Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Columbia University caves to Trump's highway robbery

The full details are not yet available, but the capitulation includes agreeing to turn control of several departments over to a senior administrator--a move demanded for purely ideological reasons by the Trumpistas.  Academic freedom is dead at Columbia, and the university has damaged all of higher education.  It remains to be determined why capitulation instead of litigation was the response to these unlawful actions by the Trump Administration.

It would be hard to overstate how appalling a development this is.  A federal administration in Washington DC has extorted a major research university to throw disfavored programs and departments under the bus, thus violating core principles of academic freedom.  Columbia University might be better off "destroyed" at this point, given this abdication of its responsibilities as a university.  Perhaps they'll recover some courage and integrity when they still fail to get the federal monies they seek.

When I noted last fall that the "weaponization" of Title VI was part of the armory Trump would bring to bear on higher education, I did not anticipate that Trump would do so in a way that does not even pretend to comply with Title VI or the Constitution.  The current events are simply unprecedented.  In the McCarthy era in the 1950s, the target was alleged communists, not supporters of the Palestinians, but even then the destruction was visited upon individuals, not entire institutions and departments.    

I would urge current PhD students at Columbia to consider transferring, and current faculty to retire or seek employment elsewhere, if they can.  Columbia has betrayed all of higher education in the United States.

ADDENDUM:  Part of what is shocking about Columbia's capitulation is that the states that sued over the unlawful changes to NIH funding were succesful in court and the funding has resumed.   Unless there is some very important fact not in the public record, I cannot see how Columbia would have failed to secure an injunction in the federal court for the Southern District of New York putting a stop to the obviously illegal actions by Trump vis-a-vis Columbia.  What is going on???

UPDATE:  Here's the full text of Columbia's capitulation.  A couple of quick observations, more to come:  (1) many of the students expelled, suspended or who had their degrees revoked on orders of the Trumpistas will sue and will, I expect, prevail; (2) "Appointment of a New Senior Vice Provost" contains Columbia's complete capitulation on academic freedom at the behest of an authoritarian government.  I am told by a New York academic (not at Columbia) that this was motivated by the fear of impact on NIH-related research.  The Interim President is a medical school professor.  A court injunction would have staved off the immediate threat.  It is true that Trump can do legally what he did illegally regarding NIH funding, but that will take time:   and this will happen regardless of Columbia's capitulation.  Columbia decided to throw academic freedom under the bus today for its biological sciences, so the world should know it's not a university, but a medical school and life sciences school with dispensable appendages.

SUNY Fredonia to eliminate philosophy department and will terminate its sole remaining faculty member...

...Stephen Kershnar, whose constitutional and legal rights the university had been violating for some time.  Philosopher Neil Feit tells me that Professor Lershnar, who has bee on paid leave for several years now, will be paid through August 2026.  One hopes this move will add to the damages he wins in his lawsuit.

Statement of constitutional law scholars on Trump's unlawful threats against Columbia University

Here.  Singatories include Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi, libertarian Richard Epstein, and other leading conservative and liberal constitutional law scholars.

The bottom line is that what the Trumpistas are doing is completely illegal...and yet, rumors are Columbia may comply.

University of California system ends the use of "diversity statements" in hiring...

...although it's pathetic that the NY reports this as though the only critics of their use were "conservativdes," when the only serious critics were defenders of free speech and academic freedom.  (The benighted Professor Soucek from UC Davis, based on the quote in the article, still professes to believe that mandated action in accordance with political ideology is constitutional, even if mandated belief is not, which is bizarre.)

Unfortunately for many academic job seekers, Univeristy of California Chancellor Drake has also announced (see here) a system-wide freeze in faculty and staff hiring (as well as cuts in other areas).  That's pretty dramatic, but telling of the times we are in.

A strong statement by the President of Princeton on the attack on Columbia University...

...and academic freedom.  We need more of this making of the case for American research universities.  Of course, Princeton has the luxury of perhaps being the only such school in the country that could actually survive loss of federal money!  But all the research universities need to band together and lobby the Republican Senators and Representatives who aren't nuts.

Speaking of misconduct by authoritarian regimes: the crisis in Serbia continues

I received the following from Serbian academics, and I hope others will join me in signing:

We write to you as members of the academic community, gravely concerned about the escalating repression targeting participants in peaceful students-led protests that have now persisted for four months.

