Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Is the Capacity for Moral and Religious Beliefs Innate?

Psychologist Bloom vs. Philosopher Knobe.

Tenure-Track Hiring by Philosophy Departments, 2007-2008

MOVING TO FRONT (originally posted February 8)

It's that time of year again...I am opening comments on this thread for people to post news about junior, tenure-track hires in philosophy departments, i.e., hires made during this year of new assistant professors who will be starting in fall 2008 (or thereafter).  (For schools outside the US, please list new Lecturers who are on presumptively permanent appointments--not temporary lecturers.)  Like last year, you may also post information about post-doc appointments, since there are an increasing number of those in philosophy, many quite attractive.  No anonymous posts will be allowed. The candidates themselves, dissertation advisors, placement directors, department chairs, or faculty members involved with the hiring or the placement of the candidate may all post information.  No hearsay, however:  you must have first-hand knowledge of the placement.  (Please e-mail me about any errors.)

The format of the postings should be as follows:  candidate's name (name of PhD-granting school) hired by [name of school].  AOS: ________; any prior positions (e.g., a postdoc, a lectureship, a visiting asst prof position).  In the case of a post-doc, it should say not 'hired by' but 'post-doc at' [name of school].

Here's an example (fictional):

John Smith (Chicago) hired by Kenyon College.   AOS:  19th-Century Philosophy.  Previously Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University.

Remember:  tenure-track jobs and postdocs only.  I'll move this thread to the front at various intervals until it looks like the hiring season has wound down.  Please post only once; postings should appear within 24 hours

How Do UK PhDs Outside Oxbridge Fare on the US Market?

A prospective PhD student writes:

I was wondering if you would mind posting on your blog the question of how a UK phd (not from Oxford or Cambridge) can expect to compete on the US job market compared to how they would compete with a phd from a US department?

In my particular case I have an offer from [a top 20 US department] and one from [a top fivish UK department]. Though [the US department] looks like a great program, I was inclined towards [the UK department]  given its somewhat better ranking and better faculty for what I do. However, I'm looking to move back to the US to work after the Phd and so am asking people whether they think I would do better (ceteris paribus)on the US jbo market with a Phd from [the UK department or the US department]. One professor I asked said that he thought I would do better with [the US department] simply because many people on US hiring committees are unfamiliar (compared to their familiarity with US programs) with the strengths /weaknesses of Phd programs outside of Oxbridge in the UK and so would prefer the US Phd. Is this really the widely held view?

Post only once; signed comments strongly preferred, as usual.

 

Penn State Philosophy Recoups by Plundering Memphis

Details here.

Friday Poem: "Girl at the Electronic Catalogue"

Girl at the Electronic Catalogue

The bright screen as I pass
Alive alas with "Suicide"

The catalogue in dialogue
With a young girl's queries
And jocular I close the gap
To where she's fixed
With my crude question

"I hope it's not a choice"

"It was my brother's
I want to understand"

Such weighty mystery
The urge to leave
With or without goodbye
The leap across the space
From live to die

And though it seems volitional
We sense it is not so
These few less choosers than chosen
Go without a will
But not against it

Yet they think they will
Reaching for self-mastery
Or dreary and forlorn
Against particulars of bond
Against all other selves
To silence what offends
Not comprehending ends

I wish the girl well
Embarrassed to have stumbled
On the face of hell

8/14, 11/4/94, 4/7/96, 3/18/08

Copyright 1994, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Senior Offers that Prospective Students Should Inquire About with the Relevant Departments

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 4, WITH SOME CHANGES

There are a number of senior (i.e., tenured) offers I've heard about from generally reliable sources, but which I haven't gotten clearance from the candidate or hiring department to announce yet.  But since prospective grad students are starting to hear about admissions offer and will be making decisions over the next six weeks, I thought I should provide a "heads up."  Students admitted to these departments should inquire with the departments for more details.  (The list below does not include offers previously announced.)

One faculty member at Michigan has a senior offer from Texas.

