Dear FEAST,
My name is Angela Sun and I’m a graduate student at the University of Michigan, specializing in ethics, action, aesthetics, and social philosophy. Since August 2020, I’ve been co-directing
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) International, a grassroots organization dedicated to addressing structural injustice facing marginalized groups in academic philosophy with over 160 chapters in 15 countries and 5 continents.
In the past three years, MAP has played an integral role in my personal and academic growth. Through MAP, I’ve helped organize conference sessions (including sessions on “Countering Bullying, Harassment, and Microaggressions” and “Public Philosophy and Activism” at 2021 APA meetings),
workshops, and get-togethers, and
wrote articles,
reports, and
guides to advocate for a more diverse, just, and welcoming profession. Above all, I’ve found a community of compassionate graduate students who philosophize from marginalized perspectives. Thousands of other marginalized students have found their own local communities through MAP.
Today, I’m writing to you with an urgent call for action. As an organization run by marginalized graduate students with little institutional support, MAP is severely underfunded. MAP activities have traditionally been co-funded by local universities and the Marc Sanders Foundation.
However, since 2013, when we started with 19 chapters, we have grown over 784%, yet we still receive the same annual operational budget--a little over $10,000. MAP’s exponential growth makes our funding highly unsustainable for the past few years. COVID disruptions have further exacerbated the issue.
This year, we launched our first-ever fundraising campaign with the Marc Sanders Foundation (MSF). The MSF will match every donation dollar-for-dollar, up to $10,000; donations through this fundraising campaign have the potential to increase MAP's annual operational budget by 100%. We need your help to keep MAP running.
Donations will help MAP International organize events and support MAP chapters in philosophy departments worldwide. Moreover, they will go towards our two new initiatives aimed at facilitating regional collaboration and community building:
MAP-Africa and the MAP Inter-Campus Peer Mentoring Network. Read our most recent annual report to learn more about MAP programming since 2020, and how the donations would be used.
How you can help