APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

The Committee continued its focus on arranging paper sessions for the Eastern Division, Central Division, and Pacific Division meetings of the APA. These included panels on racial identity and recent social movements, a variety of author-meets-critics colloquiums, as well as a session exploring the writings of Frederick Douglass.

Professor Lawson attended the APA board meeting in Oakland, California, to report on the activities of the committee.

The American Philosophical Association is supporting and disseminating philosophical research on issues of science, technology, and diversity through a dual program of commissioned research papers and small research grants. The focus on science, technology, and diversity extends traditional philosophical concerns with the foundations of knowledge and value into concerns with the conflicts and dilemmas of cultural, racial and ethnic diversity as these concerns increasingly emerge through scientific and technological development. Papers will be commissioned through established APA Committees and presented in Committee sessions at APA Divisional Meetings during 1999–2000. A small grant competition will provide support for other philosophical research into these issues. The APA plans to commission 10–15 papers and to fund 10–15 research projects, with the actual balance between the two dependent upon the proposals submitted by APA Committees and prospective grantees. Bill Lawson, a member of the Philosophy Department at Michigan State University, and Chair of the APA Committee on Blacks, will serve as Research Coordinator, assisted by a five-member Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee will serve as the grant selection committee and advise Professor Lawson, as needed, on the development of other aspects of the program. Both the commissioned papers and the research conducted under the grant program will be collected into a book, to be edited by Lawson with advice from the Advisory Committee. The National Office of the American Philosophical Association, including Executive Director, Eric Hoffman, and appropriate members of his staff, will handle all administrative work in support of the program.

This project has been funded. The five-member Advisory committee consists of Elliot Sober, Stephanie Bird, Sandra Harding, Joe Rouse and Anita Silver. Robert Ginsberg, Executive Editor, Value Inquiry Book Series, has asked to be considered the publisher for the edited papers produced by the American Philosophical Association project Philosophical Explorations of Science, Technology, and Diversity.

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