Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in July

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

On Truth by Simon Blackburn (Oxford University Press, 2018).

The Monarachy of Fear:  A Philosopher Looks at our Political Crisis by Martha C. Nussbaum (Simon & Schuster, 2018).

Technic and Magic:  The Reconstructino of Reality by Federico Campagna (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).

Sextus Empiricus:  Against Those in the Disciplines trans. with introduction & notes by Richard Bett (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Animals:  A History edited by Peter Adamson & G. Fay Edwards (Oxford Philosophical Concept, Oxford University Press, 2018).

The Geography of Insight:  The Sciences, the Humainties, How They Differ, Why They Matter by Richard Foley (Oxford University Press, 2018).

$20 million gift to UCLA Philosophy...

...from the son of philosopher and longtime UCLA faculty member David Kaplan in honor of both his father and his mother, a clinical psychologist, also at UCLA. (The Kaplans' son made his money in real estate investing.) Apart from Johns Hopkins, this will probably make UCLA the best-endowed philosophy department in the United States.  (My guess is Michigan will be #3 in that regard, though I'm not certain.)

UCLA has been a top department in the U.S. since the 1950s, when Hans Reichenbach was on the faculty (his PhD students included Hilary Putnam and Wesley Salmon).  Kaplan took his own PhD at UCLA, under the supervision of Rudolf Carnap.

Teaching "Critical Thinking" in the age of Internet falsehoods

Philosopher Jerry Dworkin comments.

'New Infantilism' comes to The Nation

This is disgraceful (the abject apology, and the abuse of the language of "harm"), on a par with the misconduct towards Rebecca Tuvel by the former Associate Editors of Hypatia or the mistreatment of Tommie Shelby by the Society for Analytic Feminism.  Adults would do well to remember John Gardner's comments on an earlier thread:

That something offends you, or more generally makes you feel bad, does not show that it does you any harm. We all feel bad about something most days and come out of it unscathed, just as we come out of most physical pain unscathed. Of course there may be harms that are consequences of offence and pain. Torture harms people by the use of pain. Upset may turn to depression and may then be disabling. I have yet to see any evidence that anything Rebecca Tuvel said had any such consequences. Whereas people are certainly inflicting such consequences on her.

The Nation has now inflicted similar professional damage on the poet it has so prominently published and then rebuked.  Any poet with integrity should stop submitting to The Nation until its poetry editors are replaced with competent professionals.

UPDATE:  Philosopher Jerry Dworkin writes:

The amazing thing is that their initial reading was spot on. Although why it is "profane" is a puzzle. Maybe "Christian" is a bad word.

When we read the poem we took it as a profane, over-the-top attack on the ways in which members of many groups are asked, or required, to perform the work of marginalization. We can no longer read the poem in that way.

They don't give their new reading. But it seems that the mere appearance of "ableist" and "disparaging" language is sufficient to condemn a poem.  So much for Huck Finn.

Blast from the past: can this book live up to its blurb?

Back in 2016.

What a 'no deal' Brexit would look like: the case of food

This is extraordinary.  On the plus side, properly prepared, Boris Johnson's carcass alone could probably feed a small village for a week.

Great moments at the foundations of rock 'n' roll: Son House, "Death Letter Blues," 1965 performance

Son House (1902-1988) was first musically active in the 1920s through the early 1940s (he was an influence on both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters), before being rediscovered in the 1960s and returning to performing.  (Here's a 1930 recording of the "Walkin' Blues.")   Here's perhaps the most famous video of him from the 1960s, an impassioned performance of the "Death Letter Blues."

 

Applied epistemology: painting donkeys to look like zebras

Some Egyptian zookeepers have been reading Dretske.

(Thanks to Nick Shackel for the pointer.)

Edinburgh's Michela Massimi interviewed...

...at 3AM.  Another philosopher with an instructive trajectory into the field, one that testifies to the importance of the European project.

