Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Peter Singer invited to give a Zoom talk about "Pandemic Ethics" by the Philosophy Department at Rhodes College...

...and now there is an uproar because Singer holds incorrect views, for example, about euthanasia, infanticide and the disabled.  An uproar is fine, what isn't fine are the demands that his event (slated for tomorrow) be cancelled, which have come from, among others, the History faculty and the Anthropology/Sociology/African Studies Program at Rhodes.  For example, the historians sent out the following campus-wide email:

As historians, we the undersigned condemn Prof. Peter Singers’ abhorrent views that some humans have less value than others. We object to inviting him to Rhodes College to speak as part of a “Pandemics Ethics” panel. Positioning him as an expert on ethics only legitimizes his reprehensible beliefs that deny the very humanity of people with disabilities. Hypothetical philosophies on morality cause real violence. We historians are all too familiar with ideas that justify labeling marginalized, vulnerable, and minority populations as “life unworthy of life,” and the murderous consequences for those deemed “unfit” to live. Adhering to the College’s own IDEAS Framework that seeks to foster “a sense of belonging” and embrace “the full range of psychological, physical, and social difference,” we historians assert that Prof. Peter Singers’ blatant inhumanity has no place in serious academic exchange here at Rhodes.  

The first sentence is fine:  the historians can decide that Singer's views are abhorrent and can condemn them.  But the rest of the email is a call to violate the academic freedom rights of their colleagues in the philosophy department, who have a right to invite someone they judge (quite reasonably) to be an expert in applied ethics to give a talk.  (Academic freedom includes the freedom of members of a discipline to decide which speakers are appropriate speakers in their departments, just as it includes freedom to design the curriculum, set requirements, and so on.)

Commitment to diversity more important than scientific competence in biology job ad

Biologist Jerry Coyne (Chicago) comments. 

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

In Memoriam: Charles W. Mills (1951-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 21--UPDATED

Professor Mills, a leading figure in political philosophy and philosophy of race, was, since 2016, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, before that having spent more than a quarter-century in the Chicago area, first at the University of Illinois at Chicago and then Northwestern University.  His best-known work was undoubtedly The Racial Contract (1997), although he wrote influential books and articles on Marxist philosophy, Africana philosophy, and other topics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  A brief memorial notice from the APA.

ANOTHER:  A memorial from the CUNY Graduate Center.

AND ANOTHER:  A charming and evocative "personal tribute" from philosopher Liam Kofi Bright (LSE).

STILL MORE:  A NYT columnist on Mills.  And an obituary from the Jamaica Observer.

A PHILOSOPHICAL APPRECIATION:  From philosopher Jason Stanley (Yale).

Blast from the past: grad student questions about publishing

Back in 2012.

Greene from UCL to UC Santa Barbara

Amanda Greene (political philosophy), Associate Professor of Philosophy at University College London, has accepted a tenured offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she will start as Associate Professor in fall 2022.  This is the second recent major appointment in value theory by UCSB from the UK, after Elinor Mason who moved from the University of Edinburgh in 2020.

German election results are encouraging

A full breakdown here:  the Greens and the Social Democrats both saw significant increases in their share of the vote, while the crypto-fascist AfD lost ground.  Some of the gains for the Greens probably came from losses for The Left, the democratic socialist party.   The Greens are not as progressive, but the Greens, thanks to their electoral gains, will have more impact this time around than either they or The Left had in the previous parliament.  Or so it looks to me, an outsider to German politics!  (Merkel's Christian Democrats are somewhat more conservative than the Social Democrats, but one should not look at German politics through an American lens:  most Christian Democrrats wouldn't be welcome in today's Republican Party in the U.S.)

What if the earth was cut in half?

I'm sure many readers have been worrying about this; remarkably, there's a site with an answer.

Maclure from Laval to McGill

Jocelyn Maclure (ethics, political philosophy, including issues related to AI) has left his tenured position at Laval University to take up a tenured position in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University, where he will also hold a new endowed chair in "Technology and Human Nature"

A. Philip Randolph and Vernon Jordan: an anecdote

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was the great civil and labor rights leader of the last century, whom I've occasionally mentioned here before.  When I was a high school student, my father had given me a biography of Randolph by Jervis Anderson, which made a profound impression on me at the time:  this was a great man.  Randolph had organized, in the face of many obstacles, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the first half of the last century, a union that represented the overwhelmingly Black porters who tended to passengers on interstate trains (when trains were still the primary form of long distance transport).  During WWII, Randolph forced FDR to outlaw racial discrimination in the defense industries; after WWII, Randolph forced Truman to integrate the military.  He and Bayard Rustin, another great figure of the last century, organized the 1963 March on Washington, at which  Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous "I have a dream" speech.  Randolph, like Rustin, always emphasized the intersection of labor and civil rights, a view that MLK came around too in the years proceeding his assassination. 

