Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"The truth is terrible" as Nietzsche says; more on Reagan

Greg Palast writes:

"In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

"People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

"Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three."

UPDATE: And more "terrible truths" about the Reagan years from philosopher Benjamin Hellie here.

AND STILL MORE: From Nathan Newman (via Paul Myers).

Moral Philosopher Dancy Accepts Part-Time Post at Texas

Jonathan Dancy (ethics, epistemology, early modern) at the University of Reading has accepted a half-time appointment with tenure at the University of Texas at Austin, where he will teach for one semester each year (starting in January).

The last three years, as many have remarked, have brought about an extraordinary transformation to philosophy at Texas. We've added at the senior level, between philosophy and law, and either full-time or half-time, Mark Sainsbury, Michael Tye, John Deigh, Leslie Green, and now George Bealer and Jonathan Dancy. It wouldn't have happened without two very good Deans: Richard Lariviere of the College of Liberal Arts and Bill Powers of the Law School.

"War on Journalism"

This account of a British journalist's nightmarish experience with U.S. immigration authorities is worth reading in its entirety. Did you know that journalists hailing from countries whose citizens do not require visas to enter the U.S. now have to have visas themselves, or face deportation? And being stopped at immigration and deported is a bitter experience, as this journalist recounts.

The Reagan Presidency Remembered

I've been interested in the comments of liberal and left bloggers on the Reagan years, prompted by the occasion of the former President's death, but constrained by the norms pertaining to "not speaking ill of the dead." (The comments of right-wing bloggers were predictable--their penchant for hagiography and myth-making about "the Great Communicator" [or "the Great Prevaricator" as his critics often called him] fit the occasion--and so are far less interesting.) I've collected a few.

Liberal economist Brad DeLong did not observe the adage "don't speak ill of the dead" (and some of the commenters on his site objected), though his criticisms are relatively modest:

"He tried hard, but by and large he didn't have the brainpower to think his way out of the boxes that his prior commitments and initial personnel choices handed him. The economic policy the neoconservatives handed him was a disaster: the tax cuts made America a more unequal place, and the deficits slowed economic growth in the 1980s significantly.... The best you can say about social policy is that it was a tremendous waste: a lot of misery could have been prevented had not fears of alienating the base kept the Reagan administration from reacting swiftly and intelligently to the coming of AIDS...."

Left economist Max Sawicky was even more mild (the commenters on his site less so), apparently thinking that the public record of the man ought to be immune at the time of personal tragedy for his family:

"I won't be mourning. I disliked him a lot, but gloating would be stupid and obnoxious, and expressions of homage insincere. He doesn't need any pity. He was a lucky man, he had a pretty good life, and in his own right he was successful. You can't beat him because he has already won. Fortunately the game has more innings. Respect is due the bereaved, as well as to those who have a good feeling about him. It's just the decent thing to do."

Everyone's favorite biologist Paul Myers takes, as always, a more direct approach:

"I don't take joy in the death of any man, and I regret the loss to the family of Ronald Reagan. Reagan, however, was a disaster for American politics: I sincerely believe that his presidency, even more so than Nixon's, was the point where the Republican party went off the rails into outright lunacy, where a figurehead idiot could be elected to the highest office in the land, where the Religious Right took over, where the party endorsed insane economics and corruption, where the environment became something to be plundered rather than preserved. Reagan made George W Bush possible...and it's hard to believe, as much as I despised Reagan during his presidency, that now we would have someone in office who actually makes him look respectable."

Myers also links to an apt set of remarks several years ago by Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan):

"As someone who served with President Reagan, and in the interest of historical accuracy, please allow me to share with you some of my recollections of the Reagan years that I hope will make it into the final cut of the [TV] mini-series [about Reagan]: $640 Pentagon toilets seats; ketchup as a vegetable; union busting; firing striking air traffic controllers; Iran-Contra; selling arms to terrorist nations; trading arms for hostages; retreating from terrorists in Beirut; lying to Congress; financing an illegal war in Nicaragua; visiting Bitburg cemetery; a cozy relationship with Saddam Hussein; shredding documents; Ed Meese; Fawn Hall; Oliver North; James Watt; apartheid apologia; the savings and loan scandal; voodoo economics; record budget deficits; double digit unemployment; farm bankruptcies; trade deficits; astrologers in the White House; Star Wars; and influence peddling."

One striking aspect of the positive memorials for Reagan in the popular media--and in their blogosphere echo chambers--is the credit he is given for bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. I actually think it is correct to give considerable credit to Reagan, though not, as far I can see, because of his silly rhetoric about an "evil empire" or other tough-guy posturing; the explanation is considerably more mundane.

