Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Justin Weinberg does it again

Many readers have been writing me about Weinberg's coverage of the 3AM fiasco--in which Richard Marshall's interview with Holly Lawford-Smith was withdrawn because it offended those who "think correctly"--which may have set a new low for the ridiculous contortions required by the New Infantilism that he has long championed.  I'll let a couple of my correspondents do the commentary, although they have asked for anonymity for the obvious reason that Weinberg's standard modus operandi is to feign a commitment to civility while letting the anonymous commenters at his blog dish out the insults, abuse, and lies about the disfavored.

Weinberg titled his post "Richard Marshall resigns from 3AM Magazine," which manages to omit all the significant facts about what happened from the headline.   One reader amusingly suggested some other possible headlines in the spirit of Weinberg Whitewash:

"John F Kennedy Dies Suddenly"

"Sudetenland Now Part of Germany"

"Berlin Wall Disappears"

Of course, Weinberg can't wholly avoid acknowledging what transpired in the body of his post, but he quickly shifts gears to pandering to the thought police and their alleged special "knowledge."  (Philosopher Kathleen Stock [Sussex] tweeted aptly about this display, as did Daniel Kaufman [Missouri State].)  But a philosopher elsewhere who wrote to me put it best:

Thanks for your coverage of the 3AM nightmare. Watching Justin Weinberg turn that into another occasion to lecture us about the need for interpretive charity (!! -- and "moral resisters", FML) was enough to make me want to put a fork into my eye.

Despairing philosophers:  put down your forks, and remember that the most salient perspectives are often not the most sensible or typical.

In Memoriam: Mary Warnock (1924-2019)

A moral philosopher, she was especially notable for her influential work on concrete policy questions in the UK over many years.   The Guardian obituary is here.

(Thanks to the many readers who sent notice of Professor Warnock's passing--I've been on the road, and haven't been able to respond individually.)

What will (or should) universities do with student benficiaries of the fraudulent admissions?

The NYT covers various perspectives, including mine.

Minority cultural rights in liberal democraties

Philosopher Paul Patton (New South Wales) comments.

UMSL's Piccinini wins 2018 Barwise Prize for contributions to philosophy and computing

The APA announcement is here.

In appreciation of Richard Marshall's interviews at 3AM Magazine

A propos this, longtime reader and attorney John Bogart (who also has a PhD in philosophy) writes:

The Marshall interviews, whatever they are for folks in academia, are even more valuable to those of us in other contexts.  I am a devoted reader of them.  They are clear, largely jargon-free, short discussions of what a variety of philosophers are up to.  People like me, a lawyer, do not have colleagues down the hall to discuss what is going on in Phil Science, feminist theory, or Kant, or whatever.  The interviews have been a way to see a little of that.  They have been a public service, not just a service to philosophers.

It appears 3AM Magazine owner Andrew Gallix isn't coping too well with the response to his decision to pull the Lawford-Smith interview

Philosopher Jimmy Doyle (Harvard) shared Mr. Gallix's response to Prof. Doyle's e-mail of protest, calling it "rank cowardice" to pull the interview:

UPDATE:   At Richard Marshall's request, I've pulled Mr.  Gallix's intemperate and unfortunate response.  Richard writes that Mr.Gallix is "a good guy actually and is under a lot of pressure from the mob who surround him. I think he panicked and wishes he could walk back!"

Follow-up study about personality and philosophical beliefs

I posted about the initial study five years ago.  Now PhD student Nick Byrd (Florida State) asked me to share that he is conducting a follow-up study about the relationship between personality and reasoning. It should take only 10-20 minutes to complete the survey: https://fsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2fukMpZiL7kwcLj

Godfrey-Smith on the influence of Australian philosophy...

...at least within the "analytic" tradition after WWII.  In addition to the philosophers Godfrey-Smith mentions (like J.J.C. Smart and David Armstrong), Australia has sent a huge number of undergraduate students for PhD education in the U.S. and England, who then embarked on successful academic careers both abroad and back home (examples, just off the top of my head, would include David Chalmers, Rae Langton, Ken Gemes, John Tasioulas, as well as Peter Godfrey-Smith of course!)

3AM Magazine's radical chic motto--"whatever it is, we're against it"--turns out to be bollocks

Their real motto is "whatever right-thinking zealots in our little corner of the universe agree on, we're for it."  The magazine has withdrawn Richard Marshall's interview with philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) because in the course of the interview she denied that trans women are women, and expressed the gender critical view of these issues familiar to readers of the blog from the work of philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex).

Richard Marshall has resigned from 3AM Magazine, given this insulting treatment of his work.  He is right to do so, even though this is a huge loss for philosophy.  As he told me, it means the "end of the series" of interviews he has done over many years now, which now numbers nearly 400 interviews with philosophers about their work in accessible terms and freely available on the Internet.

If you value Mr. Marshall's work and freedom of expression and thought, then e-mail the owner and co-editor of 3AM to make that known.  He is Andrew Gallix, reachable here:   andrew@3ammagazine.com

Besides the loss for philosophy, it is also a further indication that, as Professor Lawford-Smith said in her interview, this issue is toxic in the UK.  Transwomen are transwomen.  Transwomen should be treated as women in most contexts.  There may be exceptions.   These sensible thoughts--well-expressed by a transgender philosopher noted here--are now verboten in the UK, it appears.

(And for the maniacs out there (you don't know who you are, but you are maniacs), here's links to evidence of my "transphobia" [sic].)

UPDATE:  Below the fold is the portion of the interview that has attracted the ire of the thought police:

University of Pennsylvania statement about the college admissions scandal

Well, not really, but funny.

On Javanka, the brain-dead children of money

This is very funny:

[T]he first daughter and her husband remain psychologically mysterious, at least to me. Why don’t they have impostor syndrome, given that their total lack of qualifications for the jobs they are doing makes them actual impostors?

According to “Kushner, Inc.,” Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. “Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty,” writes Ward. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy. According to Ward, shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state, Kushner told him “to leave Mexico to him because he’d have Nafta wrapped up by October.”

As political actors, the couple are living exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon which leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability because they can’t grasp how much they don’t know.

How accurate are department placement pages?

MOVING TO FRONT AGAIN (ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 11):  Discussion continues in the comments

Not quite twenty years ago, I began pressing philosophy departments to provide comprehensive placement information on their homepages.  That effort was largely successful, and the average philosophy PhD program typically makes available better placement information than the average PhD program in other fields.  But periodically the issue arises about how accurate or complete this information is.  For example, a Wisconsin graduate (who is employed) wrote the other day as follows:

I wanted to make a follow up comment to your latest post about academic placement. I often wonder how accurate departmental descriptions of placement history are. For instance, I graduated from UW–Madison. On the Department's placement history, there are a number of people listed as "Did Not Seek Academic Employment" who in fact did seek such employment. They simply didn't get academic employment, and eventually gave up. "Does Not Seek Academic Employment" is a more accurate descriptor. (I'm not one of these people, just to be clear.)

I wonder how common this practice is.

I'm opening comments for other examples:  please include links.  And representatives of any of the departments named are free to post explanations or corrections as well. 

Remembering Anscombe 100 years after her birth

Philosopher John Schwenkler (Florida State) offers a sympathetic overview of her work and public positions.  (Anscombe's Intention is undoubtedly an important work, but it seems to me overstatement to call it "the foundational text in analytic philosophy of action," although it is foundational to a certain tradition within analytic philosophy of action.)

Economics, another bastion of sexual harassment...

...and it's in The New York Times.  Kudos to the AEA for investigating this and publicizing it.  But why haven't more economists been taken down by sexual harassment?  Have I missed it?

Fascists in California legislature introduce bill calling for a tenured professor to be fired...

...for his constitutionally protected speech.   Nothing he said comes close to the legal test for unlawful incitement.  These legislators are a disgrace to the United States and the First Amendment.   The University of California at Davis reportedly is "investigating" the faculty member for his comments, even though it has no legal authority to do so.  (Besides being offensive, this faculty member's comments are also ignorant:  see here and here.  But that is wholly independent of his right to make them without being sanctioned by his employer.)

Melbourne's Holly Lawford-Smith interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Blast from the past: advice for prospective graduate students about visiting departments

Back in 2014, but still quite relevant of course.

Dougherty from Cambridge to North Carolina

Tom Dougherty (moral & political philosophy), currently Lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge University, has accepted an offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he will be Associate Professor of Philosophy; he will start either this fall or in January 2020.

(Thanks to Ram Neta for the information.)

In Memoriam: A.S. Troelstra (1939-2019)

A distinguished logician, Professor Troelstra spent his career at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam.  Amsterdam's memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Mark Van Atten for the pointer.)

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Temple, "Triple Guitar," 1971

Dutch hard blues rock outfit from the early 1970s, this comes from their debut album:

 

The American roots of actual "white" supremacy...

...although it wasn't really "white" supremacy so much as Aryan or Nordic supremacy, since Jews and Italians (among others now treated as "white") weren't welcome.  But Hitler and the Nazis were impressed, although the article includes this gem:

What the Nazis “found exciting about the American model didn’t involve just eugenics,” observes James Q. Whitman, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (2017). “It also involved the systematic degradation of Jim Crow, of American deprivation of basic rights of citizenship like voting.” Nazi lawyers carefully studied how the United States, despite its pretense of equal citizenship, had effectively denied that status to those who were not white. They looked at Supreme Court decisions that withheld full citizenship rights from nonwhite subjects in U.S. colonial territories. They examined cases that drew...arbitrary but hard lines around who could be considered “white.”  The Nazis reviewed the infamous “one-drop rule,” which defined anyone with any trace of African blood as black, and “found American law on mongrelization too harsh to be embraced by the Third Reich.”

"Too harsh" for the Nazis!

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

In Memoriam: Anita Silvers (1940-2019)

A longtime member of the Philosophy Department at San Francisco State University, Professor Silvers was well-known for her work in applied ethics and feminist philosophy, especially as related to issues of disability.  The SFSU memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Justin Tiwald for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  A lovely memorial tribute from philosopher Teresa Blankmeyer Burke (Galludet).

Man being investigated for securities fraud offered tip about Yale coach seeking bribes in a bid for leniency...

...which led to the recent indictments and criminal complaints in the college admission scandal.

First class action lawsuit filed in the college admissions scandal

The lawsuit purports to represent two classes of plaintiffs: 

Six plaintiffs joined [Stanford student] Kalea Woods ’20 in the class action lawsuit filed against Stanford and seven other universities implicated in the college admissions bribery scandal in an amended complaint filed hours after the original suit.

The lawsuit seeks reimbursement for student application fees paid by students who were ultimately rejected by an admissions process that the lawsuit deems to be fraudulent and unfair, according to lawyer John Medler.

Because student application fees typically range from $50 to $100 per student per application, and 30,000 to 40,000 students are rejected each year from each of the eight universities named as defendants, the amount in controversy will exceed $5 million, Medler told The Daily....

The case argues that “had Plaintiffs known that the system was warped and rigged by fraud, they would not have spent the money to apply to the school.” It maintains that applicants “did not receive what they paid for—a fair admissions consideration process.”

All new plaintiffs named in the lawsuit are students rejected by at least one of the eight universities or their parents....

The suit also includes in its class all students who between 2012 and 2018 were rejected from at least one of the eight universities in question after paying application fees.

The original version of the lawsuit included two Stanford students, who were also claiming the value of their degree was reduced by the scandal.  I've not seen the amended complaint, so don't know if that claim is still there (I'm skeptical that claim would get anywhere).   I'm also skeptical that the fact that some admissions decisions were tainted means that the process class members received wasn't fair.   I also imagine that those who applied and were rejected would have to show that, but for the corrupt decisions, they might have gotten in.  Some or all of these problems may mean that the courts will not certify that there is a "class" here:  it may be that individual plaintiffs, who are similarly situated vis-a-vis the process and each other, might be able to sue.  But I'm very far from an expert on class actions.  Opening comments in case any of my law readers have insight into any of this.  (Thanks to Ken Taylor for the pointer to the Stanford Daily article.)

Three observations about the college admissions scandal

CHE has a useful summary report of who has been indicted so far and what they did.  Two observations:

1.  The students who were admitted through this scheme will have to be expelled.   Fraud in an application, even if the students were unaware of it, is always grounds for expulsion.