One faculty member at Penn has a senior offer from Johns Hopkins.

One faculty member at UC Riverside is likely to get a senior offer from U of Southern California.

One faculty member at UC Davis has a senior offer from Cornell.

I suspect there are other offers outstanding as well, so all prospective students are advised to inquire with the departments to which they have been admitted about any faculty who might be leaving or any faculty who might be joining in the near future.

And, remember, according to APA guidelines, you have until April 15 to decide about financial aid offers!

"In Praise of Realism (and Against 'Nonsense' Jurisprudence)"

I've posted on SSRN a draft of my Dunbar Lecture in Law and Philosophy, titled as above, which I will deliver tomorrow at the University of Mississippi.  The Lecture is sponsored by the Law School and Department of Philosophy.  When they kindly invited me to deliver the lecture, I was told that past Dunbar Lecturers had included, as it happens, one of the subjects of my Lecture, Ronald Dworkin.  The abstract follows:

Ronald Dworkin describes an approach to how courts should decide cases that he associates with Judge Richard Posner as a Chicago School of "anti-theoretical, no-nonsense jurisprudence." Since Professor Dworkin takes his own view of adjudication to be diametrically opposed to that of the Chicago School, it might seem fair, then, to describe Dworkin's own theory as an instance of "pro-theoretical, nonsense jurisprudence." That characterization is not one, needless to say, that Professor Dworkin welcomes. Dworkin describes his preferred approach to jurisprudential questions, to be sure, as theoretical, in opposition to what he calls the practical orientation of the Chicago School. But while there is a real dispute between Dworkin and Posner, it is not one illuminated by the contrast between theory and practice. It is, rather a dispute about the kind of theory that is relevant and illuminating when it comes to law and adjudication. And the fault line marked by this dispute is profound indeed, one that extends far beyond Dworkin and Posner and has a venerable and ancient history. I shall describe it, instead, as a dispute between Moralists and Realists, between those whose starting point is a theory of how things (morally) ought to be versus those who begin with a theory of how things really are. The Lecture endeavors to show that our contemporaries, Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner, are reenacting a version of the dispute between the paradigmatic philosophical moralist Plato and the paradigmatic historical realist Thucydides.

In Memoriam: Hazel Barnes (1915-2008)

Professor Barnes, a longtime professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, played a major role in introducing French existentialism to the Anglophone world, through her translations and scholarship.  There is more information, and links to obituaries, here.

Driver & Sorensen from Dartmouth to Wash U/St. Louis

Julia Driver (ethics) and Roy Sorensen (epistemology, metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of language) at Dartmouth College have accepted senior offers from the Department of Philosophy at Washington University, St. Louis.  The Wash U department has been on a steady upward trajectory with good senior and junior hiring over the last half-dozen years; these latest appointments will probably propel it solidly into the U.S. top thirty, perhaps higher.

Oxford's Hawthorne to Take Up Part-Time Position at Princeton

John Hawthorne, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, who is well-known for many contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and the history of early modern philosophy, has concluded his half-time appointment at Rutgers, and will now move to a roughly quarter-time U.S. appointment at Princeton.  Daniel Garber, Chair of the Department at Princeton, writes:

I am very pleased to announce that John Hawthorne (University of Oxford) has accepted an offer to be a regular visitor in the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University for the next five years. Beginning in spring 2009, he will come for six weeks in the spring, and teach a course and a half, as well as work with graduate students.

UPDATE:  Just to be clear:  Hawthorne will be full-time at Oxford; the Oxford academic calendar, as many readers will know, has long breaks (about six weeks) between terms, and it is during one of these breaks that Professor Hawthorne will be in the US and working at Princeton. 

