Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Problems with PGR Update Service

Several additions to the Update Service of the PGR (which are archived here) have failed to reach many subscribers to the service, including me! Blackwell is working on the problem. I won't be sending out additional Updates until it is fixed. In the mean time, you can check the "Philosophy Updates" category of this site, or visit the archives section, linked above.

Disney's "Fantasyland Excuse for Censorship"

As readers will recall, Disney is blocking its subsidiary Mirimax from distributing Michael Moore's new film critical of Bush. Disney head Michael Eisner has offered by way of explanation the following: "we just didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year." As detailed here that explanation is just ludicrous. A sample:

"Disney, through its various subsidiaries, is one of the largest distributors of political, often highly partisan media content in the country-- virtually all of it right-wing. Consider:

"*Almost all of Disney's major talk radio stations-- WABC in New York, WMAL in D.C., WLS in Chicago, WBAP in Dallas/Ft. Worth and KSFO in San Francisco-- broadcast Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Indeed, WABC is considered the home station for both of these shows, which promote an unremitting Republican political agenda. (Disney's KABC in L.A. carries Hannity, but has Bill O'Reilly instead of Limbaugh.) Disney's news/talk stations are dominated by a variety of other partisan Republican hosts, both local and national, including Laura Ingraham, Larry Elder and Matt Drudge.

"*Disney's Family Channel carries Pat Robertson's 700 Club, which routinely equates Christianity with Republican causes....

"*Disney's ABC News prominently features John Stossel, who, though not explicitly partisan, advocates for a conservative philosophy in almost all his work: 'It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market,' he has explained (Oregonian, 10/26/94). No journalist is allowed to advocate for a balancing point of view on ABC's news programs."

Meanwhile, the ne'er-too-bright right-wing of the blogosphere is busy gloating about a story in The Independent (suddenly a favorite of American right-wingers!) claiming that, "Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it."

But here's what Moore actually said in the interview:

"Almost a year ago after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent that he was upset that Miramax had made the film -- Disney owns Miramax -- and he will not distribute this film.

"Miramax said don't worry about that, keep making the film, we'll keep funding it. The Disney money kept flowing to us for the last year. We finished the film last week, and we take it to the Cannes film festival next week.

"On Monday of this week we got final word from Disney that they will not distribute the film. They told my agent they did not want to upset the Bush family, particularly Gov. Bush of Florida because Disney was up for a number of tax incentives, abatements ... whatever. The risk of losing this -- we're talking about tens of millions of dollars -- they didn't want to risk it over a little documentary."

Kant Scholar Kuehn from Marburg to Boston Univ.

The Kant scholar Manfred Kuehn at the University of Marburg (and, before that, Purdue University) has accepted a senior offer from Boston University, to start this fall. Kuehn, in effect, replaces Henry Allison, who is moving from BU to a part-time post at the University of California at Davis this fall.

In addition to his work on Kant, Kuehn has also done work on the Scottish Enlightenment (Reid, Smith, etc.), an area where BU (with Charles Griswold and Knud Haakonssen) already enjoys a leadership position.

International lawyer Jinks from St. Louis to Arizona State

Derek Jinks (international law, foreign affairs law) at St. Louis University (and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School this past academic year) has accepted an offer from Arizona State University College of Law, which also added six new tenure-track faculty this year, as well as, at the senior level, Michael White (from ASU Philosophy) to a half-time appointment in the Law College.

(Belated) May Day Greetings...

...from The Virtual Stoa (political theorists at Oxford). Follow the links.

Bush Fashion

William Edmundson (Georgia State Law & Philosophy) writes:

"Your blog readers may not yet have seen what Bush's couturiers have come up with for their Fall collection. Check it out here.

"Of particular interest is the "W, the President" collection. The striking simplicity of the bumper sticker design,
has an unsettling power, especially when displayed (as I first saw one) on the back of a late model Mercedes-Benz.

"Better yet is the travel mug, whose outward, ascending flare reminds me of a satirical cartoon of the doorway openings in the typical Texas ranch. Too obvious to mention, almost, is the affinity the "W" has to certain other powerfully simple emblems of personal leadership that the 20th century is remembered for.

"Also worth a deconstructive glance is the country collection, styled 'The Farm-Ranch Team.' I am intrigued by the license plate with its evocative barbed-wire horizontal. What critters are y'all keeping in (or out) down there, Podner?"

Creationist Genetics...

...and "how much [a certain kind of] conservative Christian identity is tied to the denial of civil rights and opposition to science"--from Pharyngula, who else? Read with care the lesson in micro-evolution and genetics from the Old Testament.

Philosopher of Biology Griffiths from Pitt to Exeter

Paul Griffiths (philosophy of biology, philosophy of psychology), currently Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter, where he will join John Dupre and Mark Rowlands, among others.

NYU's Kramer to be new Stanford Law Dean

Larry Kramer (constitutional law, conflicts of law) at New York University has been appointed the new Dean at Stanford Law School. Stanford's press release is here.

Legal scholar Davis from Toronto to NYU Law

Kevin Davis (commercial law, law and development) at the University of Toronto has accepted a tenured offer from New York University School of Law.

The Case Against Gay Marriage

This strikes me as pretty decisive. Seriously, penguins: think about it.

(Thanks to Robert Crouch [Biomedical Ethics, McGill] for the pointer.)

Why the US Attacked Iraq

Here's David Bernstein (George Mason Law) from the right-wing Volokh Conspiracy putting it clearly and directly:

"I did support the war to remove Saddam and provide a lesson to others in the Arab world what becomes of leaders who defy the U.S., try to acquire WMDs, etc....I was hopeful that those who suggested that the U.S. could establish democracy there were correct, but thought it likely wiser to simply divide the country in three, ensuring mainly that (1) the oil revenues were in the hands of a friendly government; and (2) the U.S. had bases from which it could project force if needed to Iran and Saudi Arabia."

A few minor changes in emphasis and phrasing, and this could have come from Noam Chomsky. But it is much better coming from the right.

Funny Chun

Chun the Unavoidable has a whole series of laugh-while-you-cry political posts, including: "James Inhofe Would Beat Kerry Resoundingly"; Victor Hanson's "cognitive dissonant meltdown"; "Kerry is the most pitiful candidate the Democratic Party has ever nominated, and I'm not even sure he can carry his home state. Remember that Kerry barely was able to beat Weld in the most pinko state in the universe"; and "Juan Cole Uses The Phrase 'Steaming Excrement,' Though I Am Agnostic on Whether He Is Banging His Head against A Wall."

UPDATE: Is there hope for Kerry, notwithstanding his dreariness, after all? This fellow thinks so. (Thanks to Luke Weiger for the pointer.)

The Future for Philosophy...

...is coming soon. Details here and here. Since the corrected proofs are just going back to OUP, September publication is more likely than June or July.

Slavery and the University of Alabama

Legal historian Alfred Brophy at the University of Alabama School of Law recently led a successful campaign to get the University to apologize for its role in supporting slavery. As he writes:

"The UA Faculty Senate has recently apologized for the role of the faculty in the slave system before the Civil War. The case for the faculty apology rests on three principles.

"First, the faculty benefited from slave labor. One of the university's first acts was to purchase a slave, Ben, in 1828. He worked building the university for several years before it opened in 1831. In the years from 1837 through the Civil War, the university owned a few slaves and rented others from faculty members and Tuscaloosa residents.

The slaves worked at many jobs on campus - from making bricks, carpentry, and carrying water and coal, to waiting on students. One slave, Sam, worked as a laboratory assistant for the distinguished science professor F.A.P. Barnard (who was president of Columbia University after the Civil War). Slaves were also brought to campus by students. Some of the buildings that survive to this day on the campus - including the imposing president's mansion - were built in part by slaves.

"The faculty were also responsible for the beating of slaves. When the trustees moved in 1845 to limit the abuse of slaves by students, they made the faculty responsible for discipline. President Basil Manly recorded in his diary that he beat Sam in the presence of the faculty. When Manly thought Sam was 'insufficiently humbled,' he beat him again 'severely.'

"Perhaps most troubling for a university, though, is that the faculty were proponents of proslavery thought. In its early years, a few at the university opposed slavery. Trustee James Birney (later a candidate for president on the Liberty Party), joined by Professor Henry Tutweiler, urged gradual abolition of slavery. But not enough Alabama faculty supported such progress. After 1837, faculty frequently lectured that slavery was the natural order of things and a positive good."

For going to the trouble of bringing his scholarly expertise to bear, Professor Brophy, according to this article, "received numerous threatening e-mail messages and phone calls." The story continues:

John Kerry ought to listen to Ralph Nader

From the Houston Chronicle:

"A part of the problem," Nader said in an interview last week, "is that the Democrats have become too cautious -- too indentured to the same money the Republicans are dialing for. Kerry's consultants and handlers are telling him to tone it down, and he has. For example, he's now saying `I'm not a redistributionist, I'm a centrist,' and that speaks volumes. Because the issue isn't redistributing wealth in the old-fashioned sense but stopping the redistribution that's already going on through corporate welfare."

In fact, ending corporate welfare is one of 10 elements of what Nader is certain would be a winning campaign. "Democrats would like it, but so would lots of conservatives, liberals and progressives who don't like the way wealth is being redistributed in this country." Here are some other ideas on Nader's list:

· Support a living wage. Kerry should propose a living wage -- and act as though he means it. Huge numbers of Americans -- 10 million households -- earn less than $10,000 a year. Those workers would be substantially better off if the minimum wage had simply been indexed for inflation -- "like congressional salaries" -- over the last 35 years.

· Go after corporate crime. "This would attract a lot of conservatives to his cause -- certainly as many as there are Reagan Democrats. I'm talking about people whose 401(k)s have been destroyed by what Enron and the others have done through corporate greed."

· Repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. The prospective yield turns out to be "almost exactly what the American Society of Civil Engineers said last year it would take to restore America's deteriorating infrastructure" -- roads and bridges, schools, libraries, water and sewer systems, public buildings.

"Everybody could get behind this, from labor unions to the Rotary, from workers to the corporate suppliers. And the best part is that it would create thousands of good-paying jobs that can't be outsourced to China."

Yale Law & Poli Sci Make Bid for Alec Stone Sweet at Oxford

The Law School and Political Science Department at Yale University have made a joint offer to Alec Stone Sweet at Oxford University, who specializes in the law and politics of European integration, as well as comparative law, politics and courts.

A Psychologist's Perspective on Abu Ghraib...

...is here. Recalling the famous "Stanford Prison Experiment," he notes,

"[I]t seems that the contrast of power which is particularly evident in prison settings between guards and prisoners is a breeding ground for cruelty. Even Stanford University students randomly assigned to each role, who were presumably bright, 'normal' individuals, fell easily into the roles of the powerful and the powerless. It as if the context awakens in people something primitive in them, a part of them for which 'cruelty constituted that great festival pleasure... and was indeed an ingredient of almost every one of their pleasures'" (quoting Nietzsche).

"The Crimes at Abu Ghraib are not the Worst"

More here, via LewRockewell.com. A sample:

"U.S. forces have expended thousands of cluster munitions in Iraq, often in heavily populated places. (In the Karbala-Hillah area alone, U.S. teams had destroyed by late August last year more than 31,000 unexploded bomblets 'that landed on fields, homes, factories and roads . . . many were in populated areas on Karbala's outskirts.') The toll among children, whose natural curiosity draws them to the interesting-looking bomblets, has been heavy.

