Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: 2014, the year the philosophy profession went mad

Four years ago.   One salutary development in the interim--perhaps due to the public outrage in 2017 over the abuse of Rebecca Tuvel by the usual suspects--is increasingly visible and vocal resistance to the "bloodthirsty mob of wacko philosophy profs" by other members of the profession.

Blast from the past: "What is an 'area of competence'?"

Back in 2007.

Blast from the past: the REAL "pluralist" guide to PhD programs

Back in 2013.  We miss you Spiros!

Blast from the past: these philosophers didn't take the "kindness" pledge

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: Robert Paul Wolff on Harvard Philosophy in the 1950s

Back in 2010.

Blast from the past: More Nonsense Rankings

Back in 2014, but, remarkably, some people continue to produce similarly misleading "information."  Why are some people so indifferent to the well-being of undergraduate students?  (And see this and this.)

Blast from the past: Thomas Nagel jumps the shark

Way back in 2009.

Blast from the past: George W. Bush's second inaugural address

Back in 2005.  Seems almost sane now!  How much further can American sink?

Blast from the past: Some Thoughts on Nietzsche and Foucault

Back in 2004.  And for more on Foucault, see this.  (If someone is interested in publishing 'officially' this paper from a decade ago, let me know!)

Blast from the past: "'Be nice' is truly the new slogan of the vindictive and intolerant"

As true then as it is now.

Blast from the past: the Marquette case, in the beginning

Back in early 2015, long before the lawsuit and the professor's academic freedom rights were vindicated by the courts. 

Blast from the past: Schopenhauer on anonymity

Back in 2005, but as relevant today.  I've discovered there's nothing that upsets the twitterabble more than the prospect that one of their abusive kin is about to be exposed.

Blast from the past: the failed 2014 attempt to take down the PGR

Coming up on the fourth anniversary of that absurd episode.

Blast from the past: what can we learn from the Brian Bruya/Metaphilosophy fiasco?

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: Fish v. Boghossian on 'Does Philosophy Matter?'

Back in 2011, with reader comments.

Best of the summer blog

For those returning to blog reading, here are some highlights from the summer you might enjoy:

June

"Important"=expresses the "correct" view

UK academics protest ongoing defamation of 'A Woman's Place UK' by some trans activists

Blaming the victim is apparently OK when the accused is a feminist literary theorist (the post that started it all)

This isn't the first time 'theory' professors tried to bully a school out of punishing sexual harassment:  Derrida did it too!

In Memoriam:  Stanley Cavell

Nietzsche:  The Truth is Terrible, at TLS

University of Chicago Law Review podcast on Title IX issues

July

Claremont Graduate University shuts its philosophy department, terminates two tenured faculty

Self-help Nietzsche?

Wisconsin Supreme Court sides with Marquette professor whose contractual right to academic freedom was violated

Philosopher Yitzhak Melamed victim of anti-semitic attack in Bonn--and then a victim of police brutality

Most pressing issues confronting the academic profession of philosophy in the US currently

'New Infantilism' comes to The Nation

$20 million gift to UCLA Philosophy

August

Marx, "cultural Marxism," identity politics, our capitalist future

Blast from the past: can this book live up to its blurb?

Back in 2016.

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

The comments make interesting reading several years later, now that Carrie Jenkins, Alan Richardson et al. have been exposed.

Blast from the past: on an irony about the evolution of 'standpoint' epistemology

Back in 2016 (and also).

Blast from the past: the most important philosophers of the past two hundred years

Back in 2009;  the top ten:  Wittgenstein, Frege, Russell, Mill, Quine, Hegel, Kripke, Nietzsche, Marx, Kierkegaard.  The ordinal listing aside, a plausible "top ten."

Blast from the past: the sociology of English academia in the 1980s and 1990s, and Philosophy academia today

Back in 2016.

Blast from the past: Shorter APA Code of Conduct

Back in 2016.

Blast from the past: What is an 'area of competence'?

Back in 2007.  Opening comments here, in case readers think anything has changed in the interim.

Blast from the past: the APA's irresponsible 'statement' on 'bullying and harassment'

Back in 2016.  The statement's only impact has been to confirm the APA's dismal reputation.

Blast from the past: the favorite slogan of the vindictive and intolerant (at least in academic philosophy)

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: the eating habits of philosophers, and their ethical reflections on them

Back in 2012.

Blast from the past: Alan Dershowitz, serial enemy of academic freedom

Since the "blowhard and buffoon" Alan Dershowitz (I here quote one of my liberal, Jewish, very pro-Israel law colleagues!) is back in the news because of his shilling for Trump--the explanation is transparent, since Dershowitz has only one criterion for any position he takes (namely, is it good for Likud)--it's worth recalling that Dershowitz has been a resolute opponent of academic freedom and freedom of expression, most notoriously in the tenure case of Norman Finkelstein at DePaul.

Blast from the past: the first five laws of cyber-dynamics

From 2015. As true today as then.

Blast from the past: Perspective on the PGR from a PhD student

Back in 2014, but as timely as ever.

Blast from the past: Most cited Anglophone philosophy books since WWII

Here.

