The PGR Numbers, from Mitchell Aboulafia

The results of the latest iteration of the peculiar exercise known as the PGR survey have been slow to appear, but, as the "area" rankings have trickled out, Mitchell Aboulafia has been tracking the participation rate over at Up@Night. And, so far, it does not look good. The most recent area he has mentioned is Philosophy of Language.

As he summarizes the situation:

More Great PGR Posts From Mitchell Aboulafia

Mitchell's the human to watch on this.

• PGREvaluators: Struggling with Other Obligations
• The PGR: A Whiff of Desperation?

That last one should definitely make us really totally confident that the new co-editor has total, utter, complete independence from any influence that Herr Über Professor Leiter might, well, not attempt to exert, we wouldn't want to imply that...more like impose with an iron fist.

No offense, but sometimes one wonders what the fire truck people are thinking.

An Open Letter to Prospective Evaluators for the 2014-2015 Philosophical Gourmet Report

Not by me, but by Mitchell Aboulafia. Posted at NewAPPS.

Here, I shall do no more than register my disgust, yet again, by quoting the words of Zachary Ernst:

It is my contention that the Report is not merely unsound as a ranking system and detrimental to the profession; it is obviously unsound as a ranking system and obviously detrimental to the profession. Indeed, its flaws are so obvious that it would seem to be unnecessary to discuss them. However, the Report is also an institution unto itself. It is so deeply entrenched into the profession of academic philosophy that otherwise highly intelligent and critical professionals seem to have developed a blind spot to it.

Indeed, it is seriously worrying how utterly oblivious people in this profession are to the flaws of PGR and to the egregious damage it does. Not intentionally, but that is ir-effing-relevant.

Two Reflections on PGR from Mitchell Aboulafia

Over at Up@Night:

• "Leiter Posts Response to Criticism of Rankings—A Response to the Response" (here)
• "The Dog Ate My (Philosophical Gourmet) Report" (here)
• "Ten Excuses For Not Filling Out the PGR Survey" (here, and just humor)

I personally hope lots of people will simply decline to fill out the report, whether they signed the September Statement or not. That is the best way to delegitimize what has become an embarrassment to the profession.

Also, Leigh M. Johnson has produced a nice timeline of recent events here.

High School Popularity Rankings

A bit of satire from Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa. Since rankings are such a good idea, you know.

Bharath Vallabha on "The Function of the Philosophical Gourmet Report"

In a discussion over at Feminist Philosophers, Bharath Vallabha made an interesting set of comments about the role that the Philosophical Gourmet Report plays in philosophy. It turns out that there is a longer version, "The Function of the Philosophical Gourmet Report", which Bharath has given me permission to share. Obviously, you should click the link to download it.



For those who are not familiar with this sort of analysis, let me emphasize right now that Bharath's essay is not about the intentions of people involved with the Gourmet Report. It is about its function in a different sense: its effect upon the field and the larger social and professional forces that have made it seem so essential.

Bharath has also written a piece at Hippo Reads, "Eugene Park Was Right: Academic Philosophy Is Failing Its Cosmopolitan Values". For those who do not know, Park's essay described his reasons for leaving the field, which largely concern its 'homogeneity'. Bharath's essay is a response to a typically derogatory commentary on Park's essay by one Brian Leiter, who more or less manages to prove Park's point while thinking he is refuting it. (Thanks to Feminist Philosophers for the link.)

Disclosure: Bharath received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard, and I taught him during the time I was there. I was not on his committee. As is mentioned at the beginning of the Park essay, he too has now left academic philosophy, which is something I personally regard as a serious loss for the field. If we are losing such people, then we are doing something very wrong.

Can You Sign the September Statement If You Object to PGR in Principle?

I have had several people write me now to explain that they can't sign the "September Statement" because doing so would be implicitly to endorse PGR. This is the weirdest flipside ever of Leiter's insistence that the true agenda of the authors of the September Statement is to destroy PGR.

The worry seems to be focused on two sentences near the end of the Statement:

We are only declining to volunteer our services to the PGR while it is under the control of Brian Leiter. With a different leadership structure, the benefits of the guide might be achieved without detriment to our colleague.

