The idea:

Most undergraduate students in North America only read and discuss “Western,” Anglo-European philosophy in their philosophy courses. The problem is not that philosophy professors are generally unwilling to teach traditionally underrepresented areas such as African, Latin American, Indigenous, East Asian, South Asian, and Islamic philosophy. Rather, the problem is that most lack the familiarity needed to competently teach work in these areas. The Northeast Workshop to Learn About Multicultural Philosophy (NEWLAMP) project is a yearly week-long summer workshop aimed towards remedying this problem, by teaching philosophy teachers about a given underrepresented area, so that they can then teach it in their general undergraduate courses. Each year, NEWLAMP will focus on a different area. For its inaugural edition in July 2020, we'll delve into African and Africana social and political philosophy.

The potential impact:

The potential impact that the NEWLAMP project could have on the inclusiveness and diversity of our field is substantial. 20 philosophy faculty, coming from a wide range of institutions, will teach a very large and diverse collection of undergraduate students about an area of philosophy that has traditionally been marginalized. Hundreds, and soon thousands, of undergraduate students will read not just about liberalism and libertarianism in their social and political philosophy courses, but also about, say, the African ethic of Ubuntu and pan-Africanism—topics that their philosophy teachers would likely not have tried to teach on their own. Professors will thus contribute to building a better curriculum and a broader canon in social and political philosophy. This is likely to have many positive downstream effects on the field, as more undergraduate students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, will be more likely to have an interest in a philosophy major, to then join the field of academia, and to further transform it.