Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

AAUP is now irrelevant to the fight for academic freedom

Oh how the mighty have fallen; Committee A of the AAUP used to be a reliable defender of academic freedom, but since its capture by the enemies of academic freedom, it has been going downhill fast.   The latest absurd statement in defense of "diversity statements" reflects pretty clearly the influence of UC Davis law professor Brian Soucek (a member of Committee A), whose mistaken views we have discussed many times before (see especially).   Let me quote the appropriately scathing comments of Professor Tyler Harper (Bates College) from Twitter:

The AAUP statement insisting that mandatory DEI statements are compatible with academic freedom—and not political litmus tests—is ridiculous. DEI is not a neutral framework dropped from the sky, it’s an ideology about which reasonable people—including people of color—disagree.  I have benefited from and support affirmative action, and there are some things that fall under the rubric of DEI that I agree with. But pretending that DEI is not a political perspective or framework—when only people of one political persuasion support DEI—is a flagrant lie.  Evaluating a professor’s teaching with respect to their adherence to a DEI framework is a clear violation of academic freedom. DEI is not some bland affirmation that diversity is important and all people deserve accessible education. It’s a specific set of ideas.

Professor Harper adds:  "Recent events should have made clear that professors, particularly those of us on the left, must defend academic freedom without compromise, even when we disagree with how others use that freedom. When academic freedom is softened, we are always the ones who end up losing."

The Republican war on higher education, version 2.0

Here's what's coming down the pike, and it may be a catastrophe for higher education in America:

Top Republicans are threatening to pull billions of dollars of federal funding from some of the most prestigious universities in the US, stripping them of official accreditation to punish them for allowing pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.

The Guardian has reviewed a video recording of a meeting in Washington last week between House majority leader Steve Scalise and the powerful pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). In it, Scalise outlined how he planned to unleash a massive attack against universities that fail to squash criticism of Israel.

The offensive, which would be coordinated with the White House should Donald Trump win the presidential race in November, could even threaten the existence of universities, Scalise warned. He talked about revoking accreditation, the system by which higher education institutions are approved and to which the bulk of federal funds are tied.

“Your accreditation is on the line,” Scalise said. “You’re not playing games any more, or else you’re not a school any more"....

A reverse Whorf-Sapir hypothesis?

Peter Ludlow comments on a less-noted aspect of Daniel Everett's hypothesis about Pirahã.  (Earlier coverage from 2012, with reader discussion.)

The Academy's Covid cranks make their comeback at Stanford

Oy veh.  

UPDATE:  A participant in the Stanford event points out to me that the preceding link gives a misleading characterization of the event and the debates that actually took place there.  There were, indeed, some cranks (notably Alex Berenson), but there was also informed debate, and competing views, about difficult questions.

Intellectual humility is sometimes (often?) not a virtue

Interesting and sensible piece by philosopher Rachel Fraser.  (Intellectual humility, of course, is always a virtue for the ignorant.)  

(Unrelated to the articles main themes, I was, nonetheless, struck by this example at the start and what it tells us about the conservative nature of Anglophone philosophy:  "Suppose you want to be a better person. (Lots of us do.) How might you go about it? You might try to become more generous and commit to donating more of your income to charity."  Why not:  "You might stop working on Wall Street and devote your life to revolution" or, more modestly, "You might stop supporting Republicans and Democrats, and devote your time and money to socialist causes?")

Three models of a PhD program faculty: Princeton, MIT, Pittburgh

On what I will call the "Princeton model" the center of gravity of the department is in contemporary areas of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, mind and science, and parts of value theory, but having at least one faculty member covering the major periods of the history of Western philosophy (ancient, early modern, Kant, less often post-Kantian) is thought essential.   The history of philosophy, however, is not particularly integrated with the pursuit of the contemporary "hot" topics in Anglophone "analytic" philosophy.  But its serious representation is treated as important.  The Princeton model is influential, and many major PhD programs follow it to varying extent:  e.g., NYU, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Brown, Cornell, Wisconsin. Outside the U.S., Oxford and Toronto certainly operate this way, although both are helped by being large, so they can cover quite a lot!

Philosopher Ned Hall talks about the philosophy of causation and the structure of reality...

...at The Dissenter.

Philosophy of psychedelics...

