Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in January

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month:

Essays and Reviews, 1959-2002 by Bernard Williams (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Epistemic Paternalism:  A Defence by Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013).

The Logic of Legal Requirements:  Essays on Defeasibility edited by Jorrdi Ferrer Beltran & Giovanni Battista Ratti (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Three Views of Logic:  Mathematics, Philosophy, and Computer Science by Donald W. Loveland, Richard E. Hodel, and S.G. Sterrett (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Colorado's Philosophy Department put into a kind of receivership...

...with an external (to Philosophy) Chair taking over, in the wake of an extremely critical report by an APA Committee that the Department, to its credit, invited to come in to assess sexual harassment and other climate issues in the department.  (I had heard rumors about two faculty members accused of sexual harassment last year, though I have to say, prior to that, I had not heard, as the report says, that the Department was a "bad place" for women.  That reputation may have existed, of course--often I don't hear things, for reasons readers can imagine.)  As the report notes, the current Chair, Graeme Forbes, had been put in a rather "untenable" position by the Administration, despite his efforts to address misconduct.  Hopefully, the external Chair, with support from the Dean and Provost, can be more successful.

ADDENDUM:  The earlier suspension of PhD admissions was apparently related to this report, though as I understand it, the University (no doubt concerned about legal ramifications) would not permit disclosure of the reason at the time.

ANOTHER:  This is a rather misleading headline, since "pervasive" implies that there were lots of sexual harassers running loose in the Department, which is not at all consistent with what I've heard (and is not supported by the report).  A department can have a bad climate for women with just one or two unchecked sexual harassers (and at least one issue in the Colorado case concerns the nature of the discipline imposed to date on offender[s]).

AND ONE MORE:  A couple of readers point out a bit of the Committee Report that seems to me rather unfortunate, and inappropriate:

Realize that there is plurality in the discipline.  If some department members have a problem with people doing non-­‐feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy (or being engaged in any other sort of intellectual or other type of pursuit), they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for plurality in the discipline.  Even if they are unable to reach a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students, in formal or informal settings on or off campus.

Calls for handling disagreements about the merits of different ways of doing philosophy in a collegial way is fine, but it is absurd and outrageous to suggest that those whose judgment is that particular ways of doing philosophy are worthless, misguided or foolish should undergo "re-education" so that they think correctly and come to "appreciate" or at least "tolerate" what they believe to be without merit.  I recognize that there are a "plurality" of approaches taken in philosophy departments, and I also believe that some of them are without merit and we would be better off without them.  Every philosopher no doubt has such views.  It's outrageous for an APA Committee to even imply that having such philosophical views is unacceptable!  And it's also a distraction from the real issues.  The sexual harassment/discrimination problems in philosophy are far too serious for an APA committee to be co-opting them into an ideological program about how philosophers should conceive the discipline, a topic about which there is, correctly, philosophical disagreement and contestation, even within departments.

AND LET'S REMEMBER THIS PROBLEM ISN'T JUST AT COLORADO:  There are other "Colorado's" out there, and we have all heard the stories.  Indeed, parts of the report, sad to say, reminded me of the situation in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, at least back in 2008, which is when I left.  Though one friend of mine who left more recently, quoted this line from the Report,

"It is our strong conclusion that the department maintains an environment with unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior and divisive uncivil behavior," the report's authors wrote,

and then added, "Oh hey, sounds exactly like the Texas department!"  I hope that isn't right, but if there's any chance it still is, then I hope Texas and other departments with "climate" issues will also undertake some self-scrutiny and remediation, as Colorado has done.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Philosopher Kathryn Norlock (Trent) writes with some important points:

The APA Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Harassment recently submitted our report to the APA Board and discussed it at the Eastern APA.  Note that, as the report to the APA states, members of a department who know there are problems are rather obligated to do something about it.  As we wrote,

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/sexualharassmentreport.pdf

 "All public and private...colleges, and universities ... receiving any Federal funds must comply with Title IX.” Those responsibilities include preventing as well as responding to incidents:

• A school has a responsibility to respond promptly and effectively. If a school knows or reasonably should know about sexual harassment or sexual violence that creates a hostile environment, the school must take immediate action to eliminate the sexual harassment or sexual violence, prevent its recurrence, and address its effects.

•Even if an individual does not want to file a complaint or does not request that the school take any action on the student’s behalf, if a school knows or reasonably should know about possible sexual harassment or sexual violence, it must promptly investigate to determine what occurred and then take appropriate steps to resolve the situation.

