Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

The Religion of Civil Liberties

I said in an earlier post that “religion” should be confined to the theistic religions. That is sensible when the issue is the role of faith-based morality in public policy. But in other contexts a broader sense of the word, to denote the embrace of a system of thought that is not responsive to scientific or pragmatic argu­ment and hence is dogmatic, and that occupies a central place in the ideology of its adherents, can be illuminating. I am in­creasingly struck by the aptness of the term to the type of civil libertarian who will have no truck with tradeoffs between secu­rity and liberty. The choicest recent example of this outlook happens to be found in the opinion by an English judge, Lord Hoffman of the House of Lords, in a decision invalidat­ing a post-9/11 British law allowing indefinite detention, with­out a hearing, of aliens suspected of terrorism who can't be deported, either because no nation will accept them or only a nation in which they would be exposed to torture or other seri­ous harms.

The case is A v. Secretary of State, [2004] UKHL 36, [2004] All ER(D) 271 (Dec. 26, 2004). I am not interested in whether it was decided correctly—one would have to know more about English and international human rights law than I do to opine responsibly on that question—but only in the mind­set illustrated by Lord Hoffman’s opinion. Noting that “the power which the Home Secretary seeks to uphold is a power to detain people indefinitely without charge or trial,” he says that “nothing could be more antithetical to the instincts and traditions of the people of the United Kingdom.” This is a pious fraud, ignoring a long history of abuses of civil liberty by British police and security agencies, documented by the English legal historian A. W. Brian Simpson in his book In the Highest Degree Odious and by others. And Hoffman quickly retrenches by adding that the draconian laws enacted to curb the Irish Republican Army, laws similar to those challenged successfully by “A,” were justifiable because “it was reasonable to say that terrorism in Northern Ireland threatened the life of that part of the nation and the territorial integrity of the United King­dom as a whole.” He acknowledges that “the threat of...atrocities" similar to the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. “in the United Kingdom is a real one.” But he denies that it is “a threat to the life of the nation….Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda.” Actuallly, there is more doubt that the United Kingdom will survive Islamist terrorism than there was that it would survive the Irish Republican Army, the aims of which were modest compared to those of Osama bin Laden and his associates and which did not aspire to the possession of weapons of mass destruction. Hoffman adds that “terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government.” But considering how fiercely the British authori­ties responded to the 9/11 attacks one imagines that their response to a similar or worse attack on Britain would leave little of the institutional framework of civil liberties standing; and Hoffman surely regards that framework as an important part of “our institutions of government.”

He concludes with what has become the first article in the civil liberties common book of prayer: “The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accor­dance with its traditional laws and political values, come not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.” What he is saying is that terrorism is not a “real threat,” but the enactments of a democratic legislature (“laws such as these”) are. Terrorism that kills thousands of people (in time, it could be millions) is less menacing than laws that cut back on “traditional laws and politi­cal values,” even if the “traditions” are only a few years old. An ordinary sensible person would think that terrorism on the scale enabled by modern technology and inflamed by religio-political fanaticism can do more harm to a nation than a law authorizing the in­definite detention of nondeportable aliens suspected of being terrorists. To think otherwise is to be in the grip of a dogma that flaunts its defiance of common sense. Credo quia absudum est.

Civil liberties have real benefits that are entitled to considerable weight whenever measures to increase public safety are proposed. But in Lord Hoffman's opinion, as in similar pronouncements by American civil libertarians, the effort is to place the existing level of civil liberties beyond pragmatic assessment by according them transcendent value compared to which considerations of physical survival are made to seem petty.

A Note on Free Will

One of yesterday's comments asked me whether I believed in free will. I think of free will as being epiphenomenal. When we engage in deliberation, we are examining the pros and cons of alternative courses of action. When we complete our deliberation, either the pros or the cons will be weightier, and we go with the weightier side of the balance.

This is not to deny that people are morally and legally responsible for their deliberate actions. But I take the function of the concept of "responsibility" to be to add a thumb to the balance described in the previous paragraph. The question for the law is not whether a defendant's crime was the product of an exercise of free will, but whether attaching a penalty to the kind of conduct in which he engaged is likely to reduce the incidence of that conduct by making it more costly. If so, we say that his decision to engage in the conduct was culpable, was "his fault." We say he "could have chosen" not to engage in the conduct. But probably, if we knew everything about his psychology, we would realize that his choice was foreordained. What we mean when we say that he "had a choice" is that the penalty would have deterred most people from engaging in such behavior.

As Willard Quine put it, a choice is "free" if the individual's "motives and drives" are part of the causal chain that produces the "chosen" act, even if those motives and drives are themselves rigidly determined, perhaps as a result of a heavy threat of punishment or a powerful financial incentive. If the individual because of youth, insanity, or retardation is incapable of deliberation, his behavior is excused or his responsibility mitigated.

The upshot is that ascriptions of responsibility are based on social need (for example to deter crime) rather than on metaphysics, philosophy of mind, theology, or moral philosophy.

For a fuller discussion, see the index references to "free will" in my book The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990).

Response to Comments on Citing Foreign Courts

Lawrence v. Texas, invaliding state sodomy laws, was one of the decisions in which the U.S. Supreme Court cited a foreign case, and a comment asks whether I think the decision was wrong. I think it would be possible to write a respectable, narrow opinion invalidating those laws, which have come to seem ridiculous, though so inconsequential are they that it hardly seems worth the bother. The trouble is that Justice Kennedy wrote a very broad opinion, with language that armed the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to create a constitutional right of gay marriage, setting off a firestorm. Many liberals now recognize that the Massachusetts court made a serious political mistake. The judges of that court (the judges in the majority, that is) might say that law must not bend to politics, but that would be a ridiculous statement when the issue is gay marriage. Neither the U.S. nor the Massachusetts constitution speaks to gay marriage. The decision that there shall be a right to such marriage is a political decision, in the sense that it rests--it has to rest, there is no other foundation for it--on the ideology, values, temperament, and so forth of the judge, rather than on some "observer independent" source of guidance. When such a decision is contrary to strong public opinion, its undemocratic character is unmistakable, and the decision arouses indignation and strengthens the opponents of (a certain kind of) judicial activism.

In light of several of the comments, I need to clarify what I mean by saying that judges can properly (in my view) cite foreign cases as source of relevant information, but not as precedents. What I mean by citing a case as a precedent is recognizing that its mere existence, as distinct from the cogency of its reasoning or the relevance of information revealed in it, is a reason for deciding the present case the same way: "a" reason, not necessarily the reason, or a controlling reason. No one supposes that a foreign decision would be a binding precedent on an issue of domestic law. My target is citing a foreign decision that, say, announces a constitutional right to gay marriage and saying or implying that the bare fact that a respectable foreign court has announced such a right is a reason why we should do likewise. That is to accord authority to a foreign decision, rather than to treat such a decision as one might treat a law review article--as a source, possibly, of excellent arguments or persuasive facts, but not as an authority.

One commenter asks, wouldn't it have been a good thing if, before the Civil War, the Supreme Court had taken note of the fact that the other nations of what we regarded as the civilized world had outlawed slavery? Could not the Court have used that international consensus to outlaw slavery in the United States? It could not have, because the preservation of slavery was the essence of the compromise that enabled the U.S. Constitution to be ratified, and because a decision outlawing slavery would have precipitated the secession of the southern states even quicker than the election of Lincoln did--he campaigned only to limit the spread of, and not to abolish, slavery. Abolition had to await the Emancipation Proclamation (of uncertain constitutionality) and the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Slavery is a good example of a practice believed to be contrary to natural law; and one comment notes the affinity between the concept of natural law and the idea of international legal norms as a source of guidance in interpreting local constitutional law. I have a qualified sympathy for the idea of natural law. If a novel case arises--one that cannot be decided by subsumption under clear statutory or constitutional language or precedent--the judge will have to look elsewhere, and if one wants to call the elsewhere "natural law" I have no strong objection, as long as it is understood not to be Thomas Aquinas's concept of natural law. The vaguer, less consistent, more anachronistic, more gap-ridden, and more absurd the orthodox materials of judicial decision (constitutional and statutory text, precedent, etc.) are, the more the judges will be on their own in deciding cases. And that is the situation in which American judges, especially appellate judges, often find themselves. Whether they draw on economic theory or political principles, or on some inarticulate notion of what is fair or right, to decide cases in the broad open area of American law, they will be going outside the positive law in any useful sense of that term--and, as I say, if you want to call where they are going natural law, that is all right with me. Yet in the context of pre-Civil War U.S. law, natural-law arguments for the unconstitutionality of slavery would have collapsed in the face of the constitutional text and history and the political balance of power. And given the cultural heterogeneity of the world, we must recognize, in very sharp contrast to advocates of Catholic natural law, that natural law is primarily a national rather than an international body of thought.

Several comments ask how one state should treat the decisions of another state, and how a court should treat its old decisions. I recognize analogies here to the citation of foreign courts, but the differences seem to me more important. A court in one state will not feel itself bound by a decision of another state, but will recognize that decision as an authority, and for the very good reason that the legal cultures of the states are, today at any rate, pretty similar in most areas. Similarly, a court will not consider it absolutely bound by its old decisions, but will treat them as authorities, in part because there is a considerable continuity in legal culture within a state over time, and in part because of the reliance interests that judicial decisions generate.

Citing Foreign Courts

The U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly citing decisions by foreign courts. I don't like the practice, for a variety of reasons that I'll sketch briefly. But I must first make clear that I don't object to all such citations. For example, sometimes foreign law supplies the rule of decision for a case in an American court; or sometimes a foreign judicial opinion contains an interesting argument or datum worth citing with credit to the original. My objection is to citing a foreign decision as authority in a case involving U.S. domestic law, e.g., the U.S. Constitution; in other words as a precedent, that is, as a reason for following it that is independent of its intrinsic persuasiveness; as evidence, in short, for a budding international consensus that should influence U.S. law.

My objections are numerous but I am going to mention just ones that relate to what I said yesterday, in my response to comments on my first posting, about the judicial process. The first is that it is undemocratic to subject Americans to even the limited rule of foreign courts, except to the extent that treaties or other conventional sources of international law authorize the delegation of lawmaking to foreign bodies. There is a profound political difference between even an appointed, life-tenured U.S. federal judge and a judge of a foreign country. The U.S. judge is appointed by an elected official (the President) and confirmed by an elected legislative body (the Senate) and is subject to removal by impeachment, and his court is subject to budgetary and other controls and influence by Congress. If he is a lower-court judge, he is influenced by the President's authority to nominate him to a higher court. He is in short a part of a system of checks and balances; he has a degree at least of democratic legitimacy. A foreign judge is not subject to any political process within the United States.

Second, legal principles are not instantiations of a universal moral law, but the product of local political, cultural, and historical circumstances. Without a deep study of foreign legal, political, and social systems--a study that few U.S. judges or justices, or for that matter academics, have made or are capable of making--it is impossible to determine whether a foreign decision on gay marriage, abortion, hate speech, capital punishment, religious establishments, etc. is the product of a reasoning process, values, ideology, or other circumstances that are the same or similar in the United States. Gay marriage is the most obvious current example. The opposition to it in the United States is largely though not entirely religious in origin, and so in countries that are much less religious than the U.S. opposition is muted; but this says nothing about whether the U.S. position is "wrong" because out of step with these other countries.

Third, the citation of foreign decisions is a form of figleafing, reflecting the efforts of opinion writers (often law clerks still suffering from the misconceptions of law students) to escape responsibility for stating the true grounds of decision. A judge or justice who votes in favor of homosexual rights is reluctant to admit that he is doing so not because the Constitution commands that he do so but because he is sympathetic to homosexuals or minorities in general, or dislikes the motivations or beliefs of the people who object to homosexual rights, or never misses an opportunity to invalidate unequal treatment, or thinks homosexual rights the new liberal frontier. If instead he can point to an emerging international consensus (as the Supreme Court did in invalidating capital punishment of 15 year olds), he can minimize the appearance of subjective decisionmaking by pointing to something outside his personal values, politics, emotions, and ideology. It would not be figleafing if American judges really were willing to take their cues from foreigners, but I don't believe it. Almost the whole world prohibits hate speech, but in the U.S. it is considered constitutionally privileged and the fact that we are out of step with the rest of the world seems not to bother any of the judges who cite foreign decisions.

Response to Comments

I cannot possibly do justice to these comments. Let me make just a few points in response to some of them, trying to group them thematically:

1. I think it important, at least for purposes of the subject of my blog on faith-based morality, to confine "religion" to theism. There are important nontheistic religions, such as Buddhism, and systems of thought, such as Communism in its heyday, that occupy the same position in the minds and emotions of adherents that religion does. In the United States, however, most religious people are theists, and the issue of religion in public policy is about theistic religion in public policy.

2. I am not an agnostic, if by that is meant (and this is the sense I have of the term, though it may be an idiosyncratic sense) someone who is perplexed as to whether or not there is a God; who regards this as an interesting question to which he happens not to have the answer. I am someone who simply doesn't feel the presence of God in my life. That I think is the typical state of the nonreligious person, and corresponds to what I assume is the feeling of a eunuch about sex. The eunuch knows that sex is important to many people, but he doesn't have any feeling of that importance. Sex doesn't exist for him.  God doesn't exist for me. That doesn't mean that He doesn't exist. My understanding of Nietzsche's dictum that "God is dead" is not that it is a metaphysical statement, a statement of atheist doctrine, but that it is a statement that God is as if dead, to educated Europeans of Nietzsche's era. I think that whether or not God is dead for one depends on upbringing and temperament, but not on arguments.

3. A fascinating question about religion and public policy that I did not address is what actual difference the religiosity of the American people makes to American law. If you look at a nation, such as Denmark (or indeed at almost any European nation west of Poland) or Japan and other east Asian nations, in which the Gallup Poll records very low levels of religious belief, you will see that their legal systems are very much like ours so far as substantive principles are concerned. What is true about the United States is that certain issues agitate our legal system for religious reasons, such as abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, pornography, prayer in the public schools, public recognition of the Ten Commandments, financial support of parochial schools (as by means of a voucher system), the teaching of evolution. Yet as a result of the Supreme Court's rather heavy-handed enforcement of the Constitution, most of these issues when they get into court as so often they do are resolved as they would be by the ordinary political processes in more secular nations. The startling result is that the most salient difference, so far as the intersection of religion and public policy is concerned, between the United States and the more secular nations is that many of them have established churches! (Hume favored established churches because he thought they would deaden religion belief. He was right, at least in the Western European context.)

4. I really do take the view--this is closely related to point 2 above--that the sort of political discussion in which political philosophers, law professors, and other intellectuals engage is neither educative nor edifying; I also think it is largely inconsequential, and I am grateful for that fact. I think that what moves people in deciding between candidates and platforms and so on certainly includes facts (such as the collapse of communism--a tremendous fact), as well as a variety of "nonrational" factors, such as whom you like to hang out with--I think that's extremely important in the choice of a political party to affiliate with. When a brilliant philosopher like Rawls gets down to the policy level and talks about abortion and campaign financing and the like, you recognize a perfectly conventional liberal and you begin to wonder whether his philosophy isn't just elaborate window dressing for standard left liberalism.

5. I think that people are smart about their own interests and can also make fairly reliable judgments about the character and leadership abilities of political candidates, but that they are hopeless when it comes to understanding domestic or foreign policy issues of even average difficulty. I think this is true in all democracies. But I don't think it's anything to despair about. The government is run by a governing class consisting largely of professional politicians, civil servants, big shots from the private sector who take temporary jobs as senior appointed officials, and lobbyists and other representatives of interest groups. This class understands the issues. If it screws up badly, as it often does because of the intrinsic uncertainties of governance, it is punished in elections. In effect the people have a veto over their rulers, and this serves as an important constraint on runaway self-interest, exploitation, and corruption by our rulers. I do not think we would do better to have a government run by academics, which is the implicit model of government held by political philosophers, law professors, and the like. Would we really have done better over the last half century with Presidents Stevenson, Humphrey, a second-term Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis? And haven't the universities, in their overwhelmingly liberal orientation (in most fields relating to public policy), forgotten John Stuart Mill's dictum that ideas become flabby and stale when they are not exposed to vigorous challenge?

6. Finally, I can't resist responding to the two commenters who asked me to identify the principal misconceptions of first-year law students. There are two, and they are closely related. The first is the idea that the law exists somewhere, in a book presumably (or, to be modern, in an electronic database), and that what you learn in law school is how to find the book, and that what law professors do, to justify making you sit in class for three years, is hide the book from you. The second misconception is that legal reasoning is something special, subtle, esoteric, which will enable you once you have learned it to answer a question in a way that would make no sense to a lay person. In other words--and this is what joins the misconceptions--law is a mystery.

But what law really is is a tool that law school shows you how to use. It is a rhetoric, a vocabulary, a tradition, a set of rules and conventions, which you can use to achieve practical results, which are the only results worth having. So if you're a judge--which sounds like something special, something far removed from the real world of nonlawyers, but is not, or should not be--you are given problems that you try to solve in a way that will be realistic, having regard for the issues at stake, the relevant moral values of your society, the interest in providing guidance for the future, the goals behind applicable rules or standards, the value of a certain kind of neutrality or impersonality, and perhaps other considerations both particular to the case at hand and systemic. You should be able to explain your decision in a way that would make sense to a lay person, but need not convince him, because the conventional legal materials of decision are often indeterminate when applied to a case that has reached the appellate level, and then the decision will reflect values or experiences of the judge that are not universally held in the society, although presumably the decision will fall within some general range of reasonableness or acceptability.

In short, it should be possible to explain everything in law in perfectly simple, everyday, common sense terms. That should be the law student's, the lawyer's, and the judge's creed.

I've gone on long enough, it's late, and I'll stop. Tomorrow I'll discuss why it is, in my opinion, a mistake for American courts to cite as precedent decisions by courts in foreign countries.

Faith-Based Morality and Public Policy

Brian said I’m an atheist, but the word has two distinct meanings. The first is a person who does not have a sense that there is a God—who, in short, is not a religious person. The second is a person who adheres to the doctrine that there is no God. That is a metaphysical proposition that does not interest me. You cannot convince a religious person that there is no God, because he does not share your premises, for example that only science delivers truths. There is no fruitful debating of God’s existence.

I note that President Bush, in his press conference following his reelection, said, in answer to a question about the increased political activism of religious people, that in America not only is anyone free to worship as he pleases, but also anyone is free not to worship at all, and the people who choose not to worship are just as patriotic as the worshippers. Well, I am one of thse nonworshippers, but I have no interest in promoting a doctrine of atheism.

I read recently, in a book on Locke—who grounded his egalitarianism in Christianity—that “Modernity has a secular self-understanding that tends to deny religious doctrine a role in political jus­tification.” Let me take this quotation as my text, and remind you of six actual or hypothetical cases involving religion and the Constitution:

1. The peyote case—an Indian tribe uses peyote in its religious ceremonies; the state outlaws peyote.

2. The Amish case—the Amish don’t want their kids to attend high school, in violation of the state’s compulsory schooling law.

3. The Ten Commandments case—is it lawful to post the Ten Commandments in a courthouse or other public building?

4. May a state ban the teaching of evolution, or require teaching of “creation science,” in its public schools.

5. Should the fact that most opposition to abortion is based on belief in ensoulment invalidate laws restricting abortion on demand?

6. Should the fact that much of the opposition to gay marriage rests on religious belief invalidate laws refusing to recognize such marriages?

In the first two cases, religion is seeking an exemption from secularly motivated laws of general applicability. In the next pair of cases, the state is being asked to enact, in effect, a religious dogma. The last two cases are the interesting ones. A law prohibiting abortion or gay marriage is not an enactment of religion in the same sense as posting the Ten Commandments or teaching divine creation, because those prohibitions do not mention religion or contain a religious message; they are merely inspired by religion. It would be a leap to regard them as “establishing” religion. And, in my view, a leap too far.

The leap would imply that the only morality that should guide public policy in today’s

United States

is a secular morality. There are secular moralities, such as utilitarianism. But should the Constitution, or political philosophy, be understood to prescribe utilitarianism, whether in the Benthamite or J. S. Mill versions, or maybe “secular humanism,” as our civic religion? That might depend on the character of morality, on what kind of normative order morality is, exactly. Specifically, on whether it must be reasoned, functional, practical, articulably derived from or related to some unexceptionable social goal. Well, much or even most morality seems based, rather, on instinct, emotion, custom, history, politics, or ideology, rather than on widely shared social goals. Think of the absolute prohibition of infanticide in contrast to the far more tolerant view of even late-term abortions. Think of the prohibition of bullfighting, cock fights, and cruelty to animals generally. Think of the rejection in our society of the Islamic punishment code, public nudity, polygamy, indentured servitude, chain gangs, voluntary gladiatorial combat, forced redistribution of wealth, preventive war, torture, the mutilation of corpses, sex with corpses, sex with nonobjecting animals, child labor, duelling, suicide, euthanasia, arranged marriages, race and sex discrimination. Are there really compelling reasons for these unarguable tenets of the current American moral code? One can give reasons for them, but would they be anything more than rationalizations? They have causes, that history, sociology, or psychology might elucidate, but causes are not reasons.

If morality, or at least a large part of the moral domain, lives below reason as it were, isn’t the practical consequence that morality is simply dominant public opinion? And so if the population is religious, religion will influence morality, which in turn will influence law, subject to constitutional limitations narrowly interpreted to protect the handful of rights that ought not to be at the mercy of the majority.

Rawls and others have thought that religious beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to influence public policy, precisely because they are nondiscussable. But this view rests on a misunderstanding of democracy. Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors.

If this analysis is sound, then we see that the statement that “Modernity has a secular self-understanding that tends to deny religious doctrine a role in political jus­tification” depends on whether modernity is equated with the dominance of the secular. The statement is thus entirely circular.

I welcome comments, as well as suggestions of additional topics for me to address during my guest week.

Testing

I thank Brian for his gracious introduction. I will begin blogging shortly after midnight, and--since Brian called me an atheist--my first subject will be faith-based morality as a basis of law.

I am posting this unnecessary preface merely to test whether I can master the basic technical requirements for posting on Brian's blog.

A few introductory remarks on Posner's Jurisprudence

Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, who also continues to teach at the University of Chicago Law School, will be guest-blogging here starting Monday, December 27 through next Saturday (January 1) or Sunday (January 2).

Richard Posner is, of course, best-known for his seminal work establishing economic analysis of law as the major intellectual event in American legal scholarship of the past thirty years.  Over the last twenty years, he has also become recognized as one of the most important and influential federal judges in the United States.  But for his candid and unflinching academic writings, he would surely be the obvious choice for an appointment to the United States Supreme Court (were one to be made on the merits), but in the current political environment, it is hard to imagine religious conservatives agreeing to an outspoken social and economic libertarian--not to mention atheist, who is also not at all bashful about the duty of judges to make "good law" when such law needs to be made--surviving the confirmation process.  That is a misfortune, but just one of many in America today!

Not since Benjamin Cardozo 75 years ago, have we had a sitting judge who has written so frankly about what it is judges do and ought to do.  Posner's jurisprudential interests have centered around adjudication, rather than the more traditional conceptual questions about the nature of law and its relationship to morality.  He has defended in various places what he has called a "pragmatic" approach to adjudication.  (The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Harvard University Press, 1999] contains one particularly useful exposition; citations, below, are to this book.)  The view is "pragmatic" in various respects, but it seems to me the key one is this:  by treating the primary duty of judges as the forward-looking one of reaching "good" resolutions to disputes (where that is usually understood in utilitarian or economic-efficiency terms), the Posnerian judge not only demotes precedent and statutes from the role of "binding authorities" to that of (often useful and reliable) "rules of thumb" about what would be the best outcome, he also sets a pragmatic bar on theorizing about adjudication:  namely, the theories have to be useful for judges, given their duty to produce outcomes that maximize the good (however exactly the good is understood).

This pragmatic attitude towards theory--which Posner shares, most strikingly, with Marx, who tells us in the Second Thesis on Feuerbach that, "The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question"--accounts for the view for which Posner is most notorious among philosophers, namely, his scathing attacks on the value and relevance of what he calls "academic moralism" (Posner 1999, 5) --"the kind of moral theorizing nowadays considered rigorous in university circles" (id.)--to the work of judges.  Such theory, says Posner,  

has no prospect of improving human behavior.  Knowing the moral thing to do furnishes no motive, and creates no motivation.  Motive and motivation have to come from outside morality.  Even if this is wrong, the analytical tools employed in academic moralism--whether moral casuistry, or reasoning from the canonical texts of moral philosophy, or careful analysis, or reflective equilibrium, or some combination of these tools--are too feeble to override either narrow self-interest or [pre-existing] moral intuitions.  And academic moralists have neither the rhetorical skills nor the factual knowledge that might enable them to persuade without having good methods of inquiry and analysis.  As a result of its analytical, rhetorical, and factual deficiencies, academic moralism is helpless when intuitions clash or self-interest opposes, and otiose when they line up.  (Posner 1999, 7)

(Posner, of course, stakes his ground here with the Humeans who deny that there is any intrinsic connection between knowledge of the moral rightness of an action and an agent's motiviation to perform it.) 

Posner is not alone in such skepticism about the practical value of moral theory, though he may be the most vigorous proponent of such a view since Karl Marx himself.  In a 1997 essay in Daedelus, for example, the eminent political scientist Charles Lindblom expressed the same kind of skepticism as Posner's:

[T]here is no clear, umistakable, demonstrated connection between. . .the distinguished contributions of a whole history of political philosophy and any of society's major ventures. . ...We have to face, at one extreme, the possibility that the world of the 1940s and 1950s--and today's world, too--would look pretty much as it does had there never been a Plato or Aristotle or their equivalents; never a Hobbes, a Locke, a Weber, or their equivalents.  (Lindblom 1997, 241-242)

Notice, of course, that this kind of skepticism about academic moral theory need not depend on any general skepticism about whether ideas (or reasons) make a causal difference to the course of events.  Hardcore eliminative materialists may embrace this kind of radical skepticism, but more relaxed materialists (like Posner and Marx) need not.  People may act for reasons, and ideas may be hugely influential, and all of that is compatible with skepticism about moral theory.  Posnerian and Marxian skepticism is directed, rather, at one or both of the following claims: (1) that moral ideas and reasons make a causal difference to the course of events; or, (2) that certain normative ideas in the form of a theory make a causal difference to the course of events.  The former claim would, of course, subsume the latter:  if moral ideas make no causal difference, then of course moral theories will make no causal difference.  The converse does not hold, however:  (2) is a weaker claim than  (1), which might explain why even some contemporary moral philosophers have embraced versions of (2) (perhaps Annette Baier, for example). 

This latter, more modest skepticism does require that we specify the distinctive form of normative theory, such that normative ideas so expressed are causally inert.  A "theory" in the problematic sense, I take it, aims for a systematic and explicit justification of its normative claims.  Moreover, this justification aims for a level of abstractness and comprehensiveness remote from the particularized decision-making of ordinary life.  Of course, ordinary people have normative views, and these views may influence their actions.  But ordinary decisions are not generally (if ever) informed by a normative theory in the sense at issue.

The preceding characterization of normative theory certainly fits Posner's examples of "academic moralists" (like Dworkin and Rawls), and it also jibes with his criticism of academic moralism.  For it is precisely the characteristics of academic moral theory--the drawing of fine distinctions, the mustering of careful arguments and counter-arguments, the parsing of concepts--that are supposed to explain its inefficacy for Posner:  such stuff simply numbs the mind, bores the reader, and is ineffectual with respect to altering people's antecedent, basic motivations and desires.  But is Posner right?  A bit of armchair sociology suggests he may well be.   We do know, for example, that academic moral theory is little read, even within the academy.  (Rawls's A Theory of Justice [1971] may be the exception, though as Posner has pointed out to me, it is far from clear whether this distinguished work is widely read or just widely referred to for a few pithy, memorable, metaphoric ideas--the difference principle, the veil of ignorance, the original position, overlapping consensus, and so forth--rather than the elaborate argumentative apparatus which purportedly generates these ideas.)  We know that academic moral theory bores many people, including students.  We know that most people and most politicans are not especially smart or acute, and have trouble following a complex argument.  (The entire blogosphere is evidence for that!  Recall this stunning example from many months ago of a PhD economist who can't even follow a simple argument.)  We know that people are strongly moved by self-interest in many (perhaps most) circumstances.  Given all that--who could seriously deny any of it?--it would, indeed, be surprising if academic moral theory made any difference at all to the course of events.  The burden is properly placed on the proponents of the thesis that academic moral theory matters to make the case.

The first and less modest kind of skepticism--the one which questions whether moral ideas, theoretically expressed or otherwise, exert much force in the course of human affairs--is more dependent on a certain view of human nature, one, arguably, shared by Posner as well as others in what I have called the "classical realist" tradition in political theory, which includes, in different ways, thinkers from Machiavelli to Nietzsche to Holmes.  (For discussion of all these figures, as well as Posner, see my "Classical Realism," Philosophical Issues 11 (2001):  244-267.)  Like the skepticism about moral theory, this kind of skepticism about the efficacy of moral reasons rests on the thought that given what human beings are really like, one should not expect moral claims or normative theory to have much impact upon them:  either people are such that they won't answer to moral demands, or they are such that moral theory will not affect them.  Posner takes over from rational choice theory a picture of agents as rational maximizers of their satisfactions, and it is that picture of human nature, together with the Humeanism about motivation noted earlier, that explains much of Posner's general world view, including his skepticism about academic moral philosophy.

I have touched on just a few important themes in Posner's jurisprudential writings, but given the scope of his corpus, and his theoretical interests, there is much, much more, even of a philosophical nature, that might merit comment:  for example, his skepticism about the objectivity of morality; his writings on Holmes; and his rational choice treatment of judges as kinds of maximizers.  Although I have not conferred with Judge Posner about the topics he plans to address this week, hopefully these introductory remarks will prove useful for those unfamiliar with Posner's work of a jurisprudential nature.

Pedigree of Recent Tenure-Track Hires at Top PhD Programs in Philosophy

Dr. Michael Pelczar from the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore writes:

The thread in your site on publication and hiring prompted me to do some informal fact finding. I thought that there might be some interest in the results.

I visited the websites of the top 50 U.S. philosophy programs as reported in the latest (2004-06) edition of the Gourmet Report, and identified all the faculty members of these departments who received their PhDs in 1999 or since. There are 108 of these, by my count. (I may have missed a few, since in a handful of cases it wasn't clear when the degree was conferred.) For each faculty member, I looked up the Gourmet Report ranking of his or her PhD program at the time that he or she graduated, and for the two years prior to that. (I treated Oxford and ANU as top ten programs.) Of 108 individuals, 81 graduated from top 10 departments, 97 from top 20 departments, 103 from top 30 departments, and 106 from ranked departments. So:

Top 10:  75%
Top 20:  90%
Top 30:  95%
Ranked: 98%

I don't draw any conclusions from these numbers, besides the obvious one that ranked departments have a strong preference for junior candidates from top 20 programs.

Remember, of course, that categories like "top 10" and "top 20" may include slightly more than 10 or 20 faculties, because of ties.

A Story for Christmas Eve

I expect they won't be telling this one at W's house this evening.

George Bush's Christmas Present for College Students

Details here:

College students in virtually every state will be required to shoulder more of the cost of their education under new federal rules that govern most of the nation's financial aid.

Because of the changes, which take effect next fall and are expected to save the government $300 million in the 2005-6 academic year, at least 1.3 million students will receive smaller Pell Grants, the nation's primary scholarship for those of low income, according to two analyses of the new rules.

In addition, 89,000 students or so who would otherwise be getting some Pell Grant money will get none, the analyses found....

Beyond the implications for Pell Grants, the new rules are expected to have a domino effect across almost every type of financial aid, tightening access to billions of dollars in state and institutional grants and, in turn, increasing the reliance on loans to pay for college. Taken together, many education experts say, the consequences for the nation's core financial aid programs are among the most substantial in a decade.

Cheer up, at least he hasn't announced a new military draft...yet.

The Left2Right Blog Phenomenon

It has been a rather remarkable 2 1/2 weeks for the new Left2Right blog featuring leading moral and political philosophers.  With links from a number of well-trafficked blog sites (including the right-wing National Review blog!), the site appears to be averaging close to 4,000 hits per day (a bit more than this blog, for example, which has been around much longer), with many threads yielding 100 or more comments (though there are a handful of, shall we say, especially vocal repeat players in the comments sections). The Technorati search engine shows more than 150 other sites linking to Left2Right already!

There is much that is interesting, politically and sociologically, about this phenomenon.  Here are a few observations, in no particular order:

(1)  As with the Becker-Posner blog, the sudden popularity of the Left2Right blog shows that having real knowledge, skills, and achievements counts, even in the blogosphere.  (Having open comments no doubt helps too!)  In two weeks, the Left2Right blog has a level of visibility that 99% of all blogs never achieve, and that the remaining 1% take months, sometimes years, to achieve.  The explanation is simple:  readers are interested in what those who have documented skills and accomplishments have to say.  Contrast this, say, with a typical right-wing blogopath who--despite years of posting, a large pre-existing audience for conservative tripe, and even periodic boosts from InstaIgnorance--averages maybe 1,000 hits per day, often much less.  The moral:  there is a limited market, even in the blogosphere, for the opining of those who lack real skills and achievements. 

(2)  Another factor in the blog's popularity--as noted, parenthetically, above--is the existence of a comments function.  Predictably, the quality of the commentary has not been high (though it is not uniformly hopeless), and at times one feels that the opportunity to anonymously attack distinguished academics is the raison d'etre for many of the commentators being there.  For obvious reasons, the blogosphere is awash with the ressentiment of those who otherwise do not have fora for their prejudices and parochial fantasies, hence the opportunity to foist them upon individuals of real accomplishment is probably irresistible.  As one trusted reader remarked long ago, regarding the talk radio phenomenon (but it applies equally to blogs, comments on blog, Internet discussion groups and so on):  "It has empowered the previously mute pent-up malcontents suffocating in America to vent with impunity. If you spit on the sidewalk, you can be fined. If you spit verbally on decent people, you are applauded by other sputum-laden verbal wheezers."  Alas, there is more than a little spitting going on in the comments at the Left2Right site.

(3)  The initial rationale for Left2Right--to find a way to initiate dialogue with those on "the right" and to listen and learn from conservative values--met with a somewhat mixed response.  At one extreme are commenters like the one on this site:

Isn't the term "useful idiots" reserved for people like these? Listen and learn? Why not just bend over? And my answer is no, there are no conservative "values" I care to share.

But a more tempered version of the same sentiment comes from Jessica Wilson (Philosophy, Michigan):

The unfortunate truth is that all this endless handwringing (not so much in Left2Right, but throughout the progressive sphere, as in this week's Nation) about how we can get through to the right may well be a waste of time.

Perhaps it's time to start thinking in different terms about the relation between left and right.  Rather than trying to fruitlessly bridge the divide, we need to start protecting ourselves from the right and its agenda.

Perhaps because of this response, the blog has since changed its rationale.

