Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Dear Aunt Estelle and Uncle Hobie...

Here's why undecideds should vote for Kerry. If this doesn't sway Estelle and Hobie, then we're all doomed.

Bush Supporters Speak Out

This writer at the libertarian Lew Rockwell site has a charming chronicle of how Bush supporters have responded to his criticisms of their man. The insults and abusive language are familiar, but what is so striking about the right-wing rabble when they get aroused is their penchant for armchair psychologizing to demean their opponent. My own armchair psychologizing leads me to suspect that this is largely projection, that these folks attribute petty and base motives to their opponents because those are the ones with which they are most familiar. Anyone not in an armchair have better insight?

The U.S. Election Day is Only Two Weeks Away...

...but will we know the results in the year 2004? Given what's brewing, it's doubtful.

Philosophy Job Market

Brian Weatherson (Philosophy, Cornell) has an anaylsis of the October edition of Jobs for Philosophers here. I'm not sure I get his descriptive/normative distinction, but the data is clear enough and job seekers, in particular, may find it of interest.

"Bush's War on Science"

The actual (and apt) title for this article from The Guardian. An excerpt:

"In a recent edition of the genius internet cartoon strip Get Your War On, two anonymous office workers discuss George Bush's policy on stem cell research. 'If Bush is gonna keep arguing against science,' says one, 'why not go all the way and argue against gravity? I bet he could convince some of his supporters they were floating.'

"Whether or not Bush's political strategist Karl Rove is focus-grouping the weightlessness claim is unclear; what we do know is that the president seems to have opened up a War on Science, and that women are likely to be among its earliest casualties.

"Over the summer, Bush revealed plans to appoint another Dubya - Dr David W Hager - to the reproductive health drugs advisory committee of the US federal food and drug administration (FDA). This distinguished panel - whose advice is traditionally adhered to - makes crucial decisions on matters relating to contraception, infertility treatment, drugs used in obstetrics and gynaecology (including hormone therapy), and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilisation and abortion.

"The fact that the committee's recent 24-3 vote in favour of selling the morning-after pill without prescription was mysteriously - and against almost all precedent - rejected by the FDA is bad enough. But Hager's appointment is a real shocker.

"For those of you unfamiliar with his work, Hager is the author of a book called As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now. It exploits the latest in scientific advances to promote ever more sophisticated female healthcare. Hang on - I'm sorry, it blends biblical accounts of Jesus healing women with case studies from Hager's practice.

"And what a practice it sounds. Come to David with chronic premenstrual pain and, along with your inferior Earth medicine, he will prescribe you specific Bible readings and prayers to treat the problem. He's not one of your crazy futurists - he won't dole out contraceptive medicine to anyone unmarried, say, and despite being an ob-gyn, he's a staunch pro-lifer."

(Thanks to Mike Bruno for the pointer.)

Inter-Blog Warfare

This will be of no interest to anyone other than those who read blogs more generally:

Crooked Timber is a nice blog of mostly decent, social democrats, folks I like and respect as scholars, and I wish there were more of them in the world. But they can be pretty boring--often right, but still boring--and far too nice to felons and villains. But Kieran Healy (Sociology, Arizona), who posts there, is funny. And here he has some great fun with David Bernstein (Law, George Mason), an earnest libertarian, with whom I've had some fun too.

"Bush is an Idiot," or "Screw Our Troops"

Details here:

"Col. Earl Hecker, a critical care doctor at Landstuhl [a millitary hospital], says that the casualty situation for U.S. troops is far worse than most people in the U.S. can imagine. '[The public has] no idea what's going on here, none whatsoever,' he told New York Newsday. Then he blurted out, 'Bush is an idiot.'

"Hecker has every right to feel angry. On an average day, he sees 35 young men and women transported to Landstuhl, mainly from Iraq. Doctors and nurses at the hospital say it is like something out of a nightmare--where 'the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives,' wrote Toronto Star reporter Sandro Contenta.

"Since September 2001, more than 18,000 military personnel have come to the hospital from Iraq and Afghanistan--roughly 20 percent because of combat injuries, the rest due to accidents or illness. While the Pentagon has reported approximately 7,300 soldiers injured in combat in Iraq, that number doesn't reflect soldiers evacuated for illnesses, like diarrhea or persistent fever, which are often related to living conditions.

"And it doesn't count the thousands of soldiers sent home because they are suffering from mental health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder. At Landstuhl alone, more than 1,400 soldiers have been admitted for mental health problems.

"Back at home, the Pentagon says that some 28,000 troops out of the 168,000 who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought medical care from the Veterans Administration. Nearly 20 percent of those--well over 5,000--have done so for mental health reasons.

"It's no wonder why. According to a New England Journal of Medicine study released in July, during the six weeks that the Iraq war lasted officially, 95 percent of Marines and Army soldiers surveyed said that they had been shot at, 56 percent had killed an enemy combatant, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains. 'It's probably the biggest challenge to mental health [in the military] since Vietnam,' Col. Gary Southwell, chief of psychology services at Landstuhl, told Newsday.

"For these soldiers, help may not be available, even if they manage to make it home alive. The Veterans Administration (VA) has been overloaded for decades--and has a current backlog of more than 300,000 claims.

"Of the claims for benefits filed by soldiers returned from Afghanistan or Iraq, fewer than two-thirds have been processed--leaving more than 9,750 recent veterans waiting for help, according to the Washington Post. And a September 20 Government Accountability Office report concluded that the VA isn't able to determine if it can handle a rush of post-traumatic stress disorder cases.

"Meanwhile, soldiers who are injured in Iraq and sent home are in for a rude awakening--a 50 percent pay cut. When Marine Lance Cpl. James Crosby left Iraq, he was unconscious, his legs paralyzed, his guts pierced by shrapnel.

"According to the Boston Globe, that's when the military cut his pay. 'Before you leave the combat zone, they swipe your ID card through a computer, and you go back to your base pay,' said Crosby. 'You need that pay more than ever, to move your life around.' In a wheelchair and attached to a colostomy bag, Crosby told the Globe: 'I still have to fight the consequences of what happened. I struggle every day.''

"That struggle is leading more troops and their families to question the war. 'The army is not going to like what I have to say, but I think we have no business being there,' Larry Daniels' wife, Cheryl, told Newsday.

"She says that she voted for Bush in 2000, but has changed her mind this year. 'I will definitely vote for Kerry, not because I prefer Kerry over Bush, but because I don't want Bush back in office,' she says. 'I'm hoping that if Kerry takes office, we'll be pulling out' of Iraq.

"Unfortunately, as Kerry has made all too clear, he won't answer the hopes of people like Cheryl. During the first presidential debate, when asked if U.S. soldiers were 'dying for a mistake,' Kerry answered 'No, and they don't have to...I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that.' That means more U.S. troops killed and maimed for oil profits."

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

That last remark reminds me of something: after months and months of mindless blather about whether we were "misled" in to war, it occurs to me that there are still adults who have graduated from college, and who are otherwise functionally literate, who believe that the U.S. is in Iraq for any reason other than strategic political and economic advantages (and having nothing to do, needless to say, with the fake "war [sic] on terror"). I find it hard to believe, but perhaps it is true.

"Pirates and Emperors"

This is cute, and pointed--especially the duck at the end.

(Thanks to Doug Barnes for the pointer.)

Here's one for the Annals of Pettiness

ORIGINALLY POSTED APRIL 28, 2004: These rumors just won't die...sigh. Worth posting again.

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

It is inevitable that if one produces rankings and comments on the scholarly fortunes of different faculties that ad hominem attacks and speculations will abound. Yet even though my rankings of philosophy departments dominate the philosophy world, I've never encountered unprofessional behavior on a par with what my law school rankings--far less influential than U.S. News, to be sure, but perhaps more influential among the top students--have generated among law schools. In the annals of pettiness, the University of Michigan Law School (my alma mater, no less!) and Northwestern University School of Law may be in a class by themselves.

Regarding Michigan, I have pointed out, on various occasions, what everyone in the legal academy knows: namely, that Michigan lost its super elite status during the 1990s, that it went from being a clear "top five" law school in every respect, to competing with the top dozen (Penn, Virginia, Texas, Georgetown, Boalt, etc.). This is not even remotely controversial among insiders: Michigan's senior faculty was decimated over the last dozen years, though, as I've noted, they've done very well in recruiting younger scholars.

Given the banality of these observations, I was quite astonished when someone forwarded me a posting on a prelaw discussion site by someone claiming to be on the admissions staff at Michigan explaining that I had been "rejected" for a faculty position at Michigan as a way of explaining my reporting the facts about Michigan's faculty retention problems. [Edit: see Update, below.]

Yes, I kid you not: on a discussion site for prelaw students, someone claiming to be an admissions staffer at a reputable law school posted this smear. Wow!

The smear is not without its amusing aspects. For one, my wife would divorce me if I ever suggested we live in Ann Arbor, which is small, cold, and Midwestern (which aren't her three favorite attributes--or mine!--in a place to live). But more seriously, the fact that Michigan Law even interviewed me in 1992-93 (when I first sought teaching jobs) was both a surprise (they were already overloaded with law-and-philosophy faculty) and a blessing (it gave me instant credibility on the teaching market). Finally--and this is really the oddest part of this whole episode--the list of law schools that didn't offer me faculty positions during my career is quite a bit longer than the list of law schools that did--and it includes lots of schools about which, last time I looked, I've written positive things or which have fared quite well in my various law school rankings (for example: Chicago, Boalt, BU, NYU, USC, Hastings, and so on). (And Penn, which made me an offer several years ago, only came in 11th in last year's faculty quality survey, noticeably below their 7th-place ranking in US News. So I'm plainly doing a terrible job responding to the marketplace incentives properly!)

Two Items from the New York Times of Interest

U.S. readers will surely have seen these, but foreign readers, who have no reason or need to look at The New York Times ordinarily, may find both these items of interest.

One is the expected endorsement of John Kerry for President. The editorial is a well-drawn indictment of the Bush Administration, that avoids claiming too much more for Kerry than the evidence warrants.

The other is a striking portrait of Bush the "decisionmaker," making clear what an irrational and frightening zealot the man is. As historian Juan Cole (Michigan) puts it: the "profile of George W. Bush reminded me eerily of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Suskind portrays Bush as filled with unwarranted certainty, sure that God is speaking and working through him, and convinced that decisive action shapes reality in ways that make it unnecessary to first study reality." Here are some notable excerpts from the profile:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

....

"Every few months, a report surfaces of the president using strikingly Messianic language, only to be dismissed by the White House. Three months ago, for instance, in a private meeting with Amish farmers in Lancaster County, Pa., Bush was reported to have said, 'I trust God speaks through me.' In this ongoing game of winks and nods, a White House spokesman denied the president had specifically spoken those words, but noted that 'his faith helps him in his service to people.'

"A recent Gallup Poll noted that 42 percent of Americans identify themselves as evangelical or 'born again.' While this group leans Republican, it includes black urban churches and is far from monolithic. But Bush clearly draws his most ardent supporters and tireless workers from this group...

"This signaling system -- forceful, national, varied, yet clean of the president's specific fingerprint -- carries enormous weight. Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Republican senator from Rhode Island, has broken with the president precisely over concerns about the nature of Bush's certainty. 'This issue,' he says, of Bush's 'announcing that 'I carry the word of God' is the key to the election. The president wants to signal to the base with that message, but in the swing states he does not.'

....

"The crowd [in Poplar Bluff, Missouri] went wild, and they went wild again when the president finally arrived and gave his stump speech. There were Bush's periodic stumbles and gaffes, but for the followers of the faith-based president, that was just fine. They got it -- and 'it' was the faith.

"And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. 'You think he's an idiot, don't you?' I said, no, I didn't. 'No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!' In this instance, the final 'you,' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

....

'''To me, I just believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down, to see the darkness and protect this nation,' [Mr. Billington, a Bush supporter in Missouri] told me, voicing an idea shared by millions of Bush supporters. 'Other people will not protect us. God gives people choices to make. God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time.'

"'But when the moment came in the V.I.P. tent to shake Bush's hand, Billington remembered being reserved. "'I really thank God that you're the president' was all I told him.' Bush, he recalled, said, 'Thank you.'

'''He knew what I meant,' Billington said. 'I believe he's an instrument of God, but I have to be careful about what I say, you know, in public.'

"Is there anyone in America who feels that John Kerry is an instrument of God?"

A Libertarian Speaks: Why Kerry Will Win

But his prediction is less interesting than his analysis:

"If you believe the president's own words, he has not the foggiest idea of what the war on terrorism is all about. His repeated claim that terrorists hate us because we are rich and free is so patently absurd as to be laughable. Osama bin Laden probably has a higher net worth than Bush, if not Dick Cheney, and what the terrorists object to is not us but our foreign policy, part of which is to turn the U.S. armed forces into a corporate oil-protective service.

"His belief that you can fight a war and cut taxes at the same time is reckless. The record deficit he has created is a most dangerous situation for the economy. For one thing, it means trillions of dollars of American debt paper are in the hands of the Japanese, the Chinese, the Malaysians and the Koreans. That gives them influence over U.S. policy they should not have.

"As for the war in Iraq, it demonstrates that Bush learned nothing from the 20th century. An important part of the 20th century was the attempt by nation-states to devise a system of international law that could replace invasion with negotiations.

"It was a long and difficult struggle, but the peaceful ending of the Cold War showed that great progress was being made. Now George Bush has wrecked all that. What is the difference between Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland and Bush's invasion of Iraq? There is no difference. Both were unprovoked attacks in violation of international law. Both were blatant attempts to achieve political objectives by force – in Hitler's case, the annexation of Poland; in Bush's case, regime change. Morally, there is not a thread's difference between the bombing of Warsaw and the bombing of Baghdad.

"That's the single most important thing to learn about the Iraq War. If every other nation adopts the same policy of 'pre-emptive' wars, the world will be right back in the jungle that cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the last century – by far the bloodiest in human history.

"Bush has a dangerous mind-set. He appears to actually believe that he is an agent of God. He said as much. That puts him in the same mind-set as bin Laden. I much prefer the saner notion of a president who believes that the God of the universe has better things to do than manage the day-to-day affairs of the U.S. government. I prefer an emotionally mature person who can admit mistakes as opposed to a self-righteous rooster who gets defensive and resentful when someone disagrees with him."

One of the sad things about the law side of the blogosphere is that most of the putative libertarians are so dreary and spineless, so selective in their libertarianism. They tend to be sturdy in their free market utopianism, and utterly unreliable with respect to the other criminal uses of state power.

The Bush War on Science, yet again

Skeptic Magazine enters the fray; putatively educated Republicans had better read this before voting for their Party's candidate in November. An excerpt (the extensive footnotes are omitted):

"There’s a war going on—and not just the one in Iraq. This conflict may not get as much media play, but it could have just as great an impact on our safety, national prestige, and long-term economic health. It is a war over the integrity of science itself, and the casualties are everywhere: career scientists and enforcement officials are resigning en masse from government agencies, citing an inability to do their jobs due to what they see as the ruthless politicization of science by the Bush administration. Bruce Boler, Marianne Horinko, Rich Biondi, J. P. Suarez and Eric Schaeffer are among those who have resigned from the EPA alone. In a letter to The New York Times, former EPA administrator Russell Train, who worked for both Nixon and Ford, wrote, 'I can state categorically that there never was such White House intrusion into the business of the EPA during my tenure.' Government meddling has reached such a level that European scientists are voicing concerns that Bush may not merely be undermining U.S. dominance in sciences, but global research as well....