•A criminal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment or sexual violence does not relieve the school of its duty under Title IX to resolve complaints promptly and equitably.

Marx is back, part 78: Democracy is doomed, equality is doomed, as long as capitalism survives

And it's in The New York Times no less.

Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers) interviewed...

...at 3AM.

What were you favorite book(s)/article(s) that appeared in 2013?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 21, 2013:  THIS DESERVES MORE RESPONSES!

Signed comments only:  full name and valid e-mail address.  You can name more than one, but say a couple of words about each book or article you mention, why you liked it, why it's significant, what it's contribution is to a particular literature.  I'll add my own at some point, but first I'd like readers to weigh in.

"Good Practices" for encouraging women to participate in philosophy...

...courtesy of the British Philosophical Association and SWIP.  Quite a lot of information as well as suggested practices.

(Thanks to several philosophers who sent this along.)

"1,000-word philosophy"

An interesting idea; they welcome proposals for contributions.

A-level philosophy under threat in the UK?

Reader Nathan Howards points me to this.  Comments from readers informed about these issues?

In defense of English Departments!

Michael Clune (Case Western) replies at 3AM to Alex Rosenberg's criticisms.

Professor Clune's piece raises an interesting point:  namely, what's going on in English Departments today may not be what people like Alex and myself remember from the "bad old days," like the 1980s, when English Departments were (as Princeton's A. Walton Litz put it--I am paraphrasing from memory) "the repository for all the world's bad philosophy, bad social science, and bad history."  (Litz left the English Department at Princeton and moved to Creative Writing because, as he put it, he wanted to be around people "who liked reading literature.") 

So readers, especially those of you in English Departments, what's the story?  Is Prof. Clune right or Prof. Rosenberg?  Or is the reality somewhere inbetween?

Signed comments--full name and valid e-mail address--will be strongly preferred.  (One reason for valid e-mail addresses is that sometimes I need to ask the commenter a question about what appears to be an error or typo.  I do not disclose the e-mail addresses to anyone else.)

In Memoriam: Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

Not a philosopher, but a moral entrepeneur and leader, more so than most philosophers.  The Times obituary is fairly informative about his long career, including his survival of political persecution.  It doesn't say so directly, but it is notable to have lived more than 90 years and to have been on the right side of almost every major moral and political issue of the day.  Here's one of his many lovely songs that I remember seeing him sing in concert back in the late 1970s.

UPDATE:  A nice Democracy Now memorial program on Seeger.  (Thanks to David Auerbach for the pointer.)

Philosopher by day...

...competitive powerlifter and boxer by night.   And you thought Prof. Kukla was only a pugnacious blogger!

"Philosophy of leisure"?

Who would have guessed?  Not Spiros.

UCSD's Patricia Churchland...

...on the Colbert Report.

(Thanks to Thomas Wright for the pointer.)

Nietzsche Monday

A review of a quite good collection of new essays and a very interesting interview with my friend Ken Gemes (Birkbeck), mostly about Nietzsche (he says a couple of dubious things in this regard, though also some intriguing ones).  I was particularly amused by his off-hand comment that, "I don’t doubt that Nietzsche was in some sense a naturalist," a claim that, when I first defended it systematically a dozen years ago, had lots of doubters and was a decidedly minority view.  If I may (inaptly) borrow the famous line attributed to Gandhi (regarding a rather more serious matter), "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

Networking and mentoring workshop for grad student women in philosophy...

...at Princeton this coming August.

An adjunct and...

...a parent.

Chalmers interviewed...

...at Filosofisk Supplement (out of Norway).

Value-free economics?

Not really.

Yale's alumni magazine embarrasses itself and the university

Corey Robin has funny commentary. 

Demographics and the future of higher education in America

Some interesting data.

Fagan from Rice to Utah

Melinda Fagan (philosophy of biology, epistemology), currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, has accepted a tenured offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah, where she will be Associate Professor and the first holder of the Sterling McMurrin Chair.

 

Lotteries, not elections

Philosopher Alex Guerrero (Penn) comments.

Why study philosophy?

Not to do metaphysics, according to Peter Hacker (Oxford/Kent).  Discuss.

Undergraduate linguistics majors triple...

...and the vast majority are women. 

"Naughty passengers will be crushed"

These fake London Underground signs are making the round on Facebook; don't click on the link unless you're somewhere where you can laugh out loud.

Earnings and the liberal arts degree

A more conventional approach to the "cost" of college debate, from today's IHE.

The "cost" of the cost of college

This probably gets at the real issue and tragedy.

Uruguay's unconventional President

A charming set of photos, with slightly breathless accompanying text.

