Tad Brennan (Philosophy, Northwestern) points out to me a quite silly article in The Atlantic Monthly by one Ross Douthat, trashing his undergraduate education at Harvard. The article has already attracted unfavorable comment here and here, and it certainly seems like nothing more than a public confession by the author of his own vapidity and shallowness. But we can not, of course, let pass this extraordinarily silly remark by Mr. Douthat about philosophy departments:
The retreat into irrelevance is visible all across the humanities curriculum. Philosophy departments have largely purged themselves of metaphysicians and moralists ... .
The response by David Velleman (Philosophy, Michigan) in the comments here is apt:
That statement about philosophy departments is nonsense. The man has no idea what he's talking about.
What I don't understand is why the Atlantic prints such trash without demanding some substantiation, or without doing fact-checking of their own. They wouldn't let an author get away with making unsubstantiated statements like this about just any subject. But academia is fair game.
UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that Mr. Douthat has posted additional, false comments about philosophy departments here, where it is also possible to post comments. I invite my many knowledgeable philosophical readers to give this silly man the intellectual drubbing he needs on this subject. Perhaps it shall force him to purge from his (apparently) forthcoming book on the subject of Harvard the ignorant nonsense about philosophy departments.
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