Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

On the Atrocities in Mumbai

This is worth reading.

"Change We Can Believe In?" Part III

Analysis here; an excerpt:

[W]hat can we realistically expect of an Obama administration? We have two sources of information: actions and rhetoric....

The first post-election appointment was for the crucial position of chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among House Democrats and like Biden, a long-term Washington insider.  Emanuel is also one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions, the Center for Responsive Politics reports.  He "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry." Since being elected to Congress in 2002, he "has received more money from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment business than any other industry"; these are also among Obama's top donors. His task is to oversee Obama's approach to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, for which his and Obama's funders share ample responsibility.

In an interview with an editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel was asked what the Obama administration would do about "the Democratic congressional leadership, which is brimming with left-wing barons who have their own agenda," such as slashing defense spending (in accord with the will of the majority of the population) and "angling for steep energy taxes to combat global warming," not to speak of the outright lunatics in Congress who toy with slavery reparations and even sympathize with Europeans who want to indict Bush administration war criminals for war crimes. "Barack Obama can stand up to them," Emanuel assured the editor. The administration will be "pragmatic," fending off left extremists.

Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff. The leading figures in his economic team are Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As Treasury Secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks....Rubin was replaced as Treasury Secretary by Summers, who presided over legislation barring federal regulation of derivatives, the "weapons of mass destruction" (Warren Buffett) that helped plunge financial markets to disaster. He ranks as "one of the main villains in the current economic crisis," according to Dean Baker, one of the few economists to have warned accurately of the impending crisis. Placing financial policy in the hands of Rubin and Summers is "a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism," Baker adds.

The business press reviewed the records of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, which met on November 7 to determine how to deal with the financial crisis. In Bloomberg News, Jonathan Weil concluded that "Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama's inner circle." About half "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both." Is it really plausible that "they won't mistake the nation's needs for their own corporate interests?" He also pointed out that chief of staff Emanuel "was a director at Freddie Mac in 2000 and 2001 while it was committing accounting fraud."

Those are the actions, at the time of writing.  The rhetoric is "change" and "hope"....

On Iraq, Obama has frequently been praised for his "principled opposition" to the war. In reality, as he has made clear, his opposition has been entirely unprincipled throughout. The war, he said, is a "strategic blunder." When Kremlin critics of the invasion of Afghanistan called it a strategic blunder, we did not say that they were taking a principled stand....

Metz from Witwatersrand to Johannesburg

Thaddeus Metz (ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law), Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, has accepted appointment as Humanities Research Professor at the University of Johannesburg.  (Metz was both the youngest professor and the only philosopher to get the highest rating by the National Research Foundation in South Africa earlier this year.)

Department of Unintended Ironies

Here:  "Garden gnomes have been banned from cemeteries by a church diocese because leaders say they are 'unnatural creatures'."

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

Smoking Habit a Liability on the Job Market?

A candidate on the teaching market writes:

I am a cigarette smoker (at least one pack a day), and it occurred to me that this fact, when known, very well could play a role in a hiring decision. I was wondering if you or your readers had any thoughts about this.

Please, if posted, refrain from using my name. I am actually trying to quit, but job-market stress is making it hard.

Interesting question, given how much norms about smoking have changed among professionals, including academics, over the past 25 years--and in the U.S. especially.  I'm opening comments.  Smokers with pertinent experience who would like to post anonymously may do so, though please include a real e-mail address (that won't appear).

Morison from Oxford to Princeton

PLEASE SEE UPDATE, BELOW

Ben Morison, a leading young scholar of ancient philosophy at Oxford University, has accepted a tenured appointment at Princeton University, starting next year.   Morison will join Hendrik Lorenz (recently tenured), Alexander Nehamas, John Cooper (who is reported to be thinking of retiring), and Christian Wildberg (in Classics) to sustain Princeton's leading position as a center of studies in ancient philosophy in both North America and the Anglophone world. 

The situation for students interested in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy has changed a good bit in the last ten years.  The top departments have always had multiple scholars working in the area.  At this point, this would mean the top choices are, besides Princeton, University of Chicago (Agnes Callard, Michael Forster, Gabriel Richardson Lear, Jonathan Lear, Martha Nussbaum), University of Toronto (Rachel Barney, Lloyd Gerson, Brad Inwood, Mohan Matthen, Jennifer Whiting), and perhaps Yale University (Susanne Bobzien, Verity Harte, Barbara Sattler) and University of Texas at Austin (R.J. Hankinson, Stephen White, A.P.D. Mourelatos [though he has been on unpaid leave a fair bit and may be phasing into retirement--he is in his early 70s], and Paul Woodruff [though he is now Dean of the Undergraduate College]).  Chicago students also benefit from an inter-university consortium with the University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago (Constance Meinwald), and Northwestern University (David Ebrey, Richard Kraut).

