Philosophical outreach and public philosophy are important to:
- keeping the profession from being slashed at universities
- facilitating philosophizing by people not at universities, which are the vast majority of people
Such outreach is also intrinsically rewarding. Two of my most fulfilling experiences as a professional philosopher were two outreach activities that I undertook while in graduate school:
- organizing the Iowa Lyceum, a free five-day philosophy summer camp for pre-college students in Iowa, for three years (2016-2018)
- organizing the Iowa Chapter, an on-campus undergraduate philosophy club at the University of Iowa, for five years (2015-2020)
Some of my current public-facing or public-facilitating philosophizing includes:
- making public-domain audio books for LibriVox
- moderating and answering questions on /r/askphilosophy
- posting about my experiences in research archives, or giving critical reactions to journal articles that I have read, or recording teaching strategies, and generally sharing thoughts on my current research