"[W]hen the National Cancer Institute’s web site was altered to suggest there was a link between abortion and breast cancer [Bush science adviser John] Marburger described the change as only a routine update. What actually troubled the Union of Concerned Scientists was that the findings of established science had been removed in favor of language that promoted the lonely crusade of Dr. Joel Brind.

"For those unfamiliar with Dr. Brind, he discovered the supposed Abortion Breast Cancer link (or ABC as he calls it) after 'making contact' with a local right-to-life group shortly after becoming a born-again Christian. 'With a new belief in a meaningful universe,' he explains, 'I felt compelled to use science for its noblest, life-saving purpose.' Despite the fact that Brind is completely at odds with his peers, the web site was updated with the following text:

"'[T]he possible relationship between abortion and breast cancer has been examined in over thirty published studies since 1957. Some studies have reported statistically significant evidence of an increased risk of breast cancer in women who have had abortions, while others have merely suggested an increased risk. Other studies have found no increase in risk among women who have had an interrupted pregnancy.'

"After an outcry by members of Congress, the National Cancer Institute convened a three-day conference where experts reviewed the evidence, again concluding '[i]nduced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk,' ranking the science as 'well-established....'

"Then there are those examples the UCS does not mention: the Corn Refiners Association and Sugar Association successfully lobbied Bush to pressure the World Health Organization to de-emphasize the importance of cutting sweets and eating fruits and vegetables in their anti-obesity guidelines. Two scientists were ejected from a bioethics council due to what they believed to be their views favoring embryo research. Data on hydraulic fracturing were altered so benzene levels met government standards after 'feedback' from an industry source. Another study (sponsored by Florida developers) claiming wetlands cause pollution, was used by the EPA to justify replacing protected marshes with golf courses to improve 'water quality.'

"Nothing is so trivial that it escapes top administration advisor Karl Rove’s insistence on staying 'on message'—from forbidding NASA scientists to speak to the press about the global warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow, to letting National Park Service gift shops sell books with the 'alternative view' that the Grand Canyon was formed in seven days.

"One need look no further than the USDA to see how compromised the research and enforcement environment has become. Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman was a former food industry lawyer and lobbyist and her staff includes representatives of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and other industry groups. So it should be no surprise that shortly after a dairy cow from Canada tested positive for mad cow disease a senior scientist came forward alleging agency pressure to let Canadian beef into the U.S. before a study concluded it was safe. Nor should it shock us that whistleblowers accused an Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service supervisor of insisting a cow exhibiting symptoms of the disease be sent to a rendering plant before a technician could perform the tests mandated by agency guidelines. But even the most cynical among us might be baffled by the almost cultish devotion to industry pandering exhibited when the USDA refused to give Creekstone Farms Premium Beef the kits it requested to voluntarily test its cattle so it could export to Japan because it might 'create the impression that untested beef was not safe.' Creekstone may very well go bankrupt as a result.

"Such reluctance only makes sense if the USDA fears that positive results are possible. Still, one hesitates to suggest the USDA is trying to sell as much tainted beef as possible before people start exhibiting symptoms. One hesitates slightly less so after learning that EPA staffers were also prevented from performing routine analysis of the economic and health consequences of proposed regulations governing mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. After all, it’s a lot easier to suppress unfavorable scientific findings if there’s nothing to suppress. But surely even they realize preventing an analysis of the consequences of our actions will not prevent those consequences from occurring. That’s the rub. Science doesn’t appear to factor into their reasoning at all. The tests might come up negative. They might come up positive. The meat is considered safe either way."

The Truth Appears on Television...

...and no one knows how it happened (presumably the FCC will investigate), but I'm grateful to reader Bill Campbell for calling to my attention this transcript of Daily Show Host Jon Stewart on "Crossfire"; here's a relevant excerpt. (UPDATE: Several readers pointed out that a video of the segment is available here.) "CARLSON" is Tucker Carlson, the resident right-wing shill (and "big dick" as Stewart puts it) on Crossfire, "BEGALA" is Paul Begala, the resident Clintonite, purporting to represent the left.

CARLSON: [O]f the nine guys running [for the Democratic nomination], who do you think was best. Do you think [Kerry] was the best, the most impressive?

STEWART: The most impressive?

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: I thought Al Sharpton was very impressive.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: I enjoyed his way of speaking.

I think, oftentimes, the person that knows they can't win is allowed to speak the most freely, because, otherwise, shows with titles, such as CROSSFIRE.

BEGALA: CROSSFIRE.

STEWART: Or "HARDBALL" or "I'm Going to Kick Your Ass" or...

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Will jump on it.

In many ways, it's funny. And I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to -- I felt that that wasn't fair and I should come here and tell you that I don't -- it's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: But in its defense...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

BEGALA: OK. Now

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: And come work for us, because we, as the people...

CARLSON: How do you pay?

STEWART: The people -- not well.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: Better than CNN, I'm sure.

STEWART: But you can sleep at night.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we're too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

(LAUGHTER)

How to Get Your Absentee Ballot

Tamar Gendler (Philosophy, Cornell) calls to my attention two useful sites for students (and others, of course) who may want to vote absentee, but don't know how to go about it. (If you are planning on voting for the candidate of the Fascist Theocracy Party, however, please do not read any further!)

This non-partisan website provides help in requesting an absentee ballot. You can also find information on deadlines for securing absentee ballots in the various states here.

Is Derrida Really Dead?

I suppose this parody just had to be written. An excerpt:

"Jacques Derrida, the famous French philosopher, is ‘dead’. But as there is no straightforward, one-to-one relationship between the signifier (‘dead’) and the thing signified (the termination or otherwise of the actual person, M. Derrida), we cannot be entirely sure what has happened. We are faced instead with an endless multiplicity of truths, a string of infinite possibilities. I suppose it is entirely up to the reader to decide. It would be logocentric of us all to assume that Jakki’s corporeal remains are in a state of decomposition simply because of the unbidden and puzzling presence, in our newspapers, of that signifier ‘dead’ in relation to the name ‘Jacques Derrida’ — a name which is, of course, itself merely a signifier bearing no straightforward relationship with the actual thing which we have come to call ‘Derrida’."

I'm not sure the rest is worth reading. The light amusement value is pretty much captured in the bit quoted here.

"Dog Bites Man": the World Still Wants Kerry to Win

If only these folks would spend more time reading InstaIgnorance and watching Fox TV, they would surely be as enlightened as the 50% of Americans who approve of Bush's job performance. Details here:

"In eight out of 10 nations, those polled said -- often in landslide proportions -- that they hoped to see Democrat John Kerry beat President Bush in next month's election. Bush won backing from a majority of respondents only in Russia and Israel.

"The polls were conducted in Canada, France, Britain, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Israel and Russia, with results to be published in the participating newspapers on Friday. Not all questions were asked in every country.

"On average, 57 percent of those questioned said their opinions of America had worsened over the past two to three years, compared with 20 percent who said their view had improved. That question was asked in nine of the countries, but not in Russia.

"Seventy-four percent of Japanese, 70 percent of French, 67 percent of South Koreans, 64 percent of Canadians and 60 percent of Spaniards said they had a worse opinion of America now than two to three years ago.

"Only in Israel did more people say their view of the United States had improved than worsened in the past two to three years....

"[M]any of those polled separated their feelings about the U.S. government from their views of the American people. Sixty-eight percent said they had a favorable opinion of Americans.

"Asked whether American democracy remained a model for other nations, 52 percent of those asked said yes and 42 percent said no.

"In Britain, Mexico and South Korea, more people thought the United States was no longer a model, while in Canada, Russia, Japan and Israel, majorities said it was.

"Fifty-nine percent of people questioned in seven nations -- including Britain, America's closest ally in Iraq -- said the war there was not helping the world fight against terrorism, while 35 percent said it was, as Bush contends.

"People in all 10 countries were asked who they hoped to see win the White House on Nov. 2, and the result will make Kerry wish they had a vote.

"The Democrat was favored by healthy to enormous majorities in eight of the nations -- 72 percent supported him, compared with 16 percent for Bush in France.

"In South Korea, it was 68 percent for Kerry and 18 percent for Bush; in Canada, 60 percent to 20 percent; in Spain, 58 percent to 13 percent; in Australia 54 percent to 28 percent; and in Britain 50 percent to 22 percent.

"Bush came out on top in Israel by a margin of 50 percent to 24 percent and in Russia, 52 percent to 48 percent."

Now what the heck are the 20% in Canada who support Bush thinking?

UPDATE: Canadian reader Bruce Allen writes: "20% of Canadians live in the praries where the cops still drag Indians out beyond city limits to let them die of exposure, and on the Alberta oilpatch where they know a kindred spirit."

Frivolous Lawsuits? Look to Corporate America

Details here:

"American businesses file four times as many lawsuits as do individuals represented by trial attorneys, and they are penalized by judges much more often for pursuing frivolous litigation, according to a report issued today by Public Citizen."

SSHRC Awards in Canada Announced

Richard Zach (Philosophy, Calgary) has a list of the winners and their projects here. An impressive number of philosophers garnered support! I wonder whether this is an unusually large number, or whether Canada routinely supports this many philosophers in a given year? Comments? No anonymous postings, please.

A fine Emerson quote

Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for calling this fine observation by Emerson to my attention:

"Their every truth is not quite true...so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right."

Does anyone know the source in Emerson for this remark?

UPDATE: Many thanks to Jason Wyckoff, who is studying philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who writes:

"The source the Emerson quote that you posted is "Self-Reliance" (1841), about 1/4 of the way through the essay. The complete passage is as follows:

"'Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.'"

And another longtime reader sends in some other Emerson quotes from the Barlett and Oxford books of quotations:

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

"Never read any book that is not a year old."

"Good men must not obey the laws too well."

"There is properly no history; only biography."

"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

"To be great is to be misunderstood."

"The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtezan."

"Shallow men believe in luck."

"I think no virtue goes with size."

"The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Felix Sadeli has kindly sent a link to "Self-eliance", noting that the quote in question comes from the 10th paragraph.

Selling Votes...

in the U.S. News law school rankings. Professor Caron has exactly the right idea. If this idea catches on, the whole charade will self-destruct.

Bioethicist McGee from Penn to Union University/Albany Medical School

Glenn McGee, currently Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate Director for Education at Penn's Center for Bioethics, will (effective March 1, 2005) become the John A. Balint Professor of Medical Ethics, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Center for Medical Ethics at The Albany Medical College, part of Union University in New York; he will also be Professor of Philosophy at Union College and in Health Law at Albany School of Law of Union University.

Derrida: "one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century"...

...according to more than 1,000 professors of English, comparative literature, foreign languages, and drama, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the same fields--plus a handful of faculty who teach in philosophy departments. They are protesting the New York Times obituary, which did convey, accurately, the fact that Derrida was widely thought to be an intellectual fraud.

Not a single philosopher of any note in the English-speaking world--or from Europe--is represented on the list of signatories to the letter, by the way. There is a reason.

May I suggest as an epitaph for Derrida the following apt remark of Nietzsche's?

"Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity" (The Gay Science, sec. 173).

(Thanks to Craig Duncan for the pointer to the letter.)

How to Influence the U.S. Election...

...even if you're not a U.S. voter. The Guardian has ideas. Obviously, the well-being of everyone, not just Americans, is endangered if Bush & his bestiary of madmen are re-elected. (You can ignore The Guardian's misguided "even-handedness" in its advice.)

(Thanks to John Gardner for the pointer.)

Human Rights Watch Condemns Regime for Making People "Disappear"

The criminal regime in question is based in Washington, D.C.. Details here.

Brief Hiatus

I'm off tomorrow to give a talk at Cardozo Law School in NYC...don't expect much new before Thursday.

"Jobs for Philosophers" is Out

The October edition of "Jobs for Philosophers" is available here for those who are APA members. (For non-philosophers: JFP is a publication of the American Philosophical Association; all academic posts in philosophy are advertised in one of the issues published during the year. Most are advertised in the October and November issues, so they are the ones most closely watched by job seekers.)

Brian Weatherson has some initial comments on the October JFP here. It's too soon to know whether total jobs will be up this year (we'll have to wait to November for that), but the fact that the October JFP is way up from last year is certainly a good sign. (Another question will be, of course, how the jobs divide up in terms of tenure-track and tenured, and tenure-stream versus temporary.)

"This madness will not stop...."

Here's a pleasingly blunt essay which takes the radical position that everyone--not just Americans--have moral standing. (I think Jesus Christ held this view too, though I'm no expert.) An excerpt:

"Watching the debates between Kerry and Bush is like watching a discussion between wife beaters who certainly have no disagreement about the right of men to beat their wives. On this fundamental issue, there is total unanimity. While they may disagree about when wife beating is justified, they have no doubt that wife beating is a right that all men possess, because the principle of might equals right is divinely ordained.

"So, there on the stage stand Kerry and Bush, battling it out, arguing over when the so-called Commander in Chief has the right to unleash mayhem, carnage and destruction. Kerry lambastes Bush for going into Iraq alone and under false pretenses. Clearly, neither would dare question the God-given right of the US Empire to unleash mayhem, carnage and destruction as the President sees fit. So, the wife beaters disagree if invading Iraq was justified, but that the US Empire has the right to rule the globe on its own terms is well understood and sacrosanct....

"Every year since 9/11 the names of the 3,000 odd people killed at the World Trade Center are read out, and a public display of horror and mourning takes place. I would like to know who has been reading out the names of the thousands of Afghan, Palestinian and Iraqi civilians killed by US-Israeli military madness. I haven't heard a one. And what is truly amazing is the total blindness to the fact that it is WE-the Christians and Jews-who are occupying THEIR lands, not vice versa. Although one would never know it from watching mainstream media, the truth of the matter is that fundamentalist Christian-Zionist forces are bombing and destroying their countries and killing thousands of their innocent men, women and children. Can anyone name any Muslim country occupying a Christian or Jewish country, or bombing one with F-14s and Apache Helicopters?

"Each and every day the media saturate us endlessly with fear mongering, going on and on about the threat of terrorism and how any day now the terrorists are going to strike in our own neighborhood. As if the people in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq were genetically predisposed to blow themselves up. Believe me, provide the resistance fighters (what the US Empire spokespeople call terrorists) with the same arsenal of weapons-tanks, F-14 fighter bombers, Apache helicopters, cruise missiles-and I can assure you that the suicide bombing would end immediately. Ah, but you see, when the US military forces kill innocent men, women and children-with tanks, F-14 fighter bombers, Apache helicopters, and cruise missiles-this is not terrorism. Because our cause is just, moral, and divinely sanctioned-because we have decided that God has chosen us to spread freedom and democracy.

"What we have, in the end, is nothing more than the RULE OF POWER, packaged as the rule of law. A grotesque farce if there ever was one. For if there were even a shred of the rule of law in effect, the dock in The Hague would be a hell of a lot more crowded. The brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq is no less illegal than Saddam's invasion and occupation of Kuwait. And the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iraq has been in no less violation of the Geneva Conventions. Yet, I have not heard any pundit or member of the mainstream media call for the indictment of Bush, Blair, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Perle and all the others with blood on their hands for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ah, but to speak of such a thing is of course quite absurd, since the US and UK are the paragon of legality, peace and freedom. It is, therefore, inconceivable to consider indicting the Empire's leaders and putting them on trial, for only the evil tyrants, as defined by the Empire, could be guilty of such crimes....

