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    Analyses of the Philosophical Gourmet Report

    As most readers probably know, the 2014 Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a “Ranking of Graduate Programs in Philosophy in the English-Speaking World,” was recently published; the rankings purport to be “primarily measures of faculty quality and reputation.”  Mitchell Aboulafia has done a series of postings analyzing the 2014 PGR.  If Aboulafia’s analyses are accurate, which they seem to me to be, they show why the rankings produced by the 2014 PGR ought not to be relied on.

    The postings:

    Some might think that some of these problems are at least partially the result of the September Statement.  However, the editors of the PGR made the decision to publish the report and seem to stand by it, so the reasons behind the problems (whatever they might be) seem beside the point.

    Readers might also be interested in:

    (Edit: the above two links have now been fixed).

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    19 responses to “Analyses of the Philosophical Gourmet Report”

    1. anonymous_2 Avatar
      anonymous_2

      This series of posts reveals how easy it is for reputational surveys to miss the mark. Anyone who has served on, e.g., program committees knows how hard it is to
      avoid nominations based on personal connections—for example, in my field people routinely nominate their own students for major speaking slots, editorial positions and the like—or based on just second hand gossip.
      Power, in other words, is self-reinforcing. A pity, as a lot of good philosophy comes from the margins.

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    2. p Avatar
      p

      I find a lot of Aboulafia’s (somewhat excessive) writings on PGR a bit less than informative, but also a kind of waste of time. Just reading through the article on experts seems to me to make clear that Aboulafia is on some kind of personal vendetta, more than anything else (going by AOS’s and AOC’s and such). All these problems have been well-known for years, and were discussed ad nauseam before. Moreover, his posts disproportionately magnify the actual significance of the PRG. Most people who support PGR DO NOT see it or treat it as an immensely powerful institutions representative of philosophy in US but, for some reason, its opponents do (it reminds me of many other such unbalanced issues – I see smoking pot as a rather mild and innocent vice – compared to other things available – but some people think it is on a par with crack and protest against it as if it was devil’s own invention). It is a good, albeit imperfect tool for students and their advisers and to some extent departments in relation to their respective administrations, but its influence on philosophy in US is, compared to other issues, pretty low. So why keep posting about it?

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    3. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      I see no evidence that Aboulafia’s work is the product of a personal vendetta. He sticks to the facts about the PGR, even when BL doesn’t. (And I’d ask you to do the same — please focus on the issue and not on the person). What you find excessive I find thorough, a quality that I think is extremely important in philosophy. I wish that he was magnifying the impact of the PGR, but I have seen personally how it can affect departments and hiring, and thus the profession as a whole, e.g., making a hire because of its anticipated effects on rankings rather than on what is best for that department. I also see prospective students making decisions based on rankings rather than on best fit, best placement, or best guidance. Regardless of the intentions of those who participate, it has had a harmful effect, and while it continues to wield influence, postings like Aboulafia’s are extremely important to get the field to move on to something better.

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    4. P2 Avatar
      P2

      what Roberta said.

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    5. q Avatar
      q

      If the PGR has a big effect on departments and hiring, and thus the profession as a whole, does not hiring to positively affect a department’s ranking in the PGR then become a move that is at the very least good for that department?

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    6. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Good only in the circular sense of promoting the department’s ranking (assuming the gambit works, which it is not guaranteed to). There is no reason to think that it will be good in any of the other ways a hire might be good, e.g., to cover needed areas, to build strengths in areas that the department is interested in building in, to have people doing cutting-edge research, to have people who will be good colleagues and/or good mentors for graduate students. A department in a university that cares about rankings might get more hires if it improves in the rankings, yes. But to what end?

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    7. p Avatar
      p

      But that seems to assume a very comical picture of how departments in fact deliberate about what hires to do and how to build themselves. What department considers exclusively PGR and not at all the kind of things you mention? I only heard once (I went through 5 different searches) and that after a lot of discussion of precisely the kind of issues you have mentioned – that the hire could raise one’s place in the PGR – as a kind of after-thought and half-joke.

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    8. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      You can take my word for it or not — it makes no difference to me. For obvious reasons, I am not going to name specific departments. I can assure you, however, that I have witnessed PGR rankings as the primary reason with other reasons at best secondary, if considered at all. What kind of department would do this? One that is obsessed with how it is perceived. And again, the harms extend beyond hiring to the choices of grad programs and subject areas that prospective students make, to the perceived importance of certain subject areas over others, etc.

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    9. q Avatar
      q

      I see what you are writing. Makes sense.
      Let’s agree for sake of argument that the PGR has all this influence from undergraduates looking at programs, to administrators looking to cut budgets etc. Then, say, hiring to rise in the rankings need not be merely to rise in the rankings (though not guaranteed – but then what aim by hiring is?). Might it not be plausible to think it [hiring to rise in rankings] would have some effect on graduate students applying there, philosophers applying there, department funding, and so on? Otherwise why is the PGR so putatively pernicious (unless it has a real effect) and so influential (unless it affects matters beyond a ranking on a website?).
      Hope that makes sense. But I think I’m taking us towards that vacuum of philosophy where someone (me) makes a big fuss about a tiny point that is hypothetical at best so, I’ll read your reply with interest but leave it alone after that.

