Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

A short profile of the billionaire fan of philosophy...

...Nicolas Berggruen.

(Thanks to Rohen Kumar for the pointer.)

More thoughts on contempt and Trump

A propos last week's post, David Shoemaker (Tulane) also comments, and Prof. Stohr replies in the comments.  (Thanks to them both for flagging this discussion for me.)

Philosopher John Etchemendy has stepped down as Stanford's longest-serving Provost (17 years!)

There's a nice write-up here, that includes a wonderful story at the end about how he ended up getting his PhD at Stanford (he was wait-listed initially, but was persistent--I assume the "Ian" referenced in the story is Ian Hacking).

Jane O'Grady did not like Carrie Jenkins's book on love

For our on-going series of wicked book reviews:

Unfortunately, this book is slipshod, repetitive, and full of rambling assertions rather than fine-grained philosophical analysis. For scientific backing Jenkins relies almost exclusively on an experiment by the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher...Jenkins admits that the experiment’s methodology is flawed, heavily based on self-reports and tendentiously set up, but seems to share Fisher’s blithe expectation that “love consists of these [or, if not, some other] specific biological mechanisms”. She thus simply replicates Fisher’s question-begging confusion between identity and correlation, failing to debate just how “science can finally tell us what love really is”.....

She is similarly sprawling and inconclusive in discussing the social construction of love, offering us tantalising but discrete dabblings in vampires, the medieval humours, Sappho, Ovid, Plato and Shakespeare, while neglecting to suggest how these coalesced into the cultural love brew they became.

“I propose a new theory of romantic love,” Jenkins declares. Just as when watching an actor perform we are simultaneously aware of the actor inhabiting the character, and of the character itself, so (says Jenkins) love’s dual nature is instantiated in “ancient biological machinery embodying a modern social role”. But how does that work? Jenkins never fleshes out her airy claim....

Polyamory provides a promising tuning fork for sounding the nature of romantic love, and whether focusing exclusively on one person is essential to it. Jenkins arouses expectations that she will philosophise on this and similar questions via her own feelings, but ultimately offers little in the way either of emotion or philosophy.

(Thanks to several readers for sending this along.)

(Prof. Jenkins now joins Colin McGinn in being a repeat target of wicked book reviews; unlike McGinn, I am not aware that she has written any however!)

Maryland's Peter Carruthers named 2017-18 Romanell Lecturer by APA

One of the few smart things the APA has done lately!  A statement from the selection committee:

Peter Carruthers is the author of 13 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters on a great array of topics, including self-knowledge, consciousness, animal cognition, imagination, and creativity. His work has been deeply influential within philosophy of mind and in neighboring disciplines, including cognitive, developmental and comparative psychology. His work engages closely with empirical research on the mind, often challenging the foundational structuring assumptions of this work, while also directing close attention at its consequences for major questions of philosophical interest.

Free speech at Brown, redux

An interesting account of a recent talk by my colleague Geoffrey Stone, the First Amendment scholar.  (Brown has hadn't a very good track record on freedom of expression.)

Yale (finally) does the right thing regarding Calhoun College

Surprising they didn't get it right the first time around.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Russell Morris, "The Real Thing," 1969

Russell Morris is not obscure in his native Australia, and this #1 hit from 1969 may be his best-known number; remarkably, it apparently did not chart anywhere else.  What a great tune!

 

 

Miami's (soon to be Dartmouth's) Peter Lewis interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Reader poll about blog content #2: academic freedom coverage

As a reader of the blog, how important to you is coverage of and commentary on academic freedom issues?

Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog

 

Important, I like to read this coverage and commentary

 

Unimportant, I read the blog for other reasons

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE:  So this poll has been running for a bit more than 24 hours, and the results are instructive.  I did not realize how much interest there was among readers in academic freedom issues! 

As a reader of the blog, how important to you is coverage of and commentary on academic freedom issues?
Selection		Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog	38%	289
Important, I like to read this coverage and commentary	47%	359
Unimportant, I read the blog for other reasons	15%	118
766 total

 

Richard Rorty, fortune-teller

It's the new thing.

(Thanks to Rohan Kumar for the pointer.)

