Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Nobel Prize Week Begins...

...with the award of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Richard Axel (Hughes Center/Columbia) and Linda Buck (Hutchinson Center/Seattle). (Gazing at my navel, I note that Dr. Buck took her Ph.D. from UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.)

A new prize will follow each day this week, followed, next Monday, by the award of the Pseudo-Nobel in Economics.

UPDATE: More on the winners from Carl Zimmer.

The less they know, the more they're suckered by the US News Ranking of Law Schools

A law student e-mailed me the text of a posting from some prelaw discussion board authored by someone with the charming moniker "dogfucker." The student who sent this assures me that this reflects how some students actually think about things, and that it is not a joke. The title of the posting was

"The Top 14 Will Always Be the Same,"

apparently a reference to the fact that for about the last 8 or 9 years, the same 14 law schools have been in the top 14 of the US News rankings (which may be true, I'm not certain). (The same 16 law schools have been in the top 16 since US News made the last major change in its methodology in 1999, but for unknown reasons this escapes notice. The top 15 have also been in the top 15 in reputation since US News started ranking schools in 1987, but this is also unnoticed, it appears.) Here is the posting:

"There is simply too much of an already-existing establishment for the non-elite to ever catch up to the elite schools in terms of endowment, student-spending, research, grants, excellent faculty, and everything else that makes up an elite academic institution. Non-elites have the only hope of attracting bright students with money or other rewards in hopes that they'll matriculate, but those students will always be deviant from the norm, and by far, the best students will almost always attend an elite school. It's a cycle-- the students of the current elite schools will go on to be more successful than the average graduate of a non-elite. There is simply no way to break the cycle. The Top 14 will stay the same forever, barring a radical methodology change in US News or similar act of God."

The really weird thing here is that it is largely true that "there is simply too much of an already-existing establishment for the non-elite to ever catch up to the elite schools in terms of endowment, student-spending, research, grants, excellent faculty, and everything else that makes up an elite academic institution," but this doesn't correlate with the current (or even recent) top 14 in US News, though it correlates slightly better with the top 17 or 18. For example, USC has a better faculty than Duke (even with Chemerinsky's move, and allowing for Van Alstyne's departure from Duke), and, last time I saw the data, a much better endowment (2 or 3 years ago). Indeed, most of the US News top 17 or so have much bigger endowments than other schools, though places like Duke and Penn and Cornell trail a bit, while schools like Washington University and Mercer have much larger per capita endowments than several of the top 17. In terms of research (e.g., impact and productivity), there is not much difference between Texas and UCLA, on the one hand, and Georgetown, Duke, Penn, and Northwestern on the other--and where there is a difference, it is primarily that Texas and sometimes UCLA are stronger. There is no statistically meaningful difference in student credentials between Cornell, Berkeley, UCLA, Texas, and USC. And so on.

So the odd thing here is that the author's supposition (that the first 14 in US News defines the category) is rather obviously non-factual, at least to anyone who knows anything. So how did this student arrive at this rather fantastic view? The author makes the answer clear: US News. Sad.

More Scholars Denied Entry to the U.S.

First that hotbed of radical Islam, the University of Notre Dame, is rebuffed in its efforts to bring a Muslim scholar to campus, now 61 Cuban scholars are denied entry to the country to attend a scholarly conference on Latin America.

Scholars should view these developments with alarm; among other things, they portend retaliatory action, which together with the stupid behavior by the U.S. Government, will greatly handicap international scholarly exchanges and discourse. These actions are also, of course, yet further evidence of the vindictive and authoritarian mindset of the Administration.

Preparing for Emergencies

Via John Gardner, I see that Her Majesty's Department of Vague Propaganda has produced a useful site on emergency preparedness. It could easily have been prepared by His Majesty's Department of Homeland Paranoia here in the U.S.

Forget al-Qaeda, Avian Flu May be Far More Deadly

Do read this essay, and then talk to anyone old enough to remember the devastation and horror of the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918-19. (I can recall my late maternal grandmother describing the loss of several of her siblings to this last horror.)

The Coming Military Draft, Part 811

It's usually a bad sign when the mainstream media starts running stories like this; it signals the beginning legitimization of the idea. An excerpt:

"Though President Bush and Senator John Kerry talk about it in only the most glancing ways - the president pledged to defeat terrorism with 'an all-volunteer army' during Thursday's presidential debate - many people across the country are wondering just who will fight the nation's wars.

"There is good reason to ask. By most accounts, the military, particularly the Army, has been spread thin by America's global commitments, and signs of strain are mounting.

"More than one-third of nearly 3,900 former soldiers mobilized under a special wartime program have resisted their call-ups. The Army National Guard fell nearly 10 percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal of 56,000 enlistees. The Army, concerned about recruiting, has eased some standards. And there have been bipartisan calls in Congress to expand the Army by more than 20,000 soldiers.

"Just months ago, Pentagon officials suggested that a new draft could be avoided if recruitment and retention numbers stayed high. But as fighting in Iraq escalates, signs are growing that those numbers may not be adequate in the coming years. Thus, the new talk about a draft....

"So maintaining a level of 135,000 ground troops in Iraq, another 20,000 in Afghanistan and a smaller force in the Balkans, while a garrison of 36,000 (soon to be reduced) guards the Korean armistice line and other troops maintain bases in Europe, creates a major strain. The current system is already drawing on Guard and reserve units to fill the gap. What is more, some military officers and political figures have long questioned whether 135,000 troops is a large enough force to prevail in Iraq.

"What if another big deployment is needed? Estimates vary widely on how many additional troops might be required, but some analysts say the current overall force could easily fall short by more than 70,000 ground troops....

"'You might be able to squeeze more people out of pockets of the military, but the truth is, there is a limit to what you can do there,' said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative group that favors permanent expansion of the Army....

"But the most striking shortcoming in both plans, experts say, is their lack of allowance for another major conflict - if war erupts on the Korean Peninsula, or tensions with Iran boil over, or the United States suffers a major terrorist attack.

"A Pentagon-appointed panel recently concluded that the military would lack the forces to handle its current combat and stabilization operations if new crises emerged. The report, which has not been made public, apparently did not address the issue of a draft. But some policy makers have said it points to the potential need for one."
=======================

Let us remember that if the Bush Administration had not undertaken the criminal and immoral invasion of Iraq, we would not be in this situation. The only hope is a change in the amount of irrational bellicosity emanating from Washington, D.C.

UCLA Law School Infected with Sextonism

"Sextonism," after former NYU Law School Dean John Sexton (now President of NYU), is a disease familiar to law faculty, in which a good school suddenly lapses in to uncontrolled and utterly laughable hyperbole in describing its faculty and accomplishments to its professional peers. The NYU alumni magazine, which was sent to all law faculty nationwide, was so plagued by Sextonism that a Stanford professor memorably dubbed it "law porn."

Alas, another fine school appears to be stricken now: UCLA (whose new Dean, Michael Schill, has just moved from NYU--a fact which may simply be coincidental). A brochure has just arrived in faculty mailboxes nationwide announcing UCLA's "new faculty" hires--a good set of hires, as I've noted on two different occasions (here and here)--yet the brochure then spoils this fine accomplishment by placing it under the banner of the following laugh-out-loud proclamation:

"UCLA School of Law is emerging as the strongest law faculty in the United States."

What? What about Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, NYU? Not close. What about Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Penn, Berkeley, Georgetown? Perhaps competitive in some ways, in other ways clearly not. I will say this: it seems to me, and I expect other informed observers, that UCLA has a clear edge now over Northwestern, Cornell, and USC (as well as Duke, of course).

By a reliable measure of faculty quality UCLA ranked 14th before these appointments, and by an unreliable measure, it ranked 16th (in "reputation" among academics). The new appointments are, indeed, good ones, and together with recent losses at Cornell, Northwestern, and USC give UCLA a realistic shot at the top ten.

But "the strongest law faculty in the United States"! Yikes, that is embarrassing.

If you spot other outbreaks of Sextonism at law schools in your neighborhood, do let me know! And, happily, there is an effective treatment for Sextonism: perspective and restraint.

UPDATE: Tad Brennan (Philosophy, Northwestern) points out to me that I'm reading the UCLA brochure the wrong way:

"You don't appreciate the meaning of the word 'emerging.' 'UCLA School of Law is *emerging* as the strongest law faculty in the United States' has to be understood in line with such statements as:

"'Saddam Hussein was an *emerging* threat to the United States.'

"In other words, it's roughly a negation-operator, as in: 'Three is an *emerging* even number.'

"Now does it make better sense?"
=============

To which I add: yes! Thank goodness for philosophers.

The First Presidential Non-Debate

I only saw a bit of last night's non-debate, but I'm certain that no educated person who isn't paid to lie about the matter can be pleased with Bush's performance. The best evidence comes from this always revealing conservative Christian blog site which comments:

"The president's negotiators were the ones who insisted on strict time limits and those little timer lights for all the world to see. That was surely a tactical mistake, since the time limits forced John Kerry to be what he almost never is: succinct and to the point. That rule did him a favor, making him seem clearer than ever before. Also, the president's people should inform him that the TV networks were refusing to follow the rule agreed upon by both parties--but not by the television producers--to not show reaction shots. The president's reactions as he was being insulted [sic] and lied about [sic] did not look good. The president got in some good shots--pre-emptive action against a threat against this country should pass a 'global test'?--but he missed some good opportunities and was way too repetitive. This blogger will have to give the first round to Kerry, worrying that the Senator's performance will make this a close election again, while hoping that this analysis is wrong."

And the commenters on this thread on the same site are also revealing; while some try to put a good face on their man's embarrassing performance, others are strikingly candid:

"I'm voting for Bush in any case. But Kerry isn't hurting himself so far. I think Bush is missing some opportunities."

"President Bush is overusing the phrase, 'wrong place,wrong war, wrong time' --don't you think?"

"I don't understand why Pres. Bush isn't getting to the issues, he's doing more attacking of Sen Kerry than I expected. Not that Sen Kerry is not deserving of those attacks, but that Pres. Bush could be winning on the issues more...."

"Pres. Bush sounds nervous."

"kerry looks confident and prepared. bush looks nervous and flustered. i'm not voting solely based on the debate, of course, but Kerry, at least, is articulate. Bush on the other hand, is a broken record."

"I'm cringing -- Bush is saying the same thing over and over. I want to see him do better"

"flip-flopping is not the mark of unwavering support; it's the mark of wisdom knowing when you're wrong and when to back up and go at it a different way. going bullheaded ahead is resolve, but foolish resolve."

"President Bush is letting Kerry get under his skin and put him on the defensive. Instead he needs to stop fighting on the field Kerry has chosen and put Kerry on the spot.....And then he needs to CALMLY lay out his positive vision of the new opportunities that the war makes possible.

"AARGH! He's bogging down. And he DID say it...'nuculear'."

"C'mon, Bush - you can do better!"

"Kerry certainly does well on his toes. Bush is getting flustered when he has a point he wants to make, while Kerry seems much more composed. I feel like I should be making notes on how Bush could do better next time. He seems to be relaxing a bit, here at the end, at least."

"Kerry did seem to be relaxed and he also seemed to dictate the direction. Bush did search for words and did repeat himself at times. It seemed to me to be a draw or perhaps a slight advantage to Kerry."

"Kerry was smoother than opossum pie and the president was flustered. Surely his handlers will coach some steadiness back into his delivery in time for the next two debates."

The reactions of this obviously partisan crowd are revealing: the "debate" was a disaster for Bush. Let's hope there are two more just like it.

UPDATE: That it was bad for Bush is confirmed by these poll results (produced, however, by Democratic pollsters--I've no idea whether their method was reliable, but the results are not inconsistent with the despair among the Republican partisans). Meanwhile, various right-wing law professors in the blogosphere are trying to put a favorable spin on last night's event. The most memorable comment so far: Jim Lindgren (Law, Northwestern) thinks Kerry won on "style," but Bush won on "substance."

ANOTHER: Ralph Nader, being a brave man, actually comments on the substance of the debate, or lack thereof. I assume he does this because of intellectual honesty and personal integrity, and not because he thinks this is a basis on which most people (esp. the famously "undecided") vote.

U.S. Supreme Court Clerks, 2004 Term

Reader Nathan Lee directs me to this listing of the Supreme Court clerks for the 2004 term that begins next week. Here are the schools represented for the 2004 term:

1. Harvard (9 clerks)
2. Chicago (7 clerks)
3. Yale (5 clerks)
4. Stanford (4 clerks)
5. NYU (3 clerks)
6. Virginia (2 clerks)
7. Northwestern, Michigan, Columbia, UCLA, Boston College (1 each)

An unusual year in many respects: 3 for NYU, but only 1 for Columbia; Chicago with more clerks than Yale; a strong showing for Stanford; clerks from BC and UCLA.

I need to update my ten-year listing of Supreme Clerkships; does anyone have the data for the 2002 and 2003 terms?