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    10. q Avatar
      q

      “A department in a university that cares about rankings might get more hires if it improves in the rankings, yes. But to what end?”
      Oh I see you answered this already, sorry. I agree: hiring to climb rankings seems a bit pointless. What I meant was: if what you say is true – that the PGR has moderate and widespread effects on the profession in the English-speaking world (seems plausible to me) – then I don’t think hiring to rise in the ranks is a) done just to rise in the ranks, and b) it plausible that this is the only effect it is.

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    11. Tom Avatar
      Tom

      I only want to confirm Roberta’s point from my own first-hand experience and from many anecdotes that I have heard over the years from people who had no reason to be disingenuous about this: the PGR plays a HUGE role in hiring decisions, across the board of the profession, especially concerning the fact that hirings in the so-called “CORE AREAS” (basically, analytic M+E, mind, language) disproportionately affect PGR ranking.

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    12. R Avatar
      R

      In line with “p”, I wonder how pernicious the PGR is on hiring in the profession. I don’t doubt that Roberta is right in saying that there are elite or hope-to-be-elite R1 institutions (perhaps even a few very highly ranked national liberal arts colleges) that pay attention to it, in the hope of lifting their ranking and becoming more elite, or those that are not elite but close, and would like to be seen as elite. But at the same time, there are about 3,000 BA conferring institutions in the United States at which a person could be hired in philosophy. Within that number, how many consider the PGR as a factor in hiring? Let’s assume that we include the PGR’s ranked 50 as definite, and then consider as definite the 100 Leiterrific-hoped-for-contenders under that (which would likely be an argumentative stretch as an assumption, but…). We’re at 150 now, which is 5% of hiring institutions. Do the ones under that 150 consult it? My suspicion would be that once you’re at that point, it has minimal impact, if any, and that 100 more down the line past it would be comical to suspect that PGR matters. At my own BA/MA granting university (ranked in the top 10 within its US News cohort), no one knows what the PGR is. I’ve been on lots of searches, the PGR never came up.
      I’m not taking a position here on the value of the PGR (though I do share many of the concerns about its weaknesses), nor on BL. I’m just not sold on the claim that the PGR has a real effect on hiring “in the profession as a whole.” If it does have an effect, it’s likely one that is seen inside elite or hope-to-be-elite doctoral programs, the combination of which make up a mere fraction of the hiring of philosophers as a whole. For the vast majority of hiring in philosophy, I suspect it plays no role at all.

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    13. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Hiring primarily to rise in rankings may have other positive effects, it is true. But it might not get you the areas that your department needs, or people doing innovative cutting edge research in non-core areas, or people who are good colleagues and good mentors. You might get those things (although not likely the cutting edge research in non-core areas), but it would be by chance, and you’d likely have passed over many potential candidates who would have brought you those things. We should prioritize the things that are most important, yes? You seem to agree on that, so I won’t belabor it.

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    14. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Thanks, Tom.

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    15. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      I think you are right that the PGR will have very little effect on the hiring decisions of non-elite or non-hoping-to-be-elite universities. However, I do think that the PGR has solidified certain “core” areas of philosophy as being more important, and that does have widespread effects in journals, conferences, papers published, etc. — in other words, the direction of the field as a whole. Also, because of those areas being seen as more important, given the distribution of interests from underrepresented philosophers (women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.), there has been a perpetuation of the straight-white-abled-maleness of philosophy, both among faculty and among students taking classes. These are the harms that I am concerned with, again, regardless of whether such harms were intended (I try not to make claims about what people’s intentions are, so I make no claims here).

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    16. p Avatar
      p

      Roberta: what is the evidence for any of these claims about the effects and harms of the PGR? I would think that the “core” areas were considered core before PGR even came to existence – or am I mistaken in thinking that metaphysics, epistemology, phil. of language or ethics were core already before PGR and that philosophy of biology, medieval philosophy or philosophy of race were not? In fact, did not PGR reveal (and so opened the discussion about) – what many suspected – that the areas you mention are NOT in fact valued as highly as they perhaps (in view of some) should be precisely because it gave quantified expression to that valuation? It is up to us how we use PGR, so why not use it in order to reflect on our field – as what we do – rather than blaming it for something that we do? I also think that the “perpetuation of the straight-white-abled-maleness of philosophy” has roots and causes somewhere else than in PGR. In other words, I do not disagree about the problems you mention, but I think it is a mistake to think that PGR is their cause, rather than being – in its ranking – a mere expression of it. I also have to agree with R above. It is a mystery to me how it influences hiring decisions in the way described – I have always heard people say that it does, but I have yet to witness it myself on any search committee/departmental hiring meeting. I see most “ranked” schools having either “open” searches (where they often try to get the “best” – whatever that means – candidate) or targeting their strengths or areas in which they miss or have lost people. None of this seems to be connected to PGR. The strong presence of “core” areas of analytic philosophy in journals in US well pre-dates PGR as well and has other historical and philosophical roots than Brian Leiter.

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    17. q Avatar
      q

      Yes, I agree, you are right, this all seems like good sense. Thanks.

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    18. Tom Avatar
      Tom

      “I see most “ranked” schools having either “open” searches (where they often try to get the “best” – whatever that means – candidate)”
      Let’s see how many of these ‘open’ searches result in anything other than a M/E/Mind/Language hire.

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    19. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Ethics is not considered to be part of the “core,” surprisingly enough. See Aboulafia’s most recent post for the way in which Leiter’s original conception of the field has persisted through all of the PGR’s incarnations. There may be roots for some of these attitudes elsewhere, of course, but that is not my point — my point is how the PGR has perpetuated and entrenched beliefs about the core areas.

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