There has long been a push to increase diversity in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math. And for good reason: women and minorities have been underrepresented in these areas for decades. But there are gaps in other disciplines. According to MIT philosophy professor Sally Haslanger, as recently as five years ago less than 30 percent of PhD graduates in philosophy were women. This was lower than the number of women doctorates in math, chemistry, and economics. And the percentage is worse for racial and ethnic minorities.

“The overall philosophical profession, just like society at large, is still very much dominated by straight, white, cisgendered [not transgender], able-bodied, middle-class men,” said Matthias Jenny, a philosophy graduate student at MIT.

Jenny, along with two other grad students, has partnered with the University of Massachusetts-Boston to run a weeklong program in August at MIT called Philosophy in an Inclusive Key (PIKSI-Boston). The goal is to encourage undergraduates from underrepresented groups to consider an academic career in philosophy. Haslanger has helped the students with funding and other support.

Explore Professor Haslanger’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.