Other major departments with a strong commitment in the field would include Cornell University (Tad Brennan, Charles Brittain in Classics, and Gail Fine, though she has a good deal of leave currently, which she spends in Oxford, where her partner, Terence Irwin, is now the Professor of Ancient Philosophy), Rutgers University at New Brunswick (Robert Bolton, Alan Code), University of Arizona (Julia Annas, Rachana Kamtekar), Columbia University (Wolfgang Mann, Katja Vogt), University of Pittsburgh (James Allen, James Lennox), University of California at Los Angeles (Sean Kesley, Gavin Lawrence), and Stanford University (Christopher Bobonich, Reviel Netz in Classics).  One school to watch in this regard is New York University, which has one ancient scholar on tenure-track (Matt Evans) and Philip Mitsis in Classics, as well as a senior offer out for a scholar of ancient philosophy (and additional faculty joining in Classics).

UPDATE:  The point of the preceding was to talk ONLY about the situation for study of ancient philosophy in North America--sorry that wasn't as clear in what I wrote as it was in my own mind!  Oxford probably still dominates the field for those looking outside North America, and many other U.K. programs are very attractive:  Cambridge of course, as well as King's College, London and St. Andrews/Stirling, among others.   In any case, we shall have a new set of surveys on this issue shortly.

Penultimate Draft Faculty Lists for 2008 Surveys: Last Chance for Additions/Corrections

Here is the draft list, based on all the feedback received since this morning (Nov. 23):Download pgr_faculty_lists_2008.rtf .  My sincere thanks to the dozens of philosophers who have already submited information.

The Advisory Board is presently voting on about a dozen faculties that have requested inclusion in the survey.  Since I have faculty lists for those programs already, those that the Board votes to add will be included.  I will post on the blog a list of those departments the Advisory Board votes to include.

A couple of issues it might help to clarify, before soliciting any final corrections to the lists:

"Emeritus faculty still doing some teaching and supervision" means emeritus faculty on multi-year contracts that requires them to teach graduate students.  It does *not* mean emeritus faculty who are hanging around and willing to talk to students.  I would appreciate information (you can e-mail me with this) about listings that are incorrect on this score, and I will follow up with individual departments.

"Cognate" faculty have to be faculty *at the university* (not faculty elsewhere) who are actually willing and able to work with graduate students in philosophy:  e.g., serve on dissertation committees, teach pertinents courses that philosophy students take, and so on.  I am concerned that some schools are padding the cognate lists, so let me observe that padding the list is almost certainly not helpful:  a long list of names most philosophers have not heard of, or even specialists may not have heard of, is likely to be interpreted as a weakness, not a strength.

"Adjunct" faculty at a university are *not* listed.  (On the other hand, some departments list faculty at their university who are 'cognates' as adjuncts:  they are included on the cognate list.)

Sydney and the ANU have large numbers of multi-year post-docs:  they are listed as part-time faculty (as before), but with a parenthetical "post-doc" after the name.  These faculty are not permanent members of staff, and in many cases, are not in residence for the entire academic year, or in residence each year.  Part-time with the post-doc qualification seems to be the best way to incorporate this information given the categories that apply everywhere else.  Outside Australia, post-docs are not listed, since their status is usually much more temporary and their role different than at the Australian universities with Federation Fellowship monies.

A few other points that deserve special notice:

1.  Departments are listed alphabetically by name and region (U.S., Canada, U.K., Australasia).

2.  All departments that ranked in 2006 are included here (with the exception of Florida, which has suspended its PhD program).  Faculties surveyed in 2006 that did not score high enough to rank are not included this year, unless changes in the interim seem likely to alter that result.  Several faculties not surveyed recently (or ever before) are included in this round:  Nebraska, UC Santa Cruz, Utah.  As noted, the Advisory Board is now voting on other possible inclusions.

3.  As in 2006, faculties not included in the survey will still be included in the specialty rankings where appropriate, based either on the 2006 results (assuming no major changes since then) or on the judgment of the Advisory Board.

4.  The category of "affiliated" faculty has been replaced with the cateagory "Cognate Faculty and Philosophers in Other Units," for reasons discussed on the blog this past summer.  Feedback on whether "cognate" faculty are really available for work with philosophy PhD students is especially welcome.

5.  Also very helpful would be information on faculty who are slated to retire at the end of the 2008-09 academic year or who are on a phased or scheduled retirement program of some kind.

7.  Only faculty at the affected program may post corrections, below.  DO NOT E-MAIL ME CORRECTIONS.  Please post them below, so that efforts will not be duplicated.  Occasionally, there are questions that require some discretion in terms of how to count faculty; for those purposes, faculty may e-mail me.  ONLY SIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE POSTED BELOW.

The faculty lists will be finalized by Monday, December 1, and we hope to begin the on-line survey shortly thereafter.

Draft Faculty Lists for New PGR Surveys for 08-09

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 27--LISTS NOT UPDATED SINCE OCTOBER 27:  PLEASE POST ADDITIONS/CORRECTIONS IN COMMENTS BELOW.  THESE LISTS WILL BE FINALIZED WITHIN THE WEEK.  THANKS FOR ALL THE FEEDBACK AND HELP.

