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11% of readers are adjunct faculty, while 27% are tenure-stream. I was struck by the large number of readers in other professions, such as law and computing. I'd be curious to hear what some of the readers who chose "none of the above" do. Comments are open.
MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEB. 21, 2015--PETER ASKED ME TO REPLACE THE INITIAL VERSION WITH A VERY SLIGHT REVISED ONE (BELOW--MOSTLY FIXING SOME HISTORICAL DETAILS)
Many readers have written to me about this lecture, and Peter kindly agreed to share a draft of the lecture (which will be revised, and still needs references and the like): Download Dewey Lecture-drs-rev1
ADDENDUM: It is a rich, engaging, deeply humane lecture, do read it.
John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews and a leading "Analytical Thomist" working across metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion and medieval philosophy, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Baylor University, where he will begin this fall.
A leading contributor to metaphysics and philosophy of science, especially to the literature on causation, Professor Menzies was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Macquarie University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.
MOVING TO FRONT, GIVEN THE LIVELY DISCUSSION OF THE ADJUNCT ISSUE. MUCH OF THE DISCUSSION OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES APPEARS TO HAVE MIGRATED HERE.
In light of Peter Railton's important lecture that everyone is discussing, may I suggest that one topic worthy of discussion is mental illness, and the experiences of faculty and students in dealing with it, what support they have found from universities and their departments, and related issues. And whatever other issues arise, please, let's also take a hiatus from bashing the FP blog.
With over 1500 responses, more than 60% of respondents reported some diagnosis for mental illness, with almost one in four respondents mentioning depression in particular. There is substantial co-morbidity between depression and the various anxiety disorders, as there are among the anxiety disorders, so, e.g., the 24% that report depression may also include some of the 5% that checked social anxiety disorder or the 4% that chose OCD. I assume in a poll like this, people are not so perverse as to vote "strategically" or otherwise try to muck up the results. So I think we can conclude from this that the majority of faculty and students in philosophy have confronted some kind of mental illness in their lives. I've opened comments if readers have other thoughts about these sobering results.
Philosophy faculty and students: which, if any, psychological disorders have you been diagnosed with? Check all that apply.
...than the moderation on this blog already brings about:
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
Apart from purging apparent defamation and gratuitious insult and abuse, I am approving almost all comments in a Milllian spirit.
I realize I've no idea how widespread (or not) struggles with mental illness are in the philosophical community. Maybe this poll will give us a very rough idea.
For March, there may still be one top spot open (there has been an inquiry, but no commitment). There are also 4th-from-the-top spots for $450. For April, there is still one top and one second spot open.
Just to be clear: "tenure-track" means includes both tenured and those who are untenured but in a position that is tenure eligible. Retired faculty should also choose the tenure-track category, if they are retired from a tenure-track position.
ADDENDUM: I realize too late I should have had "publishing industry" as a choice, given what I know about the readership. Sorry about that. I guess you folks should choose 'none of the above.'
I'm stopping this one a bit earlier (but with over 1200 votes), since small numbers don't show up as percentages at all in the Micropoll software at a certain point (though the number of respondents in should still appear in the chart below). I'd be curious to hear in the comments about some of the "other" languages that are native for readers. No surprise that the majority are native English speakers, though it's an impressively international readership, with nearly a third of readers having a language other than English as their native tongue.
It includes, as always, a few philosophers and political theorists (this year: David Chalmers, John Gray, Jurgen Habermas), plus one of my personal favorites, Evgeny Morozov, who always cuts through all the self-serving bullshit about the Internet and technology.
A leading figure in 20th-century philosophy of language, Professor Donnellan was Emeritus at UCLA at the time of his death. He earned his PhD at Cornell, where he taught for a number of years before moving to Los Angeles. I will post links to memorial notices when they appear.
I'm interested to hear how some of the "none of the above" would describe their political ideology or outlook. I note the results aren't that different from a similar poll about 4 1/2 years ago--slight decline in fascist readers, though!
...against outspoken law professor (though see the very good statement by the Law Dean towards the end of the article). This is really appalling. The only silver lining is that I guess they concluded they couldn't get away with firing him outright.
Philosopher Matt Silverstein (NYU-Abu Dhabi) calls my attention to this gem (which recalls an earlier discussion); an excerpt:
[I]f you are looking for a traditional understanding of modernism and of Deleuze and Guattari, you are bound to be greatly disappointed, because the idea of understanding as a stable and unified meaning is challenged and usurped here. This is not only because there are many different and sometimes incompatible views drawn together. It is also because many of the interpretations of modernism are often self-avowedly evasive and performed as such. At its most extreme, this effect brings us close to one of Deleuze's favourite authors, Lewis Carroll, and the mad tea-party. It turns out that to understand modernism we have to understand that we cannot understand what modernism is but rather experience what it does as something disunited and discombobulating....