(4)   Reading the comments at Left2Right, it is hard not to feel that many on the Right believe that the only way to "listen" to them is to accept, uncritically, what they believe, and that if you dispute the accuracy or rationality of these beliefs, you are being "condescending" or "arrogant."  One of the odd ways in which egalitarian sensibilities have permeated the culture (even on the far right) is the sensitivity people feel towards having to answer to facts, evidence, and arguments:  It is, as though, equality of regard says, "How dare you disabuse me of my myths and falsehoods (how dare you call them what they are!).  They are mine!" 

(5)  Of course, one way to "reach out to the Right" is to adopt their positions, as, I am alarmed to see, various posters at Left2Right are sometimes doing:  so, e.g., we have gushing about the virtues of markets, an endorsement of repudiating those on the left of the Democratic party, an affirmation of patriotism (but liberal patriotism, mind you!), coupled with a breathtaking dismissal as "absurd" of what is in fact one of the few plausible explanations for the invasion of Iraq, namely, that the U.S. sought strategic control over oil reserves (as another poster on the same site even observed in passing).

This, I'm afraid, isn't dialogue, but capitulation--which isn't in short supply in the Democratic Party these days, making it all the more depressing to see serious academics taking part.  Good philosophers need to have the courage of their convictions, and not pander to the forces of darkness.  Of course, they may not be pandering, and they may really believe these things, but in that case perhaps the word "left" is misplaced in the blog's name.

(6)  Most of the postings to date don't, it seems to me, have this unfortunate capitulation aspect to them, and many are quite interesting, which is why I've added Left2Right to my links, the first blog I've added in a very long time.  It will be interesting to see whether the high level of interest in the first two weeks is sustained over time.  Hopefully, too, we shall see an improvement in the quality of the comments as time goes on, and many of the "spitters" move on.

UPDATE:  Some of the preceding points are amply confirmed by the right-wing Weekly Standard "review" [sic] of the Left2Right blog.  (Most memorable line:  "As anyone who reads or writes a blog soon learns, a mix of outrage and arrogance is preferable to what's replaced them on Left2Right--a wearying combination of earnest bewilderment and political naiveté.")  Professor Velleman replies here.

Shame on National Geographic, Indeed!

Pharyngula has the story.  Do cancel your subscription.

Politically Correct and Non-Legally Binding Holiday Wishes

Via reader Ian Best comes this all-purpose set of seasons greetings, written by Professor Gary Potter (Music, Indiana-Bloomington):

From me ("the wishor") to you ("the wishee"):

Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an
environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low
stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious
persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect
for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their
choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I wish you a
financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated
recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2005, but
with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and
having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious
faith, choice of computer platform or sexual preference of the wishee. By
accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that:-

This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal.

This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration shall be
made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor
are acknowledged.

This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of
the wishes.

This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the
restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain
jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.

This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.

The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this
wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.

Any references in this greeting to "the Lord", "Father Christmas", "Our
Saviour", "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer" or any other festive figures,
whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement
by or from them in respect of this greeting, and all proprietary rights in
any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.

This greeting is made under Czech Law.

Reminder: Richard Posner will be guest blogging here next week

Just a reminder that starting on Monday (December 27) and running through the remainder of next week (until Sunday, January 2), my friend, Richard Posner, the great jurist and wide-ranging, eclectic, and always provocative legal scholar, will be posting here on jurisprudential and related matters (as distinct from the kinds of policy issues he and Gary Becker have been addressing at their new blog).  I'll post a bit more about Judge Posner's jurisprudential views before Monday.  And for those travelling during the holiday period, I will also have a separate category for Judge Posner's postings, so you can catch them when you return in the New Year.

Definitive Proof of the "Value" of a Philosophy Degree

Here.  (Thanks to Bruce Umbaugh for the pointer.)

Acceptable and Unacceptable Academic Hiring Practices

Sergio Tenenbaum, a philosopher at the University of Toronto, writes:

As we get close to the American Philosophical Association [Eastern Division Meeting, which is also the hiring convention], I thought it might be worth having a thread on what counts as acceptable or unacceptable practice in the hiring process. Here are some of my views; I’d be curious to know how widely shared they are, and whether others have their own pet peeves.

(1)     Having job candidates stay with Faculty members to save the department a few hotel bills- I think it is completely unacceptable. It leaves the job candidate with no “down time”, and often creates extremely awkward situations.

(2)     Asking about other interviews, etc.-  I also find this unacceptable. The only reason I can see to ask these questions before an offer is made is to check whether one is going after a “hot” job candidate or not. But hiring based on hype is not a very good practice…

(3)     Early junior offers- By that I mean offers that job candidates have to accept or decline before they can be expected to hear from other jobs. When I was in the job market, a few places would fly out job candidates in November, make them offers in December, and give them two weeks to accept or decline. I don’t know if anyone still engages in this practice, but I would put it in the unacceptable column too, since it’s obviously an attempt to force a job candidate to accept a less desirable job.

(4)     Not notifying job candidates in the short list about how the search is developing. I take it that anyone who is interviewed for a job deserves the courtesy of being informed, as soon as possible, that he/she is no longer being considered for a job, or that he/she is still being considered for the job, but an offer has been made to someone else.

(5)     Making job candidates commit before an unconditional offer is made-In a few places, job candidates are made to accept an offer prior to its being approved by the Dean, or Provost, or other members of the higher administration. Often it is a foregone conclusion that the offer will be approved, but still it seems unfair to make a job candidate commit to an offer weeks before the institution commits.

(6)     Interviewing job candidates in hotel rooms- I must confess I have mixed feelings about this one. Hotel suites are obviously preferable, but there’re never enough suites at the APA (and I don’t find the interview tables a very good solution).

Here are my own views on the topics Professor Tenenbaum raises:  (1)  it is obviously better for the job candidate to have "down time," but budgetary realities are budgetary realities; departments that really have to ask candidates to stay with faculty ought to do so with an eye to the issue Professor Tenenbaum raises; (2) finding out where else a candidate is interviewing provides far more information than just "hype":  if it is a candidate a department is keen on, it gives an idea of what the competition will look like (which can affect planning, timing of visits, and so on); knowing that colleagues elsewhere judged the candidate worthy can provide important confirmation of one's own judgment--selecting job candidates for interview is not a science, and it can be helpful to know that sensible colleagues elsewhere came to a similar (or different, as the case may be) appraisal (on the law teaching market, this kind of information is exchanged all the time); (3)  schools do still engage in this practice, for the obvious strategic reasons--my impression is it generally backfires, in part because of the difficulty of enforcing employment contracts, especially when oral; (4) it really would be desireable if departments were better about this; (5)  such commitments, even if given in writing, to non-existent offers are almost never legally binding, so departments that do this--and I concur with Professor Tenenbaum they are to be condemned for doing so!--are fooling themselves; (6) I have no view on this.

Comments are open; no anonymous postings, of course.

What passes for "thought" among American Rhodes Scholars

Here.  Yes, I know they're not all this pathetically parochial and trite....

UPDATE:  Apt comments from Strange Doctrines.

What David Horowitz's "Academic Freedom Bill of Rights" Really Means

Horowitz's house organ, FrontPage Magazine, gives a good indication of what "academic freedom" really means to Horowitz & his gang of thought police with this typical hatchet job on a Stanford professor.  Note that there is no substantive, scholarly criticism in the entire article; this professor is to be condemned for his substantive views--on topics within his area of scholarly expertise, no less--and nothing else. 

If David Horowitz didn't exist, George Orwell would have had to invent him.

Kansas Taliban on the March!

Sahotra Sarkar (Biology & Philosophy, Texas) has the details on the latest efforts by the ignorant to harm schoolchildren.

"A Narrow and Technical Issue"

A propos the recent discussion of Harvard's ethical blindspots, Michael Perry (Law, Emory) calls to my attention this thoughtful critique of Harvard's handling of misconduct by another member of its faculty; an excerpt:

Did the customary conflict-of-interest provisions apply to Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer when, under contract to the U.S. government in the mid-1990s, the young professor led Harvard's mission to Moscow?

After a three-day trial last week, a jury took barely more than two hours to decide that indeed they did.

With the verdict, the government's case against Harvard University and one of its star economists moved to a new level. Harvard's potential liability escalated somewhat, beneath a roughly $40 million ceiling.  So did Shleifer's personal exposure, conceivably as much as $120 million, on a charge of submitting false claims.

U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock entered a summary judgment against both defendants last summer -- Shleifer on a previous count of fraud for having attempted to set up a mutual fund business with a colleague, Harvard on breach of its contract to provide disinterested advice, rather than the treble-damages False Claims Act violation for which the government had asked.      

What the jury's verdict really changed, according to attorneys for two of the three main parties in the matter, were the incentives to settle the case.

Now that Harvard's bold claim has failed -- that it didn't matter if its chief adviser to the government of Russia invested hundred of thousands of dollars in Russian securities, since he was living in Newton, Massachusetts, at the time and commuting only periodically -- attorneys for all sides once again will meet and attempt to come to terms....

Harvard's reaction Thursday was terse. "Today's verdict related to a narrow and technical issue in the case.  Harvard remains confident that as the matter proceeds we will demonstrate that the work on the Russia Project was of great value to both the Russian Federation and the United States government...."

...

Justice Department attorney Sara McLlean made the government's opening argument. "This is a case about conflict of interest rules and common sense," she began. "Harvard professor Andrei Shleifer was the head of a very important foreign aid project in Russia, and now his lawyers and Harvard's lawyers are going to come in here and tell you that the conflict of interest rules for that project didn't apply to him.

"The conflict of interest rules in question said that people couldn't invest in the foreign countries to which they were assigned, and as Judge Woodlock has just told you, the question for you is going to be: Was Russia a foreign country to which Professor Shleifer was assigned?"  The answer, asserted McLean, would be yes.

The single most compelling piece of evidence the government offered probably was a letter Shleifer wrote in June 1995 to Jim Norris, the Moscow representative of his employer, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"Dear Mr. Norris,"

"Thank you for your letter. Indeed I was well aware of your interest in meeting me. It is certainly my intention to keep you informed about the status of the HIID [Harvard Institute for International Development] projects. I very much wanted to meet with you on my last trip, but it was simply impossible. This was a very short trip, made more or less on an emergency basis at [privatization chief] Maxim Boycko's request, and I had no spare time at all.

"I arrived in Moscow on Friday evening.  Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning were spent in a meeting with several Russians..., discussing the possibilities of tax reform in Russia.  The result of this was a memo prepared for Maxim.  Unfortunately, given my understanding with Maxim about the confidentiality of this work, I cannot send you a copy of the memo.

"I spent Sunday afternoon at the Legal Reform Project [which was drafting measures for regulatory reform], discussing mostly personnel issues that were absolutely urgent.  As you probably know, the reduction by USAID of post-differentials has created huge problems for several people, who wanted a compensatory raise and threatened to quit. It appears that these issues have been resolved, but at a great cost of time. I also spent some time on Sunday evening with [Federal Securities Commission chairman] Dimitri Vasiliev and Jonathan Hay discussing the future of the Securities Commission and the GKI.

"As you can see, I had a pretty packed trip -- even more so than usual. While I realize that it is important for me to see USAID when I come to Moscow, you should recognize the workload that I have since Maxim's and [soon-to-be chief economic adviser Anatoly] Chubais' promotions have been put in place has risen enormously.

"You also have permanent access to Maxim, Jonathan and others who reside in Moscow, and who are obviously intimately familiar with all HIID's activities.  Thus, while I intended to make every effort to see you, I hope you appreciate the level of activities that I have to monitor and be involved in. And, as I have already mentioned to you..., the efforts to uses others to perform many of these tasks simply have not worked.  I run an extremely lean operation in the U.S. and most people working for us insist on dealing with me."