I'm now feeling more hopeful that we will be able to complete a new set of PGR surveys for 2008 later this fall.  Accordingly, I'm making available a draft list of faculties for review and correction:  Download pgr_faculty_lists_2008.rtf

A few points that deserve special notice:

1.  Departments are listed alphabetically by name and region (U.S., Canada, U.K., Australasia).

2.  All departments that ranked in 2006 are included here (with the exception of Florida, which has suspended its PhD program).  Faculties surveyed in 2006 that did not score high enough to rank are not included this year, unless changes in the interim seem likely to alter that result.  Several faculties not surveyed recently (or ever before) are included in this round:  Nebraska, UC Santa Cruz, Utah.

3.  If your faculty is not included, and you would like it to be part of the survey, please send me a faculty list (organized like those in the document, above) and I will submit it to the Advisory Board to vote on inclusion.  The criterion for inclusion is that the faculty seems to have a chance to rank in the "top 50" in the US, "the top 15" in the UK, "the top 5" in Australasia, or the "top 5" in Canada.  (In 2006, all departments with scores of 2.2 or higher were ranked--the cut-off for 2008 will likely be similar.)

4.  As in 2006, faculties not included in the survey will still be included in the specialty rankings where appropriate, based either on the 2006 results (assuming no major changes since then) or on the judgment of the Advisory Board.

5.  The category of "affiliated" faculty has been replaced with the cateagory "Cognate Faculty and Philosophers in Other Units," for reasons discussed on the blog this past summer.  Feedback on whether "cognate" faculty are really available for work with philosophy PhD students is especially welcome.

6.  Also very helpful would be information on faculty who are slated to retire at the end of the 2008-09 academic year.

7.  Only faculty at the affected program may post corrections, below.  DO NOT E-MAIL ME CORRECTIONS.  Please post them below, so that efforts will not be duplicated.  Occasionally, there are questions that require some discretion in terms of how to count faculty; for those purposes, faculty may e-mail me.  ONLY SIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE POSTED BELOW.

With luck, we'll finalize the faculty lists in the next few weeks, and be in a position to conduct the surveys by early December, with results on-line come January.  That, in any case, is the optimistic scenario we're aiming for.

Thanks for your help.

Personal Ads of the Randians

Seriously.  (Thanks to Gary Chartier for the pointer.)

Applying Twice to the Same Programs?

An undergraduate student writes:

I'm in a small and unrenowned state school, with wonderful but unrenowned philosophy faculty. I've been given the impression that, not coming from a typical feeder school, I'll need to prove myself outstanding in every way to catch the attention of the top phil mind / phil cog sci programs. My grades are top notch (4.0), my GREs are good (1600), and I expect strong rec. letters--though the signatures on the bottom of most probably won't have the sort of cachet that moves mountains. However, I fear my writing sample is not going to be where it needs to be this time around.

And so the short of it: If I apply to my top programs this year and meet disappointment, have I put myself at a disadvantage trying again with those same programs next year, with a more professional piece of writing? Is it poor form to present myself twice to beleaguered admissions committees? Finally, if I put off applying anyway this year, and pursue an overseas / non-academic opportunity, does this weigh against me at all? In other words, do philosophy B.A.s go stale in the same manner as philosophy Ph.D.'s?

I've gotten many questions like this over the years, so this student's situation is not anomalous I suspect.  Philosophy BAs certainly don't go "stale" in the same way as PhDs, though someone too many years out from undergrad will likely present the question, 'Does this person remember enough philosophy?  Is s/he serious about philosophy?"  But this student's question is more specific, and here it would be helpful to hear from philosophers with experience in admissions.  How do "repeat" applicants fare?  My anecdotal impression is that there is a fair amount of turnover in admissions committees, but not total turnover:  in other words, there is an institutional memory in the form of faculty who are on admissions committees several years in a row.  If that anecdotal evidence is reliable, then it's fair to say that applying two years in a row back-to-back is not a great strategy.  Comments?  I'd ask faculty to post under their own names, but students with experience may post anonymously, as long as there is an e-mail and IP number I can verify (neither will appear).  Thanks.

Leiter v. Shapiro on Legal Philosophy on Bloggingheads TV

Details and link here.

"Family values" at work in Nebraska

Here.

This Nietzsche Conference Might Interest Some Philosophers...

...who don't have a primary interest in Nietzsche.  It would be especially nice if some philosophers of mind and action who aren't otherwise specialists in Nietzsche were there and/or submitted papers.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Rahm Emanuel and Hegel

Story here.

Publishing in "Graduate" Journals?

A young philosopher in a post-doc position writes:

I'm a regular reader of your Leiter reports blog on the philosophy profession. I wonder if you might consider soliciting responses from readers on the subject of graduate journals, by which I mean not journals on the graduate experience, but philosophy journals whose aim is to disseminate the work of graduates and early career philosophers.

My university has recently started one up, but I have misgivings about it (because of this, please don't mention my name if you raise the topic of graduate blogs with your readership). The concern I have about these journals is that they invite the suspicion that they have lower standards than those which  prevail in the profession.

