...from a philosopher whom I do not know, and who gives some of the relevant details about her background in the comments that follow (it begins with a generous compliment about my work, but I include that because of its relevance to what follows):
I was just reading your "The Case Against Free Speech" and am again impressed by your clarity and precision, as well as the scope of your philosophical understanding. It's only in the last year or two that I've engaged much with your writing, which is a shame given how much I enjoy reading your work.
One of the major criticisms I now have against much feminist philosophy in the US (having been trained as a feminist philosopher at a so-called pluralist program) is how quickly shallow judgments based off superficial readings are spread (which is not to suggest this doesn't occur within many other philosophical subfields ...). The connection here is that as a graduate student at ["pluralist" program name omitted], I was encouraged to see the Leiter Report as elitist and biased - and, accordingly, to identify you as an enemy of sorts.
The longer I've been in the professional, the more I realize how terribly wrong I was to endorse either of these views. Even my thoughts about your, shall we say, tone have radically shifted as I've spent more time around self-described socially conscious philosophers. The ways in which they virtue signal, employ hostile tactics to silence (or at least make academic life much more difficult for) those of us who hold "impure" philosophical and political views, and so forth have shown them to be the worst variety of hypocrite.
I hope that as I move forward in this profession (perhaps I should say, if I move forward) to learn from your authenticity and ability to continue to do great philosophical work despite overblown and self-serving attacks that appear to dominate our field at this moment. Thank you for the service you do for philosophy, for your thought provoking articles and blog, and for fighting against those who would brutally circumscribe philosophical explorations.
Correspondence like this (I post only occasional examples) makes me more optimistic about the future of the field, and I am grateful to this young philosopher and to others who take the time to write.
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