2.  This is the third major criminal scandal to rock the University of Southern California (USC had multiple corrupt coaches taking bribes), after the sex abuser gynecologist in student health services and the dope-using medical school Dean.  In the last two cases, it turns out the Administration had warning signs but did not act in a timely way; it remains to be seen what the early warning signs were here that were ignored, if there were any.   A generation ago, USC was derisively known as the "University of Spoiled Children."  By trying to beef up academics, and shrewdly playing the U.S. News college rankings, USC has tried to shed that image in the new century, although this scandal is certainly a set back.  (Although USC has made a good number of strong faculty appointments in the last decade, the only program to be wholly transformed into a top ten unit has been philosophy.)

3.  Of course, the traditional "corruption" of college admissions--the lowering of academic standards for athletes, alumni children, and "diversity" candidates--remains untouched by any of this.

P.F. Strawson at 100

A nice overview of his career and work from philosopher Anil Gomes (Oxford).

On intellectual vices

Quassin Cassam (Warwick) comments.

Twitter

For those who use that deplorable medium, I am on it, and try to always post links to new posts there, so it's one way of following the blog, beyond the RSS feed.  I occasionally post other things on Twitter, although not a lot; I do a bit more retweeting of other interesting or amusing stuff I come across.

Federal indictments in scheme to secure admission to selective colleges and universities

Wow!   I wonder how many schools and individuals will be implicated.

UPDATE:  This tweet from philosopher Fritz Warfield (Notre Dame) cuts to the chase.

The latest in illiberal undergraduates who understand neither college nor academic freedom

Sarah Lawrence students demand, among other things, that a professor's tenure be subject to "review" because of his (lawful) views, and that faculty be appointed based on their race.   Some of their other "demands," while unrealistic, are less venal, and would no doubt be met with more sympathy if not framed as "demands" but, say, aspirations that would help improve the student experience.

A combined PhD program for philosophy and psychology

Is this a first?  It certainly makes sense at Yale, which has philosophically-minded psychologists like Paul Bloom and psychologically-minded philosophers like Joshua Knobe and Laurie Paul.

Harvard's Mathias Risse interviewed...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 9--UPDATED

...at 3AM.  Alas, they didn't talk about his Nietzsche work, which is also noteworthy!

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE:  Now the interview has been expanded to include some discussion of Risse's Nietzsche work!

Karl Marx makes it to Business Insider

Not bad, although it doesn't get the labor theory of value quite right.

Matt Heffner for D90 Board of Education (River Forest)

He's definitely the person you want on your BOE.  If you're in River Forest or vicinity, please share!

"If trans women are women, what is a woman?"

Interesting essay from last fall by philosopher Sophie Allen (Keele) that only recently came to my attention.

Humanities, including philosophy, in community colleges

Robert Townsend, Director of the Washington Office of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, kindly wrote to share news of a new study from the AAAS:

[W]e have just released a new report on the humanities in community colleges (at http://bit.ly/HESCC2019), with a number of interesting findings about philosophy study in the sector, including:

• Between 255- and 275-thousand community college students took a philosophy course in the fall of 2015.
• Approximately 5,000 faculty taught courses in philosophy.
• Approximately 90% of community colleges offered a course in philosophy.
• Students taking philosophy courses comprised about 4% of total enrollments for credit at community colleges.
• Among students enrolled in philosophy courses at community colleges, 4%–7% were dually enrolled high school students.

You can find this summary with related data tables at https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatorDoc.aspx?i=31303.

In defense of Harvard's Ronald Sullivan

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--DEFINITELY WORTH READING!

Sullivan is a clinical law professor at Harvard and a very accomplished criminal defense attorney, who, among his many cases, recently joined the defense team for Harvey Weinstein; he is also the faculty member in charge of one of Harvard's undergraduate dorms.   Benighted Harvard students have launched a smear campaign against him, claiming this work disqualifies him from discharging his duties.  Their arguments are as irrational as one has come to expect in such cases, but we are all indebted to Randall Kennedy, also a Harvard law professor, for dissecting them with precision.  Of more general interest is this observation about the student attack on Prof. Sullivan:

These events are emblematic of a crisis besetting all strata of higher education, as activists of various stripes perceive cannily the temptation of administrators to mollify zealots in return for quiet — regardless of the merits of competing arguments or the importance of the values in question....

