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Equity Committee

The Equity Committee of the CPA was founded in 1990-1, and works to collect data on the situation of Indigenous Peoples, Black and racialized persons, women, persons with disabilities, and people of diverse sexual and gender identities in Canada. The Equity Committee of the CPA aims to identify problems faced by the discipline in advancing inclusion and equitable treatment of historically underrepresented groups at all levels of philosophical pursuit, and share information on best practices to promote equity, diversity and inclusion within the profession. It holds a regular panel as part of the CPA annual meeting to encourage critical reflection on questions of equity. 

At the November 1990 meeting of the Executive, then President of the Canadian Philosophical Association, Louise Marcil-Lacoste, was authorized to form a committee to study the hiring policies of Canadian departments of philosophy with respect to the recruitment of women. The membership of the committee was established in December 1990. 

 

ACPA Equity Committee 2020-2021

Jenna Woodrow (Co-Chair)

Thompson Rivers University

Meredith Schwartz (Co-Chair)

Ryerson University

Félix Grignon

Ryerson University

Lee Maracle

University of Toronto

Patricia Marino

University of Waterloo

Lorraine Mayer

Brandon University

Letitia Meynell

Dalhousie University

Andrew Molas

York University

Antoine Panaioti

Ryerson University

Tim Mt Pleasant

Ryerson University

Andrea Sullivan-Clark 

University of Windsor

Alison Wylie

University of British Columbia

Meghan Winsby

Western University

Audrey Yap

University of Victoria

 

ACPA Equity Committee: Indigenizing Philosophy Committee, 2019-2020

Jenna Woodrow, Chair

Thompson Rivers University

Meredith Schwartz

Ryerson University

Félix Grignon

Ryerson University

Lee Maracle

University of Toronto

Patricia Marino

University of Waterloo

Lorraine Mayer

Brandon University

Tim Mt Pleasant

Ryerson University

Andrea Sullivan-Clark

University of Windsor

Alison Wylie

University of British Columbia

Audrey Yap

University of Victoria

 

Reports and Findings

The Equity Committee produces regular reports, equity alerts, and survey results. Find them all on our Reports page.

 

 

The Canadian Philosophical Association (CPA) Equity Committee hosted a moderated conversation on equity issues in the profession on June 3rd at Congress 2008 in Vancouver. Participation from any and all interested parties was welcomed.

The two questions which opened discussion were:

  1. When, and under what conditions, is your research challenged as not really philosophy? Is your research/work never challenged in this way? What might a comparison of these two sets of experiences tell us about some of the subtle ways that authority and equity are linked within the discipline?
  2. What is your department's formal policy or informal attitude toward hiring non-Canadians, and how does this seem to be changing the landscape for equity-seeking groups within the discipline, who are Canadians, or who have been trained at Canadian institutions?

 

Hiring Toolkit

The Canadian Philosophical Association and many departments of philosophy in Canada are committed to increasing the representation of women, visible minorities, persons with disabilities, and aboriginal people among faculty members. Important though it is to affirm this ideal, it is rather more difficult to achieve it in practice. Statistics gathered by the CPA Equity Committee show that while some departments have been successful in increasing the representation of these designated groups on faculty, most departments have at best had mixed success.

While the CPA Equity Committee will continue to encourage departments to strive to increase the representation of designated groups on faculty, we can perhaps help most by showing how member departments have actually taken concrete steps towards this goal. To that end, we initiated a survey of member departments that asked them to share information about the policies and practices employed in hiring; our goal was to assemble a toolkit of 'best hiring practices' to be made available to all members of the CPA, so that Departments that affirmed the ideal of increasing the representation of designated group members on faculty could enact concrete steps to further the ideal in particular hires.

This document represents the outcome of that survey, and our reflections upon it... Download the Hiring Toolkit here: English version / French version

 

Links

Accessibility:
Climate:
Contract faculty:
Existing policies on consensual relationships with students: