Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: Most important Anglophone philosophers since WWII up until 2000

Back in 2015, with a discussion of the results.

"Extremism"

Philosopher Quassim Cassam (Warwick) discusses the concept in this video of a lecture in Belfast.

Richard Marshall interviews Hud Hudson (Western Washington)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Where untenured tenure-track faculty at the U.S. "top ten" earned their PhD, 2022 (CORRECTED)

Tenure-track junior faculty at the U.S. "top ten" programs earned their Ph.D.s in philosophy from the following programs:

1.   New York University (5)

1.   Princeton University (5)

3.   Rutgers University, New Brunswick (4)

4.   Harvard University (3)

4.   Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3)

6.   Columbia University (2)

6.   Oxford University (2)

6.   University of Southern California (2)

6.   Yale University (2)

Plus one each earned a Ph.D. from Indiana, DePaul, Berkeley, Paris I, UC Rvierside, Wisconsin, Harvard's Government Department, North Carolina, Michigan, Toronto, and UC Irvine.   Below the fold are the top ten departments with the PhDs of their untenured faculty.  Please email me corrections.  I'll extend this to the top twenty in the not-too-distant future.

2023 Rescher Medal awarded to Christine Korsgaard

Announcement here.

It looks like Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis has lost his mind

We noted early on during the Covid fiasco one of his peculiar interventions, but his latest "publication" (basically trashing his critics for having lower citation counts) is bizarre.

 

Blast from the past: Annals of Twitter hypocrisy: the case of "condescension from below"

Back in 2018, but not much has changed on Twitter, as we've noted before.

Ukrainian philosopher Yermolenko Volodymyr on living in the midst of war

A lot of very striking observations on his Twitter account, including here, here, here, and here.  (More about Volodymyr here.)

(Thanks to Anthony Couture for calling this to my attention.)

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science "Popper Prize" for 2021 goes to...

...Eddy Keming Chen (UC San Diego), with honorable mention going to papers by Vera Hartenstein (Math, LMU Munich) & Mario Hubert (Caltech), and by Lauren Ross (UC Irvine).

AFA letter to Princeton regarding its continued attacks on its own faculty member, Prof. Katz in classics

Here.

The hosts of "Brain in a Vat" reflect on the Kershnar case and free expression

Here.

University of Montreal responds correctly to petition attacking professor for expressing "incorrect" views about Russia and Ukraine

Sometimes schools do get it right.

(Thanks to Stephen Rive for the pointer.)

Gillman & Chemerinsky: student hecklers are bad for free speech on campus, state legislatures quite a bit worse

Exactly right.  It's no surprise that the crypto-fascists in America ignore the Repug war on academic freedom and free speech; it's more disheartening when those on the putative "left" whitewash the bad behavior by students on campus (e.g.).  As Professors Gillman and Chemerinsky write:

The student protestors and their allies would undoubtedly make the case that they are opposing truly bad ideas while the Republican legislators are opposing important ideas. But that is not how censorship works. Once one grants that administrators and other officials should have the authority to censor and punish bad ideas, there is no predicting who will be the target of such repression.

"Class struggle unionism"

This is interesting, and probably right.

Ukraine's Zelensky asks if the West is "afraid of Moscow"?

This is really a childishly stupid thing for him to have said (right up there with loose-lips Biden calling for Putin to be removed from power).   The West is afraid of nuclear war, as everyone in their right mind should be, including Zelensky.  Surely Zelensky knows this is why he isn't getting more military help:  does he really think taunting like this helps his cause or his people?   Given that neither NATO nor the U.S. will (we hope) take any action that risks nuclear retaliation, perhaps Zelensky needs to rethink his strategy vis-a-vis Moscow?

ADDENDUM:  Greenwald on a related theme.  (Thanks to S. Wallerstein for the pointer.)

