Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

More on Russia, Ukraine and nuclear war

A propos yesterday's post, a reader sends along these quotes from "experts" about the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used--it is hardly reassuring.   This scholar warns of the dangers of using Ukraine as a "proxy war" (as the U.S. has now admitted it is doing), and also suggests that ceding Donbas is one way to minimize the risk of Armageddon:

(Thanks to S. Wallerstein for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Here's a more optimistic take, although it involves induction over a relatively short period of time and very few incidents.  But I hope he's right!

ANOTHER:  Philosopher David Wallace (Pittsburgh) writes with a useful clarification about the Democracy Now interview:

More on Princeton's wealth and the "reality on the ground"

A Princeton professor writes:

Regarding https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/04/per-student-value-of-endowments-of-american-colleges-and-universities-2021.html , unfortunately you played right into the Princeton administration’s strategy of saying that life could not be better than being on faculty at Princeton. They have told me that for many years, as I struggled to make mortgage payments, to find time to advise dozens of senior theses and junior papers, to prepare brilliant lectures for the scions.

Several full professors, even endowed chairs, in philosophy earn significantly less than the Princeton average, and so significantly less than philosophy professors at Rutgers, NYU, or UCLA.

I appreciate your using your blog as a platform to highlight economic injustice.

Seven philosophers elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (CORRECTED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY

They are:  Jeffrey Barrett (UC Irvine), Elisabeth Lloyd (Indiana), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Nancy Sherman (Georgetown), and Linda Zagzebski (Oklahoma).

UPDATE:  Two non-Anglophone philosophers were also elected:  Beate Roessler (Amsterdam) and M. Emanuela Scribano (Ca' Foscari).   (Thanks to Stefano Bacin for catching the error of omission.)

Richard Marshall interviews Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Berlin)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Per student value of endowments of American colleges and universities, 2021

The extreme inequality in resources is getting more and more dramatic.  Here's some of what Princeton's gargantuan endowment (below the fold) buys for faculty:   a teaching load of three courses per year; a $15,000 annual research and travel budget, but in fact faculty can get more money usually if they exhaust the budget; a semester off after every five semesters of teaching; special mortgage deals to help with housing; and the highest average salaries for full professors at a university without a law school or business school to inflate the average numbers!

It's really time for the U.S. and NATO to stop arming Ukraine, and cede the Donbas region to Russia, as they have already ceded Crimea

The reason is simple:  we are sleepwalking into Armageddon:

Putin has broken a post-Cuba taboo on threatening to go nuclear. That, in itself, puts us in new territory. Without most people being aware of it, the world is entering its most dangerous period since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The majority under the age of 50 have grown up thinking the nuclear spectre is a relic of the last century. In the past few weeks, the prospect of a nuclear exchange has become the most live threat to this century’s peace...

If there were a 5 per cent chance of Putin detonating a battlefield nuclear weapon, the world would be at more risk than at any point in most people’s lifetimes. In the past few days, Moscow’s signalling has arguably raised the chances to one in 10. Putin described last week’s test of the Sarmat hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missile as giving the west “food for thought".... On Wednesday, Putin said: “We have all the instruments for this [responding to an existential threat to Russia] — ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to.” The natural response is that Joe Biden and his European counterparts have made it plain Nato will not fight in Ukraine. The west, in other words, poses no “existential threat” to Russia — its threshold for use of nuclear weapons. But that is only how the west sees it. Putin’s threats, and those of his officials, have been made in the context of claiming Russia is already at war with Nato. Russians are being told every day that they are in a fight for national survival against western-backed Nazis. This level of rhetoric exceeds anything from the cold war....

Last time I checked, this site wasn't getting many visits from the White House.  So one can only hope that sensible people in the corridors of power are weighing these catastrophic risks, but so far, there's little indication of that.

UPDATE:  More perspectives on Ukraine and the risk of nuclear war.

