Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Great moments in classic blues and their rock 'n' roll covers: Robert Johnson, "Love in Vain Blues," 1937

Here's two takes by Johnson of this great number made famous three decades later by the Rolling Stones:

And here's the Stones from 1969's Let It Bleed:

 

Blast from the past: when the NYT declared the great Bayard Rustin a "gay, Black civil rights hero"...

...but didn't highlight his work with the labor movement!

Honesty on social media?

Philosopher Christian Miller (Wake Forest) comments.

In Memoriam: William Ralph Schroeder (1947-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 28--YOB corrected, and updated

Professor Schroeder, who was emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where he spent most of his career), was best-known for his work on figures in the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy.  His major work, Sartre and His Precedecessors (Routledge, 1984) grew out of his doctoral thesis at the University of Michigan.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

(Thanks to Jeff McMahan for alerting me to his passing.)

UPDATE:  There is an obituary here.

ANOTHER:  And also here.  (Thanks to Cary Nelson for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: A guide to the National Research Council rankings

Back in 2010.

2022 Danto/ASA Prize in aesthetics

The APA announcement is here:   the winner is Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, an art historian at Harvard,for her paper, “Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law,” Art Journal 79:4 (2020) 92–113.  The competition this year included 15 papers, and the selection committee also awarded Honorable Mention to Michel-Antoine Xhignesse (Capilano University, Canada) for “What Makes a Kind an Art-Kind?”.

Ranked philosophy departments that have no tenure-stream faculty specializing in the Continental traditions in philosophy after Kant

As philosophy departments increasingly hire specialists in currently trendy but niche areas like philosophy of race and gender (but never class), it remains remarkable how many departments currently do not have any tenure-stream faculty specializing in one of the most important periods of Western philosophy (but also hugely influential in non-Western traditions), that centered in Germany after Kant, but also reflected in other Continental European countries in the 19th- and 20th-century, especially France.  This, of course, puts the lie to the claim that Anglophone departments are "departments of Western philosophy," or "departments of European and American philosophy."  After considerable progress in the last forty years, it looks like Anglophone departments are now sliding backwards in terms of narrowness, even though I'm happy to bet that Schopenhauer and Marx and Foucault will be of interest in one hundred years, in a way that, say, the metaphysics of grounding will not.

COVID outbreak...at a beach?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 30--INTERESTING COMMENTS, BELOW (NOTE, IN PARTICULAR, THAT THE WEATHER WAS BAD THAT WEEKEND, SO MOST TRANSMISSION ALMOST CERTAINLY OCCURRED INDOORS)

This is allegedly why the Center for Disease Control in the U.S. has reinstituted mask mandates:

As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized, yet officials said the vast majority were also reporting symptoms. Seven people were reported hospitalized.

Before Provincetown, health officials had been operating under the assumption that it was extraordinarily rare for a vaccinated person to become infected with the virus. And if they did, they probably wouldn't end up passing it on to others, such as children too young to qualify for the vaccine or people who were medically vulnerable.

The idea that vaccines halt transmission of the virus was largely behind the CDC's decision in May suggesting vaccinated people could safely go without their masks indoors and in crowds, even if others were unvaccinated....

The Republican war on democracy

Jane Mayer lays it all out in The New Yorker.

Seeking help with a survey of student perceptions of philosophy *before* they take philosophy

Philosopher Bailie Peterson (Northern Colorado) writes:

I have followed your blog since I discovered it happily as an undergraduate, and I appreciate your service to our field.  I am now in my fourth year as an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado.  I am working on a research project tracking student's perceptions of philosophy before they have completed their first philosophy course and I would like to ask if you would share a request for participation with your readers.  

I work with many first-generation and financially disadvantaged students, and I am curious about whether or not their views line up with assumptions made about philosophy by students more generally (for example, do students enter with the assumption that there is gender bias in philosophy, or that it is a difficult logic-laden subject?)  I am leading a small team of researchers trying to collect data from the widest number of students possible to answer these questions.

The study itself has been granted IRB Exempt status, so there is very little chance of any risk or harm to students, and all answers will be reported in aggregate. Instructors will be asked to distribute the survey twice, both on the first day of the semester and near the end of the term, to measure any change in their perceptions.  The survey is completed via a Qualtrics link and should not take more than 10 minutes.

The Delta variant: both a higher viral load *and* a shorter incubation period

Informative.  The higher viral load has now been widely reported (and explains why it is more transmissible), but I hadn't seen the point about the incubation period before:  an average of four days, instead of six.

Philosophy of journalism: the course

The journalist Carlin Romano may have dreamed of such a course, but now a competent philosopher has produced one:  you can see the syllabus and course description by Susanna Siegel (Harvard) at her homepage.  Thanks to the Trump catastrophe, I expect others may be interested in teaching such courses.

U.S. Court of Appeals upholds Indiana University vaccine mandate

A crisp and short opinion by my colleague Frank Easterbrook, which hopefully will influence any other court that has to consider these frivolous challenges.

Blast from the past: The Library of Congress Kluge Prize in the Humanities

Back in 2004.

The situation for academics in Australia

We've noted some of the recent challenges to higher education in Australia, but I'd be curious, as I imagine other readers would be, to hear from Australian academics about the pros and cons of academic life in Australia these days:  about teaching loads, research support, budget cuts, bureaucratic interference with teaching and research, and so on.  Obviously Australia continues to have many leading international centers of research in philosophy, and many other fields.  The question is:  what is it like for faculty these days? What are the challenges?  What are the positives?

Please submit comments only once, they may take awhile to appear.  (It's OK to post without your name, but please use a real email address, preferably a university one.  The email address will not appear.)

Sliwa from Cambridge to Vienna

Paulina Sliwa (ethics, epistemology), currently Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge University, will take up the Professorship in Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of Vienna this September.

The end of California?

Bacon may soon be unavailable in the state.

Paul Weithman (Notre Dame) discusses Rawls and "justice as fairness"...

...at Brain in a Vat.