Those calling for Sullivan’s resignation or dismissal as a faculty dean solely because he is serving as Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer in a rape prosecution are displaying an array of disturbingly widespread tendencies. One is impatience with drawing essential distinctions such as that between a lawyer and his client. Another is a willingness to minimize or dispense with important safeguards like fair trials. Yet another is a tendency to resort to demonization.

That “progressive” activists could denounce so bitterly a person who has demonstrated so clearly a commitment to inclusive, humane, liberal values and practices is indicative of a concerted illiberalism that is menacing university life.

All this is, of course, familiar from events covered extensively on this blog:  from the mobbing of Rebecca Tuvel, to the campaign by faculty and students on both sides of the Atlantic to shut down critical discussion of the gender ID law in the UK, to the attack on academic freedom at Marquette under the guise of protecting the "vulnerable."

Everyone who cares about academic life needs to speak up about these issues and the bad behavior of the illiberal perpetrators, including when the perpetrators are students (just as Prof. Kennedy has done correctly in this instance, since it is almost entirely students running the smear campaign against Prof. Sullivan).

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Good Rats, "Coo Coo Coo Blues," 1978

We haven't featured this Long Island, NY band in quite some time, but here's another favorite of mine, from their fourth album:

 

Would someone really buy a self-driving car that would *not* swerve to avoid hitting a human...

...while hitting a cat or dog? 

(Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)

Placement in PhD-granting programs

Given the time of year, this is worth linking to again.  Also this (note esp. the junior numbers).

A timeline of women in philosophy...

...from  OUP.  It contains several pieces of information that were new to me.

Blast from the past: the humanities in an increasingly "commercialized" culture and university

Almost a decade ago, and still relevant needless to say.

A brief comment

I do wish Justin Weinberg (South Carolina), who has run his own "safe space" philosophy blog for five years now, could have marked the occasion without launching yet another tiresome attack on me full of falsehoods and half-truths.  (He used to do this a lot, then seemed to grow out of it.)  I actually enjoy his blog, despite his consistently awful judgment on professional matters and contempt for academic freedom.  But I do wish he could let his obsession with me go.

Since there is no point, as Shaw said, in "wrestling with a pig," I'll just make a general comment:

Since last May, I have been defending the freedom of speech and inquiry of feminist philosophers and activists (especially philosopher Kathleen Stock of the University of Sussex) concerned about the ramifications of current notions of “gender identity” for the rights of women in female-only spaces and for lesbians.  (You can see almost all the posts here.)  As a result, I have also  become a target of harassment and abuse from those, even within philosophy, wanting to vilify those with the “incorrect” views, though nothing as bad as Stock and others have experienced (of course, I've been accused of "transphobia," but that's the least it).  I have criticized universities, faculty (and here and here etc.) and students for their bad behavior towards Stock and others that affect honest and open discussion of these issues.  I do not always agree with Professor Stock, but she is a model of courageous and principled advocacy on an important issue, and in the face of a sometimes organized campaign of vilification, harassment, and threats.

UPDATE:  A funny twitter thread on Weinberg's usual hypocrisy.

ANOTHER:  Weinberg decided to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his blog not only by attacking me but, in keeping with his faux commitment to civility, opening up his forum for unmoderated insults, lies, and abuse of me.  (My thanks to several folks who sent nice messages today after Justin's slimy stunt.)  

New Director of the Marc Sanders Foundation...

...which offers prizes for work in analytic philosophy.  The new Executive Director will be Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (North Carolina), who takes over from Mark Johnston (Princeton).

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. 

Another philosophy outreach program to high schools...

...this time at SUNY Geneseo.

(Thanks to David Levy for the pointer.)

Trump and the Mafia, redux

It's not just a Mafia mentality, it's a Mafia organization!

(Thanks to Steve Sverdlik for the pointer.)

The next catastrophe we will face, sooner or later, from the monster-child

If impeached, or if he loses the 2020 election, he is unlikely to go peacefully.

Nearly $47 billion given to U.S. universities last year

These are "charitable" donations, since all these universities are non-profits.   Bear that in mind when you hear figures about "charitable" giving by the rich.  In some cases, of course, the "charitable" folks are buying admission for their offspring.

ADDENDUM:  Note that some schools on the list are in the midst of capital campaigns, while others are not--that explains some of the big differences in totals.