"If the barbarism of capitalism and militarism is not overcome, our children and our children's children could indeed find themselves in a vast cemetery, a brutal world where Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay serve as models for the treatment of human beings, where environmental catastrophe becomes increasingly inevitable, and where the finest products of human culture are reduced to nothing more than commodities to be sold off to the highest bidder. Rosa Luxemburg put it quite eloquently:

'This madness will not stop, and this bloody nightmare of hell will not cease, until the people...wake up out of their drunken sleep, clasp each others hands in brotherhood and drown the bestial chorus of war agitators and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas...'"
==================================

But they won't.

The Coming Military Draft...Again...

Details here:

"Col. David H. Hackworth, one of the country's most decorated soldiers, thinks Kerry and the people passing around worried emails [about a coming draft] have it right. For one thing, he notes that Rumsfeld 'has been flat wrong on every major military call regarding Iraq.'

"He goes on to say, 'Right now ­ with both our regular and Reserve soldiers stretched beyond the breaking point ­ our all-volunteer force is tapping out. If our overseas troop commitments continue at the present rate or climb higher, there won't be enough Army and Marine grunts to do the job. And thin, overworked units, from Special Forces teams to infantry battalions, lose fights.'

"Hackworth's conclusion: 'Although Pentagon puff artists insist they're making quota, recruiters are already saying it would be easier to find $100 bills on the sidewalk outside a homeless shelter than fill their enlistment quotas, even with the huge bonuses now being paid. So the draft --­ which will include both boys and girls this time around ­-- is a no-brainer in '05 and '06.'

"Bush has stated repeatedly, most recently in the Miami debate, that he listens to his generals. If they call for more men, he will deliver. (Of course, it's a lie. When Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki warned that the military needed 300,000 troops to go invade Iraq, Bush cashiered him, showing what happens when you say what you're thinking in this administration.) And that's the way it will come down. At some point, Bush will have the generals over at the Pentagon announce that they need more fresh troops, and he will 'reluctantly' order a return to the Draft.

"Count on it.

"As for Kerry, unless he's smart enough to back down from his tough talk about 'winning the war' in Iraq, and pulls the U.S. out of that blood-drenched quagmire, he may find himself in the same bind, should he manage to win the election. And what a grand irony that would be-the old Vietnam War protester calling up a new generation of cannon-fodder for another doomed military adventure."

Philosophical Joke

A philosopher in Canada sends the following:

What do you get when you cross a deconstructionist and a mafioso? He'll make you an offer you can't understand.

And the Pseudo-Nobel Prize in Economics...

...has been awarded to Finn Kydland (Carnegie-Mellon and UC Santa Barbara) and Edward Prescott (Arizona State and Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles".

The award is made by the Bank of Sweden "in honor of Alfred Nobel," and was done so precisely with the intent of legitimizing economics by coopting the prestige of the actual Nobel Prizes, which are given in the real sciences (as well as in literature and peace). Interestingly, Jim Rossi (Law, Florida State) points out to me that a book publisher is being sued in India for falsely claiming that Amartya Sen is a Nobel Laureate:

"A man in West Bengal is challenging in court the right to call eminent economist Amartya Sen a Nobel Prize winner.

"The petitioner contends that Sen didn't win the Nobel Prize, but was conferred an award that has nothing to do with the Alfred Nobel award committee.

"The city sessions court has admitted Subodh Chandra Roy's petition for hearing.

"Roy said he moved the court to rectify a piece of 'misinformation' published in a Bengali translation of one of Sen's books on economics.

"The book introduced the writer as a Nobel Prize winner in economics.

"Roy told the court that the Nobel Prize was given out only in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature as well as for world peace.

"'There is no Nobel Prize for economics. So it is wrong to describe Sen as a Nobel Prize winner,' Roy told the court.

"The petitioner submitted to court documents obtained from the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm in support of his claim.

"Roy said Sen won the 'Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel', which was not one of the regular Nobel Prizes."

It's ironic, of course, that Sen should be the target here, since he is one of the few economists whose important work was not based on a scientistic pretense (indeed, Sen has done a good deal to undermine that disciplinary pretense). But the general point stands, and is perhaps worth making the next time someone says (and I've heard it many times), "You know, economics is the only social science for which there is a Nobel Prize.": in fact, no social sciences are recognized with Nobel Prizes, but economics is the only social science which has felt the need to pretend that it is so recognized.

Last night's Presidential Non-Debate

I missed it, happily, but Fafblog has the relevant details; a few highlights:

"Respondin to a question on abortion John Kerry tells a young audience member of his deep Catholic faith an his great respect for religion an his wonderful reverence for life an closes by sayin 'and then back in the hot sweaty chaos of the 'Nam I found out God is dead, ya stupid little bint.' George Bush, in a missed opportunity, claps....

"George Bush says he has protected the environment with such policies as his Healthy Smog Initiative an his Delicious Mercury Act. John Kerry says that mercury is not really as delicious as the president says it is an says he has a plan to protect the environment by holdin a summit with it. George Bush follows up by sayin he has a plan to preserve all creatures by leadin them two by two onto a real big boat.

"John Kerry says he has a plan to pay for his programs by negotiatin with leprechauns for their rich supply of leprechaun gold. George Bush indignantly points out that this would be 'givin the leprechauns exactly what they want' an calls for an invasion of Leprechaunland which he points out will pay for itself....

"In his closing statement John Kerry says he has a plan to kill the terrorists, kill the terrorists, kill the terrorists with a college tuition tax credit. In his closing statement George Bush warns the audience that Americans must not change their strategy, their channel, or their physical position, because to do so would be to waver before terror. As of this writing Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks have starved to death in front of C-SPAN."

Jacques Derrida has died...

...according to the BBC. He died last night in Paris, age 74, from pancreatic cancer.

Alas, he is being referred to as a philosopher.

I am, needless to say, with the vast majority of philosophers in thinking Derrida's work of a philosophical nature was badly confused and pernicious in its influence, and in the substantial minority within that group who formed that opinion after actually reading his work. His preposterously stupid writings on Nietzsche were, of course, a particular source of annoyance. And even his more apparently scholarly work on, e.g., Husserl turns out to be rather poor, as J. Claude Evans showed more than a dozen years ago. Like the Straussians, Derrida and his followers tend to be willfully bad readers of texts. Fortunately, their influence has already faded from the scene in both North America and Europe.

(Thanks to Matthew Ektopos for the pointer.)

Is Economics a "Science"?

I'm going to repost a few items from the summer--when many regular readers were doing better things with their time--which might still be of interest now that we're back in our regular routines. This item was ORIGINALLY POSTED ON JULY 16, 2004. With the pseudo-Nobel Prize in Economics being awarded on Monday, it seems particularly timely to revisit this one.

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

As fate would have it, an economist has been posting on the topic du jour--the scientific status of economics: see Tyler Cowen here and here. Professor Cowen's perspective on this question (rather typical of economists, I fear) is well-expressed by a colleague of mine:

"I guess the reason that I think economics is a science is that empirical testing is a huge part of economics. I.e., if economics were only about the mathematical models, without falsifiable claims, I would agree it's not scientific. But economics makes falsifiable claims all the time and tests them frequently. And some are confirmed, repeatedly, and they become accepted wisdom. Others are falsified, and they fall by the wayside. Isn't that what science is all about?"

This isn't, however, what "science is all about" on any plausible account. Pest control, for example, would be a science on this account (exterminators operate with evidentiary hypotheses ["ah-ah, tell-tale rat droppings!"], which they test ["since it's rats, we'll lay this kind of poison"], and which are sometimes falsified ["well, I'll be damned, it turns out it's not rats, but field mice"]), which doesn't seem the right conclusion. And lots of paradigmatic scientific propositions ("there are black holes," "there are quantum singularities") wouldn't be "scientific", because they aren't falsifiable (I owe the examples to Larry Laudan). Some philosophers of science go further, and argue that no claims are falsifiable (on evidentiary or logical grounds) because of the underdetermination of theory by evidence (the "Duhem-Quine" thesis as it is known) (Laudan has interesting arguments against this point--a nice presentation is in the so-titled chapter on undeterdetermination in his Science and Relativism [Chicago, 1990], which is still the best introduction to the subject I've read.)

So empirical testing and falsfiability can't be all that's at stake here. So is economics a science?

As it happens, this is a topic I’ve written on a few years ago. What follows is excerpted, with some editing, from my contribution on “Holmes, Economics, and Classical Realism,” in S.J. Burton (ed.), The Path of the Law and Its Influence: The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Cambridge University Press, 2000). The main subject of this essay was Holmes’s place in an intellectual tradition I denominate “classical realism.” But given Holmes’s prescient (for a lawyer) interest in economics as a predictive science, a section of the essay discussed this topic. There is little original here, mostly a synthesis of the work of others. “PJ,” below, is a reference to Posner’s The Problems of Jurisprudence. Some references and footnotes have been omitted; others have been inserted in to the text. I will be interested to hear from economists where I’ve gone wrong here. Do see the Addendum at the very end too.

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

As Richard Posner observes:

“Economists pride themselves on being engaged in a scientific endeavor. From the basic premise that people are rational maximizers of their satisfactions the economist deduces a variety of hypotheses, of which the best known is the "law of demand"--a rise in the relative price of a product will, other things held constant, cause a reduction in the quantity of the product demanded. These hypotheses are confirmed or refuted by studies of actual economic behavior.” (PJ, 362-363)

It is important to remember that a lot of the credibility of economics depends precisely on its claim to be a science, in the precise sense of generating successful predictions. (Predictive power may be neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for science, but economists generally view it as what makes their discipline "scientific.") Indeed, many economists and lawyer/economists have emphasized the putatively "scientific" character of economic theory. Friedman's classic paper on "The Methodology of Positive Economics" is predicated on the idea that economics is "a positive science [whose] generalizations about economic phenomena. . .can be used to predict the consequences of changes in circumstances." This, of course, is also Posner's view. In his Nobel Lecture, laureate George Stigler puts it this way: "The central task of an empirical science such as economics is to provide general understanding of events in the real world, and ultimately all of its theories and techniques must be instrumental to that task" (emphasis added). Indeed, most economists would probably agree with Mark Blaug that "no time [should] be wasted defending the assertion that economics is a science."

All of these scientistic sentiments about economics co-exist, of course, with a very different picture of the discipline as essentially a pseudo-science. It is better, perhaps, than astrology, but not much more predictively successful than common-sense psychology. It parlays a set of implausible and utterly unrealistic assumptions into tidy, mathematically-expressible theories that have little or no connection to reality. A recent article in The New Yorker captures this sentiment well. "[A] good deal of modern economic theory," says the author, "even the kind that wins Nobel Prizes, simply doesn't matter much.” (“The Decline of Economics,” Dec. 2, 1996, p. 50). The article continues:

Not much new before the weekend...

...Connie Rosati, from UC Davis, will be here tomorrow as a guest of the Law & Philosophy Program, with a busy day of events. Don't expect much new on the blog, therefore, before the weekend.

Foreign Affairs Law Expert Bradley from Virginia to Duke

Virginia's Curtis Bradley--who has written widely and influetially at the intersection of constitutional and foreign affairs law, including some controversial work with Jack Goldsmith, who recently left Virginia for Harvard--has accepted an offer from the law school at Duke. That's a real blow, together with Goldsmith's departure, to international and foreign affairs law at UVA, and another bit of good news for the much-rejuvenated Duke faculty.

Long-time observers of legal academia will, of course, recall my black-humor exercise after the 2001 U.S. News rankings came out, when I asked not quite two dozen very eminent legal scholars (folks every reader from the legal academy would know) to look at the U.S. News top 25 law schools, and report which three schools they considered to be the most "overrated." Here's what I found:

"The hands-down winner (named by 13 out of 20 respondents, i.e., 65%!) was Duke, which has been ranked 10th by U.S. News the past two years, and higher in some prior years. 'Sleepy, unproductive faculty' commented one famed scholar at a law school always ranked well ahead of Duke. 'A [faculty] star there would be middle of the pack at Penn and elsewhere,' said another prominent figure who has taught at numerous top ten schools. 'I regard Duke's consistent ranking in the top ten as the single most egregious error in the annual rankings,' commented a third scholar, who added, 'I give an A+ to whatever firm prepares their promotional literature.' An eminent senior scholar said he would rank 'Duke as somewhere around 15th or lower' (a sentiment echoed by several others)..." and on and on.

Pretty rough stuff, to be sure, but it was also borne out by the 2003 survey of 150+ legal scholars, where Duke came in 17th in faculty quality, significantly behind the other traditional "elite" schools.

But credit where credit is due: Duke has really turned things around the last few years. Although, since 2001, several senior heavyweights have retired or left (Paul Carrington, Clark Havighurst, William van Alstyne), the school has made a string of good hires, partly by pursuing couples (e.g., Stuart Benjamin and Arti Rai, Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk), partly by poaching very good, underplaced scholars (e.g., James Salzman), and partly by getting lucky (luck always helps in faculty hiring!). I wouldn't be surprised, when we conduct new surveys of law faculty early next year, to see Duke squarely in the top 15 for faculty quality, especially given recent losses at Cornell and Northwestern.

So kudos to whomever is leading the faculty recruitment effort at Duke: it certainly seems to be paying off!

But, in keeping with our recent Sextonism watch, I can not resist noting Professor Bradley's remarks in the Duke press release:

“'I am thrilled about my upcoming move to Duke,' says Bradley. 'The school’s strengths in constitutional law, international law, and national security law make this a perfect fit for me, and I am very attracted to the collegial culture and interdisciplinary focus at Duke. With its wonderful location in the Research Triangle, excellent student body, accomplished faculty, and energetic leadership under Dean Bartlett, Duke is arguably the best place in the nation to teach and study law.'”

One might raise an eyebrow at the reference to "the interdisciplinary focus at Duke," but that is trivial. What goes beyond the standards of acceptable hyperbole even for press releases--what suggests a possible Sextonism infection--is the bolded line, above. I'm certain neither Professor Bradley nor anyone on the Duke faculty thinks this is even arguable, so why say it? Preposterous hyperbole always backfires, even in press releases. (Contrast a good example of non-preposterous hyperbole, when Bernie Black joined the Texas faculty from Stanford: "I'm excited to join UT. I believe that UT law school has been steadily improving for some time, has a great dean, a wonderful and highly collegial faculty, and the potential to become one of the top handful of law schools in the country. I'm looking forward to the challenge of assisting in that process." Assuming a rather large hand, this is hyperbole not off the charts. But we've been vaccinated for Sextonism here!)

More on the fake "Academic Freedom Bill of Rights"

I've written previously about the latest right-wing salvo against the universities--the last bastion of reason and the Enlightenment that the pathological American right would dearly like to subdue--known as the "Academic Freedom Bill of Rights" (Orwell, where are you?). Graham Larkin at Stanford, who is also an AAUP representative, has now penned additional comments and analysis of this dangerous document here.

And the Nobel Prize in Literature...

...is awarded to the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power".

Since Jelinek's work is unknown to me (which hardly distinguishes her from most living fiction writers), I will await comments from readers on the merits of her work and this award.