...at IAITV.  Will it displace "philosophy of AI" as the new trendy AOS?  Probably not...

Meanwhile, "bird flu" continues its progression...

...although it could still amount to nothing for humans.

Philosophers born between 1928 and 1945 "disproportionately" cited in SEP...

...according to Professor Schwitzgebel's latest citation study which he kindly sent me.    Here are the philosophers born in this period ("the Silent Generation"), and their overall rank (and total citations in SEP articles):

"Silent Generation" (born 1928-1945)

1. Lewis, David K. (307)
5. Kripke, Saul A. (159)
8. Williams, Bernard (146)
10. Nagel, Thomas (137)
11. Nozick, Robert (135)
12. Jackson, Frank (130)
13. Searle, John R. (120)
14. Van Fraassen, Bas C. (117)
16. Harman, Gilbert H. (116)
18. Fodor, Jerry A. (115)

Professor Schwitzgebel asks:

So, what explains the Silent Generation's disproportionate representation among the most influential philosophers in the mainstream Anglophone tradition? I suggest that their influence is due to their objective importance. They achieved this importance through lucky timing and rising to a cultural occasion.

In the Anglophone world, especially the United States, the 1960s and 1970s were times of sharp university enrollment growth, as Silent Generation scholars were hired to teach the Boomers, as the college degree came to be seen as the standard path to social status and economic security, and as universities basked in the high prestige of science in this era (cultural pride in the space race, the success of the Manhattan Project, the polio vaccine, computers, antibiotics....). The academic job market was ridiculously easy by the standards of every subsequent decade, and professors from this era tell tales of how they landed jobs in the most prestigious universities sometimes with a single phone call.

The Silent Generation thus had a great demographic advantage: They were entering the profession in boom times. They engaged with their elders (Quine, Rawls, and Strawson, for example; Putnam and Davidson are edge cases due to Putnam's near-cutoff age and Davidson's late start), but even more, they engaged directly with one another, filling the journals with articles about the issues that interested them. Much of their seminal work was published in the 1970s while they were relatively young, and this work framed the debates of the 1980s, and the 1990s, and the early 2000s, and to a substantial extent (as my SEP analyses suggest) even today.

Mount Royal University was wrong to fire tenured professor in 2021

So ruled an arbitrator, who also found the professor's conduct did warrant discipline (earlier coverage):

When it came to [Professor] Widdowson's firing, [the arbitraror] wrote that there was just cause for discipline based on Widdowson's conduct, but that dismissal was not an appropriate penalty.

However, the decision states that Widdowson's continued employment with the university would not be viable for a number of reasons, including Widdowson's ongoing hostility toward the university and colleagues, witness testimony that stated her return to the university would be disruptive, and her "persistence" throughout the arbitration hearing that a number of tweets investigated did not constitute harassment.

Instead, the arbitrator suggested a monetary payment, rather than reinstatement with lesser penalties.

What a strange case, all growing out of a "Twitter war"!

(Thanks to Joshua Selby for the pointer.)

October 7 atrocities, one year later

Here's what I wrote one year ago.  I was right, sadly, that Netanyahu's reponse would be "brutal."  I did not anticipate how many would end up dead or maimed in the aftermath.  I never would have imagined there would still be hostages a year later.   Netanyahu's original failure on October 7 has now been compounded by the failure to prioritize freeing hostages, the failure to secure peace for Israel, and the failure to treat the Palestinians in Gaza (and elsewhere) as human beings.

PGR survey invitations to go out soon

Professors Kar and Pynes have been working extremely hard to finalize everything, and Professor Pynes tells me that he expects the invitations to go out in the next couple of days.   The Advisory Board has also nominated more than 150 new evaluators, who we hope will participate.  Past evaluators should also receive invitations, as I understand it.

Philosopher Michael Huemer vs. Internet blowhard Ben Shapiro on voting for Trump

This is pretty funny, especially the final bit:

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is still planning on voting Trump, even though he knows that Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. Shapiro explained that there is no cause for concern because “the guard rails held”, and Trump can’t do the same thing again since he’s not eligible to run again after his second term.

Let me tell you how I view this. Say you’re on a bus ride on a winding mountain road. You see the driver suddenly swing the wheel to the right, trying to send the bus over the cliff. Fortunately, the guard rail on the side of the road holds, and the bus bounces back onto the road. The bus driver does this repeatedly during the drive, but every time, the guard rail holds the bus back.

