Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Hiring Departments: Please Use "Academic Jobs Online"

MOVING TO FRONT GIVEN IMPORTANCE OF DISCUSSION

Philosopher Elizabeth Harman (Princeton) writes with a timely message, which I hope all departments will heed:

Please take note that academicjobsonline.org is a great service that makes things *much* easier for job candidates and departments that are trying to place their students.  This service is free for job applicants and only requires applicants and letter-writers to upload all their materials once.  Then to apply to each of the hiring departments using the service, applicants merely need to tick a few boxes.  Several philosophy hiring departments did use the service last year (Duke, Tufts, Yale, Stanford, Tulane, Oregon, and Washington Tacoma), and hopefully more will this year.  (All mathematics hiring uses this service.  It is much more humane for job candidates.)

There's more here (we linked to this previously, but please read it again!).  The APA, to its credit, has waived the membership fee for Interfolio for APA members, but not (as I understand it) the cost per application, which can still add up to hundreds of dollars (more than a thousand even).  Faculty:  ask yourself how you would feel about having to spend 5-10% of your gross income in a given year on job applications?  And given the diminishing marginal utility of income to middle- and upper-class income earner, that percentage is not really adequate to describe the financial hardship for job seekers.

UPDATE:  Christopher Morris (Maryland) writes:  "It might be helpful were you to open your posting to comments and invite those who have used the new service to say something about its reliability. Like most depts we are setting up our placement system for the fall and have only a little time to reorganize it. Hearing something from Duke, et al. would be very helpful to most doctoral programs."

Comments are now open; faculty, please sign your comments; students who have used the service can simply include a valid e-mail address (which won't appear), but need not sign their full name.

 

Pseudo-Science about meat eating and health

This is instructive, and no doubt the flaws in this particular study affect an enormous amount of the "science" the media picks up. about health matters.

New Books in August

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me the following new books in August:

When the State Speaks, What Should It Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality by Corey Brettschneider (Princeton University Press, 2012).

Habilitation, Health, and Agency:  A Framework for Basic Justice by Lawrence C. Becker (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Jurisprudence:  Theory and Context by Brian Bix (6th edition, Carolina Academic Press, 2012).

Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy:  Raiding the Temple of Wisdom edited by Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox (Open Court Publishing, 2012).

The Machine Question:  Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics by David J. Gunkel (MIT Press, 2012).

There is no "gossip" here, sorry

This blog does not publish gossip, though some who want to dismiss the blog (or me) will use that word.  But gossip has two characteristics:  it concerns personal, and usually properly private, matters (e.g., sexual, romantic, familial, health-related) and it is typically based on rumor and unsubstantiated hearsay.  (A typical on-line definition of "gossip" gets it about right:  "idle talk or rumour about the personal or private affairs of others.") 

This blog does not ever publish gossip; there are no rumors here about the private lives of philosophers.  The blog does publish information about professional appointments involving schools that offer post-graduate degrees, since that information is relevant to students.  This blog also does not publish based on rumors and hearsay; almost all appointments information is confirmed with the candidate involved, though occasionally only confirmation from the hiring department is available (but that's rare--usually it's because the candidate is not reachable by e-mail).   (Those protocols were put in place after it turned out that sometimes hiring departments jumped the gun.)   I sometimes see appointments "information" on other blogs, and it as often wrong or misleading as it is accurate; and sometimes when accurate, it also "jumps the gun" before a candidate has had an opportunity to communicate with colleagues about a planned move.

So if it's "gossip" about philosophers you want, this ain't the place.

616 pages...

...Spiros is concerned.

Philosophers are a bit unworldly...

...but this is still quite something.

UPDATE:  As Catarina Dutilh Novaes continues to dig, the best line in response is due to Dan Kervick:  "I can't think of a time in my life when I thought, 'Damn, I wish my penis were more sensitive!'"

ANOTHER:  24 hours later, and there's still no apology for the ludicrous comparison of circumcision to female genital mutilation, but a link to a video has been added.  The video is remarkable for being almost totaly irrelevant to the comparison at issue, but perhaps Dutilh Novaes is counting on no one really watching it.   Still, the comments are worth reading to get a sense of how utterly nuts some people are.

Brooks from Newcastle to Durham

Thom Brooks, Reader in Political and Legal Philosophy at Newcastle University, has accepted appointment as Reader in Law at the University of Durham, where he will also be an associated faculty member of the Department of Philosophy.  The appointment is effective December 1 of this year.

The controversy over the award of the "Adorno Prize" to Judith Butler

Awarding the prize to Butler should have been controversial on the merits, given the actual quality of her work (but this isn't the first time, alas, that particular Prize has been given to a charlatan).  But instead, the controversy has focused on her having verboten views about Israel and Israeli policy.  Remarkably, her response to these charges is quite cogent and lucid--I guess she can write intelligible and effective prose when she needs to!

(Thanks to Jim Nichols for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Butler fans are so touchy, who knew?

Ruth Barcan Marcus Memorial at Yale, September 29, 2012

Details here.

Here's one way in which the religious crazies and the ignorant endanger everyone...

...by opting out of vaccines.  Our pediatrician here in Chicago simply won't take as patients children who do not get vaccines.  The medical profession as a whole ought to adopt such an approach.

Best of the summer

Here are some blog posts from the summer readers might have missed, but might still find interesting:

The importance of doing unfavorable tenure reviews (June)

The QS subject rankings are complete garbage (July)

Grad student representatives at faculty meetings? (July)

Rewriting a job market letter for a philosophy PhD for purposes of law school admissions (July)

What areas are most important for a strong PhD program? (July)

Tenure again..this time in the courts (early August)

Funding sources for conferences?

A PhD student in the UK writes:

I'm a big fan of conferences (who isn't!), and while I've organized one in the past, I'm more or less completely unaware of an index (or similar) of potential sources of funding for conferences.  I'm only aware of the MIND association (which funded my last conference) and the Aristotelian Society (which doesn't really seem applicable to the particular topic I'm interested in organizing a conference around).

I wondering if you know of such an index, or whether you could ask your large and distinguished following if they know of such an index (or are interested in building one)

I don't know of resources.  Readers?  (URLs automatically convert to links, so you don't need to write them out in HTML.)

APA Entering the 21st-Century?

There's reason for hope, judging from the improved functionality of the APA site, and this letter from the new Executive Director, Amy Ferrer, which I excerpt in part:

We have ambitious goals. We are committed to modernizing the APA with a more intuitive, functional, and attractive website, including new online tools and resources for members and the public alike. We aim to better communicate with members as well as the public by creating a presence for the APA in online social networks, and we will increase and improve our member services and take on new publication initiatives....

Much of this work is already underway. For example, within weeks we will launch a new Jobs for Philosophers site with new search, sort, and bookmarking capabilities. Further, along with the new JFP, we’ll be offering our job-seeking members free access to Interfolio’s dossier service for job candidates, and APA members will also be eligible for one year of free access to Interfolio’s services for hiring committees. You will receive more information on these services very soon....

I look forward to meeting many of you at the divisional meetings and collaborating with you over the coming years. Together, we will strengthen the discipline of philosophy and build the APA into a modern and preeminent learned society.

UPDATE:  "Mr. Zero" is impressed!

Graduates by School at the Top 20 U.S. Departments, 2012-13

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY, WITH VARIOUS CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS

I've listed below graduates of leading American PhD programs who are now teaching at one of "the top 20" U.S. programs in the 2011 PGR.  Only PhD programs with placements in multiple top 20 departments are listed.  Untenured faculty are marked with an asterisk.  The list is for 2012-13.  Kripke and Martin don't technically have PhDs, but did their graduate work at Harvard.

Faculty on tenure-track at the top twenty graduated from NYU (11), MIT (9), Princeton (7), Rutgers (7), Berkeley (4), Pittsburgh (4), Yale (3), Harvard (3), and two each from UCLA, North Carolina, Columbia, Cornell, and UC Irvine.  Please e-mail me corrections.

