Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Statement by the Columbia Philosophy Department about recent events on their campus

Pretty sensible and seems quite right:

The Philosophy Department is concerned for the safety, academic progress, and rights of our students. We condemn all forms of hate speech, harassment, and incitements to violence. We also regard it as quite implausible that erecting a tent on a lawn constitutes a clear and present danger, and we urge the lifting of suspensions of students whose charges stem from that act. Thus we support the joint statement by the Columbia and Barnard Chapters of the American Association of University Professors and the letter from the Columbia College Student Council. We want President Shafik to succeed, and for mutual trust between all parties on campus to be regained. Such success and trust requires visible engagement by the President and Trustees with the procedures of faculty governance.

Cambridge University college (Emmanuel) dismisses philosophy Fellow because his views conflict with DEI (UPDATED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 23--UPDATED

Peter Singer describes what happened here, and a brief news item is here.  Emmanuel College has really disgraced itself; will Cambridge University follow suit?  (We've discussed Dr. Cofnas's views before.  His views do conflict with DEI, but any college that thinks that justifies rescinding an appointment has no commitment to academic freedom.)

UPDATE:  Philosopher Jeff McMahan writes:

In your post on April 23 about the expulsion of Nathan Cofnas from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, there is a link to a short piece by Peter Singer, in which he quotes from the letter Cofnas received informing him of his impending dismissal:

"The Committee first considered the meaning of the blog and concluded that it amounted to, or could reasonably be construed as amounting to, a rejection of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI and EDI) policies. … The Committee concluded that the core mission of the College was to achieve educational excellence and that diversity and inclusion were inseparable from that. The ideas promoted by the blog therefore represented a challenge to the College’s core values and mission."

It is worth noting one implication of the claim that the achievement of educational excellence is inseparable from policies of diversity and inclusion – namely, that there could not have been educational excellence anywhere until quite recently, when these policies were first introduced.

"No one buys books"

This is depressing, based on data revealed during a DOJ suit opposing a book publisher merger.

Emerson on Trump

Political theorist Michael Bacon calls my attention to this passage from Emerson's essay "Demonology": 

It would be easy in the political history of every time to furnish examples of this irregular success, men having a force which without virtue, without shining talent, yet makes them prevailing. No equal appears in the field against them. A power goes out from them which draws all men and events to favor them. The crimes they commit, the exposures which follow, and which would ruin any other man, are strangely overlooked, or do more strangely turn to their account.

As this NYT piece the other day made clear, Trump's prospects for winning again in November are very real.   None of this is surprising once one bears in mind the lessons of Achen and Bartels on how democracy really works.

 

Seven philosophers elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

They are:  Cora Diamond (Virginia, emerita), John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside), Jim Joyce (Michigan), Eva Feder Kittay (Stony Brook, emerita), Gideon Rosen (Princeton), Paul Taylor (UCLA), and Catherine Wilson (U of York [UK]).  Professors Diamond and Fischer were long overdue!   (Professor Diamond was so overdue that I had assumed she was a Fellow for many years already!)

(For some background, see this earlier post.)

German Chancellor: Putin has no right to be invoking Kant

True, but neither does the German Chancellor.  Of course, Kant, like all famous philosophers, has had a lot of odd lip-service loyalists and fans, including many Nazis.

(Thanks to John Styles for the pointer.)

Federal antidiscrimination law does not require campus crackdowns

This piece by Cornell law professor Michael Dorf is worth reading.  The Title VI arguments are spurious.

Lateral moves/retirements since the 2021 Philosophical Gourmet Report: 2024 edition

In addition to the separate posts announcing (generally tenured) faculty moves, I will keep a running list of all lateral moves (and retirements and deaths) not reflected in the faculty lists for the last PGR (some moves that took place after the last PGR were reflected in the faculty list, because the editors knew of them).  I will start a new list for each academic year, so that the list does not get unwieldy.  (The 2022 list is here, with a couple of late additions in bold, and the 2023 list is here.)  Unless otherwise noted, the appointment (or retirement) takes effect in 2024.  I will move this to the front periodically, putting recent additions in bold.  Untenured lateral moves will be noted as such, otherwise the move is with tenure.  A lateral move is one from one tenure-stream position to another either into or out of a program offering the PhD or terminal MA.  In addition I will list retirements and also deaths of non-emeritus faculty.  Please e-mail me with additions or corrections.

