Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Graduate students afraid to support the open letter on academic freedom

A PhD student at one of the very top programs (who asked to not be named, for reasons that will become apparent) writes:

Thank you for your blog coverage of the recent open letters on Kathleen Stock's work. You have noted an asymmetry in the relative seniority and prestige of the signatories. I write to note another asymmetry. Signatures from graduate students in philosophy abound below the anti-Stock letter, but are hard to find below the academic freedom letter. I and other graduate students in my program feel we cannot publicly support the latter without risking future professional consequences. Graduate students are hardly weighty voices here, of course, but it is nonetheless indicative of the state of the discipline that its junior members perceive support for a sober and mainstream philosophical position like that expressed in the academic freedom letter as a liability.

This is unfortunate if understandable.  It's important to remember that the Twitter Red Guard is loud but unrepresentative.

UPDATE:  Chris "I make things up" Bertram is at it again.  His response to the preceding:

The "Anti-Kathleen Stock" open letter is full of mistakes, fact-free speculation and misleading innuendo

Various folks have contacted me about the errors in the open letter defaming Kathleen Stock for being awarded an OBE.  (I suppose no one should be surprised by this given the involvement of smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa in drafting this.)  It might be useful to address the major errors in one place, so here goes:

1.  The letter states, falsely, that Professor Stock is "best-known" for her “opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act and the importance of self-identification to establish gender identity.”  In fact, Professor Stock supports the UK's Gender Recognition Act (GRA), and it is the letter's signatories who oppose it in its current form.   Professor Stock opposed a proposed amendment to the Act that would have changed the legal process for altering one's gender, so that self-identification as a particular gender would trigger a change in one's legal rights.  (The letter also adds, misleadingly, that Professor Stock is "best-known" for "advocating that trans women should be excluded from places like women’s locker rooms or shelters,” even though Professor Stock is on record as supporting "the continued function of single-sex spaces as traditionally understood," which already includes trans women (consistent with the GRA).  The concern has always been that permitting self-ID to determine legal gender will result in people with obviously male phenotypic features, including genitalia, into these spaces:   some women, obviously, might find this unpleasant. She also is on record as supporting current UK law which makes "gender reassignment" a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.)

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) recognized in Queen's "Honours" for 2020...

...with an OBE for "services to higher education," no doubt in recognition of her advocacy for free intellectual discussion of the idea of "gender identity" and the ramifications of replacing biological sex with "gender identity" for various legal protections afforded women.   Professor Stock uses the occasion to note some of the threats to the former here.

For a typically gracious reaction to this news, here is philosopher Liam Bright (LSE):

Professor Bright's insult was retweeted by Dominic Berry (LSE), Chris Bertram (Bristol), Rebecca Buxton (Oxford), and others well-known for their contempt for academic freedom.   The attempt by philosopher Peter Cave, in the response to Bright and Bertram, to elicit rational discussion went nowhere, unsurprisingly.  It is curious that, although Professor Stock's arguments and advocacy on these issues has been well-known since May 2018, there has been exactly one substantive response by philosophers (as distinct from sneering dismissiveness, like Liam Bright's, above), itself not successful (see Sophie Allen's comment at the preceding link) but at least (mostly) serious in its engagement.

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;