Great moments in British rock 'n' roll that remain obscure in the U.S.: Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, "Man of the World," 1969

Fleetwood Mac began as part of the British blues explosion of the late 1960s, led by guitarist Peter Green.  While "Oh Well" is known in the U.S. (thanks to many covers), Green's version of the band had other hits in 1968 and 1969, that made no appearances on the U.S. charts.   This number hit #2 on the UK charts:

 

Blast from the past: Garrison Keillor on the Republican Party

And this was back in 2004!  It's a helluva lot worse now.

UC San Diego offers Henry Allison Chair in History of Philosophy to Notre Dame's Shields

Students interested in ancient philosophy considering Notre Dame and UC San Diego will want to inquire about this:   Christopher Shields (Notre Dame), best-known for important work on Aristotle, has been offered the Henry Allison Chair in History of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.   Together with existing strengths in ancient at UCSD, this move would make UCSD a competitive choice in ancient philosophy.

Richard Marshall interviews Friedrich Schiller...

...at 3:16 AM.

"Isolating Russia won't bring Europe peace"

Political philosopher Lea Ypi (LSE) comments.

2022 Schock Prize in "Logic and Philosophy" goes to David Kaplan (UCLA)

Announcment here.  The Schock Prize is about as close to a "Nobel" as philosophy has, although as the title suggests, it tends to lean a bit more towards those with work related to logic than a pure philosophy prize would.  Still, past recipients include Quine, Rawls, Kripke, Nagel, Putnam, and Dummett, among others.  Kaplan is an obvious choice, and I would expect in the next decade to see some of Kit Fine, Tyler Burge, Timothy Williamson, Robert Stalnaker, Allan Gibbard, and/or Brian Skyrms recognized as well.

In Memoriam: Sten Lindström (1945-2022)

He was emeritus professor of theoretical philosophy at Uppsala University and well-known for his contributions to philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics.  There is a memorial notice (in Swedish) here.

Is there any other field where everyone knows the top two departments are at non-"brand name" universities

Thanks to the PGR, everyone knows that NYU and Rutgers are the top two departments in American philosophy.    In most other disciplines, the "top two or three" departments are always some mix of Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, Yale, sometimes also Michigan, Penn or UCLA.  NYU and Rutgers dominate no other fields the way they dominate philosophy.  This is one of many things that make complaints about "prestige bias" in philosophy so odd:  the prestige in the PGR era actually tracks the quality of the faculties, not the reputation of the university as a whole.  This is particularly striking in the humanities, where being a "brand name" university seems to be decisive in most other fields for preeminence.   (In the natural sciences, it seems easier for non-"brand name" schools to be recognized as excellent, perhaps because the criteria for important contributions are clearer and less pedigree-sensitive.)

Blast from the past: Gender (or other) quotas for entering PhD classes: what do we know about their effects?

A discussion back in 2013.

Changing a school's name from "X College" to "X University" increases enrollment

This is a peculiar finding, and one does wonder why more students apply and enroll.  Any ideas?

Tenured philosopher Andrew Haas resigns position at Higher School of Economics in Moscow in protest of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine

His resignation letter is here:  Download Haas Resignation from HSE.Haas.22.  He calls on his colleagues to do the same.

Putin's nuclear decision-making

This is interesting, and seems well-informed.  I invite those with more knowledge about these matters to comment.

(Thanks to Howard Berman for the pointer).

 

Does Cambridge University Press really prohibit graduate students from contributing to edited volumes?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SUNDAY, MARCH 20--IT APPEARS PRACTICES AT CUP MAY HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME.  MORE COMMENTS WELCOME.

That was the message received by a PhD student in philosophy in Canada, who had been invited to contribute to an edited volume by the editor (a faculty member not at his school), but was then informed that the press would not permit it.  The explanation offered for the alleged rule prohibiting graduate students from contributing was:  "There’s a perception that including them in the line-up may cause potential buyers to be put off from purchasing the volume."  That seems odd.  I can see a press not wanting faculty to invite their own PhD students to contribute, but that wasn't the issue here.