*Luvell Anderson (philosophy of language, philosophy of race, aesthetics) from Syracuse University to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

*Sam Baron (metaphysics, philosophy of science) from the Australian Catholic University to the University of Melbourne. 

*Amy Berg (ethics, political philosophy) from Oberlin College to Rice University (untenured lateral).

*Kyle Blumberg (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind) from the Australian Catholic University to the University of Melbourne.

*Gwen Bradford (ethics) from Rice University to the University of Toronto.

*Daniel Brudney (political philosophy, Marx) at the University of Chicago is entering on a phased retirement, and will be half-time through 2029.

*Sam Carter (philosophy of language, epistemology, logic) from Dianoia Institute of Philosophy/Australian Catholic University to University College London.

*Monima Chadha (Indian philosophy) from Monash University to Oxford University.

*Lu Chen (philosophy of mathematics & physics, metaphysics, philosophical logic) from Koç University (Turkey) to the University of Southern California (effective January 2024) (untenured lateral).

*Maudemarie Clark (Nietzsche) will retire from the University of California, Riverside at the end of June 2024.

*Edward Elliott (philosophy of mind, decision theory) from the University of Leeds to the University of Notre Dame.

*Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (political philosophy, contemporary European philosophy) from Syracuse University to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (joint with Political Science).

*Samuel Fletcher (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul to Oxford University.

*Peter Fritz (logic, philosophy of logic, metaphysics) from the Diaonia Institute of Philosophy/Australian Catholic University to University College London.

*J. Dmitri Gallow (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, rational choice theory) from the Dianoia Institute/Australian Catholic University to the University of Southern California.

*Berys Gaut (aesthetics, ethics) will retire from the University of St Andrews in August 2024.

*Warren Goldfarb (logic, history of analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein) will retire from Harvard University at the end of calendar year 2024.

*Simon Goldstein (philosophy of language, epistemology, AI safety) from the Dianoia Institute/Australican Catholic University to the University of Hong Kong (effective January 2024).

*Robert Gooding-Williams (social-political philosophy, philosophy of race, 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy) from Columbia University to Yale University.

*Jeremy Goodman (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic) from the University of Southern California to Johns Hopkins University (effective January 2024).

*E.J. Green (philosophy of mind & cognitive science) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Johns Hopkins University (effective January 2024).

*Jessica Isserow (metaethics, ethics, moral psychology) from the University of Leeds to the University of Notre Dame.

*Elizabeth Jackson (epistemology, philosophy of religion) from Toronto Metropolitan University to St. Louis University.

*Simon Kirchin (ethics, metaethics) from the University of Kent to the University of Leeds (effective January 2024).

*Brian Kogelmann (political philosophy) from West Virginia University (Business School) to Purdue University (Philosophy & Political Science).

Blast from the past: Ronald Reagan, the President who sent America off the rails

Back in 2011.  His legacy, of course, now includes the monster-child Trump and his Republican Party.

In Memoriam: Robert H. Kane (1938-2024)

Professor Kane, emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin (where he spent almost his entire career), died this past weekend.   He was internationally known for his revival of the libertarian position on free will in the 1990s, although he had wide-ranging philosophical interests in value theory and philosophy of religion.  He was one of my favorite colleagues when I was at UT Austin, a lovely human being as well as talented philosopher.   Professor David Sosa, Chair of the Texas Department, kindly shared this memorial announcement:

The Department of Philosophy at UT Austin mourns the passing of its longtime member Robert Kane, who was University Distinguished Teaching Professor and Professor of Philo­sophy (Emeritus).

The author of seven books and more than eighty articles on the philosophy of mind, free will and action, ethics, value theory, political philosophy and philosophy of religion, inclu­ding Free Will and Values, Through the Moral Maze, The Signifi­cance of Free Will (inaugural winner of the Hamilton Faculty Book Award), A Contem­pora­ry Introduction to Free Will, and Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom, Kane was also editor of The Ox­ford Handbook of Free Will.

Kane was the recipient of seventeen major teaching awards at the University of Texas, including the “Presi­dent’s Excellence Award,” and was in 1995 named one of the initial members of the Universi­ty’s Aca­demy of Distin­guished Tea­chers. 

Long a leading defender of a traditional “libertarian” view of free will, Kane was known for his attempts to reconcile such a view with modern science, and to articulate its implications for ethics, politics, and law.

Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Kane or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

AAUP report on the (terrible) state of academic freedom in Florida public higher education

Here.  Governor Viktor DeSantis has done real and perhaps lasting damage.

(Thanks to Jason Stanley for the pointer.)

How Netanyahu's government is endangering Israel's survival

This rings true to me, alas; some excerpts:

War is a military means for achieving political aims, and there is one key yardstick by which to measure success in war: Were the political aims achieved? Following the horrendous massacre of October 7, Israel needed to liberate the hostages and disarm Hamas, but these should not have been its only aims. In light of the existential threat posed to Israel by Iran and its agents of chaos, Israel also needed to deepen its alliance with Western democracies, strengthen cooperation with moderate Arab forces, and work to establish a stable regional order. However, the Netanyahu government ignored all these aims, and instead focused on revenge. It has failed to secure the release of all the hostages, and has not disarmed Hamas. Worse, it intentionally inflicted a humanitarian disaster on the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and thereby undermined the moral and geopolitical basis for Israel's existence....

After six months of war, many of the hostages are still in captivity and Hamas is still on its feet, but the Gaza Strip is devastated, many thousands of its people have been killed, and most of its population are now famished refugees. Together with Gaza, Israel's international standing is also in ruins, and we are now hated and ostracized even by many of our former friends....

Refereeing frequency, redux

Last week's thread on frequency of refereeing and the subsequent poll generaetd more than 500 responses; here are the results:

How many journal articles do you referee in a typical year?   Selection   Votes  none  2% 12  1-6  48% 261  7-12  31% 171  13-24  15% 81  25-50  3% 18  50 or more  1% 5  548 total

If these results are representative, then it's clear a minority of referees are refereeing a majority of the papers.  Thoughts from readers?

The Columbia University disaster

The administration has completely caved in to the Republican Congressional campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian speech on campus.  What an embarrassment. And this will spread until some university has the courage to stand up and say, "No."

(For more on Columbia, see this discussion by a Columbia law professor of some of the dubious decisions of the administration.)

Parmenidean oneness vs. common sense and human life

Michael Della Rocca vs. Tim Maudlin and Kathleen Higgins at IAITV.

In Memoriam: Charles D. Parsons (1933-2024)

Professor Parsons, who was emeritus at Harvard, died yesterday evening.   He taught for many years at Columbia University, before returning to Harvard (where he had taken his Ph.D.) in 1989, and where he spent the remainder of his career.  He was well-known for his work on Kant and in the philosophy of mathematics.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Parsons or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(I never met Professor Parsons, but I did enjoy corresponding with him occasionally, as he was a reader of the blog, and would occasionally share news or perspective.)

UPDATE:   Philosopher Gila Sher (UC San Diego) kindly shares this lovely remembrance of Professor Parsons:  Download Charles Parsons - Appreciation by Gila Sher

An interview with Dennett...

...at IAITV.  And here is a much better obituary of Dennett (i.e., no philosophical mistakes!) than most of those in the popular media (including the NYT).

In Memoriam: Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

A longtime member of the philosophy faculty at Tufts University, Professor Dennett was best-known within philosophy for his work in philosophy of mind and on free will, although outside philosophy he was famous as one of the "New Atheists" and as a champion of evolutionary explanations.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Dennett or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Eric Schliesser for the information about his death.)

More on stipends for Canadian PhD students

A propos yesterday's post, note that the dollar figures are Canadian dollars, not U.S. dollars.  A graduate student in philosophy at University of Toronto writes to say their stipend--in Toronto!--is only $26,000 (Canadian).  How are Canadian graduate students managing?  Do you take out loans?  Do most students work part-time in addition to studies and TAing?

Graduate teaching assistant strike at the University of Western Ontario ("Western") (UPDATED)

4th year PhD student Charles Bakker at Western writes:

The reason that I am writing to you is because I know that you have a soft spot for helping potential graduate students discern which schools/programs to apply for, and I was hoping you could help spread the word about how things are right now for graduate students at Western. 

As it stands, the graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are on strike at Western, as you can see here: https://globalnews.ca/news/10417515/graduate-teaching-assistants-on-strike-western-university/ The reason we are striking is because the average graduate student at Western is only guaranteed to receive roughly $23,000 per year, even though the University itself recognizes that the cost of living in our beautiful city of London, Ontario is now over $40,000 per year. While it is true that our hourly wage as GTAs is competitive, as well as over twice what the minimum wage is here in Ontario, the fact remains that GTAs are only allowed to work 10 hours a week (overtime is frowned upon). What is further, what we earn as GTAs is part of our guaranteed funding package. So, it is not like we are earning money that is additional to our funding package. Even if we were allowed to work more hours, this would only cut into the amount of time that we have to work on our own research.

Blast from the past: Fun with the smear merchants at "Campus Watch" and Daniel Pipes

Back in 2017.  Still quite amusing.

"We are not a school--we are a hospital with a football team"

Sound familiar?  

(Thanks to Arthur Smith for the pointer.)

When it rains, it pours--and a question about refereeing for journals

I've received four different referee requests in the space of two days this week (two legal philosophy related, two Nietzsche related), and have had to decline them all, as I have an outstanding referee report that is now a couple of days late (plus, on the quarter system, the big grading crush is coming up imminently).  It's pretty rare to get so many requests at the same time, but it does make me wonder how much refereeing tenured faculty are doing in a given year--by which I mean, refereeing journal articles (not book proposals etc.).  We had a thread on this topic back in 2009, and it might be interested to see if anything has changed.  Please use a real email address, but instead of your name, just describe your position, e.g., "Full Professor for 20 years at R1 university," "Associate Professor, recently promoted, liberal arts college," "Full Professor, liberal arts college with heavy teaching load," "Associate Professor, state university," etc.

UPDATE:  A commenter, below, suggested a poll might be more informative, so here goes.  Respond to the poll only if you get asked to referee papers.

How many journal articles do you referee in a typical year?

none

 

1-6

 

7-12

 

13-24

 

25-50

 

50 or more

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

 

AFTER ABOUT 2 1/2 HOURS AND 200+ VOTES:  here are some preliminary results:

 

How many journal articles do you referee in a typical year?   Selection   Votes  none  1% 3  1-6  48% 98  7-12  31% 63  13-24  14% 29  25-50  5% 10  50 or more  0% 1  204 total

The actual William F. Buckley, Jr.

A good corrective to the recent whitewash documentary.

Blast from the past: In praise of terminal M.A. programs

Back in 2015, and still relevant.  If the massive increase in competition for PhD program slots we saw this year continues, these programs will become even more important.

Essays by philosophers who were the first in their family to go to university...

...including Christine Korsgaard and Graham Priest, among others.   The site's rationale is here.

In Memoriam: Robert M. Adams (1937-2024)

Professor Adams, a leading contributor to metaphysics, the study of early modern philosophy (esp. Leibniz), philosophy of religion and ethics, did graduate work at Cornell, taught briefly at Michigan, and then spent most of his career at UCLA, before taking over the Department of Philosophy at Yale, then in receivership, circa 1992.  He retired from Yale in 2004, and taught at Oxford where his wife, the philosopher and medievalist, Marilyn McCord Adams, had taken up a position.  After Oxford, he spent time in the departments at North Carolina/Chapel Hill and Rutgers.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Adams or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work in any of the many areas he wrote in.

(As a rookie job seeker in 1992-93, I had an Eastern APA interview with UCLA.  Robert Adams was in the room, and his poker face in response to my answers to questions was unforgettable--whether the answers were good or not so good, his expression did not change!  I'll never forget it!)

Petition to the President of Hobart & William Smith Colleges regarding the illegal suspension of a professor for her legally protected speech

Here, with background here.  Please sign!  This case is egregious.

Some curious--and some alarming--facts about the U.S. Supreme Court...

...courtesy of law professor Eric Segall (Georgia State).