This suspicion simply stems from the fact that the qualifier 'graduate' suggests that they differ in some way from regular journals, and they don't differ in the interests of their authorship or readership, or in the topics, coverage and scope. They do have a restricted and more junior authorship. Youth and inexperience do not matter for publishing in regular journals because there contributions are completely anonymous, so the point of difference that naturally suggests itself is the quality of the work and the standards required for publication.

Whether or not the suspicion is justified, if it is widely shared, graduates should be discouraged from contributing to graduate journals because they risk 'wasting' their good paper ideas in a forum where they won't receive the credit they deserve.

I am inclined to think the suspicion is justified, and that it is a mistake--or in any case, a waste--for young philosophers to publish in such journals:  I don't think they're taken seriously or read.  I'm opening comments in case other philosophers have a different perspective on these journals.  Post only once, please, and non-anonymous comments strongly preferred, as usual.

Philosopher Hacking Honored by SSHRC of Canada with "Gold Medal" for Research

Ian Hacking (emeritus, Toronto) is certainly deserving of this recognition.

Karl Kraus's Favorite Journalist Thomas "No Ideas and the Ability to Express Them" Friedman...

...finally comes clean (at least in the parody issue of the NY Times):

I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write.

I know, you’re thinking I’m going too far. I haven’t always been wrong about everything. I recently made some sense on global warming and what we needed to do about it, for instance.

But to have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as what we have done to Iraq — and ourselves — is outrageous enough to prove that people like me have no business posing as wise men, and, more importantly, that The New York Times has no business continuing to provide me with a national platform.

In any case, I have made a decision: as of today, I will no longer write in this or any other newspaper....

Baffled? I don’t blame you. So I’ll cite some facts to support my decision — a practice, I must admit, I have too seldom followed.

Let’s start with the invasion itself. I was pretty much all for it. Mind you, I was not one of the pundits, reporters, or public figures who said that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. I knew better — but I said it didn’t matter!

Back in February of 2003, I wrote in this space: “Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice — but it’s a legitimate choice.” In other words, we should invade a sovereign state and replace its government in order to remake the world more to our liking.

Now the simple fact is, an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state is a war crime, even when linked to grand ideas of the future of mankind. In fact, that’s exactly what Hitler did, for exactly the same reasons. The Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal called it the “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

What was I thinking? And more importantly, why didn’t anyone stop me?

But wait, it gets worse. Having expressed how acceptable it was to commit Hitler’s signature crime, I then applauded the invasion of Iraq as an “audacious roll of the dice.” It should have occurred to me that this gamble would be unspeakably painful for an untold number of Iraqis who had done nothing to us — in other words, any of them.

Soon, when it became obvious that my pipe dreams for a peaceful and democratic subject nation were just that, I decided to say it was too soon to tell how things would turn out in Iraq, but that we would definitely know in six months to a year. I said this pretty much every six months for five years. And The Times just kept giving me more and more column-inches....

[W]hy are newspapers like The New York Times letting people like me make fools of themselves, mislead the American people, and, worst of all, give their wives a lifetime of ammunition?

To err is human, but to print, reprint, and re-reprint error-mad humans like me is a criminally moronic editorial policy.

Nor, of course, is it only me. Just consider who populates the opinion pages of America’s top newspapers. Bill Kristol, who was actually hired by The Times long after being proven wrong on Iraq. Charles Krauthammer. Robert Novak. Mona Charen. Fred Barnes. The list goes on and on of officially-approved wise men (and a woman or two) who never once doubted that Iraq had vast stockpiles of W.M.D.s. And that’s just in newspapers.

We were all wrong again and again — and the consequences were devastating. Can anyone tell me why any of us should ever be asked, let alone paid, for our opinions ever again? Or, for that matter, why Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz should be allowed behind any sort of desk whatsoever as long as they live?

Copies of this satire really ought to be circulated anywhere this empty vessel is invited to speak. 

On Messrs. Kraus and Friedman, see this earlier item.

(Thanks to Sarah Jeong for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  "The moustache of understanding."  (Thanks to Michael Rosen for the pointer.)

Galeano on Obama

Worth reading, as Galeano usually is.

Which AOS's and AOC's Are in Demand?

An undergraduate in Britain writes:

I am a final year undergraduate student at the University of [name omitted] in the UK and am currently looking in to graduate schools. One of the factors which I am considering is which departments are strong in AOSs and AOCs that are marketable. However to answer this question I need to know which AOSs and AOCs are marketable. I read your article in the Chronicle Careers ten years ago and found it very interesting--for example the fact that Applied Ethics has an almost one to one ration of jobs to candidates.

My question is this: Which AOSs and AOCs have the most favourable ratios of jobs to candidates? If there were a ranking these I would find that very useful. Is there a reliable way of finding out (are there surveys) or do we have to rely on anecdotal evidence?

Of course I understand that it is somewhat perverse to go to graduate school and then choose your field based on job prospects. However it still seems like the information would be useful. For example students who have more than one main interest and are not sure which they prefer, the information could tip the scale in one direction. Even more so if they are choosing between graduate schools based on their specialty rankings, years before they have to write their dissertations. Similarly it could be useful for choosing between equally attractive sounding courses at masters level, for AOCs.

