Justifying Non-Western Philosophy

Given limited space, I will take for granted that we agree that there is at least some non-Western philosophy. However, exactly what falls under that category is difficult to say. Philosophers will disagree both as to what counts as ‘non-Western’ and as to what counts as ‘philosophy.’^{Footnote 5} For the purpose of this paper, I adopt the somewhat idiosyncratic use of ‘non-Western’ that is fairly common in philosophical circles. This is not an endorsement of that usage or a recommendation that we refer to these works collectively as ‘non-Western’ in our pedagogical practice. Nothing of consequence for my argument hangs on subscribing to this particular conception. There are likely good reasons for reclassifying some of the traditions I mention below as ‘Western’ or adopting another classification system altogether. Were they reclassified or re-categorized, my argument would still indicate that, by including these traditions in our introductory courses, we might avoid causing a specific harm to our students.

Most centrally, ‘non-Western philosophy’ marks out non-European intellectual traditions including Chinese, Indian, African, and Indigenous philosophy. It might be called ‘non-European philosophy’ except ‘non-Western philosophy’ also includes Latin American and Islamic traditions, some aspects of which have European roots. Interpreting ‘non-European’ to mean ‘historically non-white’ would disqualify major figures in Latin American philosophy. Interpreting it to mean ‘historically not produced in Europe’ would disqualify some Islamic philosophy. Though for practical purposes, both ‘historically non-white’ and ‘non-European’ can be used in much the same way as ‘non-Western philosophy,’ my point is just that there will be problems at the margins regardless of which term we use. So, I follow the aforementioned, though not unproblematic, common convention and refer to all these traditions collectively as ‘non-Western.’

‘Non-Western philosophy’ may also include more contemporary works that draw substantively on those historical traditions but do not fall under the category of ‘comparative philosophy.’ Additionally, significant engagement with philosophical problems arising specifically or especially within the context of ‘non-Western’ geographic regions or identity groups can make a work ‘non-Western.’ This is the case even if the author is trained in the traditional European canon or is of European descent. However, works in contemporary philosophy of race or, to take one example, African-American philosophy are not usually considered non-Western. They often draw primarily on a European or American historical tradition and analyze problems within a ‘Western’ geographic context. Alternatively, they may deal only in abstraction, ostensibly divorced from any particular geographic context. Similarly, not every philosophical work by an author who identifies (or is identified) as African, Asian, Latin American, Indigenous, etc. counts as ‘non-Western.’ While acknowledging that there are some unclear cases, Kwame Nkrumah and Frantz Fanon produced texts in non-Western (in this case, African/Africana) philosophy but Jaegwon Kim has not.

Even if philosophers were to agree as to the extension of ‘non-Western,’ we are still likely to differ over which traditions or regions produced works that qualify as philosophy (and which particular works those are). Some will argue that only India and China have historical traditions, while others will include texts from Ancient Egypt. Still others may include oral traditions, ethnophilosophy, and some works of literature as philosophy. The most restrictive may argue that only those non-Western works that emerged out of the Ancient Greek tradition, like some Islamic and Latin American philosophy and contemporary non-Western texts, qualify as philosophy.^{Footnote 6} For the sake of this paper, specifying a precise, mutually agreed upon extension is unnecessary—whichever non-Western texts or traditions happen to meet the reader’s meta-philosophical commitments should be considered candidates for inclusion.

A final note about the use of ‘non-Western philosophy’ in this paper: one might argue that the issues with marking out clearly defined and agreed upon content for the category ‘non-Western’ is reason to advocate for the inclusion of a specific tradition instead of non-Western philosophy in general. However, the testimonial and empirical evidence I present below contain ambiguities that recommend against pursuing that strategy here. Specifically, without further research, it is unclear if (1) members of all marginalized racial and ethnic groups suffer the form of alienation I isolate and (2) the presence of any non-Western content is sufficient to alleviate alienation or only content from an historical tradition with which a student identifies. By maintaining a broad conception of ‘non-Western philosophy,’ this paper presents the first steps in a normative argument to include non-Western texts and indicates a potentially promising avenue for future empirical inquiry that could yield a more specific understanding of the harms endured and how best to treat them.