Draft faculty lists (FINAL draft) for ALL Departments for the 2021 PGR

MOVING TO FRONT--TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY FOR FEEDBACK/CORRECTIONS

Professor Christopher Pynes, co-editor of the PGR, has shared with me the FINAL draft of the faculty lists for the 2021 PGR, on which he welcomes feedback not later than September 27 (his contact information is on the draft, and please direct all questions and comments to him):  Download PGR faculty fall 2021 ALL Departments 18September2021_V5.  Only faculty in the departments should email Professor Pynes about changes that need to be made.   The faculty lists aim to include those with a tenure home in the philosophy department, with all others involved in training graduate students listed as "cognate" faculty.  "Part-time" faculty are half time, unless otherwise noted.

Note that some programs have been added to the faculty lists for purposes of the 2021 survey.  And a reminder that the editors have, for this new survey, decided to only note with an asterisk faculty over the age of 75 in the fall following the report (so fall 2022).  There has been a clear change in retirement patterns over the last decade, so that faculty who are still teaching at 70 are mostly still teaching at 75, but those still teaching at 75 are rarely teaching at 80.  So being 75 is far more relevant now than merely being 70,which seems to me right.

Professor Pynes tells me that the plan is to launch the survey around October 1, and that it will run for approximately three weeks.  Initial results will be posted here starting in the second or third week of November.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Three Man Army, "Polecat Woman," 1974

British hard rock trio active in the early 70s, this is the lead number from their third album:

 

"Agency and Responsibility Research Group"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 21--UPDATED

Here, courtesy of philosopher Thomas Nadelhoffer (Charleston).

UPDATE:   Upcoming talks this semester are by Derk Pereboom (9/30), Christian List (10/27), and Carolina Sartorio (12/03).

21 million American brown shirts ready for action

Wow!

Philosopher Arif Ahmed on challenges for academic freedom at his school, Cambridge University

Here, and with lessons for those who teach elsewhere.

Discussing Nietzsche, moral psychology, naturalism, and related topics...

...with Ricardo Lopes at The Dissenter.  The particular focus is my Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, but we ranged over other issues as well.

Open letter protesting Midwestern State's treatment of Nathan Jun

Here (and prior coverage).

Richard Marshall interviews Paul Thagard (Waterloo)...

...at 3:16 AM.

The philistinism of the philosophers

From an essay by philosopher Justin Smith (Paris VII):

The political philosopher Jake McNulty reminded me recently of a wonderful observation of Adorno’s: that it was not the artists with firm political convictions expressed through their art, such as Bertolt Brecht, who ended up truly revolutionizing their historical moment, but those such as Samuel Beckett, whose work is infinitely ambiguous, non-committal, and open to endless interpretation. The one gave us Tin Pan Alley retrofitted with revolutionary slogans, the other gave us his own sort of revolution. One fears that the closest thing we have to intellectuals today are so disengaged from even the ideal of an avant-garde that they know only how to scan a work for its manifest content, and thus today’s descendants of Brecht are deemed good because they are “on message”, while today’s descendants of Beckett, if there were any, would be deemed irresponsible for failing to state explicitly enough their commitment to antiracism.

Hamkins, Montero from Oxford, CUNY to Notre Dame

Joel Hamkins (logic, philosophical logic, philosophy of mathematics), currently Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, and Barbara Montero (philosophy of mind and cognitive science, philosophy of dance), currently Professor of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island and the City University of New York Graduate Center, have both accepted senior offers from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Hamkins will start in Spring 2022, and Montero in Fall 2022.   Notre Dame has long had a leadership position in mathematical and philosophical logic, and the appointment of Hamkins will solidify that.

Blast from the past: "Racism, evolutionary-psychology style"

Back in 2011.

"Anti-realism" and the analytic-continental divide

Philosopher Lee Braver (South Florida) comments.  Of course, Derrida really is a charlatan, but he is the exception and not the norm in the post-Kantian traditions in Continental European philosophy.

"The Need for Socially Distanced Citizens"

Philosopher Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) comments.