Most pressing issues confronting the academic profession of philosophy in the US currently

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 24--MORE COMMENTS WELCOME

More than 1,000 readers voted; here were the top 9 vote getters (there was a drop-off thereafter):

1. Lack of tenure-track jobs  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

2. Erosion of tenure and closing of philosophy departments  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 469–453

3. Excessive politicization of the discipline  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 754–202, loses to Erosion of tenure and closing of philosophy departments by 727–209

4. Sexual harassment  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 851–102, loses to Excessive politicization of the discipline by 447–429

5. Harmful effects of social media (blogs, twitter, facebook) on the profession (e.g., promoting rumor-mongering, bullying, mobbing, group polarization)  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 821–147, loses to Sexual harassment by 456–392

6. Lack of tolerance for a wide range of philosophical and political views  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 815–143, loses to Harmful effects of social media (blogs, twitter, facebook) on the profession (e.g., promoting rumor-mongering, bullying, mobbing, group polarization) by 421–387

7. Capture of the APA by interest groups with political rather than philosophical aims  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 763–169, loses to Lack of tolerance for a wide range of philosophical and political views by 410–349

8. Lack of racial, ethnic and/or gender diversity in the profession  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 848–106, loses to Capture of the APA by interest groups with political rather than philosophical aims by 425–392

9. Excessive emphasis on issues of diversity in the profession  loses to Lack of tenure-track jobs by 766–181, loses to Lack of racial, ethnic and/or gender diversity in the profession by 424–419

The neck-and-neck showing for #8 and #9 indicates how polarized opinion is on these issues right now. I would have been surprised if the top two had been anything other than what they were (by a wide margin).  #4 and #5 were on my "top five," and I think #7 was in my top five too.  But #3, #6, and #7 probably all reflect overlapping concerns.

Readers who voted are invited to comment on their own rank ordering, how they understood the choices, and/or choices they wished had been included.  Comments are moderated, and may take awhile to appear; comments that include a valid e-mail address (which will not appear) are more likely to be approved.

BrianLeiter.net updated

My personal page has been updated for 2018-19, with new additions under CV, talks, and former students, for anyone whose interested.  Talks scheduled so far for 2018-19 will take me to Rome, Los Angeles, Boston, Stockholm, Singapore, Paris, Lund, and Genoa, among other places.  If you're a reader, please introduce yourself if you are able to attend any of these events.

Trump and Schmitt

This is an interesting analysis by legal historian Mark Weiner.

Top 50 universities by membership in the National Academy of Sciences, 2018 (CORRECTED AGAIN)

The National Academy of Sciences is the even more selective "science only" cousin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  While it does elect faculty in the social sciences, its focus is on the natural sciences and the biological sciences, including those in and around medicine; any university with a good medical school tends to do better, all else being equal, in NAS representation (indeed, some top medical schools, like UC San Francisco and Texas Southwestern in Dallas make the list, despite not being full service research universities).  As a result I mark with an asterik (*) universities without medical schools, and I mark with a # universities with medical schools with very high research profiles  (Some schools, like UT Austin and Illinois/Urbana have only recently added medical schools.)  As with the AAAS, there is a certain amount of "the rich get richer" at the NAS, though the schools with the most members are indeed very strong in the sciences.

1.  #Harvard University (183)

2.  #Stanford University (156)

3.  *University of California, Berkeley (153)

4.  *Massachussetts Institute of Technology (117)

5.  *Princeton University (87)

6.  Yale University (71)

7.  *California Institute of Technology (70)

8.  Columbia University (60)

9.  University of California, San Diego (57)

10. #University of Washington, Seattle (46)

11. University of Chicago (44)

12. University of California, Los Angeles (43)

12. #University of California, San Francisco (43) (exclusively health disciplines, including medicine)

14. New York University (37)

14. #University of Pennsylvania (37)

14. University of Wisconsin, Madison (37)

17. Cornell University (35)

18. #Johns Hopkins University (33)

19. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (29)

20. *University of California, Santa Barbara (27)

20. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (27)

22. Northwestern University (25)

23. #Washington University, St. Louis (24)

24. #Duke University (23)

25. *Rutgers University, New Brunswick (22)

25. University of California, Irvine (22)

27. University of California, Davis (21)

28. #University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (20)

29. University of Florida, Gainesville (19)

30. *Scripps Research Institute (18)

30. University of Colorado, Boulder (18)

32. University of Texas, Austin (16)

33. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul (15)

34. University of Arizona (14)

34. University of Utah (14)

36. Pennsylvania State University (13)

37. *Arizona State University (12)

37. *University of Maryland, College Park (12)

37. University of Southern California (12)

40. Ohio State University (11)

40. *Texas A&M University (11)

Trump is right that U.S. hostility to Russia is not productive

Worth remembering.

Shocking brief filed by UT Austin regarding "academic freedom"

Three faculty at UT Austin sued the state and the university over the law permitting licensed gun owners to carry guns on campus, including in classrooms; they asserted, among other things, that this law violated their academic freedom.  A lower court dismissed their academic freedom claim (correctly, in my view--the campus carry law is barbaric and idiotic, but it does not violate academic freedom); on appeal, lawyers for the University argued that only the institution, not individual professors, have a right to academic freedom.  The UT Austin President has been trying to walk away from his lawyer's court filings, but UT Austin faculty are correct to be worried about this legal position (which some lower courts elsewhere have also adopted):  it is inconsistent with the influential AAUP statement, which UT Austin, like most universities, purports to affirm.

A philosopher elsewhere asked, after my recent posting about the Marquette case, how one determines whether one has a contractual right to academic freedom.  (Faculty at public universities, in addition to any contractual right, can appeal to a First Amendment right to academic freedom, which many courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have recognized.)  The first thing to do is to look at your University's Faculty Handbook, to see whether it incorporates by reference, or by explicit quotation, the AAUP statement.  If the Faculty Handbook does not, then one should inquire with a Dean or Provost about whether the university views itself as contractually bound to protect the academic freedom of its faculty and, if so, where it has made a written commitment to that effect.

Even if the Faculty Handbook incorporates the AAUP principles of academic freedom, this does not necessarily mean a faculty member has contractual protection for his or her academic freedom:  this may depend on state contract law.  In Texas, for example, courts have held (in contexts unrelated to academic freedom) that a university's contract with a faculty member does not incorporate the provisions of Faculty Handbook.  (In the Marquette case, by contrast, the Wisconsin court treated the Faculty Handbook's provisions as part of the binding contract with faculty.)  One way to avoid the contingencies of state contract law is to make sure an offer letter explicitly states that the offer incorporates the provisions in the Faculty Handbook or incorporates the protections for academic freedom laid out in the 1940 AAUP statement.

Opening comments here, in case any of my law readers want to add to the preceding.

What is it like to be(come) a philosopher: Joel Sati edition

Here.  (Mr. Sati is a PhD student, although not in philosophy, with an extremely interesting life trajectory.)

Advertising update

The top spots for September and October are all booked, though there's at least one 2nd-from-the-top spot still available each of those months.  There's also one top spot still available in each of November and December.  With the academic year commencing, rates go back to normal ($600 for a top spot, $500 for a 2nd from the spot, and $450 for a 3rd from the top, with a 10% discount for booking three or more months).

Is time an illusion?

Philosophers Alison Fernandes (Warwick) and Huw Price (Cambridge) discuss with a physicist.

Warwick's Karen Simecek interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Great moments at the foundations of rock 'n' roll: Blind Willie McTell, "You Was Born to Die," 1933

McTell (1898-1959) was a prolific performer and recording artist through the 1940s, though never had big "hits" of his own, though he became well-known enough to inspire a song by Bob Dylan.   Here's a lesser-known number from 1933 (lesser-known compared to his famous "Statesboro Blues"), one which, I suspect, Keith Richards studied carefully:

 

In Memoriam: Robert Coburn (1930-2018)

Emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he had taught since 1971, Professor Coburn also taught philosophy for eleven years at the University of Chicago.  He worked on a variety of topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion over his long career.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

Berkeley's Hans Sluga has a blog!

Mostly on topics in and around political philosophy, broadly (which is appropriate) construed.