Mass resignations of editors from journals are happening in fields other than philosophy

Nature covers the story.  (Wiley is a culprit in one of the featured stories, as in philosophy.  And, yes, there is discussion about moving the PGR from Wiley given these events.) 

(Thanks to Nathan Ballantyne for the pointer.)

Why the huge increase in applications to top PhD programs this year? (Or was the increase more widespread?)

Following up on yesterday's post, a commenter there reported the following statistics:  "Yale had 580 applications, NYU had 450, Rutgers had 350, all for 9-10 admits. MIT purportedly had almost 500 applications--while having 300ish in the past--for 8 admits."   That is consistent with the anecdotal reports I have heard from elsewhere, also "top 10" programs.    Notre Dame, a top 15 but not top 10 program, reported a 21% increase in applications. 

What is going on?  Philosophy departments are closing left and right, tenured faculty are being axed, this doesn't seem an obvious time for a huge explosion of interest in graduate study of philosophy.   One possibility is that the difficult job market is leading more students to target the top programs, which have had and continue to have the best outcomes for graduates (i.e., not simply tenure-track jobs but tenure-track jobs at schools less likely to axe their philosophy programs--e.g., major research universities, elite liberal arts colleges).   Some data on applications at PhD programs outside the top 25 or 30 might shed light on this hypothesis.  Another possibility is that there is pent up demand for spots in PhD programs in the wake of the pandemic, when many students had their studies disrupted and some programs stopped accepting students.

Faculty involved in admissions can post without their name, but please use a real email address, which will not appear.  Students may also post anonymously, but please use a real email address as well.

UPDATE:  Over night, some comments were submitted to yesterday's thread that bear on the question raised here; for example:

Got an offer from two top 5 programs (PGR). Beyond what has been mentioned above, I personally see three reasons:
1. Many top programs got rid of GRE's as a requirement. I didn't do those either, and it was a major reason why I applied to US programs in the first place. I still think it was a mistake to get rid of them. (Yes, this has already been so when Covid was around, but also... Covid was around. So you'd expect much less applications then)
2. MUCH more anecdotal: My sense lately has been that many people have been expressing a growing appreciation for rigorous philosophy; feminist and trans issues, scepticism against science, conspiracy theories, certain geopolitical happenings; basically the topics people constantly talk about, are highly philosophical, and my personal experience was that from journalists over scientists even to my parents, people have been appreciating philosophy as a field much more. I'm wondering if you had similar experiences.
3. Perhaps the supreme court decision against certain forms of affirmative action motivated a lot of additional students to take their shot. I don't think this is too plausible, but reality is often counterintuitive. Only the numbers could tell. I can also personally say that two years ago, I was very sceptical to apply because of many DEI related issues. Those worries have reduced massively since. But maybe that's an internal development, not an external one.

It would be interesting to hear from others about what role, if any, these kinds of considerations played.

NYU makes senior offers to Kosch, Lederman

Since today is decision day, and this has been made public at NYU, it seems important to get this out there for any students who might be affected:  the Department of Philosophy at New York University has extended senior offers to Michelle Kosch (Kant, post-Kantian philosophy [esp. Fichte, Kierkegaard]) at Cornell University and Harvey Lederman (logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, Chinese philosophy) at the University of Texas at Austin.  

This has been quite a PhD admissions season...

...or at least that has been my impression from students I was writing for or have met/corresponded with during the process.  According to one report from an admitted student at a top 5 program, that program had nearly double the number of applications from the prior year!   How widespread is this phenomenon?  And what would explain an increase in applications?    Curious to hear from those doing admissions as well as those who applied.  And congratulations to those who were admitted in this cycle!

AI comes full circle in education

First, the worry was that students were using it to write their papers; now it turns out instructors are using it to evaluate them!  What do readers think?  Have any of you used AI this way?