Alienation and Belonging: In the Classroom and on Campus

Conversations about alienation and belonging in philosophy tend to revolve around our well-known problem with underrepresentation. As is frequently noted, white women are underrepresented in philosophy. Women as a whole make up only 23% of philosophy faculty^{Footnote 7} and 28% of U.S. graduate students.^{Footnote 8} In Canada, women were 31.2% of faculty in 2011.^{Footnote 9} The percentages of racial and ethnic minority faculty members and graduate students, especially women of colour, are far lower.^{Footnote 10}

Studies in STEM fields, where women are also underrepresented, and one study of philosophy classrooms, lend support to the theory that women experience a lower sense of belonging in their introductory courses than their male peers and that this is related to their underrepresentation.^{Footnote 11} Testimony from female philosophers also suggests that alienation is a prevalent, though not universal, affective experience and that there may be some contributing factors that are specific to or more common with women.^{Footnote 12} In other words, when women in philosophy suffer alienation it is, in part, because they are women.^{Footnote 13}

Beyond its potential effect on retention in philosophy, this experience of alienation is itself cause for concern. Whether the result of bias inside the classroom or the interaction of larger cultural patterns with the norms and structures of philosophy, this negative psychological experience is not optional. Especially at the introductory level, the course they are taking may be required or they are otherwise unable to extricate themselves from the situation. Even when women do elect to take a philosophy course, those affected must endure alienation as part of their educative experience. This contributes to a general pattern of sexist oppression in which women are systematically forced to grapple with negative experiences because they are women.

While these studies and testimony focus on the feeling of alienation shared by women, women of colour face other sources of alienation, some of which also affect men of colour. Although a gap persists between the rate of white college enrolment and that of non-Asian people of colour, students of colour make up an increasing percentage of total U.S. college enrolment.^{Footnote 14} Meanwhile, over 30 years of study documents a pervasive experience of alienation by students of colour at predominately white institutions (PWIs).^{Footnote 15} This may, in turn, influence learning outcomes. For example, one recent study found that black students’ perceptions of campus climate was a strong predictor of their intent to leave college, whereas, for white students, high school GPA was a greater predictor.^{Footnote 16} Another study suggested that Latinx students’ college adjustment processes and academic outcomes are negatively affected by feelings of alienation.^{Footnote 17}

Apart from its impact on outcomes, including retention, students of colour disproportionately bear the experience of alienation itself. White students assess campus climate more positively than students of colour.^{Footnote 18} For example, Asian American students have high levels of college retention and success but still experience significant levels of alienation.^{Footnote 19} An analysis of all studies on campus racial climate and students’ experiences with race since 1992 concluded that the experiences of students of colour at PWIs are consistently marked by alienation. The authors write, “Perhaps the title of Carolina Sotello Viernes Turner’s article, ‘Guests in Someone Else’s House: Students of Color’ (1994), best characterizes a feeling that is shared among many at most PWIs.”^{Footnote 20} Moreover, even when both whites and students of colour experience alienation, for students of colour these feelings may be linked to perceptions of racial discrimination and prejudice, whereas for white students they are not.^{Footnote 21}

As in the case of women in philosophy, the alienation of men and women of colour at PWIs is a non-optional burden borne by a segment of the student population because they are members of that (those) group(s). Moreover, it marks the college experience as a whole, not just their experience within a particular classroom or discipline. Undoubtedly, in some instances, this alienation is due to explicit or implicit bias on the part of individual actors or the institution. However, even when conscious or unconscious attitudes of actors are not at issue, these experiences of alienation are nevertheless painful. They are part of a larger pattern—that of racial oppression.

Noting their potential effects on representation and, more importantly, their tie to systems of sexist and racist disadvantage gives us, as philosophers and educators, reason to adopt interventions that might alleviate or at least lessen these pervasive experiences. Proposals to address the alienation of women in introductory level philosophy courses are sometimes quite minimal, recommending minor changes to content, presentation of the disciple, and teaching strategies.^{Footnote 22} The most popular of those minimal intervention strategies, such initiatives to diversify the authors on our syllabi, are usually extended to target students of colour as a group.