From the very beginning, students and citizens have faced systematic state intimidation, culminating in a shocking act of violence during a mass protest on March 15 — a moment intended for solemn silence in memory of 15 fellow citizens who tragically lost their lives. In that very moment of commemoration, an unidentified device emitting a powerful sound and shock wave was unleashed against peaceful demonstrators without warning. The resulting pressure wave triggered mass panic, causing injuries and widespread distress. This deliberate deployment of such a device constitutes a flagrant violation of the Police Law of the Republic of Serbia. The intentional use of tactics designed to instill fear, panic, and chaos represents a grave breach of fundamental human rights — including the right to life itself. The report from Earshot confirming this is available HERE.

Farewell to the old American constitutional order

Apt remarks by one of my colleagues, in the NYT:

Aziz Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said that assessing whether a given development is a constitutional crisis is “generally unhelpful.”

“I think it’s more useful to say that this is moving us into a completely different kind of constitutional order, one that’s no longer characterized by laws that bind officials and that can be enforced,” Professor Huq said. “The law, in other words, becomes a tool to harm enemies, but not to bind those who govern. That is a quite different constitutional order from the one that we’ve had for a long time"....

Professor Huq acknowledged that there was “often some uncertainty about exactly what compliance with a court order against an agency requires.”

But there are limits, he added. “The Trump administration is pushing that uncertainty to a breaking point,” he said, “just as it has pushed the idea that the executive has to comply with statutes to a breaking point.”

If we do not live in a society "characterized by laws that bind officials and that can be enforced" then we are no longer living in a society with the rule of law, which means we are all in danger, every day.

"The Case for Boycotting the U.S."

Unfortunately, it's a pretty good case.

In authoritarian societies without the rule of law, the leader unlawfully detains individuals and defies the courts

And that's now Trump's America:

[L]ate last week, immigration agents arrested a Lebanese doctor on a legal visa, despite a court order temporarily blocking her immediate removal. That followed the detention of German tourists, a former Columbia University graduate student with a green card and multiple immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens or have long lived in the United States.

And even as the administration targeted a group of Venezuelans this weekend who officials said are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang, they used an archaic, war-time law to round them up and then seemingly ignored a judge’s order to halt deportation flights.

The Lebanese doctor was legally in the country and working at Brown University.  The Columbia graduate student was a legal perminent resident of the United States, entitled to his First Amendment rights, yet was seized by federal agents because of his lawful political speech and whisked away to a jurisdiction less likely to free him.

These are the actions of a lawless would-be tyrant.  And just as the dragnet has expanded from criminals in the country illegally to professionals and students in the country legally, it will expand, before we're done, to citizens who exercise their constitutional rights.  How far it will go in that direction will depend on many factors, including the courts, the Democrats, the remaining Republicans committed to the rule of law, and state authorities in the civilized states.

Mytaxe.uk: run for the hills!

Last week, I was in the UK, with legal philosophy talks at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and a Nietzsche workshop at King's College, London.  Because it was a compressed visit (I arrived Tuesday, and had talks Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday), I booked a taxi service from Cambridge to Oxford (the trains are almost as expensive and take a very long time between the two towns).  A colleague had recommended this service, mytaxe.uk, https://www.mytaxe.uk/, which I cannot recommend, alas, based on my experience.  They may be better for local bookings, but they were terrible for my trip, and I would never use them again. 

"Existential Questions"

An apt title for a philosophy conference in a war zone, organized by Jason Stanley, with talks by David Chalmers and Laurie Paul, among others.

Universities must hold the line on free speech and academic freedom against the Trump Administration's attacks

Via Shamik Dasgupta, I learn of this petition/open letter addressed to the universities, which is certainly timely and right.  I have signed.

Trump's war on transgender people

This seems exactly right:

Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany in 1933, later wrote that long before Jews, Roma, gays, Communists and others could be herded into death camps, they had to be “denationalized” — excluded from the society that guaranteed their legal rights. Enlightenment thinkers had posited that just by virtue of existing, each person has inalienable rights. Arendt, however, observed that the “right to have rights” could be guaranteed only by a political community. Without a state to claim them as their own, people have no laws, no courts and no political mechanisms for protecting rights....

A country that has pushed one group out of its political community will eventually push out others. The Trump administration’s barrage of attacks on trans people can seem haphazard, but as elements of a denationalization project, they fall into place. In his Inaugural Address and one of his first executive orders, President Trump asserted that only two sexes exist: male and female, established at conception and immutable. Trans people, in other words, do not exist. Executive orders aimed at banning any mention of transgender people in schools, banning trans athletes from women’s sports, ordering a stop to gender-affirming medical care for people under 19 and barring trans people from serving in the military followed.

The State Department stopped issuing passports with the “X” gender marker and began issuing passports consistent with the sex the applicant was assigned at birth, even if the person had legally changed gender....

Last month, despite the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling that trans and nonbinary people are protected from workplace discrimination, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission started dropping lawsuits it had brought on their behalf.

The rights the Trump administration is taking away from trans people are relatively new. Only in the past few decades, for example, have clear legal procedures existed for changing the gender marker on identity documents, and only in the past few years have federal and some state authorities made the process fairly easy. But before transgender, gender-nonconforming and intersex people were recognized as a group — or groups — of people who had rights, many could blend in, fly below the radar. Now, in their new rightlessness, they are exposed.

 

 

60 more universities targetted in Trump's fake war on anti-semitism on campus

This is ominous, and I hope all these schools are preparing legal action to stop this abuse of power.  The University of Chicago is not on any of these lists, and not because we didn't have anti-Israel demonstrations on campus.  We aren't on these lists because:  (1) there is no anti-semitism problem here, to put it mildly; and (2) UChicago has a good reputation in Repug circles going back to Milton Friedman (thanks Milton!) and UChicago has had a genuine, and longstanding, commitment to free expression and academic freedom (going back to when Robert Hutchins told the Illinois legislature in the 1930s to "fuck off" [he said it in Latin] when it complained because a communist spoke on campus).  We'll see how long that good luck lasts.

Trump's withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella will likely lead to nuclear proliferation

So argues (quite plausibly) Berkeley law professor David Grewal.

Trump is gaslighting American universities

Philosopher Mathias Risse comments.

The Trumpistas are coming for the judges...

...with threats of bombs and impeachment.  While many of these threats originate from the sick people Trump has always riled up, some are coming from public figures, including the disgusting Elon Musk (how can anyone use Twitter/X while this appalling creature owns it?).

Trump's "Title VI demand letter" to Columbia University violates both Title VI and the Constitution

Several Columbia law professors explain.  I hope this forms the basis of the lawsuit Columbia needs to file against the Trumpistas this week.

It's also well past time for Columbia to challenge the "anti-semitism" crisis narrative (which Columbia has stupidly fed).  Len Gutkin, at CHE, reviewed Columbia's own report, and wrote this:

[I]ts second antisemitism task-force report makes clear that the campus atmosphere could at times be unacceptably toxic. It recounts a handful of instances of abusive language on a Columbia-only social-media site, which provide evidence, however limited, of genuinely hateful attitudes among some of its students. But most of the other incidents the report includes are uncorroborated, and there’s no reason to think that the most alarming — necklaces ripped off of Jewish students while they walk back to campus, for instance — were perpetrated by Columbia students. As a piece of investigatory reportage, the document is a mess. It strains to make the most of very little; it was going to conclude that antisemitism was rife on campus no matter what it uncovered. 

Lateral moves/retirements since the 2024 Philosophical Gourmet Report: 2024-25 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 2024 PGR (some moves that took place after the 2024 PGR were reflected in the faculty list, because the editors knew of them--the ones listed here were not reflected in the faculty lists evaluators saw).  I will start a new list for each academic year, so that the list does not get unwieldy.    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.

Santiago Amaya (moral psychology, philosophy of action) from the University of Los Andes (Colombia) to Rice University.

Jc Beall (philosophical logic; philosophy of logic, mathematics & language; metaphysics) had to rescind (for personal reasons) acceptance of an offer from the National University of Singapore, so remains at the University of Notre Dame.

Jeremy Fantl (epistemology) from the University of Calgary to Ohio State University.

Michael Friedman (Kant, philosophy of science, 20th-century philosophy) has taken emeritus status at Stanford University.

Sebastian Gardner (Kant, 19th-century German philosophy) retired from University College London in Januray 2025.

Grace Helton (cognitive science, epistemology, moral psychology) from Princeton University (untenured) to the University of Rochester (tenured).

Graciella de Pierris (early modern philosophy) died in fall 2024.

Lawrence Shapiro (philosophy of mind & psychology) will retire from the University of Wisconsin, Madison at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.

Stewart Shapiro (philosophy of mathematics, philosophical logic) retired from Ohio State University in 2024, but continues to teach half-time at both Ohio State and the University of Connectcut, Storrs (he was listed as full-time, and not emeritus, at OSU in the fall 2024 PGR).

Andrew Stephenson (Kant, philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic) from the University of Southampton to LMU Munich.

Changes in the senior ranks typically affect specialty rankings, although can also affect the "overall" rankings (e.g., Stanford would drop out of the top 15, but will remain in the top 20).  

Typepad, the blog service provider, was out of comission the last 24 hours...

...but now is back.  Some additional Monday posts will be coming.

"The singularity is bullshit"

An interview with Oxford's Michael Wooldridge on the history of AI.

(Thanks to Tanmay Khale for the pointer.)

Deja Vu all over again: Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy targetted for elimination again!

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 10:  SEE UPDATE

The last time it was at Middlesex University in 2010, and now it's the same thing again at Kingston University, where the program landed after the last disaster.   There's an open letter from students here.  Faculty have not yet been fired, but they almost certainly will be if the program closures go through.  Given the general level of economic distress in UK higher education, will another institution step forward to save the program?

UPDATE:  There is now a petition in support of the program here, which is accepting signatures.

Trump Administration makes demands on Columbia University...

...including treating anti-Zionism as anti-semitism (and thus making it a matter for univeristy discipline) and putting several departments into academic receivership for no other reason than faculty members hold views disfavored by the Trump Administration. Other demands are more banal, but these two are a frontal assault on academic freedom and free expression rights of faculty and students.  If Columbia doesn't go to court over this authoritarianism, then the capitulation is complete.

J.D. Vance vs. the Pope

Philosopher Steven Hales comments.

Annals of incompetence: a reminder

The two strongest criminal cases against Donald Trump--for election interference in Georgia, and for unlawfully retaining classified documents--were both botched:  the Georgia case because the local prosecutor, Fani Willis, decided to put her unqualified boyfriend into a key role in the case; and the latter, because Merrick Garland moved too slow.  If the former had been handled professionally, Trump would be in a Georgia jail cell, rather than the White House.  If the latter had been pursued promptly, there would have been a conviction, although it might not have sufficed to keep him out of the White House.  Missed opportunities are bitter at this point, but those responsible should not be forgotten.

Open access philosophy books: a thread, Part II

The last thread had 39 submissions, so I thought it's time for a second thread.  Instructions as before:

In light of the growing number of these volumes, I am going to run a thread periodically in which I invite authors or readers to share links to philosophical works that are currently or permanently "open access."  Please use your full name and a valid email address (the latter will not appear) and include the URL for the book (give the title and the author, if you are not the author).  Authors or readers can only say something about the work and what it tries to do.  Please indicate if the "open access" period is limited.

Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

Letter to Congress from Union of Concerned Scientists and dozens of scientific associations...

...including the Philosophy of Science Association, about threats to funding of scientific research.

Speaking of ideology, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post changes editorial policies to focus on...

...personal liberties [e.g., like the kinds he enjoys] and the virtues of free markets.  What a surprise!

"How are Ideologies False? A Reconstruction of the Marxian Concept"

This article, in the Social Philosophy & Policy volume on "Ideology," is open access now for those who are interested.  The abstract:

For Karl Marx, ideological forms of consciousness are false, but how and in what respects? Ideologies must include some beliefs in order to be false, even if not all the beliefs that are inferentially related in the ideology are false, and even if there are (causally) related attitudes in the ideology that are neither true nor false. “Ideological” beliefs, however, are not simply false; their falsity has the specific property of not being in the interests of the agents who accept the ideology. One can make two kinds of mistakes about interests. One can mistake what is in one’s intrinsic interest or one can mistake what is in one’s extrinsic interest (that is, the means required to realize one’s intrinsic interests). Marx is mostly, but not exclusively, focused on mistakes about extrinsic interests; this is important in understanding how “morality” (which is not a matter of beliefs, but attitudes) can be ideological for Marx. I illustrate this analysis with some of Marx’s paradigmatic examples of ideological mistakes and offer an account of Marx’s conception of “interests.”

Trump's surprisingly sane position on nuclear weapons

In the midst of the disaster his Administration produces every week, at least there's this.

Blast from the past: Who was really the greatest philosopher of the 20th-century

A poll back in 2009, with more than a thousand votes.  The top five:

1.  Ludwig Wittgenstein (17%)

2.  Bertrand Russell (16%)

3.  David K. Lewis (12%)

4.  Martin Heidegger (10%)

5.  W.V.O. Quine (8%)

5.  John Rawls (8%)

The Lewis result says more about who was reading the blog in 2009, I suspect.  I'd pick Quine, but let's face it:  the 20th-century didn't have as many greats as the 19th-century!

Feel free to discuss, but post comments only once, as they may take awhile to appear.

Cruelty is not the point; subjugation and silencing is

An interesting interview with political theorist Corey Robin about Trump, Musk, McCarthyism and more.

"The world is not a quantum wave function"

Philosopher Valia Allori  comments.

More on the illegality of the cancellation of contracts and grants at Columbia for alleged Title VI violations

From CHE:

Samuel R. Bagenstos, who served as general counsel for the HHS under the Biden administration, said there are typically due-process requirements — such as statements of findings, hearings, and appeals — in cases alleging violations of civil-rights law. (Columbia has been accused of running afoul of Title VI, which bars discrimination in education based on race, color, and national origin.)

“Congress set forth specific procedures for suspending or terminating funds based on allegations of discrimination,” Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, wrote via a LinkedIn message. “This purported ‘immediate cancellation’ complies with none of them.”

The administration’s decision comes without clear evidence of wrongdoing by Columbia under Title VI, said Jonathan S. Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education.

“They don’t have a ruling from a judge. They don’t have a finding by an administrative agency. They haven’t tried to reach a resolution. They simply started cherry-picking money that’s going to Columbia and saying, ‘We’re not going to pay that,’” Fansmith said. “That’s not how we do this in the United States.”

This is why Columbia's capitulation is so foolish.

Columbia fallout begins: Harvard (another target for the Trumpistas) freezes faculty and staff hiring

Here.

Deja Vu all over again: Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy targetted for elimination again!

The last time it was at Middlesex University in 2010, and now it's the same thing again at Kingston University, where the program landed after the last disaster.   There's an open letter from students here.  Faculty have not yet been fired, but they almost certainly will be if the program closures go through.  Given the general level of economic distress in UK higher education, will another institution step forward to save the program?

Scathing speech by French Senator about our Nero, Trump

Here, if you haven't already seen it, with an English transcript as well.  

Petty tyrant serving as Interim US Attorney in Washington DC threatens Georgetown Law...

...and the Georgetown Dean responds forcefully!  This is how all educational leaders should deal with these little fascists in Trump's orbit.

Annals of political repression on campus: immigration authorities detain Palestinian activist at Columbia...

...despite his being a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.  Permanent residents have First Amendment rights, and his are being violated in the most egregious way.  If there is a  legal fund for Mr. Khalil, please let me know and I will post a link. Mr. Khalil does have a lawyer, and he will need one.

It's official: Columbia University capitulates

Here, in response to this.  The Trumpistas won't be satisfied, of course, until Columbia suppresses all speech critical of Israel or in support of the Palestinians.

Which school will be next?

Trump Admin pulls $400 million in grants/contracts from Columbia University over anti-semitism allegations

Just 48 hours later, the Trump gangsters have yanked $400 million in contracts and grants from Columbia University.  I'm sure this can't be legal, given the absence of even a semblance of due process which would be required for a Title VI sanction to be imposed.  Columbia's response to this robbery?

“We are reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding. We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff," a spokesperson for the university told NBC News.

Seriously?  The time for mealy-mouthed pablum is over.  Columbia needs to get their own Roy Cohn (Trump's favorite lawyer) on the case, who will respond roughly as Mr. Cohn did when his client, Mafia boss Carmine Galante, was dragged into court (scroll to the one minute mark:  short verison, it's all a publicity stunt, everything the government says about my client are lies).  Columbia, unlike Galante, has the advantage of not being guilty as charged!  Here's a draft of a more suitable response:

The allegation that Columbia University has tolerated anti-semitic misconduct is false and without basis, and the Administration knows that.  This is a political stunt, meant to intimidate universities and coerce them into suppressing lawful political speech, protected by the First Amendment.  The Univeristy will be taking the Trump Administration to court immmediately to seek remedies for its unlawful breach of contract and witholding of federal grants, all done without even a pretense of fair process.  We urge every university in the country to stand firm in protecting lawful speech.

I hope Columbia changes its tune quickly in the face of this plan to "destroy" the university.  Columbia needs to go on the offensive, and call out this fraud on the public for what it is.

Meanwhile, the ten universities being "visited" by the fake Anti-Semitism Task Force should be preparing their own legal and public relations campaigns.  Holmesian Bad Men only back down when costs are imposed on them.

 

 

Ben-Gurion University in Israel suspends professor for criticizing the IDF

Pretty egregious behavior by the university, which is forbidden by law from discriminating against employees based on their political viewpoint.  You can write to the BGU President, Dr. Daniel Chamowitz, to protest this violation of the free speech rights of a faculty member at:  [email protected]

(Thanks to Alon Harel for the pointer.)

More signs of the times: hiring freezes, reduced PhD admissions

The NYT reports:

Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university based research, including deep reductions in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health. Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty. The University of Pennsylvania could face a $250 million hit in N.I.H. funding alone....

In some cases, schools are pre-emptively cutting their expenses as a precautionary measure.

North Carolina State University announced on Feb. 14 that it was freezing most hiring. Stanford University announced on Feb. 26 that it was freezing staff hiring, citing “very significant risks” to the community. At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, President Kim Schatzel announced an “immediate pause” on faculty and staff hiring until July. She cited the potential loss of $20 to $23 million in N.I.H. research funding. Dozens of other schools have announced hiring freezes or “chills.”

Many of the cuts are now hitting graduate education...

A graduate program in biological sciences at the University of California, San Diego, usually enrolls 25 new graduate students a year. This year, the number will be 17....

Can AI hold office hours?

Several law professors trained AI on the class textbook, and AI still gave incomplete or wrong answers half the time!

UPDATE:  A senior scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy elsewhere writes:

The other day I gave the same query to two different AI's (anthropic.claude-3.5-sonnet.v2 and openai.gpt-4o):

"I'm interested in Plato's Republic, and I'd like to read some recent scholarly literature concerning his proposals for censorship in books 2 and 3 of the Republic. Can you suggest some articles written within the last ten years?"

One gave me two citations, one gave me five. Of those seven, exactly 1 was a real citation to a real article. The other 6 were mix-and-match nonsense: the names of real authors (lots of my friends!), the names of real journals, and titles that were plausible pastiches of title-elements.  But none of them actually exist. 

People tell me that AI is useful for some things, but it is still far from a serious adjunct to scholarship.

Pain, the mind and the body

Interesting.

Deciding Between Admissions Offers: The Importance of Visiting/Talking With Current Students

MOVING TO FRONT FROM LAST YEAR (SINCE TIMELY AGAIN--originally posted March 6, 2009)

Applicants to PhD and MA programs are now receiving offers of admission and, if they are lucky, are beginning to weigh choices between different departments.  I want to reiterate a point made in the PGR, namely, that students are well-advised to talk to current students at the programs they are considering.   There are often things you will want to know that you won't glean from familiarity with the excellence of the faculty's work, even if that remains the most important, if defeasible, reason for choosing a particular department.  Here are some examples of information that no ranking, no departmental brochure, and no "official" departmental representive will tell you about; all of these are drawn from stories I've heard from students over the last few years about ranked departments (the departments will remain unnamed, obviously).  You can think of them as representing "types" of problems you should be aware of before enrolling.  I've tweaked some of the details to protect identities.