Reagan, as is widely acknowledged outside the U.S., pursued a classic Keynesian economic policy of massive deficit spending, but disproportionately on the military and weaponry, rather than human services. This massive military spending proceeded at a rate that the Soviets could not entirely afford to ignore but which they also, as it turned, couldn't afford to match. This almost certainly exacerbated the weaknesses of the Soviet system--the inability of centralized planning to effectively maximize productive power, in a way that would allow the Soviets to meet both their massive commitments to human services spending and the arms race with the U.S.--and hastened the collapse of the system. In that sense, the Reagan Administration surely does get credit.

But it must also get the blame, since many of the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union have not been positive ones. There was, for example, the spectacular increase in human mortality and misery in Russia in the 1990s; the bloodshed and genocide in the former Yugoslavia; the rise of the various fascist regimes in many of the former Soviet "republics," whose egregious behavior has so far not commanded much attention in the U.S. due to their cooperation with the fake "war on terror" and Western oil interests; and, more recently, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the resulting death and misery for tens of thousands, as well as the destabilization of the international legal order, with still undetermined consequences.

None of these events would have likely transpired in a world with the Soviet Union, as I assume everyone recognizes. It will presumably take another fifty years for us to have any meaningful perspective on whether the costs of the collapse of the Soviet Union were outweighed by the benefits to those freed from police states in Eastern Europe and in some portions of the former Soviet Union.

UPDATE: Interesting remarks from historian Juan Cole (who denies that the Reagan Presidency had any impact on the Soviet Union) (thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer). He concludes:

"Reagan's policies thus bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan's blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan's gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed."

ANOTHER UPDATE: And William Rivers Pitt to similar effect:

"In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, 'The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads.'

"The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.

"How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?

"The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.

"Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see."

FINAL UPDATE TO THIS POSTING: More commentary here.

Has Bush Lost His Mind?

Via onegoodmove, I am directed to this alarming article, for whose credibility I can not vouch, but which at least reports things within the realm of reasonable possibility. Some excerpts:

"President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

"In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as 'enemies of the state.'

"Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

“'It reminds me of the Nixon days,' says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. 'Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.'

"In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be 'God’s will' and then tells aides to 'fuck over' anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration....

"West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft 'the Blues Brothers' because 'they’re on a mission from God.' 'The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,' says one aide. 'They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.'”

"But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them 'fucking assholes' in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him 'unpatriotic' or 'anti-American.'"

Ezra Pound war poem

Thanks to Empty Doorway for reminding us of "Ode Pour L'election De Son Sepulchre."

More Philosophy Department Blogs

This time it's the University of Arizona--mostly grad students, some faculty.

Here's a thought: if every department gets a blog, they will soon become important sources of information for prospective students about departmental life, teaching, mentoring, etc. Each March, say, those with comments features could invite discussion with prospectives. Of course, there will be a certain cost to candor in such exchanges, given their public nature, but they are likely to provide helpful, supplemental information to prospective students.

UPDATE: Already several Arizona faculty have signed on, so now it's about evenly mixed between grad students and professors.

Securalists and Theocrats

Hendrik Hertzberg in the current issue of The New Yorker:

"The salient division in American political life where religion is concerned is no longer between Catholics and Protestants, if it ever was, or even between believers and nonbelievers. It is between traditional supporters of a secular state (many of whom are themselves religiously observant), on the one hand, and, on the other hand—well, theocrats might be too strong a term."

Or it might not.

From the mouths of babes...the "American Taliban,"

in their own words.

Right-Wing Pundit Ann Coulter and ex-Klansman David Duke

Can you tell them apart?

"Science isn't a democracy"

UPDATE, MOVING THIS STORY TO THE FRONT: Support NPR by e-mailing [email protected] to commend NPR for their correct decision not to give equal time to the anti-evolutionists. Already the forces of reaction and ignorance are mobilizing their troops: Pharyngula and Chris Mooney (see esp. his Update) have details.

======================

Three cheers for NPR for dissing the pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute: Chris Mooney has the details:

"The Discovery Institute is going totally bonkers because NPR has courageously decided to do something that few other media outlets would dare: Refuse to prop up pseudoscience....

"ID supporters don't deserve equal time with evolution supporters, because they haven't successfully shown that their theory is a scientific rival to evolution. By creating the appearance of a one-on-one debate between ID and evolution, NPR would essentially be giving the impression that the two views have equal scientific stature. But they clearly do not....