Brazen violation of contractual rights of a faculty member at Hobart & William Smith Colleges

Professor Jodi Dean, an anti-Zionist political theorist at Hobart & William Smith, a liberal arts college in upstate New York, wrote a blog post a few days ago expressing support for the Hamas attack on Israel last October, and has now been suspended from teaching by the college.  I am not, shall we say, a fan of this genre, but that is neither here nor there.  Professor Dean's college is committed to the AAUP academic freedom principles, and her speech is clearly covered by the AAUP protection for extramural speech.   Hobart & William Smith Colleges is now in breach of contract.  That the President is a lawyer, no less, is a case study in "the rules in the books, and the rules in action" are often two different things.  The President should be fired, and Professor Dean should be immediately restored to the classroom.  I fear neither will happen, but I hope FIRE and/or the AFA will provide legal assistance to challenge this lawless conduct by the college.

The message from the benighted President is below the fold.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Universe, "Spanish Feeling," 1971

ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 4, 2017

It doesn't get any more obscure than the British band "Universe" (background here); the whole album is worth a listen for fans of the rock of that period, but here's a favorite of mine:

 

Two philosophers win Guggenheim Fellowships

They are:   Jenann Ismael (Johns Hopkins) and Barbara Montero (Notre Dame).  In addition, classicist Gretchen Reydams-Schils (Notre Dame), who works on ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, also won a Guggenheim.

(Thanks to Steve Gross for the pointer.)

"Law is a Moral Practice"

I review a recent book of legal philosophy.  One puzzling feature of the book is that the author gives different formulations of its title thesis.  (The review has already been a "hit" on Twitter!)

Chat GPT does Hegel!

Philosopher Paul Studtmann was struggling through Hegel's Encyclopedia, and decided to ask ChatGPT for help with the "Absolute Spirit" chapter.  He offered the following instruction:  "Please rewrite the following passage from Hegel in language that a five-year-old can understand…."  He then entered each section of the chapter for ChatGPT to "translate" as it were.  The result is actually pretty remarkable:  Download Absolute_Spirit_5_ELI5

Only 1.6% of *state* legislators are working-class people

Not a surprise, but still a stunning figure.

Declining Admissions Offers in a Timely Way

MOVING TO FRONT, SINCE RELEVANT AGAIN (originally posted Mar. 2, 2011)

============================================

Keith DeRose (Yale) writes:

    Since prospective graduate students read your blog for information and advice on applying to graduate programs, I was wondering whether it might be a good idea for you to run a short post on an important way that applicants can help one another.

     Every year, many applicants get into better programs than they otherwise would have by eventually being accepted by a program that initially put them on a waiting list.  (I myself got into the program I attended off their waiting list.  In fact, I think I was quite a ways down UCLA's waiting list.)  Often, though, the management of waiting lists gets extremely messy, especially right before and on April 15, and the consequences of this messiness are often results that are far from optimal for the students involved.

     I don't think there's any feasible way to completely solve these problems, but the applicants themselves can make things much better for one another by declining offers as soon as they're in a position to, so the programs involved can then go to their waiting lists.

     Sometimes this can be done simply by making one's decision earlier.  Once they have all the relevant information, given it a little chance to sink in, mulled it over a  bit, and talked things over with their advisers, students can often do everyone -- including themselves!-- a favor by making a decision significantly in advance of April 15. 

    However, I realize that for various reasons, some will delay making their decision until the bitter end.  In addition to reasons of personal psychology, sometimes this is done because students are hoping themselves to get into a better program than they've so far been accepted at off of a waiting list.

Sooner or later someone incited by Trump is going to shoot a judge or lawyer smeared by Trump

We're getting closer to that moment.  In a civilized democracy, laws would exist to penalize such behavior by a public figure.

Allen Buchanan talks about moral evolution and the "escape from tribalism"...

...at The Dissenter.

An English professor reflects on the decline of the humanities at the University of Florida over the last several decades

Grim reading, which resonates with yesterday's piece.  An excerpt:

Things got bureaucratic and fiscalised. There was more jargon, more acronyms, more metrics. Fatuous measurements were introduced, to express in hopelessly inadequate numbers what we were endeavouring to do with words. Pepsi got a monopoly on drinks machines. Students were discouraged from using their offices on campus. We had to account for our own presence there. In our brutalist 1970s building – designed, it was said, to be indefensible and sit-in-proof – there were no longer any chance conversations at the copy machine or the water-cooler. It’s always midnight now, all the time.