Though an encouraging step in the direction of inclusion, simply expanding these initiatives to students of colour means that any distinct sources of alienation experienced by students of colour will not be addressed. This is particularly concerning when it perpetuates a common problem wherein white women benefit from diversity efforts that are nominally inclusive along lines of gender and race, but do not, in fact, equally aid men and women of colour.^{Footnote 23} Regardless, merely expanding proposals and programs to include the racially marginalized obscures causes of alienation that are not analogous to those that affect white women. This includes, I argue in the next section, the absence of non-Western philosophical traditions.

The Impact of Philosophy’s Western Focus

In his introduction to a volume of critical reflections by Black and Latinx philosophers on the discipline of philosophy, George Yancy describes his own experience with feelings of alienation. Though he notes that the overwhelming whiteness of philosophy can be alienating on many fronts, he isolates encounters with the Western canon as one significant source of this experience. And while, as previously mentioned, there are ways in which ‘whiteness’ and ‘the Western historical tradition’ may come apart, Yancy is obviously right that a standard presentation of a Western historical tradition is almost exclusively white, or understood as white. Of his experience, Yancy writes, “It is unsettling to read a text, to engage it … and yet to realize that such a text … wasn’t written for your eyes, but written on the assumption that you were not one of its ‘appropriate’ subjects, could not have been one of its ‘appropriate’ subjects/readers.”^{Footnote 24} He contrasts this with the experiences of his white students, including his white female students, who, he argues, feel some implicit sense of belonging as a consequence of the whiteness of the standard Western historical tradition. He writes, “My white students come to recognize that they are the ‘philosophical (white) we.’ The history of philosophy—from Plato to Derrida—is a family relationship; one that welcomes them a priori. My white students’ feelings of ownership of ‘genuine’ philosophy and ‘real’ philosophical texts is a given.”^{Footnote 25}

In another essay in the same volume, Linda Martín Alcoff, a U.S. born Latina, describes a similar experience. Reflecting on the impact of an absence of Latin American and African philosophy in the academy on scholars of colour, she writes, “No wonder we hardly feel at home in institutions of learning, or that we are so often tempted to downplay our backgrounds if not join in the derision of them.”^{Footnote 26} Eugene Park, an Asian American former graduate student in philosophy, describes a similar experience engaging with an exclusively Western curriculum and his frustrated attempts to incorporate non-Western traditions into his work. He ultimately left the discipline in part because, as he writes, “as a person of color, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable in my department and within the discipline at large.”^{Footnote 27}

Yancy, Alcoff, and Park are each critical of the conditions that give rise to the absence on non-Western philosophy. Notable about these descriptions, however, is that the affective impact of a lack of non-Western content can and does come apart from negative assessments of the intentions of the individual actors who perpetuate a Western philosophy curriculum. The pervasive ignorance of other historical traditions and a historical legacy of contempt for and dismissal of non-Western works as mystical, tribal, or otherwise insufficiently philosophical, means that this absence or exclusion may have an effect even when it lacks any discriminatory intent. For example, when Park’s dissertation advisor warned him against pursuing Asian philosophy as his area of specialization, Park recognized that this advice stemmed primarily from practical worries about the job market. But, he notes that it nevertheless contributes to the structure of exclusion that he found so alienating.

That philosophers of colour can be so impacted, regardless of the intentions of the individual actors, may partially explain why the usual response—to deny that the Western curriculum is intended to be alienating—is inadequate. Philosophers who teach only Western works may claim they do not believe that non-Western traditions are inferior or unimportant but they are simply not sufficiently trained in non-Western philosophical traditions to be able to incorporate them into their research or teaching.^{Footnote 28} Even if true, that we have arrived at this point as a discipline through no fault of our own does not address that fact that there is an unfair psychological burden placed on some of our colleagues.

Clearly, not every philosopher of colour experiences alienation because of an absence of non-Western content. Nonetheless, this testimonial evidence is suggestive of an effect—philosophers of colour are positioned to experience alienation with this distinct source. However, we cannot extrapolate from this testimony that our students of colour must also suffer similarly. There are important interrelated disanalogies between the position of these philosophers of colour and our students of colour: First, the academics cited above are aware of the existence of alternative non-Western traditions and so able to recognize their absence from the curriculum. Second, they may closely identify with a particular non-Western philosophical tradition. Our students are not only unlikely to closely identify with any philosophical traditions at all; in most cases, they are probably not even aware of the existence of non-Western philosophical traditions. So, perhaps, they will not experience alienation from their absence.

To date, no empirical studies examine the effects of an absence of non-Western intellectual traditions, including non-Western philosophy, on our students. Yet, in highly publicized protests stretching back to the mid-1980s, our undergraduate students of colour profess to having this negative affective experience as a consequence of a curriculum overly focused on the traditional Western canon. Students from Stanford’s Black Student Union (BSU) led the charge with an initiative to overturn that university’s Western civilization requirement. The course centred around a mandatory reading list of 15 works (the ‘core list’), none of which were written by women or people of colour and all of which were part of the Western intellectual tradition.

In his testimony in front of Stanford’s Academic Senate, then-BSU president, Bill King, acknowledged that professors who wanted to retain the core list were not expressing ill will; they were acting in what they thought was the best interests of their students. However, King continued, the curriculum they defended placed unfair mental and emotional burdens on students of colour. It presented a false and hurtful presentation of Western culture as solely the product of European influence and alienated students of colour with its lack of non-European (for our purposes, ‘non-Western’) historical traditions. He argued, “… by focusing these ideas on all of us they are crushing the psyche of those others to whom Locke, Hume, and Plato are not speaking.”^{Footnote 29} King’s peers described a similar affective impact. When a subsequent revision of the course sparked outrage from the opposing side, BSU member Amanda Kemp remarked that the implicit message of those protestors was clear: “N—, go home.”^{Footnote 30}

Testimony from the 1980s Stanford case is instructive not only because of its prominence, spurring discussion of curriculum diversity across the country, but because, in 2016, this debate was reignited on the Stanford campus, to similar effect. A right-leaning student publication, The Stanford Review, recommended the reinstatement of a mandatory course in Western civilization for all humanities students. Unlike the previous iteration, this course proposal did include voices and critiques from white women and women and men of colour, though only within the context of a classic presentation of the Western intellectual tradition. Again, students of colour spoke out in protest, asserting a desire to see more, not less, non-Western content in the curriculum. They expressed concern about the impact that such a course would have on them and other incoming students of colour.^{Footnote 31} One student wrote that a focus on the European context was already pervasive at Stanford, leading to a host of negative classroom interactions.^{Footnote 32} Another student, noting that her prior educational experiences were devoid of substantive engagement with Western authors of colour and non-Western content commented on the proposed course: “I can’t imagine what it would be like to sit in that classroom, especially as a freshman student of colour who already feels out of place at Stanford.”^{Footnote 33}

Whether students notice the absence of non-Western philosophy, these reactions lend support to the view that students of colour experience alienation when non-Western intellectual traditions are absent or marginalized in the curriculum in general.^{Footnote 34} Though the relationship remains underexplored in the empirical literature, several campus studies suggest that diversity in course content has a positive impact on students’ senses of belonging on campus, especially for students of colour.^{Footnote 35} A quantitative study at one campus found that, for students of colour especially, the perception that diversity, including non-Western traditions, was infused throughout the curriculum was more strongly correlated with a positive campus climate than a number of other common measures of student satisfaction. A second qualitative study across five campuses found that students of colour consistently felt that white interests were overrepresented and expressed the desire for more cultural representation and a greater infusion of diversity into the general curriculum.^{Footnote 36}

Thus, while it is true that students may not notice the absence of non-Western philosophy, they may be attuned to the presence or absence of non-Western content more broadly. The difficulty in disaggregating students’ reactions to non-Western content from non-white or non-European content in the current empirical literature does allow for the possibility that this alienation might be entirely alleviated with more content from Western authors of colour. However, the testimony presented above indicates that this measure would be insufficient. Although more empirical work must be done to establish a causal connection, current evidence suggests an effect: students of colour report experiencing alienation because non-Western content is absent from the curriculum. Where they perceive that non-Western content is infused into the curriculum, students of colour find their campuses to be more welcoming to people of diverse backgrounds.

Non-Western Philosophy in our Introductory Courses

In the previous section, I presented evidence that an absence of non-Western traditions in the curriculum may contribute to a sense of alienation for our students of colour and, conversely, infusing the curriculum with a greater degree of non-Western content could help to alleviate that sense. If this causal relation holds, then out of a concern for our students’ suffering, instructors have good reason to support low cost interventions that mitigate this impact. For philosophy instructors, this would involve including some non-Western philosophy in our courses, especially at the introductory level. Such a proposal is motivated both by the availability of non-Western content and the role that introductory courses play in the wider curriculum. It has the benefit of meeting capacity, as even philosophers trained exclusively in the Western tradition have the expertise needed to add some piece of non-Western philosophy to their introductory syllabi. In this section, I respond to a number of potential defeaters for this proposal. I then review reasons for focusing on introductory courses, specifically.

One contention, which I mention only to quickly set it aside, is that philosophy does not need to diversify because, as a discipline, philosophy aims to capture, analyse, and explain aspects of the human experience that are, in some sense, independent of their cultural context. On this view, philosophical insights, like those of math and science, arise in a particular culture but they are not tied to that time and place. Whatever veracity it may have, when applied to our undergraduate teaching, this argument misses the point. Whether the best insights from Western philosophical traditions are hopelessly contextual or abstract universals does not change the fact that other philosophical traditions (with insights that may be similarly particular or universal) are absent from the curriculum. If students do experience alienation as a consequence of this absence, then introductory math and science courses, which have other disciplinary demands and may lack accessible non-Western content, are not well positioned to address it—philosophy is.^{Footnote 37}

More to the point, one might worry that, by modifying introductory courses to include some non-Western philosophy, we would be sacrificing departmental or individual course goals for the sake of institutional aims. The seriousness of this charge depends on how exactly we conceive of our introductory courses and what they play in our departmental curriculum. Are they primarily meant to prepare our future majors by imparting a specific set of historical content? If so, then we would indeed have to evaluate the relative importance of that goal as compared to other departmental and institutional aims. Alternatively, perhaps we understand our introductory courses to be largely vehicles for imparting a view of what makes philosophical questions and answers distinct from those of other disciplines and/or some certain set of skills. If so, then those ends could also be served, and perhaps better served, by a diverse syllabus.^{Footnote 38}

In any case, it is important to remember the curriculum functions as an integrated whole. We design courses with an eye towards students’ experiences in the classroom and as majors and the overarching goals of the curriculum. Often, those broader goals are met accidentally, through the usual process of teaching our courses. In philosophy, for example, we may take ourselves to develop crucial critical thinking skills in our students. However, that those aims are usually met accidentally does not mean that they cannot and should not be addressed intentionally. As a department or as individual instructors, we might be called upon to offer courses with a special focus or to modify a course to develop a particular skill. Subject to disciplinary and workload constraints, gaps in students’ experiences are legitimate reasons for changing or modifying the content of our courses.

Given this existing relationship between our courses and the curriculum as a whole, it makes little sense to think of our course content as isolated from the wider aims of the institution. We already understand and agree that the courses we offer and their content work in conjunction to provide an overall educative experience for our students. That they do so grounds their continued existence within the university. If they fail to meet a collectively agreed upon curricular need or they place unnecessary barriers between students and the attainment of wider educative aims, then they may be justifiably shifted or changed. Though competing aims might override a proposal to increase non-Western content in philosophy courses, the mere fact that the goal is institutional rather than departmental or individual is not a reason to reject it.