"Contempt," and Trump

Several readers flagged for me this nicely done column by philosopher Karen Stohr (Georgetown) on the subject of "contempt" (it appears at the usually unreadable "Stone" blog at the NYT).  It is well-written, smartly invokes some relevant philosophical concepts, and is broadly accessible to an educated reader.  

I do think Prof. Stohr is largely wrong, however, and for reasons that may be worth explaining.  I like that Prof. Stohr describes herself--no doubt accurately, but unusually honestly--as "a Midwesterner by birth and moral instincts."  What I like about this confession of the relativity of moral sentiment is that it helps explain her column and makes clear that if you share her sentiments, then her points are probably compelling, otherwise maybe not.  I would encourage lots of other philosophers to be as honest as Prof. Stohr:  we are well past the point when kids whose parents were pastors, or kids from Toledo or South Dakota, should be able to pass off their local etiquette norms and associated feelings as morally obligatory.  (Readers here know my moral sentiments:  I'm from New York, I don't suffer fools or charlatans or "posturing preening wankers" gladly, and I enjoy a good evisceration of scoundrels and miscreants.  I'm allergic to Kant, and an equal opportunity critic of anyone who enters the public sphere.  But none of it's personal, it's all "business"!)

The difficult with Prof. Stohr's approach is that its argument rests on "armchair political science," a much feebler discipline than empirical political science.  She is right, of course, that contempt generally "is directed at the entire person," and so involves "dismissing" the person as not worth engaging with.  (How much it has in common with Strawson's "objective attitude," as she suggests, is an interesting philosophical question, which I will bracket here.) But she goes on to claim that:

Contempt expressed by the socially powerful toward the socially vulnerable is a much greater moral danger than contempt that flows in the opposite direction. As president, Trump occupies a position of exceptional social power. Contempt bolstered by such power becomes far more effective and hence, far more threatening to our grounding democratic values....

Trump’s [mocking] imitation of [disabled journalist] Kovaleski reinforced a specific social inequality that most people now recognize as morally abhorrent; namely, the marginalization of people with disabilities.....

It may seem as though the best response to Trump’s contempt is to return it in kind, treating him the same way he treats others. The trouble, though, is that contempt toward Trump does not function in the same way that his contempt toward others functions. Even if we grant that Trump deserves contempt for his attitudes and behaviors, his powerful social position insulates him from the worst of contempt’s effects. It is simply not possible to disregard or diminish the agency of the president of the United States. This means that contempt is not a particularly useful weapon in the battle against bigotry or misogyny. The socially vulnerable cannot wield it effectively precisely because of their social vulnerability.

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If there is empirical support for these claims, I am not aware of it and none is cited.  Take Trump's pathetic mockery of the disabled journalist:   it damaged Trump, not the journalist, so much so that even Trump and his supporters had to deny that he was really mocking the journalist.  Kovaleski was not marginalized, he won support from all corners and across partisan lines.  Prof. Stohr's characterization bears no relationship to what actually transpired in the court of public opinion, as best I can tell.

Helping career civil servants who want to resist Trump wickedness

Philosopher Christopher Kutz (Berkeley) comments.

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

UC Riverside's John Martin Fischer becomes only philosopher in UC system...

...to be named a "University Professor" by the Board of Regents.

(Thanks to Manuel Vargas for the pointer.)

President [sic] Trump "frustrated" by how hard pretending to be President is

Poor baby, maybe he'll quit.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit unanimously upholds federal district court's stay of Trump's travel ban

NYT story here.  I have not had an opportunity to read the opinion, but there is a link to it in the article.   My impression is that the executive order is most vulnerable on religious discrimination grounds, given the ordinarily wide latitude given to the executive branch in immigration matters (though not as wide as the government lawyers are trying to argue).   I am pleased on the moral merits that the courts are pushing back against the Idiot-in-Chief, but the ultimate legal merits are trickier here.  I'm quite sure Trump has not helped himself with the judiciary by his initial responses, and that may yet carry over to the Supreme Court, which will get this case next.  The religious discrimination argument could, in fact, persuade some of the more conservative Justices--and add to that the fact that they may also feel the need to make clear that the Idiot-in-Chief can not do whatever he wants.

UPDATE:  This is a more nuanced discussion from one of my law colleagues who actually read the opinion!