Please do not feel obliged to give me a detailed answer or to post this on your blog. I would however very much appreciate it if you could at least point me in the direction of where I could find some answers to my question (perhaps it has been addressed before). For example, is Applied Ethics still so marketable (I really like Applied Ethics)? 

Comments are open; please post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

"Change We Can Believe in"? Part II

Choosing Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff sounds, I'm afraid, more like Bill Clinton redux.

Philosophy Job Market Wiki Has Come Back to Life for This Year

Here.

Philosophers and Their Interesting Pets, Part II

Sara Chant (Missouri) and her teaching assistant, the Great Dane.

A Philosopher and His Wolf

Several philosophers were kind enough to send me this story.

FDR and the Great Depression: What *Really* Happened

Given ideological fantasies on the American right about what happened during the Great Depression, it is probably worth highlighting Krugman's quick summary of what the actual scholarly research in the field suggests:

[T]here’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.

That said, F.D.R. did not, in fact, manage to engineer a full economic recovery during his first two terms. This failure is often cited as evidence against Keynesian economics, which says that increased public spending can get a stalled economy moving. But the definitive study of fiscal policy in the ’30s, by the M.I.T. economist E. Cary Brown, reached a very different conclusion: fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful “not because it does not work, but because it was not tried.”

This may seem hard to believe. The New Deal famously placed millions of Americans on the public payroll via the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. To this day we drive on W.P.A.-built roads and send our children to W.P.A.-built schools. Didn’t all these public works amount to a major fiscal stimulus?

Well, it wasn’t as major as you might think. The effects of federal public works spending were largely offset by other factors, notably a large tax increase, enacted by Herbert Hoover, whose full effects weren’t felt until his successor took office. Also, expansionary policy at the federal level was undercut by spending cuts and tax increases at the state and local level.

And F.D.R. wasn’t just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion — he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.

What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

There is more detail here.

October JFP

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 10:  SEE SECOND UPDATE, BELOW.

UPDATE:  It appears the APA has pulled the on-line version. 

A couple of readers have sent me the link, for which my thanks.  As expected, it's not a great October JFP, and one worries that some advertised positions with asterisks may yet disappear due to financial problems.  I would, again, remind job seekers to be careful about the timing of their dissertation defense, since, as the saying goes, "PhDs go stale."  (Just to be clear, I take it what the saying means is this:  the farther you are from the year of your PhD without a tenure-track position, the more unfavorable inferences hiring departments will draw about your qualifications.  It's obviously not a rational inference to draw in the midst of an economic crisis, but there it is.)  Unless your advisors tell you otherwise, I would not defend in December just for the sake of being able to say at the APA that you have defended; it is the responsibility of letter writers to indicate whether you will be done or not, and when.  I would, to the extent possible, time defending closer to the time when you know if you have a job--or simply delay defending until next year if it looks like no job offers are materializing.

Thoughts from others on this issue?  Signed comments strongly preferred, though I will entertain anonymous comments from students as long as their e-mail is visible when they submit the comment (it won't appear).

UDPATE:  As two readers have now pointed out, the on-line ads go well beyond the 250+ ads in the October JFP (indeed, they go up to #500 or so).   Many of these will presumably be in the November JFP.  It is possible, then, that the November JFP will make up for a somewhat weaker October JFP.  Let us hope so.

NOVEMBER 12 UPDATE:  I've now seen the November JFP, and while I haven't done a careful count of how many ads also appeared in October, overall it looks pretty bad.  If anyone has done the tallies, please post them in the comments.  I fear this is a pretty grim landscape; I hope faculty and departments will go out of their way this year to support their students on the job market and find ways to extend funding, when necessary, given the difficult job situation.

William Ayers Speaks

So, as we know, in the non-stop shriek of 21st-century media, individuals too far out of the mainstream occasionally become caricatures offered up for the sake of ritual sacrifice and to effect communal bonding among right-thinking folks; one such individual, William Ayers, now speaks.

"Change We Can Believe in"? Part I

The prudent wing of the Republocrat party spreads its wings.

Wilson from CUNY Grad Center to Aberdeen

Catherine Wilson (early modern philosophy, ethics), Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will take up the post of Professor of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, effective, July 1, 2009, where she will join, among others, Stephen Gaukroger (early modern), who is now half-time at Aberdeen (he also continues to hold a post at the University of Sydney).  Additional appointments are planned, and when the postgraduate programs are reopened for admissions, Aberdeen will clearly be a very attractive destination for students interested in the history of modern philosophy.

UPDATE:  I am told that Aberdeen will be accepting PhD applicants for 2009.

