Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Petition calling on University of Kansas *not* to implement the Regents' policy purporting to suspend tenure

The petition is here, and I urge readers to sign.  (Earlier coverage.)   It's worth noting that four of the six state universities (including Kansas State University) have announced they will not make use of the new policy.  The University of Kansas should follow suit.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Steamhammer, "Contemporary Chick Con Song," 1969

Part of the British blues explosion in the 1960s, this is far and away their best-known number, and what a great one it is (you'll have it on replay I predict):

 

New COVID worries: the new Brazilian and South African variants of the coronavirus

Here; an excerpt

The more transmissible variant, B.1.1.7, is already spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark, and probably in many other countries. But scientists are just as worried about 501Y.V2, a variant detected in South Africa. Some of the mutations it carries, including ones named E484K and K417N, change its surface protein, spike, and have been shown in the lab to reduce how well monoclonal antibodies combat the virus. In a preprint published earlier this month, Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, showed that E484K also reduced the potency of convalescent sera from some donors 10-fold—although he is quick to add this does not necessarily mean the mutation would cause people's immunity to the new strain to drop 10-fold.

P.1 [the Brazilian variant] adds to the concerns because it appears to have hit on a similar constellation of mutations and has emerged in a place with a high level of immunity. “Anytime you see the same mutations arising and starting to spread multiple times, in different viral strains across the world, that's really strong evidence that there's some evolutionary advantage to those mutations,” Bloom says....

(Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

Widespread political protests in Russia

Remarkable.  Some accounts suggest they are bigger than any protests during the Putin era.

Efficacy of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines on the new variants of the coronavirus

This paper suggests the vaccine is likely to need updating at various intervals for maximum effectiveness.  If that's right, it means the current mass vaccinations which are just getting started may need to be undertaken again next fall.  If I'm misunderstanding the paper, or if readers have links to other helpful information about this issue, please comment, below.

(Thanks to Bob Matthews for the pointer.)

Cancel culture redux: think tank fires VP for funny tweet that offended Repugs

Story here.  I thought that was a pretty good joke, actually, and Mr. Wilkinson should not have apologized.  But for God's sake, everyone on Twitter posts jokes that fail or tweets something off the cuff they later regret.  Shame on the Niskanen Center.

(Longtime readers may recall Mr. Wilkinson from when he was more of a "free market" utopian:  see, e.g., here or here.)

UPDATE:  This is amusing.  Hypocrisy, thy name is Jerry Taylor!

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Jerry Dworkin (UC Davis) writes:  "I also was involved years ago with a critical correspondence with him [Wilkinson] about libertarian issues.  I was pleasantly surprised by his definite shift to more reasonable views at Nikansen. This latest firing is abysmal. That Taylor tweet is hilarious in light of his actions."

In Memoriam: Jim Edwards (1939-2021)

A longtime member of the department at the University of 'Glasgow, Professor Edwards was well-known for his work in philosophy of language and epistemology.  The Glasgow Department has posted some memories from friends, colleagues, and former students here.

(Thanks to David Bain for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: On New York bluntness...

...and other offenses to "WASP decorum" (back in 2017).

University of Kansas Regents seem to think they can unilterally breach the university's contract with tenured faculty

As philosopherJohn Symons (Kansas) notes on Twitter, the Regents voted to "approve allowing university CEOs power to dismiss, suspend or terminate employees incl tenured faculty."   If they do so, this will end up in court.

Lectures recorded because of COVID that might be available to the public?

Reader Neil Webb writes:

One of the consequences of Covid is that lectures have been delivered online.

While many of those lectures will only be available to students within an institution some are available to anyone with internet access.

Would you mind asking those who do have lectures available and are happy for them to be shared more widely to provide a link so that others can benefit from them?

As I explained to Mr. Webb, often these lectures can not be shared outside the university (that is the rule here, for example).  Often student privacy rights under FERPA are implicated in sharing recordings, another obstacle.   But readers can post links to lectures being recorded during COVID that are widely available (maybe there is already an archive with such links somewhere?).

The East Timor genocide

Indonesia was the immediate perpetrator, the U.S. was one of many international supporters.  45 years ago.   Worth remembering.

UPDATE:  Dr. Roger Albin (Michigan) writes:  "An excellent complement to the link you posted on the East Timor genocide is Geoffrey Robinson’s The Killing Season, a first-rate monograph on the slaughter that brought the Suharto regime to power.  It contains abundant documentation of American complicity in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians."

