In this very brief opinion piece submitted to the New York Times Opinions page in 2016, the authors argue that one of two changes ought to come to the exceedingly high number of philosophy departments around the United States and Canada that have no specialists in any field of philosophy outside of those written by European and American men.

In the first paragraph, the authors go into statistical detail about the lack of departments offering classes in more diverse fields of philosophy than the standard European and American classes. They draw particular attention to the lack of representation of philosophers who are Chinese, African, Indian, Islamic, Latin American, or Native American. Having pointed out these glaring deficiencies, the authors go on to say “the present situation is hard to justify morally, politically, epistemically or as a good educational and research training practice.”

In the following paragraphs the authors go on to argue what I have to imagine they know to be a losing point; that departments who fail to diversify their curricula ought to specify their name. Rather than being the Philosophy Department, the authors suggest they be called the Anglo-European Philosophy Department.

The next few paragraphs are the authors effectively exchanging justifications and refutations with an imagined opponent of such a change, but the end result, as is the case when anyone debates someone who isn’t there, is that the authors win out.

I don’t imagine Garfield and Van Norden thought any department would undergo such a name change as they suggested, but their rhetoric did effectively expose a critical contradiction in the logic of those philosophy departments, something I’m sure philosophers can’t stand.