The University of Colorado at Boulder has reprimanded its philosophy department for sexist behavior. It removed the department chair, required department staff members to take sensitivity training, and suspended the admission of graduate students for a year.
Why? A team from the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women saw signs of bullying and sexual harassment (not to mention too much social drinking) in the department.
Apparently UC-Boulder’s isn’t the only philosophy department to look bad in the eyes of women. One author, noting the report, wrote sarcastically in Slate that the discipline of philosophy “among the humanities is perhaps the last relic of the good old days of academe, before the feminazis and the ethnics ruined everything.”
It is true that about 27 percent of all philosophy doctorates go to females. Is the figure low because of sexual harassment? Ben Cohen, writing for the Pope Center, is not convinced.