Education

Are those Republican criticism against women's studies and black studies programs valid at all? Are there "real" philosophers arguing for their abolition?

Comments

"Real" philosophers argue for nearly every position articulable! But I think the kind of issue that is most likely to come up among philosophers and other academics about such programs is more likely to be about resources. Resources for higher education right now are extremely limited, so judgments about the money required for academic positions and operating budgets to sustain such programs must always be made in the context of competing needs and demands from other academic units. Administrators must always confront the very real problem of where the scarce resources will bring the best value to the institution.

Moreover, different institutions have very different identities and missions. For an institution mostly dedicated to providing the kinds of education that will advantage their students vocationally, for example, such programs arguably do not fit well into that institution's mission. Where liberal studies is the institutional mission, then such programs would seem to be more viable within that institutional context--but again, they also compete for resources with more traditional disciplines, which the institution obviously also has a stong interest in supporting. Different academics will disagree about how to "rank" different disciplines in terms of their importance to the institution, and in these debates some of the more thoughtful criticisms made by opponents to such programs deserve to be heard. But then, many academics will make very different criticisms of the two disciplines nearest to my heart: Philosophy and Classics. Do colleges and universities really need these disciplines? I think so...but everywhere I have taught, I have had colleagues who thought the resources required to sustain these disciplines would be better spent elsewhere. It is because of decisions like these that we pay the big bucks to administrators!

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