Four philosophers elected to the British Academy

They are:  Samir Okasha (Bristol), Ian Rumfitt (Oxford), Victor Tadros (Law, Warwick) and, as a Corresponding Fellow, Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh).  Other Corresponding Fellows who work in cognate fields to philosophy elected this year include Seyla Benhabib (Yale) and Barbara Partee (U Mass/Amherst emerita).

What do you consider the most pressing issues confronting the academic profession of philosophy in the U.S. currently?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--ALMOST 600 VOTES ALREADY, MORE WELCOME

A new poll.  I'll post results and open it for discussion next week.  No doubt I omitted some issues others might have included; readers can note other issues in the discussion next week.

Thalos from Utah to Tennessee

Mariam Thalos (philosophy of science), formerly Professor at the University of Utah, is now Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and the new Head of Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, effective this month.

Jan Friedrichsen doesn't understand why everyone thinks he's an anti-semitic bigot

Seriously.  Our correspondence:

From: Jan Friedrichsen [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:02 AM
To: Leiter, Brian <[email protected]>
Subject: Anti-semitic email

Dear Mr. Leiter

Thank you for publishing my email. But I really don' t understand why you think I am an anti-semit. I assume you are able to read. There is nothing anti-semitic in the email. You made the effort to publish my email, so you should also make the effort to explain to me why you think I am an anti-semit. Ok, I offended Mr. Melamed, but is it anti-semitic to offend a jew?

And I want you to know that I am not afraid because you published it. I really like it. I got two reactions, one man cursed at me and the other wrote that I am right. I'm waiting for your explanation why I am an anti-semit. A man with your academic reputation should have the decency not to denounce someone publicly without explanation. 

Sincerely Jan Friedrichsen

My reply:

Dear Mr. Friedrichsen:

It’s hard to know whether you’re being serious.  But let me help you:

1. Denying Professor Melamed’s testimony that the German police participated in the killing of his grandparents on the grounds that the German police “did NOT kill anyone” sounds like you are denying the Holocaust, which as you know is a crime in Germany and which is something only denied by anti-semites.
2. Even if you weren’t denying the Holocaust, denying, on the basis of no evidence, what the German police did to Professor Melamed’s family suggests hostility towards Jews that is typical of anti-semites; normal people accept the testimony of others about their family history.
3. Referring to “fucking stupid Jews” is not a phrase used by anyone who is not an anti-semite.
4. Referring to Israel as a “fucking desert” and suggesting Prof. Melamed return there are statements that would not be made by a normal human being but only by an anti-semite.

You are, as I said, what’s wrong with the human race.  I hope the German police investigate you (though I hope they don’t beat you, as they did Prof. Melamed).

I am adding you to my list of blocked senders, so don’t bother writing again.

Very truly yours,

Brian Leiter

 UPDATE:  In the interest of fairness--yes, fairness to unself-aware anti-semites--Mr. Friedrichsen left me a phone message claiming I had misunderstood his e-mails, that they were due to his not being a native speaker of English.  He claims, for example, that he does not deny the Holocaust, he was saying only that the Bonn police had not killed anyone.  And he claims that if he had been writing to a footballer, he would have said "fucking stupid footballers."  He was adamant, but polite in the message he left me.  I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions.

Israel makes another highly symbolic move towards being a full-fledged apartheid state

Disgraceful.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

A linguist on philosophical writing

Case study:  Ruth Millikan.  (It's complimentary!)

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

Meet Jan Friedrichsen, anti-semitic maniac

This being the Internet era--in which every deranged idiot and sociopath can immediately express his views--Professor Melamed, victim of both an anti-semitic attack and police brutality, has actually received critical messages!   This one is special and deserves to be made famous:

From: Jan Friedrichsen <[email protected]>

Subject: German police brutality

Date: July 14, 2018 at 10:18:14 AM EDT

To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>

Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>

Dear Mr. Melamed,

I just read the article about you and the Bonn police. I am german and want to tell you something. Except of the muslim migrants, there is no antisemitism in Germany anymore. We do not care if you are jewish or not. But you are a liar. You say you got hit twice for a few dozen times in the face by the police. So they hit you 50 to 100 times in the face??? Never! And you say you are not afraid of the german police because they killed your family in 1942. They did NOT kill anyone. You fucking stupid jews still cry like babies about a time that ended 73 years ago. And you weren't even born at that time. You didn't know them. I really don't care what happened to my ancestors a hundred years ago. So stop crying. I am 42 and even my father was born four years AFTER WWII. So I do not feel guilty for ANYTHING. If you start crying like a little baby every time you get in a little trouble, then stay in your fucking desert you call Israel! And stop telling lies about Germany and german policemen!

