Zoobahtov.wordpress.com Website Review

~ ——————-BY ALEXANDER ZUBATOV——————- on Aeon by Peter Levine, an as*ociate dean at the Jonathan M Tisch College of Civic Life and a research professor at the department of philosophy at Tufts University, in which he laments the lack of diversity in philosophy departments. Here are the > Philosophers in the United States typically choose a much higher > percentage of their sources (often, 100 per cent) from Europe and > countries settled by Europeans. Philosophy teachers, too, look > homogeneous: 86 per cent of new PhD researchers in philosophy are > white, and 72 per cent are male. In the whole country, only about 30 > African-American women work as philosophy professors. Now, having taken my share of philosophy courses in college (Yale), I can honestly say that I did not see, as it were, so much as a single African-American as* among the occupied (and all-too-many empty) seats, so unless things have changed radically since I graduated in 1997, this seems to me to be a matter of (lack of) interest in philosophy, first and foremost. The focus of African-American pop culture on “keepin’ it real” certainly doesn’t help muster up interest in a discipline where the student encounters idealism, phenomenology and abstraction in spades. I would also advance the supposition that the cultures of people who are disproportionately poor are going to be (wisely) oriented toward using a college education in pursuit of practical goals, such as the attainment of status or pecuniary remuneration. Philosophy in America brings neither. Philosophy is, sad to say, a luxury. With that in mind, I’d suspect we’ll be seeing more African-Americans interested in philosophy when one of two things happens: (1) more African-Americans have the luxury of spending their time on something so thoroughly useless; or (2) philosophy becomes a gateway to status and wealth in this country. I’d speculate — going out on a limb here — that option 2 is just a little bit unlikely, so we’ll have