"Khalid Tamimi and four other members of his family were walking on a footpath in Baghdad when his brother, seven-year-old Haithem, spotted something interesting, picked it up and examined it, then threw it down. The bomblet's explosion killed Haithem and his nine-year-old cousin, Nora, and seriously wounded Khalid, as well as the children's mothers, Amal and Mayasa.

"Last year the whole world learned about Ali Ismail Abbas, the twelve-year-old boy who was sleeping in his home in Baghdad when a U.S. missile struck and the explosion tore off both his arms and killed his parents and his brother. His heartrending photo appeared in news media around the world, as did reports of his anguished cries for help in getting his arms back.

"Recently, the ferocious U.S. attacks on Fallujah have yielded hundreds of additional casualties among the innocent. There, as in many other places in Iraq, U.S. troops have fired recklessly and without adequate regard for the thousands of civilians they thereby placed in mortal jeopardy. 'I'm sitting at the funeral of my only son, who was killed because of the U.S. Marines' harsh manner in dealing with civilians,' Abbas Abdullah told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. 'They shot him in the head, and he died instantly.'"

Grady to Step Down as George Mason Dean

This news a bit belated, but noteworthy anyway: Mark Grady, the successful Dean of the law school at George Mason University since 1997, will be stepping down this summer: story here. Grady, who came to George Mason from UCLA, recruited his former Northwestern colleague Daniel Polsby to the faculty, as well as constitutional law and legal ethics scholar Ronald Rotunda, among many others. He built on the foundation laid by Henry Manne, who established George Mason as an important center of law and economics. Perhaps one of his most important accomplishments was to effectively manage the school's relationship with the U.S. News rankings, where George Mason is now in the top 40. George Mason ought to be in the top 40 by academic measures, but those play a relatively small role in U.S. News. And while you can explain till your blue in the face why your school "ought to be top 40," it's a helluva lot easier to just be there!

Rational Choice Theorist Bicchieri from Carnegie-Mellon to Penn

Cristina Bicchieri at Carnegie-Mellon University has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Decision Science and Director of the Philosophy, Politics & Economics Program at the University of Pennsylvania, starting in July. Bicchieri works at the intersection of game and rational choice theory and moral and political philosophy, and is coming to Penn with the opportunity to make additional appointments in these areas. Given recent losses in these areas at Penn, this is an important development for value theory and cognate fields at Penn.

On the ground in Iraq

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail offers a gripping perspective on the ground in Iraq; his site is the place for the news not deemed fit to print by the mainstream media.

More Hiring by Temple Philosophy

Temple had a busy year of lateral hiring; in addition to Noel Carroll, the Philosophy Department also hired, to the tenured ranks, two scholars interested in issues at the intersection of philosophy and race: Lewis Gordon from the Africana Studies Department at Brown University and Paul Taylor, currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. In addition, the Temple Department hired to the tenure-track Michael Thau (philosophy of mind), currently an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Thau, as it happens, did his undergraduate work at Temple, where his mentor was Michael Tye (who is now at Texas), and whose position he, in effect, now fills at Temple.

Philosopher of Art Carroll from Wisconsin to Temple

Noel Carroll (philosophy of art) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison has accepted a senior offer from Temple University, where he will join several others philosophers working in and around aesthetics, including Philip Alperson, Susan Feagin, Joseph Margolis, and Richard Shusterman.

Megalomaniacs in M&E?

Interesting remarks from a leading young philosopher working in "metaphysics & epistemology" (broadly understood, as it usually is in these discussions, to include also philosophy of language and mind). All names have been omitted, to protect the innocent (and the guilty):

"I think there is a bad problem with senior people in M&E currently. Basically, there are too many older megalomaniacs who are extremely hostile to anyone who doesn't genuflect. And the megalomaniacs are spread out across different areas.... If I get like that when I'm older, I hope you will remind me of these words. I remember when a department I was in asked [one megalomaniac] for a comparative judgement on two tenured philosophers [in M&E]. He claimed not
to have heard of one of them, and didn't offer any judgement on the other. He then (unsolicitedly) provided a ranked list of his 'top twenty' philosophers [in M&E]--each and every one of them was one of his old buddies, or a younger...philosopher...who is a camp follower of his. It was utterly shocking to my department (and became somewhat of a joke)....

"The megalomaniacs in M&E are not helping their cause. To take an example from the philosphy of language, people outside philosophy of language (unless they've been indoctrinated) typically think that the 'direct reference' program has been a tempest in a teapot, and hasn't yielded a great deal of philosophical insight. And they're right. So they're not going to hire more direct-reference hacks. If the elder philosophers of language insist that only direct-reference hacks should be hired in M&E positions, then they're just going to succeed in getting historians and ethicists hired.

"Generalizing, the point is that pushing students of one's own agenda, even if that agenda has led to some interesting positions, is self-destructive. Those outside the field will associate that agenda with the senior statesperson, and not think the younger senior-statesperson flunky is original. They'll then conclude that there is nothing new happening in that subfield, and look elsewhere for appointments. So one worry with M&E now is that too many of the senior statespersons are megalomaniacs with the self-destructive agenda of pushing their own programs. And that affects hiring in M&E. Fewer historians seem
to have been infected with meglomania, to the great credit of history of philosophy (though maybe it's something in the nature of the study of history vs. advancing one's own philosophical agenda)."

I've opened comments on this one, and invite philosophers working in these fields to react. NO ANONYMOUS POSTS.

UPDATE 5/9 (3 pm): If you've read this far, do read the comments too for a number of quite interesting observations by others, faculty and students.

False Objectivity in Science Reporting

Chris Mooney here explains how journalists contribute to scientific ignorance. Sometimes there aren't two sides to an issue, unless you count the lies and falsehoods. (The point could be generalized beyond scientific issues.) Mooney writes:

"In its most simplistic version, journalistic objectivity means that both sides on an issue should be balanced out against one another. But this definition collapses when it comes to scientific issues. Science isn't a democracy, and in practice, one side in a scientific debate is often much more reputable than another. Findings that have survived peer review, been published in leading journals, and replicated or confirmed by other scientists tend to have much stronger weight attached to them. The current consensus view of the climate science community - that humans are heating the planet through greenhouse gas emissions, though it's debatable exactly how much - is a good example of a robust scientific conclusion. It arises from the highly rigorous global peer review process conducted under the auspices of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and has been confirmed by the United States' own National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

"By contrast, with a few exceptions, the views of conservative contrarians on the climate issue rarely find anything more than superficial support in the peer reviewed literature. However, the media allow these contrarians to get around this problem and keep debate alive through non-scientific channels. On newspaper op-ed pages and in he-said, she-said exchanges presented by news reporters, contrarians battle back against the scientific consensus. They're entirely in their element: Newspaper op-ed pages don't practice scientific quality control. And while career science writers may be well informed about the issues they cover, they may also feel compelled by journalistic canons to present the 'other side' even when scientists themselves have stopped taking that side seriously."

Another apt recent example was the Harvard Law School's newspaper coverage of Lawrence VanDyke's incompetent and dishonest apology for Intelligent Design.

UT Austin and the Academies

This will be of interest strictly to my UT Austin readers, since it involves UT Austin faculty membership in the various academies that recognize scholarly achievement.

Here are the current non-emeritus faculty in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and other academies. An * indicates a fellow only of the British Academy or Royal Society; a # indicates a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences as well (except where noted).

Anthropology: #Karl Butzer
Chemistry: Paul Barbara, #Allen Bard, *Alan Cowley, Larry Faulkner, #Alan Lambowitz, *Philip Magnus, Peter Rossky
Engineering: Ben Streetman (many more engineering faculty are elected to the National Academy of Engineering--UT is 3rd or 4th in the nation in representation in this academy, I'm told reliably)
Geography: #Karl Butzer
Government: Sanford Levinson
History: William Goetzmann, *Antony Hopkins, *W. Roger Louis
Integrative Biology: James Bull, David Crews, David Hillis, Michael Ryan, Beryl Simpson
Molecular Genetics & Microbiology: #Alan Lambowitz
Law: Philip Bobbitt, Douglas Laycock, Sanford Levinson, *Basil Markesinis, Mark Yudof
Mathematics: #Luis Cafferelli, #John Tate (only NAS, bizarrely), #Karen Uhlenbeck
Philosophy: *Mark Sainsbury
Physics: Roy Schwitters, #Harry Swinney, #Steven Weinberg

About a dozen more emeritus faculty (Abram Amsel [Psychology], Alfred Crosby [History], Walter Dean Burnham [Government], Bryce DeWitt [Physics], Janet Spence [Psychology], etc.) are also elected to the various academies. Because of the path-dependence of Academy membership, only Texas units strong for a long time (Chemistry, Integrative Biology, Law) have representation in the Academies commensurate with their current strength. Because the university as a whole only made the transition from a regional to a national and international research university in the 1970s, other now strong units (Mathematics, Physics, Anthropology, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, Computer Sciences, Art History) will take awhile to catch up. As the academies become less incestuous and parochial, I would expect to see larger clusters from these other disciplines recognized by the Academies.

(Addendum: Classics at UT, which has been one of the top departments in the country since the 1960s, is an unusual case, since there is no section of the American Academy devoted to recognizing distinguished classicists: they have to make it in under History, or Literary Criticism or, less often, Philosophy. So, in general, claccisists are under-recognized by the American Academy, and thus it is unsurprising, but still disappointing, that very eminent folks at UT like Peter Green (now emeritus), Karl Galinsky, and Michael Gagarin have not yet been recognized by membership.)

A "Weird" Michigan Law Student's Encounter with Ducks

Funny.

The Disappearance of Common Culture

A propopos my posting on the creationist theme park and the creation of an insular, parallel universe of services for the religious, this article reports that:

"The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) may consider a resolution next month urging parents to pull their children out of public schools and educate them either by home schooling or sending them to Christian private schools....

"The resolution urges all officers and members of the Southern Baptist Convention 'to remove their children from the government schools and see to it that they receive a thoroughly Christian education....'

"The resolution's co-sponsor, Bruce Shortt, an attorney and home-schooling father, told the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com that many Christian parents are in denial about the dangers of government schools. He said the time has come 'to focus on rescuing our children from Pharaoh's schools.'

"The resolution does not disparage adults who 'labor as missionaries' by working or teaching in public schools. Rather, 'they should be commended and encouraged to be salt and light in a dark and decaying government school system,' it says."

(Thanks to Eric Enlow for the pointer.)

Helen Vendler Dissing Philosophy

Harvard poetry scholar Helen Vendler delivered the Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities and, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription access only), argued that, "A humanities education should focus on language, literature, and the arts, not on history and philosophy...."

Observation #1: Helen Vendler's ex-husband (now deceased) is the philosopher Zeno Vendler.

Observation #2: Yes, observation #1 is a genuine ad hominem.

Observation #3: "In her speech, Ms. Vendler, a prolific poetry critic, argued that the arts teach students more about humanity and their national heritage than either philosophy or history, offering them a truer portrayal of 'the way we are and were, the way we actually live and have lived.'" This may, indeed, be true, but I wonder whether it isn't the wrong basis on which to argue for the value of literature. (Note: the full text of the lecture is here. Thanks to Michael Madison [Pittsburgh Law] for the link.)

UPDATE: A poet, who shall remain anonymous, writes: "I never liked Vendler. She 'reigns' over poetry criticism in an almost authoritarian manner and has given her imprimatur to Jorie Graham who, as you know, is a poet I find an overrated dilletante. As to poets giving insight into life (or whatever the words are), I have been struck time and again at how plain dumb sentimental religious ('spiritual') so many well-regarded poets are. Do they understand life, humanity? Through a glass barely. People like Vendler live in a political vacuum and worship purity and refinement of sensibility which is fine if joined with social responsibility and authentic concern for the victims of injustice. Harvard is not, in my view, a good place for anything but a Philistinism of caring (Graham, by the way, has joined Vendler at Harvard)." Philosophers may get some amusement some time by looking at Jorie Graham's dabbling in philosophical themes; she's not only a bad poet, but a pretentious one as well.

Here's what actually happens, by the way, when poets dare to give insight in to our "national heritage." And here's an explanation of the poetry industry that produces irrelevant poseurs like Jorie Graham.

FURTHER UPDATE: And here's a priceless review of Jorie Graham by William Logan; a sample:

"Reading Jorie Graham’s poems in Never is like watching a slow-motion nature documentary where an anaconda ever so lazily disarticulates its jaw and inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, swallows a goat. Such microscopic infatuation with detail is entrancing, the world slowed to the creeping choreography of muscle; but it can be blindingly tedious....

"Graham’s poems are increasingly like the incessant doodles of a patient in a mad ward, all that energy and meticulous observation grinding toward nothing. Graham’s most devoted critic, Helen Vendler (who has dragged the whole Graham bandwagon at times), believes that poetry is a 'structural and rhythmic enactment,' that mimetic accuracy is 'the virtue, the fundamental ethics, of art.' Graham’s poetry shows how crippling that notion can be—pursued as the highest value, it creates an art that cannot escape its dreary miming gestures. When poetry records only the trivial blizzard of experience, it offers the chaos of act without the order of interpretation....

"Graham’s poems are often a tour de force; but their blowsy logorrhea, their hydraulic overuse of words, explains why a poetry of such grand (and even seductive) ambition can seem so fragile and incoherent. Like a Laocoön coiled not in snakes but in his own intestines, she shows how stultified, how barren, a poet can become when she high-mindedly makes an art with all the false starts and second thoughts (and third thoughts) left in."

Philosopher of Mind Siewert from Miami to UC Riverside

Charles Siewert (philosophy of mind) at the University of Miami has accepted a senior offer from the University of California at Riverside, capping an aggressive recruitment year for UCR, which also hired Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology) at the senior level from Yale University and Michael Nelson (philosophy of language) at the tenure-track level, also from Yale. Siewert's much-discussed book on consciousness received the APA Book Prize (the successor to what used to be the Matchette Prize for best book by a young philosopher) several years ago.

Entry-Level Hiring by Law Schools During 2003-04

Larry Solum posts his final update of the list of entry-level hires in U.S. law schools here. His data may be usefully compared with the data I collected two years ago on entry-level hiring here.

"Let Them Eat Cakewalk"

Sharply written. A sample:

"Imagine yourself as 'Abdul M,' an Iraqi whose entire family, including a daughter and a wife, was killed when American 'defense' planners blew-up 18 civilians in a house they thought sheltered Saddam Hussein in Al Mansur. 'I dug them out,' Abdul told 'Frontline' last year, 'with my own bare hands. I carried them out with my own bare hands. I buried them with my own bare hands.'

"There are many stories like Abdul's in 'liberated' Iraq. Abdul's deceased loved ones are two among many thousands of Iraqis who have been killed in the process of being 'liberated' by the United States of America. The exact number of those victims is unclear - the occupation authorities see no need to count Iraqi dead - but estimates range well into the many tens of thousands. This is before the depleted uranium used by the benevolent American military takes its full, long, and terrible toll....

"Now join me on a trip into the private lives of some key war masters. Turn with me to pages 409-411 of Bob Woodward's recently published book Plan of Attack (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), which claims to give 'the definitive account of how and why George W. Bush, his war council, and allies launched a preemptive attack to topple Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq.'

"Here we learn about a glorious dinner party that took place in the residence of super hawk Vice President and former Haliburton chief Dick Cheney on the Sunday night of April 13, 2003. The guests included Kenneth Aldeman, a friend of Cheney and a former assistant to Donald Rumsfeld at the U.S. Defense Department during the 1970s....

"The war has been awesome, Adleman said [at the party]. 'So I just want to make a toast, without getting to cheesy. To the president of the United States.' they all raised their glasses, Hear!, Hear!. Adelman said he had worried to death as time went on that there would be no war...."

"How many people have died in Iraq because of the U.S. invasion since that day when Cheney, Wolfowitz, Adelman, and Libby raised their glasses in a heavily fortified mansion of unimaginable privilege, located within a short cab-ride's distance from some of the worst scenes of urban misery in the industrialized world? The exact count is unknown, for the reasons mentioned above, but it is certainly a large and ugly number - one that makes you wonder about the soul of a man who was 'worried to death' that 'there would be no war.' Imagine that as a concern that keeps you up at night!"

Don't Tell Andrew Sullivan...

...since, after all, the "moral credibility" of the United States is an a priori truth:

"Thousands of Afghani POWs brutally executed, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation alleges US military complicity."

More details here. (Thanks to Doug Barnes for the pointer.)

The Attack on Middle Eastern Studies

Imagine: federal legislation to regulate what goes on in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, to make sure that it comports with the current agenda of the madmen in Washington. More details here.

The Anatomy of Fascism

Fascism: ''A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.''

--Robert Paxton, as quoted in The New York Times Book Review, May 2, 2004

U.S. Preparing for Military Draft; Could Start by Spring 2005

More details here:

"Pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills S 89 and HR 163) would time the program so the draft could begin at early as Spring 2005 -- conveniently just after the 2004 presidential election! But the administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed NOW, so our action is needed immediately. Details and links follow.

"If voters who currently support U.S. aggression abroad were confronted with the possibility that their own children or grandchildren might not have a say about whether to fight, many of these same voters might have a change of mind. (Not that it should make a difference, but this plan would among other things eliminate higher education as a shelter and would not exclude women -- and Canada is no longer an option.)"

UPDATE: Here is the House bill and here is the Senate bill. (Thanks to UT law student Matt Byrne for the links.)

FURTHER UPDATE: A couple of foreign readers (and one from the US) expressed puzzlement at the fact that the the bills referenced, above, were introduced in 2003 by Democrats. The explanation is simple, and familiar to many U.S. readers: with war imminent--based on false pretenses, as we now know--certain Democrats made a strategic calculation (a mistaken one, in my view) to raise the specter of sending not only the poor and the working class (the core of the "volunteer" army) to war, but also sending rich white kids (the kinds whose fathers are Senators and Congressmen) via a military draft. (All 14 Democrats who sponsore the House bill voted against authorizing the war with Iraq.) The ploy failed, as all the world now knows, but the bills remain. If Bush is re-elected, the fact that these bills were introduced by Democrats will be hugely advantageous as the Bush Administration has to confront the deteriorating military situation in Iraq and Afghanistan; its inability to meet the actual terrorist threat because of the military venture in Iraq; and the demoralized and disenchanted volunteer army. (Those with doubts on the latter score might spend some time perusing this site (no right-wing law professors here, just real people), or reading the many articles in the Christian Science Monitor over the last year on the subject, or reading this first-hand account by an American soldier.)

"Inverted Totalitarianism"

Read about it here, courtesy of political theorist Sheldon Wolin. The essay is a year old, but is still, suffice it to say, of relevance to assessing the current situation.

More on Free Speech in America

Details here:

"The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday....

"Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor."

Fortunately, there are no government actors here, so all my principled libertarian friends can rest easy, knowing that free speech is safe in America, while in Canada, they still suffer under the burden of not being able to incite mobs to "Kill all the fags."

More Bush Humor

"How would you feel about a person who thinks it is okay to grab your shirt and use it to clean their eyeglasses?" Video here.

Shoben from Illinois Law to Nevada

Elaine Shoben, Edward W. Cleary Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law and an expert in employment discrimination law, has accepted an endowed chair at the still relatively new William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Nevada has really done better than any law school established in the last decade in attracting well-known faculty, and even debuted in the "top 100" in U.S. News (though not, needless to say, because of faculty quality, though that probably would have been a just result on those grounds alone). Among their successes: the recruitment of Lynne Henderson and Bruce Markell from Indiana University, Bloomington; Robert Lawless from the University of Missouri, Columbia; and Jeffrey Stempel from Florida State University, among others.

Law Fellows of the British Academy

The list of law faculty elected to the British Academy--the British analogue of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (except that all the sciences are recognized solely by The Royal Society)--is here. In addition, the British Academy has elected as "Corresponding Fellows" a handful of American law faculty: Judge Guido Calabresi of the 2nd Circuit, who still teaches part-time at Yale; Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit, who still teaches part-time at Chicago; Allan Farnsworth of Columbia Law School; and the legal historian R.H. Helmholz of the University of Chicago Law School. (My late colleague Charles Alan Wright was also a Corresponding Fellow, until his untimely death in 2000.)

Unlike in philosophy, relatively few British Academy law fellows are on American law faculties, and those that are hold part-time positions in the U.S. They are as follows (all part-time; * marks those over 70):

Columbia University: Joseph Raz
New York University: *Ronald Dworkin
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: *A.W.B. Simpson
University of Notre Dame: John Finnis
University of Texas, Austin: Basil Markesinis

Philosophers in the British Academy

The British Academy is the British counterpart to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (with the one difference that all scholarly achievement in the sciences is recognized by The Royal Society in Britain). Current Philosophy Fellows of the British Academy are here. In addition, there are a small number of non-retired American philosophers who are "Corresponding Fellows" of the British Academy. Here are U.S. philosophy departments with either "Ordinary" or "Corresponding" Fellows of the British Academy; then follows a list of UK faculties with non-emeritus Fellows. Faculty over 70 are marked with an *.

Carnegie-Mellon University (*D. Scott)
City University of New York Graduate Center (S. Kripke, *R. Sorabji [part-time])
Columbia University (J. Elster, C. Peacocke, J. Raz [part-time])
Harvard University (D. Parfit [part-time], T. Scanlon, *A. Sen [part-time])
New York University (*R. Dworkin [part-time], T. Nagel, D. Parfit [part-time], C. Wright [part-time]).
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (D. Parfit [part-time])
University of California, Berkeley (*B. Stroud)
University of California, Los Angeles (T. Burge)
University of California, San Diego (N. Cartwright [part-time])
University of Notre Dame (*A. MacIntyre)
University of Pittsburgh (J. McDowell)
University of Texas, Austin (M. Sainsbury)

And now here are UK faculties by the number of Philosophy Fellows of the British Academy:

1. Oxford University (J. Broome, M. Burnyeat, J. Butterfield, G.A. Cohen, M. Frede, D. Parfit, J. Raz, T. Williamson)
2. Cambridge University (S. Blackburn, E. Craig, J. Heal, O. O'Neill)
3. University of St. Andrews (S. Broadie, C. Wright)
Others:
London School of Economics (N. Cartwright)
University College London (*R. Dworkin [part-time])
University of Sussex (M. Boden)

Can the President Imprison Anyone, Forever?

Here's a good explanation of why the Supreme Court had better answer that question in the negative.