Plenty of other evidence was introduced, including various Harvard blandishments of "impartial oversight" in response to government's help-wanted advertisement that "a completely neutral third party, void of any vested interest in the [privatization] contracting process, is required."

One Harvard proposal promised, "During the first year, Dr. Shleifer will work full-time on the project, dividing his time between the U.S. and Russia...."

...

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Bloom closed the government's argument. "In this country, no one is above the law," she began. "Today these defendants stand before you literally arguing that the rules, the conflict of interest rules of the United States government, do not apply to the Harvard professor who headed a $57 million U.S. government program in Russia.

"Would it make any sense to read this provision to apply to the American secretaries, to the bookkeepers, to the assistants, and not to the man at the top, the man who was giving advice to the Russian officials on the creation of securities markets in Russia, to the man who directed all the other employees, to the man who had the most information about the financial markets in Russia of everyone on the project?"

...

At 43, Andrei Shleifer no longer exhibits the boyish enthusiasm of the teenager who arrived from Russia in 1977 in Rochester, New York, knowing no more English than what he had learned from episodes of "Charlie's Angels" on television. Within a of couple years, a sharp-eyed recruiter had offered him a scholarship to Harvard College. And there, as sophomore, he entered into a life-changing friendship when he brashly offered to correct the math errors in a paper by first-year assistant professor of economics named Larry Summers. 

Today, Summers is president of Harvard University. Shleifer, too, has come a very long way. Despite the legal proceedings that have been grinding on against him for most of a decade, Shleifer has continued to rise in the economics profession. He sold his interest in a prosperous money management firm some years ago; he is a moderately wealthy man. Today, he edits the prestigious Journal of Economic Perspectives for the American Economics Association. He is considered a leading expert on finance, behavioral economics and, of all things, corruption....

Mainly, he is a man who does not seem to possess a fundamental understanding of the predicament in which he finds himself -- in the dock because of the moral compass of a handful of young government lawyers who considered that even Harvard University with its lofty good intentions must obey the law. He is hoist on his own petard in the very sort of legal system whose robust checks and balances he was supposed to explain to the government of the Russian Federation....

So why did the trial take three days?  Why did Harvard spend all that money on a question that took a laughing jury, unanimous from the start of its deliberations (by jurors' own accounts), little more than two hours to decide?

That is the really interesting question. There's something unexplained about Harvard continuing to defend the integrity of its professor, the expert on corruption who began investing in Russian securities with his deputy almost as soon as he got the advisor's job, who argues now that the conflict of interest rules didn't apply to him. 

That's what makes this such a fascinating case....The sheer audacity of putting so weak a case before a jury makes you think there must be something more at stake.

At a minimum, when the collective judgment of those who run America's oldest university differs so radically from the common sense of its everyday citizens, as expressed by the jury last week, the institution itself must be alarmed, and enter into a deeper self-examination.

And at a maximum? What if the men and women at the pinnacle of American education simply don't know wrong from right? The "narrow and technical issue" at the heart of Harvard's ill-fated Russia Project may be one of those innumerable pivots on which American history regularly turns.

Perhaps the myth of left-wing Harvard will have to be joined by the myth of ethical Harvard?

"The Man of the Year"

You know whom that right-wing rag Time picked; now here's the real winner.

Wyman from NYU Law to Toronto

Katrina Wyman (environmental law), currently an assistant professor of law at New York University, has accepted an offer from the law faculty at the University of Toronto.  While leading Canadian law faculties are frequently raided by American schools, moves back North are more rare (the only other one I can think of recently involved Michael Byers [international law] who moved from Duke to a Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia).

More on merit, cronyism and discrimination against those with families in the philosophy profession

A senior philosopher out West writes:

The thread on TAR on "Philosophical Perspectives" and related issues
raises many very important and complex questions.  The roles of
institutional affiliation and "connections" are very significant in
various areas of our profession, although they sometimes work in
subtle ways.  A more thorough exploration of the VARIOUS ways in
which graduate school affiliation and connections to visible,
influential philosophers help to frame one's possibilities in our
profession would be interesting to me.

Just to start: note that those of us who have families--young
children (or even not-so-young children)--or who live on the west
coast or really anywhere apart from the NY metropolitan area--have
significantly harder times attending conferences.  Since we cannot
attend so many conferences, colloquia, reading groups, and so forth,
we cannot "impress people in person."  That is, I have often heard it
said that certain philosophers, although they do not write much or
have not influenced the profession much through their writing, are
"very impressive in person."  Well, if you can't go to the
conferences, colloquia, and so forth which are the "stages" or
contexts for impressing the relevant people, one is at a considerable
disadvantage.  This really seems to be important in the hiring
practices of the most elite departments these days, and it works
against those of us who have families or live in areas where there
are fewer opportunities for attendance and participation.  Also,
having a youngish family makes it considerably harder to go off to a
prestigious institute or to take a fellowship which requires
residence.

In general, the hiring practices of the profession at the senior
level seem to be changing: less emphasis is put on quality of work
and impact over time, and more emphasis seems to be put on whether
someone is "impressive" in participating in conferences, discussions,
and so forth.  In some ways this is good, as the "oral tradition" is
an important part of philosophy, and some extremely good philosophers
simply don't write much, but have a salutary influence on the
profession through their conversations.  But in some ways this is
bad, exacerbating what is already a significant (although perhaps not
always decisive) role of institutional affiliation and connections.

Comments are open; no anonymous postings.  (Occasionally, readers ask why I require non-anonymous postings in response to an anonymous set of comments.  Lack of anonymity leads posters to be more responsible, I have found, and it also makes it possible for readers, sometimes, to interpret the poster's remarks in light of what they know about his/her institutional affiliation, background, interests, and so on.  In the case of the comments quoted above, I of course know the identity of the philosopher making these remarks, and while others are deprived of relevant background information that might affect their interpretation of these remarks, I thought them interesting enough standing alone to solicit reactions.)

Two Lateral Hires for Villanova Law

Villanova has just made two senior appointments, a scholarly couple, David Caudill (evidence, property, postmodern legal theory) from Washington & Lee has accepted a Chair at Villanova and Penelope Pether (law & literature, criminal law, postmodern legal theory) from American University will join the tenured faculty.

Now The Economist Endorses the Newest "Big Lie": Universities are not diverse

What goes on in the mind of people who write stuff like this?

Academia is simultaneously both the part of America that is most obsessed with diversity, and the least diverse part of the country. On the one hand, colleges bend over backwards to hire minority professors and recruit minority students, aided by an ever-burgeoning bureaucracy of “diversity officers”. Yet, when it comes to politics, they are not just indifferent to diversity, but downright allergic to it.

Universities are, in fact, the most politically and intellectually diverse institutions in American society.  In which corporate boardroom or elite law firm does one find not only Republicans and Democrats, but also Burkean conservatives, libertarians, social democrats, and socialists?  Yet this is typical of every major university in the country.  As an example, I looked at my own law faculty, with 65 members; I have no idea what the political views of 12 members of the faculty are, which leaves 53 whose politics are known to me.  (I could run the same exercise with my philosophy faculty, but I have no idea what the political views of most of my colleagues are there.)  Of those 53, 10 are on the right (conservatives or libertarians--slightly more are libertarians), 13 are in the American "middle" (6 are moderate Republicans, 7 moderate Democrats), and 30 are on the left (liberal, social democrat, socialist--most of these are American liberals, needless to say).  Self-selection would seem the most obvious explanation for this distribution--just as it would be for the distribution of political views at the large New York law firm I worked at, which was skewed in the opposite direction, but much more radically (there were some liberals, but no one to the left of liberal, for example--well, except me, of course, but I kept that to myself).

Moreover, situate my faculty in the context of the legal academy at large, and it is even clearer how much more politically diverse the academy is than the society at large.  Confining ourselves to just the top 25-or-so faculties, there are a handful of schools definitely skewed further to the right than the Texas faculty (e.g., Chicago, Northwestern, Virginia, George Mason, San Diego), another handful definitely skewed further to the left than the Texas faculty (e.g., UCLA, Georgetown, Wisconsin, Berkeley), with the rest being hard to place without more information--though for almost every faculty in the top 25 (including places like UCLA and Berkeley), I can identify three or more well-known scholars on the right; no doubt there are more simply not known to me.

There is no doubt that the academy is to the left of the society at large; there is also no doubt that views to the right of the society at large are better represented in the academy than anywhere else.  The fact remains:  for genuine diversity of political viewpoint, no other major institution in American society holds a candle to the universities:  not corporations, not law firms, not Congress, and so on.  That is as it should be given the tasks charged to universities, but what is amazing is that--in keeping with the "black-is-white" moment we're living through in America--it appears that huge sectors of the population believe otherwise--and now The Economist is doing its bit to propagate this "big lie".  They continue:

Evidence of the atypical uniformity of American universities grows by the week. The Centre for Responsive Politics notes that this year two universities—the University of California and Harvard—occupied first and second place in the list of donations to the Kerry campaign by employee groups, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft et al. Employees at both universities gave 19 times as much to John Kerry as to George Bush.

The obvious question, of course, is what percentage of university faculty give to any political candidate?  (It appears to be a very small percentage.)  And might the patterns of giving be skewed in one direction rather than another?  What of the well-known fact that academics on the right are unlikely to support the Republican Party in its current form, with its radical foreign policy, its anti-libertarian initiatives, and its hostility to science and objective knowledge?  The point is simple enough, that you might think even journalists could figure it out:  the fact that relatively few academics give money to George W. Bush (together with the fact that relatively few give to any political candidates) tells you next to nothing about the actual distribution of political views in the academy.

Predictably, The Economist attributes the academic right's desertion of the Republican Party not to that Party's having gone off the rails, but rather to the academy's having done so! 

These days, academia is marginalised in the capital—unless, of course, you count all the Straussian conservative intellectuals in think-tanks who left academia because they thought it was rigged against them.

There is no doubt that serious academic disciplines are "rigged" against Straussians, since they are "rigged" (at least when working well) against scholarly incompetence.  But how could one expect journalists to be able to assess that claim?  One would actually have to know something, for example, about the actual quality of Allan Bloom's translation of The Republic or Leo Strauss's interpretation of the same text to realize that the absence of Straussians from philosophy and classics departments--indeed, their absence even from politics departments outside North America--is entirely on the merits.  Let us hope that universities remain inhospitable to diversity of scholarly mediocrity.

Canada at risk of becoming a plutocracy?

So says Osgoode Hall tax professor Neil Brooks:

The C. D. Howe Institute recently set up a "Tax Competitiveness Centre" to recommend far-reaching tax reforms. That spells trouble for most Canadians.

Unless you're a rich investor, hold onto your wallet. Whenever the business-funded institute starts poking around in the tax system, it finds lots of things to change - mostly for the benefit of the rich.

That means the rest of us end up paying more taxes, or face cuts to social programs or benefits.

With the federal government trying to decide what to do with a surplus of $9 billion, the institute has been full of ideas.

Its latest - advocated by Jack Mintz, head of its new Tax Competitiveness Centre - is strikingly similar to one favoured by the Bush administration

Lift the tax burden entirely off income from investments and place the full tax burden on income from labour.

Not surprisingly, this idea is wildly popular among investors, who make up the bulk of C.D. Howe members.

Of course, these investors represent only a tiny proportion of Canada's taxpayers. But they tend to be highly effective at getting their way.

They've been particularly effective in the last few decades, as the power of labour has declined and the power of corporations and investors has risen sharply.

Rich Canadians have benefited enormously.

According to calculations by McMaster University economist Michael Veall, the top-earning 1 per cent of Canadians have almost doubled their share of the national income - from 7.6 per cent in 1980 to 13.6 per cent in 2000.

Osgoode Hall law professor Neil Brooks says the top-earning Canadians haven't enjoyed such a large share of Canada's national income since the 1920s and 1930s, a time when Canada was often regarded as a plutocracy (that is, a society ruled by the wealthy).

"Canada is once again at risk of becoming a plutocracy," says Brooks.

(By the way, when was the last time a major American newspaper described various right-wing think tanks, correctly, as shills for the rich and corporate interests?)

But let's look on the bright side:  if Canada becomes more plutocratic, then Canadians and Americans will have even more in common!

In Memoriam

Paul Edwards (1923-2004)

The New York Times obituary is here.

UPDATE:  A propos our recent discussion of Professor Flew's purported conversion, Gilbert Harman (Philosophy, Princeton) suggests an apt headline for the passing of Professor Edwards:  "Noted Atheist Dies without Converting to Christianity"!

Round 'em up

According to this new poll,

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Jewish-Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

Whoops, sorry, that's Muslim-Americans...anyway:

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim-Americans....

The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

But what about wearing colorful emblems on their clothes to mark them as Muslims?

(Thanks to Scott Shapiro for the pointer, and the idea for how to present this.)

The Social Security Privatization Scam, continued

Remarkably, I actually heard from some poor deluded free market utopian protesting the facts about social security privatization, pointing (as befits anyone suitably indoctrinated) to the putative great success of private pension plans in Chile.  Now, as chance would have it (did he get the same e-mail?) comes Krugman:

Decades of conservative marketing have convinced Americans that government programs always create bloated bureaucracies, while the private sector is always lean and efficient. But when it comes to retirement security, the opposite is true. More than 99 percent of Social Security's revenues go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. In Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. And that's a typical number for privatized systems....

A reasonable prediction for the real rate of return on personal accounts in the U.S. is 4 percent or less. If we introduce a system with British-level management fees, net returns to workers will be reduced by more than a quarter. Add in deep cuts in guaranteed benefits and a big increase in risk, and we're looking at a "reform" that hurts everyone except the investment industry....

For the record, I don't think giving financial corporations a huge windfall is the main motive for privatization; it's mostly an ideological thing. But that windfall is a major reason Wall Street wants privatization, and everyone else should be very suspicious.

Then there's the issue of poverty among the elderly.

Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government must "provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum pension." In other words, privatization would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to save them....

So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement system that works, and can be made financially sound for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead, it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that, when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor protected the elderly from poverty.

In a plutocracy like the United States, most government policies reflect the interests and objectives of the economically dominant groups.  Krugman may be correct that privatization of social security is an kind of ideological idee fixe among the free market utopians, but that still leaves the question:  why did that idea get fixed in the first place?  Should we really discount the importance of the multi-billion dollar windfall to Wall Street that privatization of social security represents?

Antony Flew's "conversion"

MOVING TO THE FRONT from 12/15/04:  The plot thickens...read on!

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

Many people by now have e-mailed me links to the various stories about the embrace of belief in God by English philosopher and longtime atheist Antony Flew, who is now in his early 80s.  Here is one interview in which Flew explains his change of belief, attributing it to the "scientific" [sic] evidence for Intelligent Design.  I haven't posted this, because there really isn't much to say.  His understanding of the putative "science" is not, shall we say, robust, and old age, as we know, takes its toll on people in many different ways.  This is more an embarrassment for Flew than some triumph for creationism.  But so many folks have e-mailed me about it, I figured I should post something. 

Sad.

UPDATE:  Gilbert Harman (Philosophy, Princeton) observes:  "What's interesting is that there are no headlines about famous believers who become atheists, or anyway I don't remember such headlines..."  Nor do I.

Meanwhile, various readers point out that Flew may not have renounced atheism, as this somewhat strange, and tepid, affirmation of it suggests.  But that just heightens the import of Professor Harman's question:  why is it that an alleged embrace of theism by an atheist is deemed so newsworthy, while the converse (which must surely happen) is not? 

AND ANOTHER UPDATE:  Len Cleavlin writes:

In your post on this subject you cited the "infamous" Rationalist International Bulletin #137, which cites the "Sorry to Disappoint, But I'm Still An Atheist" essay from The Secular Web.

That "Sorry to Disappoint" essay is from August of 2001, and is probably not completely indicative of Flew's current views (see the actual webpage, which notes that. A better indicator of Flew's current views is this summary of Richard Carrier's correspondence with Flew [scroll down to December 2004 Updates].

Notre Dame Philosophy on the Move!

Notre Dame already has tenured offers outstanding to Hans Halvorson (philosophy of physics) at Princeton and Michael Potter (philosophy of math, logic, history of analytic philosophy) at Cambridge; now comes word that they have made a senior offer to Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, early modern, philosophy of religion) at Yale, who may also be about to receive the prize for "most big ticket offers in the shortest period of time" (in the last several years, he has declined offers from Arizona, Cornell, and Rutgers).  I wouldn't be surprised if Keith accepts the Notre Dame offer.  Certainly students considering Yale will want to keep a close eye on this, since without DeRose, Yale will be in trouble.  And while landing DeRose, Halvorson, and Potter will surely push Notre Dame in to the proverbial "top ten," Notre Dame still has an enormous amount to offer prospective students in DeRose's areas even if he doesn't end up moving--though those looking at Notre Dame will also want to inquire about the status of these offers come April.

The Pennsylvania Taliban are being hauled in to court...

...for inserting intelligent design creationism in to the school curriculum in Dover.  An excerpt from the ACLU's press release:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and attorneys with Pepper Hamilton LLP filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of 11 parents who say that presenting "intelligent design" in public school science classrooms violates their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.

"Teaching students about religion’s role in world history and culture is proper, but disguising a particular religious belief as science is not," said ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director Witold Walczak. "Intelligent design is a Trojan Horse for bringing religious creationism back into public school science classes...."

Today’s lawsuit challenges a controversial decision made in October by the Dover Area School Board to require biology teachers to present "intelligent design" as an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution. "Intelligent design" is an assertion that an intelligent, supernatural entity has intervened in the history of life. The lawsuit argues that such an assertion is inherently a religious argument that falls outside the realm of science. At the time of the October vote, district science teachers opposed the policy and three school board members have since quit in protest of the decision....

Teachers are also required to read a statement to students in ninth grade biology classes that includes the following language:

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view in an effort to gain an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves. As is true with any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind.

The lawsuit argues that teaching students about "intelligent design" in public school science classes entangles government with religion and violates the separation of church and state. Of Pandas and People, the alternative book available for students, was authored by advocates of so-called creation science and published by a Christian think-tank that aims to preach "the Christian Gospel and understanding of the Bible."

Note, by the way, that the pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute are calling for the Dover Board to withdraw and revise its curriculum proposal.  They must realize that what the zealots have done in Dover will be a loser in the courts (Chris Mooney has some details on why), and they are worried about the precedent this will set.  Let us hope the zealots stick to their guns, so that we can get a court decision in place.  (Even if the lower court fouls it up, the Third Circuit, where Pennsylvania is located, is still one of the relatively sane and responsible circuit benches in the country; I am optimistic if it goes that far, we will get a good decision.)

Dean of Massachussetts Law School Excoriates Harvard Law School on Plagiarism, Torture

Here.  Wow!

(Thanks to Anthony D'Amato for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Most memorable line:

[W]hile I have always been in favor of diversity of viewpoints on a faculty, and our own faculty ranges from very liberal to quite conservative -- although we see no need to hire the right wing kooks who seem to be taking over the world -- I have lately begun to wonder about the intellectual diversity argument. The right wing has taken over the government, radio, part of television, a significant part of the newspaper world, and certain religiously based universities. Having taken over much of the world, is it really necessary that they be given a major voice in universities too? They’ve done pretty well without a major foothold at lots of universities. Why give these nuts still more power?

Some Good News for the Financially Beleagured Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Brian Weatherson (Philosophy, Cornell) has the details.  (I got this e-mail too, but deleted it unfortunately.  Weatherson has posted the text.)

More Paranoid Fantasies on the Right...or Why Christopher Hitchens Needs to Drink Less

I gather Hitchens--the former leftist who discovered there was more fame and money to be had pandering to the American right--is a drunk, and perhaps that explains everything.  But his paranoid ranting is getting more unhinged from reality as times goes on, so it may be time to think about a ten-step plan.  In any event, his little polemic is instructive along a number of dimensions about the right-wing mindset.  Consider:

[A]ll faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death....

Is there any reputable scholar of the Islamic world who thinks this is the situation?  I am not aware of any, not even the famously uncharitable Bernard Lewis.  But this is minor, so let us move on:

Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left.

Pure fiction, of course:  first, because there is no left in American politics; second, because we have just been through a political campaign in which the Democrats were out-toughing the Republicans all the way through (how many times did John Kerry promise to kill, kill, kill?); third, because no one on the marginalized left in America--not Noam Chomsky, not Z Magazine, not Howard Zinn, etc.--has made any of these arguments.  Hitchens, of course, cites no one--how could he?  Look what he offers by way of "proof" instead:

From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed.  How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of "despair."

Notice the casual rhetorical trick of assimilating al-Qaida to suicide bombers in Palestine, as though the latter had anything to do with the former, which, of course, they do not.  But this has become an increasingly popular right-wing device, which we have seen before, namely, to sweep together all "our enemies" under one umbrella, such that child killers in Beslan are the same as the 9/11 fanatics, and Palestinian suicide bombers are part of the same Islamic death cult invented in the first paragraph.  The war planners and propagandists haven't had such a well-constructed fictional enemy since the Cold War.

The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization.

And who exactly said this?  No culprits are named, of course.  To be sure, someone somewhere has probably uttered every imaginable proposition about questions of political moment, but that isn't what's at issue here. What's at issue here is whether the propositions in question represent some significant current in left-wing critiques of U.S. policy.  And this proposition rather obviously does not.  Indeed, prior to 9/11, it was only those on the left like Chomsky and liberal journalists like Bob Herbert who even called attention to the fundamentalist zealots in Afghanistan with whom we were so eager to do business.

The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. 

I don't even follow the reference here, and my guess is Hitchens doesn't either.

If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).      

Ah, yes, the famous parenthetical, in which we bury the actual issue so as not to interefere with the flow of the propaganda.  Perhaps Mr. Hitchens hasn't noticed that the local "party of God" has been waging war on Constitutional prohibitions; he could start here, and scroll down for dozens of instances.

George Bush may subjectively be a Christian...

Sorry to interrupt mid-sentence, but this one is such a howler, how does one let it pass?  Bush has repeatedly injected his "subjective Christianity" in to his social and political policies and decisions, from meddling with science, to "faith-based" initiatives, to his position on stem cell research; again see here, and keep on scrolling. 

...but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries.

What is the actual evidence in support of any of these claims?  The Taliban are still active throughout Afghanistan, except Kabul, where American mercenaries and soldiers keep the Afghani President from being killed.  (If one wants to have some idea what is actually going on in Afghanistan, this site is a good place to start.)  Where are the non-partisan experts who believe that al-Qaida has been weakened?  We're not talking drunk journalistic whores and panderers, we're talking actual security experts who aren't in the pay of the U.S. propaganda machine.  None are mentioned, needless to say.  Hitchens, himself, must realize the size of the lies he is telling, because he immediately turns to the main evidence that Bush & co. have made the situation far worse:

The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?

Actually the complaint has never been that "Islamic religious extremists" have been inflamed--what would that even mean?--but rather that the criminal and immoral invasion of Iraq has inflamed hundreds of thousands throughout the Arab and Islamic world, pushing them towards extremism of the kind that is, indeed, dangerous.  Hitchens can't present the charge accurately, of course, because it would ruin his little fantasy--just like he can't mention the theocratic movements at home endorsed and emboldened by our "subjective" Christian leader, George W. Bush.

Christopher Hitchens, and his parochial enthusiasts in the U.S., do need to remember that it's a big world out there, and that not everyone is in the thrall of the same fictions and ideological delusions.  If you peddle the products of your alcohol-addled imagination as though they were factual and rational, someone is bound to notice and say as much.