Have other encountered this issue with CUP or other academic presses?  To be clear, the issue isn't graduate students co-authoring with faculty (which happens a lot, I've done it with my doctoral students several times), but rather a prohibition on solo contributions from those without the PhD?

2022 Lenssen Prize for best essay on teaching philosophy...

...goes to Vaughn Baltzly (Texas State) for the paper “Trolleyology as First Philosophy: A Puzzle-Centered Approach to Introducing the Discipline,” published in the December 2021 issue (44:4) of Teaching Philosophy.

More on Putin and Ukraine

On the earlier thread, reader Boris Dagaev posted this:

Understandably, some readers of this blog are not completely satisfied with Stanovaya's analysis, which was written for the subscribers of her Telegram channel who are familiar with her work, and thus is limited in scope.

To provide a wider historical perspective (starting with 2007), I've translated the first part of today's article by another Russian political scientist, Kirill Shamiev. I'm hoping it would clarify some coordinated strategic considerations and tactical moves made by Putin's regime over the past few years.

You can find the translation here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oUHox2ooGCkk6g3GzB69aboqUUSHiJFgEDEM8_2I3Fk/edit?usp=sharing

By contrast, Scott Sagan, a political science professor at Stanford, here presumes (but does not argue for) the "Putin is a madman" view, and its alarming implications.  (Thanks to Jeff McMahan for the pointer.)

This is a context in which it pays, as Nietzsche says, to remember that objectivity and knowledge may emerge from having "one's pro and contra in one's power, and...[shifting] them in and out:  so that one knows how to make precisely the difference in perspectives and affective interpretations useful for knowledge."  So reading these two different perspectives on Putin and Ukraine, what can we conclude?

Self-driving trucks to replace 500,000 human jobs

The latest.  These are well-paying jobs too, thanks to the Teamsters union.   As Engels observed:

[T]he perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous.  If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves…Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the laborer....

This isn't, as the kids say, a "bug" in capitalism but one of its essential features, which is why things can only end badly.

CORRECTION:  They were well-paying jobs, prior to deregulation of the longhaul trucking industry!

Blast from the past: "The conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest"

Back in 2011, but the point is timeless.

Librarian in Texas fired after refusing to remove book about a transgender teen

If one wants to see what the Repugs have in store for America if given the chance, see Texas.

Philosophy thought police, redux

Philosopher Raja Halwani (School of the Art Institute, Chicago) discusses the reaction he got from some of the usual suspects (plus some new would-be censors, like Alex Bryant [British Columbia]) when he decided to include an essay by philosopher Kathleen Stock in his well-known Philosophy of Sex anthology.  Professor Halwani provides an admirably patient dissection of the objections.

On "snitches" in academia

The always provocative Laura Kipnes (journalism, Northwhestern) comments.  She alludes, in part, to her own experience with abuse of the Title IX process.   The last story she recounts concerns a former PhD student in philosophy at Northwestern:

Not long ago I received a wrenching email from the mother of a former graduate student I’d interviewed and written about in Unwanted Advances.  He’d been swept up in the same accusation-fest on my campus that I had. In fact he’d been reported on, he told me, by some of the same people who’d gone after me (friends, he’d once thought), and been, perhaps, collateral damage in the events I was relating. The charges involved his having made drunken passes (six months apart) at two women in his circle, and being, they felt, in various ways invasive.

Great moments in British rock 'n' roll that remain obscure in the U.S.: Small Faces, "Tin Soldier," 1967

Between 1965 and 1968, the Small Faces had multiple top ten hits in the UK, but cracked the U.S. top twenty only once, with "Itchycoo Park."  Steve Marriott, the brilliant and distinctive lead vocalist (and guitarist), left the group in 1969 to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton and moved in a more hard blues rock direction, which led to great success in the U.S. in the early 1970s; the remaining Small Faces joined forces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to form the hugely successful Faces, which also had a good run in the early 1970s.  But here the Small Faces are at the peak of their U.K. success, with a great single (lip synced here) that never made it in the U.S.:

 

 

Regarding yesterday's post about YouTube seminars on Kripke's "Naming and Necessity at 50"

Someone from the Saul Kripke Center at the CUNY Graduate Center asked me to take the post down, since the videos were not intended for public consumption (among other things, they are actual seminars with student participants).   Alas, putting them on YouTube makes them ripe for public consumption, although it is true they aren't searchable on Google.

"there will be no compensation for this position"

This job ad for an adjunct assistant professor of chemistry and  biochemistry at UCLA is making the rounds on social media because it involves no salary.  I'll venture an hypothesis:  although the position is without salary, it doesn't say it comes without benefits (e.g., health insurance).   The position was advertised on March 4, with a closing date of April 4.  My guess is that the department has someone in mind (maybe a recent PhD of theirs?) who needs a benefits-eligible position until their real job starts, hence this position, which they have to advertise because of equal opportunity laws.  By emphasizing it has no salary, they hope to scare everyone else off!

Right-wing "cancel culture" watch: study room at University of Florida named for Karl Marx has the name removed

Zieg Heil, baby, we're ideologically pure in Florida!   The case study in the Dunning-Kruger Effect that initiated this bit of petty tyranny in the service of ideological delusion is one Jennifer Carbrera who objects--obviously on the basis of no study or knowledge--to Marx being described as a "philosopher, radical economist and revolutionary critic" (all true, of course), adding that the description "neglects to mention the millions of people who have died as a direct result of his ideas."   Direct result?   Some people have funny views about causation, but I guess she's opposed to the Bible too for similar reasons.

Richard Marshall interviews Johann Gottfried Herder...

...at 3:16 AM.

Iranian translator of Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" refuses award in Iran in protest of censorship

Story here; an excerpt:

An Iranian mathematician and philosoph[er]...has rejected his award for the country's book of the year "in protest at censorship" in Iran.

Kaave Lajevardi said in a post on his blog on March 15 that he informed officials of his decision after being named as the joint winner of the prize for his translation of John Locke's book "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding."

Lajevardi, who studied at the University of Toronto but returned to live in Tehran, said that while his book had not been subject to censorship, that "does not prevent me from seeing the terrible dominance of censorship in publishing" and "the violation of the civil rights of translators, authors and publishers."

"By my own decision, I do not accept this particular award in order to challenge more broadly than ever before the very common and completely irrational and possibly illegal censorship routine...of which the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is one of the main custodians," he said in his post.

The publication of any artistic or cultural work in Iran, including books and films, is done only with the permission of the ministry or other government institutions.

(Thanks to Mousa Mohammadian for the pointer.)

More on Columbia's possible "fudging" of self-reported data to the USNews.com college rankings

At CHE (earlier).

Arthur Caplan, bioethicist...and aspiring war criminal?

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU's medical school, is certainly very good at talking to journalists.  My impression has long been that he is not well-regarded by philosophers, and not even by many fellow bioethicists.   But this is really a new low:

Arthur L. Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, has been campaigning for a program of mass death. He has written, not one, but two op-eds calling for a pharmaceutical boycott of Russia.

"How far does noncooperation with Russia go?" wrote Caplan on March 11 in Medscape. "Very, very far ... Whatever can be done to minimize harm to existing subjects in a short period of time ought to be done, but that is it. Similarly, no sale of medicines or therapies ought to be occurring, be they life-saving or consumer products." (Emphases mine.)

"The Russian people need to be pinched not only by the loss of cheeseburgers and boutique coffee but by products they use to maintain their well-being," Caplan lightheartedly adds.

The targeting of civilians is a relatively new form of barbarity in the history of war.

Caplan is untroubled by the implications of his proposal. "War is cruel that way," he shrugs, "but if you tolerate a government that is bombing and shelling a peaceful neighbor to oblivion, then pharma must ensure that efforts to make Putin and his kleptocratic goons feel the wrath of their fellow citizens."

