Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Our Silicon Valley overlords operate in mysterious ways

Facebook has decided it is now OK to discuss, indeed praise, a NeoNazi Ukrainian militia that is now fighting the Russians, whereas before users could not mention them.

AFA letter to Concordia U in Wisconsin over possible sanction of philosophy professor...

...for criticizing the university.

Major violation of academic freedom at the University of Washington

A major donor to the University of Washington has withdrawn an endowment supporting a chair and program in Israel studies because the current holder criticized Israel!  Some details:

The University of Washington has put its five-year-old Israel Studies Program on hold after a major donor, angry about a professor’s criticism of Israel, took her money back.

Becky Benaroya, a prominent Seattle philanthropist, gave $5 million in 2016 to create the program. But after a professor who held the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies was among hundreds of Jewish studies and Israel studies professors to sign a widely circulated statement criticizing Israel last year, Benaroya became concerned about what was happening in the program she had funded.

She requested months of meetings with the professor, Liora Halperin, and university officials to discuss her views on the program’s direction. Those meetings — which also included a representative of the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, according to a person familiar with them — culminated in the university returning the entire endowment to Benaroya earlier this year.

 

"Anglophone Analytic Legal Philosophy"

This paper might be of interest to some readers; the abstract:

This essay examines Anglophone analytic legal philosophy in comparison to Professor Aldo Schiavello's account of Italian (and also, more broadly, non-Anglophone) analytic legal philosophy (in the same volume). The focus, in particular, is on legal positivism in H.L.A. Hart, Norberto Bobbio, and Alf Ross, and some of their striking shared commitments--especially, to methodological positivism (the idea that general jurisprudence can describe what the law is, without taking any position on what it ought to be). Methodological positivism is defended against a variety of objections raised by Schiavello.

Philosophy Department at SUNY Potsdam under threat

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY, FEB. 25--PLEASE SIGN IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY

Philosophers David Curry and Tim Murphy, both tenured faculty at the Potsdam campus of the State University of New York system, write:

We have been informed by upper administration, in the Academic Affairs Realignment Report they shared with Faculty Senate on February 17th, 2022, that the philosophy major program is included on a list of programs determined to go into “immediate provisionary status” (it appears we were spared “immediate discontinuation”). The terms of those “provisions” make it abundantly clear that the termination of the program is imminent. That is, “provisionary status” is really a death sentence for the major. This is further confirmed by the “recommendation” that the department be dissolved and the faculty merged with some other department by the end of the semester. As documented extensively below, the administration has no good reason for making these decisions, and plenty of good reasons to overturn them.

The link to the webpage is www.sunypotsdamphilosophy.com

To the petition:  https://www.change.org/p/dr-philip-neisser-save-suny-potsdam-philosophy

Please sign! If the smaller state universities can end their philosophy programs with impunity, the already desperate jobs situation will get even worse for newly minted PhDs.   Do remember the apt comments of  philosopher Steve Hales (Bloomsburg U in the Pennsylvania state system):

Authentic higher education is not just worker training for businesses. Philosophy has been the central discipline of universities since Plato’s Academy. We invented logic, systematic ethics, and the natural sciences—philosophy is not some ephemeral, boutique area of study but the heart of the university. Young Pennsylvanians [and New Yorkers--ed.] deserve the chance to improve their lives through the study of philosophy, and not just if they are privileged enough to go to U. Penn or Swarthmore [or Columbia or Vassar--ed.]....

It does not matter how many students major in philosophy; we will never attract as many as fields that are the names of jobs. What matters is that students have the choice....

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Ancient Grease, "Freedom Train," 1970

We haven't featured this Welsh hard (or "heavy" as is sometimes said) blues rock band since 2020, but here's another number from their one and only album:

 

Recalling the McCarthy Era attacks on academic freedom and the First Amendment

Philosopher Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin (Sam Houston State) recalls his grandfather's experience, which recent developments in Texas make worth remembering.

Blast from the past: 20 "Most Important" philosophers of all time

A poll back in 2009, with comments from readers.  This post still gets visits almost every day!

U.S. Free Speech Union on events at the University of Florida

Here, including a discussion of the devastating federal court opinion.   We saw this pattern in the Title IX context too:  judges are generally mystified by what passes for "process" at universities!

As always, war means death

This Ukrainian news source is keeping track of the horrors.

"The return of metaphysics"

Philosophers Patricia Churchlanad (UC San Diego) and Galen Strawson (Texas/Austin) discuss at IAITV (also in the discussion, alas, is Hilary Lawson, the owner of IAITV--but one can skip past that if one wants).

More on U Mass/Boston's proposed "mission statement"

Philosopher Steven Levine (U Mass/Boston) comments on Twitter on the proposal we noted previously:

The first line of my University's proposed mission is "to becoming an anti-racist and health-promoting institution." Not as side effects of our mission to pursue research and teach students, but as the mission itself.