Please, "Hitch," call Alcoholics Anonymous today!

UPDATE:  Reader Robert Gressis suggests, plausibly, that the reference to Michael Moore, above, is to this posting on his web site, in which Moore makes the banal observation that inhabitants who resist the occupation of their country by a foreign nation, and the puppet government the invaders imposed, may just as well be called freedom fighters.  Apparently what has gotten Hitchens agitated is that Moore has not acquiesced in the piece of labelling propaganda common in the U.S. mass media which describes all these individuals as "insurgents" and "enemies," names which presuppose two things which are false:  that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was either lawful or morally defensible.

Philosophers Publishing Their Friends

MOVING TO THE FRONT (from December 8):  the discussion has continued, and there is much interesting debate (and even a few fireworks) with contributions from Keith DeRose, Ken Taylor, Ralph Wedgwood, Gilbert Harman, John Hawthorne, and others.  Most memorable comment, from Tom Hurka at Toronto:

Let’s see. Like Keith DeRose I’m getting e-mails from people in less prestigious departments thanking me for raising an issue they’re very disturbed by but don’t feel safe raising themselves. And then there are reassuring posts from senior folks at Stanford, Oxford, and Princeton saying don’t worry, cronyism doesn’t happen, it’s just excellence being recognized. How much fancy epistemology does it take to figure out what’s going on? Could it be that sitting in the centre of circles of privilege makes it harder to see that they’re there?

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

Ted Warfield (Philosophy, Notre Dame) has raised some interesting issues here about publication practices in philosophy, especially in invitation-only journals.

UPDATE:  The editor of the journal issue in question in Professor Warfield's post has added some pertinent information to the thread linked, above.  Those who checked the discussion earlier should probably look again now.

San Diego Law Dean Rodriguez to Resign Effective June 30, 2005

Dan Rodriguez--who left Boalt to become Dean of the University of San Diego School of Law in 1999--will resign at the end of this academic year.  There can be little doubt that Rodriguez's tenure transformed San Diego, making it a genuine national contender in the market for faculty talent and establishing the school, along with George Mason on the East Coast, as one of the "up-and-coming American law schools" of the new century. 

I began my own teaching career at San Diego in 1993, moving to Texas in 1995.  There were already many very good faculty in place back then (including Larry Alexander, whose loyalty to the school since 1970 has been crucial to its recent successes), but the school was somewhat paralyzed in appointments matters by ideological and personal disputes.  Rodriguez successfully overcame that, making a string of notable lateral appointments from traditionally stronger schools:  Karen Burke (tax) and Donald Dripps (criminal procedure) from Minnesota; Steven Smith (constitutional law) from Notre Dame (who turned down an offer from Northwestern in the process); Heidi Hurd and Michael Moore (law and philosophy, criminal law) from Penn (they subsequently moved to Illinois, where Hurd is now Dean); and Yale Kamisar (criminal procedure) from Michigan (Kamisar retired from Michigan), among others.  In addition, he solidified ties with some of the excellent faculties at UC San Diego, adding leading philosophers, economists, and political scientists from UCSD to part-time posts at the Law School, as well as enjoying good success at retaining top faculty talent against raids by other schools (e.g., Frank Partnoy turned down Emory and Tom Smith turned down Ohio State during Rodriguez's tenure).

That San Diego came out 22nd in the nation in the faculty quality survey conducted in 2003 is hardly surprising, in light of these striking recruitments.

One "nut" that remains to be cracked for San Diego is how to get the corrupt U.S. News rankings to better reflect the school's accomplishments and merits.  Mark Grady, another successful Dean (at George Mason University), cracked that nut for GMU, with the result that a school with at least a top 40 faculty is now ranked in the top 40 by U.S. News (even though its academic reputation scores still lag preposterously).  San Diego, as a much larger school, has found it harder to mark progress in U.S. News (and its academic reputation scores are, like GMU's, also much too low).   But that will be a task for the next Dean, who will inherit some great opportunities thanks to Dean Rodriguez's skillful leadership.

TONGUE-IN-CHEEK UPDATE:  As a reader pointed out, I should add that Dean Rodriguez achieved all this despite the public revelation that San Diego has a small but vocal contingent of everyone's favorite right-wing kooks on the faculty!

"'God is with us': Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of 'Moral Values'"

A propos Justice Scalia's revisionist history of the Holocaust, reader Kelvin Kean in Pennsylvania calls my attention to this striking essay:

Hitler's own speeches and writings prove, at the very least, that he presented many of the same faith-based arguments heard in America today. Religion in the schools? Hitler was for it. Intellectuals who practiced "anti-Christian, smug individualism"? According to Hitler, their days were numbered. Divine Providence's role in shaping Germany's ultimate victory? Who could argue? In other words, there is enough historical evidence to color Scalia deluded. Writing for Free Inquiry, John Patrick Michael Murphy explained: "Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). His troops were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical. Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values." He liked corporeal punishment in home and school. Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration. While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it." For anyone wanting even more proof, Mein Kampf is chock full of the Fuhrer's musings on God. ("I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord," Hitler wrote). But anti-Semitic rants aside, some of Hitler's religious musings are interchangeable with Mr. Bush's.... In the meantime, however, for those who have not yet noticed, our own homegrown zealots -- those who advocate hatred in the name of the Lord -- have made considerable headway, with gays and lesbians currently at the center of legislation which, should it pass, will alter this country forever. When the Marriage Protection Act passed the House in July, the New York Times called it "a radical assault on the Constitution. "If it passes in the Senate, the bill could obliterate the separation of powers and wipe out Constitutional protections for all minorities, stripping the courts and possibly paving the way for Christian nationhood. Other pieces of court stripping legislation bills designed to topple the wall between church and state are also in play. This encroaching infusion of church and state, combined with recent decrees concerning moral values, doesn't resonate with inclusive tolerance. "When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side? If you answered Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you're correct," Bob Fitrakis wrote. "Nothing can be more misleading than to categorize Hitler as a barbaric pagan or Godless totalitarian, like Stalin." While many of us reserve a soft spot for true Christian generosity and the warm teachings of Jesus, it's important to remember that Christianity can be (and has been) distorted for darker purposes. Whether you're talking about Nazi Germany, the pre-Civil War American South, or the atmosphere in the U.S. these past few years, whenever questions of conscience are vigorously denounced, you can bet there is trouble ahead -- and the hijacking of faith and the manipulation of religion should always arouse suspicion. Moral values as a mandate? What better way to foster civil obedience and "One nation Under God" unity in a time of preventative war, suppressed liberty and sanctioned torture. So, yes, despite tales of Hitler's atheism and Germany's Godlessness, the list of Hitler's religious assertions and Nazi Christian affiliations is long, and before Americans swallow more WMD-type baloney, it's best to comprehend this history and understand that no nation, including our own, is immune to faith-based fascism. Substituting "America" for "Germany," many of Hitler's religious assertions could have been uttered by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson -- with Hitler even asserting that God punished Germany for turning away from Him -- before promising that renewed piety would protect the Fatherland and make it prosperous and successful once more. "Once the mercy of God shown upon us, but we were not worthy of His mercy. Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again learned to pray," Hitler said in 1936, sixty-five years before Falwell and Robertson blamed abortionists and feminists for the tragedies of Sept. 11. Hitler's religious phrases could have also come from the lips of George W. Bush. "Our prayer is: Lord God, let us never hesitate, let us never play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us,"Hitler said in March, 1933, sounding much like our president, who believes that God wants him to liberate the people in Middle East -- even if he has to torture, maim and kill tens of thousands in the process. "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Bob Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.. . . Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . ." Speaking in Berlin in March, 1936, Hitler said something remarkably similar. "I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany," he said, before launching the preventive war heard round the world. Both leaders also promised peace while planning for war. "We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended," Bush said, in his State of the Union address in Jan. 2003, two months before launching a preventative war in Iraq. "Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!"Hitler said in Nuremberg on Sept. 13, 1936. Yes, many of Hitler's faith-based comments could have come from George Bush himself, and are undoubtedly the kinds of sentiments many Americans not only agree with -- but take comfort in. This is not to say that Bush is Hitler or that religion is evil, but to serve as a reminder that things are not always what they seem. Christianity was used to justify everything from the Salem witch trials to slavery in America, and facilitated group-think in Germany -- when individuality and questions of conscience were needed the most. These are but a few of the Fuhrer's assertions: "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith." (The German Churches Under Hitler, p.241) "We must turn all the sentiments of the Volk, all its thinking, acting, even its beliefs, away from the anti-Christian, smug individualism of the past, from the egotism and stupid Phariseeism of personal arrogance, and we must educate the youth in particular in the spirit of those of Christ's words that we must interpret anew: love one another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each one of you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers! This youth will, with loathing and contempt, abandon those hypocrites who have Christ on their lips but the devil in their hearts." (Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, page 140) "It will be the Government's care to maintain honest cooperation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith." (At the Reichstag, March 23, 1933) "Without pledging ourselves to any particular Confession [Protestantism or Catholicism], we have restored to faith its prerequisites because we were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933) "But there is something else I believe, and that is that there is a God. . . . And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years." (Munich, Feb. 24, 1940) "You [blue-collar workers] represent the most noble of slogans known to us: "God helps those who help themselves!' (Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, Vol. 2, page 1147) "Fifteen years ago I had nothing save my faith and my will. Today the Movement is Germany, today this Movement has won the German nation and formed the Reich. Would that have been possible without the blessing of the Almighty? Or do they who ruined Germany wish to maintain that they have had God's blessing? What we are we are, not against but with the will of Providence. And so long as we are loyal, honest, and ready to fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall also in the future have the blessing of Providence." (Rosenheim, Aug. 11, 1935) "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. . . As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." (Munich, April 12, 1922) "If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbor, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work." (Feb. 24, 1939) "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933) "An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An educated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal)." (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, page 59)... In 1937, Hitler said that because of Germany's belief in God and God's favoritism towards Germany, the country would prevail and prosper. "We, therefore, go our way into the future with the deepest belief in God. Would all we have achieved been possible had Providence not helped us? I know that the fruits of human labor are hard-won and transitory if they are not blessed by the Omnipotent. Work such as ours which has received the blessings of the Omnipotent can never again be undone by mere mortals,"he said. While attempting to solidify his power, Hitler also denounced those who denounced religion -- as if he were talking about Hollywood or blue states or Noam Chomsky. "For eight months we have been conducting a fearless campaign against that Communism which is threatening our entire nation, our culture, our art, and our public morals, "Hitler said in a speech in Oct. 1933. "We have made an end of denials of the Deity and the crying down of religion...." George Bush is not Hitler. America is not Nazi Germany. But buying into religious assertions or thinking that God is on your side is not wise when it comes to matters of war -- particularly when that war is an aggressive preventative war based on false premises and assumptions.

Don't Monkey Around with Bush!

At least not in New York: 

A portrait of President George W. Bush using monkeys to form his image has led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests over freedom of expression.

"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month....

"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild...."

From afar, the painting offers a likeness of Bush, but when you get closer you see the image is made up of chimpanzees or monkeys swimming in a marsh.

What is really revealing here, of course, about the degenerate state of the culture is that a businessman (in New York City no less) should think it grounds for "arrest" that one constructs a portrait of the President out of monkeys!  (I am assuming, to be sure, that the businessman was not simply indignant on behalf of the monkeys so sullied.)

The Privatization-of-Social-Security Scam

It continues apace, promising misery and hardship for tens of millions of Americans in the years ahead; economist Dean Baker has some pertinent analysis:

[T]he Bush plan would require a large reduction in the benefits provided by the existing system. A worker who is 20 today would see a cut of approximately one-third in his or her retirement benefit, although workers would theoretically more than recoup this loss by investing a portion of their Social Security taxes in a private account.