When you finally get off the bus, one of your fellow passengers declares that this was an excellent bus driver. He proposes hiring this driver to drive the same group to another city.

“What are you, out of your f—ing mind?” you reply. “He tried to drive us off a cliff!”

“Oh that,” says the other passenger. “The guard rail held, so what’s the big deal? Don’t worry, this next drive won’t go by a cliff. Since the rest of his driving performance was fine, we should hire him.”

That guy is Ben Shapiro.

Beall from Notre Dame to National University of Singapore (NUS)

Jc Beall (philosophical logic; philosophy of logic, mathematics & language; metaphysics), currently O'Neill Family Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, has accepted a senior appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore, to start in the academic year 25-26.   That's a big catch for NUS, which was already ranked (in 2021) in the specialty areas for philosophical logic and philosophy of mathematics; Beall's addition should push NUS into the top groupings in these specialties.   More generally, the addition of Beall, along with Peter Millican part-time, seems likely to move NUS into the top five programs in Australasia (it just missed the top five in 2021, before these additions).

Jason Brennan (Georgetown) to be the new editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs

Professor Brennan shared the new mission statement; I've bolded a particularly important part:

Philosophy & Public Affairs publishes the best philosophical work that engages with matters of public concern. Since 1972, Philosophy & Public Affairs has published pathbreaking scholarship that has reshaped philosophical debates for decades to come. Continuing this tradition, the journal seeks papers that are bold, daring, and risk-taking.  Philosophy & Public Affairs prizes papers that seek to change paradigms over papers that make minor moves in long debates. It seeks to avoid esoteric and scholastic papers in favor of accessible and engaging papers about topics that matter to non-specialists. 

The journal welcomes submissions from philosophers, legal scholars, political scientists, economists, and sociologists. It welcomes papers on problems requiring empirical or legal analysis, provided those papers also rigorously defend a normative position. 


All papers submitted to Philosophy & Public Affairs are blinded to editors. Papers that pass initial inspection undergo triple-blind review. The journal values viewpoint and ideological diversity; no preference will be given to papers that affirm editors’ political or moral commitments. The journal aims to provide a forum in which researchers with different perspectives can bring their distinctive methods to bear on problems that concern everyone.


The editorial staff retains complete autonomy from Wiley in determining which and how many papers to publish. Commercial considerations have no bearing on the decisions of the editorial staff. This editorial autonomy is protected by contract.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Fat, "Country Girl," 1970

ORIGINALLY POSED JULY 6, 2019--ONE OF MY FAVORITE DISCOVERIES IN THIS SERIES

Western Massachussetts band that never made it nationally; this is from their debut album:

10/5/24 UPDATE:  Ahmet Ertegun reportedly thought Fat would be the American answer to The Rolling Stones.  It didn't work out that way for them, alas.  Feel free to add links to favorite Fat songs.

"The Law and Philosophy of Academic Freedom"

I gave this public lecture earlier this week at Providence College, and the College kindly has made a recording available:

I thought the Q&A was productive as well.  My thanks to Professor Chris Arroyo and his colleagues for a warm welcome and good discussion.

UPDATE:  At the request of some readers, here is the handout the audience had:  Download Law and Phil Academic Freedom Leiter

Do your undergraduates have trouble reading whole books?

From The Atlantic:

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

Curious to hear from undergraduate teachers what their experience has been and whether this article rings true.

(Thanks to Chris Williams for the pointer.)

 

 

Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, volume 5...

...is here.   OUP is making one chapter, John Horty on "Precedent and Open Texture," available for free:

This chapter presents a semantic account of open-textured predicates, particularly in the law, but also in language more broadly. The central idea is that judgments involving open-textured predicates are evaluated against a background set of previous authoritative decisions involving these predicates, which then constrain later applications in just the way that precedent cases constrain later decisions in the common law. In developing this idea, the paper relies on the “reason model” of precedential constraint, derived directly from recent research in artificial intelligence and law as well as previous work by Grant Lamond. According to the reason model, what matters about a precedent case is the court’s assessment of importance among the competing reasons presented by that case, which is represented as a priority ordering among these reasons. Later courts are then constrained simply to respect the priority ordering on reasons established by earlier decisions.

(Among many other things, the paper references very fine work on formal models of precedential constraint by Gabriel Broughton, a graduate of the Law School here who recently defended his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton.)

Philosopher's Magazine, redux: it is, indeed, reborn as an online magazine

A propos an earlier post, Daniel Kodsi, a philosophy lecturer at Oxford and the new editor, writes:

The Philosophers’ Magazine is now accepting submissions for publication in its redesigned online magazine. We are interested in everything and anything philosophical: essays, book reviews, interviews, Platonic dialogues, … . Since the bounds of the philosophical are no simple matter to delimit, that may be to say that we are interested in everything and anything—so long as it takes seriously the power of philosophical enquiry to make new discoveries and makes no sacrifices on normal philosophical standards of clarity and informal rigor. Is there a problem you think deserves to be better known, a book you feel compelled to criticize, or a disagreement you want to air? Contact us at [email protected].

 

We are also expanding our editorial team. Editorial staff would be expected to be able to engage as intellectual peers with some of the world’s leading philosophers and thinkers: past contributors to The Philosophers’ Magazine include Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ronald Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum, Timothy Williamson, Kit Fine, Elliott Sober, Frank Jackson, Patricia Churchland, David Chalmers, Christine Korsgaard and Simon Blackburn. Although editing for The Philosphers’ Magazine is demanding, it represents a unique opportunity—especially for early career researchers—to shape public conversations in philosophy and beyond. Applicants should email a CV and a brief proposal for a special issue they would be interested in helping to organise to [email protected].

Department of Education's OCR creates massive exception for faculty's contractual right to academic freedom

We mentioned not long ago the firing of an anti-Zionist tenured professor at Muehlenberg College, and now the Office of Civil Rights report on the case is public.  It contains two pieces of information of significance. 

First, OCR says there were "repeated reports in a single semester regarding a professor’s classroom statements and social media posts that created a potential hostile environment for Jewish students."  Faculty have no right under AAUP standards to utilize classroom time for political statements unrelated to their subject-matter.  If, as CHE reports and the OCR implies, Professor Finkelstein did that, she could be sanctioned for it.  The OCR report also says that "the college received...allegations, which the college confirmed, that the professor had entered the Hillel space on campus, photographed a student fundraising display for 'the various war efforts in Israel' and posted denigrating comments on Instagram regarding the students."   This also seems to me unprotected behavior:  students have a reasonable expectation that their lawful political speech on campus will not be photographed by faculty for purposes of extramural denigration of them.

Much more alarming, however, is that the OCR has now put its imprint on the proposition that there is a "Title VI obligation to take steps reasonably calculated to redress any hostile environment related to shared ancestry affecting the education program or activity, if one exists, even if the conduct occurs on private social media and involves political speech. Students had reported significant anxiety and fear resulting from the professor’s comments in class and on social media that impacted their access to education" (emphasis added).  The idea that the lawful extramural speech in private about political topics can form the basis for sanctioning a faculty member is a massive infringement on the existing contractual rights of academic freedom under AAUP standards.  The fact that students reporting "anxiety and fear" based on "comments...on social media" can be a factor a college may consider in imposing sanctions is not just a "weaponizing" of Title VI, it turns Title VI into a nuclear warhead directed at otherwise lawful political speech by faculty.

Philosophy actually does teach some intellectual skills!

Philosopher Michael Prinzing tweeted this interesting looking study at me the other day.  I have only read a bit of it, but would be curious to hear from readers who take the time to examine it more carefully.

Kelsey from Notre Dame to Chicago

Sean Kelsey (ancient Greek philosophy), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has accepted a senior offer from  the Department of Philosophy at the Uiversity of Chicago, where he will start in fall 2025.  He joins a large group of faculty working in and around ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, including Agnes Callard, Gabriel Richardson Lear, Jonathan Lear, Martha Nussbaum, and John Proios.

Einstein vs. Bergson on the nature of time

A nice account by philosopher Evan Thompson of a debate most readers are probably unfamiliar with.  Curious to hear informed reader reactions from those of you who know your Einstein, or know your Bergson (or both)!

"Careerism is ruining college"

This essay by a recent Penn graduate is an example of "confusing cause and effect" that is very common, especially in the media.

When I pictured myself in college, I envisioned potluck picnics and late nights listening to Taylor Swift, overanalyzing class crushes. Maybe even joining a Quidditch team.

I never daydreamed about hiding in the library bathroom, crying because I had just been rejected from an undergraduate law journal.

The recently publicized tensions on college campuses, particularly those in the heavily scrutinized Ivy League, are among many forces at play for students today. But there’s another that has not yet captivated the news cycle.

It’s called pre-professional pressure: a prevailing culture that convinces many of us that only careers in fields such as computer programming, finance and consulting, preferably at blue-chip firms like Goldman Sachs, McKinsey or big tech companies, can secure us worthwhile futures. It is an inescapable part of the current college experience, like tailgating or surviving on stale dining hall food. It not only steers our life choices; it also permeates daily life and negatively affects our mental health.

Royal Society (UK) releases referee reports of papers by famous scientists...

...including Crick and Watson on DNA, and Alan Turing.  It would be fun to see the referee reports on David Lewis's Convention or Donald Davidson's "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" or other famous philosophers before they became famous.  Are readres familiar with any examples that are out there?

(Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)

Major Australian university abandons in-person classes!

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 16--SEE COMMENT #6 BELOW, THIS ISN'T AS BAD AS IT INITIALLY SOUNDED

This is a shocking development.  The University of Adelaide, while not at the level of the Universities of Melbourne or Sydney, is a major, research-intensive university in Australia, part of the elite "Group of 8."  I assume cost-cutting is driving this crazy decision, but one would think after everyone's experience during Covid with teaching on Zoom that the inferiority of that approach would have been apparent.  What is going on in Australia?

Tenured professor in Wisconsin stripped of tenure for making pornographic videos with his wife in his spare time

A bizarre case, and Professor Gow should sue.  The University was within rights to strip him of his administrative role in light of his "hobby," which arguably would affect his ability to discharge university business.  But he has a First Amendment right to make pornography, and I can't see how a public university can fire him from his tenured position for exercising that right.

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

"I'll have a Ryle of beer please"

Philosopher David Lobina writes:

Apropos of a debate in the UK regarding whether to keep the pint as a measure of beer or go metric instead (for health reasons, or otherwise), Gilbert Ryle makes an appearance in the Letters section of the Guardian (link here):

May I suggest that the new measure be called the Ryle? This after the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle who, as Charlotte Vrijen tells us in her PhD dissertation: “… gave his name to a measure of beer, roughly three‑quarters of a pint. Christ Church had special glasses made for these ‘Ryles of beer’. He used to say that sometimes half a pint was too small a measure and a pint too large. Once he stated that he would prefer to be remembered for having invented a measure of beer than for having written The Concept of Mind.”
Alec McHoul
Mundijong, Western Australia

Blast from the past: Geuss on Rorty (and on Geuss)

Back in 2008, with some reader comments.  A great broadside against Gadamer thrown in as well.

UPDATE:  Here's the full Geuss essay. (Thanks to Peter Aronoff for the pointer.)

Leslie Green on jurisprudence and its relation to its history

He's made a very interesting, new paper available here.

The military's obligations to the U.S. President

An interesting perspective from philosopher Graham Parsons, a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  (You'll note his by-line notes specifically that he is not speaking for the Academy or the militiary.)  I hope Professor Parsons's view has some influence.

In Memoriam: Gerald J. Massey (1934-2024)

Professor Massey, who spent most of his career at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was emeritus, was best-known for his work in logic, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language; he also wrote on a number of historical figures in philosophy as well.  You can learn more about his career here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Massey or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

Caltech (and other schools) are asking to be sued for consumer fraud

This NYT article may inspire some lawyers to bring the case.

Nietzsche's moral anti-realism

I talk about it with Johnathan Bi here, in the second part of the long interview I did with him (part I).  Mr. Bi tells me he is now doing series of interviews on ancient Greek philosophy with, among others, Tad Brennan, Agnes Callard, Rachana Kamtekar, and Richard Kraut, among others.

Why is this race so close? There is no mystery

The "undecided" or "waivering" voters have no idea what's going on and do not understand cause and effect.  Consider this from the latest NYT polls showing an essential tie in the key Northern battleground states:

The polling results fit a recurring theme with voters in battleground states: Many tend to believe that Mr. Trump’s time in office helped people like them, and they worry that Ms. Harris’s policies would hurt people like them.

For these voters, economic correlation is causation:  if the economy was good under Trump, Trump caused it.  In fact, Trump's policies were not good for people of average income, but to know that you'd have to know something about his actual policies (e.g., his tax cuts).  (Interestingly, voters give Trump a pass on the pandemic:  they know he didn't cause that.  On the other hand, they apparently don't know how badly he handled it, but, again, that would require actually paying attention to his malign influence on health policy.)  (Achen and Bartels in Democracy for Realists discuss various cases in which correlation is treated as causation by voters, including some pretty bizarre ones.) 

Conversely, because substantial inflation occurred under Biden, he caused it:  correlation is causation and thus responsibility.  The role of the pandemic and the disruption in supply chains in producing inflation is a consideration unavailable to the ignorant.

The problem for Harris is that every time voters walk into the supermarket they are reminded that prices of most stuff they buy is 15-20% higher than under Trump.   (I'm not an especially alert shopper, but even I am astonished at times.)  As the NYT also reports, "As for the issues that matter most to swing voters, pocketbook economics is No. 1 by far." There's just no way around that, and it may be enough to return the monster child to office.  Harris's pitches to the prudent wing of the capitalist class won't change this.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Tear Gas, "Lay It On Me," 1971

ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 8, 2020--COMMENTS NOW OPEN

Another great rollicking number from the Scottish rock band:

2024 UPDAT:  Feel free to add links to other Tear Gas favorites or live performances (the latter are hard to come by!).

Blast from the past: Should graduate students use social media?

Back in 2013, with reader discussion (including, amusingly, comments from one of the bigger social media maniacs in professional philosophy of recent years).

On academic predictions of the future

Sociologist Randall Collins looks back at some unsuccessful ones, and offers reflections on why and how they went so wrong.  Quite interesting.

(Thanks to Howard Berman for the pointer.)

Corrupt mayors, New York City style

As a native of NYC, I've been following with some bemusement the travails of the eccentric and now indicted current Mayor, Eric Adams; it brought to mind an earlier, and far more corrupt, NYC Mayor, William O'Dwyer, who was saved by President Truman.  I doubt President Biden, or a President Harris, will come to Mayor Adams's rescue.

PGR update

Professors Kar and Pynes have been hard at work finalizing the faculty lists for the surveys, as well as consulting with the Advisory Board for nominations of evaluators and other matters.   The survey will launch in October, probably not later than mid-October, and the goal is for results to start being available before the American Thanksgiving.  I will, as in the past, preview some results here.  The final report will be available, as before, at www.philosophicalgourmet.com.

 

An ominous change in nuclear policy by Russia

This really deserves more attention than it is receiving:

Mr. Putin said, Russia would treat “aggression against Russia by any nonnuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state” as a “joint attack on the Russian Federation.” The language was a clear reference to Ukraine, which does not have nuclear weapons, and the military support it receives from nuclear-armed NATO countries like the United States and Britain.

Mr. Putin also said that Russia would be prepared to use a nuclear weapon even in response to an attack carried out with conventional weapons that creates “a critical threat to our sovereignty.” Ukraine last month pressed a cross-border offensive that captured territory in Russia for the first time since the war began and has been lobbying Washington for permission to use Western missiles for strikes deep into Russian territory.

While I do not expect Russia to launch a nuclear first strike on the U.S. or U.K., I worry that he may use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and once that happens, things could spin out of control very quickly.

Tenured professor at Muehlenberg College fired for lawful extramural speech in support of Palestine and against Zionism

There is an account at The Intercept, with a quote from AAUP officials who are on this case (I hope FIRE and the AFA are too).  On the facts reported, the college has acted illegally.  This looks to be another example of weaponizing Title VI for purposes of punishing lawful political speech.  Please email me if you have other details/information about this case.

(Thanks to Liam Murphy for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Here's the AAUP letter to the college.  It's fine, if a bit too reticent.  What the college needs is to get a credible lawyer letter informing them that they are going to be sued for breach of contract if they try to fire Professor Finkelstein for her political speech.  (Absent evidence that her political speech manifests itself in discriminatory behavior in the classroom, there is no basis for sanctiniong her under AAUP standards.)

(Thanks to Michael Risch for the pointer to the AAUP letter.)