Philosophy and legal education...

...at the Huffington Post.

Restoring MLK

The historian Thomas Sugrue (Penn) comments.

Public funding for higher education

Although this past year saw an increase in 40 of 50 states, the really sobering figure in the IHE article is the 2009 through 2014 changes, which are overwhelmingly negative, often hugely so.

UBC's Paul Russell on "Five Books" about freedom and responsibility

I just came across this nice interview, conducted by Nigel Warburton.

Tenure reviews and the length of articles

An untenured philosopher writes:  

Obviously those who publish longer work would benefit if length was generally associated with a multiplier in tenure and promotion deliberations. Let's stipulate that the added length under consideration is not padding or bloat, that there is not repetition, etc. Let's also stipulate that brevity is, other things being equal, a precious virtue in philosophical writing. But let's also recognize that some projects and arguments are not conducive to brief presentation.

As an example, set the multiplier at a relatively stingy (number of pages/30). Under this scheme, an 60-page article (in journal of caliber X) would be regarded roughly as 2 articles would be (in journals of caliber X), a 45-page article as 1.5, ...

I have a two-part query. First, do tenure and promotion committees (implicitly or explicitly) regard longer work in this way? Second, should they? 

My view is that they should. Longer papers, like books - which are often associated with multipliers in the sorts of deliberations I'm interested in - generally contain more argumentation and require more work to produce than shorter papers (even while being reviewed at much higher standards than your typical OUP monograph). These are things that should be recognized and rewarded by tenure and promotion committees. 

Caveat 1: we must be careful not to reward (and thereby incentivize) bloated writing. But a committee's default assumption should be that bloat, filler, etc., are generally eliminated during peer-review. Caveat 2: the amount of added work probably cannot be read directly off the page count, which is why the multiplier I've suggested is relatively stingy.

I would be curious to know what you think about this.

In tenure reviews I've done in recent years, this hasn't been an issue.  I guess if a candidate had three 60-page papers, I would note the length with respect to the question of productivity.  But the qualitative considerations tend to dominate in most of the cases I can recall.

Thoughts from readers?  Signed comments preferred, but if you're concerned that particulars of a tenure case will be apparent with your name attached, you can post with a distinctive pseudonym, but please include a valid e-mail, which will not appear.

Empirical evidence of the eternal return of the same...

...via the CBC!  (Thanks to Dirk Felleman for the pointer.)

Another summer school for female students...

...on mathematical philosophy in Munich.

Philosopher and therapist Hanna Pickard (Oxford) blogging...

...at Flickers of Freedom.

UCSD summer program for undergraduate women in philosophy

This is a nice initiative, spread the word.

Q: "What do you do for a living?" A: "I'm a philosopher."

A graduate student writes wondering how readers deal with how this dialogue typically concludes:

How do readers of your blog respond when strangers ask them, "What's your philosophy?"

Nussbaum on the emotion of anger

My colleague Martha Nussbaum talks about some of the themes she will take up in her John Locke Lectures at Oxford this Spring; this was a presentation for law students at Chicago, and so I think will be quite accessible to those without any background in the philosophy of emotions.

Berkeley: the canary in the coalmine?

Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary about the effects of the neoliberal agenda on Berkeley has been attracting a good deal of attention and commentary.  As the latter piece points out, the Reagan revolution from the right has basically continued through multiple Democratic Administrations, and one of the casualties has been the idea of "public" higher education.  From a Marxist point of view, none of this is surprising--what will be surprising is whether nominally democratic capitalist societies actually reverse course.  I'm not hopeful, but also hope I'm wrong!

(Thanks to Joshua Niland for the pointers.)

Time off between undergraduate and graduate school?

A recent college graduate writes with a question that often arises; he is currently teaching English overseas, and writes:

I wanted to get some teaching experience under my belt because I definitely enjoy teaching, and I would also like to read read read.

The thing is I am starting to think it may create some kind of disadvantage for me if in a couple of years I do finally decide to attend graduate school. I'd like your thoughts on whether waiting a few years between getting a BA and a A/Phd could be problematic. What immediately comes to mind is that from the point of view of my professors, I will have dropped off the grid for a while only to appear suddenly asking for letters of recommendation. I can see that being a bit awkward and producing substandard letters.

My own sense is that time away from philosophy often does count against applicants (esp. to PhD program, maybe less so to MA programs), but that if one is going to take a year or two off, it is particularly important to stay current with your potential recommenders (update them on your plans, give them an estimated timetable for when you might need their support) and also try to stay engaged with philosophy, through reading, auditing classes, etc.  Thoughts from readers?  Reactions from faculty who have recently done PhD or MA admissions would be particularly helpful.