UPDATE: This year's winner has a homepage!And here is an informative article, which includes this encouraging bit of information: "Jelinek retired from public life in 1996 after rightwing politicians from Joerg Haider's Freedom Party (FPOe) used her name in campaigns, denouncing her work as low and immoral art." "Low" and "immoral" art is my favorite kind! And being denounced by NeoNazis is certainly a good sign.

And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry...

...is awarded to Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, both of the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, and Irwin Rose at the University of California at Irvine, "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation."

A Bourgeois Economist Looks at Bush and Kerry

Analysis by Benjamin Friedman (Economics, Harvard) here; an excerpt:

"Judging from the economic proposals that the two candidates have offered, and in President Bush's case from those he has actually carried out during his first term, the fundamental economic issue of this election involves the respective roles of work and saving—of labor and capital—in the economy we seek to create. Do we value and encourage one, or the other, or both? Do we look to income earned from one, or the other, or both, to pay for what we collectively undertake as a society, whether in waging war in Iraq or providing health care or education at home? Do we distribute economic rewards to those among us who happen to be in a position to do one, or the other, or both? These questions are what our choices are really about."

(Thanks to Benjamin Hale for the pointer.)

InstaIgnorance Strikes Again!

A blogger remarks: "I've long since packed Glenn [Reynolds of InstaIgnorance] in my Rush/Drudge box, so I'm no longer shocked when he says wingnutty things, but he's still not usually so, well, dumb."

Details here.

The Undergraduate Quarterly Defended

As I noted about two weeks ago, a philosopher at Georgetown had called my attention to a publication, The Undergraduate Quarterly, that was soliciting student essays without noting up front that it was charging a $35.00 application fee. The editor of that journal, a recent graduate of UCLA, Andrew Zaky has written to me to explain the practice. Here is Mr. Zaky's response:

"A few days ago, Brian Leiter and other professors harshly criticized The Undergraduate Quarterly Journal because students who submit articles for inclusion into the journal are required to pay a $35.00 application fee. A practice not normally taken up in academic journals, charging an application fee serves multiple purposes for The Undergraduate Quarterly. First, it limits the number of essays being submitted to the journal thereby making it possible and practical for the Editorial Board to sensibly review a shortened list of essay. If anyone and everyone were allowed to submit articles, the journal would be unable to feasibly sustain itself. While it may seem that a profit is being made on the application fee, this is simply not the case. Last quarter, 78 applicants each paid $25.00 to submit their articles to The Undergraduate Quarterly. That is roughly $1,950.00 in application fee revenue. Yet, this revenue was not nearly enough to pay for our $5,500.00 in merit-based scholarships (given to the best authors of the publication), $5,000.00 in IT, $2,200.00 in attorneys fees (for assistance in copyright law, $6,340.00 in printing fees), $1,000.00 for mailing, not to mention the extra several hundreds of dollars in general overhead.

"The bottom-line is, the journal costs close to $25,000.00 to create, we don’t ask our authors to subside some of the publishing costs like other journals do, all of the editors work pro-bono with no obvious intentions of retroactive quid pro quo, the application fee does not scratch the surface of our operating expenses, and yet we are constantly placed in the position to defend ourselves. I am personally to blame for our situation as I failed to take the proper precautions in explaining the application fee in both our press releases and on the website. In the future, I will be sure to make our intentions very clear with a more in depth explanation to be placed on the website. I hope professors and others in the world of academia will not simply criticize the merits of the journal based on the fact that it has an application fee and I would finally like to say that while an imposed application fee is not a normal practice taken up in academic publishing, it does not mean it is automatically wrong to do so. I would like to personally thank Brian Leiter for giving me the opportunity to defend the journal against this thematic and recurring criticism. I would be more than happy to hear comments on how we may be able to limit submissions without an application fee, and still make the journal accessible on the national level."

Mr. Zaky can be reached at andyzaky at undergraduatequarterly-dot-com.

I also received the following letter from another UCLA student who has published in the journal:

The Vice-Presidential Non-Debate...

...was last night between Dick Cheney and John Edwards. Edwards underperformed, probably because he was overprepared with pat speeches, not all of which were responsive (even by the low standards of responsiveness that are the hallmark of these events). A great trial lawyer, it turns out, is not necessarily a great politico on televison. (I hereby resign from picking political candidates.) Cheney, by contrast, is a pro: I can't recall the last time I saw such a confident, earnest, and well-spoken pathological liar and dissembler. No matter how huge the lie he was telling, he told it clearly and directly, without any uncertainty. If Bush were this good in this kind of setting, the race wouldn't be as close as it is.

I've not seen much of what other bloggers have said about the debate (I haven't looked, admittedly), though this comment on the debate by Ann Althouse (Law, Wisconsin) did catch my eye:

"Edwards says lines I think I remember Kerry saying last week. 'We lost more troops in September than we lost in August, we lost more troops in August than ...' The litany of defeatism. People have died, people have died. When I turn on NPR in the morning, the first thing I hear is nearly always the number of persons who just died in Iraq, almost never in a context connecting those deaths to what they fought for, just dismal, hopeless death."

Professor Althouse's son attends law school; he is not serving in Iraq, so won't become part of that famed "litany of defeatism."

UPDATE: Matt Davidson calls my attention to a nice piece on "Cheney's Avalanche of Lies." But it has to be conceded: Cheney is a good and effective liar, and since the ignorance of most people (culpable and otherwise) is quite extensive, all they have to go on are the verbal and physical cues, and in that regard Cheney is very good at not giving any of those we associate with liars and dissemblers. (And just to clarify something from the original posting: I certainly don't think Edwards did as badly as Bush--not even close. But qua performance, it was adequate, but underwhelming, I fear. But I'm not a typical viewer, so I may have this totally wrong.)

UPDATE: And another Cheney lie caught here.

Poll Watch: the "cruel and savage" candidate is slipping

The most sober of the pollsters, Rasmussen Reports--which has had Bush up on Kerry 49-45 for much of the last several weeks--now has Bush 48, Kerry 47. It has been tightening since last week's debate. As to why it is important, for America and humanity, that Kerry win, I would remind readers of Chomsky's apt remarks many months ago:

"Kerry is sometimes described as Bush-lite, which is not inaccurate, and in general the political spectrum is pretty narrow in the United States, and elections are mostly bought, as the population knows. But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. And in this system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.

"My feeling is pretty much the way it was in the year 2000. I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function - that's important, and fine, and I support it. However, when it comes to the choice between the two factions of the business party, it does sometimes, in this case as in 2000, make a difference. A fraction.

"That's not only true for international affairs, it's maybe even more dramatically true domestically. The people around Bush are very deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century. The prospect of a government which serves popular interests is being dismantled here. It's an administration that works, that is devoted, to a narrow sector of wealth and power, no matter what the cost to the general population. And that could be extremely dangerous in the not very long run.

"You could see it clearly in the way they dealt with, what is by common agreement, the major domestic economic problem coming along, namely the exploding health care costs. They're traceable to the fact that the US has a highly inefficient healthcare system - far higher expenditure than other comparable countries, and not particularly good outcomes. Rather poor, in fact. And it's because it's privatised. So they passed a huge prescription drug bill, which is primarily a gift to the pharmaceutical corporations and insurance companies. It's a huge taxpayer subsidy. They're already wealthy beyond dreams of avarice. And that's their constituency. And as that continues, with significant domestic problems ahead, for the general population it's extremely harmful.

"Again there isn't a great difference, so for maybe 90% of the population over the past 20 years, real income has either stagnated or declined, while for the top few percent, it's just exploded astronomically. But there are differences and the present group in power is particularly cruel and savage in this respect."