"NPR needs to stand its ground and refuse to give in, despite loudly trumpeted accusations of censorship. The station needs to realize that these meritless charges are totally predictable: Discovery's goal is to be part of the debate, to claim a seat at the scientific table. When the ID viewpoint is excluded, Discovery's gang can be expected to cry bloody murder. And pretty soon, its media surrogates will take up the accusation (if they haven't already).

"I say let them. Science isn't a democracy, period. NPR needs to keep that firmly in mind as it comes under attack."

In Praise of "Conspiracy Theories"

Noam Chomsky remarks:

"Among Western intellectuals, it is a virtual axiom that the US goal -- sometimes Bush's 'messianic mission,' as the elite press puts it -- is to bring democracy to Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. Critics in the liberal press (e.g., the New York Review, American Prospect, etc.) agree that it is a noble and generous vision but object that it is beyond our reach, etc. Iraqis apparently see it differently. A few days after the President affirmed his noble vision to rapturous applause in Washington last November, a poll in Baghdad was released in which people were asked why the US invaded. Some did agree with near-unanimous Western elite opinion: to establish democracy. 1%. 5% said it was to help Iraqis. Most of the rest gave the obvious answer, dismissed with some hysteria here as a 'conspiracy theory' or with some other intellectual equivalent of a four-letter word: to control Iraq's resources and to reorganize the Middle East in the interests of the US and its Israeli client."

Brown Shirts Anyone?

Details here:

"On May 16...[Lori Haigh] installed [in her San Francisco art gallery] a piece of artwork by Guy Colwell entitled 'Abuse.' The painting (which you can see here) is an elaboration of the torture that went on at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq....

"Haigh placed the painting in the front window of her gallery. Two days later, 'someone threw eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep,' AP reported, and 'people started leaving nasty messages and threats on her business answering machine.' She told AP that she received 'about 200 angry voicemails, e-mails, and death threats.'

"So she decided to remove the painting, but still things got worse.

"One day, someone walked into the gallery and spit in her face.

"And then on May 27, someone 'knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched Haigh in the face, knocking her out, breaking her nose, and causing a concussion,' AP said. Two days later, she still had a bad black right eye, with purple on the cheek next to the eye, one bandage over the nose, and another over her right eyebrow.

"The abuse was too much for her--she has two young kids--so she has closed her gallery down."

On Applying Twice to Grad Schools in Philosophy

A graduate of a top 20ish program (hereafter Department X) writes with the following interesting story about his experiences on applying to graduate school:

"I applied twice to graduate schools. My dossiers were identical, essentially apart from having an extra year of grad work. I was #30 at Department X my first year of applying and #1 my second year. So, somehow Department X had gone from admitting me only because I begged, really, to putting me at the top of their list of applicants. I also fared much better at [another top 15ish program], to which I applied both times. Two years later I went to [the top 15ish program] as a visiting student and was as competent as their best grad students. Overall, there was a huge difference between how I was received the first year and the second year. I think that had I had better advice on admissions (or the PGR), I would have gotten in at a top program. (I made two mistakes: First, I said I was primarily interested in philosophy of religion. Second, I was advised that in philosophy the GRE makes no difference; as a result I didn't take it seriously and didn't score very highly on it. (I found out later that e.g. at Yale it counts for 1/3 of one's overall rating; and everywhere it is taken very seriously. For instance, I went to [a state university with a PhD program] undergrad. I applied there, and was told by a long-time member of the admissions committee that I had the best letters he had seen in 10 years. These letters were from faculty at the school. Yet, I was #20 on the list because of my GRE scores.)

"Overall, grad admissions (like the job market) is capricious and too often not merit-based. So, the advice not to reapply is amazing to me. The candidate pool differs, the admissions committee differs and, most important perhaps, the sort of mood the faculty member is in when your file is read differs.

"Second, you can succeed if you don't go to a top 10 or 20 school. There is a disadvantage; often one will wind up with a 'teaching job' (a euphemism for a job where there is so much teaching that you can't even teach well). So, it may take intense work to publish one's way out of such a school. But it can be done.

"Also, going to a say, top-25 school and working with a prominent faculty member in a hot area of philosophy can pay off. [Department X's most famous faculty member's] students do fantastically on the job market, even when they're not as good as other students who worked with other people at [Department X]. Part of this is that [the famous faculty member in question] is a tremendous advisor and really works hard to get his students jobs."