ANOTHER:   The original point (above) has already been made by Chomsky:

I’m not criticizing Zelensky; he’s an honorable person and has shown great courage. You can sympathize with his positions. But you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. And that’s what it implies. I’ll go back to what I said before: there are basically two options. One option is to pursue the policy we are now following, to quote Ambassador Freeman again, to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. And yes, we can pursue that policy with the possibility of nuclear war. Or we can face the reality that the only alternative is a diplomatic settlement, which will be ugly—it will give Putin and his narrow circle an escape hatch. It will say, Here’s how you can get out without destroying Ukraine and going on to destroy the world.

 

Linguistic Society of America moves to adopt the Chicago Principles on Free Expression

Here.   Will the American Philosophical Association do so?  I'm skeptical, but let us see.

ADDENDUM:  Some of the comments that follow make clear that Linguistics is afflicted by the same mindless identity politics that afflicts philosophy:

An interview with Professor Santurri about St. Olaf's violation of his academic freedom rights

Here.

Some skepticsm about grouping Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch together philosophically

Philosopher Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) makes some very good points in this review essay of the recent books we have noted previously; some excerpts:

On both accounts, each member of the quartet was able to reach her full potential as a philosopher because the Big Men on Campus—A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, Richard Hare and others—were away fighting the war. Their absence was critical, these books argue, because these men, who dominated the intellectual scene at Oxford, were hell-bent on destroying traditional philosophical reflection into metaphysics and morals...

This narrative frame comes from Mary Midgley herself, who, in 2013, wrote a letter to the Guardian arguing that she and her friends were able to thrive as philosophers because “there were fewer men about then"....

While this account fits with Midgley’s idea that women are bound by their sex to do philosophy differently (and perhaps better) than men, and surely reflects her own experience of Oxford, it strikes me as out of joint with what we know about the personalities of some of her friends. The insistence of all three authors on shoehorning these women’s stories into an all-too-familiar pop-feminist narrative distorts the unique nature of the bonds these women forged together. It also insinuates, insultingly, that they needed to be treated with kid gloves in order to mature intellectually. I find it difficult to believe that Anscombe needed to be sheltered from the clever men of Oxford in order to cultivate her legendary philosophical habits, or that Murdoch would have lacked the boldness to hold her own in a room full of men who plainly lacked the imaginative vision she herself possessed...

Das from UCL to Toronto

Nilanjan Das (epistemology, Indian philosophy), currently Lecturer in Philosophy at University College London, has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.  Toronto was already probably the strongest program in the Anglophone world for Indian philosophy, but now there can be no doubt!

Fugate from American U of Beirut to Florida State

Courtney D. Fugate (Kant, pre-Kantian German philosophy), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy and Civilization Studies at the American University of Beirut, has accepted a tenured appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, where he will start in the fall. 

60% of the U.S. population has now had Covid

I've love to see the class breakdown on this.  We all know the age breakdown, of course (my own father was an early victim of the Covid disaster in this country, which is wholly attributable to Trump and the Repugs).  Recall this post from early in the pandemic.  We hardly knew what was coming...

Florida man, taking advantage of new "parental rights" law, asks school libraries to remove the Bible

Exactly right:

"My objection to the Bible being in your public schools is based on the following seven points, offered for your learned consideration," Stevens wrote.

Stevens proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its "casual" references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. "Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?"

He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. "In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons," he wrote....

"If you want to teach morality and ethics, do you really want to turn to a book that wants you to dash babies against rocks?" he told NPR, pointing to Psalm 137:9.

FIRE on Professor Santurri's mistreatment by St. Olaf

Here.

Art and offense at Vermont Law School

Historian Amna Khalid (Carleton) comments.

In Memoriam: Aaron Smuts (1975-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 25--UPDATED

I was very sorry to learn of the untimely passing of Professor Smuts, who wrote widely in value theory (including both aesthetics and ethics), and was, at the time of his death, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department at Rhode Island College.  You can learn more about his work here.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Noel Carroll for the information.)

UPDATE:  An obituary here.

ANOTHER:  A memorial notice in the newsletter of the American Society of Aesthetics is here.

2021-22 philosophy job market

Philosopher Marcus Arvan (Tampa) offers his informative annual assessment, with useful comparisons to prior years.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is still real

Dunning responds to critics.  Every day on Twitter confirms its existence, of course.

PLF letter to California Community Colleges on the constitutional problems with proposed DEI requirements

This is a useful letter, which canvasses a number of constitutional problems.  (I disagree with some of the "diversity" arguments they make against the requirements, but I think the letter gets it right on the constitutional infirmities.)

Blast from the past: when Errol Morris defended his views on Kripke and Kuhn

Back in 2011.

AFA sends letter to St. Olaf College after it removes director of the center that invited Peter Singer

AFA letter here.  The event itself went off without a problem, despite protests and calls to boycott.  But the center's director, Professor Santurri, is now being punished for inviting Singer and other "controversial" speakers.  What a disgrace!

Front page of NYT: U.S. wants to see Russian military "weakened"

That's great, then Russia will have to rely even more on its nuclear arsenal.   I hope to God we are not sleepwalking into Armageddon.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy announces 2021 "Best Article" prize...

...and others (also).

(Thanks to Alix Cohen for the pointers.)

Thomas Kuhn and the ashtray

Long ago, we noted the filmmaker Errol Morris's allegation that during a heated discussion with Kuhn, Kuhn threw an ashtray at him.  We've also noted that Mr. Morris has a low opinion of Kuhn's contributions.  Philosopher of science Brad Wray (Aarhus U) now investigates the Morris-Kuhn history, and corrects the record.

Florida's Gov. Viktor DeSantis strikes again!

This time it's the brazenly unconstitutional "Stop WOKE Act," described by F.I.R.E. here.  Fortunately, a law firm has already filed suit to enjoin it.

Blast from the past: best Anglophone philosophers of law since 1945...

...who were at least 60 in 2016.  One thing that is certain is that a similar poll in a generation will not be so Oxford-centric.

Great moments in British rock 'n' roll that remain obscure in the U.S.: Status Quo, "Down Down," 1974

Here's another great number by Status Quo; this song was a worldwide hit, but not in the U.S.:

 

Richard Marshall interviews Juan Comesana (Arizona, moving to Rutgers)...

...at 3:16 AM.

A 1961 program introducing existentialism

Here, featuring the philosopher (and Sartre's English translator) Hazel Barnes.

(Thanks to Richard Marshall for the pointer.)

Williams from South Florida to Georgetown

Thomas Williams, a leading scholar of medieval philosophy and ethics who is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, has accepted a Chair in medieval philosophy at Georgetown University.

Where untenured tenure-track faculty at the U.S. "top twenty" earned their PhD, 2022

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 4--CORRECTED

Following up on last week's post:  tenure-track junior faculty at the U.S. "top twenty" programs earned their Ph.D.s in philosophy from the following programs:

1.   New York University (8)

2.   Massachusetts Institute of Technology (7)

2.   Princeton University (7)

2.   Rutgers University, New Brunswick (7)

5.   Harvard University (6)

6.  Yale University (5)

7.   University of California, Berkeley (4)

8.   Columbia University (3)

9.  Cambridge University (2) (both Notre Dame)

9.   Oxford University (2)

9.   University of California, Irvine (2)

9.   University of Chicago (2) (both Columbia/Barnard)

9.   University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2)

9.   University of Southern California (2) (both Michigan)

Plus one each earned a Ph.D. from Indiana, DePaul, Paris I, UC Rvierside, Wisconsin, Harvard's Government Department, North Carolina, Toronto, Cornell, Pittsburgh, York (UK), Western Ontario, UCLA, and Potsdam.   Below the fold are the top twenty departments with the PhDs of their untenured faculty.  Please email me corrections. 

Pasternak from UCL to Toronto

Avia Pasternak (political philosophy), currently Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at University College London, has accepted a tenured appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Blast from the past: How do you know if your paper idea is "original"?

Back in 2013, with a discussion.

Attack on the universities and tenure in Florida accelerates...

...with Governor Viktor DeSantis (or is it Ron Orban, I get confused) leading the charge.

