Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

More on the Manhattan College bloodbath...

...at CHE.  (Earlier coverage.)  An excerpt:

Nearly two dozen faculty members at Manhattan College, most of them tenured, got word last month that they were being laid off. The decision appeared to contradict the “last-in, first-out” approach laid out last fall by the New York college’s administrators, in which the newest employees would be the first to go.

In what felt to some faculty members like a bait and switch, several senior professors who assumed their jobs weren’t at risk now face termination, while more-junior scholars, who signed buyout agreements because they thought they would be dismissed under the policy, now find themselves unable to revoke those deals....

The recent turn of events has made a disruptive period even more disquieting for some professors. Jordan Pascoe, a professor of philosophy who is her department’s second-newest member, was at risk of being laid off under the last-in, first-out policy, and considered signing the voluntary-separation agreement. Administrators said one or two positions would be cut from her department. “So there was still a chance that I was going to make it through. I love my job, and I didn’t want to lose it,” Pascoe said. “I thought to myself, ‘In 10 years, if I never manage to get another academic job, will I feel good about having voluntarily given this one up?’ I didn’t think I would, so I felt like it was worth staying and fighting to keep my job.”

She found out at the start of the spring semester that she wouldn’t get that chance.

Fiction, nonfiction, and the perception of "fabrication"

Philosopher Hannah Kim discusses.

Noam Chomsky talks about language, mind, and consciousness...

...at Consciousness Live! with Richard Brown.

Why don't Harvard students take their academic work seriously anymore?

Grade inflation and the resume arms race, according to one Harvard student.

Where to study Kant, 2024 edition

There are perhaps fewer changes here than in the post-Kantian traditions from the 2021 PGR, but there are some. Here were the top two groups from 2021 (the numbers represeent mean,median, mode, and the "group" based on the rounded mean):

Brown University	4	4	4	1
Princeton University	4	4	4	1
Stanford University	4	4	4	1
University of California, San Diego	4	4.5	4.5	1
University of Pittsburgh	4	4	4	1
Cambridge University	3.5	3.5	3.5	2
Oxford University	3.5	3.5	3.5	2
University of California, Berkeley	3.5	3.5	4	2
University of California, Riverside	3.5	3	3	2
University of Chicago	3.5	3.5	4	2
University of St. Andrews/Stirling Joint Program	3.5	4	4	2
University of Texas, Austin	3.5	3.5	3.5	2
University of Toronto	3.5	4	4	2

Last time, the Group 1 programs (with tenured faculty in parentheses) were Brown (Paul Guyer), Princeton (Andrew Chignell, Desmond Hogan), Stanford University (Lanier Anderson, Michael Friedman), University of California, San Diego (Clinton Tolley, Eric Watkins), and University of Pittsburgh (Stephen Engstrom).  Since then Guyer has officially retired, so Brown is no longer a top choice for Kant.  Friedman at Stanford also turns 77 this year, so prospective students should bear that in mind.  Johns Hopkins, in the interim, has added (full-time) Katharina Kraus from the University of Notre Dame, who joins half-time Kant specialist Lucy Allais, which will surely put Hopkins in Group 1 or 2 for Kant studies.   At Chicago, Robert Pippin is no longer taking PhD students in philosophy, but the department has also added two junior Kant specialists since the 2021 PGR.

Blast from the (recent) past: "Identity politics" neoliberalism meets millenial narcissism

True now, as in 2022.

"Scientific publishing in the digital era"

Reflections from Dr. David Ozonoff, who retired at the end of last year as the co-Founding Editor of Environmental Health, a public health journal.  Many of the issues he raises will be familiar to academics in other fields, and which we have discussed on the blog periodically. 

A very interesting interview with Louise Antony about sex, gender, gender eliminativism, and other topics...

...at The Freethinker.

The latest on the Amy Wax case at Penn

The University seems hellbent on a textbook violation of contractual academic freedom rights; this whole thing will end up in court.

Alex Rosenberg on science, philosophy, and meaning....

...at Walter Veit's Podcast. 

Introducing Jen Royle, the nutty chef and owner of TABLE restaurant in Boston

I first came across this on Twitter (where it's been seen millions of time), and this news item writes it up.  Short version:  customer cancels at last minute dinner reservation at TABLE restaurant when he has to go to the emergency room; restaurant won't waive its cancellation fee ($250, the full charge), so the customer uses his travel insurance to cover it; the restaurant owner Royle then sends the cusotmer an abusive and insulting email, which goes viral.  It's hard to imagine anyone who reads through all this ever setting foot again in one of her establishments:  as someone joked on Twitter, "you don't want crazy cooking your food."

Against "diversity" statements in job applications

I confess I'm amazed the APA Blog published these "incorrect" thoughts, but good for them!   These aren't the strongest arguments against the use of diversity statements, but I certainly agree they are a "waste of time," except as an end-run around legal prohibitions on using race/ethnicity as a factor in hiring.

Great moments in rock 'n' roll covers: Lemmy does AC/DC

Lemmy (of Motorhead fame) recorded this version of AC/DC's lead track, "It's a Long Way to the Top if You Want to Rock 'n' Roll" (from 1975) in 2006. It's hard to top the original, but this one is pretty good:

Feel free to add links to other favorite AC/DC covers.

Two more ACU/Dianoia departures: Fritz, Carter to UCL

Peter Fritz (logic, philosophy of logic, metaphysics), Professor of Philosophy ast the soon-to-be-defunct Diaonia Institute of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University, and Sam Carter (philosophy of language, epistemology, logic), Senior Research Fellow at Dianoia, have both accepted permanent posts at University College London:  Fritz as Associate Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science, and Carter as Lecturer in Philosophy.

MAGA crazy says it out loud: we will end democracy

Charming.   I trust the Democrats will run this clip in many advertisements.

Blast from the past: Adolph Reed on antiracist scholarship and activism

Back in 2018, and still very relevant.

The Republican war on higher education (and academic freedom) comes to Indiana

From IHE:

Indiana’s Republican-dominated state Senate wants to do both at once. Earlier this month it passed a bill that takes aim at both tenure and DEI in public colleges and universities, tying them together with language that shifts focus from racial or other notions of diversity toward what it calls “intellectual diversity.” Senate Bill 202, now being debated in the majority-Republican state House of Representatives, defines that term as “multiple, divergent, and varied scholarly perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.”

The legislation would leave it to boards of trustees to determine what intellectual diversity means for individual faculty members’ disciplines, to gauge whether those faculty members have delivered it and to decide how much they should be punished if they fail to do so. Many of these trustees are appointed by the governor, currently Republican Eric Holcomb. Critics have said this means the bill would subject “hiring, tenure, and promotion”—and even employment after earning tenure—to “reviews that judge faculty based on political criteria.”...

Online Festschrift for Matti Eklund, organized by a colleague at Uppsala

But he's only 50!  What a nice thing to do, with contributions by Daniel Korman, Eli Hirsch, Øystein Linnebom and others.

"Woke Kindergarten"

That's the actual name of a business, and this sad story is a good example of how race-centric thinking is actually dangerous to the well-being of people, in this case, schoolchildren:

A Hayward elementary school struggling to boost low test scores and dismal student attendance is spending $250,000 in federal money for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove those barriers to learning.

The Woke Kindergarten sessions train teachers on concepts and curriculum that’s available to use in classrooms with any of Glassbrook Elementary’s 474 students. The sessions are funded through a federal program meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools boost student achievement. 

But two years into the three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, student achievement at Glassbrook has fallen, prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well spent given the needs of the students, who are predominantly low-income. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino. 

Galen Strawson takes his campaign "against narrativity"...

...to the Dublin Review of Books.

Which serious philosophy departments offer opportuities to study the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY, WITH UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS

The landscape is certainly changing for students who want to get a solid philosophy education and be able to study the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy.   Columbia University, long a top choice for Anglophone students, is no longer one:   Frederick Neuhouser (Hegel, German Idealism) is retiring at the end of this academic year, and Robert Gooding-Williams (Nietzsche) is leaving for Yale.  (Taylor Carman [phenomenology & existentialism] remains at Barnard/Columbia, but he does not appear to work with many PhD students.  Axel Honneth is in his 70s and half-time.  Neuhouser was the mainstay of supervision at Columbia.)  Robert Pippin (Kant, Hegel, German Idealism) is no longer taking PhD students in philosophy at the University of Chicago, Arnold Davidson (Foucault) has retired, and Daniel Brudney (Marx) has entered phased retirement (ending in 2029).  Maudemarie Clark (Nietzsche) may retire soon at the University of California at Riverside.

Here are what seem to me the best choices--in terms of breadth and depth of coverage--among the Anglophone world top 25 programs:

Harvard University:  now has a large group of faculty and cognate faculty interested in post-Kantian European philosophy, including Peter Gordon (Frankfurt School), Sean Kelly (phenomenology & existentialism), Samantha Matherne (Kant & German Idealism, NeoKantianism, phenomenology), Richard Moran (Sartre), Mathias Risse (Nietzsche), Michael Rosen (Hegel, Marx, Frankfurt School).