Of Local Interest (and Amusement)

Local conservative lawyer and activist Marc Levin--who not long ago accused mild-mannered me of "intemperate" and "shameful" rhetoric--is profiled here, complete with a fine sampling of his own temperate rhetoric, that brings nothing but glory and honor to his alma mater.

UPDATE: And for some of Levin's responses, see this article.

Reflections on Blogging After 10 Months and 320,000+ Visits

They're not much different from my reflections after 100,000+ visits and 6 months which I wrote about here: all seem pertinent, especially (1) and (4a):

"(1) The quality of discussion and commentary in the blogosphere is neither better nor worse than in the public culture generally. Just as in the public culture, you can locate alternative points of view that have intellectual substance, so too, you can do the same in the blogosphere. The blogosphere has not made any advance on this score over the mere fact of the Internet making it possible, e.g., to get to Znet or TomDispatch, with ease from your home or office computer."

(4a) "The less they know the less they know it" (a finding of empirical psychology) and "You can't talk to the ignorant about lies, because they have no criteria" (Ezra Pound) are still the order of the day in the blogosphere generally. I've tried to adopt the policy of no longer linking to the hopeless cases, especially since the blogopaths among them seem to crave the attention."

I'll go further on point (1): in most respects, the blogosphere is inferior to the existing media that the Internet makes available. From my home computer, I can read newspapers in Britain and Canada, I can have easy access to the current commentary of Chomsky and Roy and others without parochial blinders.

Now contrast this with most of the US-based law and political science blogosphere, which functions almost entirely as an echo chamber for stale right-wing tripe, that was already widely available in the reactionary United States. Why turn to the blogosphere when The Weekly Standard and The National Review" and The Wall Street Journal, not to mention the various pseudo-scholarly publications of AEI and Heritage, have long been around?

A few additional observations based on experience the last few months:

The blogosphere brings one in to a kind of "contact" with people one wouldn't ordinarily encounter ideologically or intellectually. Some of these individuals are a pleasure to have discovered, since they bring to bear knowledge and competence from which I, and I hope readers of this blog, have benefitted: for example, the biologist Paul Myers at Pharyngula, or the scientists and concerned citizens at The Panda's Thumb.

Others, alas, are the kind of people one would prefer to keep at arm's length, the various noxious mediocrities and defiantly stupid for whom the absence of editorial (or even grown-up) oversight in the blogosphere is essential.

Hobbes, Iraq, Rumsfeld

Cartoon here.

(Thanks to Adrian Viens at Oxford for the pointer.)

Two More Lateral Appointments at Vanderbilt Law

In addition to Tracey George (law and social science) from Northwestern University and Laurence Helfer (international law) from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Vanderbilt made two other tenured appointments this year: Margaret Blair (corporate law) from the Brookings Institution (she has also been a visiting professor at Georgetown), and Owen Jones (law and evolutionary psychology) from Arizona State University.

Republican Ron Paul (Texas) on the "Misnamed Patriot Act"

"The misnamed Patriot Act, presented to the public as an anti-terrorism measure, actually focuses on American citizens rather than foreign terrorists. For example, the definition of 'terrorism' for federal criminal purposes has been greatly expanded; future administrations may consider you a terrorist if you belong to a pro-gun group, a citizen militia, or a pro-life organization. Legitimate protest against the government could place you (and tens of thousands of other Americans) under federal surveillance. Similarly, your Internet use can be monitored without your knowledge, and your Internet provider can be forced to hand over user information to law enforcement without a warrant or subpoena.

"The biggest problem with these new law enforcement powers is that they bear little relationship to fighting terrorism. Surveillance powers are greatly expanded, while checks and balances on government are greatly reduced. Most of the provisions have been sought after by domestic law enforcement agencies for years, not to fight terrorism, but rather to increase their police power over the American people. The federal government has made no showing that it failed to detect or prevent the September 11th attacks because of the civil liberties that will be compromised by this new legislation."

--Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx)

More on the Philosophy Job Market and Philosophy Admissions

My earlier correspondent writes with a report of astonishingly bad advice from faculty mentors at an MA program:

"One of our faculty advisors said that [student X] had better take the offer [of admission from a top 25 PhD program, whose name is omitted here] because everyone gets exactly one shot to apply for PhD programs. He thought that reapplying was very unlikely to improve the outcome. He implied that the stigma of having been previously rejected would cripple any subsequent applications. Is that true? Another faculty member told her ambitious grad students that there was 'no point' in getting a PhD from any program outside the top 10."

There's much to be said for a "bird in the hand," but the advice reported here is too absolute to be sensible. While there's certainly no reason to think that applying another year with the same dossier will lead to better results, one question to ask is what can be accomplished in the intervening year. A publication? Some new letter writers? More coursework and grades? As to "stigma," this may attach, and it may not: membership on admissions committees does rotate, and departments vary considerably in how well they keep track of who has applied before.

It is clearly silly to say there is "no point" in getting a PhD from a program outside "the top 10," and I say that, obviously, as someone who thinks the quality of a program--overall and in the areas of most interest to a student--is VERY important. There was presumably a "point" in getting a PhD for these philosophers who didn't go to "top 10" programs (at the time they went) but who are now employed as philosophers at top 10 programs:

Desmond Hogan (PhD, Yale) at Princeton
Matt Evans (PhD, Texas) at NYU
Kit Fine (PhD, Warwick) at NYU
Richard Foley (PhD, Brown) at NYU
Don Garrett (PhD, Yale) at NYU
Frances Egan (PhD, Western Ontario) at Rutgers
John Hawthorne (PhD, Syracuse) at Rutgers
Peter Klein (PhD, Yale) at Rutgers
Ernest LePore (PhD, Minnesota) at Rutgers
Howard McGary (PhD, Minnesota) at Rutgers
Brian McLaughlin (PhD, North Carolina) at Rutgers
Ted Sider (PhD, U Mass/Amherst) at Rutgers
Dean Zimmerman (PhD, Brown) at Rutgers
Edwin Curley (PhD, Duke) at Michigan
Peter Ludlow (PhD, Columbia) at Michigan
Joseph Camp (PhD, Brown) at Pittsburgh
James Lennox (PhD, Toronto) at Pittsburgh
John Norton (PhD, New South Wales) at Pittsburgh
Lanier Anderson (PhD, Penn) at Stanford
Allen Wood (PhD, Yale) at Stanford
Jeff Helzner (PhD, Carnegie-Mellon) at Columbia
Achille Varzi (PhD, Toronto) at Columbia
Peter Godfrey-Smith (PhD, UC San Diego) at Harvard and ANU
Alison Simmons (PhD, Penn) at Harvard
David Chalmers (PhD, Indiana) at Arizona
Thomas Christiano (PhD, Illinois/Chicago) at Arizona
Michael Gill (PhD, North Carolina) at Arizona
Rachana Kamtekar (PhD, Chicago) at Arizona
Uriah Kriegel (PhD, Brown) at Arizona
Chris Maloney (PhD, Indiana) at Arizona
Calvin Normore (PhD, Toronto) at UCLA
Sheldon Smith (PhD, Ohio State) at UCLA

And this, remember, is just from the top 10; you don’t have to go far outside the top ten to find many more examples, such as,

Jesse Prinz (PhD, Chicago) at North Carolina
Robert Kane (PhD, Yale) at Texas
A.P. Martinich (PhD, UC San Diego) at Texas
A.P.D. Mourelatos (PhD, Yale) at Texas
Michael Tye (PhD, SUNY-Buffalo) at Texas
Alan Code (PhD, Wisconsin) at Berkeley
Branden Fitelson (PhD, Wisconsin) at Berkeley
Brian Weatherson (PhD, Monash) at Cornell
etc.

Would any of these philosophers have been well-advised to forget about graduate school because they didn’t get in to a top 10 programs? Plainly not.

And there are, of course, dozens more successful philosophers at PhD- and MA-granting programs—as well as tens of dozens at liberal arts colleges, state universities, etc.—who earned their PhDs from non-top 10 programs. (Note, of course, that in the above lists, most of the philosophers earned their PhDs at top 20ish programs. But the list of graduates would become more diverse as we consider a wider range of institutions of higher education.)

UPDATE: A graduate student at a top 20 program writes:

Irrelevant "Inside" Blogosphere Humor

Eugene Volokh, maistro at the Volokh Conspiracy, announces the newest "guest" bloggers:

"I'm delighted to say that the University of San Diego law professors from The Right Coast — Gail Heriot, Sai Prakash, Mike Rappaport, Maimon Schwarzschild, Tom Smith, and Chris Wonnell — will be guest-blogging here from Wednesday, June 2 to Tuesday, June 8.

"This is really a first-rate group of accomplished scholars and thinkers, and I'm very pleased that they agreed to join us for the week. You will, I suspect, find them a bit more conservative than the average Volokh Conspirator, but we've got a Big Tent here."

A "Big Tent" indeed: from the friendly far right to the friendly lunatic right!

Or so it looks to those of us in the cosmopolitan center!!!

Remind Us Why We Invaded Iraq?

Here's a powerful video/animation compiling the lies of Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld. Watch the whole thing.

What Liberal Academy?

Yes, it's true that when you raise the intellectual bar high, as serious universities do, you get fewer right-wing kooks, but that simply doesn't mean there is political indoctrination going on at universities. The fact that the U.S. has moved farther to the right during the same time period when the universities have allegedly moved to the left ought to be taken as empirical confirmation of that point. For other plausible anecdotal evidence, see the discussion here.

UPDATE: More on the subject from Pharyngula here. He notes: "Maybe the real complaint conservatives have with the 'liberal academy' is that we aren't in the business of merely confirming their a priori prejudices. And the more ignorant, the more wrong, and the more strongly-held an individual's prejudices are, the more deeply they will resent universities."

More Philosophers on the Move: George Bealer, Michael Strevens Accept Offers

George Bealer (metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Coloradoa at Boulder has accepted the offer from the University of Texas at Austin, to start in fall 2004 (he will technically be on leave of absence from Colorado next year). However, he still has open offers (to start fall 2005) from both the University of Florida at Gainesville and Yale University (though we have no doubt that once he's in Austin, he won't give these offers a second thought!).

Michael Strevens (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) at Stanford University has accepted the tenured offer from New York University.

Harvard Profs Spearhead Letter to Congress over Human Rights in Iraq

I have been invited to share the following:

============

Dear Colleagues,

A group of us has been working for the past few weeks to draft a letter to Congress addressing recent human rights issues in Iraq. The letter is attached in PDF format. The letter, as well as an updated list of signers, will be available at www.iraq-letter.com by June 1. We hope that many of you will want to join us in signing.

The letter focuses on issues of democratic accountability and responsibility, calling upon Congress to take action (1) to assess responsibility from the highest civilian officials on down for the abuses that have occurred and any policies enabling those abuses, and (2) to take responsibility for reviewing any coercive interrogation policy and for deciding whether this country should adopt any such policy, and if so in what form and with what protections against abuse.

Through informal networking, we are circulating the letter to a variety of law schools, faculties of public policy, diplomacy and international relations. Our goal is to send the letter with signatures to Congress by June 9, 2004. Should you wish to sign on, please do so at your earliest possible convenience but no later than Monday, June 7, 2004. To sign, please send a brief email indicating your name and title, institution and chair if applicable to: [email protected]

We would appreciate your forwarding the attached letter to your colleagues and to those at other schools, inviting them to sign and circulate the letter further. Those interested in signing should write to: [email protected], rather than directly to you or us. (Although some may get this too late for the initial letter to Congress in early June, people can and should continue to circulate the letter and send in names even after the initial deadline. We will continue to collect names and will send them to Congress as a supplement to the initial list at a later date).

Elizabeth Bartholet, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
James Cavallaro, Associate Director, Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School ([email protected])
Christine Desan, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
===============

Needless to say, in my view this letter doesn't go far enough.

UPDATE: Nice to see that Stephen Bainbridge, distinguished corporate law expert at UCLA, has already seen fit to insult his colleagues here: "Clearly, [the letter] is to be regarded as more of a partisan political act than opinio juris." But Professor Bainbridge's judgment about the letter is, by contrast, informed scholarly opinion, not "partisan political act." Indeed!

Start-of-the-Month Blog Stats

As expected, a slight drop in readership during the past month, as school lets out, and faculty and especially students scatter: a bit over 64,000 visits last month, down from well over 66,000 in April, but still well over the 52,000 in March. Unless I antagonize the National Review or some other slimy right-wing venue again, I expect an average of about 2,000 visits per day will be the norm for the rest of the summer. Thanks, as always, for stopping by.

New Blog Devoted to Free Will and Action Theory

John Martin Fischer and two of his graduate students at the University of California at Riverside have started a blog devoted to philosophical issues about free will and philosophy of action.

This is a novel undertaking in several respects, the least of which is that it is the first substantive blog related to these philosophical issues. More interesting is that it combines the talents of faculty and students, moreover faculty and students at the same department, a department with particular distinction in that area. What will be next? Texas faculty and students will have to start an ancient philosophy or Nietzsche blog. "Decisions, Decisions" could be the blog from faculty and students at UC Irvine. "Stanley Cavell Central" (or "No M&E Allowed") from the University of Chicago. You get the idea.

UPDATE: I note that a few philosophers of action from other schools are joining the list of contributors to the new free will blog.