Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

2010: Philosophers Who Died

Here is a list of philosophers and historians of philosophy whose passing during 2010 was noted on the blog:  Kurt Baier, Jacques Brunschwig, Richard Cartwright, Denis Dutton, Antony Flew, Philippa Foot, David Furley, Pierre Hadot, John Haugeland, Paul Hoffman, David Hull, Claude Lefort, Ralph McInerney, Ian Mueller, Brian O'Shaughnessy, Margaret Osler, Nelson Pike, Itamar Pitowsky, Anthony Quinton, James Ross, J. Howard Sobel, Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Mary Anne Warren.

You can see a list of prior years' deaths of philosophers here.

Farewell to the Eastern APA, Hello to Skype!

A young philosopher writes:

Given the on-going disaster at the Eastern APA, both in terms of the punishing weather and in terms of the brutal job market, I thought I would share my thoughts about a Skype interview I recently did.  As someone who is fortunate enough to have a tenure track job that I like very much, I am writing not out of bitterness or frustration but rather in the hopes that I might encourage others in my position to rethink the inexcusable circus that is the Eastern APA job market.   

Despite being happy with my present job, where I have served on a few search committees of my own, I applied for a position this year that would put me closer to extended family.  Given the sad state of the job market, I was very pleased and thankful to get a Skype interview.  Now that I have done the interview, I just wanted to point out that I know of no justification or excuse that would merit the continuation of the current practice of forcing graduate students, visiting and adjunct instructors, and untenured junior professors to endure the cost, stress, and humiliation that have become hallmarks of the job market circus at the APA.  Free technology has finally revealed that the emperor that is the job market simply has no clothes.  At this point, the *only* thing that speaks in favor of the APA facilitating the present practice is the inertia of tradition. 

The purpose of my note to you is to place the burden on the readers of your blog who would continue with the status quo.  Given the hardships caused by forcing job candidates to go to the APA, the burden is easy enough to shift to the interviewing departments as well as the APA policies that facilitate the decisions of these departments.   Keep in mind that the issue is not the old debate about the empirical data on face to face interviews and whether they introduce unwarranted biases into the hiring process or add any useful information.  Nor is the debate about whether phone interviews are adequate substitutes for traditional face to face interviews.  For present purposes, we can set those debates to one side.  The key issue I am highlighting is:  Given that every hiring department can simply use Skype to do video interviews at no cost to either themselves or the candidates, why would any departments continue to participate in the insanity that is the APA job market? 

Here are just some of the myriad benefits of Skype interviews over “face to face” APA interviews: (a) they are free for both the departments and the candidates (who often don’t have the money to attend conferences over the holidays in some of the country’s most expensive cities), (b) they are markedly less stressful for the candidates, who are able to do the interviews from the comfort of their homes or offices rather than having to navigate the stress-filled ballrooms, lobbies, hallways, and suites of hotels, (c) they enable both candidates and hiring committees to spend time with their families over the holidays rather than braving the cold and expense of compulsory mid-holiday “vacations” in the north east, (d) they can be scheduled much more flexibly, which not only benefits candidates but also makes it less stressful for the hiring committees themselves, (e) they minimize stress and fatigue as factors that influence hiring decisions by ensuring that candidates and search committees are much more at ease than they would otherwise be, (f) they save money for the departments so that departments have more funding to bring additional candidates to campus, (g) they make it possible for departments to spread out their interviews over a few weeks, making it possible for them to actually interview more candidates under more favorable conditions, and finally, (h) they send a welcomed message to candidates that the hiring department has the good practical and moral sense to set aside the irrational practices of tradition and embrace new methods and ideas that make life easier on everyone involved.  That is precisely the kind of department for which I would like to work.  So, regardless of whether I am lucky enough to get the job this year, I am committed to ensuring that whenever I serve on hiring committees in the future, I take a stand for progress and against the siren song of tradition.  My question for your readers is:  Who’s with me? 

New Books in December

Here are the books that publishers and/or authors sent me this month:

The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays by Joshua Cohen (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History by Darian Shanske (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Naturalism and Normativity edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur (Columbia University Press, 2010).

Examined Lives:  from Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011).

APA Interview Issues: Cancellations, Reschedulings, Contact Info Etc.

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY

Post on this subject here.

APA/Boston Travel Information/Advice/Updates

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY

Post on this subject in this thread.

APA Session Cancellations/Reschedulings

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY

Post information on these in this thread.

Per reader suggestions, I'm creating separate threads for each kind of information that might be useful.  Don't forget to check the original thread which already has some information on cancellations, travel info, and interviews.  I will try to make sure that new comments are approved every hour through the evening. 

In Memoriam: Denis Dutton (1944-2010)

A philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Professor Dutton may have been best known to the wider literate public for the creation of the popular Arts & Letters Daily website.   An LA Times notice here.

IHE Story on the Boston APA Disaster

Although IHE is mostly not publishing this week, to their credit they did do a story on the Boston APA disaster, which includes quotes from some APA folks.