In America the Vengeful, even the philosophers of health can preach death....

A Russian political scientist on Russia, Ukraine and Putin's motives

Tatiana Stanovaya is a Russian political scientist and analyst, based in France, who writes widely in English-language publications.  Reader Boris Dagaev (who contributed several interesting comments to an earlier thread) calls my attention to Stanovaya's analysis shared on Telegram (which is popular in Russia, but not widely used elsewhere).  This is a good counterweight to the narrative (popular in U.S. media) that Putin is a simly a "madman" in thrall to a crazy ideology:

Since there is much speculation about why and when exactly Putin decided to go to war, it is important to trace how we got to the point of no return.

There were six key stages:
 
1️⃣ The honeymoon. May – October 2019. This period took place in the first few months after Vladimir Zelensky’s election. The Kremlin had high hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough over the Donbass conflict because of Zelensky's background and his commitment to establishing peace at any cost. However, after a successful prisoner exchange in September, their high hopes rapidly evaporated. The Normandy summit in Paris in December 2019 was the final nail in the coffin of any viable “peace settlement”, as understood by Moscow.

2️⃣ Disappointment. November 2019 – Autumn 2020. Over the next year, in Moscow's eyes, Zelensky went from being their last hope to a hell-hound, worse even than Poroshenko (which they had previously thought impossible). Moscow realised two things, providing the rationale for the current war. Firstly, it became clear for Russia that a full-fledged dialogue with Zelensky or any other Ukrainian leader would be doomed to fail. Secondly, even the full implementation of the Minsk agreements, a fantasy scenario, wouldn’t stop Ukraine sliding into NATO - NATO was already inside Ukraine. By the end of 2020, the situation was judged critical. At this point, Putin began to seriously look for an urgent solution to the Ukrainian “problem”.

Nuclear war, again

This NYT article is chilling.  

Blast from the past: recommendations of advanced introductory texts in philosophy

Back in 2015.

What we'll lose when the COVID "public health emergency" ends

The government declared the emergency in late January of 2020, and with it came free vaccines, protections for medicaid patients, and a lot more.

(Thanks to David Rosenthal for the pointer.)

The "moral hyperthermia" of the academy (with special reference to anthropology)

Some good points in this CHE essay by an anthropologist (although I could have lived witihout the references to Luhmann and Sloterdijk):

For the last decade or so, we have witnessed a period of renewed moral activism — think Occupy Wall Street, the Black Lives Matter movement, and #MeToo, to say nothing of student demands for safe spaces and a heightened sensitivity to potentially offensive expression. Campus monuments honoring slave owners, perpetrators of genocide, colonialists, and racists are removed; department buildings and ethnographic film festivals are renamed. My own field of anthropology has been in no way immune from the generalized sense of renewed moral exigency. In 2020, the American Anthropological Association officially institutionalized its members’ morals by prioritizing proposals for executive sessions that promote anti-imperialism, anti-ableism, anti-transphobia, etc. American cultural anthropology is now a moral-political project invested in promoting the values of progressives in the United States rather than in observing and reflecting on human life in a less ethnocentric fashion....

"Philosophy Takes on the News"

Philosopher Simon Kirchin (Kent) has launched a new podcast with this title:  a weekly show with 3-4 philosophers discussing items in the week's headlines.  Recent discussions include the war in Ukraine, ocean justice, the morality of jokes, and what we can learn from having lived through a global pandemic.  The link:

https://stkirchin.podbean.com/

Simon tells me it is also available through most podcast providers.  He also says he is keen to hear from members of our community across the world to see if they want to in future episodes.  Please get in touch with him at s.t.kirchin at kent.ac.uk

Blast from the past: Sean Kelly (Harvard) on the renewed interest in phenomenology

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS, INCLUDING FROM PROF. KELLY

Back in 2008.  How do things look today?