The Job Market and the Economy

As feared, bad news about the academic job market is trickling in from various sources.  In addition to some state universities cancelling advertised searches (I've heard of several confirmed cases on the law school teaching market, but I assume this also affects philosophy searches at the same universities), I know of one private university that had advertised multiple positions, including open rank, which may now only be able to make one junior appointment.   There is not a heck of a lot one can do under these circumstances, but, to the extent viable, do consider some of the advice here.  (I was at a conference this weekend talking to someone from a top private university who told me that it's very hard for their PhD students to delay defending because of strict funding limits.)  The apparent severity of the financial crisis now upon us makes it, I am sorry to say, unlikely that we are going to see a significant rebound in the academic job market in 09-10.   I find particularly ominous the remarks of my former Texas colleague Mark Yudof, now President of the University of California system and a savvy observer of public higher education, in the Times article linked above:

On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed a midyear budget cut of $65.5 million for the University of California system — on top of the $48 million reduction already in the budget.

“Budget cuts mean that campuses won’t be able to fill faculty vacancies, that the student-faculty ratio rises, that students have lecturers instead of tenured professors,” said Mark G. Yudof, president of the California system. “Higher education is very labor intensive. We may be getting to the point where there will have to be some basic change in the model.”

But what might those changes be?  Much, much larger classes?  Fewer tenure-stream faculty, more adjuncts and lecturers on temporary contracts?  The full privatization of the elite state universities, so that they can charge tuition to sustain their faculties?  All of the above, one suspects.

UPDATE:  Even wealthy Harvard feels the strain.  (Thanks to A.P. Taylor for the link.)

Kristallnacht (J. Stanley)

Today is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. My grandmother was living across the street from the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, where her father was chief cantor. Her life was intertwined with that synagogue, which she called her "house". I've posted her account of its destruction on Kristallnacht here.

Any Departments Wishing to be Included in the New PGR Surveys

About a dozen departments have contacted me so far asking to be considered for inclusion in the new PGR surveys.  (The draft faculty lists are here, and see the comments for corrections, many of which have not yet been incorporated.)   If any other departments wish to be included, please e-mail me a current faculty list in a form conforming to those on the draft faculty lists.  The Advisory Board will begin voting by the middle of next week on which additional programs to include in the survey.

As noted in the earlier posting accompanying the draft faculty lists:

2.  All departments that ranked in 2006 are included here (with the exception of Florida, which has suspended its PhD program).  Faculties surveyed in 2006 that did not score high enough to rank are not included this year, unless changes in the interim seem likely to alter that result.  Several faculties not surveyed recently (or ever before) are included in this round:  Nebraska, UC Santa Cruz, Utah.

3.  If your faculty is not included, and you would like it to be part of the survey, please send me a faculty list (organized like those in the document, above) and I will submit it to the Advisory Board to vote on inclusion.  The criterion for inclusion is that the faculty seems to have a chance to rank in the "top 50" in the US, "the top 15" in the UK, "the top 5" in Australasia, or the "top 5" in Canada.  (In 2006, all departments with scores of 2.2 or higher were ranked--the cut-off for 2008 will likely be similar.)

Faculties not included in the overall ranking will still be ranked in the 'specialty' categories, using the 2006 results and/or based on the judgment of Advisory Board members with pertinent expertise.

Faculties considering asking for inclusion should bear in mind that PGR evaluators are, in general, a 'tough' group:  even the best departments in the Anglophone world fail to score a 5.0, and many evaluators rank departments "0" (i.e., inadequate for a PhD program) without much hesitation.  We certainly want to make sure that the overall rankings do not omit programs that would perform competitively, but there may also be costs for departments in being formally evaluated in this process.  Again, even if a department is not included in the overall surveys, we will make every effort to insure fair representation of programs with particular areas of excellence in the specialty rankings.

Maya Angelou on the Obama Victory

This is interesting as well as moving, and it includes a poem!

The Results of Yesterday's Presidential Poll of Readers of This Blog

As of about 3 pm  EST, there were 392 votes cast as follows:

1.  Barack Obama (81%)

2.  John McCain (10%)

3.  Ralph Nader (4%)

4.  Bob Barr (3%)

5.  Cynthia McKinney, Chuck Baldwin, Roger Calero (each 1%)

While there were 38 votes for Senator McCain among the readers, there were 39 votes for the third party candidates, including 21 for third party candidates of the left.  I suppose there are no real surprises here, certainly not in the overwhelming support for Obama.  I suspect some of the McCain supporters are religious conservatives and some are libertarians opposing an Obama victory.  In any case, for the 14% of readers who voted for some candidate of the 'right' (though I'm a bit reluctant to lump Barr in with Baldwin and McCain), you'll be happy to know that I'm hopeful an Obama victory will permit me to ignore politics for a long time! 

A taxonomy of philosophy?

David Chalmers (ANU) is working on a taxomony of philosophy for a new on-line resource.  Help him out with feedback here.

Election Post-Mortem

As all readers know, Obama won the election by a safe margin in both the popular vote and the electoral college (the latter being America's strange system to insure that there isn't too much popular input into who is elected President).   This is certainly a happier outcome than the one four years ago.  As I remarked before, Obama is educated and he is civilized, and there are reasons to hope that he has a capacity for genuine imaginative empathy with other human beings, unlike the current morally vacant occupant of the White House.  That capacity alone might make a meaningful difference.