A bit of advice for departments interviewing at the Boston APA

So with the caveat that I am not offering legal advice (since I am officially retired from the practice of law)--but since I am hearing a couple of horror stories about some departments perhaps not making accomodations for stranded job seekers (e.g., rescheduling the interviews, proposing Sykpe interviews, phone interviews, or some alternative way to "meet" with job seekers who simply can not make it to Boston under the circumstances)--let me observe that such departments would be well-advised to consult their university's counsel office as to whether or not they have discharged their EEO obligations if they fail to provide an opportunity for candidates who can not make it to Boston due to exigent circumstances to interview with them.  I realize this is a hugely unfortunate and stressful situation for all (and especially job seekers), but departments do, as I understand it, have legal obligations to the candidates with whom they have scheduled interviews when the candidates can not attend the interviews due to circumstances quite clearly beyond their control.

What's going on with the APA Meeting in Boston in Light of the Weather Disaster?

The American Philosophical Association website is on its "winter holiday," while the most important meeting of the year is snowed under in Boston, and I am hearing from loads of folks that they don't know when they can get there.  The APA site has no information about what's going on.  Have departments made contact with interviewees about re-scheduling?  Are some interviewing schools cancelling altogether?  Will the conference be extended?

Feel free to post any pertinent information and links here.  Hiring departments are welcome to post information as well about their contingency plans.

UPDATE:  Comments on this thread are now limited to logistical and informational posts (e.g., session cancellations, interviewing plans of hiring schools, travel info and the like).  We'll open a separate thread after the New Year about the lessons to be learned from this fiasco going forward.  Thanks.

2010: The Year of the Crazies

Here.  America went off the rails with the election of Reagan in 1980, but the truth is that that period of time now looks really quite sane by comparison to the past fifteen years.  The thing that bodes ill for the future of this country is that there is no sign of a return to normalcy:  the crazies just get crazier and louder, helped in large part by the Internet, and by the fact that one of the two viable political parties in the United States is now fully captured by the crazies, aided and abetted by the most venal and short-sighted elements of the American plutocracy.  Under those circumstances, it is probably at least notable, as Robert Paul Wolff observes, that Obama managed to accomplish several things since the election:  ending discrimination against gay men and women in the military; a new nuclear arms treaty; and a stealth stimulus package, in the form of payroll tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits, though at the cost of enriching the plutocracy further.   The latter may yet prove to be a bad deal, but it may well have been the only deal available.  (For a different take than Wolff's, though, do see this.)

The sad fact remains, though, that the "center" of American politics (except with respect to discrimination against minority groups) has moved steadily to the right for thirty years, so much so that the center of the Demoractic party would have been Nixon Republicans in 1970, and the Republican Party is squarely where the unhinged reactionary right was two generations ago.   If that trend continues, things can only end very badly for this country.

But for a more hopeful view, do see Wolff's entertaining predictions for 2011.

And as a counterpart to the crazies, here's a nice report on some under-appreciated "good guys and gals."

Weather Alert for Those Heading to Boston for the APA

Better keep an eye on this.  Delta has already cancelled 500 flights.  Good luck to all!

XPhil in The Philosopher's Magazine

Here.

(Thanks to Wesley Buckwalter for the pointer.)

Postmodern Xmas

Here.

(Thanks to Johnston Hill for the pointer.)

Burge on Neurobabble and "jj" on Burgebabble

Here and here.  ("jj" is the pseudonym of a philosopher of mind and cognitive science.)

Cambridge Offers Professorship to Sydney's Price

Huw Price, Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and a two-time winner of the lucrative Australian Federation Fellowships, has been offered the Bertrand Russell Professorship in Philosophy at Cambridge University (presently held by Simon Blackburn, who will be retiring this year).  Price has written widely in philosophy of science and physics, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

Some Good News for the Humanities: $20 Million to Support Humanities at the University of Wisconsin...

...including $2.5 million specifically for a Chair in ancient Greek philosophy!

(Thanks to Samuel Howard for the pointer.)

ADDENDUM:  Wisconsin's press release is here.  They are hoping to fill the ancient Greek philosophy Chair, it indicates, by fall 2011.

CORRECTION:  Folks at Wisconsin tell me the press release is in error:  the Chair will be advertised and searched for during 2011-12, so will be filled by fall 2012, not 2011.

ANOTHER ADDENDUM:  Steve Nadler (Wisconsin) tells me that the Philosophy Department will also get three or four additional positions over the next five years from this new funding, another tremendous opportunity given the job market.

A comment on this year's job market

Many years ago (1992 to be precise), I can recall, with pleasant surprise, getting a convention interview with UCLA just 3 days before Xmas.  (Didn't get that job, but it was still good for morale!  And I'll never forget Robert Adams's poker face when asking me about Nietzsche!)  If that's indicative of how late in the day schools schedule APA interviews (anecdotal evidence suggests it is), then job seekers might have some hope of still hearing about interviews today.  The volume of applications that schools have received this year (25-50% higher than normal is what, again, the anecdotal evidence suggests) has definitely meant that it has taken longer for schools to decide whom to interview.  And, of course, schools that skip the APA, and bring candidates directly to campus, will likely be making decisions through the December break.

But whatever the timeline, my impression--from talking with colleagues elsewhere, and from talking with candidates for whom I've written--is that this year's market is brutal, even worse than last year's.  While there has been a slight increase in the total number of positions advertised, the 'backlog' of candidates from prior years means that the ratio of job seekers to positions is likely to turn out to be even more unfavorable than it has been the last two years.  There are plenty of candidates (maybe the vast majority) who, ten years ago, would have had four or five times as many interviews, but because of the massive economic contraction, have but one or two interviews this year.   But who, thinking about graduate school in 2003 or 2004 could have anticipated the meltdown of the capitalist system that has rocked much of the world the past two years?   In light of the desperate circumstances we now face in academia, it may be apt to recall the observations of Max Weber from a century ago:

I know of hardly any career on earth where chance plays such a role. I may say so all the more since I personally owe it to some mere accidents that during my very early years I was appointed to a full professorship in a discipline in which persons of my generation undoubtedly had achieved more that I had. And, indeed, I fancy, on the basis of this experience, that I have a sharp eye for the undeserved fate of the many whom accident has cast in the opposite direction and who within this selective apparatus in spite of all their ability do not attain the positions that are due them.

"The Simpsons" Make Fun of Grad Students

Thanks to Jonathan Trerise for the pointer.

A Petition in Support of the Faculty and Students at the University of Puetro Rico

Here.  Professor Rosado Haddock explains:

[The]  petition [is addressed) to a member of parliament in charge of educational affairs. [I]t essentially states the following:

1. that the government should look for funds for the university elsewhere and not in the pockets of the students;

2. that the president, the chancellor and the president of the Board of Directors should resign;

3. that the police should completely abandon the university, since the presence of the police and military police, and the use of brute force that they represent are incompatible with the rights to free expression, free creativity and to the search for knowledge;

4. to allow the university to continue being the center of free expression and the acquisition of knowledge it has been up to this day;

5. to help maintain the tradition of academic excellence that the University of Puerto Rico has represented for the Puertorrican nation;

6. to help avoid the educational and cultural catastrophe to which the UPR is presently conducted, which would be a shame for everybody;

7. to help defend the university from external interests, both political and economic, that menace its autonomy, the ethical principles on which it was founded and the constitutional rights of the Puertorricans, as well as the universal rights of each and every citizen of the world.

Please consider signing.

In Memoriam: Richard L. Cartwright (1925-2010)

Professor Cartwright, longtime member of the philosophy faculty at MIT (where he was professor emeritus), passed away on December 19.  I will link to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  MIT has posted Judith Jarvis Thomson's admiring remarks on Cartwright for a festschrift published for him a number of years ago.  They are both evocative and sociologically instructive about a certain conception of philosophy.  Alex Byrne tells me a memorial notice will be forthcoming shortly.

ADDENDUM:  There is now a memorial notice and a link to a Facebook appreciation page at the same link, above.

I'm really not sure if this is a joke

I am hoping it is.  An excerpt:

Inverting the way we commonly talk and think about domestication, the book will explore how grasses, grains, various animals such as wolves, cows, cats, goats, and microbes, as well as technologies have conspired to domesticate human beings for their own ends. Throughout North America and other parts of the world, for example, grass cultivated humans to be beings that love lawns and large grassy areas for their sports so that humans would spread grass all about the world, thereby getting itself replicated. Likewise, cows, in a sinister plot against other herd animals, cultivated humans to have a particular love of beef so that they might get replicated and spread across the globe, cornering the market on prime pieces of grazing land.

(Thanks to a pseudonymous reader for sending me to this, shall we say, unusual blog.)

UPDATE:  Mohan Matthen, the philosopher of mind and biology at the University of Toronto writes:

It's a wacky idea, but not without a sane and sober (and brilliant) precedent.

Grasses coevolved with humans: certain grasses became nutritious so humans would consume them and excrete their seeds all over so that the grasses themselves prospered. (Jared Diamond discusses this case in Guns, Germs, and Steel. He also observes that natural selection acts oppositely on fruits and seeds: fruits evolve to be good-tasting to attract animals to eat them; seeds within the fruits evolve to be hard or bitter or even poisonous so that they are not chewed up, but are rather spat out or excreted whole, to reproduce.) Fruits coevolved with old world monkeys: the fruit developed colour so that they are easily visible to these monkeys; the monkeys developed colour vision so they could spot the fruit. The monkeys found a source of nutrition; the plants that grew the fruit got propagated wherever the monkeys went. (J. D. Mollon has developed the co-evolution thesis for colour vision.) 

Of course, in the above cases, there is natural variation on both sides, from which the mutual benefit can evolve. Some plants of a species have attributes that make them apt to be taken up by humans in a way that aids their reproduction; others have these attributes in lesser measure. Similarly, among humans there are some who are prone to eat the grass and fruit with such attributes and others who do not. The former of each kind prosper. That's co-evolution, and if it can be described as the domestication of plants, then the opposite description is equally apt. But I didn't see much about co-evolution in the blog that you linked.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  So it's definitely not a joke.  Professor Levi has offered a useful clarification of what he calls his "hyperbole" from the original posting, and confirms that he did, indeed, have in mind the co-evolution hypothesis point noted by Professor Matthen.  He also offers, though, the following somewhat puzzling further explanation for how the co-evolution point fits with his interests in the Continental traditions in philosophy:

In what context does such a project make sense? Well, in the context of continental theory where my work is primarily situated. What might motivate such a project within the framework of continental theory? Well, the fact that most continental theorists argue that humans in some way or another construct reality. Among the continentals we have the Kantians that argue that the mind structures reality, the phenomenologists that argue that intentionality structures reality, the linguistic and semiotic idealists that argue that language and signs construct reality, those that argue that power and discourse constructs reality, and the hermeneuts that talk about how history constructs reality. Everywhere we have continentalists arguing, in a manner that repeats the story of Adam in the Garden of Eden, that humans are sovereigns that construct reality.

My little project, which perhaps suffers from hyperbole (but how else do you draw attention to an important point), merely tries to draw attention to the role played by nonhumans in the development and construction of humans and their societies.

It's unclear, though, how any causal hypothesis about the structure of the world--whether physical or biological--could be responsive (or even relevant) to a philosophical thesis about the human contribution to the conceptual structuring of our understanding of the world (of which the hypothesis about co-evolution is but one of many examples).   I have invited Professor Bryant to comment further, and welcome input from other interested readers.

 

Kant and Poker

This appears to be for real.

(Thanks to Ken Feinstein for the pointer.)

A great new way to waste time this holiday break: Google Book's New Searchable Database!

Philosopher Zvi Biener (Western Michigan) writes:

This might be of modest interest to some. Google has just released a tool for viewing relative word frequencies in their database of scanned books (slightly more details on the exact subset of books can be found here). I inputted the names of the Top 10 Most Significant Philosophers of Science of the 20th-Century, as polled this October. This is the resulting chart.  Caution must be exercised, of course: this is a chart of full-name instances only, relying on the results of an imperfect OCR process, in books only, across all disciplines, etc., etc., etc. The dataset is available for those with spare time.

Besides the most obvious navel-gazing uses (like searching for you and your famous colleagues!), you can also chart certain philosophical fashions.  Relatively few philosophers today realize that Auguste Comte ("wasn't he a positivist?") was actually one of the cultural giants of the 19th-century--but his fading fortunes are well-revealed in a search of books between 1825 and 2000 in comparison to Kant, Hegel, and Spinoza.  Or consider the shifting levels of interest since 1925 in Ralph Barton Perry and Henry Sidgwick.  Or Hegel's fading influence in German scholarship during the 19th-century, only to recover in the 20th.  Or how prominent American philosophers compare to prominent scholars in other fields.  Have fun.

UPDATE:  Philosopher David Auerbach (North Carolina State) writes:  "Two important points about using the search.  The distortion introduced by it being only books is important, particularly since for most of the 20th century articles were where the action was.   Second, if one of your search terms has high frequency it can swamp the others; get rid of it and the scale shifts so that you can see the details of the less frequent ones."  The former point was certainly true in Anglophone philosophy for much of the 20th-century, though one would expect books to reflect the prominence of certain articles as well.

ANOTHER:  More Google weirdness.  (Thanks to C.E. Emmer for the pointer.)

"Electro-Rorty"

Cute (thanks to Jacob Nerney [Brandeis]).

Not Nice Referees

Reader Stephen Lavelle sends a link to this choice compendium of wicked excerpts from referee reports for a science journal; a few examples:

The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.

I suppose that I should be happy that I don’t have to spend a lot of time reviewing this dreadful paper; however I am depressed that people are performing such bad science.

The biggest problem with this manuscript, which has nearly sucked the will to live out of me, is the terrible writing style.

I agreed to review this Ms whilst answering e-mails in the golden glow of a balmy evening on the terrace of our holiday hotel on Lake Como. Back in the harsh light of reality in Belfast I realize that it’s just on the limit of my comfort zone and that it would probably have been better not to have volunteered.

"Do people actually believe in objective moral truths?"

More interesting discussion at "On the Human," this time courtesy of Joshua Knobe (Yale).

"Smartest" Academics by Field

It's now official:  "Philosophers are the smartest humanists, physicists the smartest scientists, economists the smartest social scientists."

(Thanks to Peter Kail for the pointer.)

Canadian MA Student Under Attack for Thesis Deemed "Offensive" to Jews

More precisely, it is critical of the exploitation of the Holocaust for political advantage, apparently a verboten topic in the new Canada.  But like the earlier attack on the conference at York University, this is a sign of a very ugly political climate in Toronto when it comes to honest discussion of Israel.

(Thanks to Moti Gorin for the pointer.)

Now *this* is serious: Julian Assange Trying to Suppress Dialetheism!

The proof.

(Thanks to Peter Ludlow for the pointer.)

Notable Retirements (Recent and Prospective) That Prospective Students Should Be Aware Of

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 15, 2010 (some more updates)

Especially because we will not get a new PGR out till 2011, I thought it might be useful for students thinking about graduate school in philosophy to flag some significant recent or imminent retirements of well-known philosophers; in many cases, the affected departments have already made new appointments in the areas affected by the retirement:

Neera Badhwar (ethics) has retired at the University of Oklahoma, Norman (and moved to George Mason University).

Simon Blackburn (ethics, philosophy of language) will retire from Cambridge University at the end of this academic year (he will continue part-time at UNC-Chapel Hill).

Lesley Brown (ancient philosophy) will retire at Oxford University in September 2011.

John Brough (phenomenology) has retired from Georgetown University.

Patricia and Paul Churchland (philosophy of mind, science, and cognitive science) have retired at the University of California at San Diego.

Edwin Curley (early modern philosophy) has retired at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Jonathan Dancy (ethics) will retire from the University of Reading next summer (but will continue with his part-time post at the University of Texas at Austin).

William Demopoulos (philosophy of mathematics and science) will retire from the University of Western Ontario in summer 2012, but will also not be teaching during the 2011-12 academic year.

John Earman (philosophy of science and physics) has retired at the University of Pittsburgh.

Daniel Farrell (moral & political philosophy) has retired at Ohio State University.

Jerry Fodor (philosophy of mind, cognitive science) is NOT on a phased retirement at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, as previously reported, but he will be teaching only half-time going forward.

R.G. Frey (applied ethics) has retired at Bowling Green State University.

Alan Gabbey (early modern philosophy) will retire from Barnard College and Columbia University in 2012, but 2010-11 will be his last year of teaching.

Martin Golding (philosophy of law) has retired at Duke University.

William L. Harper (decision theory, philosophy of science, Kant) has retired at the University of Western Ontario.

W.D. Hart (philosophy of mathematics, logic, metaphysics) has retired at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Michael Inwood (Continental philosophy) will retire at Oxford University in September 2011.

Brian Loar (philosophy of mind and language) has retired at Rutgers University at New Brunswick.

Sabina Lovibond (ethics, Wittgenstein) will retire at Oxford University in September 2011.

Alasdair MacIntyre (ethics) has retired from the University of Notre Dame.

Patrick Maher (philosophy of science, decision theory) has retired at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Alexander P.D. Mourelatos (ancient philosophy) will retire at the University of Texas at Austin as of January 2011.  (He will continue to be in residence, and, knowing Alex, I am sure will remain involved with the classical philosophy program.)

Derek Parfit (ethics, philosophy of mind) has retired at Oxford University (though will continue part-time, to the best of my knowledge, at NYU, Rutgers, and Harvard, as he has been doing).

Alvin Plantinga (epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion) has retired at the University of Notre Dame.

Peter Smith (logic) will retire from Cambridge University at the end of this academic year.

Michael Stocker (ethics) will conclude a phased retirement this academic year at Syracuse University.

Gisela Striker (ancient philosophy) will retire from Harvard University this year.

Ralph Walker (Kant) will retire at Oxford University in September 2011.

Merold Westphal (Continental philosophy) will retire at Fordham University this Spring.

Allen Wood (Kant, 19th-century) will retire from Stanford University at the end of the 2010-11 academic year, and move to Indiana University, Bloomington, where he will continue to teach.

Let me know of omissions of significant recent (this past academic year) or impending (scheduled for this academic year) retirements.

Special Issue of Synthese on "Evolution and Its Rivals"

Available free on-line through the end of the month!  Longtime followers of my "Texas Taliban Alerts" will, no doubt, be particularly interested in the extended discussion of the ID creationism apologetics of Francis Beckwith.  (Earlier relevant items here, here and here.)   Alas, one of the essays, by Robert Pennock (Michigan State), appears to be a purported defense of the demarcation problem against Laudan's famous critique.

University of Puerto Rico (including Philosophy) Under Threat, Occupied by Police

Philosopher Guillermo Rosado Haddock has sent the following letter to philosophical colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere:

Dear Colleagues:

    I am not discussing here any philosophical issue but just asking for
some international awareness about the terrible emergency situation at the University of Puerto Rico. The University of Puerto Rico's main campus -and also three other ones- have been invaded by the police and military police.