Friday Poem: "Thoughts After Snyder's Poem"

Thoughts After Snyder's Poem

What you should know
The poet said
To be a poet
To which I add a word:


Know who you are are not
Where your darkness starts
Words' weight in drams and scruples
What other poets do
The way the world works
How money hurts
Children's dizzy ways
Love's anagrams
The universe asleep
The space you cannot keep
The sound that needing makes
What you must not forsake

8/13-10/12/95, 10/31-11/17/95, 3/13/08

Copyright 1995, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Why major in Philosophy (J. Stanley)

No matter your political affiliation: either because Stephen Colbert was a philosophy major, or because working for a hedge fund is "like reading Russell, Frege, or Wittgenstein, except it's about money."

5th Anniversary of the U.S. War of Aggression Against Iraq

Today marks the 5th anniversary of one of the most spectacular state crimes in recent history, one that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of lives disrupted and ruined. A recent essay by Professor Chomsky is apt for marking the occasion.  It might also be useful to recall some earlier postings on the subject here over the past few years, both on the apologists for the crimes and the crimes themselves:

On Norman Geras and the proposition that "there was no persuasive moral case against the Iraq War"

The Proposed U.S. Troop "Surge" in Iraq

The Permanent U.S. Military Presence in Iraq

U.N. Study:  Iraqis Endure Worse Conditions Now Than Under Saddam

Goebbels Had Nothing on These Guys...or the Latest in Bush Rationalizations for War and Tyranny

Pure Politics:  Bashing the Anti-War Left...in the Guardian?

Commemoration of Susan Hurley

Nicholas Shea, a Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford, informs me that the life and work of Susan Hurley will be commemorated at an event to be held in All Souls College on Saturday, April 26th 2008, commencing at 2.15, followed by tea in the College.

Philosophy on TV!

In Denmark at least, with Vincent Hendricks.  About the show (English translation):

The Power of Mind is a TV-series on philosophy which attempts to show how fundamental philosophical questions and issues show themselves everywhere - in science as well as everyday life.

The show is hosted by Professor Vincent F. Hendricks who in each program will have a new guest in the studio to discuss ethics, religion, science, aestetics, politics mathematics, logic, knowledge and other themes making up the fundamental disciplines of philosophy. Some of the guests are Dan Zahavi, Frederik Stjernfelt, Stig Andur Pedersen, Jesper Ryberg and many others.

For those who read Danish, there is more information here.

Freud on the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 1930

An interesting document here.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Dershowitz and Plagiarism, Again

Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, as we noted previously, played a major role in the politically motivated tenure denial of Norman Finkelstein, the former DePaul political science professor who has been a staunch critic of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.  Dershowitz seems to have been at least partially motivated by Professor Finkelstein's charge that Dershowitz plagiarized portions of a book he wrote in defense of Israel.  Lawyer/philosopher Frank Menetrez (who previously wrote a devastating analysis of Dershowitz's critique of Finkelstein) has now re-examined the plagiarism charge, and documented quite persuasively an instance of plagiarism.  Professor Dershowitz purports to reply to Menetrez here, but it is wholly non-responsive, as Dr. Menetrez himself points out in rejoinder at the same link.  Of course, the plagiarism at issue in Dershowitz's case does not appear to be nearly as significant as that involving other Harvard Law School faculty in recent years.  Whereas other HLS faculty have acknowledged wrongdoing, however, Professor Dershowitz has steadfastly denied it.  That denial is no longer credible.

Talkative Students

Jonathan Wolff (UCL) comments.

Busy March

This is a rather hectic (but exciting) month for me, as I'm giving the Fresco Lectures in Jurisprudence at the University of Genoa in Italy, the Dunbar Lecture in Law and Philosophy at the University of Mississippi, and participating in an APA session (at the Pacific Division in Pasadena) on Nietzsche.  I may be slower than usual in replying to e-mails, but I will keep udpating the blog with pertinent faculty news, since this is likely to be a busy month for news. 

Good luck to all job seekers and to prospective students, who will also no doubt be getting news in the coming weeks!