The mission also involves the fact that we will—and I quote—"hold ourselves and each other accountable to ensure these values drive all decision-making in research, pedagogical innovations, resource allocation, and the development of policies and practices."

Those who work on purely theoretical issues in the sciences and elsewhere have been defined out of the mission. According to this passage, they will, in not directly forwarding these values in their work, be held 'accountable' for this.

We will, I think, deeply regret the social instrumentalization of the University. Many faculty think they are forwarding justice and pluralism by supporting this mission, when what they are really advancing is administrative and intellectual centralization.

The ugliness that awaits with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine

Unfortunately, this evocative short essay is probably correct.

(Thanks to Katalin Balog for the pointer.)

U.S. Universities by membership in the National Academy of Sciences (through 2021)

We last did this in 2018 (although Rockefeller University was incorrectly omitted last time).  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, engineering and other applied 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 universities with 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 asterisk (*) universities without medical schools, and I mark with a # universities with medical schools with very high research profiles (Some schools, like UT Austin, UC Riverside 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 (188)

2.  #Stanford University (164)

3.  *University of California, Berkeley (125)

4.  *Massachusetts Institute of Technology (120)

5.  *Princeton University (89)

6.  *California Institute of Technology (70)

7.  #Columbia University (69)

8.  Yale University (67)

9.  University of California, San Diego (53)

10. University of Chicago (48)

11. #University of California, San Francisco (46)

11. #University of Washington, Seattle (46)

13. New York University (45)

14. #University of California, Los Angeles (43)

15. #University of Pennsylvania (40)

16. Cornell University (34)

16. *Rockefeller University (34)

16. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (34)

19. University of Wisconsin, Madison (33)

20. #Johns Hopkins University (32)

What's going on in Canada?

A reader writes:

I am a long time follower of your blog, and wanted to write in to ask whether you might consider a post soliciting comments (or giving your own thoughts) regarding the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act by the Canadian Trudeau government in response to the Trucker Convoy Protest. I would be particularly interested in hearing readers thoughts regarding the legality of the protests and the degree to which its actions have or have not justified the Act’s invocation, and in particular regarding the seizing of assets of people who attended the protest or were associated with it. I would also be curious to hear a legal perspective on the descriptions of the protest as “occupations" and the like — the trucks did after all block road access in a capital city, etc. Lastly, I would be especially interested in perspectives on the historical legality of road blockades as civil protest measures.

Here's a NYT account from yesterday.   The Emergency Measures Act seems to be fraught with the potential for abuse; whether it was abused here, I'm not sure.  Comments are open for informed comments about the questions raised, not meltdowns and ranting!

Richard Marshall interviews Justin E.H. Smith (Paris VII)...

...at 3:16 AM.  Entertaining and eclectic!

U Mass/Boston adopts new "mission statement"

The shorter version:  "We are no longer a university."

AFA Statement on the attack on tenure and academic freedom in Texas

Here.

More thoughts on academic freedom and offensive speech by faculty

Georgetown law professor Paul Butler calls for a newly hired colleague, Ilya Shapiro, to be fired for an offensive tweet, but offers no account of academic freedom or its limits.  (A faculty letter organized by F.I.R.E. correctly noted that it would violate AAUP academic freedom rules to fire Shapiro. See also.)  As mathematician Craig Larson (Virginia Commonwealth) wrote to me,

[Butler] thinks his colleague should be fired over a tweet. He never states any principle that might be discussed, but implies something like: "If you tweet something that is offensive to some group of students, making it *impossible* to teach that group of students, then you should be fired".

That he hasn't thought this through is easy to see: the principle could equally be applied to evolutionary biologists who ever say that the bible account of creation is false, to cartesian physcists who are offended by those upstart newtonians, to Peter Singer, etc, etc.

Anyone with a different view from a professor might claim that it is *impossible* to learn from some professor. Maybe Butler thinks professors shouldn't have any extra-mural opinions?

Garcia from Yale to Free University Berlin

Manon Garcia (feminist philosophy, 20th-century Continental philosophy, moral & political philosophy), currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, has accepted appointment as Junior Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin; given her work already, I expect she will be tenured there soon.  (Yale's ranking in 20th-century Continental philosophy and perhaps also feminist philosophy was importantly due to Professor Garcia, so prospective students should take note.)

Heart disease risk increases substantially after Covid (even a mild case)

A rather disturbing report in Nature; an excerpt:

Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study¹ shows. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease.

What’s more, the risk was elevated even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes....

Philosophy PhD admissions decisions are starting to come out in significant numbers

Here.  Good luck to all readers who are applying this round!

JHP Article Prize for 2021

Prof. Deborah Boyle (Charleston), editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, writes:

The Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded the prize for the best article published in the journal in 2021 to Matthew D. Walker’s article, “Aristotle’s Eudemus and the Propaedeutic Use of the Dialogue Form” (JHP 59.3 [July 2021]: 399–427).

Professor Walker is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale NUS College (part of the National University of Singapore).

Former Vice-Provost at Penn supports violation of AAUP academic freedom principles

Anita Allen (Penn) is a distinguished legal scholar and philosopher, whom I greatly respect, which makes her remarks here all the more shocking.  She is clear that she is expressing only her "own opinion," but given that she was a highly-regarded Vice Provost at Penn for many years, one can only worry about the future of academic freedom at Penn if the university and its Faculty Senate embrace her views.

Although Professor Allen notes that Penn is committed to the AAUP academic freedom principles, what she proposes is a clear violation of those principles, in particular, the principle that "[w]hen [faculty] speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline."  By contrast, Professor Allen proposes that faculty can be sanctioned (perhaps even terminated) for speech that:

(1)  "poses a significant hazard to the interests of [the academic] community or its express academici and moral values" (around 13 minutes);

(2)  poses "a significant hazard to the community or its core values, such as equity, inclusion, and diversity" (around 19:30)

(3)  "ha[s] a negative impact on recruitment and retention of diverse faculty, students and staff" (around 21:30)

(4)  "repeatedly requires onerous extra, highly stressful work by administrators due to students', parents', colleagues', staff's, alums' and others concerns and complaints" (around 21:30).

She also states that while "dissent" is "rarely sufficient grounds for termination" (rarely?), dissenting views that are "highly offensive and hurtful to students, colleagues or staff," as well as racist, sexist, homophobic, and discriminatory speech may be sufficient (around 26 minutes).

"Strong disciplines" are the foundation of genuine interdisciplinarity

Philosopher of science Paul Griffiths (Sydney) gets this exactly right; an excerpt:

An interdisciplinary team is not a group of people trained in “interdisciplinarity”. It’s a group of people who have deep knowledge and sound judgment in their disciplines....

A discipline is much more than a particular stream of courses in the undergraduate syllabus, despite efforts to redefine it as such. A discipline is an international community of expertise.A discipline is the group within which one expert can legitimately judge another expert’s work. A historian, an epidemiologist or a quantum theorist is best placed to judge whether work in history, epidemiology or quantum theory is good work. They can tell if a course covers the right material. They can also tell who is the most promising candidate for employment or for promotion.

Fascist Lt. Governor of Texas Dan Patrick wants to end tenure, and ban teaching of "Critical Race Theory" in higher education

This really is becoming the McCarthy Era all over again, except that there is no foreign power committed to the CRT bogeyman:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is proposing to end tenure for new hires at Texas public universities and making the teaching of critical race theory a cause for tenure revocation. He said tenure should also be reviewed annually.

Currently state law says tenured faculty are subject to a performance evaluation “no more often than once every year, but no less often than once every six years.”

The goal is to eliminate tenure at all public universities in Texas, Patrick said during a Friday news conference. The issue will be a “top priority” and a subject of interim hearings as lawmakers prepare for the 88th Legislative Session that starts in January.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Frost, "Baby Once You Got It," 1969

We haven't featured in quite awhile this Michigan psychedelic band that never made it as big as its contemporaries (like Grand Funk and Bob Seger); this comes from their debut album:

 

Russia will invade Ukraine by Monday, February 21

The Olympics end on February 20, and as my colleague Tom Ginsburg pointed out on Twitter, Putin is not going to embarrass his "ally" China by usurping all the headlines until the Olympics are over.  We have noted previously  why Russia will invade Ukraine.  The U.S. could have prevented this by withdrawing the threat to include Ukraine in the NATO sphere of influence.  Of course, that would be a concession to Putin, who is a very bad man (maybe as bad as Trump!).   Moral propriety, alas, has little to do with the sordid nature of great power politics, as the entire history of U.S. conduct since WWII would also reveal. 

Inaugural "Alvin Plantinga Prize" from APA goes to Princeton's Lara Buchak

From the APA announcement:

The American Philosophical Association (APA) is pleased to announce that the inaugural Alvin Plantinga Prize in the amount of $10,000 has been awarded to Lara Buchak (Princeton University) for her essay, “Faith and Traditions.”

The APA has also awarded two honorable mentions in the amount of $5,000 each to Charity Anderson (Baylor University) for “Divine Hiddenness: An Evidential Argument” and to Aaron Segal (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) for “Dependence, Transcendence, and Creaturely Freedom: On the Incompatibility of Three Theistic Doctrines.”

