Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: Fodor v. Sober on natural selection and laws

Back in 2010.  This is about as high quality as philosophy available on the Internet gets.

Blast from the past: what to look for in a book contract with an academic publisher

Back in 2018, with a discussion by readers.

Blast from the past: co-authorship in philosophy

A discussion, back in 2013.

Blast from the past: the Ward Churchill case, the First Amendment, and academic freedom

Here (2005), here (2007), and here (2009).

Blast from the past: Dora Russell, Bertrand's second wife, feminist activist and sex radical

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: Steve Pyke's "Philosophers" on philosophy

Back in 2011.

Blast from the past: Charles Taylor wins Templeton Prize, and a discussion of who should get a "Nobel Prize in Philosophy"

Back in 2007.

Blast from the past: "How Trump Thinks"

Back in 2016.  Law professor David Noll (Rutgers) reminded me of it on Twitter, noting that it had (alas) "held up extremely well" as an analysis of the monster child.

Blast from the past: Citation networks in philosophy, 1993-2013

Back in 2013.

Blast from the past: Non-confidential tenure letters?

Back in 2013.

Blast from the past: unethical philosophers who participated in the smear campaign against Rebecca Tuvel have now issued a "white paper" on publication ethics

Back in 2019, but these miscreants are still among us, unrepentant.

Blast from the past: My most controversial statement ever, and the backlash to it

Back in 2017.

Blast from the past: What counts as "service" at your university?

A discussion back in 2010.

Blast from the past: when Errol Morris defended his views on Kripke and Kuhn

Back in 2011.

Blast from the past: best Anglophone philosophers of law since 1945...

...who were at least 60 in 2016.  One thing that is certain is that a similar poll in a generation will not be so Oxford-centric.

Blast from the past: How do you know if your paper idea is "original"?

Back in 2013, with a discussion.

Blast from past: Smear merchants at "Campus Watch" object to being correctly described

Back in 2017.

Blast from the past: Cochrane v. Krugman...or the pseudo-science of macroeconomics implodes

Back in 2009, with a discussion.

Blast from the past: "Generation Wuss"

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: "Most influential" philosophy books in the last 20 years, based on Google Scholar

Back in 2020.  Someone was lying on Twitter about this post, which reminded me of it.

Blast from the past: Most important Anglophone philosophers since WWII up until 2000

Back in 2015, with a discussion of the results.

Blast from the past: Annals of Twitter hypocrisy: the case of "condescension from below"

Back in 2018, but not much has changed on Twitter, as we've noted before.

Blast from the past: Garrison Keillor on the Republican Party

And this was back in 2004!  It's a helluva lot worse now.

Blast from the past: Gender (or other) quotas for entering PhD classes: what do we know about their effects?

A discussion back in 2013.

Blast from the past: "The conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest"

Back in 2011, but the point is timeless.

Blast from the past: recommendations of advanced introductory texts in philosophy

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: Sean Kelly (Harvard) on the renewed interest in phenomenology

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS, INCLUDING FROM PROF. KELLY

Back in 2008.  How do things look today?

Blast from the past: Christopher Pynes reflects on APA Committee service

Back in 2016.

Blast from the past: Is philosophy in the doldrums? Poll results and discussion

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: on the proposition that "there was no persuasive moral case agianst the Iraq war"

Back in 2006, but relevant again given some of the strange claims about the Iraq war now being made in the Ukraine thread!

Blast from the past: 20 "Most Important" philosophers of all time

A poll back in 2009, with comments from readers.  This post still gets visits almost every day!

Blast from the past: Most cited Anglophone philosophy books published since WWII (according to Google Scholar)

Back in 2017.

Blast from the past: Against "secret waitlists" in admissions

Back in 2017, but will soon be timely again. Do see the comments as well.

Blast from the past: On an irony in the evolution of "standpoint epistemology"

Back in 2016.  And see also.

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

Back in December 2010, and of course the change has largely come to pass (albeit with Zoom mostly taking the place of Skype).

Blast from the past: Capitalism and culture

Back in 2015, with reading suggestions from readers.

ADDENDUM:  Reader Don Sudduth suggested opening comments for relevant literature on this topic since 2015.

Blast from the past: top 50 U.S. research universities based on membership in the National Academy of Sciences

Back in 2018, probably not much different now.

Blast from the past: Colin McGinn did not like Ted Honderich's book

Way back in 2007, the first in what became an ongoing series of harsh book reviews.  Reader reactions to the McGinn review (in the comments) varied.

Blast from the past: "There is no general metaphysical picture our best science supports"

Back in 2009, with comments by readers.

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.