    Brief History: Puerto Rico -a Latinamerican Spanish speaking country- has never been a free country since the beginning of the 16th century, when it became a colony of the Spanish monarchy. At the end of the nineteenth century and as a result of the so-called Spanish-American war it became a colony of the United States of America. The University of Puerto Rico was founded in 1903. For some decades it had only two campuses, the Río Piedras and the Mayagüez campuses, which are still the biggest and the most important. Since the 1960s it expanded and to this day has eleven campuses.  From an academic standpoint, the best  epoch of the UPR was that of the 1950s and 1960s when thanks to the appointment of many exiled academicians both from the Spanish Civil War and the second World War, and others fleeing from totalitarian regimes in other Latinamerican countries, the UPR became one of the very best Latinamerican universities.

    Due to to the abnormal political status, since a 1948 political strike and then tlater due to the tensions during the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the1970s, there have been conflicts at the university, especially at the biggest Río Piedras campus -where I have taught for a little bit more than three and a half decades. The strong
development of the pro-statehood movement beginning in the middle of the 1960s, and especially of an extreme rightist fringe of that movement has produced some clashes with the main campus where a considerable number both of students and professors want Puerto Rico to be a free country. During the conflicts in the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s the police forces, especially the military police -called "fuerza de choque" (collision force)- entered the university causing a chaos, many injured and a few deaths. They entered once more the Río Piedras campus in 1976 and for many months in the five months long first economic strike of 1981-1982 against a triplication of the matriculation fees.

    From then on the university administrators decided to maintain the police outside the university, and there were very few and always minor conflicts until 2005. In that year there was once more an economic strike due to a new increase of the matriculation fees. Politically , since 1968 the colonialist party -which had been by far the strongest- and the pro-statehood party have succeeded each other at the helm of the government.  However, none of the pro-statehood governors (there were three of them) had been a far-to-the-right member of the USA republican party. That happened for the first time at the end of 2008, when Luis Fortuño, a disciple of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and so far to the right as the so-called Tea Party in the USA, obtained the governorship. Since then, in two years of government, this extreme neo-liberal government with some fascist traits has directed all its energies against the workers and against cultural institutions.

    There have been some 25,000 layoffs of government employees accompanied by even more in the private sector. Moreover, he has almost dismantled cultural institutions like the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (Puertorrican Institute of Culture), the Escuela de Artes Plásticas (School of Plastic Arts) and the Conservatorio de Música (Music's Conservatory). But by far the most important public institution in Puertorrican history is the University of Puerto Rico, which is also by far even now the best university in my country. (There are some private "universities", namely, two mediocre ones and others that do not deserve being called 'universities'.) Arbitrary decisions made by the Junta de Síndicos (Board of Directors) and the president of the UPR caused a two months strike last semester (from mid-April to mid-June, though the semester normally ends by mid-May). The Board of Directors (to which belong mostly non-academicians, supposedly representative of the people but really representing the interests of the government and private interests of millionaires) violated the agreement that finished the strike, and since then has been taking measures against professors, employees and students.  They have abolished previously determined increases in the wages of all employees, including professors, as well as promotions of professors.  Moreover, they have arbitrarily decided to put a lower bound to the number of students in the different courses. In the case of graduate courses, the lower bound is 10, which means that I will never be able to teach a graduate course again. Thus, I opted for retirement effective the 31st of this month (though it is now not clear when will the semester end).

    In fact such a measure and the many obstacles that the administration puts to the appointment of new professors will probably make many graduate programs disappear. In particular, the Philosophy Department at Río Piedras, the only philosophy department in the whole country and the only place in the whole country where you can study an M.A. in Philosophy -B.A in Philosophy can also be studied in Mayagüez, where there is a sort of sub-department of Philosophy as part of a much bigger Department of Humanities-, is on the verge of disappearing. Usually, in better days we had ten professors in the Philosophy Department at Río Piedras. Presently, we have four professors and six vacancies. In order to have a chairman we had to ask for help from the sub-department in Mayagüez. Since I am retiring and one of my colleagues is almost seventy, there exists the strong possibility that the department will have only two to three professors in the near future.

    Among the arbitrary measures taken by the Board of Directors and the president of the UPR there is a special $800 fee, besides the matriculation fees, per year for each student. That would reduce in about %15 the number of students at the UPR, since they will not be able to pay the extra fees.  It would be especially damaging to graduate programs, since graduate students' matriculation fees are three times as high as those of the undergraduate, and with two to three exceptions per graduate program they do not receive any economic assistance. The Graduate Program in Philosophy has two to three graduate assistants of a total of some twenty or more graduate students, but in other more peopled programs like History or Hispanic Studies the proportion is three or four assistantships from more than one-hundred students. In view of this extra fee that woul begin in January 2011, the students had a two days strike last week and announced an indefinite strike beginning next week. The president and the Board of Directors asked the governor for "help" and the governor ordered an invasion of the university campuses (Río Piedras + thre smaller ones) by the police, in the case of Río Piedras, by the military police, and they have already announced that the police will stay permanently in the campus. On the basis of former experience, especially during the 1981-1982 strike, we all fear the worst.