Will the University of Hong Kong survive as one of Asia's leading universities?

I'm skeptical, given the incursions of the authoritarian government in Beijing.  Universities in Taiwain and Singapore (and maybe also New Zealand and Australia) may be the beneficiaries if a real exodus begins.

"Three myths" about the awful Viktor Orban in Hungary

This is instructive.

Classical violinist comes to the defense of Hendrix

God bless him.

New editors for the Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism

Jonathan Gilmore and Sandra Shapshay, both at CUNY.

Blast from the past: the "preeminent world publisher of academic philosophy"?

A discussion back in 2008--and it's still not Cambridge University Press, although maybe once it was.

Are COVID hospitalization numbers informative?

This is interesting; an excerpt:

The authors of the paper out this week took a different tack to answer a similar question, this time for adults. Instead of meticulously looking at why a few hundred patients were admitted to a pair of hospitals, they analyzed the electronic records for nearly 50,000 COVID hospital admissions at the more than 100 VA hospitals across the country. Then they checked to see whether each patient required supplemental oxygen or had a blood oxygen level below 94 percent. (The latter criterion is based on the National Institutes of Health definition of “severe COVID.”) If either of these conditions was met, the authors classified that patient as having moderate to severe disease; otherwise, the case was considered mild or asymptomatic.

The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.

Political orientation, science denial, and COVID vaccinations

Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments.

Provost announces new "Faculty Success Initiative"

This is very funny; an excerpt:

The survey results show a faculty that is dedicated and happy to have employment at this university. The data is pretty conclusive: 46 percent of you are not actively looking for work, 30 percent of you feel confident your academic unit will survive the upcoming budget cuts, and 24 percent of you report feeling only slightly panicked most of the day. That means an impressive 100 percent of you are happy with the university and working hard every day to help students graduate as quickly as possible....

Renaming Faculty Job Titles. I am working with Human Resources to rename job codes to better reflect the work you actually do. So, for example, many of you will no longer be “Professors” but “Student Graduation Facilitators.” Others of you will take on the new job title of “Metric Chaser” or “Adjunct Administrator.” These better reflect the valuable work you do and not the things you thought you were hired to do.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Third World War, "Ascension Day," 1971

Short-lived British proto-punk band formed in 1970, this is probably the best number from their debut album:

 

Victory for academic freedom at the University of Toronto (UPDATED)

After an offer on the law faculty was blocked as a result of outside political interference, the University of Toronto was censured by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).  CAUT has now "paused" the censure, since the University has now offered the position to the candidate previously blocked. 

UPDATE:  The censure is only "paused" because it's not yet clear whether the University of Toronto will protect the offeree's academic freedom in the face of harassment from outside groups.

(Thanks to Mohan Matthen for the pointer.)

9/18/21 UPDATE:   This is not so good:

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), which imposed the censure in April, says it has called for a pause on the measure after it says the school met one of its key demands: to re-offer the position of director of the school's International Human Rights Program to Valentina Azarova....

After careful consideration, the CAUT says, Azarova has declined the offer.

"Her decision, while unfortunate, is understandable given the University's initial reaction to the unfounded and scurrilous attacks on her reputation and her research," CAUT said in a statement Friday.

Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on the "1619 Project" and the muted professional response to it

We covered the response of historians to the 1619 Project extensively here--most of it occurring on the World Socialist Website, one of the few venues willing to seek out distinguished historians for comment.  The "Project" and its reception is the subject of this instructive essay by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz; some excerpts:

I began feeling uneasy a few minutes into reading the lead essay, by the project’s chief contributor, the journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, and then I read a key paragraph so fallacious and dogmatic that it hit me between the eyes. With a tone of absolute assurance, flagging the matter as crucial, the essay informed readers of what it called a „fact“ – a fact „conveniently left out of our founding mythology“ – specifically that „one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence“ from Britain „was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.“  I instantly wondered how anyone even lightly informed about the history of either slavery or the American Revolution , could write that sentence….

Blast from the past: Yale faculty (both law and philosophy professors) vouch for Sarah Braasch

Back in early 2020, but unfortunately timely again (a notoriously unhinged law professor with a large social media platform has been attacking Ms. Braasch this week, making no mention of the fact that Yale withdrew its racial harassment charges against her or of any of the facts uncovered by journalist Cathy Young).