Calculating "indirect costs" (IDC) on federal grants for humanities projects

A philosopher elsewhere writes:

I've been wrestling with my office of sponsored research on the issue of IDC rates for federal grants, in my own case for a translation proposal for the NEH.

My university has a newly negotiated rate with the federal government of 39%. In previous years, they were willing to reduce the existing rate (I think it was closer to 30%) to 10%, on the reasonable assumption that research in the humanities costs the institution considerably less than research in the hard sciences. But they are no insisting that the rate should be fixed across disciplines and projects. I've tried to make the case that a scholarly project in the humanities is in no way comparable to a scientific investigation of, say, the role of platelet-derived growth factor in carcinogenesis. The latter requires maintenance of lab equipment, payment of post-doctoral researchers, etc. that have no real equivalent in humanistic inquiry. But the current administration appears to be operating under the assumption that the value of grants is not to make scholarship possible but to put money in the university's purse.

I wonder if other philosophers have encountered similar issues, or if my own institution is comparatively unique in asking the NEH (in this case) to give the university a sizeable cut of the money that won't contribute in any meaningful way to the scholarly project at hand. And in a way that (in my own case) will make the grant application itself less competitive.

Curious to hear how other universities handle this.  If you do not want to post your name, at least say something about your school (public/private, R1, SLAC) and the project (e.g., translation project, humanities research, interdisciplinary research [with psychology, law etc.]).

"My dinner with Nozick"

Philosopher David Schmidtz recounts the interesting experience.  I'm curious what readers make of this claim:  "The difference in the styles of Rawls and Nozick was momentous. Rawls cultivated apostles. Nozick did not. Nozick had no interest in becoming a religion."  Signed comments will be preferred (full name, valid email address.)

Steve Pyke, famed photographer of philosophers and many others, interviewed...

...at Aesthetics for Birds.  I sat for him in his NYC studio for the second series, and it was a lot of fun, and he was kind enough to let me use the photo in various places, including at the bottom of my home page.

 

Blast from the past: Transparency about refereeing

Back in 2019, with reader discussion.

"The Impact of PhD studies on mental health"

A Swedish study, not encouraging (except the last line):

We study the impact of PhD studies on mental health care uptake using Swedish administrative records of prescriptions for psychiatric medication for the full population of PhD students. First, we provide descriptive evidence that PhD students collect psychiatric medication at a higher rate than a matched sample of individuals holding a master’s degree, but at a lower rate than a matched sample from the general population. Second, we implement an event study analysis and document that, in the years preceding their PhD studies, prospective students collect psychiatric medication at a rate similar to that of a matched sample of individuals holding a master’s degree. However, following the start of PhD studies, the use of psychiatric medication among PhD students increases substantially. This upward trend continues throughout the course of PhD studies, with estimates showing a 40 percent increase by the fifth year compared to pre-PhD levels. After the fifth year, which represents the average duration of PhD studies in our sample, we observe a notable decrease in the utilization of psychiatric medication.

More on the coming crisis of antiobiotic-resistant microbes

Following up on last week, this grim appraisal appeared in Science:

In 2019, while attending the annual conference of the American Society for Microbiology, I listened to an interview with Carl Nathan, a renowned tuberculosis researcher. During the conversation, Nathan shared that in 1948 he was among the first group of civilians to receive penicillin treatment for pneumonia. At that time, pneumonia, primarily caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, was the leading cause of death in the United States. Tuberculosis ranked second. The introduction of penicillin and streptomycin in the 1940s provided the first effective treatment for pneumonia and tuberculosis, respectively.

 

The benefits that antibiotics brought to society were monumental. Before they were introduced, infectious diseases were the leading cause of death, driving epidemics with unimaginable mortality rates. For example, a plague epidemic is believed to have triggered the Neolithic decline in Europe. The resulting population drop-off facilitated the spread of Indo-European languages during the Bronze Age. A few centuries later, the plague of Justinian caused devastating mortality in the Byzantine Empire, killing between a quarter and half of the population and contributing to the empire’s downfall. And between 1492 and 1600, an estimated 80 to 90% of the Native American population died from infectious diseases introduced by Europeans and Africans, a factor that contributed to European colonization of the Americas.

 

Living through the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed approximately 0.4% of the US population, provided only a glimpse into the fear and societal impact associated with catastrophic population declines caused by infectious diseases....