Beyond worries about unjustified interference, one might object to this proposal on the grounds that it is pedagogically inappropriate. It caters to students’ senses of belonging and alienation, treating them primarily as bearers of a particular racial or ethnic identity. Moreover, it encourages their identification with these groups in ways that might be harmful to their overall education. Our goal as educators ought to be to inspire all of our students to identify with perspectives and groups outside their own.^{Footnote 39}

There are two things to say in response to this concern. The first is to recognize that, when our students arrive in our classrooms, they already possess racial and ethnic identities. Data in the previous section indicates that these identities can and will interact with the classroom dynamic and curriculum we present. Regardless of our intent, our choices in the classroom will contribute to students’ experiences of belonging or alienation. In her article, “Gender Perception as a Habit of Moral Perception,” Kathryn Norlock draws on situated learning theory to explain this concept with respect to syllabus construction:

Whether this is true of all cases, data suggests that an absence of non-Western content has this effect. As such, a choice to include non-Western philosophy to address feelings of alienation does not encourage identification so much as it admits the reality of an existing dynamic. Moreover, this dynamic currently privileges those students who do identify with our course content on the basis of their racial and gender identities.

Second, as Norlock also notes, we may be in the grips of a false dichotomy. Research suggests that curricular diversity encourages perspective-taking for white students and critical thinking for students of all racial backgrounds.^{Footnote 41} So, the inclusion of non-Western philosophy is not at odds with encouraging students to identify beyond their groups. In fact, it is one means towards that end. In selecting between those multiple means, represented by the many ways in which we might diversify our syllabi, we must take into account other factors. That non-Western philosophy might help to mitigate some forms of alienation is one compelling reason for including it in a syllabus already diversified for the benefit of all of our students.

As it stands, this call for infusion of non-Western content across the curriculum recommends our courses add a text or two in non-Western philosophy. And there is a multitude of resources that would allow instructors to meet that goal. Despite their overall marginalization within the academy, non-Western traditions are robust areas of study. There are articles, books, and online databases (as well as textbooks for students) that carefully examine the methods, arguments, and context of non-Western philosophical works in terms familiar and intelligible to those working in the Western tradition.^{Footnote 42} In many cases, these resources explain the similarities and differences between this content and texts in the traditional Western canon, demonstrating how they might be taught effectively alongside one another. Using available resources, some non-Western content could be taught even by those trained exclusively in Western philosophy.

The need for specialized knowledge of these non-Western texts is also diminished because a call to infuse non-Western content across the curriculum would primarily effect courses at the introductory level, due to their relative impact and function. As with all our students, students of colour are more likely to take a general introductory philosophy course than any other. These courses are used to fulfil distribution requirements, function as threshold courses for first years, or are required of students who wish to take additional philosophy courses. If our students’ overall senses of alienation or belonging are based on their personal experience with the curriculum, then non-Western content in our introductory courses is likely to have the greatest impact.

In addition, by their very nature as introductions to a subject, these courses provide an implicit (and sometimes explicit) answer to questions about what philosophy is, where it comes from, and who practices it. Supposing an instructor makes no attempt to define philosophy for her students, the content of a general introductory course would still make a statement about what philosophy is and isn’t merely because of its place in the curriculum. When the texts in an introductory philosophy course are entirely Western, this might give rise to the impression that all of philosophy is Western. The unique function of introductory courses means that students’ overall assessments could be disproportionately affected by the extent to which those traditions are represented at the introductory level relative to other places in the curriculum. Yet, privileging these courses is not an attempt to create a mere illusion of diversity in the rest of the philosophy curriculum. Given its numerical impact, non-Western philosophy in an introductory course contributes to institutional curriculum diversity and deepening students’ experiences with non-Western traditions.

Concluding Thoughts

In a previous section, I argued that we ought to take seriously our students’ experiences of alienation when designing our courses. Apart from their effect on outcomes, they constitute a form of suffering and so are worthy of our concern. This includes cases where the cause of alienation for students of colour as a group might be importantly different than those that affects women as a group. Drawing on testimonial evidence and research on campus climate, I suggested one such cause may be the exclusion of non-Western philosophy, as part of a more widespread absence of non-Western content in the curriculum. I responded to considerations that might mitigate the benefits of including non-Western philosophy in our introductory courses. In this final section, I will consider two further objections to my proposal that we include at least some non-Western philosophy in our introductory courses: the first is that my proposal amounts to a pernicious form of tokenism and so, is objectionable on its face. The second is that such interventions are unlikely to be effective, given ambiguities in the empirical evidence.