Philosopher Jenkins Named Notre Dame President

Medieval philosophy scholar the Rev. John Jenkins at the University of Notre Dame has been named the school's new President.

Vote for Bush, Send Your Daughters to War Too

I spoke too soon: see this: "U.S. Eyes Proposal to Draft Women."

Law School Membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

UPDATE (5/5) with corrections

By popular demand, here is a listing of the top law schools by the number of non-retired faculty elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; see the caveats about what this means here.

1. Yale University (19) (B. Ackerman, L. Brilmayer, G. Calabresi [part-time], S. Carter, *M. Damaska, D. Days, R. Ellickson, W. Eskridge, O. Fiss, M. Graetz, H. Koh, A. Kronman, J. Langbein, J. Mashaw, R. Post, J. Resnik, R. Romano, C. Rose, A. Schwartz, R. Winter [part-time])

2. Columbia University (15.5) (*Barb. Black, V. Blasi [part-time], L. Bollinger, J. Coffee, R. Ferguson, G. Fletcher, *R. Gardner, R. Gilson [part-time], *J. Greenberg, K. Greenawalt, S. Issacharoff, L. Liebman, T. Merrill, *H. Monaghan, J. Raz [part-time], *M. Sovern, J. Waldron)

3. Harvard University (13) (L. Bebchuk, R. Clark, M. Glendon, M. Horwitz, R. Kennedy, L. Kaplow, D. Meltzer, F. Michelman, M. Minow, R. Mnookin, S. Shavell, L. Tribe, R. Unger)

3. University of California, Berkeley (13) (*R. Buxbaum, J. Choper, R. Cooter, *M. Eisenberg, D. Farber, P. Frickey, J. Gordley, H.H. Kay, D. Rubinfeld, S. Scheffler, H. Scheiber, *O. Williamson, F. Zimring)

5. University of Chicago (11.5) (D. Baird, D. Currie, *K. Dam, F. Easterbrook [part-time], R. Epstein, R. Helmholz, S. Levmore, M. Nussbaum, R. Posner [part-time], G. Stone, D. Strauss, C. Sunstein, D. Wood [part-time])

6. New York University (9.0) (A. Amsterdam, *J. Cohen, *N. Dorsen, *R. Dworkin [part-time], J. Ferejohn [part-time], T. Nagel, B. Neuborne, *J. Reid, R. Stewart, J. Weiler)

7. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (6.5) (P. Ellsworth, B. Frier, R. Lempert, D. Regan, *B. Simpson [part-time], J. Vining, J.B. White)

8. Stanford University (4.5) (G. Casper, *L. Friedman, R. Gilson [part-time], T. Grey, K. Sullivan)

9. University of Texas, Austin (4.0) (P. Bobbitt, D. Laycock, S. Levinson, M. Yudof)

10. University of Virginia (2.5) (V. Blasi [part-time], R. Scott, G.E. White)

11. Georgetown University (2.0) (*R. Drinan, M. Tushnet)

12. Duke University (1.5) (W. Dellinger [part-time], D. Horowitz)

13. College of William & Mary (*W. van Alstyne)

13. Emory University (*H. Berman)

13. George Washington University (*L. Sohn)

13. University of California, Los Angeles (*J. Handler)

13. University of Colorado, Boulder (R. Nagel)

13. University of Pennsylvania (*G. Hazard)

13. University of San Diego (*C. Auerbach [part-time], *Y. Kamisar [part-time])

13. University of Wisconsin, Madison (*S. Macaulay)

Among leading law schools, the following have no full-time non-emeritus members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences: Cornell University; Northwestern University; University of Illinois; University of Iowa; University of Southern California; Vanderbilt University. I would expect Herbert Hovenkamp (Iowa), Matthew Spitzer (USC) and Thomas Ulen (Illinois) to be elected before long.

Addendum: approximate faculty sizes for the top 12 schools above: Yale (50), Harvard (80), Berkeley (50), Columbia (60), Chicago (40), NYU (80), Michigan (50), Stanford (40), Texas (60), Virginia (60), Georgetown (80), Duke (40).

More on the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

The annual announcement of newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (as well as the National Academy of Sciences, to which only three philosophers have been elected in recent decades: the late W.V.O. Quine; Patrick Suppes, who is emeritus at Stanford; and Brian Skyrms at the University of California at Irvine) is a pleasant rite of Spring in American universities, one of those rare occasions in American life when serious intellectual and scholarly accomplishment (usually spanning several decades) is recognized and celebrated.

The process of selection of new members is not, however, an entirely “pure” one, though this typically produces errors of omission, rather than inclusion. (See my earlier comments on this in connection with Philosophy.) Existing members of the Academy nominate new candidates for membership; the existing membership eventually votes on some of these nominees; and then a membership committee makes the final selection and, in philosophy at least, is not bound by the membership vote. What this means, of course, is that the selection procedure has a distinct “the rich get richer” element built in to it: the more members of the Academy a unit or university already has, the easier it typically is to get more members. And the composition of the final selection committee can, of course, be hugely important to the outcomes.

Notwithstanding the not ideal methodology, the Academy does recognize—at least in the fields I can judge—meritorious scholarly achievement; the sins of omission, as noted, are the real cause for skepticism, though the occasional “friend of a friend” makes it in who doesn’t compare favorably to other elected members in his or her field.

With those caveats in mind, here is a listing of universities based on the number of new members this year. Note that any school with a medical school will fare better, because there are 5 biology sections to which members are elected (including one explicitly for medicine), and in several of these those elected are frequently on medical school faculties. That fact is important, e.g., for schools like Duke, Washington/Seattle and Wash U/St. Louis which have outstanding medical schools, of longstanding—and makes the strong performance of universities without medical schools (e.g., MIT, Berkeley, Princeton, UC Irvine, Texas/Austin) all the more striking. Note that the University of California at San Francisco is a medical school campus only (though with wide-ranging research in the biological sciences). (Having a law school doesn't confer quite as great an advantage, because there is only one law section to which members are elected--but it's worth keeping in mind that schools like MIT and Princeton and Irvine don't have law schools either!)