Here are the programs with at least 10 graduates in the top 20:

1.  Princeton (62 total; 7 junior)

2.  Harvard University (58 total; 3 junior)

3.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (31 total; 9 junior)

4.  University of Pittsburgh (28 total; 4 junior)

5.  Yale University (22 total; 3 junior)

6.  University of California, Berkeley (19 total; 4 junior)

7.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (17 total; 0 junior)

8.  Columbia University (15 total; 2 junior)

9.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (14 total; 7 junior)

9.  University of California, Los Angeles (14 total; 2 junior)

11. Cornell University (13 total; 2 junior)

11.  New York University (13 total; 11 junior)

11. Stanford University (13 total; 1 junior)

14. University of Chicago (12 total; 0 junior)

Rutgers has been a top program for about 20 years, NYU for about 15 years; after them, the youngest top PhD programs on the list are MIT and Pittsburgh, which date from the 1960s.  Harvard and Princeton were the top two departments from the 1960s until the rise of Rutgers and NYU in the 1990s.  Cornell had a solidly top ten PhD program for much of the last fifty years, as did Berkeley and UCLA; Michigan has been in the top ten, often the top five, that entire time.  Chicago's was a top ten program during much of the 1960s, 70s and perhaps 80s (Donald Davidson left Chicago in 1981, Christine Korsgaard in the early 1990s).  Columbia and Yale have fluctuated from the top ten to well outside the top 25 during this half-century period.  One conclusion one might draw is that being an elite research university can compensate for the weakness of the philosophy department, but a non-elite research university has to be absolutely tops (e.g., NYU, Rutgers, Pittsburgh) in order for its graduates to succeed in marked numbers.  Michigan is perhaps the strangest underperformer here, relative to its steady prominence, though it still does respectably--the numbers are small enough that bad luck might explain the results (e.g., some prominent philosophers from Michigan died prematurely [Warren Quinn, Gregory Kavka, Robert C. Solomon]).

One non-US program--Oxford--would easily rank in the top ten if it had been included.

Here are the graduates by PhD program; only programs with at least four graduates in two or more departments (other than the PhD-granting department) are listed:

Yawn...what you need to know about sleeping

Pretty interesting, actually.

Two Senior Hires for UT Austin: Strawson from Reading, Montague from Bristol

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin has made two senior hires:  Galen Strawson (metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, history of early modern philosophy, Nietzsche), currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, will take up a new Chair in philosophy at Texas; and Michelle Montague (philosophy of mind, metaphysics), currently at the University of Bristol, will come in as an Associate Professor with tenure.  Montague and Strawson are teaching at UT in 2012-13, will be back at their UK institutions in fall 2013, and then return to UT full time in spring 2014.

In addition to these hires, UT made two additional junior appointments, and a lateral junior hire of Katherine Dunlop (Kant, philosophy of math) from Brown University.  Taken together, these five appointments will probably push UT back towards the overall top 15 in the US.

More philosophical thoughts on Ayn Rand

Here; an excerpt:

[I]n the  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Rand,  its authors write that “her advocacy of a minimal state with the sole  function of protecting negative individual rights is contrary to the  welfare statism of most academics,” claiming outright that the  overwhelming majority of professional philosophers and political  theorists have been simply unable to fairly evaluate her work because of  the biasing factor of their prior political commitments.

 

Somehow the same ‘welfare statism’ of academics has not prevented the close study of Robert Nozick’s landmark Anarchy, State and Utopia,  a sophisticated libertarian text that mounts an original, and far more  effective, argument against redistributive policies. Apart from John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, there is perhaps no more commonly-assigned book in undergraduate political philosophy classes.