Tokenism is the objection that this proposal is an empty gesture towards inclusion, and so doesn’t represent a deeper commitment to the value of diversity, non-Western materials and traditions, and/or the people who would be impacted. A criticism of this sort could take aim at two aspects of my argument—the motivation driving the proposal and its effects. I will take each critique in turn.

With respect to motivation, one could argue that this proposal ignores the issue that the standard presentation of philosophy in introductory courses view is both false and likely based on racist principles. Instead of focusing on its impact on our students, we ought to include non-Western philosophy because doing so presents a view that is more true to what philosophy actually is and/or pushes back against this historical racism. I think there is something right in this critique but, as I indicated in the introduction, the problem with arguments of this sort is that they do not provide sufficient motivation for changes to our teaching. Many of the choices that we make in curriculum and course content are the product of some arbitrary or pernicious bias, individual or institutional. The picture we present of philosophy in our introductory courses is necessarily a simplification of the discipline, subject to any number of pedagogical constraints. That it ought not be simplified so as to erase the contributions of non-Western philosophers requires more than a commitment to historical accuracy or completeness.

Then there is the worry that I am avoiding a responsibility to attend to past and present racial injustice in our teaching. I am sympathetic to this complaint but such backwards-looking arguments for inclusion are complex and, at best, involve a number of tricky moves between institutional and institutional responsibility. Earlier, I claimed that attending to our students’ racialized experiences is not to treat them only as bearers of a racial/ethnic identity. Here, I want to note that focusing on the impact of our curricular choices on our students of colour at least has the virtue of centring the experiences of members of marginalized racial groups, as opposed to touting the benefits of diversity for all our students. In this sense, it is attentive to concerns about past and present racial injustice, though in a forward-looking, student-centred, manner.

There is still the worry that, even if the intent is not tokenism, the proposal still might have a tokenizing impact, further alienating students. Were we to implement it, departments might end up with introductory courses that present some non-Western traditions but no other courses with non-Western content. The placement of non-Western philosophy in the introductory courses could signal to our students that all serious philosophy above the introductory level is Western. This, it seems, is the very definition of tokenism; it implicitly represents whole traditions as unimportant in their own right and unworthy of further engagement.

I agree that such a proposal would be tokenism. Notice that it is not the one I offer here. Instead, I argue that our introductory courses present an especially compelling place to offer non-Western philosophy, because of the role they play in the curriculum. A token gesture is one that comes with no further commitment; this proposal only is a small step towards addressing a larger problem, but one that we can take in our role as philosophy instructors. In adopting this proposal, we should continue to push for diversity in our other institutional capacities including hiring committees and curriculum advisory boards. Studies suggest that, for faculty members, the perception that other faculty are engaged in teaching diverse content or that their departments are committed to diversity encourages them to adopt diversity in their courses as well.^{Footnote 43} So, there is reason to be optimistic that, were a department or individual instructor to adopt this proposal, more faculty members would integrate diverse materials, including non-Western content, into their courses.

To avoid further alienating our students of colour, we must be careful to eschew even the appearance of tokenism. One step is ensuring that the non-Western texts we select are fully integrated into the syllabus and not tacked on at the end. Including texts from other historical traditions also comes with the risk that we may reinforce the belief that there are deep and inherent cultural differences in modes of thought.^{Footnote 44} For this reason, it is especially crucial that these texts be treated with respect, showing why the question is important, the methodology compelling or convincing, or the conclusion interesting or true. Arguing that that introductory courses in critical thinking ought to include non-Western contributions, like the Hindu syllogism, Anand Jayprakash Vaidya demonstrates how this might be done. He shows how a seemingly strange (to the Western audience) style of argument can be made more compelling by unpacking its culturally embedded presuppositions.^{Footnote 45} Resources that would enable us to do this with other non-Western texts are increasingly available. The extent of our deference to the experts that produce them will be greater, certainly, than with some of the Western texts we use. But, assuming they are clear and precise, that we must rely on their expertise is a separate issue from whether we can draw on it to present the material to our students without causing some further harm.

