Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: MA students and PhD applications

Back in 2010, with comments from readers.

Blast from the past: Janiak & Mercer on forgotten early modern female philosophers

Back in 2015, with some discussion in the comments as well.

Blast from the past: What is philosophy?

Peter Hacker's take, back in 2013, with a discussion.

Blast from the past: Ted Honderich, persona non grata

Back in 2005, with some interesting comments from readers.

Blast from the past: the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?

A poll back in 2009.

Blast from the past: Regulating speech on campus

Some comments on the law, back in 2015.

Blast from the past: Robert Paul Wolff's memoirs

Here's a post from 2010 with a link to several chapters.   Many readers at the time greatly enjoyed Wolff's evocative and well-written memoirs of personal and acadedmic life, and his portraits of different philosophers; a new generation of readers deserves to know of them!

Blast from the past: How the PGR helped one student decide a PhD in philosophy was not for him

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: grad student questions about publishing

Back in 2012.

Blast from the past: "Racism, evolutionary-psychology style"

Back in 2011.

Blast from the past: the "preeminent world publisher of academic philosophy"?

A discussion back in 2008--and it's still not Cambridge University Press, although maybe once it was.

Blast from the past: Yale faculty (both law and philosophy professors) vouch for Sarah Braasch

Back in early 2020, but unfortunately timely again (a notoriously unhinged law professor with a large social media platform has been attacking Ms. Braasch this week, making no mention of the fact that Yale withdrew its racial harassment charges against her or of any of the facts uncovered by journalist Cathy Young).

Blast from the past: Farewell to the Eastern APA, and Hello to Skype

Back in 2010, and it has come to pass:  the Eastern APA is no longer the "hiring convention," and most screening interviews are done on Skype or Zoom, even before the pandemic. 

Blast from the past: what are "cognate faculty" for PGR purposes?

Back in 2014, but timely again.  Professor Pynes asked me to share this, in light of his current efforts to finalize the faculty lists for the 2021 PGR.

Blackburn v. Parfit

Back in 2011, and it led to a good discussion in the comments which are worth reading!

Blast from the past: Nihilistic password security questions

Back in 2019.

Blast from the pasts: favorite books/articles that appeared in 2013?

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: the Sokal hoax, redux

Back in 2018.

Blast from the past: can U.S. faculty be forced to teach in person in the fall?

From summer 2020, but (unfortunately) timely again.

Blast from the past: the "novelty fetish" in jurisprudence and normative philosophy

Back in 2015, but still exactly right, to wit:  "one can be pretty sure that the next general theory of law will be more daft than the last one."  And Dworkin's final one was pretty daft!  But he's been overtaken.

Blast from the past: "unreliable" philosophers

A discussion back in 2013.

Blast from the past: when the NYT declared the great Bayard Rustin a "gay, Black civil rights hero"...

...but didn't highlight his work with the labor movement!

Blast from the past: A guide to the National Research Council rankings

Back in 2010.

Blast from the past: The Library of Congress Kluge Prize in the Humanities

Back in 2004.

Blast from the past: Jason Stanley on the idea of "pluralism" in philosophy departments

Back in 2007, with comments from others.

Blast from the past: L'Affaire Swinburne and the now-defunct "Rightly Considered" blog

Back in 2016; this bit is worth quoting again:

[L]ife is short, the world is fully of idiotic arguments that depend on absurd premises, this is particularly true when it comes to arguments inspired by religious dogma, therefore adults with real jobs and limited time devote their time to challenging arguments.  Of course, it's possible that I'm wholly wrong in treating Swinburne as an  instance of awful arguments for bigotry.  It is also possible, as Quine says in Pursuit of Truth, that telepathy works and empiricism is false.  Many things are possible, but efficient allocation of effort is a virtue, and not only in matters of intellectual labor.

Blast from the past: the QS university rankings, a debate with their PR person

Back in 2013.

Blast from the past: inflated letters of recommendation

Back in 2011, with a discussion by readers.

Blast from the past: editors removing philosophers from a book based on "allegations" of sexual misconduct

Back in 2016.  I imagine these  kind of star-chamber judgments are still affecting the editing of books and maybe even journals.

Blast from the past: What is analytic philosophy? Thoughts from Fodor

Way back in 2004.

Blast from the past: publishing while in graduate school

Back in 2016, with comments from readers.

Blast from the past: hot topics in epistemology?

Back in 2007.

UPDATE:  The comments on the 2007 thread may take a half minute or more to load, please be patient.

Blast from the past: the strange saga of the white feminist vs. her African-American colleague at Northwestern

Back in 2016 (and also here and here, with a cameo by philosopher Sally Haslanger.)  Both the protagonists remain at Northwestern.

Blast from the past: Some students is not writing good

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: In defense of English Departments!

Back in 2014, including a discussion.

Blast from the past: Going to law school? Thinking about law school? What should you read?

Back in 2016.

Blast from the past: philosophy of journalism?

Or:  "Why is Brian Leiter so mean to me," asks Carlin Romano back in 2009.

Blast from the past: when it turned out the primary test of implicit bias was worthless

Back in 2017 (and also).

Blast from the past: a discussion of reader polls about the importance of different parts of philosophy

Back in 2014.  (Some later polls:  experimental philosophy; feminist philosophy; history of analytic philosophy.)

Blast from the past: what counts as 'service to the profession' at your university?

A discussion, back in 2010.

Blast from the past: Maintaining a personal web page while on the job market

A discussion in 2012.  By now, such pages are pretty much required.

Blast from the past: Transparency in refereeing

A discussion, back in 2019.

Blast from the past: "TheTwitter cesspool"

Back in 2018.  Still a cesspool, of course, though more bearable now that I don't engage with the rabble!

Blast from the past: Dennett trashes much of contemporary philosophy, esp. "analytic metaphysics"

Back in 2016.

Blast from the past: PhD admissions and the job market for "older" students/candidates

A discussion back in 2008.

Blast from the past: "Weapons of math instruction"

Way back in 2003, when weapons of mass destruction were in the news.

Blast from the past: On the "pathologically self-righteous people" using social media to suppress thought and speech

Back in 2016, but still relevant, alas.  (Link fixed.)

Blast from the past: "the Right-Wing Blob"

Back in 2011.

Blast from the past: Does Wall Street produce anything of value?

Back in 2010.  Still relevant, unsurprisingly.

Blast from the past: How to prepare for job interviews at schools with a primary emphasis on teaching?

Back in 2008.