Managerial layers that once protected us from administrative curiosity – to put it no higher; others might speak of mischief or idiocy – were stripped away. People who once might have been expected to stand in the way seemed rather to turn on us; the downward transmission of power became the rule. Our laborious and trivial autonomy became merely burdensome, a foolish pretence, a charade. Think of replacing the threads in a mobile with metal coat-hangers. There is no give, no movement, no flexibility, no sway, no grace; only a tautening; a jerky, creaky, clanking, humourless expression of will over long distances, with little to choose between push and pull.

(Thanks to Michael Magoulias for the pointer.)

Daily Mail gives a vivid description of what a nuclear attack on Washington DC would be like

They love sensationalism, of course, but this isn't sensational, this is a pretty realistic description of what would ensue.   We need more reporting like this, including on the cable and television news.

"On Gutting the Liberal Arts"

Philospher David C.K. Curry, the last philosophy faculty member at SUNY-Potsdam, comments at CHE; an excerpt:

At Potsdam, a few facts are indisputable. We face a $9-million annual operating deficit. Enrollment has fallen from 4,224 in 2012 to 2,501 in 2023, a decline of around 40 percent. “There will be no bailouts,” President Suzanne Smith announced last fall, explaining that the SUNY system refuses to help. Personnel costs account for the vast majority of Potsdam’s expenses.

But focusing on the fiscal tree, as the administration wants us to do, causes one to lose sight of the forest. Echoing Gordon Gee, Smith aims to restructure the academic programs offered. Potsdam’s “Financial Stability Plan” is meant to “close the gap and focus our finite resources toward those programs that are most in demand in today’s marketplace.” The rhetoric unsurprisingly echoes that of higher-education consultants like the rpk Group, which focuses on “maximizing Mission, Market, and Margin®.”

But who decides what the employment needs of the future will be, and which courses will be most relevant? In a humanizing moment, Smith teared up while announcing the cuts. While I have no doubt that her news was genuinely difficult to deliver, it was more difficult to receive...

Years of state disinvestment have laid the groundwork for these cuts. Frederick E. Kowal, president of United University Professions, argues that SUNY’s financial crisis is “manufactured,” and the real crisis is that the State of New York has failed to fulfill its obligations. In 2004 New York funded the SUNY system at just under $1.9 billion; in 2023 the funding for SUNY was just $1.34 billion. If you factor in inflation, SUNY received almost twice as much state support in 2004 as it did in 2023. Similar funding cuts have occurred nationwide.

That decline in funding combined with the pandemic-era enrollment declines created the perfect opportunity for authoritarian administrators to impose their increasingly corporate visions of higher education onto their institutions. While faculty and staff members scrambled to educate their students during a pandemic, administrators sharpened their knives, shamelessly seizing the opportunity to gut programs, the faculty, and faculty governance.

Reader comments on some philosophers who have recently died

I want to thank readers for their excellent and illuminating comments and reflections on several recent obituaries posted here, including for Michael Tanner, Jonathan Bennett, William W. Tait, and Howard Stein.  I did not know any of these individuals personally, but I now feel like I know a bit about the people behind the philosophical work thanks to the evocative remembrances.   I should have started opening comments on memorials many years ago, but will certainly keep doing so.

Euthanasia in the Netherlands...

...for mental health reasons:

Please watch the video before commenting.  I would be interested to hear from philosophers who have thought about these issues, or from those knowledgeable about the practices in the Netherlands.

 

Humanities, including philosophy, under threat at Valparaiso University, a Lutheran university in Indiana

Coming so close on the heels of St. Norbert College's mass firing of humanities tenure-track faculty (tenured faculty may be next there!), this is an  alarming trend:

The administration of Valparaiso University has placed Philosophy, along with a number of other humanities disciplines, under review for possible discontinuance.  We'd appreciate the philosophical community's support by way of signing a petition and/or sending emails to relevant administrators and board members.  Contact details are given on the petition, which you can find here:  

https://www.change.org/SaveTheHumanitiesAtVU

Comments are open for more information, strategic suggestions, etc.

Marx's critique of Stirner

The critique of Stirner is the bit of The German Ideology most commentators pass over, but, in fact, it contains some important insights into Marx's own epistemological views.