    In fact, this is simply a part of the government's plan. They want to close the public university and then get rid of students, professors and other employees that are political dissidents, i.e that are not right wing pro-statehooders. They also want to use that opportunity to sell some of the campuses to some of the so-called "universities", the president of one of which helped economically the present governor to win the elections.   

    In view of the terrible situation described, I would like those of you that have some contact with organizations of liberal academics to inform them of the situation and to denounce it wherever you can, in order to put some international pressure to the government of Puerto Rico and the Board of Directors of the University of Puerto Rico. In view of the colonial status of Puerto Rico, most news about this country do not transcend our frontiers, but the situation at the University of Puerto Rico is probably worse than that of the protesting students in England, since in England the government is certainly not a neo-fascist one like in Puerto Rico, nor one that has already menaced with the use of extreme force and violence -a little bit of which was already experienced a few months ago.

    Best regards to all of you, many thanks, and my best wishes that next
year will be intellectually very productive for all of you.
        Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock

        
I've opened comments for readers with additional information, pertinent links, etc.  Professor Rosado Haddock seems to be correct that these developments are receiving almost no attention in the U.S.--this is the first I've heard of them.

More on the London Protests Against the Massive Tuition Hikes

Here.

(Thanks to Matthew Smith for the pointer.)

APA Hikes Fee for On-Site Registration!

Manyul Im (Fairfield) writes:

Did you know about the on-site registration fee hike by the APA? I suspect a lot of people like me don’t know. I don’t think I received any email notice about it; I think there should have been, given the fact that it’s a 50% (!) rate hike. Here’s the announcement pasted from the APA site PDF:

    APA DIVISIONAL MEETING REGISTRATION CHANGE 


    PLEASE NOTE: THERE HAS BEEN A CHANGE IN REGISTRATION POLICY.  IT 
    NOW COSTS LESS TO REGISTER IN ADVANCE THAN AT THE MEETING.  The 
    rates for advance registration are the same as last year’s rates; there is now a 
    supplement for registering in person at the meeting.  The purpose of this 
    change is to encourage as many attendees as possible to pre-register, thereby 
    reducing the long lines at the Registration Desk at the start of the meeting. 
 
    Rates for registration are as follows: 
 
    APA Members: $60 for advance registration, $90 for on-site registration 
 
    Non-members: $90 for advance registration, $120 for on-site registration 
 
    Student members: $10 for advance registration, $20 for on-site registration 
 
    Of the $60 the Eastern Division collects from each APA member who pre- 
    registers, $40 will be returned to the National Office to cover the salaries of 
    staff members essential to the functioning of the Division. The remaining $20 
    will go to offset meeting expenses directly.  All those participating in the 
    meeting are expected to register, and to wear their name badges to signify that 
    they have done so.  The staff conducts random checks at the meeting, and 
    those who have not registered are asked to do so immediately.

I would be fine with the rate hike, though this seems like a big hike, if it were possible to register online, but you still have to fax in a registration and you can’t do that past Dec. 6. Call me delinquent but I didn’t even think about checking the APA site until this week. I guess this speaks to the numerous calls for updating the website, on your post about the APA.

UPDATE:  One reader reports getting an e-mail from the APA about this several months ago, though completely shares the annoyance about being unable to register on-line.

ANOTHER:  Steve Hales writes:  "A quick comment about the APA advance registration issue. I TRIED to register in advance. I called Linda Smallbrook at the APA and left a message, and sent her email before the preregistration deadline. She 
never replied in any way. I wonder how many other people tried and failed to preregister." 

I'm opening comments, if others want to weigh in.  Usual rules apply.

Zurn from Kentucky to U Mass/Boston

Somewhat belated:  Christopher Zurn (social & political philosophy, philosophy of law, Critical Theory), previously Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, has taken up a post (starting this fall) as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachussetts at Boston.

U of California Raises Retirement Age, Reduces Benefits for New Hires

This, I suspect, is a move that will have substantial consequences down the road for the University of California System, which had, for a long time, probably the best retirement benefits of any state university system in the country.  The raising of the retirement age may actually benefit the system, at least short-term, by keeping distinguished senior faculty in the UC system longer--it has not been uncommon for prominent UC faculty to retire long before age 70, draw a substantial pension, and then take up a full-time teaching post elsewhere.

Thoughts from readers about the impact of this move?  Links to more detailed information also welcome.

New Journal: "Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy"

I don't usually announce new journals, but this one is open access, so seems like it should be encouraged and publicized.  They are now accepting submissions.  I trust they will publish articles that also explain how what used to be an actual movement in philosophy ceased to exist!

"How to write a thread on the Leiter Reports blog"

Philosopher Steve Hales (Bloomsburg) sends along this extremely funny parody, inspired by some recent discussion threads on this blog.  Even if, like all parodies, it's perhaps a tad unfair, it still made me laught at loud, so my thanks to Professor Hales for permission to share:

Original post:

Before starting a career in philosophy, you should know that you will almost certainly be dead before you are 100. 

