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    Summer School: Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (MCMP Munich)

    The Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy is hosting a pioneer event: a summer school exclusively for female students. Summer schools for female students are now well established in mathematics, but to my knowledge this is the first summer school in philosophy geared explicitly towards female students. (In a similar vein, Rutgers hosts the wonderful Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy.) I am posting below the official announcement that has been circulated today. Please pass on the information to anyone you think may be interested, and do encourage your motivated female students to apply!

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    http://www.mathsummer2014.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/index.html

    The Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) is organizing the first Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students, which will be held from July 27 to August 2, 2014 in Munich, Germany. The summer school is open to excellent female students who want to specialize in mathematical philosophy.

    Since women are significantly underrepresented in philosophy generally and in formal philosophy in particular, this summer school is aimed at encouraging women to engage with mathematical methods and apply them to philosophical problems. The summer school will provide an infrastructure for developing expertise in some of the main formal approaches used in mathematical philosophy, including theories of individual and collective decision-making, agent-based modeling, and epistemic logic. Furthermore, it offers study in an informal setting, lively debate, and a chance to strengthen mathematical self-confidence and independence for female students. Finally, being located at the MCMP, the summer school will also provide a stimulating and interdisciplinary environment for meeting like-minded philosophers.

    LECTURERS: Rachael Briggs (ANU), Catrin Campbell-Moore (MCMP), Sebastian Lutz (MCMP), Conor Mayo-Wilson (MCMP), Gil Sagi (MCMP), Sonja Smets (Amsterdam), Florian Steinberger  (MCMP)

    ORGANIZERS: Stephan Hartmann, Catherine Herfeld, Hannes Leitgeb, Kristina Liefke

    APPLICATION: For details about the application procedure, have a look at the above-mentioned webpage. The deadline for application is 15 February 2015. 

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    21 responses to “Summer School: Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (MCMP Munich)”

    1. Pascal Engel Avatar
      Pascal Engel

      Is this really what you want ?

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    2. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      For diversity-encouraging summer programs, there’s also the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) at Penn State: http://rockethics.psu.edu/education/piksi

      If you know promising undergraduate women or men from underrepresented groups such as African Americans, Chicano/as and Latino/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans, LGBT persons, economically disadvantaged communities, and people with disabilities, please call this program to their attention. In addition, please consider serving as their “sponsor.” Faculty sponsors mentor students, helping them to prepare their applications, and, when possible and appropriate, work with the students after the Summer Institute to help further the gains the students have made.

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    3. Sylvia Avatar
      Sylvia

      Although I assume this event has been put together with the best of intentions, I have the same reservations as Pascal Engel.
      At my former university there was a summer event for “girls and informatics”, which was later cancelled due to lack of interest. The organizers didn’t understand why. It’s a subtle thing, but, as a student, I would never have participated in such an event either.
      In contrast, I did participate in an event organized by the European Women in Mathematics once, but this event was open for men and women. Male participants were a minority there, but isn’t it crucial to include them if the goal is to promote diversity?
      Nevertheless, I honestly hope this summer school will attract many students and be a succes. It’s a great (and diverse) line-up, so that is promising!

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    4. Eric Schliesser Avatar
      Eric Schliesser

      Well, this Summer school has a few things going for it: (i) very strong line-up of young faculty; (ii) a clear focus; (iii) teaching skills that will strongly enhance careers and philosophical development; (iv) association with a potentially powerful brand (MCMP).

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    5. Sebastian Lutz Avatar
      Sebastian Lutz

      How did the EWM end up with a majority of women at their event? Did they have a quota? If not, it would be great to know how they made their event more inviting to women.

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    6. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I agree that initiatives to promote diversity (in the gender dimension or other dimension) can ‘backfire’. But I applaud the courage of putting this together to see if it succeeds in attracting more female students to the area. It is not a risk-free idea, but we’ll only know if we try. (Plus, it seems that similar initiatives in math have been successful, so there are reasons to believe that the chances of this succeeding are not 0.)

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    7. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      I think this is a terrific idea, and I don’t see why there should be any substantial risk. People are free to leave it off their CVs if they like. I presume the point of this school isn’t to provide a job-getting credential, anyway, but rather to get people jump-started earlier in their careers.

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    8. Pascal Engel Avatar
      Pascal Engel

      It is one thing to attract attention to the problem in one area ( philosophy, maths, formal philosophy) where there is a gender deficit ( so to say), by doing one symbolic event once. It is another thing to call for regular such events. Do women scholars in these fields want a situation where there would be women only conferences, on the one hand, and men only conferences on the other hand? I feel embarrassed when I am in a males only conference, if I know that there are competent women scholars in the field who could have been invited ( and would have been ready to go) and have not been invited, but I would feel even more embarassed if I were told that the conference I am attending is devised to be “men only” and that the competent women scholars I had thought about have to wait for their turn when a women only conference is organised… It no simply a risk of backfiring, but there is something which seems to me wrong in the very idea of this divison of labor.

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    9. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      “Do women scholars in these fields want a situation where there would be women only conferences, on the one hand, and men only conferences on the other hand?”
      Has anyone made such a proposal, that is, coupling this conference with men-only conferences?

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    10. Pascal Engel Avatar
      Pascal Engel

      No nobody has sugested that explicitly as project, but the suggested women only conferences, if they become regular and established, would create potentially such a category (i.e men only vs women only) , just by contrast, especially given the premiss, which was the motivation for the women only conferences, that in some areas there is an underepresentation of women and a all too male culture. Or if they do not create such divisions , there would be a division between women only on the one hand and two-sexed conferences on the other. Not so good for diversity, I think.