JD/PhD Programs in the U.S.: A Comment

I've had some inquiries lately about the section on the study of philosophy in law schools in the PGR like this one:

I am considering enrolling in a joint JD/PhD in philosophy next year, and I was reading through your rankings in philosophy, law, and joint JD/PhD programs. First, let me say thank you so much for the time and energy you've put in to make this information and these rankings available; it has been very helpful for me. My question, however, is if there is any reason why Harvard and Stanford are virtually not mentioned on the "The Study of Philosophy in Law Schools" page on philosophicalgourmet.com. Do their programs for law and philosophy not match up with the other schools mentioned? I ask because they both have very strong respective law and philosophy programs. I know you're extremely busy, so if you don't have time to respond about this, I completely understand. However, if you do get a chance, any comments would be greatly appreciated. Again, thanks so much for the rankings and information you've compiled about law schools and philosophy programs.

Legal academia is more pedigree-sensitive than academic philosophy (and I'm sure many of you think academic philosophy is way too pedigree-sensitive!), so this student's question is quite understandable.  Four law schools dominate the market for new law teachers:  Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford.  On a per capita basis, Yale is way ahead of the other three, and these four are way ahead of everyone else.  Yet two of these three "feeder" schools for legal academia go unmentioned in the current PGR section.

Walzer Excoriated

Here, and justifiably so.

Updates to the Memorial Notices for Mothersill and Rosenberg

I have added links to memorial notices and events to the earlier postings about the passing of Professors Mothersill and Rosenberg for those readers who might be interested.

Friday Poem: "Trio"

Trio

  1.  Lake

A day in the country
Herb and I in a rowboat
Except I can't swim
Despite the lake enticing

Herb says jump right in
You can grab the boat
Or its mooring rope
You'll soon swim

So I jumped but stayed near
Cool water icy fear
And the fear held sway
I did not swim that day

  2. Matchmaker

For Herb a painful favor
Some words with Jean
To bring the two together

Did I not suppress desire
For myself just silence
But verbal for the other

And the service rendered
Love children marriage
Modest happiness quiet

But darkness not long later
His body lost to Hodgkin's
Sweet Herb gone forever

3. Jean's Cousin

A rage of rubies
Summer coral ebony gleam
Body like a flame

How could a straw man
With tongue of sand
Presume to love her

Now only time's pity
The memory of pain
And blandness without her

4/2-4/19/97, 4/16/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Belot and Ruetsche from Pittsburgh to Michigan

Gordon Belot and Laura Ruetsche, both Associate Professors of Philosophy working in philosophy of physics at the University of Pittsburgh, have accepted tenured offers from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  In addition to the junior appointment of David Baker, this will give Michigan a very strong presence in philosophy of physics, even when Lawrence Sklar, Michigan's longtime distinguished philosopher of science, retires.

Mark Twain's "The War Prayer"

Now that the Republicans have chosen Senator McCain of Arizona as their standard-bearer for the fall Presidential contest in the U.S., and since Senator McCain is, among other things, the candidate of perpetual war, it seems fitting to remember this fine short piece by Mark Twain, which a reader has sent today.

Carroll from Temple to CUNY Grad Center

Noel Carroll (aesthetics) at Temple University has accepted one of the Distinguished Professorships in Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Notre Dame Makes Bid for Arizona's Paul

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame has voted out a tenured offer to Laurie (L.A.) Paul at the University of Arizona, who is one of the leading philosophers of her generation working in metaphysics.

Berkeley Makes Offer to Reginster at Brown

Bernard Reginster (Continental philosophy) at Brown University has a tenured offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Was Nietzsche a Fictionalist?

I know you were wondering!

Chomsky on Iraq and the Presidential Election

I haven't posted a link to one of Chomsky's items in awhile, but this one is particularly interesting (though he, incorrectly, describes the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as a war of aggression, which it was not under international law--but that is minor).

Jesseph from NC State to South Florida

Douglas Jesseph (early modern philosophy, history and philosophy of mathematics) at North Carolina State University has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, where he will join another leading scholar in the history of early modern philosophy, Roger Ariew.  South Florida has developed a strong group in the history of philosophy, especially from the medieval period through post-Kantian Continental.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.