FEATURED
Last year’s conference featured a ‘Debauched yet professional conference party’
The University of California Santa Cruz is hosting its second annual Queer Analytic Philosophy Conference this June, an event that one philosophy professor described as essentially a training for “left-wing activists.”
The conference is set to include “a poster session” for students, “a workshop on LGBTQIA+ activism,” a party, and “other glam surprises” in addition to talks by “queer” scholars.
“The aim of the conference is to foreground philosophical work in the analytic tradition … that is informed by queer experience, community, and theorizing, as well as to build community among queer scholars in philosophy and beyond,” according to the webpage for the conference on PhilEvents, which tracks academic events and papers in philosophy worldwide.
“The goal is to bring as many queer philosophers as possible together for a few days of community-building and queer philosophizing,” the event page states.
Organizers “conveniently” scheduled the event during the week leading up to San Francisco’s annual Pride Parade, according to the website.
A “Graduate Student Prize in Queer Analytic Philosophy” featuring a $1,000 reward will be granted through an academic paper contest. The winner of the contest also will give a talk at the conference.
Suggested topics for the paper include: “Imagination and desire from a queer perspective,” “Discriminatory language and hate speech,” “Standpoint epistemology and cishet ignorance,” “Re-imagining and abolishing the family,” and “Metaphysics of sex, gender, and sexuality.”
Organizers also offered to pay for travel costs for participants, stating “priority will be given to those who lack research funds and are in precarious employment situations.”
The College Fix emailed Erin Beeghly, Lauren Lyons, and Joshua Kramer, the organizers of the event, multiple times over the past two weeks asking why they believe the conference is academically important, but none replied. Lyons is a professor at UCSC. Beeghly teaches at the University of Utah and Kramer teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Fix also reached out to the university’s media relations team by email multiple times, asking about the conference, but it did not respond.
Brandon Warmke, a professor of humanities at University of Florida, called out the absurdity of the event in an email to The Fix.
“This conference promises a ‘workshop on LGBTQIA+ activism … a party (of course), and other glam surprises.’ If the philosophers involved expect us to believe this is a serious academic endeavor not at all devoted to training left-wing activists, they shouldn’t get their hopes up,” he said.
Warmke also posted about the event recently on X, writing sarcastically, “Philosophy is doing well and has definitely not become cringe or kitschy.”
UC Santa Cruz is a public, taxpayer-funded university, and it is sponsoring the event. But the conference appears to be primarily funded by a private grant from the American Philosophical Association.
The APA’s Diversity and Inclusiveness Grant Program “makes available up to $20,000 annually to fund projects aiming to increase the presence and participation of women, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, people of low socioeconomic status, and other underrepresented groups in philosophy,” according to the APA website.
The Queer Analytic Philosophy Conference received the $20,000 grant as the result of a request by the project coordinators, according to the conference website.
The grant proposal states that the first conference in 2025 included more than 80 participants and featured panels on “ethics, language, identity, and love and sex, all explored through queer philosophical frameworks.”
Activism also was part of the 2025 conference. According to the grant proposal, it included “a panel on queer organizing within and beyond the discipline, featuring undocumented student organizers and other activists, followed by breakout groups on building collective power in philosophy, organizing within universities, and self-care in activist contexts.”
That first conference, held in April of last year, covered topics including “gender euphoria, trans sex talk, BDSM and social class, informed consent, and the social construction of butchness,” according to the announcement from UC Santa Cruz’s Humanities Institute.
A schedule of the 2025 conference listed a “Debauched yet professional conference party” and a panel called “F—ing.”
It also featured presentation titles such as “Trans sleeper cells: (Re)imagining trans passing,” “On our own terms: Trans women crafting the meaning of ‘woman,’” and “Queers in Philosophy: Organizing for Resistance Discussion.”
MORE: Boston U. faculty outraged over removal of pride flags from campus offices