Four new part-time "Professorial Fellows" at the Arche Center at St. Andrews

They are:  Joshua Dever (philosophy of language) from Texas/Austin; Matthew McGrath (metaphysics) from Missouri; L.A. Paul (metaphysics) from North Carolina/Chapel Hill; and Gabriel Uzquiano (philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, logic) from Southern California.  The appointments are for five years, commencing April 1, 2014 (except McGrath who starts September 1 2014).   These are officially quarter-time appointments, though as we noted in the case of Professor Paul, her time in residence will be five weeks each year.  (Professor Uzquiano confirms that he will also be at St. Andrews for five weeks each year.)

"Males studies" at Australian university

Theres a lot of interesting work on the construction and nature of maleness in different societies, but that doesn't seem to be what this course is about! 

(Thanks to Glenn Carruthers for the pointer.)

Fitelson talks about "paradoxes of consistency"...

...with Matt Teichman, a philosophy PhD student here who orchestrates the excellent Elucidations series that we have noted before.

Plato, Aristotle, Dewey, Elizabeth Anderson and...

...the mass incarceration of African-Americans.

Religious exemption from anti-discrimination principles in Canada!

Many readers have sent me this surprising story:  a professor at York University in Toronto (a public university) has been required to grant a religious student's request not to interact with women.  (The religion of the objector is unclear, but it is presumably some orthodox sect, many of which are notorious for their virulent sexism.)  The decision is surprising, since usually religious reasons for pernicious discrimination are not accomodated, not even in the United States, which is the leading accomodator of religious prejudice among the advanced Western democracies.  Canada, which has a strongly egalitarian constitutional culture, also provides constitutional protection for "multiculturalism," which means even reactionary bigoted cultures enjoy some legal solicitude. 

This student wants to go to university, which means he wants and needs enlightenment.  Canada should not indulge his antiquarian prejudices.  Show this young man the light!

I'm opening comments for those who have more information about this strange incident.  Signed comments only:  full name and valid e-mail address required.

In case you forgot that Bill Gates is a wicked man...

...read why the teachers in one Massachussetts school district rejected the "merit pay" supplied by his Foundation.

Ludlow on academic publishing

In CHE:

To put it bluntly, the current state of academic publishing is the result of a series of strong-arm tactics enabling publishers to pry copyrights from authors, and then charge exorbitant fees to university libraries for access to that work. The publishers have inverted their role as disseminators of knowledge and become bottlers of knowledge, releasing it exclusively to the highest bidders.

That's also to put it a bit too crudely:  in fact, publishers provide value, through copy-editing, preservation, and distribution of scholarship.   They need to recoup those costs, and they do that, partly, through copyright.  Without a doubt, some publishers, especially in the sciences, have been exploiting their market position not just to recoup costs, but to extract substantial profits and to restrict access to knowledge considerably.  Aaron Swartz (the anniversary of his suicide is the occasion for Peter's piece) was a victim of prosecutorial over-reaching, which happens much more than people realize, but usually not to middle-class white kids.  That doesn't mean Peter's "blunt" characterization of academic publishing is wholly fair.  (Peter will be a guest-blogger again in the Spring, so readers will no doubt get to hear more from him on this subject then.)

Funeral service for E.J. Lowe

His colleague, Professor Hendry, writes:  "A funeral service for Jonathan will be held at Durham Cathedral on Monday 20th January at 1.30pm."  If you have questions, please contact Professor Hendry.

U of Colorado sociologist not retiring, and will be able to continue teaching her class

We noted this case previously, and it has now been resolved in favor of the faculty member.  From the IHE story:

[Professor] Adler said that while she was gratified that all of the reviews cleared her, the fact that her course "had to undergo this extraordinary scrutiny to reverse CU’s initial jump to judgment is a sad statement on what is occurring in universities." She added: "My victory today is a small one, and mostly Pyrrhic, because the trends toward mission creep and overreach by bodies such as the Office of Discrimination and Harassment and Institutional Review Boards are increasingly dominating decision-making in higher education. Universities and schools at all levels around the globe are increasingly sacrificing academic freedom as they become more concerned with risk and liability than with creating an environment in which creativity and ideas can flourish and students can be challenged to expand their horizons."

A spokesman for the university said that it would not respond directly to Adler's statement, although it does disagree with it. But the spokesman added: "The institution's motivation at all times in this situation was concern for the the welfare of students and teaching assistants."