Interview with Prof. Jeremy Fischer who resigned his post at Alabama/Huntsville over their inadequate public health measures

Here; an excerpt:

EA: In your resignation letter, you said you did not want to be complicit in a “moral atrocity.” Can you elaborate on what you consider to be the “moral atrocity” in this situation? Is it limited to UAH? What does it mean on a world scale?

JF: There is a good chance that classes and other in-person events on campus will accelerate COVID transmission in the wider community. This is a huge problem for a state like Alabama, in which only about 76% of senior citizens are fully vaccinated. (Compare that number with 99% in Vermont, 98% in Maine, 96% in Washington State and 95% in Maryland.) Already, as the school year begins, Alabama hospitals are packed with COVID patients and running out of ICU beds (and workers to staff them ).

In such circumstances, large institutions like schools and universities need to take all reasonable steps to minimize coronavirus transmission. (See, for example, the possible mitigation policies, numbered (1)-(8) above, as well as our petition demand to move at least some classes online and implement C.D.C.-recommended social distancing guidelines.) But, despite their modest efforts, the UA System failed to take even most of these steps. In my judgment, this failure is morally atrocious.

"Democrats Sick Of Being Blamed For Cowardice On Issues They Actually Just Don’t Care About"

The Onion, of course:

“I’ve had it with being labeled spineless simply because, at the end of the day, I really don’t give a shit whether we tax the rich to help poor families or hungry children or whatever,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), stressing that his complete lack of interest in passing tough regulations for the financial services industry, supporting a Green New Deal, and ending the War on Terror hardly meant he was weak-willed or timid. “That’s so unfair. If these were issues Democrats truly cared about, then we’d fight the Republicans tooth and nail on them. We’d even have the guts to risk the lucrative relationships we’ve formed with powerful corporations, defense contractors, and billionaire donors. But for something like an eviction moratorium, Medicare for all, or a fracking ban? No fucking way.”

(Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)

Philosopher Nathan Jun has resigned his tenured position at Midwestern State University

We noted Professor Jun's ordeal last year.  He has now sent out an email to me and others as follows:

I am writing to let you know that I have been forced to resign from Midwestern State University. As a result of last year's scandal I ended up developing severe PTSD for which I have since been hospitalized on three separate occasions. Having already thrown me under the bus in October 2020 by publicly condemning me and refusing to defend my safety and reputation against attacks by a white supremacist mob, the university subsequently saw fit to deny the accommodations I had requested under the ADA. Faced with the choice of being terminated or resigning, I ultimately opted for the latter.

Long story short: the far right--in concert with the soulless, amoral administration of Midwestern State University--has succeeded in destroying my academic career and, frankly, my life. 

I do know that he has resigned, but I do not know any further details beyond what Professor Jun reports.  If readers learn more, please email me, and I will update this post.

Blast from the past: Farewell to the Eastern APA, and Hello to Skype

Back in 2010, and it has come to pass:  the Eastern APA is no longer the "hiring convention," and most screening interviews are done on Skype or Zoom, even before the pandemic. 

After a decade of litigation, appeals court orders reinstatement of transgender professor who was victim of discrimination in tenure decision

The right outcome, but it sure took a long time!

The prudent wing of the ruling class behaving badly...

...or behaving, in any event, like the ruling class.  Greenwald rightly lambasts "the normalization of maskless elites attended to by faceless servants."

(Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)

On getting a "mild" breakthrough COVID infection

There is some useful information here, about symptoms and duration in particular.

Peter Boghossian's resignation from Portland State University

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 9--UPDATED WITH SOME MORE INFORMATION

Various readers sent me this letter from Professor Boghossian describing his alleged reasons for resigning.  If, in fact, he was treated in the ways described, that is pretty outrageous, but it would be good to have independent confirmation from another source.  (He has been an assistant professor since 2014, which is a rather long time at that rank, so it would be good to know what the story is with that as well.)  Some of the "illiberal" campus environment is obviously real at many places, although rarely to the extent he describes.   On the other hand, a professor at Portland State revealed in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education that she literally has no idea what academic freedom is, so maybe things really are that bad there?

UPDATE (9/14/21):  A faculty member at Portland State writes with some useful context and perspective:

Peter was not a tenure-line faculty at PSU. PSU has an unusual status for non- t-t faculty that they can apply for the same titles as tenure-line faculty. I believe it was 2014 that he got that title (after having been an Instructor for I believe six years before that), but because he is not on the tenure track, he could have kept it indefinitely. In fact, he did decide to apply for promotion to "Associate Professor" last year, but was denied.