Btw you should be afraid of the german police otherwise you now know what happens and I think you deserved it. I hate it when people say Germany has a problem with antisemitism, because it's not the german people but the muslim migrants. 

Sincerely Jan Friedrichsen

I have a short message for Herr Friedrichsen:  you are what's wrong with the world.

Hyman from Oxford to UCL

John Hyman (philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, Wittgenstein), Professor of Aesthetics at Oxford University, will take up the Grote Professorship at University College London, effective this September.

Philosophical justifications for plagiarizing philosophy papers

These are funny, especially the one on "time travel."

(Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)

More on police brutality in Germany

Reader Jonathan Mai writes:

Regarding your interesting post about the brutal police attack on Professor Melamed it might be interesting to share some information on police brutality in Germany.

1. There's a large amount of unjustified police violence against suspects, mostly with an immigrant background. (There's the still unsolved case of Oury Jalloh who in 2005 burnt to death in a Dessau police station under, to put it mildly, very unclear circumstances.) 

2. Policemen involved in alleged violent attacks are almost never found guilty in court. There seems to be  a symbiotic relation between executive and judicial powers when it comes to police violence.  

3. Journalists almost never report critically on the violent incidents. As in the case of Professor Melamed they adopt the police strategy of denying the facts and literally copy the police reports on what supposedly happened.

4. There's evidence that witnesses and victims to and of violent police crimes are threatened to take back their statement. A milder form of this strategy seems to have been applied to Professor Melamed.

The above points are presented in more detail in a post that also contains a link to a radio broadcast dealing with the same issue (both are in German):

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Unter-dem-Stiefel-4043782.html

In light of these facts the reaction of the Bonn mayor is also quite typical: Foreground the anti-Semitic attack (which is unacceptable to be sure) and remain silent on the really problematic issues surrounding police violence I pointed out above. The case of Professor Melamed is not an isolated case but part of a very troubling pattern.  

I'm opening comments for those who have more information, useful links (in German or English), etc.

Great moments at the foundations of rock 'n' roll: R.L. Burnside, "Goin' Down South"

 Burnside (1926-2005), who learned to play guitar from Mississippi Fred McDowell, did not start recording until the 1960s, and kept performing well into old age (see, e.g., his performance of "Poor Black Mattie" in the 1980s); this is an early number:

 

Philosopher Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins) victim of anti-semitic attack in Bonn--and then a victim of police brutality at hands of local cops!

When I arrived in Bonn on Thursday, July 12 to give a keynote at Bonn's annual Summer School in Classical German Philosophy, I was shocked to learn that the prior day's speaker, Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins) had first been the victim of an anti-semitic assault by a deranged German-Paltestinian (some news reports described the assailant as a drug addict) on the lovely green space adjacent to the University, but that he was then beaten by the Bonn police who mistook him for the culprit rather than the victim--so he was victimized twice!  (Naturally, the police tried to rationalize their assault on Professor Melamed, but an independent investigation has been launched by the Minister of the Interior.)  The University and town are in an uproar (the events are all over the print and televised media), and the Bonn Mayor has organized a rally for next Thursday in which all Bonn citizens are encouraged to wear a Kippa.  But I'll here let Professor Melamed recount the horrible events.

The Events at the Bonner Hofgarten this July 11th: A Letter to a German Friend,

In the past two days I have been approached by various German news media requesting my description of the events that took place at the Bonner Hofgarten on July 11th. I cannot answer all of these requests as I have work to do and family to look after. Instead, let me provide a brief and precise description of the course of events on that day. Let me also note that I am deeply troubled by the description of the events in the Bonn Police statement of July 12. The report is replete with flat and groundless lies aiming at covering both the brutality and inefficiency of the Bonn police on July 11th (I will explain these grave charges shortly).

I had been invited to give a Keynote Lecture at Bonn University’s prestigious summer school in classical German philosophy. Regrettably, I could come for only two and half days due to family commitments, and I was scheduled to give my talk on Wed. June 11 at 18:00. I had spent the morning of that day working on my research, and at 12:30 I met Dr. Lina Steiner (Bonn University), my former colleague and a close friend of both my spouse and I. Lina showed me the nice schloss and then she wished to show me the town (though I visit German universities quite frequently, I had never been to Bonn before). It was sometime after 14:00 that we crossed the street and entered the Bonner Hofgartens. Shortly thereafter, a stocky man about 1.60 meters tall approached us and asked me “Bist Du Jude?” and then, added that he is Palestinian. I started saying that I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and deeply regret the current depressing state of Islamic-Jewish relations, when the person (realizing that I am a foreigner) started shouting in English: “I fuck Jews. I fuck Jews.” Realizing where this conversation is going Dr. Steiner and I passed to the other side and moved away from the person who then followed us with his persistent curses. Then, he tried to throw away my yarlmulka (Kippa) shouting in German that in Germany I am not allowed to wear a yarmulka. I took my yalmulka from the ground and put it back on my head. The guy got angrier: “No. You are not allowed to have the yarmulka here” (that’s my recollection of his shouts in German). He then shouted several times: “Kein Juden in Deutschland”, and threw my yalmulka for the second time. I picked it up and put it on my head. “You don’t listen to me” he shouted, and threw my yarmulka for the third time. I picked it up and put it on my head. He pushed me, and then we moved aside.

As this was happening, Lina asked bypassers to call the police, and a few of them made the phone call (there were quite a few people around). The attacker, at that point, went to the nearby lawn and started walking in circles. After about five minutes he came back to us. He pushed me and then I tried to kick him in the groin so that he would leave us. I didn’t hit, but he was deterred and went again to the green, walking in circles. I asked Lina where the police is. Then the attacker came for the third time. He pushed again, cursed, and I tried (and failed) to kick his groin. Then, we heard the siren of the police. It was at least 20 minutes after we asked to call the police (there were many passers-by around who could attest). The attacker moved slowly, then once the police car was about to park he started running away.

The police moved slowly and the attacker was about to get out of my eyesight. He was about 400 meters ahead of me, and after some hesitation I started running after him, so that I could still point the police in his direction (the area was populated, and the attacker took off his shirt, so it was clear he was about to disappear from eyesight). After three hundred meters I saw a pair of policemen running from the opposite direction, passing the attacker, and running… toward me. I didn’t have much time to wonder, as almost immediately four or five policemen with heavy guard jumped over me (two from the front, and two or three from the back). They pushed my head into the ground, and then while I was totally incapacitated and barely able to breath (not to mention move a finger), they started punching my face. After a few dozen punches, I started shouting in English that I was the wrong person. They put handcuffs on my hands, behind my back, and after a few dozen additional punches to my face while I am shouting that I’m the wrong person, they finally moved from my back. I was now able to breath. I asked them to open my bag and reach for my identifying documents. My glasses were broken. My watch torn, and then after another 5 or 10 minutes they realized they made an error. One of the policemen came, took off my handcuffs, and told me that they captured person who attacked us. Then the same policemen shouted at me in a didactic tone (in English): “Don’t get in trouble with the German Police!.” This was more than enough. I told the policeman sardonically, “I am no longer afraid of the German police. The German police murdered my grandfather. They murdered my grandmother. They murdered my uncle, and they murdered my aunt. All in one day in September 1942. So, alas, I am not afraid of them anymore.” The policeman was baffled. I asked him for his name, and he refused to answer. I asked again, and again got no answer. Later, I was able to write down the identifying number on his police vest which I still have with me.

2018 Lakatos Prize in philosophy of science goes to...

...Sabina Leonelli (Exter) and Craig Callender (UC San Diego).

Streeck, 'How Will Capitalism End?'