Reply1: Stated so stridently, the poster’s claim is not true. Many people live to 100 and beyond, in large part due to their own lifestyle choices. The warning is too extreme; I’ve heard of several people who have lived past 100.

Reply2: The whole issue is an empirical one. Or, rather, there are several, related, empirical questions here. It is irresponsible to adopt an age position prior to the relevant studies.

Reply3: The poster ignores the vital gender gap in longevity—women live considerably longer than men, and nearly all centenarians are women.

Reply4: I’m offended by the implicit assumptions made about women in the previous post. The only reason women live longer than men is that men gorge themselves on all the world’s resources and then die from overconsumption. If men only stopped oppressing women, then men would live longer as well.

Reply5: The poster fails to take into account the fact that many people would choose not to live anywhere near 100. The poster’s snide, pro-age bias clearly reflects a failure to realize how many people live lives of suffering that make their lives not worth living, especially to extreme old age.

Reply6: Has the poster ever reflected on the fact that only tenured faculty are likely to have the security and health benefits to live to 100? Think about the poor itinerant adjuncts once in awhile.

Reply7: These short lifespans are an embarrassment to the profession. Can’t the APA do anything about it?

Suckerpunch, redux

An alert reader informs me that I may have misinterpreted the offending Tweet, that it may not be Christopher Roussel who plans to suckerpunch me, but Dave Mesing.  I'm afraid Twitter syntax is beyond me, so I guess I'll just have to take precautions against both of these tough guys.  Sigh.

Ryanair Not Popular, It Appears

Judging from this.

"Should I go to graduate school in philosophy?"

Eric Chwang (Colorado) calls to my attention this site created by his colleague Michael Huemer.  It's certainly quite opinionated, but of course we like that!  I think I mostly agree with what he says, though perhaps at points it's a bit too negative (e.g., is it really true that an undergrad who needs paper ideas is unlikely to become a good researcher?  surely many students develop these skills over time).  But without saying more about my own reactions to the advice, let me invite readers to post their reactions to Professor Huemer's advice.  Signed comments will, as usual, be very strongly preferred.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Religiosity on the Decline in Canada

Not surprising, but here's the evidence.

(Thanks to Les Green for the link.)

UPDATE:  Reader Roger Albin sends a link to this interesting study (and do click on the chart at the end), which suggests that Americans may be much more likely to tell pollsters that they're religious than they are to actually engage in religious activities and services.

Thoughts on Templeton Foundation Funding?

Bence Nanay (Antwerp & Cambridge) writes:

I know you ran a piece on the Templeton Foundation, but as I know that a lot of philosophers in the current crunch for external funding consider applying or have applied, it may be a good idea to see what people think of accepting funding from them. I know that some very good and respected philosophers want to hear nothing of them and some other very good and respected philosophers took their money, so it should be a lively exchange that could help some of us about whether we should consider them as an acceptable funding source...

My view is unchanged from before:  while the Templeton Foundation undoubtedly devotes resources to muddying certain intellectual waters, it has, to my knowledge, funded substantial philosophical research projects, without unsavory strings attached.  But I invite signed comments from readers with views about this.

DePaul Tenure Controversy, Again--But This Time Involving a Philosophy Professor

I have no information beyond what's contained in these links:  here, here, and here.  Many readers will recall the scandal of Norman Finkelstein's politically motivated firing several years ago, in which the DePaul Administration behaved disgracefully.  More recently, the same Administration, with its characteristic heavy-handedness and lack of academic judgment, axed the Dean of the law school and appointed a replacement without even consulting the faculty.  That history certainly should make one skeptical that they have behaved honorably in this instance.

UPDATE:  Some of these links imply that the decision to deny tenure was made initially at the departmental level, which would complicate the picture considerably.  But, again, it's not entirely clear what the process was based on these initial reports.

British Parliament Passes Proposed Fee Increase for Universities

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY TO ENCOURAGE CONTINUED DISCUSSION AND INFORMATION

Further thoughts from readers in the UK about what transpired today?  Also, readers are invited to continue the lively and informative discussion from the earlier thread here.

The handling of the G8/20 meetings in Toronto "amounted to martial law in Toronto"

 A propos our earlier discussion, the official review of police (mis)conduct in Toronto is now out, and the Ontario ombudsman has concluded that it constituted  “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history” and “amounted to martial law in Toronto.”

(Thanks to Michel-Antoine Xhignesse for the pointer.)

From the bowels of Cyberspace...

...come bountiful pearls of human wisdom.  Sometimes readers send them, sometimes I happen to follow back a link to the blog and am rewarded with a find.   I've collected a few for your reading pleasure.

Middlesex Philosophy Student Seriously Injured by Police During Yesterday's London Protests

Several readers sent this story.  Police are always the same, whether in a democratic or undemocratic society--something to bear in mind should you attend a protest.