A model response by the President of Syracuse University to controversial comments by a professor

The Syracuse President, Kent Syverud, is a former law professor and, more importantly, someone who understands his obligations when it comes to the academic freedom rights of faculty, even faculty who say stupid or foolish things.  From his public statement about the controversy, which is a model response for university leaders in these situations:

Recently, one of our professors shared thoughts on 9/11 on social media. These comments have been the subject of much scrutiny and vehement disagreement by critics. That is their right, just as our professor has the right to free speech, however uncomfortable it may make anyone feel. What cannot be tolerated are the harassment and violent threats that we have seen in response that have been directed at this professor. Our Department of Public Safety is in contact with the professor and has engaged the support of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

A call for greater opportunities for non-native speakers in "analytic" philosophy

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SOME READERS ASKED ME TO OPEN COMMENTS, WHICH I HAVE NOW DONE (couldn't moderate them yesterday)

Dubbed the "Barcelona Principles" by its creator, philosopher Filippo Contessi, it adopts the currently trendy language of "inclusion," but its basic point is sound:  insofar as analytic philosophy tries to be a Wissenschaft, it should be open to scientific contributions from researchers across different linguistic cultures.  It seems to me doubtful, however, that one can evaluate "publications, presentations, proposals and submissions without giving" weight to their authors' "linguistic style" and "fluency," since the latter are often inextricable from the substance.  (One can, certainly, as the principle proposes, disregard accent.)  Far better, it seems to me, to invite non-Anglophone philosophers on the merits of their work and then help them, as needed, with their English expression.  (With the four volumes [so far] of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, we have solicited a number of important legal philosophers outside the Anglosphere, and, when necessary, helped edit their English.)

"How We Argue Now"

Philosopher John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) comments.

Memorial for Joseph Margolis this Friday

Philosopher Espen Hammer, Chair of the Department at Temple, writes:  "The Temple philosophy department will be hosting a memorial event for Professor Joseph Margolis. The event will take place 3-5pm (EST) on Friday, September 17. Please click here for the zoom link!"

On mention of the N-word in a pedagogical context

Sensible analysis, as usual, from law professor Randall Kennedy (Harvard); an excerpt:

I am skeptical of some of the claims of hurt. I suspect that some of them are the product of learned strategic ripostes. It is now well known that in certain settings, particularly those that strive to be socially enlightened (like colleges and universities), you can effectively challenge speech to which you object by claiming not only that it is socially abhorrent (racist, sexist, transphobic, etc., etc., etc.) but that it makes you feel insulted, offended, or endangered.

"Against Effective Altruism"

Philosopher Alice Crary (New School/Oxford) comments. What Professor Crary calls "the institutional critique" is the really decisive one it seems to me; here is her useful summary of it:

This critique attacks effective altruists for operating with a damagingly narrow interpretation of the class of things that are assessable as right or wrong. It targets effective altruists’ tendency to focus on single actions and their proximate consequences and, more specifically, on simple interventions that reduce suffering in the short term. Advocates of the institutional critique are on the whole concerned to decry the neglect, on the part of EA, of coordinated sets of actions directed at changing social structures that reliably cause suffering. EA’s metrics are best suited to detect the short term impact of particular actions, so its tendency to discount the impact of coordinated actions can be seen as reflecting ‘measurability bias’. A leitmotif of the institutional critique of EA is that this bias is politically dangerous because it obscures the structural, political roots of global misery, thereby contributing to its reproduction by weakening existing political mechanisms for positive social change

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Toe Fat, "Bad Side of the Moon," 1970

Several members of this British band went on to greater fame and fortune with Uriah Heep (Ken Hensley, Lee Kerslake) and Jethro Tull (John Glascock); this is their version of an Elton John song:

 

9/11 Anniversary

It's 48 years since the events in Chile, and 20 years since the events in America.  I have vivid memories of the latter, none of the former.  I'll just post links to what I wrote on the 5th anniversary in 2006:  a personal recollection of that day which readers too young to remember the events may find interesting (I was teaching at the University of Texas at Austin on 9/11/2001); and some reflections on the catastrophic political and cultural fallout from the crimes of 9/11.  It's perhaps a good day to remember that George W. Bush was a far worse President than the otherwise appalling Donald Trump:  he inflicted death and suffering on millions and millions of people because of the criminal war of aggression against Iraq, which Bush's "bestiary of madmen" (as I used to call them) used 9/11 to justify.