The Absent Faculty:  Are the faculty who look so good on paper actually around and interested in working with students?  I heard a story about a key senior person in one department who is an alcoholic, and who simply ignored his students.  In another department, almost all the graduate students had to sign an open letter to the faculty a number of years ago protesting the failure of faculty to return graded papers and their general lack of interest in mentoring the students.   In yet another department, a well-known senior member of the faculty spent so much time travelling and lecturing around the world, that he rarely had time to review or discuss work carefully with students. 

The Sexual Predator Faculty:  Are women treated as young philosophers and aspiring professionals, or do faculty regularly view them as a potential source for dates and sexual liasons?  It's a bit shocking to realize that this is still a live issue in some departments, but, sadly, it is.  Are faculty-student sexual relations common in the department?  What happens when the relations end?  Are there repeated cases of sexual harassment complaints against faculty in the department?  Do they ever result in discipline?  I suppose it is possible this could be an issue for male students, but all the reports I've gotten over the years have been from women victimized by male faculty. 

Trump Admin targets Columbia

Straight out of the fascist sycophant's playbook:  right after Linda McMahon was sworn in as Education Secretary, the attack began:

The Trump administration is threatening to cut tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for Columbia University, making the school the first major target in its effort to root out what it considers antisemitic harassment on college campuses.

A comprehensive review of Columbia University’s federal contracts and grants was announced Monday night, shortly after Linda McMahon was confirmed as the secretary of education in a party-line vote.

The review, which will be led by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the General Services Administration, has already identified $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government that could be subject to stop-work orders. Health and Human Services said in a news release that the review was necessary “given Columbia’s ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

Far more could be on the line: A federal task force will conduct a comprehensive review of the “more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure that the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities,” the news release said.

Another perspective on the Ukraine war

Ukraine has something both Russia and America want.  I still think NATO expansion was the bigger issue for Russia, but the American crime boss, Trump, has, as is his wont, made this economic case more plausible.

(Thanks to Ben Mitchell-Yellin for the pointer.)

Trump's most ominous moves in his first six weeks

The first six weeks of Trump have been much worse than I anticipated.  His fascist henchmen are better organized and things are moving much faster and in some exceptionally dangerous ways (quite apart from the serial lawlessness, which is what one would epxect from a Holmesian Bad Man).  Pardoning the miscreants involved in the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol was grotesque, of course, but even more concerning is the transparent effort to politicize the military and federal police, and insulate them from legal review.  

As one commentator put it:

President Trump’s decision to fire senior military leaders without cause is foolish and a disgrace. It politicizes our professional military in a dangerous and debilitating way. What frightens me even more is the removal of three judge advocates general, the most senior uniformed legal authorities in the Defense Department. Their removal is one more element of this administration’s attack on the rule of law, and an especially disturbing part....

I am worried about political loyalty becoming a criterion to hold high military positions. For now, I have confidence that our professional military has nurtured dozens of highly qualified senior officers capable of holding positions of trust and responsibility, people who can provide leadership at the Pentagon and offer sound military advice to our civilian leaders.

But that optimism doesn’t extend to the consequences of removing the military’s top judge advocates general, the senior military professionals who interpret and enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the rules that guide troops in the field. They have the independent legal authority to tell any military commander or political appointee that an order from the president or the secretary of defense is unlawful, cannot be given and should not be obeyed.

Of the three JAGs who were dismissed, I know Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and worked with him for more than three years. His legal advice was always sound, professional and well supported. It is hard to imagine there was any reason to remove him, other than the obvious one of replacing him with someone more loyal to Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and therefore more willing to interpret the law consistent with their desires.

If there is one characteristic of this president and this administration, it is the utter lack of respect for legal constraints [BL:  of course, he's a "Bad Man"]...

Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth will now get to choose the JAG leadership for all three military departments. One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement. This is part of a much larger pattern of disrespect, even disdain, for the rule of law....

The meaning of all this is crystal clear:  Trump, and his fascist lackey Hegseth, want a military that will obey the unlawful orders of the "Boss of Bosses," i.e., Trump, including, e.g., repressing domestic dissent, policing "Democratic" cities, and ultimately, keeping Trump, or Trump lackeys in power, when he loses the next elections.