Can people vaccinated for COVID still be contagious?

A nicely done news article about what we do and don't know at this stage.   From the conclusion:

In the end, the vaccines likely limit transmission in two ways:

 

1. Preventing some percentage of infections totally, even asymptomatic ones. This prevents the body from replicating the virus and having enough to share with others.

 

2. Turning a further percentage of what would have been symptomatic infections to asymptomatic ones, thus preventing the body from coughing, sneezing and generally shooting the virus long distances.

 

Overall, I think it would be reasonable to estimate that vaccines reduce transmission from anywhere from 30% to 90% — a huge range, to be sure, but it depends on the vaccine used and the accuracy of these studies with limited sample sizes.

 

That result would be both good and bad. On one hand, it’s not total sterilizing immunity — someone who has been vaccinated still has a reasonably high likelihood of picking up the disease at a party and giving it to their immunocompromised friend later in the week. That means the vaccinated probably shouldn’t go to parties where there are unvaccinated people while the pandemic rages.

Now that the monster-child is gone...

...I give him credit for not annihilating civilization in a nuclear war.   He exceeded my low expectations in this very important respect.  Kudos!

Richard Marshall interviews Walter Horn...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: James Bohman (1954-2021)

Well-known for his contributions to political philosophy (esp. democratic theory), Professor Bohman spent almost his entire career at Saint Louis University, where he was emeritus.  I will post links to memorial notices as they appear.

How the Wokerati talk: a guide

This was a rare gem from one of the old metablogs; it's a shame the author can't be given credit for their guide to the special (mis)use of language by the "woke":

The vocab is hard to keep up with. Should we start a running glossary?

"Problematic": adj. (of arguments) false; (of pratices) must be banned; (of utterances) must be retracted and apologised for; (of tweets) must be deleted;

"Free speech": n. a problematic concept [see above]

"Censorship": n. the alleged suppression of problematic ideas, a largely mythical practice. [compare "silence"]

"Silence": v. (1) to ignore, not talk about. (2) to disagree with (3) to discuss a marginalized individual [see below] in terms they would prefer not to be discussed

"erase": v. synonym for silence

"identity": n. an (esp. marginalised) individual's conception of themself. NB all other definitions, such as those which have been explored by philosophers over the past two millennia, are problematic [see above]

Blast from the past: "Expanding notions of harm in psychology"

Back in 2015, but still relevant.

Is anyone surprised that a Trump-appointed commission about how to teach American history...

...produced reactionary garbage?  I assume not!

Why is the new variant of the coronavirus more transmissible (if it is)?

It's been hard to find a clear answer to this in the media.   The most common surmise I've seen is that the new variant reproduces more in the nose and throat, and so people expel more of it when they sneeze or cough.   But a recent NYT article suggests these as possible explanations:

In a typical coronavirus, the tip of the spike protein is like an ill-fitting puzzle piece. It can latch onto human cells, but the fit is so loose that the virus often falls away and fails to infect the cell.

The N501Y mutation seems to refine the shape of the puzzle piece, allowing a tighter fit and increasing the chance of a successful infection....

One mysterious [additional] mutation in the B.1.1.7 lineage [of the coronavirus] deletes the 69th and 70th amino acids in the spike protein. Experiments have shown that this deletion enables the coronavirus to infect cells more successfully. It’s possible that it changes the shape of the spike protein in a way that makes it harder for antibodies to attach.

I'd be curious to know what other accounts of the mechanism readers have seen.  I'll conclude with observations by longtime reader Dr. David Ozonoff from the Boston University School of Public Health, with whom I've corresponded a bit about this:

I don’t think we know how (or truthfully even whether) the virus is more transmissible. Transmission is very complicated and depends on characteristics of the host (us), the environment (social behavior, season, etc.) and the virus itself. The evidence so far available does suggest increased transmission is very plausible but I don’t believe the evidence is ironclad (but it doesn’t have to be). In this context the exact mechanism (which is what you seem to be seeking) is just speculative and increased viral load is a reasonable speculation. Increased affinity for the ACE-2 receptor and increased infectivity of younger age groups has also been mentioned. I don’t think we can say what the exact mechansm or mechanisms is/are at work here.

UPDATE:  Dr. Ozonoff just sent along this informative new article from the generally excellent STAT.

Blast from the past: the most significant moral philosophers in the history of Western philosophy?

A poll, and discussion, back in 2013.

New study suggests COVID immunity appears to be longlasting

An account here; an excerpt:

Covid-19 patients who recovered from the disease still have robust immunity from the coronavirus eight months after infection, according to a new study....

[T]he new study does show that a small number of recovered people do not have long-lasting immunity. But vaccination ought to offset that problem by ensuring herd immunity in the larger population. 

The new paper studied blood samples from 185 men and women who had recovered from covid-19—most from a mild infection, although 7% were hospitalized. Each person provided at least one blood sample between six days and eight months after their initial symptoms, and 43 of the samples were taken after six months. The team that ran the investigation measured the levels of several immunological agents that work together to prevent reinfection: antibodies (which tag a pathogen for destruction by the immune system or neutralize its activity), B cells (which make antibodies), and T cells (which kill infected cells). 

MLK's philosophy of "Personalism"

Interesting essay by philosopher Aaron Preston (Valparaiso), about an aspect of King's thought I was not familiar with.

What the right-wing crazies may be planning for inauguration week

This is creepy beyond belief.

(Thanks to Jason Stanley for calling it to my attention.)

Ithaca College announces plans for draconian cuts, including in Philosophy

Here.  (Earlier coverage.)  Comments are open for those with more information, additional links, etc.  Submit comments only once, they may take awhile to appear.

(Thanks to Zena Hitz for the pointer.)

Footage from inside the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol

This is pretty remarkable and appalling.  Although most Capitol police did their job, a few were clearly on the side of the rioters.

Another perspective on the open letter on academic freedom opposing the anti-Stock letter

Philosopher Teresa Marques (Barcelona) writes with an interesting observation:

The importance of this letter is not the in-fighting among factions in philosophy, but the broader conflict of rights at issue, and threats to academic freedom in universities around the world across a range of academic areas. The letter has been signed by more than 450 people, from clinicians and psychologists to sociologists, chemists, historians, surgeons, journalists, school teachers, etc., and by people based in more than 30 countries. Had it been open to signatories a bit longer it would have reached more people in Latin America, the south of Europe (although there were already 10 people based in Spain who signed it), and Eastern Europe. I've been contacted by many people who wanted to sign it and were surprised to see it closed.

For a Saturday evening change of pace

Today would have been my father's 88th birthday, had he not been an early victim of the COVID disaster in the United States.  In lieu of the usual "obscure" rock 'n' roll, I thought I would post instead one of my father's favorite pieces of music:  Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, K 581.  I hope you enjoy it and also that you are spared the sorrow and tragedy of COVID in your lives.

 

Philosophy summer programs for "diverse" undergraduates

A list of programs here.  (What each program counts as "diverse" varies a bit, so do read the descriptions.)

Trump, social media, the future of democracy

A good piece of writing by journalist Ross Barkan; an excerpt:

Many on the left cheered Trump’s banishment from social media and the quick move by Amazon to dump Parler, the right-wing Twitter-like app, from its cloud computing services. Greg Bensinger, a member of the New York Times editorial board, praised the decisions from Facebook and Twitter, calling for “more direct, human moderation of high-profile accounts; more prominent warning labels; software that can delay posts so that they can be reviewed before going out to the masses, especially during moments of high tension; and a far greater willingness to suspend or even completely block dangerous accounts like Mr. Trump’s.”

This was general consensus. The problem wasn’t that the ban had come—it was that it had come so late. Trump, of course, had four years to incite violence and hatred from his Twitter account. Imagine what would have happened if the tech elites in Silicon Valley decided to neuter him back in 2017. Imagine the weakness of that presidency....

Chapman law professor and right-wing activist John Eastman spoke at the rally before the stormtrooper riot...

...and now some faculty want him fired.   The problem is he didn't commit a firing offense (as the University President recognizes).  He has not been convicted of a crime, only of world-historic stupidity and venality.  Lisa Leitz, a Chapman professor of peace studies, is calling for him to be fired because "his appearance at the rally and his past Trump campaign activities have scarred the university's reputation...it undermines the credibility of every faculty member."  Professor Leitz has obviously not thought very carefully about what she is saying.   No one, including her, would enjoy any academic freedom were the standard for termination "speech that, when it enters the public eye, 'scar[s] the university's reputation.'"   That standard would have surely justified the illegal firing of Steven Salaita, to take but one example.

Chapman has since announced that Eastman is retiring, and has agreed not to take legal action against the university.  (Eastman is 60 and has taught at Chapman for about 25 years.)   In other words, he and the University reached a settlement involving mutual release of legal claims, his agreement to retire, and in all likelihood a financial payout to Eastman to get him to retire.

 

The U.S. Capitol police has a history of racial and other problems

This is pretty pathetic.

Christa Peterson's "hit piece" on Kathleen Stock

Christa Peterson (Southern California) will be known to readers of the blog for her penchant to tell all philosophers to "fuck off," to denounce work by feminist theorists and philosophers she doesn't like as "dumb as shit,", or just "shit", and, of course, her frequent tweeting "fuck Brian Leiter," after she tired of merely expressing her impatience that I wasn't dead and comparing my speech to that of Nazis.  

I mention all this because Peterson has now taken to scolding Kathleen Stock for being, shall we say, "unpleasant" on Twitter.  Seriously.   Peterson has taken her own voluminous tweets and turned them into an essay attacking Kathleen Stock.  (The essay has been retweeted more than 1,500 times!)  Stock replies at length here, noting that "Christa Peterson...has monitored my tweets for two and a half years, offence-mining my twitter feed for anything that looked like it might harm my reputation and archiving it."  (Philosopher Tomas Bogardus also analyzes Peterson's claims and arguments here.   I will try not to duplicate points made by Stock or Bogardus.) 

Big chunks of Peterson's essay are given over to assertions about what she deems to be obvious about trans identity, and pronouncements about how to interpret empirical evidence.   Readers can evaluate those for themselves; I found them mostly unpersuasive.  (For a contrasting view on "gender identity," see this.)   Peterson does not deign to discuss Stock's paper for the Aristotelian Society, she just refers to it derisively. This is a standing pattern with Peterson; recall her response to the paper "Are adult human females women?" by philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT) that appeared in Philosophical Studies:

That's Alex Byrne alright, he shall henceforth be known as Mr. Bad, Lazy Philosophy Guy.  But it's not just Byrne.  Leslie Green--the Professor of Philosophy of Law at Oxford who has written for decades about philosophical issues about sex and gender--commented on transgender issues in an interview, which led Peterson to declare his views "repulsive and DEEPLY UNSERIOUS haha philosophy is horrible!"   Condescension from below, with no self-awareness, may not be horrible, but it is certainly risible.

Blast from the past: Graduate school and starting a family: when?

Back in 2009, no doubt still highly relevant.

In Memoriam: John Corcoran (1937-2021)

Well-known for his contributions to mathematical logic and to the history and philosophy of logic, Professor Corcoran spent most of his career (from 1969 onwards) at the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

More on the allocation of scarce medical resources during the pandemic, and a lack of consensus among bioethicists about how to proceed

Bioethicist Thomas Cunningham (Loyola Marymount Bioethics Institute) writes:

Thanks as always for your continued commentary and wise read of the news of interest to the world and to philosophers, broadly conceived.

Sometime around March, you discussed allocation of scarce resources in US hospitals on your blog. At that time I suggested there was a consensus in the bioethics community about how to do this. I am writing today to revise my assessment, as this is very much in the news and may remain of interest to you and your readers.

Here in Los Angeles, we are experiencing absurdly low supplies for various resources. Speaking generally, and not about my health system in particular, I am aware of shortages in ventilators, machines that deliver high concentrations of oxygen to patients, oxygen itself, hemodialysis machines, feeding pumps, IV machines, the lines that they require to deliver therapies to patients, and other equipment. Hospitals are also seeing such unprecedented volumes of hospitalized patients that they have considered implementing triage protocols to allocate patients to lower levels of care that have adequate staffing, as reported here.

Graduate students afraid to support the open letter on academic freedom

A PhD student at one of the very top programs (who asked to not be named, for reasons that will become apparent) writes:

Thank you for your blog coverage of the recent open letters on Kathleen Stock's work. You have noted an asymmetry in the relative seniority and prestige of the signatories. I write to note another asymmetry. Signatures from graduate students in philosophy abound below the anti-Stock letter, but are hard to find below the academic freedom letter. I and other graduate students in my program feel we cannot publicly support the latter without risking future professional consequences. Graduate students are hardly weighty voices here, of course, but it is nonetheless indicative of the state of the discipline that its junior members perceive support for a sober and mainstream philosophical position like that expressed in the academic freedom letter as a liability.

This is unfortunate if understandable.  It's important to remember that the Twitter Red Guard is loud but unrepresentative.

UPDATE:  Chris "I make things up" Bertram is at it again.  His response to the preceding:

Which states are treating college teachers as "essential workers" (like K-12 teachers) for vaccine purposes and which aren't

This article is informative.

The "open letter" in support of academic freedom and against the "Anti-Stock" letter...

...has attracted strong support, with several hundreds of signatures now.  As I noted on Twitter, "What's particularly striking is that most of the academic philosophers who signed (a far more distinguished group than denounced Prof. Stock) are not part of the Twitter echo chamber."  I see among the signatories Kit Fine (NYU), Timothy Williamson (Oxford), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney), Peter Singer (Princeton), Ned Hall (Harvard), Alex Byrne (MIT), Chandra Sripada (Michigan), Thomas Hurka (Toronto), Tim Crane (CEU), David Velleman (NYU emeritus; Johns Hopkins), Peter Simons (emeritus, Trinity College Dublin), Daniel Jacobson (Colorado), R.A. Duff (emeritus, Stirling), John Divers (Trinity College Dublin), Paul Russell (UBC & Lund), Gerald Dworkin (emeritus, UC Davis), Peter Carruthers (Maryland), Samir OKasha (Bristol), among many others who will be known to readers of the blog.  I don't think this supports Jason Stanley's hypothesis that most senior faculty support Stock--once again, most philosophers are sitting this out--but it does show there is strong support for basic academic freedom values and an end to the "reign of terror" of open letters attacking individual philosophers.

Richard Marshall interviews Richard Smith (Durham)...

...at 3:16 AM.

A striking "mea culpa" (of sorts) from Robert Paul Wolff, who has seen a lot!

I only just read this; note that it is from January 3, so before the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol.  We should all revisit this blog post in ten years.  An excerpt:

It is now clear that if the Republicans had the votes in the House and the Senate they would simply cancel the results of the election and install Trump in the White House for another four years.

Rather late in life, thus, I realize that I have spent the last 70 years and more simply taking for granted the fundamental procedural processes of American government. I have been aware all my life of the many ways in which, either legally or illegally, Democrats and Republicans have suppressed the vote, stolen votes, distorted vote totals, and in myriad other ways twisted and gamed the political system for their benefit. But I freely confess that it never occurred to me that the elected representatives sitting in the House and the Senate would, if they had the votes, simply cancel a national election.

U.S. military leaders make clear where they stand

A bulwark, for now, against much worse.

The stormtrooper riot isn't over, a reminder

This uprising continues.  I fear political assassinations may yet occur.  Reagan's revolution from the right is now coming to its final fruition:   the evisceration of the working classes and nearly 30 years of lies and anti-government rhetoric from Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, the Murdoch media, Tucker Carlson etc. is now coming to fruition.  What an ugly country this is.

University of Dallas appoints a philosophy professor as President

Jonathan Sanford, who works in virtue ethics.

The real worry about the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol last week is what it portends

I agree with much of this author's take:

This is all indicative of an incipient fascism, laying the cultural and political groundwork for a violent, extra-parliamentary mass movement of the right. It is a mistake to assume that fascism must take the form of dictatorship. Far-right movements today are shaped by the same factors: the decomposition of parliamentary legitimacy and their inherited organisational weaknesses. In that context, wielding the power of office is a pedagogical, formative experience. It allows movements with thin civic roots to project influence at a national level and try things out.

Fascism does not arrive on the scene with full uniform and programme. The Jewish socialist Arthur Rosenberg traced the origins of fascism as a mass movement to the period before the first world war, when millions were already infected by volkisch, racial-nationalist ideology, and by contempt for democratic government. It consolidates through experimentation, learning the ropes through episodes that, at first, appear amateurish and thuggish, from the beer hall (Munich) putsch to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. First as farce, then as tragedy.

 

"Transient global amnesia" and the self

Philosopher Steven Hales (Bloomsburg) comments on his experience.  I had not heard of this, it's quite remarkable.

2020 in review

For those who missed it during the holidays, here are links to the end-of-year review of 2020, broken into four quarters:   1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.  A list of the philosophers whose deaths were noted in 2020 is here.

Against the "anti-Stock letter": an opposing open letter

Here.  They are also accepting signatures.  I strongly agree with this from the new letter:

It cannot become our standard that where analysis and discussion of matters of public concern may cause offense, the social and institutional consequences of engagement are so costly that few will be willing to do the work. It cannot become our standard that the mere allegation of harm caused by some writing or speech, in the absence of any specific evidence to that effect, is sufficient to trigger such consequences. And it cannot become our standard that the mere fact that someone who causes harm agrees with something said or written by an academic is sufficient to saddle that academic with responsibility for that harm.

The Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy is the latest depressing example of an increasing inclination in the Academy to adopt precisely these kinds of standards. The effect can only be to discourage those whom we employ to research, think, write, and speak about these issues from doing so and to deprive students of a diverse and intellectually rigorous education. This will neither benefit our laws, regulations, and public policies nor improve the education that students receive.

In Memoriam: Margaret Morrison (1954-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

A leading philosopher of science, Professor Morrison was emerita in philosophy at the University of Toronto, where she had taught since 1989.   You can learn more about her work here.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Professor Stephan Hartmann [LMU Munich] for notifying me of her passing, and for the link, above.)

UPDATE:   A memorial notice from Toronto.

Where (untenured) tenure-track faculty at the U.S. "top 24" departments in 2020-21 got their PhD

As prior studies have confirmed, PGR rank is a rather good predictor of professional outcomes, even though that's not what the PGR suveys measure. (Of course, NYU and Rutgers placement, below, would have been wholly predictable from PGR rankings of faculty quality in years past!) 

I look here, as I've done before (also here), only at the untenured tenure-stream faculty at the top American PhD programs.  This is misleading in some obvious ways.  One of the most important is that tenure-stream jobs at liberal arts colleges may be the best jobs in American higher education:  teachers enjoy excellent students, good salaries, and research support.  My anecdotal impression is that tenure-stream faculty at leading liberal arts colleges in the U.S. (places like Pomona, Reed, Colgate, Wesleyan, Carleton, Macalester, Swarthmore, Grinnell, Bowdoin, etc.) are rather happy, and often have research qualification comparable to faculty at research universities.

With those caveats, here is where tenure-stream but untenured faculty at the "top 24" U.S. programs (based on this guesstimate) earned their PhD:

1.  New York University (9)

2.  Princeton University (7)

2.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (7)

4.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (6)

5.  University of California, Berkeley (5)

6.  Harvard University (4)

6.  Yale University (4)

8.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (3)

9.  Cambridge University (2)

9.  Columbia University (2)

9.  Oxford University (2)

9.  University of California, Irvine (2)

9.  University of California, Riverside (2)

9.  University of Chicago (2)

9.  University of Pittsburgh (2)

9.  University of Texas, Austin (2)

9.  University of Wisconsin, Madison (2)

1 each:  University of Southern California, University of Toronto, University of California at Los Angelse, Stanford University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, DePaul University, University of Paris I, University of York (UK), University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Potsdam, University of Western Ontario, University of Rome III, University of Melbourne, Harvard University (Government Department), Claremont Graduate School (Religious Studies)

Berkeley, once again, is a star performer relative to its (very good but not "top 5") PGR ranking over the last decade, a credit I suspect to the quality of the training.  (MIT also out-performs its PGR rank, but not as dramatically.)  The UC Irvine and Riverside PhDs were specialists in areas where those programs are strong, as reflected in the PGR.  Both Cambridge PhDs were hired at Notre Dame.  Both Chicago PhDs were hired at Columbia or Barnard (tenure-stream Barnard faculty are part of the Columbia graduate program faculty). 

Below the fold, a list of PhDs by school (corrections welcome, of course):

An interesting essay on Trump, fascism, "big lies," and the future

A good piece of writing by historian Timothy Snyder (Yale), that many of you may have already seen, but if not, it's worth reading, even though it overemphasizes the racist aspects of all this (as real as it is, racism is largely epiphenomenal [type-epiphenomenal, for my philosophy readers!]).   An excerpt from later in the essay:

Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers [Repugs like Josh Hawley, who would be glad to undermine the whole democratic system] will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.

Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.