This concern about a tokenizing impact is part of a larger worry that these efforts will not be effective at addressing students’ alienation or that in attempting to do so we may inadvertently reinforce a secondary source of alienation. For example, one might object that efforts to diversify syllabi are ineffective at reducing alienation for women in philosophy. In a single study done at Georgia State University, researchers found that increasing the proportion of women on syllabi to an average of 20% did not increase female students’ assessments of their willingness to continue in philosophy. However, like the researchers who performed the study, I urge caution in interpreting these results as an indication that students’ senses of belonging are unaffected by the diversity of a syllabus. First, the researchers did discover that students’ perceptions of the fairness of their syllabus in terms of gender partially explained why women were less likely to be willing to continue than men. Even when the proportion of female authors was increased, female students still tended perceive it as unfair. Second, there may be other variables that adversely affected women’s willingness to continue. That a sense of belonging is associated with retention does not mean they are always in step. Third, in this case, a sense of belonging may be more strongly correlated with some other variable in philosophy classrooms. With this proposal, I do not intend to fully erase all the feelings of alienation experienced by our students of colour. They are bound to stem from multiple sources, many of which fall outside the scope of what we as instructors can address. Instead, I recommend a small step that we can take as instructors to address a single source of this negative affective experience.

Finally, with respect both to this study and more generally, we should be cautious about drawing inferences directly from the experiences of women to the experiences of students of colour. This may be especially true in this instance since gender diversity in syllabus construction is usually presented as a binary, where authors are either male or female. But there is a plethora of ways in which we might make our syllabi less Western. This raises the second worry about effectiveness: will students’ alienation be addressed if any non-Western traditions are infused into the curriculum or only by the infusion of a particular tradition with which they identify? I noted earlier that current data does not precisely isolate the mechanism by which this alienation operates. Assuming students’ feelings of alienation are affected at all by non-Western content, including Chinese philosophy on a syllabus may make no difference to the alienation of African American students, or Asian American students of non-Chinese descent. Furthermore, will adopting only those non-Western texts and traditions that meet our own, perhaps narrow, definition of philosophy give rise to another, subtler, form of alienation for students of colour? We may tend to select non-Western texts that implicitly valourize the Western tradition by asking and answering only those philosophical questions that are also present in the West.

Answering these questions and evaluating the impact of various proposals demands additional empirical attention. They touch on complex matters in educational psychology on the process of racial and ethnic identity formation. Even if we were to conclude that alienation is only combatted by adding content from a specific tradition with which a student already identifies, we could still decide against including that tradition. Whether and how non-Western traditions are introduced into our courses must be weighed against competing considerations including, as I indicated in previous sections, our meta-philosophical views and other disciplinary and pedagogical concerns. Discovering that this particular source of alienation is strongly correlated with student satisfaction or retention may increase the strength of this consideration relative to others, but on their own our students’ experiences of alienation are not decisive. Nonetheless, there are actions we can take rather than passively awaiting those results or further evidence confirming that a lack of non-Western content causes alienation. We could begin by investigating whether students of colour at our own universities experience this sort of alienation and if our departments, out of indifference or a lack of awareness, are complicit in offering a largely Western curriculum.^{Footnote 46} Or, we might start by selecting non-Western texts to include in our introductory courses.

There are benefits for all our students in adopting a diverse curriculum. This paper aims to provide some additional guidance in how we might select between various instantiations of diversity. Incorporating some non-Western philosophy in the introductory curriculum is an easy measure to adopt. Over time, closer engagement with these materials could open the door to a more expansive understanding of our discipline that will invite a greater number of students to feel at home in our classrooms. At the same time, we should remain vigilant against ways that this small step could give rise to other, subtler, alienating experiences. This initiative, as with others like it, will need to be revisited and revised in light of new evidence and analysis. Nonetheless, working from what we know now, and drawing lessons from the lived experience of some of our colleagues of colour, we have reason believe that the inclusion of non-Western philosophy may go some way towards alleviating alienation for a segment of our students of colour.