Another university confused about its purpose: Virginia Commonwealth University

Universities exist to educate students and contribute to knowledge.  Period.  That's it.  They have to comply with various laws (e.g., Title IX, equal opportunity etc.), but their purpose is to educate and contribute to knowledge.  Their purpose is not diversity; if diversity contributed to the pedagogical function, then it deserves some consideration, but it is not the purpose of the university to promote diversity. 

VCU seems to be the latest public university falling down the "diversity" rabbit hole, going so far (at least according to this document:  Download Quest 2028 One VCU April 2022 Faculty Senate (1)) as to insert "diversity" into hiring and promotion criteria.  If so, they are asking to be sued for unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

But quite apart from the legality of all this, what is depressing is the fundamental confusion, on the part of academic leaders, about why their institutions exist.

Religious liberty claims run amok, yet again

A philosophy professor with a spurious "religious" objection to addressing students by their preferred pronouns has prevailed in his lawsuit against the university.

Meriwether sued in 2018 after he was disciplined, and a federal district court dismissed the suit for lack of standing. Then, last year a three-judge appellate panel revived the lawsuit and sent it back to the lower court, where Meriwether could have argued his First Amendment rights of free speech and religion and his 14th Amendment right to due process were violated.

 

"As part of the settlement, the university has agreed that Meriwether has the right to choose when to use, or avoid using, titles or pronouns when referring to or addressing students," the release from Meriwether's attorneys read. "Significantly, the university agreed Meriwether will never be mandated to use pronouns, including if a student requests pronouns that conflict with his or her biological sex."

 

Shawnee University called it an "economic decision."

 

"Though we have decided to settle, we adamantly deny that anyone at Shawnee State deprived Dr. Meriwether of his free speech rights or his rights to freely exercise his religion," the school's statement read.

 

Advertising update

The next open spots are in June and July:  there's still one top spot available each of those months, as well as one second or third from the top.   Some fall top spots are already booked, but there is still one top opening in each of the fall months, as well as second and third spots.  Email me for more information.

On knowing your genetic origins

Philosopher Daniel Groll (Carleton) comments.

A conference in honor of Charles Mills...

...at the CUNY Graduate Center a week from this Friday.  (Note that registration is required.)

(Thanks to Corey Beckford for the pointer.)

A pernicious form of "cancel culture" exists...

...and thankfully the longtime feminist critic at The Nation has taken the trouble to document it, given the ostriches on the putative left who pretend it doesn't:

Gillian Philip, one of a group of writers producing popular children’s books under the pseudonym Erin Hunter, put #Istandwithjkrowling in her Twitter bio, for which she was subjected to a storm of online abuse and fired by her publisher. Whatever you may think of Rowling, Philip isn’t her. Without the security that comes with unparalleled wealth and celebrity, she’s just a person with an opinion—right or wrong, that’s what cost her her job. She now works as a truck driver.

"Mob review" rather than "peer review"?

Last week the Twitter mob panned a book they hadn't read, and now we have this:

The blurb for the book “Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology” says that it “engages with the overlap of Black experience, hip-hop music, ethics and feminism to focus on a subsection known as ‘trap feminism.’”

But the book, written by Jennifer M. Buck, a white academic at a Christian university, was criticized by some authors and theologians as academically flawed, with deeply problematic passages, including repeated references to the ghetto. The project was also widely condemned on social media as poorly executed and as an example of cultural appropriation.

In response to the criticism, the book’s publisher, Wipf and Stock Publishers, decided on Wednesday that it would pull the title from circulation.

The incident touched on a larger debate in the world of publishing over when, how, and even whether, it is appropriate for authors to write about subjects outside their own culture....

There is actually a whole academic discipline in which authors write "about subjects outside their own culture":  it's called anthropology.

(Thanks to John Doris for the pointer.)

An interview with Chomsky about Ukraine and the risk of nuclear war

Sensible, and basically the realist perspective.

(Thanks to Torbjörn Tännsjö for the pointer.)

"The End of Progressive Intellectual Life"

His narrative is somewhat selective, and self-serving, but there are clear elements of truth in this essay by Michael Lind.  An excerpt:

[I]n the third decade of the 21st century, intellectual life on the American center left is dead. Debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned: Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women Are Women, 1619, Defund the Police. The space to the left-of-center that was once filled with magazines and organizations devoted to what Diana Trilling called the “life of significant contention” is now filled by the ritualized gobbledygook of foundation-funded, single-issue nonprofits like a pond choked by weeds. Having crowded out dissent and debate, the nonprofit industrial complex—Progressivism Inc.—taints the Democratic Party by association with its bizarre obsessions and contributes to Democratic electoral defeats, like the one that appears to be imminent this fall....

Close-minded intolerance on campus is largely a feature of elite U.S. colleges...

...and their well-to-do students, and not what goes on at most universities in the country.  Although I've made this point over the years, and while it's a good thing that the problem isn't widespread, that it exists at elite universities, which produce disproportionate numbers of ruling elites, is a bad thing.   Of course, none of this is as bad a thing as, inter alia, the crytpo-fascism of large swaths of the Republican Party; the continuing immiseration of the vast majority in the U.S.; the risk of nuclear war due to the mishandling of the Ukraine situation; etc. etc.

Great moments in British rock 'n' roll that remain obscure in the U.S.: Family, "Winter," 1968

This British psychedelic/progressive/generally eclectic band scored several top ten albums in the U.K. in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but was mostly unknown in the U.S.  (One member of the band, bassist Ric Grech, enjoyed greater fame and fortune with Blind Faith and then Traffic.)  This is one of my favorite songs from their first album:

 

Justice Ginsburg is a philosopher, and other great moments in the Dunning-Kruger Effect

A propos this (and especially this), it was recently brought to my attention that philosopher Sandra LaPointe (McMaster), opined as follows on Twitter:

Arizona makes bid for Maryland's Liberto

Hallie Liberto (ethics, applied ethics), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland at College Park, has a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona.

An open letter about calling attention to the open letter to OUP attacking an unread and unreleased book

A propos this (and see also), this response by philosopher Moti Gorin (Colorado State) is pretty funny:

By platforming this letter, which, unlike Lawford-Smith’s book, can be read — having been violently ripped from the realm of the merely possible to the realm of the actual — Weinberg promotes inaccurate stereotypes about unread books, such as the stereotype that they can be understood and assessed. Also, he may contribute to reality-oppressive practices, such as the possible creation of a journal dedicated to the review of unread books. The undersigned, as possible writers of possible books, are concerned, and call for a ban on such possible journals.

The possible risks are real. More troublingly, they are actually possible — some of the writers we like would go further and say the possible risks are immanent. Everyone we like agrees that possible risks can be much worse than actual harms of the sort for which evidence can be provided. This is because possible harms are very difficult to locate. They elude even the most intensive textual deconstruction, revealing themselves only in narratives of lived experience/diaries....

Moreover, criticism of as-yet unreleased and unread books is exactly like cancer: both are bad, both are violent, and both can spread. More specifically, such criticism can contribute to rhetorical violence (which we need not remind you is always-already there) against future, possible, unread books and their authors, or possible authors and publishers, or possible publishers....

The "DOXA four" in Moscow

Editors of a student journal are facing prison sentences for opposing the war of aggression against Ukraine.  Their statements to the court are here.

Richard Marshall interviews Joseph Mitterer (Klagenfurt [Austria])...

...at 3:16 AM.  I thought this was interesting, about his road into philosophy and the situation in Austria after WWII:

Still at school I had the chance to attend the annual European Forum at Alpbach, a village in the Austrian Tyrol near my home town. There I met Hans Albert, Karl-Otto Apel, Paul Feyerabend, Walter Kaufmann and Herbert Marcuse amongst others.

It was the mid sixties of the last century, I hated the confinements of my high school, the Ex-Nazi teachers, and I couldn’t wait for these three weeks of intellectual challenge to arrive in late summer. I was excited by the atmosphere of Alpbach and it was there, where I decided to put my life on philosophy.

Academic philosophy in Austria back then was hardly attractive. Twenty years after the war the scene in Vienna was dominated by a transcendental philosophy whose Post-Nazi-representatives had prevented the return of the exiled philosophers of the “Vienna Circle”.