 

Surely  there must be some other reason for Rand’s academic neglect. The  authors of the SEP entry do go on to suggest an additional number of  largely psychological hypotheses having to do with Rand’s dogmatic tone,  cult-like following, and emphasis on popular fiction–never  entertaining the possibility that professional philosophers think her  work is, quite simply, of poor quality. Objectively, ahem, speaking.

In Memoriam: George Nakhnikian (1920-2012)

Professor Nakhnikian was largely responsible for leading two different departments to positions of national prominence:  Wayne State in the 1950s and 1960s, and Indiana/Bloomingon in the late 1960s and 1970s.  The memorial notice from the Indiana department is here.

Philosophy blogging prize once again...

...at 3 Quarks.  To my knowledge, none of the past winners have had any impact on philosophical debates, but at least it's nice to be recognized for blogging philosophy!  (As a past winner, I can say that I did incorporate some of my entry into an actual scholarly article!)

"Philosophy Family Tree" Redux

MOVING TO FRONT--MORE CONTRIBUTIONS NEEDED

Josh Dever (Texas) has reworked his Philosophy Family Tree project as a wiki, which seems the best way to undertake this kind of project.  So please feel free to contribute after reading the introductory materials.

The Case for Retroactive Abortion

Ross Douthat inadvertently makes it.  (Karl Kraus, where are you?)

46% of the U.S. Population Utterly in the Dark about Evolution

A majority of Repugs, but substantial minorities of others!  Even the Intelligent Design scam artists don't believe this!

UPDATE:  Michael Weisberg (Penn) points out to me that these survey responses about evolution are strongly affected by how the question is presented; for discussion, see this paper.  When the questions are asked differently, the belief in evolution goes up.

Brian Leiter

Running a little experiment here, please ignore!

 

UPDATE:  Readers keep e-mailing to ask what the 'experiment' is.  Sorry for sounding mysterious, I'm puzzled by Google image results, and in particular, by the fact that this photo, which is on my law school homepage, and other places, including this blog, doesn't seem to turn up.  The Google Gods operate in mysterious and often malevolent ways.  Those of you with blogs can help by reposting the photo there or linking to this post.  Thanks. 

Kieran Healy Shows You How to Make $100...

...off of right-wing crazies.

"Mereology Map"

Another flowchart, of sorts, but this one is so far afield of areas I know about, I can't vouch for it one way or the other.  But the author, Ted Parent, also a VAP at Virginia Tech, welcomes comments!

Philosophers' Annual for 2011 Now On-Line

Here.

A metaethics "flowchart"

A useful document courtesy of philosopher David Faraci, currently a VAP at Virginia Tech.  He's taking comments and suggestions on this draft over at PeaSoup.

Where is Bentham?

Spiros wonders.

Bizarre job ad...

...which certainly looks like an attempt to do an end-run around the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Plutocracy Watch: Ideological Delusion Edition

(Thanks to Richard Marshall for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  A reader points out the article that goes with the chart.

Niall Ferguson is a Charlatan

This is nicely said.  It is curious the appetite Harvard has for these showboat performers, of dubious (e.g., Pinker) or no (e.g., Dershowitz) intellectual merit.

Zealot Birds of a Religious Feather...

...flock together.

Where should departments advertise jobs?

Michael Dickson, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina, writes:

In my department we are having this debate right now -- do we continue to use the JFP alone (no), do we advertise in JFP parallel to emerging venues (probably), or do we advertise in the emerging venues only (possibly)?

Option 2 is the safest, but also has the potential to perpetuate a system that is in terrible need of reform (or better, total replacement).

It would be very useful to see a general discussion of this point, right now, as now is the time that departments are facing this issue.

 Thoughts from readers in other departments facing these issues?  Signed comments strongly preferred.

Philosophers confess their shame

Pretty funny.

(Thanks to Carrie Jenkins Ichikawa for the pointer.)

National Repugs Turn on Missouri Senate Candidate...

...though given the condition of the Republican Party, there will no doubt be another troglodyte in the news before long.

"My ultimate Ayn Rand porn"

Anagram for "Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."