In Memoriam: Raymond Smullyan (1919-2017)

The logician Raymond Smullyan, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington, has passed away.  I will post links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Alan White for the information.)

UPDATE:  The NYT obituary.

Reader poll about blog content going forward #1

As I mentioned awhile back, I am going to be polling the readership to get a sense of which content is particularly important to readers.  This first poll concerns postings about "faculty news," such as hires, moves, awards and the like.  (There will be a separate poll for links to articles by philosophers, interviews with philosophers etc.--this poll just concerns things like who is moving from where to where, who is retiring, who received an important prize etc.)   My old polling service seems to have disappeared from the web, so I'm trying a new service for this first one. 

 

As a reader of the blog, how important to you is news about faculty, such as hires, retirements, lateral moves, and faculty awards and recognition?

Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog

 

Important, I like to have this information

 

Unimportant, I read the blog for other reasons

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

 

UPDATE:  So over 700 readers voted during the last 12 hours (you other 8-9,000 free riders still have a chance!), and here's the results:

Selection		Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog	36%	256
Important, I like to have this information	36%	261
Unimportant, I read the blog for other reasons	28%	201
718 total

I'll let this run another day, but this is a useful response, confirming what I suspected based on earlier polls about how many readers were in academic philosophy, and how many not.  Thanks!

Bertrand Russell's reply to an invitation to debate the fascist Oswald Mosley

Here.

Judge Gorsuch disapproves of Trump's comments about judges (hardly surprising)...

...according to Senator Blumenthal and President [sic] Trump takes the bait on cue!  (As usual, some of the replies to his tweet are very funny as well.)

More on philosophy from John Horgan in his series at Scientific American

Part 3; an excerpt:

Last fall, I attended “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,” at which speakers pondered whether we must grant rights to sentient sex robots; whether super-smart robots will be nice to us; and whether we should let a trolley kill a dumb human rather than a smart robot. (If the human was a trolleyologist, I'd save the robot.) Everyone was having fun until Thomas Nagel, that killjoy, reminded us that millennia of philosophizing have yielded no consensus on ethical questions. [See Post-postscript.]

A few brave souls insist that “moral truth” is not an oxymoron, and moral philosophy still matters. Peter Singer, mentioned above, presents arguments for altruism—more specifically, for giving money to the poor instead of spending on stuff you don’t need--that I find disturbingly persuasive. [See Post-post-postscript.]

Derek Parfit, who died earlier this month, strove to prove the existence of objectively true moral laws. In a 2011 profile for The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar writes: “Parfit believes that there are true answers to moral questions, just as there are to mathematical ones.” But Parfit is admired less for being right than for being “brilliantly clever and imaginative” (as Bernard Williams put it in a review of Parfit’s 1984 book Reasons and Persons).

 Part 4; an excerpt:

Last year my philosophy salon pondered “Cognitive Homelessness” by Timothy Williamson. It’s a strange essay, crammed with what struck me as willfully obscure terms and assertions. It features an arcane argument, based on the so-called Sorites paradox, that you cannot know whether you are hot or not.

Or as Williamson puts it: “Feeling hot does not imply being in a position to know that one is hot.” Williamson concludes that we are “cognitively homeless,” by which he means that “nothing of interest is inherently accessible” to our knowledge.

Whoa. I wasn’t sure what Williamson’s aim was. A parody of philosophy? A demonstration that so-called rational analysis is futile, because if you’re sufficiently clever you can defend any crazy conclusion?

The more I pondered the paper, the more I liked it. I began to see—or think I saw—the world through Williamson’s eyes. The view fascinated me, in part because it’s odd. The paper also seemed ironic in the literary sense, seething with possible meanings. Then, an epiphany: Philosophy is poetry with little rhyme and lots of reason.

Mr. Horgan also replies at the end to a comment by  Aaron Preston from our earlier thread.

Helping students with publishing--faculty duties?

A reader writes: 

I am philosophy student, with an MA, now going through the PhD admissions process. As is the case with all philosophers, my writing benefits greatly from the feedback I receive from others. 

I've been fortunate to have two papers published [in reputable but not very top journals]. Both papers began life as seminar papers. Thus, I received a lot of feedback on them from my professors, both substantive comments and copy suggestions. 