The President's main pitch is that these accounts will yield higher returns than Social Security does. The pitch also includes rhetoric about the accounts being "your money," and giving every worker a stake in the "ownership society." These claims are mostly bad math, faulty logic and deception. Advocates of private accounts assume that the stock market will give the same returns in the future as it has in the past, even though price-to-earnings ratios in the stock market are far higher now than in the past, and the Social Security trustees project that profits will grow at about half the rate they did in the past. None of the proponents of privatization have yet passed the "no economist left behind test," which asks them to show the set of dividend yields and stock price increases that add up to the stock returns they assume in their analysis.

Private accounts also have high administrative costs. According to Bush's Social Security Commission, their private accounts will cost about ten times as much to administer as in the current system if they're handled through a single government-managed system. If Wall Street gets its hands on this money, with everyone going to his or her local bank or brokerage house--as is the case with the privatized systems in England and Chile--the costs could be thirty times as high as the cost of our Social Security system [Leiter:  that, of course, is the entire point!]. When the administrative costs are combined with real numbers on stock returns, the individual accounts will provide no better returns on average than the government bonds currently held by the Social Security trust fund. The accounts just add risk--individuals may invest poorly or retire during a market downturn, leaving them with much less money than they'd have under the current system....

Of course, the only reason anyone is even talking about cutting benefits and privatizing the program is that the right has managed to convince the public that Social Security is on its last legs. For more than two decades they have spread stories about the baby boomers bankrupting the system and multitrillion-dollar debts left to our children and grandchildren. In reality the program can pay all scheduled benefits long past the boomers' retirement. According to the Social Security trustees report, it can pay full benefits through the year 2042 with no changes whatsoever. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office puts the date at 2052....

Social Security is the country's most important and successful social program. It provides a large measure of economic security to the whole country, uniting the interests of the poor and the middle class. The program not only keeps tens of millions of retirees out of poverty, it also provides disability and survivors insurance to almost the entire working population. More children receive benefits from Social Security than from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (the revamped welfare program). Social Security is also extremely efficient and has a minimal amount of fraud and abuse.

It's a hugely popular program. Close to 90 percent of the public regularly affirms that we spend either too little or the right amount on Social Security. While polls also show majority support for private accounts, that's only when the question is asked, Would you like a private account? When the real-world question, Would you like a private account if it means a cut in your Social Security benefits? is asked, substantial majorities say no.

This is one of those cases where there really aren't "two sides" of the issue that have equal epistemic merits; there is the truth, and then there are the lies.  You can guess which side the right-wing is on, of course.  I've even talked to earnest and otherwise intelligent law professors who've been suckered by the Social Security scare stories.  The "big lies" keep getting bigger....

UPDATE:  Reader Barry Lam recommends Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot's 1999 book Social Security:  The Phony Crisis; he notes that it "is highly readable and required reading even today.  I have yet to see any successful refutation of their points."  How could there be?  The crisis is phony, and only the ignorant or the dishonest claim otherwise.

Philosophy Graduate School and the Teaching Jobs Really Out There

Reader B.J. Robidoux writes:

I read your article about landing a faculty philosophy job, and this is what struck me as strange, not being in either philosophy or academia. You say that the research universities produce metaphysicians who aren't prepared to teach undergraduate survey courses, etc. My question is, why does the profession marginalize the students who are developing the skills demanded by the market?

Here's my impression: your business is withering away, sort of like the American auto industry, and there is declining demand for your product at the undergraduate level. The tenured professors resemble the UAW, well paid but aging and rapidly disappearing, and they are being replaced by contract workers. Ultimately this will affect the research programs, which will have less and less justification for producing teachers who will never get a job and don't have qualifications for the jobs available.

And my question: How does the profession justify not training students for the available jobs? And why isn't there more focus on the history of philosophy at the graduate level?

Just my impression. I'd be curious if you had a response. Always enjoy reading your blog.

Here is a relevant portion of the article of mine which prompted Mr. Robidoux's inquiry:

One problem in recent years has been the growing culture gap between the issues that are "hot" in the top graduate programs and what is actually taught at the bulk of institutions of higher education in the United States. Thus, there is a growing demand for the teaching of "applied ethics" (which includes both medical ethics and business ethics), yet hardly any of the top graduate programs boast specialists in that area or train doctoral students in it.

Applied ethics is viewed as unrigorous and philosophically superficial, hence it is largely ignored by the leading programs. Yet according to A.P.A. data for the 1995-96 job market, the ratio of jobs seeking an A.O.S. of "Applied Ethics" to candidates with that A.O.S. was almost 1 to 1. By contrast, for an A.O.S. of metaphysics -- a "hot" area in all the leading departments -- the ratio of candidates to jobs was about 4 to 1.

That being said, it seems perverse to go to graduate school in philosophy and then choose your field based on job prospects. If you wanted to do that, you could have gotten a J.D. or M.B.A., and surely have done very well. You went to philosophy grad school presumably because you loved some aspect of philosophy. The dissertation, if it is to be successful, must reflect where your true interests lie.

But there is a compromise posture. According to A.P.A. data based on a 1994 survey, more than 70 per cent of all U.S. philosophy departments offer the following courses at least once every two years: ethics, ancient philosophy, early modern philosophy, and logic. That is not surprising: any philosophy department, whether at a leading research university or at a small liberal-arts college, needs to offer the courses that cover the core of the discipline.

Relatively few departments can afford to have a specialist in cutting-edge analytic metaphysics, even if they would like to. But a specialist in metaphysics who is competent to cover the basic undergraduates courses in, say, ancient philosophy and logic, might be very attractive. Almost all departments at least aspire to maintain a serious research profile. The metaphysician who can teach the core department curriculum allows a department to meet that aspiration and fulfill its institutional obligations.

I have opened comments, and invite readers to respond to the issues raised by Mr. Robidoux (or to take issue with some of my analysis from the original article).  No anonymous postings, of course--and no rude ones, either!  Our discipline ought to be able to explain and justify its priorities in response to questions like this from interested observers--or, alternatively, we should change the priorities if these challenges can't be met.

Notre Dame Making Bid for Philosopher Potter

The University of Notre Dame is making a tenured offer to Michael Potter (philosophy of math, logic, history of analytic philosophy) at Cambridge University. 

Another Fake Religious Right Sob Story

Guess what?  It turns out that the current favorite poster boy of the right-wing liars--the California teacher who was purportedly barred from distributing the Declaration of Independence to his students--was, in fact, a religious zealot engaged in systematic proseltyzing of his students.  In a civilized country, he'd be fired for his professional derelictions, not just barred from peddling his sectarian ideology to children in the public schools.

"Top Legal Thinkers"

Various folks have called to my attention the Legal Affairs on-line poll whose aim is to identify the "top 20 legal thinkers" in America.  The list of candidates is--to put the matter gently--absurd, not because there aren't substantial "legal thinkers" on the list (there are some), but because there are far too many on the list who aren't leading legal thinkers by anyone's lights, and some who aren't even capable of thinking based on any evidence I've seen.  Since some of my own ranking material is invoked, misleadingly, as a basis for drawing up the list, I am glad to see someone documenting quite clearly that there were clearly far different criteria at work, given both the inclusions and omissions on the list.  (Many of the academic omissions would have been avoided by using another set of data points, also on my law school ranking site.)  The answer to the "mystery" of these inclusions and exclusions may also be fairly simple:  Legal Affairs is the house organ of the Yale Law School, and so may simply reflect the parochial biases and infatuations of New Haven at the moment.

I would urge my readers not to participate in this meaningless publicity stunt, whose main significance may be that it is a warning sign that Legal Affairs is on the verge of becoming defunct.  It deserves to be for offering up silliness like this.

UPDATE:  Just to be absolutely clear: Legal Affairs did not consult me on this meaningless on-line poll.  They mention my ranking site, but their list of candidates is manifestly not based on my ranking data.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Since the posting of the criticisms here and elsewhere, Legal Affairs has added the following tepid disclaimer of sorts to the site:

Since this poll went up on Thursday, December 8^th, it has drawn wide attention and some criticism. While it's already accomplishing its mission of stirring conversation about legal thinkers, we want to emphasize that it's not a ranking, but a poll—what Webster's defines as "a voting or expression of opinions by individuals." For more about how we came up with the list, click here. We've fleshed out our explanation and we're the first to admit that this is a magazine opinion poll, not a scientific endeavor.

Our hope is that the poll will be something fun for the legal community and others interested in it and that the results will help us, and readers, identify interesting thinkers whose work deserves wider attention. We won't take the results too seriously and trust you won't either, but we hope that you'll participate and vote. 

This rather sorry post-hoc rationalization for their meaningless publicity stunt doesn't merit further comment.  (And as Paul Caron [Law, Cincinnati] points out to me, these folks sure seem to be taking it deadly seriously, which, of course, was predictable.)

Communicating with "the Right"

For the Record has an illuminating posting on the subject; be sure to get to the bit about the victims of domestic violence.

Advice for Academic Job Seekers

Those seeking teaching jobs in law or philosophy may want to review the items in this category, which many job seekers reported finding helpful last year. 

Best of luck to all job seekers during this stressful process!

Some of the treats we can expect from the Texas legislature

Perhaps the best thing about the Texas legislature is that it formally meets only once every two years:  this limits, somewhat, the amount of mindless damage it can do.   But the Texas Taliban is gearing up for big victories in the session that begins in January:

The first bill assigned a priority number in the House isn't about public education or child abuse protection. It's a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Social conservatives have a firm grip on the levers of Texas government and are determined to steer the legislative session that begins Jan. 11.

Conservatives in and out of the Legislature say the time has come for school vouchers and [an end] for quickie divorces. They will fight the legalization of slot machines and champion a ban on human cloning, including embryonic stem-cell research.

And they will join ranks with some pharmacists and church-affiliated hospitals so they will not have to dispense the "morning-after pill" or other prescriptions that they morally oppose. For some hospitals, that includes not having to provide such pills for rape victims brought to their emergency rooms....

"There's no doubt that conservatives are in a good position," said Kelly Shackleford, president of the Free Market [sic] Foundation....

"Last session was kind of opening the gate that had been blockaded for so long," said Mr. Shackleford, referring to 2003 successes such as state laws prohibiting gay marriage, requiring waiting periods for abortions and allowing a moment of silence in public schools....

Few doubt that a constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman will breeze through the session and go before the voters.

An alternative proposal backed by Mr. Shackleford and others would define marriage and also prohibit civil unions or any other legal recognition of same-sex couples.

"To me, anyone who stands in front of that is committing political suicide," he said.

Conservatives also want the state to require prenuptial counseling and waiting periods for divorce.

The aim is to make marriage "more protected and more special," Mr. Shackleford said.

Bottom line:  Austin had better secede.

Don't expect any Bush photo-ops in recognition of this achievement:

Details here:

US troops injured in Iraq have required limb amputations at twice the rate of past wars, and as many as 20 percent have suffered head and neck injuries that may require a lifetime of care, according to new data giving the clearest picture yet of the severity of battlefield wounds.

The data are the grisly flip side of improvements in battlefield medicine that have saved many combatants who would have died in the past: Only 1 in 10 US troops injured in Iraq has died, the lowest rate of any war in US history.

But those who survive have much more grievous wounds. Bulletproof Kevlar vests protect soldiers' bodies but not their limbs, as insurgent snipers and makeshift bombs tear off arms and legs and rip into faces and necks. More than half of those injured sustain wounds so serious they cannot return to duty, according to Pentagon statistics.

Much attention has focused on the 1,000-plus soldiers killed in Iraq, but the Pentagon has released little information on the 9,765 soldiers injured as of this week.

UPDATE:  And because we are a compassionate country, this is how we treat the maimed and damaged.  (Thanks to Jessica Wilson for the pointer.)

"Atheist": the Perfect Insult

Pharyngula has details.