The Democrats--the generally prudent wing of the Republocrat Party--made gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but not as much as had been hoped--indeed, it looks like, in the Senate, the Democrats will be well short of a filibuster-proof majority of 60, especially when one remembers that one of the "Democrats" is the McCain supporter and all-around reprehensible human being Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.  That fact will put significant constraints on the kinds of nominations to the federal courts Obama can pursue, though there is reason to hope that he may still be able to have a decisive influence on the shape of the U.S. Supreme Court.  (The Supreme Court matters, however, far less than most lay people believe:  vide Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope and L.A. Powe, Jr., The Warren Court and American Politics:  the Court is, in short, mainly a follower, not a leader, when it comes to social and economic policy.)

The NY Times opines that Obama's "triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens."  This, alas, is nonsense:  one need only recall that two months ago, Obama/Biden were in a dead heat with the war-monger and the ignorant yahoo.  Only the intervention of the quasi-collapse of the financial system tipped the scales decisively to Obama.   That the margin of victory was not even more decisive, given the economic catastrophe, is somewhat troubling.  Perhaps lingering racism explains it, it is rather hard to know.

Herewith some of my thoughts about the Obama victory, a victory I certainly welcome.

Obviously it is notable that less than two generations after the end of apartheid in the United States, an African-American has been elected President of the country.  That is certainly salutary, but not nearly as important as the fact that the African-American who is assuming this position of national and international prominence is neither a bizarre reactionary like Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court nor complicit in world-historic criminality like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.  Instead, the new African-American President is a 'liberal' and 'progressive' in some sense of those terms.  The American right has done well at co-opting the increasingly mindless liberal rhetoric of "diversity" on behalf of its reactionary agenda--witness Thomas, Powell, and Rice--but perhaps, with the election of an African-American President who is not a reactionary, we may now observe that the fact that he is an African-American is one of the least important facts about his victory.

The United States, for those who are old enough to remember, went "off the rails" as a civilized country with Reagan's election in 1980 and the triumph of naked plutocracy that it signalled.  Reagan gave us unabashed union-busting, massive wealth redistribution to the super rich, the first fake "war on terrorism" (that one never gained much traction), total neglect of the AIDS epidemic (at the cost of millions of lives), a criminal surrogate war of aggression and terrorism against Nicarauga, and, ironically enough, a classically Keynsian economic stimulus package in the form of massive deficit-spending on military hardware.  The legacy of that period has now been so thoroughly white-washed in popular American culture that it is almost unrecognizable, but both the whitewash and its legacy are indicative of the additional damage that Reagan did to the nation by debasing the language and shifting the entire spectrum of what could pass as 'sane' opinion to the far right.  The consequences of this cultural catastrophe has been with us since:  eight years of a Democratic presidency under Clinton predicated on domestic policies that were (except on a few social issues) far to the right of Richard Nixon; the idea that a national media which is almost unrelenting in its apologetics for the plutocracy somehow suffers from "liberal bias" because it doesn't reliably indulge the prejudices of religious-inspired bigots and other ignoramuses; and, most recently, the idea that Reagan represented some inspiring "conservative" ideal that has been betrayed by George W. Bush and his bestiary of madmen, people who are not only Reagan's heirs in terms of policy, but in many cases, in terms of being the very same people carrying out the policies of a plutocracy run amok!

I confess I was hoping for a victory of Obama and the Democrats that had been more decisive--both in the popular vote (and without the intervention of an economic crisis) and in the Senate and House results--such that we might safely conclude that the country in which my children live was finally back "on the rails" of post-Enlightenment civilization.  Right now, I'm unsure.  The "lunatic right"--in America, this is now mostly a redundant phrase--thinks that Obama is a "Marxist" and a "socialist."  One may hope they are right--and, contrary to Professor Myers, with whose general cautionary remarks I am in basic agreement, there is actually some reason to think that though he ran as a mealy-mouthed centrist, he may in fact pursue a far more progressive agenda, certainly one more progressive than Clinton's.  But there isn't only the question of whether Obama will be more progressive than his endless forays into public pop-psychotherapy would let on--it's also whether what constitutes the "right" in American politics will change.  It is hard not to agree with the sentiments of the economist Brad DeLong (Berkeley) who observed that, "This Republican Party needs to be burned, razed to the ground, and the furrows sown with salt." 

Why couldn't the United States have a multi-party system like Canada's in which the "conservative" opposition consists not of some alagamation of moral troglodytes, free-market utopians unhinged from reality, and unabashed apostles of self-enrichment at the expense of the majority, but rather represents those ready to engage in a reasonably rational contest with the social democratic left over the best, realistic means by which to promote human well-being along all its dimensions?   Terms like "liberal" and "conservative" function in popular discourse as indexicals:  what they refer to depends entirely on the speaker.  If an Obama Presidency can change the referents of these terms in the United States, such that "conservative" no longer picks out people whose views would put them on the borderline sociopathic right of most civilized nations, he will have done something quite important.   Whether he can do that and cope with the domestic and foreign catastrophes that are the legacy of the last quarter-century is the question now before the world.   One can only hope he succeeds.