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    11. anonymous grad student Avatar
      anonymous grad student

      Is the worry just that there wouldn’t be enough women able to go to other conferences if they are going to women-only conferences? I guess I can see how this sort of argument might go in the case of faculty (though I’m not at all sure I would think it would be a good one), but in my experience most graduate students are trying to go to as many conferences, workshops, etc. as possible. So I sort of highly doubt that this kind of event–a summer school geared towards early-stage grad students and undergrads–is going to drain women away from other conferences at which they might be welcome. Plus, it seems like the goal is at least in part to produce more women working on formal stuff in philosophy, and that that would be a blessing to conferences on formal work, simply because there would be more women to invite. But maybe I’m not getting the worry right. I think the career stage that they are targeting is important here–there is not going to be a lot of overlap between the women who will attend, who are just starting out in philosophy, and a professional or even a good grad conference.

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    12. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      How did this switch to being about conferences? As far as I know, no one has suggested all female conferences, let alone all male conferences. This is about an educational opportunity for students, not an outlet for professionals. I presume that one of the goals here would be to increase the number of competent female professionals in this area in the future. Unlike conferences, this is not about representing the current diversity of scholars, but helping to increase this diversity prospectively.

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    13. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      At least under UK law, you’re allowed to organise single-sex events of this kind only if (i) there’s a demonstrated under-representation of the sex in question and (ii) a reasonable case can be made that it will help alleviate that under-representation. So there’s certainly no need to worry about men-only and women-only events (one or other would be illegal), and I’m unconvinced (though I’m no lawyer) that woman-only conferences would be legal. (A summer school for women students, on the other hand, is pretty clearly legal.)
      Of course, that’s only the UK – I don’t know what the equality legislation is like in Germany.

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    14. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Just to clarify: I think it can backfire for the organizers, not for participants. For example, if the summer school fails to attract enough participants, it may be interpreted as a sign that women really are not interested in the topic at all, and thus that it is a mistake to even try.

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    15. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      With Eric Winsberg and others, I want to emphasize that this is a very different situation from conferences: it is an educational opportunity for students. There are good reasons to think that, if such a summer school were open to male and female students, many female students might be put off by the potential unfavorable climate for them (they are used enough to being bulldozed by fellow male students).
      So a female-only event of this kind is likely to create a more favorable, welcoming climate for people (i.e. women) who all too often get the ‘message’ that they have no business being interested in more ‘technical’ areas.

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    16. Sylvia Avatar
      Sylvia

      Sebastian: For the EWM conference, I was contacted by one of the local organizers directly. (She had seen me give a talk at a logic conference for PhD-students.) She emphasized the content of the program, not the female-preferred part. So, that is one option: to contact PhD-students who have just started. (Ma-students remain harder to find, but contacting them individually may still be crucial.)
      So, to be inviting to women, just invite them to the event! 🙂 It’s harder to say ‘no’ to a person than to a flyer.
      They also organized presentation sessions: the students gave short presentations (on the topic of their Ma-thesis) in small groups. There was at least one professor in each group, and the emphasis was on constructive feedback.
      I want to repeat that I assume that many people have put their best effort into this. My only worry is how the advertisement is perceived by potential participants. It’s hard to get this right; there seems to be an uncanny valley right beside where all the elements fall into the right place.
      One thing that may be unfortunate is just the title of the event: “for female students”. (And maybe it is not too late to change this?) For a junior, a Summer School is something you’d like to put on your CV (if you don’t have any publications yet, what else can you put there?), but I wouldn’t have liked this on my CV, because it draws attention to my gender, which ought to be irrelevant. I would fear that people evaluating my CV would assume: ‘she clearly can’t play in the main league’. Like Pascal Engel suggests, I would have felt embarrassed.
      As I said, it’s a subtle thing.

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    17. Sebastian Lutz Avatar
      Sebastian Lutz

      I hope that the community pulls its weight with respect to the invitations: Every professor / teacher who knows women who might be interested should urge them to go.
      As to the way a summer school for women looks on a CV, you might very well be right. (Note, however, that this worry is mainly about women participating, not about the effect it has on their hiring chances; if it does have an effect on hiring chances, this is quite an indictment of the profession.) The hope is that any such worries are dispelled by (as Eric (Schliesser) points out) the strong line-up of lecturers and the potentially powerful brand of the MCMP.

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    18. Ehud Avatar
      Ehud

      I fully understand the reservations people have. I can see how the women for whom this is intended might find the framing problematic for various reasons. But overall I found this a very good idea and did my best to distribute the announcement. The main reason for this is that it just looks like a terrific summer school. I think male students are going to be jealous. Second, like others here I think it is critical to note that this is about a learning opportunity, and should not be compared to a conference. Indeed, it is a learning opportunity for women who are beginners in the field and women considering entering this world.
      One thing that might help overcome the “how would it look on the CV” issue: The organizers should offer to provide participants with a letter for search committees and the like explaining the goals of the school and the qualifications of the participants and faculty. The letter would emphasize that participation should not have the stigma the for some people is associated with “affirmative action”.

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    19. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      I think people worrying about how this will look on CVs are vastly overestimating how much time is actually spent on each application at the long list stage. Nuances of one’s CV are hardly likely to matter at that stage because you have so little time per application and more important things to worry about. (And later in an application you are still likely to have much richer sources of data.)

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    20. anonymous female student Avatar
      anonymous female student

      As for the CV worry, I would say, as it was suggested above: there is no way that participation in MCMP event could not look AMAZING in a CV.
      Btw, I submitted my application, but still haven’t received any reply (although the decisions were to be made by the 1st of March). I hope no reply doesn’t mean a negative reply, but if anyone here knows anything, please, let me know.

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    21. anonymous female student Avatar
      anonymous female student

      Ok, I’ve got a response. I’m going to Munich!:)

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