CFP: 2027 Eastern AAPT-APA Teaching Hub: "Navigating Threatening Teaching Environments"

SESSION GOALS: It has never been so threatening to be a philosophy teacher in higher education. Some of our students today are more easily angered, more easily offended, and more prone to seeking retribution (for even minor perceived slights) than students have ever been. In part because of the contents of many of our courses, we philosophy teachers often find ourselves especially exposed, and especially vulnerable, to these dangers. Today, more than ever, we need to rethink how we approach, how we teach, how we evaluate, and how we interact with the students who take our philosophy classes. This Teaching Hub session will showcase two things: personal accounts of surprising and troubling experiences that philosophy teachers have encountered in their classrooms; and strategic suggestions for how to cleverly and creatively avoid or at least mitigate these sorts of experiences in our own classrooms.

We welcome proposals on any topic related to this theme, including (but not limited to) the following:

• In this era of increased sensitivity to controversy, what changes might we make to how we teach controversial topics? Should we still teach controversial topics? How does one decide how, or whether, to take on that risk? Are there ways to reduce that risk while still honoring that controversy?
• What steps can we take to avoid becoming excessively cautious, fearful, or self-censoring in our classrooms? What are the best ways to seem like brave teachers, and what are the best ways to become brave teachers?
• As teachers, where this is legal, should we protect ourselves by video recording ourselves whenever we teach? If we decide to do this, should we admit to our students why we are doing it? How can we prevent this practice from reducing the quality of our teaching? Are there any interesting or creative alternatives to doing this?
• How can we, as philosophy teachers, avoid or reduce the perception that we are attempting to be indoctrinators? Is it a good idea to hide our personal opinions (on any given topic) from our students so that we cannot be seen as pushing those opinions on those students? If we hide our opinions, does this make us more effective at teaching philosophy, or less?
• How can we enable students to feel angry at us without seeming threatening to us? Similarly, how can we maintain challenging expectations for our students without seeming threatening to them?
• What grading or course design strategies can we use to reduce or mitigate student hostility, resentment, or retaliation? Can we preserve our rigorous expectations without creating that peril? How acceptable is it to adopt grading or course design strategies that reduce that peril at the cost of that rigor?
• In recent years, societal forces have begun pitting higher education students against their instructors, as if their instructors are their enemies. How can we help our students trust that we are actually their close allies?
• How important is it to share our frightening classroom experiences with other instructors (in our departments, on our campuses, and at our conferences)? What can we do to help mentor each other on this issue? What can department heads do to protect their instructors from threatening student behaviors? And what can instructors do to help their department heads help them?
• Sometimes our students feel antagonistic toward us simply because they were (or felt) forced to take our class. Maybe it was required, or maybe someone else (an advisor, or a parent) simply chose it for them, perhaps without even explaining why. How can we transform the experiences of these “drafted” students from those of conscripts to those of volunteers?
• If this list is missing a topic question that it should have included, please rectify this by writing it in and by submitting a proposal for it. Especially when times are scary, sometimes an urgent answer keeps escaping us because its question keeps not occurring to us.

FORMAT: Rather than a traditional paper presentation, Teaching Hub sessions are expected to be highly interactive. Proposals should indicate how audience members will participate in the session. The primary goal for the Teaching Hub is for attendees to walk away with something concrete to deploy in their own classrooms/teaching context.

What does the Teaching Hub mean by “highly interactive”? This includes (but is not limited to) the following:

• Presenters focusing less time on arguments for teaching some content or teaching a particular way, and more time on what it would actually look like to teach that content or teach in that way.
• Presenters thinking of the audience as their students and themselves as the facilitator/teacher. How could you cover the same content in a way that your audience participates in active learning activities during the session time?
• Presenters offering and demonstrating clear, practical examples of teaching methods, classroom activities, policies, practices, etc.
• Presenters conceptualizing of themselves as a facilitator, not giving traditional philosophical only talk-style presentation. 

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: August 1, 2026

SUBMISSIONS:

• Proposals should be sent to Darren Domsky [email protected] by August 1, 2026, with the subject line “Navigating Scary Teaching Environments AAPT-APA TH January 2027.”
• In the body of the email, please include your name, institutional affiliation (if any), position (if any), and email contact information.
• Attached to the email, please include anonymized submission of 500–750 words (.doc, .docx, or .pdf) detailing the following: (1) describe the focus of your session, (2) an overview of how you plan to use your session time, including how you will make the session highly interactive, and (3) what you hope the audience will take away from your session. This session will be an hour and 50 minutes long, and it will have three presentations of 35 minutes each. Presenters will be given as much freedom as possible to decide how best to utilize their 35 minutes, so long as those 35 minutes are highly interactive.
• The AAPT is a community of teacher-scholars dedicated to sharing our lived expertise regarding reflective and responsible student-centered teaching and learning. We value authentic, creative, and insightful approaches to pedagogy that exhibit what philosophy does best: thinking through problems both independently and collaboratively. At present, we judge that the use of generative AI conflicts with these values. Therefore the use of generative AI in preparing proposals and in the content of presentations is prohibited. If you believe an exception should be made for your use of generative AI, please disclose how you have used it and why an exception should be made for your use.
• We aim to select presenters by August 15, 2026.

Questions about this session should be directed to Darren Domsky [email protected]. For general information about the AAPT-APA Teaching Hub, please visit the Teaching Hub page. For specific information about the Teaching Hub at the 2027 Eastern APA meeting in Boston, MA, please contact co-chairs Jordan Kokot ([email protected]) and Rebeccah Leiby ([email protected]).