UPDATE:  A propos the themes in the last two paragraphs, this short blog posting by Krugman is apt.

Serious Question: Whom Did You *Really* Vote for Yesterday?

Just curious what the breakdown is like among regular readers of this blog.  Thanks.

Serious question: if you voted yesterday, whom did you vote for?
	John McCain
	Barack Obama
	Ralph Nader
	Bob Barr
	Cynthia McKinney
	Chuck Baldwin
	Gloria La Riva
	Brian Moore
	Roger Calero
pollcode.com free polls

Thoughts on the Election Outcome from Readers?

Comments are open; post only once and you must post with your full name and an e-mail address.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

If Obama Loses, It's My Fault

It's true.   (Well, not really, I would have voted for Nader.)

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the link.)

Your Official Leiter Reports Presidential Poll

Please vote often!

Who would you REALLY like to see elected President of the U.S.?
	John McCain
	Barack Obama
	Rev. Jeremiah Wright
	William Ayers
	Sarah Palin
	A Moose
	PZ Myers, aka, "Pharyngula"
	Glenn Reynolds, aka, "InstaIgnorance"
	Immanuel Kant
	Any member of the PGR Advisory Board
	Any member of the Texas Taliban
	Jason Stanley
	Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate
	Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate
	Saul Kripke, Schock Prize Winner
	The Anonymous Proprietor of the Now Defunct "Dadahead" Blog
	Stephen Colbert
	Ali G.
	A Philosopher Named Cohen (G.A., Joshua, or Stewart)
	Any Four-Dimensionalist
pollcode.com free polls

Click on the "Submit Query" button on the right to see the results so far.

BREAKING NEWS:  EARLY VOTING RESULTS 10:30 AM EST:  Things are not looking good for the Illinois Senator with the philosophy vote:  with only 10% of the votes cast, Senator Obama trails Immanuel Kant (12%), Stephen Colbert (13%), A Philosopher Named Cohen (13%), and Any Four-Dimensionalist (12%).  There are reasons to suspect, however, that metaphysicians are over-represented in this sample.  We'll be watching this carefully throughout the day.  Meanwhile, Senator McCain, with 3% of the vote, is in a tie with former Weatherman William Ayers, Professor Myers of Pharyngula, and Ali G. 

UPDATE 1 PM EST:  Our scientific survey has been discovered by Pharyngula!  Expect a surge for Professor Myers.  Metaphysicians, Kantians, and political philosophers/epistemologists will have to get on the move if this is going to be a horse race! 

VOTE UPDAT 5 PM EST:  It turns out that the 1033 votes for Professor Myers were spoiled, and so have to be discounted.  (Sorry, Paul!)  Here then are the actual results as of 5 pm:

1.  Barack Obama (326 votes)

2.  Stephen Colbert (256 votes)

3.  A Moose (144 votes)

4.  Immanuel Kant (100 votes)

5.  Paul Krugman (79 votes)

6.  Any Four-Dimensionalist (76 votes)

7.  A Philosopher Named Cohen (49 votes)

8.  Ali G.  (41 votes)

9.  William Ayers (39 votes)

10.  Saul Kripke (31 votes)

I was particularly pleased to see that Professor Ayers got more votes than Senator McCain and Governor Palin combined! 

If the election was run by dogs

This is funny.

UPDATE:  Ruchira Paul points out that the election may be run by dogs!

Galbraith on Economics, Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, etc.

Lots of good stuff in this short interview with economist James Galbraith (Texas); an excerpt:

Do you find it odd that so few economists foresaw the current credit disaster? Some did. The person with the most serious claim for seeing it coming is Dean Baker, the Washington economist. I saw it coming in general terms.

But there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis? Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three.

What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science? It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless....

Regulation is the new mantra, and even Alan Greenspan in his mea culpa before Congress seemed to regret he hadn’t used more of it. I would say a day late and a dollar short. Greenspan blotted his copybook disastrously with his support of deregulated finance. This is a follower of Ayn Rand, an old Objectivist. His belief was you can’t really regulate and discipline the market and you shouldn’t try. I think Greenspan bears a high, high degree of responsibility for what has happened.

UPDATE:  And here's Galbraith on Moyers.  (Thanks to Charlie Huenemann for that link.)

UK Postgraduates Have Their Own Website and Blog

Here.

Historian of Early Modern Philosophy by Day, Syd Barrett Reincarnated by Night!

Wow!  This is sure to push Colorado into the top 25!

Haslanger on Bloggingheads TV

Sally Haslanger (MIT) talks about issues in feminist philosophy, the situation for women in academic philosophy, her experience as an adoptive parent of African-American children, and other topics.

Republicans Turning to Oxford Philosopher to Defeat Obama!

Seriously.   Of course, it did not quite go as planned.

(Thanks to Richard Greene for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Here is an account of the affair from Peter Millican (Oxford).