Give or take 1 or 2 new members, most of the top 25 perform pretty comparably year in and year out; the really odd one out this year is Northwestern, with an astonishing 10 new members. Since by no other measure is Northwestern comparable to, e.g., MIT or Harvard or Stanford (its research peer class is usually thought to be Duke, Illinois, Texas, NYU, Penn, Wisconsin, etc.) my suspicion is that some of the impurities of the procedure may explain this anomalous result. (Other slightly surprising results this year: 3 from Maryland and Ohio State marks a notably strong, and just, showing for these [underappreciated] state universities; 0 from Johns Hopkins [esp. given Hopkins’s strength in medicine] is a surprise; only 1 from Cornell is a bit off their usual 2-4; also 0 from Brown, Cal Tech, and Wisconsin seems odd, especially the latter two.)

Anyway, here they are by number of new members elected in 2004:

1. Massachussetts Institute of Technology (11)
2. Harvard University (10)
2. Northwestern University (10)
4. Yale University (8)
5. Stanford University (7)
5. University of California, Berkeley (7)
7. Columbia University (5)
7. Princeton University (5)
9. Duke University (4)
9. New York University (4)
9. University of California, Los Angeles (4)
9. University of California, San Francisco (4)
9. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4)
9. University of Washington, Seattle (4)
9. Washington University, St. Louis (4)
16. Ohio State University (3)
16. University of California, Irvine (3)
16. University of California, San Diego (3)
16. University of Chicago (3)
16. University of Maryland, College Park (3)
16. University of Texas, Austin (3)
22. Pennsylvania State University (2)
22. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2)
22. University of Pennsylvania (2)
22. University of Virginia (2)

All of the following schools had 1 faculty member elected this year: University of California, Santa Barbara; College of William & Mary; Smith College; Clemson University; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Rutgers University, New Brunswick; Cornell University; University of Florida, Gainesville; University of Iowa; University of Vermont; City University of New York Graduate Center; Carnegie-Mellon University; Emory University; Wheaton College; Amherst College; University of Missouri, Columbia; Indiana University, Bloomington; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Georgia; University of Pittsburgh; Northeastern University; Bard College; Florida State University.

New Philosophy Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Announced...

...here. They are:

Ned Block (New York University)
Alvin Goldman (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)
D. Anthony Martin (University of California, Los Angeles)
Peter Railton (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Samuel Scheffler (University of California, Berkeley)

Nice to see two of the ten I had singled out a few weeks ago as deserving election made it this year--and all the choices this year are obviously highly meritorious.

UPDATE: Several folks have e-mailed wondering which departments have the most elected members. Bearing in mind my earlier cautionary notes on this subject (about why AAAS membership is a weak indicator of program quality), and my observations, above, here are the departments with the most non-retired AAAS members (based on the 2004-05 faculty composition). I’ve marked with an * those faculty over 70. The ranking of the top 15 is very rough, based on some discounting for part-time faculty.

1. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (E. Curley, S. Darwall, A. Gibbard, P. Railton, D. Regan [elected in Law], L. Sklar, K. Walton).
2. University of California, Los Angeles (T. Burge, B. Copenhaver, B. Herman, *D. Kaplan, D.A. Martin)
3. New York University (N. Block, *R. Dworkin [elected in Law; part-time], H. Field, T. Nagel, D. Parfit [part-time]).
3. Stanford University (*S. Feferman [elected in Mathematics], *D. Follesdal [part-time], M. Friedman, J. Perry, A. Wood)
5. Harvard University (C. Korsgaard, D. Parfit [part-time], T. Scanlon, *A. Sen [elected in Economics; part-time], G. Striker)
5. Princeton University (*P. Benacerraf, J. Cooper, A. Nehamas, B. van Fraassen)
5. University of California, Berkeley (*H. Dreyfus, S. Scheffler, *J. Searle, *B. Stroud)
5. University of Pittsburgh (R. Brandom, J. Earman, *A. Grunbaum, J. McDowell)
9. Rutgers University, New Brunswick (J. Fodor, A. Goldman, D. Parfit [part-time], E. Sosa [part-time]).
9. University of California, Irvine (P. Maddy, D. Malament, B. Skyrms)
9. University of Notre Dame (*A. MacIntyre, *A. Plantinga, P. Quinn)
12. Brown University (*J. Kim, E. Sosa)
12. City University of New York Graduate Center (S. Kripke, *R. Sorabji [part-time])
12. Columbia University (Ph. Kitcher, J. Raz [part-time; elected in Law], J. Waldron [elected in Law]).
12. Massachussetts Institute of Technology (J. Cohen [elected in Political Science], R. Stalnaker)
12. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (T. Hill, S. Wolf)
12. University of Pennsylvania (P. Guyer, *C. Kahn)

New Law Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Announced...

...here. They are:

Philip Bobbitt (University of Texas, Austin)
George Fletcher (Columbia University)
Michael Graetz (Yale University)
Joel Handler (University of California, Los Angeles)
Daniel Meltzer (Harvard University)
Thomas Merrill (Columbia University)
Diane Wood (U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit; Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School--and also UT Law Class of 1975!)

I was particularly pleased to see my colleague Philip Bobbitt recognized; he is one of the few members of the legal academy to have written two books that are recognized classics--Tragic Choices (with Guido Calabresi) and Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution--and a third, more recent book, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, that is likely to become one. This brings to four the number of UT Law faculty elected to the Academy (the others are Douglas Laycock, Sanford Levinson, and Mark Yudof); I'll compile stats for law schools generally a bit later.