAfee is quite right to remind of changes and real possibilities, then. Together we all know a great deal about good things that really are being done that refute and/or reframe every one of the charges -- or at least refuse them as far too sweeping.  I have recently completed my term as Chair of the Committee on Public Philosophy: there is a lot of interest in seeing that committee do much more and  not only by way of publicizing philosophy in the sense of p.r. (interests I encountered ranged from, We should be interviewed more often to,The point is not to interpret the world, but to change it).  The CPP has a website and a more active group of philosophers on it now; check it out if that's useful to you.  The Public Philosophy Network Noelle mentioned picks up from and does more with the CPP's wide-ranging mandate also with care not to define "public philosophy" in exclusive ways but, rather, to open it up for really active discussion and projects in a diverse community.  And of course there are many, many interdisciplinary, "engaged" projects and programs and majors and minors out there that are precisely not "irrelevant" or any of the other tired old charges. 

Sorry; this is too long. One more thing, though: when I've spoken with faculty groups, including specifically philosophers but across many disciplinary lines, about the extraordinary changes in higher education (from the huge effects of all our work over some 30 years to make it more inclusive in all regards, and from admissions to curricula to research, to the present defunding and forcing into business management, faculty as fungible labor, and increasingly, profit-seeking mode), I have found all too many who say something like, What's happening now is so depressing I really can't think about it."  I have to say that that is obviously part of the problem: higher education has been, for the most part, just taking what is done to it at least since W. Bush and the Spellman Commission, et al. I was sent to a fascinating conference in Norway this past June, where I learned more about similar changes across Europe, as well as some fine counter-moves.   

In short, yes, philosophy as a way of life supported by the academy is threatened, but it is not at all alone in being so. 

I'm so glad this discussion is taking place!

Elizabeth Minnich

Dr. Elizabeth K. Minnich
Senior Scholar, Association of American Colleges & Universities;
Queens University


On Dec 12, 2011, at 11:50 PM, McAfee, Noelle C wrote:

to whatever extent the chronicle article is true, it is also true that there is much interest among a new cadre of philosophers to do work that is more immediately meaningful and relevant.  In the space of about a year, the new public philosophy network already has more than 500 members, and we just had a very successful first conference in DC.   visit our website and consider joining:

http://publicphilosophynetwork.ning.com/


Noelle McAfee, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Associate Editor of the Kettering Review
Department of Philosophy
Emory University
561 S. Kilgo Circle
Atlanta, GA 30322
office: (404) 712-7358
cell: (202) 531-1185
http://gonepublic.wordpress.com/

On Dec 12, 2011, at 5:07 PM, Joan Callahan wrote:

Well, this is certainly all true.  But it's also true that philosophers are very busy writing for one another, and have not systematically resisted making ourselves more and more irrelevant to the realities "ordinary" people deal with day in and day out.  We are a highly, highly professionalized group of (fine) scholars.  But that will not save philosophy departments these days.  We need to be making substantial differences to students' lives.  When we are, they will rise up to keep us, don't you think?

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 4:35 PM, Bat-Ami Bar On <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
The crisis of Philosophy is not unique to Philosophy but is more general and may be described as a crisis of the humanities and even in more general terms as the crisis of the academy. The crisis is also not local but felt in academic institutions throughout the globe. And blaming administrators does not work either in the case of this crisis. The academy is basically undergoing a huge change (brought to us by the global socio-economic and political changes to which the academy is not immune) that may be effecting public and private institutions slightly differently but no one is coming through this crisis untouched.
----------
Bat-Ami Bar On
Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies
Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Chair, Judaic Studies
Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000

http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~ami



On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 15:52, Christine Cuomo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Joan,
Thanks for posting, lots to discuss in this! I skimmed this morning and don't think I agree with much as far as the analysis goes (personally, I'd "blame" American culture and university administrators more than people in philosophy departments), but I appreciate that he's highlighting a terrible trend. I for one would love to know what other folks on the FEAST list think...

Chris
________________________________________
From: Feminist ethics and social theory [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Callahan, Joan [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 2:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: On Philosophy -- From the US Chronicle of Higher Ed.

This is worth looking at.  Joan

http://chronicle.com/article/Making-Philosophy-Matter-or/130029/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

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