Philosophy has not always been inclusive, and it still struggles to reflect its practitioners and students. We can improve philosophy - make it more diverse, more interesting, and more intellectually exciting - by broadening our horizons. Below are some of the initiatives I've been fortunate enough to participate in over the last few years.
Ethics Bowl
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As part of my service to the Department of Philosophy, in February 2024 I was the local organizer for the inaugural McMaster - Hamilton Regional - Ethics Bowl! Our Bowl was a was the largest regional competition in Ontario! The success of this event is due to the excellent organizers at Ethics Bowl Canada, the many volunteer judges and moderators, and the administrative folks on McMaster's campus who made things happen. All these folks have my deepest gratitude. You can see more about some of McMaster's coverage of the event here and here.
Looking forward to the McMaster Bowl in 2025! |
Penn's Philosophy for the Young |
Minorities and Philosophy |
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For most of my PhD, I was involved in the P4Y: Philosophy for the Young initiative.
P4Y is developing philosophy programs for local public school students, eventually so as to produce a full K-12 curricula. As part of this, we started the Think About It! project in which we construct age-appropriate activities designed to stimulate philosophical thinking on various topics - including lifeboat ethics, ethics of ownership, free will, identity construction. We've used various methods to engage the students - narratives/stories, thought experiments, debates, etc. This program was a tremendous amount of fun! From 2018 to 2020, I facilitated the Carver School for Science and Engineering's Philosophy Club. We've talked about the nature and existence of God, personal identity, friendship, love, and have also addressed questions in political organization and distributive justice. We also transitioned into an Ethics Bowl team and competed in the first-ever Philadelphia Bowl in February 2020. Prior to this, I was part of the Philadelphia Futures Philosophy Club. Philadelphia Futures is a program for underserved high school students, and particularly for those who will be first-generation college students. Philosophy club is an after-school program where students met with Penn faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates to discuss a wide variety of philosophical questions. It operates much like an undergraduate seminar. In the past, students have had the option to continue Philosophy Club on Penn's campus and, in the most recent iteration, work alongside Penn undergraduate students. The Philosophy Club students were incredibly bright and many of them have gone on to flourish in university. |
I was a chapter representative for the University of Pennsylvania chapter of MAP - Minorities and Philosophy from 2015-2020. MAP is an organization devoted to increasing knowledge of and exposure to non-traditional philosophers, philosophical themes, and methods. Since our chapter began in 2014, we've organized an annual conference on a non-traditional topic. We bring in philosophers working in these fields to learn from them and become better philosophers and teachers of philosophy.
Our first two conferences (2015 & 2016) were on non-western philosophy, broadly construed. In 2017, we hosted 'Global Feminsims' - what does feminism mean across the world, and how were/are philosophers thinking about women? Most recently, in 2018, we turned to questions of pedagogy in 'Inclusive Methodology and Pedagogy.' If we are committed to being excellent educators, we must develop methods, assessments, syllabi, etc. with our students and their needs in mind. In Spring of 2020, we were to host a conference on the Philosophy of Race to learn from and collaborate with speakers from many different philosophical perspectives - our keynotes included Robin Zheng (Yale-NUS), Quayshawn Spencer (Penn), and Mickaella Perina (University of Massachusetts) - but of course, this was canceled because of covid-19.
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New Narratives in the History of Philosophy
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Through my dissertation advisor Karen Detlefsen, one of the founding members of New Narratives in the History of Philosophy, I have been involved in some of the New Narratives podcasts available here. These podcasts - episodes 5-8 - focus on both towering figures in philosophy such as Margaret Cavendish, Émilie du Châtelet, and Mary Astell on metaphilosophical questions about canon formation and reformation.
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