Otsuka from UCL to LSE

Michael Otsuka (political philosophy, ethics), Professor of Philosophy at University College London, has accepted a senior appointment in the Department of Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method at the London School of Economics, effective September 2013.  That's a good break for LSE, after the departure of Nancy Cartwright, and will make the program an attractive choice for students interested in political philosophy and cognate issues in social choice and rational choice theory.

Bonnie Mann on Men and Sexual Harassment

Professor Mann, some readers may recall, was a player in last summer's controversy surrounding the irresponsible "Climate for Women" section of the fake "Pluralist [sic] Guide" (now happily gone).  One wonders to what extent her essay in a recent APA Newsletter is not partly (or wholly) a commentary on events at Oregon?  That is certainly how a recent Oregon PhD interprets it.

Zombies, Schombies

At 3AM.

A week after choosing Randroid Ryan as His Running-Mate...

...Romney is now trailing Obama by two points even in the usually pro-Romney Rasmussen polls.  That's a hopeful sign. 

"Hooliganism"

Historian Juan Cole comments.

Rage Against Ryan

This is funny.

(Thanks to George Stamets for the pointer.)

Research by Philosopher Jim Tabery (Utah) Makes the NY Times (and Science)

Here.

Another Kind of Problem: Female Faculty Harassed by Students

What to do?

In Memoriam: Hugo Bedau (1926-2012)

A longtime faculty member at Tufts, he was a leading writer on and opponent of the death penalty.  The NY Times obituary is here.

Support Pussy Riot in the Face of Russian Political Persecution

There will be shows of support internationally on August 17, the day they are due to be sentenced.  (Earlier coverage here.)

(Thanks to Juliette Kennedy for the pointer.)

A new survey testing views about free will and responsibility

Here, from Nadelhoffer, Nahmias, and Sripada.  Please participate, it's fun!

Durham, LSE, and the Gaddafi Scandal

Chris Bertram (Bristol) points out to me that Durham (not philosophy) has recently hired the political theorist David Held from LSE.  Held, like Nancy Cartwright (who is also moving to Durham, as noted), was involved in supervising Saif Gaddafi's PhD thesis (which is suspected to have been plagiarized), and both were implicated in the resulting scandal about the Libyan government's involvement with the LSE.  (The full report is here, and the key bits are at pp. 28 ff.)  What role the unpleasantness of this affair played in the decion of these two scholars to leave I do not know, but several readers remarked on it.

Which journal's book reviews have the most influence?

The poll closed last Friday, and with about 300 votes, here were the top five:

1. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

2. Philosophical Review  loses to Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews by 188–75

3. Mind  loses to Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews by 195–63, loses to Philosophical Review by 121–83

4. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research  loses to Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews by 215–44, loses to Mind by 135–79

5. Ethics  loses to Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews by 205–43, loses to Philosophy & Phenomenological Research by 102–101

 Journal of Philosophy was the runner-up for the top five.  Some journals that run extensive and valuable review sections, like Journal of the History of Philosophy, were not included since they don't run reviews across a range of areas, contemporary and historical.  There were some accidental omissions from the survey, like Philosophy in Review, though I think it doubtful  any of the omissions would have displaced NDPR.  NDPR's success is due, I would venture, to the general quality of the reviews, their substantive character (due to fairly generous word limits), and their timeliness.  (I should note, of course, that I am a member of the NDPR editorial board and have contributed several reviews there.)  Gary Gutting (Notre Dame) deserves credit and gratitude for conceiving and managing this project so effectively over the last decade.  

UPDATE:  Steve Gross (Johns Hopkins) writes:

Perhaps a further reason for NDPR's success is that many folks subscribe to their email service. Speaking for myself, I'm more likely to read NDPR reviews simply because I don't need to go get them. And, if I find myself with a few minutes downtime with nothing to do (waiting in a line, say), I'll just take out my phone and read an NDPR review.

That is probably right, and was part of the wisdom of creating an on-line review service.

Shame on you for voting!

Jason Brennan (Georgetown) comments.