Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: Fish v. Boghossian on relativism in the NYT

Back in 2011, with a discussion by readers.

Blast from the past: most important philosophers of language since WWII

Back in 2016, with a discussion of the results.

Blast from the past: "My five favorite Americans of the 20th-century"

Back in 2018.  Many readers voted for MLK, unsurprisingly.

Blast from the past: when English professor Jennifer Doyle (UC Riverside) actually came to the defense of Judith Butler's defense of Avital Ronell

Back in 2018.  I still puzzle about how people like this made it into universities, since it's all so crazy.

Blast from the past: The "slave revolt" in philosophy, redux

Back in 2016 (with a new PGR, it is timely again).

Blast from the past: the 2014 attempt to take down the Philosophical Gourmet Report

It failed obviously.

Blast from the past: when philosophers and other academics spoke out in defense of Rebecca Tuvel and in condemnation of the former associate editors of Hypatia

Back in 2017.  The good news is there has been less of this bad behavior in philosophy since 2017 (alhough not none).

Blast from the past: Carrie Jenkins, Alan Soble, and the "chasm of crap"

Back in 2018.

Blast from the past: Tales from the American oligarchy

Back in 2008.

Blast from the past: Why do rich private universities still want to block unions for their graduate student TAs?

Back in 2016, prompted by the NLRB decision to give the green light to the union at Columbia now striking, as noted earlier.

Blast from the past: the state of philosophy in 2007 compared to 1997?

An interesting discussion, back in 2008.

Blast from the past: departments ranked by citations to faculty in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: Most important contributors to metaethics, 1945-2000

Back in 2019, with a discussion.

Blast from the past: MIT's ups-and-downs in the Philosophical Gourmet Report

Back in 2018, but the lesson there should be borne in mind this time around too (not specifically with regard to MIT, which continued to do well, but with regard to other departments that moved up or down).

Blast from the past: On defending the powerless and vulnerable, and giving them a voice

Back in 2018.

Blast from the past: "Social Justice [sic]" kittens: the calendar

Back in 2019.

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.