The Real George W. Bush: whiny, petulant, and weak on domestic security

This from today's pleasingly direct column by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

"Last week President Bush found himself defending his record on national security without his usual protective cocoon of loyalty-tested audiences and cowed reporters. And the sound you heard was the scales' falling from millions of eyes.

"Trying to undo the damage, Mr. Bush is now telling those loyalty-tested audiences that Senator John Kerry's use of the phrase 'global test' means that he 'would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions.' He's lying, of course, as anyone can confirm by looking at what Mr. Kerry actually said. But it may still work - Mr. Bush's pre-debate rise in the polls is testimony to the effectiveness of smear tactics.

"Still, something important happened on Thursday. Style probably mattered most: viewers were shocked by the contrast between Mr. Bush's manufactured image as a strong, resolute leader and his whiny, petulant behavior in the debate. But Mr. Bush would have lost even more badly if post-debate coverage had focused on substance.

"Here's one underreported example: So far, Mr. Bush has paid no political price for his shameful penny-pinching on domestic security and his refusal to provide effective protection for America's ports and chemical plants. As Jonathan Chait wrote in The New Republic: 'Bush's record on homeland security ought to be considered a scandal. Yet, not only is it not a scandal, it's not even a story.'

"But Mr. Kerry raised the issue, describing how the administration has failed to protect us against terrorist attacks. Mr. Bush's response? 'I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises.'

"Oh, yes we do. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, Mr. Bush's tax cuts, with their strong tilt toward the wealthy, are responsible for more than $270 billion of the 2004 budget deficit. Increased spending on homeland security accounts for only $20 billion. That shows the true priorities of the self-proclaimed 'war president.' Later, Mr. Bush, perhaps realizing his mistake, asserted, 'Of course we're doing everything we can to protect America.' But he had already conceded that he isn't."
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Surely a few regular journalists could follow Professor Krugman's lead and learn to speak directly about the petulant liar-in-chief.

Texas job search for two faculty to strengthen Law & Philosophy Program

REPOSTED from August 24, 2004. The ad, below, will appear in the October JFP.
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REPOSTED from July 2, 2004
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The Law & Philosophy Program at Texas, which started in 1999, has enjoyed extraordinary support from two wonderful Deans: Bill Powers in the Law School and Richard Lariviere in the College of Liberal Arts. Our course offerings in the area are now unparalleled; the Law School supports a wonderful array of events each year; and the faculty covers almost every major subfield at the intersection of the two disciplines, and includes scholars who are among the leading figures in several of them. We now plan to fill the gaps, and complement some of the existing strengths, with a search this coming year for two new faculty. We expect to make another appointment in the area a year or two after this. Here is our job ad; e-mail me if you have questions:

The University of Texas at Austin seeks to make two appointments of scholars of outstanding achievement or potential (one tenured at the full or associate professor level, one tenure-track) in the areas of political, legal, and moral philosophy who can contribute to the University’s interdisciplinary Program in Law & Philosophy. (More information on that program is here). Ph.D. or satisfactory progress towards imminent award of Ph.D. required. Appointment to begin September 1, 2005. We have particular needs right now in political philosophy, though welcome applications from outstanding candidates in any of the fields noted. Undergraduate and graduate teaching, typically two courses/semester, thesis supervision, usual advising and administrative responsibilities. Limited summer teaching available. EO/AAE. Appointment would be in some or all of the following units, depending on qualifications: Government, Law, Philosophy. Salary highly competitive. Junior candidates should send a dossier (including CV, writing sample, evidence of teaching excellence, and at least three confidential letters of recommendation), while senior candidates should send a CV and the names of three referees, to Professor Brian Leiter, Director of the Law & Philosophy Program, University of Texas, 727 East Dean Keeton Street, Austin, TX 78705. Applications must be postmarked by November 15, 2004. We will not be interviewing at the hiring convention; candidates invited to campus for interviews will be contacted directly not later than January 28, 2005.

A Different Left Perspective on Nascent Fascism...

...here, from the always "lefter than thou" Mickey Z:

"President (sic) George W. Bush and company have scared half the voters to death with stories about terrorists...so they'll vote for him.

"Senator John F. Kerry (JFK2) and his surrogates on the soft left have scared the other half to death with stories about creeping fascism...so they'll vote for him.

"Of course, anyone with an iota of objectivity left realizes the terror threat is laughably exaggerated...and there's infinitely more danger in operating a motor vehicle than all the 'evildoers' in the world combined.

"But what should we make of the claims of the Democrats (and the disturbing number of lefties who support them)? What about all the yarns spun about liberties lost...solely due, we hear, to one inarticulate puppet from Texas?

"Whether we want to accept it or not; we've heard it all before. The fascists are perpetually at the gate, it seems. But, I submit: Are Bush's efforts truly more frightening than, say, Woodrow Wilson's repressive behavior during World War I?

"'Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty,' Wilson warned...and he had the newly minted Espionage and Sedition Act to back him up.

"Passed in June 1917, it cast a wide net and trampled civil liberties. In Vermont, for example, a minister was sentenced to 15 years in prison for writing a pamphlet, distributed to five persons, in which he claimed that supporting the war was wrong for a Christian. Here's a sample of that law:

"'Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both.'

"'The Espionage Act had very little to do with espionage,' says Howard Zinn.

"'Instead it made it a crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison, to say or print anything that would "willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States." The Sedition Act, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act, made it even a little more drastic. In fact, two thousand people were prosecuted under those acts and about a thousand went to prison.'

"(For those keeping score at home, the Espionage and Sedition Act is still on the books.)

"All this 'fascism' was in addition to the Palmer Raids and the deportation of Emma Goldman for saying and writing things often less radical than those that appear on this website."

Why Law Schools Can't Ignore U.S. News...

...even though everyone who knows anything knows the magazine's ranking method is without merit. But journalists, of course, don't know anything, and they stick together. Witness this from a San Francisco paper:

"Once ranked by its peers as a top-five law school, [Berkeley's] Boalt Hall has slipped. In this year's annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report magazine, Boalt Hall tumbled to 13th place from 10th last year. Two years ago, it was ranked No. 7."

Put aside that Berkeley was never ranked in the top five by U.S. News, or anyone else, what's spooky here is the tacit assumption that a change in U.S. News rank means something, i.e., that it reflects some actual change in academic quality or value, and that it also deserves credence. (Notice the opposite way of reading this: that U.S. News ranks Berkeley 13th (behind, e.g., Duke!) shows that their ranking system is unreliable.) In the last two years, Boalt lost two leading faculty (Mark Lemley to Stanford, Robert Post to Yale), but that has nothing to do with its change in rank in U.S. News. (Consider: while NYU improved its faculty during the 1990s, its academic reputation score in US News actually declined!) Boalt is quite plainly a stronger faculty now than it was ten years ago (additions of Farber, Frickey, Edlin, Choi, and on and on), when U.S. News regularly ranked it in the top ten. Yet that fact has in no way been recorded by the U.S. News rankings; indeed, that magazine has left its readers with the opposite, and thus false, impression.

This, together with the fact that the less well-informed students take the magazine's rankings rather seriously (for example), explains, of course, why schools devote so much effort to manipulating their showing in that magazine.

Surely some journalists could educate themselves about how U.S. News ranks law schools, and draw the obvious conclusion: changes in rank in U.S. News are arbitrary, and bear no relationship to the quality of an academic institution. They could then stop referencing U.S. News as though it was a relevant measure of institutional quality, and start educating their readers on how to extract the useful information, and discard the irrelevant, from that magazine's ranking scheme.

Free Speech Zones Struck Down at Texas Tech

Details here. Now the courts need to show a little courage on the equally unconstitutional "free speech zones" at political events.

And the Nobel Prize in Physics...

...has been awarded to David Gross (UC Santa Barbara), H. David Politzer (Cal Tech), and Frank Wilczek (MIT) "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction."

The Third Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.