Oxford University:   strong coverage of phenomenology & existentialism (Kate Kirkpatrick, Katherine Morris, Stephen Mulhall, Joseph Schear, Mark Wrathall) and Nietzsche (Peter Kail, Alexander Prescott-Couch), with cognate faculty prominent in Marx studies (David Leopold, Jonathan Wolff).

University of California, San Diego:  three tenured faculty working in and around the post-Kantian traditions:   Michael Hardimon (esp. Hegel), Clinton Tolley (Kant, German Idealism, phenomenology), and Eric Watkins (Kant, German Idealism, German Romanticism).

University of Chicago:  despite the changes noted at the start, there is still a sizable contingent of faculty and cognate faculty interested in post-Kantian European philosophy, including Matt Boyle (Kant, German Idealism), James Conant (Kant, German Idealism, Nietzsche), Anton Ford (Marx), Mathias Haase (German Idealism), Maya Krishnan (Kant, German Idealism), Jonathan Lear (Kierkegaard, Freud), Brian Leiter (Marx, Nietzsche), Thomas Pendlebury (Kant, German Idealism), and, part-time, Michael Forster (Herder, Hegel, German Romanticism, Nietzsche).

University of Toronto:  tenured and tenure-track faculty doing work in the post-Kantian traditions include Tarek Dika (phenomenology), Willi Goetschel (Frankfurt School), Nick Stang (esp. Hegel), and Owen Ware (Fichte, German Romanticism), among others.

Yale University:  two tenured faculty interested in 19th-century Continental philosophy, Paul Franks (Hegel & German Idealism) and Robert Gooding-Williams (Nietzsche), and one tenure-track faculty member working in both 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy, Jake McNulty (esp. Hegel, Frankfurt School).

New preface to the Chinese edition of "Nietzsche on Morality"

This won't interest most readers, but here is the new preface I wrote at the request of the translator for the Chinese edition of Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2015), to be published by the Shanghai People's Publishing House.  He wanted me to address the themes in my book that accounted for its substantial influence in Anglophone Nietzsche studies, as well as say something (brief) about the relationship of this book to my legal philosophy work.  Sadly, Heidegger and Leo Strauss, two incompetent readers of historical figures, have dominated Chinese studies.  Under those circumstances, the translation of my book is remarkable, and I hope it helps a new generation of Chinese scholars move Nietzsche studies into the 21st century.

The "cosmic inquisitor"

Speaking of nuts in cyberspace, this is an amusing profile of a very loud one, whom we've encountered before.

Viehoff from NYU to Berkeley

Daniel Viehoff (moral & political philosophy), Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University has accepted a tenured appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, effective July 2024.  (He will also have a courtesy appointment in law at Berkeley.)  Joining Johann Frick, Niko Kolodny, and Jay Wallace (among others), this appointment will solidify Berkeley's position as one of the top two or three places in the U.S. for moral and political philosophy.

A triumph for democracy in Wisconsin

Voters will now get to pick their representatives, rather than representatives (i.e., Republicans) picking their voters.  This should be good news for the public universities as well, who have suffered under minority rule by the Repugs.

Memorial event for Harry Frankfurt at UC Riverside

In the afternoon on March 9, participation by Zoom is possible with registration.

Trump's "Brownshirts"

They're out there, and not just on January 6, 2021:

[A]re you aware how much the constant threat of violence, principally from MAGA sources, is now warping American politics? If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement, are you aware of the price they might pay if they did?

Late last month, I listened to a fascinating NPR interview with the journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman regarding their new book, “Find Me the Votes,” about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They report that Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis had trouble finding lawyers willing to help prosecute her case against Trump. Even a former Georgia governor turned her down, saying, “Hypothetically speaking, do you want to have a bodyguard follow you around for the rest of your life?”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Willis received an assassination threat so specific that one evening she had to leave her office incognito while a body double wearing a bulletproof vest courageously pretended to be her and offered a target for any possible incoming fire.

Great moments in rock 'n' roll covers: Belly does Jimi Hendrix

Belly is best-known for their early 90s hit "Feed the Tree," but they also did this fine cover in 1994 of Hendrix's 1967 "Are You Experienced?" song:

Feel free to add links to your favorite Hendrix covers in the comments.

Memorial conference in honor of Stephen Gaukroger at the University of Sydney next week

Here.  It looks like participation via Zoom is possible with registration.

(Thanks to Aaron Garrett for the pointer.)

From the bowels of right-wing crazyland

Apparently they've convinced themselves the Minneapolis officer who murdered George Floyd acted legally.  One thing I learned from the preceding takedown of their pathological weirdness is that being able to speak doesn't mean you're able to breathe!

Yale faculty in favor of Yale being a university

A new website.  Only one philosopher (Daniel Greco) has signed on so far, but I trust others will.

UPDATE:  Now there's a "rejoinder" letter from Yale faculty, signed, so far, by two philosophers (Robin Dembroff, Jason Stanley).  We'll see how the tally evolves!

ANOTHER:  Law professor Paul Horwitz writes with an apt observation:   "What I find striking (but not terribly surprising) about them is that while there are plenty of signatories in the 'rejoinder' from area studies departments and public health, there are no area studies or public health signatories to the 'be a university' letter." 

"What are Australian philosophers thinking?"

A radio interview with the author of a new book of interviews with Australian philosophers or philosophers currently working in Australia, including Peter Singer, Greg Restall (no longer in Australia), Kristie Miller, Moira Gatens, Dalia Nassar, and Seth Lazar, among others.

Blast from the past: Greer, Green, and the Thought Police, Redux

Back in 2015.   What a spectacle that was; at least the biggest nut job in that episode has left the profession.

A different take on Alasdair MacIntyre

A propos this review essay by Jonathan Rée, a philosopher in Europe, whose opinion I trust, writes with a rather different take:

I was at that lecture that Rée mentions [at the start of his review], and it is testament to his intellectual weakness that he perceived any semblance of modesty in MacIntyre’s revolting reflections. First of all, the lecture presented his philosophical development as a dialectical necessity, fuelled by his restless genius. Second, it offered an enthusiastic account, largely out of context, of the supposed wisdom of the US Marine Corps in breaking down the selfhood of recruits and reshaping them in a way that was socially productive. No mention of their long list of savage operations seemed worth his bother. (Falluja anyone?) The moronic traditional Catholics who showed up for a renewing dosage of Truth were none the wiser. He lapped up their unthinking adulation. As a deeply troubled reader of After Virtue I was left in no doubt that MacIntyre was a perfect ideological creep. 

ADDENDUM:  I've heard, unsurprisingly, from MacIntrye's admirers, who obviously do not share the preceding views.  I should clarify that the remarks about the Marines occurred in the Q&A of the lecture, not the lecture itself (some of the content of the lecture itself was noted last fall).  They are related to views MacIntyre has expressed in print:

"Begin with the record of those notable, although not too numerous institutions that have had significant success in taking young people who have gone badly wrong and redirecting them into participation in constructive activities and worthwhile ways of life, some of them prisons for juvenile offenders or reform schools, some of them tough boarding schools, some of them providing the kind of basic training that the United States Marine Corps affords its recruits. Uniformly such institutions succeed by subjecting the young to rigorous discipline, introducing them to testing activities in which they have to depend on others and become such that others can depend on them, learning a mode of common life, learning some trade, and always incurring penalties, if they fail to learn, until they have learned at last that failing to learn is itself the worst penalty." (Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Irrelevance of Ethics,” in Virtue and the Economy: Essays on Morality and Markets, eds. Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight (New York: Routledge, 2015), 8-9.)

"Frontiers" of AI ethics

An interesting essay by philosopher Seth Lazar, who, unlike a lot of folks who write about this topic, clearly knows a lot about AI!  One striking excerpt:

LLMs are trained to predict the next token. So generative agents have no mind, no self. They are excellent simulations of human agency. They can simulate friendship, among many other things. We must therefore ask: does this difference between simulation and reality matter? Why? Is this just about friendship, or are there more general principles about the value of the real? I wasn’t fully aware of this before the rise of LLMs, but it turns out that I am deeply committed to things being real. A simulation of X, for almost any putatively valuable X, has less moral worth, in my view, than the real thing. Why is that? Why will a generative agent never be a real friend?

How Trump thinks, redux

As we have noted in the past, Trump thinks like a Mafioso.  So to understand Trump, watch this interview with Anthony Casso, who eventually became boss of the Lucchese crime family in NYC, and was notorious (a "homocidal maniac") even by Mafia standards. See especially Mr. Casso's comments on the families of his victims around 9:45 and 12:30:

Recall Trump:  "I love to remember my enemies and I love to get my enemies whenever I can, absolutely. ... So many people that were enemies of mine were wiped out, and I do not really care about that."

Blast from the past: Best introductory texts in political philosophy?

Back in 2019, with reader suggestions.

David Enoch talks about (what else?) moral realism...

...at Lance Independent.  I do wonder when the current moral realism fad will pass in Anglophone philosophy?  Group polarization effects may keep it going for awhile, I fear.

John Locke's pancakes recipe

Who knew?

(Thanks to Andy Hudson for the pointer.)

Massive cuts at Manhattan College

This private liberal arts college plans to cut 25% of its faculty!   Philosopher James Mahon at Lehman College in NYC tells me that three of its four philosophy faculty will be lost:   one tenure-track, and one tenured professor, are being fired, and another tenured professor has opted to take the "voluntary" [sic] redundancy package.  There is a petition to support the faculty here, and a GoFundMe page to assist the faculty in seeking legal redress; I think the latter is particularly important given the dire situation.  The student newspaper has useful coverage of this bloodbath here and here.

Even in an era in which these stories are becoming increasingly common, this one is really ghastly in its draconian impact.

Comments are open for more information and relevant links.

An informative review of an intellectual biography of Alasdair MacIntyre...

...at LRB.

Top 40 research universities in the world ranked by "Google Scholar" citations (sort of)

We first searched for all Google Scholar citations of faculty at a particular university.  We then summed the citations for the first most-cited faculty member, the tenth-most cited, the 20th, the 30th and the 40th.   The data was collected several months ago.

Some fields are promiscuous with citations (e.g., medicine, psychology, statistics, particle physics), and others are stingy (e.g., history, literary studies).  In general, the natural sciences (except mathematics), the life sciences (including medicine) and engineering do more citing than the humanities.  Schools without a medical school are marked with an *.   Schools with an # have a top medical school, which is always a bonanza for citations.   Small differences are treated as ties.   If there's one takeaway from this exercise, it is this:   the industry of "global rankings" of universities depends heavily on citations, and is skewed, predictably, to schools with strong medical schools.

Great moments in rock 'n' roll covers: Joan Jett does Sly & the Family Stone

From 1983:

And the original:

Northwestern students now facing obscure criminal charges after producing parody of the student newspaper...

...supporting the Palestinians.  I can't believe any prosecutor would take this case, which clearly implicates core First Amendment values.

UPDATE:  Joel Pust points out to me on Twitter that the charges have now been dropped, thankfully.

Petition in support of humanities & other subjects under threat at the University of Kent

Here, a propos this.  Please sign.  Universities dislike adverse publicity, so when thousands and thousands of academic sign a petition like this it makes clear to the decision-makers that their "brand" (that's how these people think!) is being damaged!

The growth of PPE

That this article appears in Forbes ("capitalist tool") is, in a way, telling:  at least in the US, these programs tend to have a libertarian and neoclassical economics tilt to them.  They needn't, of course, but I assume that is why Forbes was interested.

Philosophy professor turned guitar maker

Tracy Chapman used one of Judy Threet's guitars at the Grammys!

(Thanks to David Martens for the pointer.)

Another temporarily free text from CUP: "Abstract Objects" by David Liggins

Here.

Another editorial team revolts against Wiley journal policies: Journal of Economic Surveys

The statement from the editors is here:  Download Public statement Resignations from the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economic Surveys (final).  From the statement:

The...documentation submitted to our analysis [by Wiley] appeared to emphasize quantity over quality of the papers submitted and strongly favoured cross pollination among the various Wiley publications also in relation to papers that we would have not considered favourably for the Journal of Economic Surveys increasing – in our perception – risks of proliferation of poor-quality science.

For earlier coverage, see this from the editor of P&PA, and this comment from David Velleman on an earlier thread:

The initial hope behind the academic OA movement — at least at Philosophers' Imprint, which was the first OA journal in Philosophy -- was that universities would cut commercial publishers out of the knowledge-dissemination business entirely, by redirecting the funds traditionally spent on paper-and-ink journals (including not only subscriptions but selection, binding, storage, etc.) to in-house OA publishing operations. We were encouraged in this hope by our librarian colleagues at the University of Michigan, who were on the leading edge of digital librarianship at the time. We wanted the academic world to become, insofar as possible, self-sufficient in the dissemination of academic work. If academic libraries had gradually moved their periodicals departments into OA publishing, it might have worked.  Unfortunately, the commercial publishers quickly captured the OA market and turned it into a source of profits, and most academic institutions made no effort to participate in the work of disseminating scholarship. Looking back, we can see that our vision would have required some central coordination as well as central funding for the transition. We were too idealistic -- or perhaps I should say, too soft-headed.