This is a brilliant and illuminating essay,  I don't agree with all of it by any means, but it has real insight and a synoptic vision of the "big picture." He doesn't miss the forest for the trees (or the trees for the twigs, the specialty of the New York Times).

Caring for the terminally ill

Philosopher Beatrice Han-Pile (Essex) discusses some of the ethical issues.

On the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the super-legislature

I'll just link to the piece I wrote when Judge Gorsuch was nominated.  I guarantee there won't be an honest discussion this time either.  I don't think Kavanaugh will vote to overturn Roe, for what it's worth.  I do think his ascendancy to the Supreme Court will guarantee the irrelevancy of that institution for the next generation.

The lawsuit against U of Miami and Colin McGinn growing out of the sexual misconduct allegations of 2012

Michael Tooley (Colorado) has posted comments about the lawsuit, which settled in 2016, including a statement from philosopher Edward Erwin (Miami), the one defendant who was not party to settlement of the lawsuit.  Prof. Erwin sent me the deposition of the plaintiff, which I have read; he told me it was not "under seal" by the court.  I'll say more about it in a moment.   My conclusion, however, based on the deposition, is that (1) Colin McGinn behaved inappropriately in trying to initiate a romantic and sexual relationship with his doctoral student, the plaintiff; and (2) the university did not act unreasonably, though I find the plaintiff's explanation of her conduct quite plausible.  I do want to highlight a point Professor Erwin makes:

Before the case was brought, McGinn, like Peter Ludlow, was blacklisted from academic philosophy. He was denied a one year Visiting Position at East Carolina University; he has been asked to withdraw his contribution to an anthology on Shakespeare and Philosophy because other authors threatened to pull theirs (Peter Ludlow has suffered the same fate), and more recently, he has had a contract for a Shakespeare book cancelled specifically because of the allegations in the case; he has had speaking engagements cancelled, and, although he has applied to several other academic positions, he has failed to make the short list for any of them.

I want to note my agreement with Professor Erwin that this kind of treatment is unacceptable; as I wrote in a CHE column awhile back:

Liberals who no doubt believe that convicted felons "deserve a second chance" sometimes sound like they think that accused or university-convicted sexual harassers should never be heard from again. But how could that be right?

Punishments should be proportional to the offense; that is a widely accepted principle of punitive justice. No one thinks that a sexual harasser should be castrated or hung. One also hopes no one thinks a sexual harasser should be prohibited from earning a living ever again. (Even convicted murderers, released from prison, are allowed to work.)

The rest of this post will concern the deposition of the plaintiff.

Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins make tenured offers to Barnard's John Morrison (UPDATED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 5, 2018:  UPDATED

Morrison, who teaches at Barnard and in the Columbia graduate program, works in early modern philosophy and philosophy of mind.  Prospective PhD students considering these schools will want to inquire about the status of this recruitment effort.

UPDATE:  Prof. Morrison has declined the offers and will remain at Barnard/Columbia.

Better drop Italy from your travel plans...

...it's about to become the preventable infectious diseases capital of Europe thanks to the ignoramuses running the government.

Great moments at the foundations of rock 'n' roll: Mississippi Fred McDowell, "Goin' Down to the River"

All the best rock 'n' roll is indebted through and through to the blues music produced by African-Americans, first in the American South in the first half of the 20th-century and then moving a bit north (to cites like Chicago) after WWII.  (I've occasionally noted examples before.)  For the remainder of the summer, I'll be featuring some of these gems, some familiar, others hopefully not.   We'll start with Mississippi Fred McDowell (the Rolling Stones made another of his songs famous to a new generation in the 1960s).

ADDENDUM:  Here's a short documentary from 1969 about McDowell (just a few years before his death), produced by the University of Mississippi.

 

San Jose State's Anand Jayprakash Vaidya interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Wisconsin Supreme Court sides with Marquette professor whose contractual right to academic freedom was violated

The Court has also ordered Marquette to reinstate the professor with back pay and other damages.  This is a significant victory for academic freedom, especially since Marquette is a private university, so there were no constitutional claims, only contractual claims.   (Earlier coverage of the McAdams case here.  This post in particular is a useful reminder of the misplaced rhetoric of "vunlerability":  it took McAdams three years and litigation that, if he had had to pay for it, would have no doubt cost at least a half million dollars, to have his contractual rights upheld and get his job back.))

