Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Kenan Malik on "white privilege" and class

Sensible, as usual (he is responding to Chris "I make things up" Bertram:  in this case, Bertram invented a straw man position that no one holds, as Malik rightly notes).

What is "cancel culture"?

This is a pretty apt characterization of some of the markers of "cancelling", including, e.g.:

1) Punitiveness:   Are people denouncing you to your employer or your social connections? Are you being blacklisted from jobs and social opportunities? Does what is being said to or about you have the goal—or foreseeable effect—of jeopardizing your livelihood?

2) Deplatforming:   Are campaigners attempting to prevent you from publishing your work, giving speeches or attending meetings? Are they claiming that allowing you to be heard is violence against them or makes them unsafe?

3) Organization:   Does criticism appear to be organized and targeted? Are the organizers recruiting others to pile on? Are you being swarmed and brigaded? Are people hunting through your work and scouring social media to find ammunition to use against you?

Even in the midst of a pandemic...

...Chris Bertram (Bristol) still can't stop his petty sniping. Amazing!  (More on Bertram for the uninitiated; new readers can safely ignore:  academic philosophy has a lot of resentful pests on its margins.)   Meanwhile, in the real world, here's a representative nice message I got from a non-philosopher:

I discovered your blog just about a week ago. In my search for people who were asking big questions about the virus and humanity, I googled "philosophers" and "corona virus."  And there you were!  Your blog is that welcome breath of sanity in a cluttered universe of internet claptrap. I have a round of sites I visit when I'm feeling especially powerless about our lives, and I've moved you right up to the top tier (between the Guardian and the Boston Globe). Bravo!

Have you been rejected in a search requiring a mandatory "diversity statement"?

I've received permission from the lawyer (alluded to here) to share his information, which he also posted at Professor Coyne's blog.  Here it is:

If anyone was rejected for a position in such a search or any other search requiring a mandatory diversity statement, please reach out to me. I am an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that offers pro bono representation and am looking to challenge the University of California Policy.

Daniel Ortner
Pacific Legal Foundation
dortner@pacificlegal.org

UPDATE:   PLF is a libertarian legal organization; they are on the wrong side of some issues, and the right side of others, as in this case.   But here is the remarkably dishonest gloss of philosopher Chris Bertram (Bristol) on Twitter on the preceding:

I wonder whether Professor Bertram also supports the McCarthy-era loyalty oaths?  And surely this political philosopher might agree that not just any means are acceptable for promoting worthy ends?   Presumably the University of California could not forbid hiring white people, even though that would be a "diversity-promoting hiring practice."

There's a context to this pathetic display, that I’ll post below the fold for anyone who is interested.

Much ado about nothing

This piece purports to be responding to this, but it isn't.  The Stonewall guidelines do indeed implicate academic freedom (for the reasons stated in the letter, which are ignored in the "response"), and the letter doesn't claim that academic freedom protects mistreatment of students--quite the contrary, as one of the signatories to the letter wrote previously.  The non-response does contain one accurate factual statement, when it refers to the attention given to these issues by "the leading blog in philosophy."  A shame Professor Bertram did not link to any examples from that "leading blog," for example, this.

The dynamic lexicon: "sanctiramus"

A philosopher elsewhere writes:

I hereby introduce a new word into the language:

sanctiramus -- a pious scold who does not know what the fuck they are talking about

origins -- sanctimonious, ignoramus

from Latin sanctimonia sanctity, from sanctus holy

from legal Latin, literally: we have no knowledge of, from Latin ignōrāre to be ignorant of;