Blast from the past: 25 most important Anglophone epistemologists since 1945

From two years ago.

Blast from the past: Best Anglophone philosophers of language since 1945

From a poll over two years ago.

Blast from the past: Society for Analytic Feminism humiliates invited speaker by issuing an "apology" after his talk

Back in 2016.  This was before the Hypatia fiasco involving Prof. Tuvel, but many of the same people were involved in both.

ADDENDUM:  By the way, SAF never did apologize to Prof. Shelby for their unprofessional treatment of him. 

Blast from the past: best Anglophone philosophers of art since 1945

Here.

Blast from the past: the best Anglophone moral philosophers since 1945

Here.

Blast from the past: when the philosophical community mobilized, successfully, to defend Professor Torcello's academic freedom at RIT.

Back in 2014.

Blast from the past: "Police killings in America: a different perspective"

Last year, still relevant, given the mindless blather on the subject.   Remember Professor Reed's commentary too.

Blast from the past: Brian Bruya makes things up

Two years ago, I predicted that Bruya's fraudulent and confused criticisms of the PGR and the whole Bruyahaha spectacle (and here) would have no influence on the new PGR, and it didn't.   Meanwhile, Metaphilosophy stands discredited by its handling of the matter, but we did learn a few useful lessons.

Blast from the past: Goldberg on Rand

Still a classic.

Blast from the past: the list of the "50 most influential living philosophers" is a fraud

It's been popping up again, so recall last year's post about its ideological agenda.

Blast from the past: what philosophers *almost* studied instead

Last year.

Blast from the past: Blackburn on Anscombe

Back in 2005 (with thanks to Bill Edmundson, who posted it).

Blast from the past: "Thomas Nagel jumps the shark"

Back in 2009.  The tragicomedy continued with Mind and Cosmos a few years later.

Blast from the past: "The Black Book of Capitalism"

Way back in 2004.  The book got "blacker" after the capitalist crisis of 2008.

Blast from the past: "The Myth of the Postmodern University"

February 2004.  The myth is less prevalent now, happily.

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

A decade ago!

Blast from the past: APA adopts new policy on religious institutions that discriminate against gay men and women

Back in 2009!

Blast from the past: on betraying the "vocation of philosophy"

Those who peddle the awful arguments against gay marriage are the experts.

Blast from the past: reflections on the 10th anniversary of the blog...

...back in August 2013.  All of it still rings true today.

The Myth of the Postmodern University

ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 22, 2004

Misperceptions in the public culture about universities are legion, but one of the most peculiar is the perception of universities as hotbeds of "postmodernism," i.e., generalized skepticism about truth, meaning, and knowledge. As best I can tell, there are just two fields where postmodernism has a significant presence and influence: English/Literature and History. Because these fields are popular undergraduate majors, and perhaps, most significantly, because journalists appear to disproportionately have majored in one of these two subjects, the result is that the postmodern fashions of these two disciplines have led to an "official" media vision of universities as hotbeds of postmodernism. But what are the facts?

My knowledge of what is going in some fields is undoubtedly superficial or limited, but I feel reasonably confident in noting that postmodernism plays little or no role in most major academic disciplines. Consider:

Anthropology: there are postmodernist strains in cultural and social anthropology, none at all in physical anthropology. This, of course, has resulted in the bifurcation of Anthropology Departments at some universities.

Biology: postmodernism has had no impact.

Chemistry: postmodernism has had no impact.

Classics: postmodernism has had little or no impact.

Economics: postmodernism has had no impact.

Law: postmodernism has had little impact, outside certain areas like Critical Race Theory whose impact on most other branches of law has been minimal. Postmodernism has had no impact on the mainstream of jurisprudence.

Linguistics: postmodernism has had no impact.

Mathematics: postmodernism has had no impact.

Philosophy: postmodernism has had no impact in the mainstream, some influence at the margins.

Physics: postmodernism has had no impact.

Political Science: postmodernism has had some impact on political theory as practiced in Poli Sci departments, almost no impact at all on the rest of the discipline (international and comparative politics, public law, American politics, formal and rational choice theory).

Psychology: postmodernism has had little or no impact.

Sociology: postmodernism has had some impact in social theory, and little or no impact in the quantitative and empirical branches of the discipline, which dominate the field.

Unsurprisingly, the natural sciences have been untouched by postmodernism--but they are, after all, a substantial portion of any research university. The social sciences have been little affected: Anthropology the most, and Political Science and Sociology only in their abstract theoretical branches; the rest of those fields, like Economics, go about "business as usual" (and often in an anti-postmodern, scientistic way). But the Social and Natural Sciences account for a vast amount of what goes on these days at research universities. The Humanities have been most afflicted by postmodernism, though even there we find two central fields--Classics and Philosophy--largely unscathed by postmodern fashions.

So there we have it: Little or no postmodernist influences in Physical Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Classics, Economics, Linguistics, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, and Psychology. Modest, but still not significant, postmodernist influences in Law, Political Science, and Sociology. Significant postmodernist influences in Anthropology, English and the various literature disciplines, and History. It's really time for journalists to stop writing about universities and intellectual life as though postmodernism were its dominant motif; happily, it is not.