(Thanks to Alan White for the pointer.)

ADDENDUM:  You can read the Court's opinion here.  Much of it is given over to the question whether the court should defer to the university's determinations; the opinion analyzes the university statutes quite thoroughly in concluding it should not.  The argument of this part is summarized at paragraph 57 and the majority responds (correctly, in my view) to the dissent in paragraph 58.  (The dissent, alas, is typical of how deferential courts are to private universities in many of these cases.)  On the merits, the court has a sensible discussion of whether 'academic freedom' encompasses McAdams's blog post, and correctly concludes that it does:  the core argument is paragraphs 69 to 77.  It's consistent with what I had argued all along, and makes mincemeat of some of the nonsense repeated by others in philosophy cyberspace.

UPDATE:  The concurrence by Judge Bradley (beginning at paragraph 97) is quite good on academic freedom, and makes a good contrast with the dissent, which, bizarrely, suggests that the value of "shared governance" trumps the core contractual protection for extramural speech.

Self-help Nietzsche?

This is not a side of Nietzsche I typically discuss, but I had fun talking about it with British journalist Ben Wilson; it turned into a bit of a free-ranging discussion about Nietzsche beyond the traditional self-improvement genre.

Brits preparing to welcome the infantile U.S. President

This is priceless!  I predict a big market for these balloons going forward.

(Thanks to Jonathan Turner for the pointer.)

Malevolence exacerbated by incompetence: the case of Trump's policy of separating children from their families at the border

Interesting analysis.

(Thanks to Cora Diamond for the pointer.)

Western Illinois University fires 24 faculty, including 7 with tenure (one a philosopher)

The WIU news release and an article at CHE.   Brian Powell is the tenured philosophy professor who has been terminated, though he will get one more year of employment, under the terms of the union contract.   WIU now has only three philosophy faculty left, one of whom is already slated to retire in 2020.  

Needless to say, financial exigency is the proferred defense for all this.

I fear we will see more of this in the coming years.

Claremont Graduate University shuts its philosophy department, and two tenured faculty will be terminated!

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 7--SEE THE LATEST COMMENT BY PROFESSOR YAMADA; HE AND PROF. YOUNG HAVE BOTH BEEN FIRED

The Claremont colleges in Southern California--Pomona, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Claremont-McKenna, and Pitzer--boast an impressive aggregated philosophy faculty, in addition to beautiful campuses and excellent undergraduates.  (The Claremont colleges are the Amherst/Haverford/Bryn Mawr/Colgate/Hamilton of the West Coast.)  I did not know that the PhD program in philosophy, part of the Claremont Graduate University, had additional faculty, but I've now learned that the Claremont Graduate University will be closing the PhD program and terminating two tenured faculty!  One, Charles Young, a specialist in ancient philosophy, may have the reasonable option to retire, but the other, Masahiro Yamada (epistemology), a tenured associate professor (with a family), will need to find a new position.  This presents a real opportunity for other departments to hire an accomplished young scholar!

If anyone has more information, comments are open.  (This is summer, and I am paying less attention to the blog, so please be patient about comment moderation.)

UPDATE:  Please see the additional information supplied by Professor Yamada in the comments, below.

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Zach Barnett (who is joining the faculty at the National University of Singapore this fall) writes:  "Masahiro Yamada was one of my thesis readers when I was a student at Pomona College, and he supported me in applying to graduate school. Actually, that's an understatement – he read countless versions of my writing sample, and when I wrote to him in a panic at the final hour, he called me up on New Year's Eve, calmed me down, and helped me put the finishing touches on my application.  I always hate to see philosophers affected by these sorts of cuts, but it is especially hard to see it happening to such a great philosopher/person."

Legal philosopher Joseph Raz wins (lucrative!) Tang Prize in "Rule of Law" from Taiwan

A news story here.  What a nice recognition for the most important figure in Anglophone legal philosophy after H.L.A. Hart!

(Thanks to Brian Bix for the pointer.)