Some people seem to think that these statements contain some sort of implicature that, if PGR were not under Leiter's control, we'd all be on board. Or, as John Protevi has now said publicly, that there are (net) "benefits" to PGR that could better be achieved without Leiter as leader.

This is just wrong. In the remarks quoted, the authors of the September Statement (of whom I am not one) are simply trying to make it clear that they are not targeting the PGR as such. That is, the purpose of the remarks is to forestall the predictable response from Leiter (which we have, of course, heard, and to which I will not link) that this is just another group of party line right-wing feminazi continentalist PGR-haters trying to destroy what he has so selflessly offered the field.

The point, that is to say, is that this particular effort targets PGR only because and in so far and so long as Brian Leiter is its editor, not because of general objections to it. That does not imply that there aren't general objections to it, nor that the signatories do not have such objections—which, as is well known, I do.

Look: It is patently absurd to suppose that the authors of the Statement meant to exclude people from signing who have general objections to rankings! To the contrary: What they are trying to do is make it possible for people who do not have such objections to sign. (I'd have thought it was equally absurd to suppose that anyone would think that those of us who have signed have thereby expressed our enthusiasm for rankings, but I guess I've just been surprised.)

So I disagree with Protevi: The last sentence quoted above does not beg the question whether PGR has (net) benefits. The sentence in question should be read:

With a different leadership structure, the benefits of the guide, such as they are (and we are not taking a stand on that), might be achieved without detriment to our colleague.

Nothing in the Statement turns on any other reading, so the charitable reading is the one just indicated (as Daniel Elstein has also said).

With all due respect, I therefore have to disagree with Jessica Wilson, too:

...[I]t is a major distraction to take the upshot of [Leiter's misbehavior] to be that Leiter should step down from the PGR, since in so doing the deeper crisis affecting our profession—the fact of and destructive impact of implicit bias—will remain unaddressed and moreover be perpetuated. The problem with the PGR is not Leiter, but the associated ranking system, which is tailor-made to encourage and encode implicit bias.

Yes, yes, but no. This just misunderstands the goal of this effort. Wilson writes as if the goal were to solve a "problem with the PGR": to improve it by getting Leiter to step down. But that too is just wrong. The goal is to deprive Leiter of one major source of the power that he has been abusing. The fact that, in doing so, we do not also address the role that PGR plays in propagating implicit bias is, so far as I can see, not relevant.

Which is not to say that addressing that other issue isn't important. Of course it is. But I simply do not see how trying to put an end to a long-standing pattern of behavior that Wilson herself characterizes as "seriously injurious" can possibly be dismissed as a "distraction" from the problem of implicit bias.

Do Protevi, Wilson, et alia, really want to help Leiter split the opposition? Because that is what they are doing.

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UPDATE (10/4): Jonahtan Jenkins Ichikawa has explained the thinking behind the language mentioned above in a comment at Feminist Philosophers. Jonathan writes: "The intention was that the statement be explicitly neutral on what attitudes signatories might have toward other possible versions of the PGR. So I can confirm with what I think is some authority...that the language was never intended to imply that a Leiter-free PGR would be better than no PGR at all." He goes on the concede, however, "...that in our efforts to avoid giving the impression that the September Statement represented an anti-PGR stance, we may have inadvertently chosen wording that is suggestive of the opposite...".

Discussions of Philosophy Rankings

In the wake of recent events, a long-overdue discussion is now beginning in earnest about whether philosophy needs "rankings" and, if so, what sorts of rankings we should have. I've set up a page where I will try to aggregate links to such discussions. If you know of more such, then please let me know, by email.

In case anyone is still confused about this, it does not follow that the PGR boycott is or was directed towards changing (let alone obliterating) the Gourmet Report. What follows is just that, since a whole lot of people are and long have been concerned about the PGR rankings anyway, and since Leiter has for a long time been an obstacle to genuine reform and now seems on the way out, it is a good time to have a discussion of both whether and how philosophy departments should be ranked.