I will conclude with a perhaps churlish qualm or cranky misgiving, not so much about the quality of this volume on the terms it has set itself with respect to artistic modernism and Deleuze and Guattari, but rather to extensions of the modern that seem essential 'in these times', as they say. The worry came about when reading the outstanding glossary entry on the rhizome, written by Eugene Holland. He is one of the foremost and most impassioned commentators on Deleuze and Guattari and politics, in particular in relation to their critique of global capitalism. So, in reflecting upon the idea of the 'rhizome-book' he remarks that 'the aim of such a book . . . is not to represent the world as it is or what it means, but to survey and map its tendencies and becomings, for better and for worse, so as to be able to affirm the former and avert the latter' (272). It is of course no coincidence that Holland reminds us of the debt to Marx in Deleuze and Guattari and political modernism. This progressive political and philosophical side of modernism is strangely lacking in the book. It is an absence that cannot be seen as a flaw on its own terms, yet it made me feel uneasy and fleetingly sad. I wanted to scream a new slogan: Modernism is collectively political, or it dies. No doubt the authors will respond that their works are political in the sense of seeking to change situations for the better on a micro-political plane. True. Yet I sensed too great an emphasis on individual ills and local connections, rather than collective action, for either Deleuze or modernism to be up to the challenges of the collapse of progressive late-modern societies and their eyeless tottering into something far worse.
This nonsense would surely have been enough to make Marx long for the philosophical sobriety of Bruno Bauer.
This is separate from his primary lawsuit for his illegal firing, but if successful this lawsuit will prove illuminating, I expect, about what went on "behind the scenes."
Various blogs have been remarking on this study about faculty hiring networks and hierarchies: the short version is that very few graduates of PhD programs place at higher ranked programs, and most research-oriented tenure-track jobs are secured by graduates of a small number of elite PhD programs. The same, of course, is true in philosophy, though that was not the focus of this study. Particularly striking is the data reported here to the effect that in 2013-14, 88% of all reported tenure-track hires were graduates of PGR-ranked programs, and that a whopping 37% of all reported tenure-track hires that year took their PhD from one of the PGR top five programs. Fortunately, the PGR makes the relevant information about the hierarchy available to everyone, not just a select group of undergraduates.
Much of the discussion pertains to whether there is any correlation between these patterns and "merit." The original study (the first lilnk, above) looks at this in terms of publications, which isn't a very useful measure in philosophy. Based on my own experience, I'm inclined to say that, on average, graduates of the top programs (or the top programs in some specialties) are stronger candidates on the merits than others, but there are substantial minorities who are mainly riding the prestige effect out of the top programs, as well as substantial minorities handicapped by not have the halo effect of a top program.
ADDENDUM: Mason Westfall, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, writes:
While the correlation between graduates of top programs and tenure-track placement is robust, there are at least two causal hypotheses consistent with that fact. One explanation is the one that you highlight---a halo effect students enjoy by being from top programs. Another explanation is that the best undergraduates get into the best programs and choose them over less prestigious programs. That would mean the best students entering graduate school would be disproportionately at the most prestigious departments. It may be that the best students entering graduate school tend to be the best students leaving graduate school and then the best students leaving graduate school get the jobs. In order to test the contribution made by the department in particular, it seems like it would be necessary to locate a population of students who got into both higher and lower pedigree programs, but chose to go to lower pedigree programs. Even this would conflate the teaching/training contribution of the school with the halo effect, but it would give us substantially more information than the correlation highlighted.
I agree with all this. To be clear, I think there are some relatively weak candidates from top programs who nonetheless do well because of the "halo" effect or, in some cases, the loyalty of alums in teaching to graduates of the program.
ANOTHER: David Wallace (Oxford) writes:
Let me add to Mason Westfall’s two causal hypotheses a third: the training you get from top programs (undergraduate or graduate) makes you a stronger philosopher. I wouldn’t find it at all surprising, given two basically equally strong undergraduate philosophers who went to very different-strength grad programs, if one turned out much stronger than the other at the end. Indeed, I’d be depressed if that wasn’t so, at least on average and other things being equal: it would suggest that all the effort people put into providing a good education and good educational environment for students is pretty much epiphenomenal.
MOVING TO FRONT (POLL ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 7) AND OPENING COMMENTS FOR DISCUSSION (AT REQUEST OF VARIOUS READERS)
Report only your income from all sources (stipends, teaching, royalties, investments, etc.); if you have no income of your own (e.g., because you are supported by parents or a spouse) then choose the first option.
UPDATE: So with almost 1700 votes, here are the results:
No annual income: 8% (135)
Less than $20,000: 19% (326)
$20,001-$30,000: 14% (236)
$30,001-$40,000: 7% (123)
$40,001-$50,000: 5% (92)
$50,001-$75,000: 16% (270)
$75,001-$100,000: 12% (200)
$100,001-$150,000: 8% (138)
$150,000-$200,000: 3% (58)
$200,001-$300,000: 3% (50)
$301,000-$500,000: 1% (22)
Over $500,000: 2% (38)
Put differently (and assuming, perhaps wrongly, that all income levels responded proportionately to the poll): 26% of readers earn between $20,000 and $50,000, and 16% of readers earn more than $100,000.
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