The Alvin Plantinga Prize is funded through the generosity of the Bossenbroek Family Foundation. This prize recognizes original essays that engage philosophical issues about or in substantial ways related to theism. Submissions were assessed according to canons of excellence for which Alvin Plantinga is eminent: clarity, rigor, and originality.

Peter Singer event at St. Olaf College goes off successfully

Professor Edmund Santurri, the Director of the College's Institute for Freedom and Community (which hosted the event), kindly shared the link for the event, for those interested.  (Earlier coverage.)

John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) talks about free will and moral responsibility...

...at Brain in a Vat.

Gunmaker pays $73 million to settle claims of families of children murdered at Sandy Hook

Our only hope for reining in the gun insanity in the U.S. may be the civil liability system. 

A methodological problem for X-Phil?

Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) discusses recent work by his doctoral student Kyle Thompson.

APA's "Public Philosophy Op-ed" prizes for 2021

Here.

Scholarly impact rankings in law

Readers thinking about law school, or interested in law or legal scholarship, might find this data of interest.

Blast from the past: Most cited Anglophone philosophy books published since WWII (according to Google Scholar)

Back in 2017.

Why are all Philosophical Gourmet Report updates here on this blog?

I confess I shouldn't be surprised any longer by what the PGR/Leiter haters pretend to be concerned about, but this one really does amaze me.  So let me spell it out for the benefit of those who genuinely don't understand.  Since many readers are not interested in the philosophy rankings, I put all this below the fold.

A good refutation of a rather feeble piece on universities and free speech...

...by philosopher Michael Veber (East Carolina U) in CHE.  Discovery of truth is central to the justification of academic freedom and free speech in universities.

(Thanks to Andrew Beck for the pointer.)

Will the EU now, finally, crack down on the illiberal regimes in Poland and especially Hungary?

The highest court in the EU has cleared the way for doing so, now let's hope it will really happen.  Money, as usual, talks very loudly and may produce real reforms in these countries.

(Recall that school desegregation in the U.S. did not start really happening until more than a dozen years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and only when the federal government announced it would withhold federal education funds from school districts not in compliance!)

Richard Marshall interviews Alexus McLeod (Connecticut)...

...about Chinese philosophy at 3:16 AM.

Philosopher in Belarus on hunger strike after being imprisoned for his views

Belarus, ruled by an authoritarian gangster, has imprisoned philosopher Uladzimir Matsekavich.  PEN international has issued a strong statement in support, and there is also a petition in his support.  We are dealing here with gangsters, of course, so only worldwide condemnation might embarrass the Belarusian authorities. 

(Thanks to Peter Singer for the pointer.)

Here we go again: St. Olaf students protest Peter Singer's virtual talk at their college

At least they only want the talk "boycotted" rather than cancelled, although they also want a commitment that the college will not invite speakers with incorrect views again.  (The misuse of the category "hate speech" is particularly remarkable:  nothing they quote from Singer would qualify as "hate speech" in any democracy with actual "hate speech" laws.)

(Thanks to Justin Garson for the pointer.)

"The metaphysics of accounting"

Who knew?

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

"Schopenhauer on boredom"

A brilliant new account by Joshua Isaac Fox, a recent PhD graduate from here.

Posing as a "virtuous victim" associated with the "dark triad" of personality traits

According to three psychologists at (ironically enough) the University of British Columbia.  From the abstract:

We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies....[W]e show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism—amoral manipulation—and a form of narcissism that reflects a person’s belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling.

Blast from the past: Against "secret waitlists" in admissions

Back in 2017, but will soon be timely again. Do see the comments as well.

"Asset Manager Capitalism"

Via Alan Thomas, I come across this short talk by political economist Mark Blyth (Brown), which also discusses the "Wall Street Green New Deal" and mentions this striking Rand Corporation report on the effect of the "Reagan Revolution" from the right on wealth inequality.

Curious to hear from those knowledgeable about the economic literatures he discusses how sound this analysis is.  (In his brief discussion of "legal" literature on who really owns corporations, I note he sides with what is a minority view in the academic literature, without much discussion.  Of course, the minority view may be correct.)

 

70% of Americans currently living "paycheck to paycheck"

That means, of course, that they are not free (see my remarks here).   Indeed, most of those with money to spare aren't free either.  The epidemic of unfreedom in America will no doubt get worse in the years ahead.

(More signs of unfreedom and economic distress.)

 

"The Logic Gallery"

Featuring portraits of all your favorite logicians throughout history, courtesy of philosopher David Marans (St. Thomas U, Florida).  Many new editions since we last featured it in 2014.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Gods, "You're My Life," 1968

Another tune from the debut album of the British band The Gods (featuring a pre-Uriah Heep Ken Hensley), one that borrows, perhaps a bit too much, from a 1966 Cream song: