I first posted on this blog on this day 14 years ago. My reflections on the 10th anniversary of the blog remain apt.
Following a suggestion of a reader earlier in the summer, when my reduced summer blogging began, I thought I'd list a few things I'm glad to have accomplished with the blog over the years.
1. In 2009, I shone the first very public light on the sexual harassment problem in philosophy in advice to prospective students--this was before any of the now notorious cases made the headlines, and the topic had been for too long a matter of sotto voce discussion. I heard from many faculty and students that they were glad for the attention given to this and the warning.
2, I helped support the movement for the APA to really enforce its existing policies against anti-gay discrimination--it started with this post in 2007, but really took off after this post and the subsequent petition. See also here and here .
3. When administrators at King's College, London threatened to fire senior philosophy faculty back in 2010, I hammered away at the misconduct by the administration, making what was transpiring an international issue, which apparently took the administrators completely by surprise, but contributed to the happy ending as I heard from faculty there.
4. In 2011, when Linda Alcoff and colleagues tried to smear various "analytic" departments as inhospitable to women, I hammered away at this fraud (including coverage of how Alcoff and friends recommended programs with known sexual harassment problems!) and covered all the absurd machinations of these dissemblers, until they finally fell silent, without apologies or mea culpas.
5. When Dickinson College tried to wrongfully terminate tenured philosopher Crispin Sartwell, I helped find him a lawyer and raise funds for his legal remedies and he was, happily, reinstated, a significant triumph of law over administrative malfeasance.
6. When the philosophy profession collapsed into madness in 2014, I stood up then, and since, for fair process and freedom of expression and thought, as well as subjecting to scrutiny topics others would rather ignore, and calling out dangerous or foolish proposals by individuals, and by the APA . Way back in 2003, I would never have guessed that it would be necessary to stand up for the core values of academic life and scholarly inquiry in the philosophy profession, but that's where we have arrived, alas.
7. Related to #6, I have also been glad to stand up consistently for academic freedom in cases ranging from John Yoo to Steven Salaita to Lawrence Torcello, as well as to defend authors against editorial misconduct, whether by Synthese or by Hypatia.
This anniversary also seems like an apt time to reflect on how the philosophy blogosphere has evolved, since it has both exploded and then contracted since I started posting back in August 2003.
Most of the substantive blogs on particular areas of philosophy have faded away, though PeaSoup (focused on ethics) is a notable exception. Early, active blogs like Philosophy Smoker and NewApps have been moribund for years. A few individuals, like Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) and Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) have developed successful individual blogs, with more substantive postings often reflecting their scholarly expertise. Philosophers Cocoon, aiming to be a friendly space with advice for early career philosophers, including job seekers, seems to have done well in recent years. One more general "group" blog that rivals mine for longevity and visibility, Feminist Philosophers, carries on with news and views, though from a kind of "feminist" angle (that they call themselves "Feminist Philosophers" rather than "A Feminist Philosophy blog" is itself curious, and a bit annoying, I've learned, to many philosophers who are also feminists--of course, every civilized person is a feminist now in the ways that matter). Justin Weinberg's more recent Daily Nous, also a news-related blog, has become since 2014 the "safe space" philosophy blog, as it were, popular particularly with SPEP members, "New Infantilists," and those aggrieved with my opinionated take on things in philosophy and academia. Weinberg, who is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina, rounds up far more philosophy-related links than I do--he is less judgmental in his linking, a virtue or vice depending on your tastes. His judgment on many professional matters, as I've noted before, is, alas, not very good. Despite that, his blog, along with Feminist Philosophers, is one of the few I read fairly regularly, and I find it a valuable resource.
And that's the philosophy blogosphere--or at least its highlights--in 2017! We'll see what the future brings and, in particular, whether some of the more substantive blogs, on the Pea Soup model, revive.
Meanwhile, I'll continue on my summer blogging schedule (mostly Mondays and Thursday) through the end of the month, when more regular blogging will resume.
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