I imagine it differs from professor to professor, but I'm curious what graduate faculty feel is an appropriate level of feedback/guidance to give when dealing with students trying to getting their work published? I thought of my papers as, say, dissertation chapters, and so, felt like continual engagement with faculty was appropriate. And my professors were more than willing to give thoughtful, and sometimes, line by line feedback. Is this level of engagement to be expected from good, thoughtful professors? (Or, perhaps, is an indication of whether or not a professor is good or thoughtful?) Or is it asking too much? Do professors have any theories on the appropriate level of feedback they give to graduate students? How might they characterize a student too dependent on their feedback?

I'll give my own views, then open this for comments.  To start, students should not try to publish seminar papers unless encouraged by the faculty member that the material is publishable.  And in such a case, the faculty member should try to assist the student with polishing the paper for publication.  Readers?  (Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile for them to appear--busy day here!)

How Bannon thinks

We know how Trump thinks, and a distinguishing feature of it is that it includes precious few ideas, and no ideology:  it is driven mainly by personal relationships and loyalties, plus the quirks of his psychological disturbance.   Bannon, by contrast, has ideas and an ideology, and this is the best synthesis of what they are.  (See also this and this, and recall an earlier post about his speech to the Vatican traditionalists.) It is a strange brew, about what you would expect from a working-class Irish-Catholic kid without any real intellectual discipline or sophistication.  He notices real events--e.g., Wall Street bankers being bailed out after the 2008 fiasco while working-class Americans see their retirement savings or their property values collapse--but has no serious diagnosis about cause and effect, instead interjecting as an interpretive rubric various petty bigotries and prejudices that he probably learned in his youth with crackpot theories about the "real" trends of history.  He correctly sees that there are elites, but fails to see that he shares with them the most crucial commitment, namely, to capitalist relations of production.  He understands too little about capitalism to realize that his silly nationalist bromides are actually incompatible with the capitalism he cherishes, that the "Davos class" of elites he bemoans are the necessary consequence of the economic system he still supports.   This is apparent to other members of the ruling class, e.g., this billionaire investor:

“President [sic] Trump may be able to temporarily hold off the sweep of automation and globalization by cajoling companies to keep jobs at home, but bolstering inefficient and uncompetitive enterprises is likely to only temporarily stave off market forces,” he continued. “While they might be popular, the reason the U.S. long ago abandoned protectionist trade policies is because they not only don’t work, they actually leave society worse off.”

Bannon once professed that, like Lenin, he wanted to destroy the system.  He should read some more Lenin, and then he might even develop a coherent world view and understand the actual role of Republican policies in it.

L.A. Paul & Marcel Proust...

...the dance!

European media continues to ridicule the so-called President of the Benighted States...

...with videos introducing their countries--click on the very small flags surrounding the icon at the linked site to see videos on behalf of those countries trying to be "second" after America.

Recordings of two 1959 lectures by J.L. Austin

Eric Johnson-DeBaufre, the philosophy librarian at Harvard, writes:

I thought you and readers of your blog might be interested to know that I have uploaded to our department Youtube channel two recordings of a lecture and Q&A session given by J. L. Austin in 1959. These were discovered by me by when I removed a filing cabinet drawer in my desk here in the library. The recordings had evidently been stored in the drawer but had, at some point, slipped out through a gap in the back. It was only upon removing the drawer in the course of some office organization that I found the recordings amidst some envelopes and other debris that had similarly slipped through this gap.

I don’t know who originally recorded the lecture and how it came into our possession, but it has now been uploaded to our channel for the benefit of the public. Here is a link to the first part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXo0YNZ3WsE and here is part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnWB4-aZAqc

The limits of perception

Philosopher Brit Brogaard (Miami) and others discuss.

The so-called President of the Benighted States of America is concerned...

...that his press spokesman was portrayed by a woman on late night TV.  Really.

An empirical analysis of Trump's language...

...by linguist David Beaver (Texas) and philosopher Jason Stanley (Yale).

Switzerland second

Move over Netherlands, here come the Swiss.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

The decline of philosophers as "public intellectuals" in the UK

Interesting survey.  Of course, philosophers were never public intellectuals in the U.S. in the same way, and the ones that had some slight public impact weren't actually very good philosophers (e.g., Sidney Hook).

(Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)

Meanwhile, no House Republicans (unlike those in Senate) are willing to condemn so-called President Trump's attack on the legitimacy of a federal judge

Pathetic.

Federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocks the immigration ban nationwide

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 4--SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS (AND LINKS)

This is a happy development, and even happier is that the government is complying with the order.   (Meanwhile, President [sic] Trump had another one of his twitter outbursts about the decision, which will only hurt him with all judges, not just this one, as he's going to find out.)   Reader James Osborn called my attention to a video of the argument before Judge Robart in the federal district court in Seattle, in particular the exchange starting about 39:00 between the lawyer for the Department of Justice and Judge Robart.  (The DOJ lawyer isn't very good, and seems ill-prepared.  Judge Robart is clearly a very nice judge.) 

The Judge's position is that this executive order on immigration must be subjected to "rational basis review," which is generally a very undemanding standard, but as the Judge notes it is not clear this order is based on "fact" as opposed to "fiction."  (That the order is not rationally related to any security objective is, in essence, the conclusion of the damning analysis by Benjamin Wittes we've linked to previously.) 

By contrast, DOJ's position appears to be that this order falls within the President's power over foreign affairs, and so is not to be subject even to rational basis review.  I'd be interested to hear from some of my lawyer/law professor readers what they make of that argument; Judge Robart isn't impressed.  (I would have assumed that immigration law is not within the executive's foreign affairs power, but I really do not know much at all about this.)

Three Clemson faculty, including one philosopher, fasting to protest their school's failure to protest Trump immigration order

CHE story here.

(Thanks to David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

Politics in the classroom

Several readers sent along this story, which seems an apt occasion to remind readers of what the AAUP statement on academic freedom says about freedom in teaching:

Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. 

In other words, pontificating in the classroom about the issue of the day enjoys no legal protection given the influential AAUP definition of academic freedom--which is in the U.S. still the benchmark for the contractual and (in the case of public univeristies) constitutional protections.  (In the UK, academic freedom is a statutory right, with some similarities to the AAUP provision; in Germany, it is a constitutional right, though one that does not encompass extramural speech, as the AAUP definition does.) 

A university could, in principle and consistent with the AAUP standards, fire an instructor for dereliction of duties for using classtime to pontificate, even about wickedness.  (Of course, various procedures would have to be followed before such a decision could be taken.)

But not all political references are forbidden.  One can use examples drawn from contemporary events to illustrate topics that have a clear "relation to the subject."  I recently discussed in a graduate seminar whether David Velleman (in a famous 1992 paper) was correct that no one could be alienated from having reasons for action--Trump, I suggested, might be a counter-example (maybe not, that was the main topic of discussion).   So, too, per the linked article, discussing "lies" might make Trump-related examples quite relevant.

The main takeway, however, is this:   being in front of a classroom is not a license, under academic freedom, to talk about whatever you want.  Academic freedom as a legal right protects your disciplinary competence in both teaching and research.  it is not a license to say whatever you want to a captive audience!

Cassirer on fascism and "mythological thinking"

This is quite interesting.

(Thanks to Daniel Buk for the pointer.)

One-year Masters of Legal Studies Program at University of Chicago Law School

We're accepting applications again.  The program is aimed at PhD students, who have completed coursework, and are either about to embark on dissertation writing or at early stages, and whose work would benefit from a year of law study.   See the site for details.  We admit only a couple each year, but it is fully funded, covering tuition and providing a living stipend.

GrabYourWallet campaign against the Trump brands taking a toll

Maybe after the impeachment, the whole ridiculous clan can file for bankruptcy.

President [sic] Trump actually said something true...

...which will no doubt cost him with Republicans:

President Trump, asked by an interviewer on Saturday why he respected President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia even though he is “a killer,” seemed to equate Mr. Putin’s actions with those of the United States.

“You got a lot of killers,” he told the interviewer, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

And some examples of Republican reactions.

2017 Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy awarded to...

...Ruth Millikan.  From the prize announcement sent to me by Tom Berry:

The University of Pittsburgh announces its award of the 2017 Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy to Ruth Millikan, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut.

In a series of influential articles and books, Ruth Millikan has developed a remarkable body of work spanning the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, epistemology, ontology, and their interconnections with the philosophical foundations of the biological and psychological sciences. Central to her project is the systematic development of a deeply influential treatment of thought and meaning as biologically and historically situated categories. Drawing on evolutionary theory, Professor Millikan showed how to conceive of the representational properties of mind and language in terms of biological function, in the process clarifying, expanding, and deepening our understanding of a range of evolutionary concepts. This trailblazing work exemplifies a reconceptualization of philosophy as not merely informed by, or informing, the natural sciences, but as fully continuous with them.

The Nicholas Rescher Prize was established by the University of Pittsburgh in 2010 in honor of a distinguished philosophy professor who has served the institution for over fifty years. It is awarded biennially and previous recipients are Ernest Sosa of Rutgers University, Alvin Plantinga of Calvin College, Jürgen Mittelstrass of the University of Konstanz, and the late Hilary Putnam of Harvard University.

Sunday Classical: Grieg, Piano Concerto in A minor

 

 

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: John Lennon, Yoko Ono & Elephant's Memory Band, "We're All Water" (1972)

Lennon's least successful solo album, Some Time in New York City, was Lennon at his peak "radical chic," but it also featured a number of Yoko Ono compositions, of which this might have been the best (lyrics aside ["There may not be much difference between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon if we strip them naked"]):

 

 

Judge Gorsuch should stand up for Judge Robart and reprimand the Idiot-in-Chief for his irresponsible remarks

Excellent point by my colleague Eric Posner.

"Bowling Green Massacre" memorial plaque

A propos this stupidity from that bottomless well of stupid know as the Trump Administration:

(Thanks to Michael Swanson for sending it along.)

CEU's Katalin Farkas interviewed...

...at 3AM.

"On Becoming the Enemy"

A timely (alas) and well-written account at Boston Review, from philosopher Jason Stanley.

Boycotting academic conferences in the US because Trump's immigration ban

Thousands of academics have pledged not to attend U.S. conferences because of the immigration ban.  The only effect of this is to punish U.S. academics--who, overwhelmingly, did not and do not support Trump--who might benefit from foreign scholars participating in conferences.  It will have no effect on Bannon polices, since Herr Bannon and his lapdog have nothing but contempt for knowledge and academics.  So what is the point?  I'm opening comments, I'm genuinely curious to hear what people think.  There's also a poll to gauge reader reaction:

 

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

 

UPDATE:  With over 350 responses in just the last five hours, sentiment here is pretty negative:  17% favor the boycott, 70% are again, 13% are undecided.  I would like to hear from supporters about their reasons in the comment section.  I'll let this run into tomorrow, so that more readers in Europe and Australasia can participate in the poll.

SO AFTER 24 HOURS and nearly 600 votes, the results are not much changed from yesterday afternoon:  19% favor the boycott, 70% oppose, the remainder are undecided.  (A couple of readers pointed out that Justin Weinberg [South Carolina] ran a similar poll on his blog, which again revealed only minority support for the boycott.  [Advertisers take note:  that poll got only about 250 votes, despite being open for more than 48 hours!])

It's another sign of Trump becoming "radioactive" that basketball players and even mainstream sports writers...

...are attacking him.

Colorado Summer Seminar in Philosophy

Open to advanced undergraduates, they're now accepting applications.  I always hear good things about this, seems like an excellent opportunity.

The Berkeley riot and the latest Trump bluster

Some Breitbart bozo named Milo Y. (I can't be bothered to figure out how to spell the last name) runs around to college campuses being an arse and insulting people, and students protest.  (The student groups that invite this malevolent clown ought to try something novel:  think about what you're doing.)  At Berkeley, there was a large, and peaceful, student protest in advance of the bozo's speech, and then about 100 outsiders also showed up and started a riot, started fires, destroyed property etc.  Berkeley went to great lengths to try to permit the event to take place, but when the riot started, they cancelled the event out of legitimate concerns for safety.  The Ignoramus-in-Chief then tweeted that Berkeley should lose federal funding.  This has no basis in existing law.

Republicans, please impeach this pathetically stupid and inept person before it's too late for you too.

ADDENDUM:  Whether Berkeley students were involved in the rioting, I should add, is irrelevant:  existing law does not authorize withholding federal funds from Berkeley because of this incident.