Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

15 years ago today, on this blog...

...the smear campaign on John Kerry's war service.

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

Back in 2018.

Blast from the past: when the Associate Editors of Hypatia defamed Rebecca Tuvel

Back in 2017. 

Blast from the past: speaker controversies at the Society for Christian Philosophers and the Society for Analytical Feminism

Both back in 2016.   Philosophy hasn't gotten much saner since!

Blast from the past: when the police arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr....

...ten years ago.

Blast from the past: Reed on race as a "taxonomy of ascriptive difference"

I do wish people would read this and think about it before making claims about philosophy being a canon of "dead white men."  It isn't.

Blast from the past: the argument from vomit

I suspect many people are now having this reaction, although for different reasons than Searle did.

Blast from the past: "Me Studies" and philosophy's problems

Back in 2015, but still all-too-relevant.

Blast from the past: by what time on April 15 must students accept admissions offers?

We discussed it back in 2017.

Blast from the past: Schopenhauer on anonymity

Back in 2005.  Schopenhauer is obviously correct:  "For a man to wrap himself up and draw his hat over his face, and then fall upon people who are walking about without any disguise—this is not the part of a gentleman, it is the part of a scoundrel and a knave." 

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

...back in 2017.

Blast from the past: On New York bluntness

Two years ago.

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

Way back in 2009!

Blast from the past: Errol Morris on Kripke and Kuhn

Back in 2011 (follow the link to get to the original discussion thread).

Blast from the past: advice for prospective graduate students about visiting departments

Back in 2014, but still quite relevant of course.

Blast from the past: the humanities in an increasingly "commercialized" culture and university

Almost a decade ago, and still relevant needless to say.

Blast from the past: The inflation of bullying

As true today as then.

Blast from the past: Hume's personal ad

Back in 2003.

Blast from the past: Nietzsche's personal ad

Here.

Blast from the past: Kant's personal ad

Here.

Blast from the past: Indexicals, children, and Kant

Back in 2004.

Blast from the past: on criticizing students, why is academic law so different than academic philosophy?

Back in 2015.

Blast from the past: the defamation of Rebecca Tuvel

Less than two years ago.  A shameful but revealing moment about a segment of the profession, the same segment that is now on a crusade to shut down feminist philosophers, scholars and activists who raise questions about the gender self-ID law.

Blast from the past: Malcolm Gladwell exposed

Back in 2012.

Blast from the past: Olberding on Tuvel

Never forget.

Blast from the past: Biology textbooks under attack in Texas

Way back in August 2003.

Blast from the past: John Yoo and academic freedom

Back in 2009.

Poetry from the past: "Recidivism"

Back in 2011.  A reader kindly called this to my attention as a poem he particularly liked.  My father was 78 when he wrote that poem, and will turn 86 next week.

Blast from the past: what is philosophy, again (Peter Hacker's take, with discussion)

Back in 2013.  (Vide Ken Taylor's reaction.)

Blast from the past: recommenders should probably include explicit comparisons in their letters

Back in 2010.

Blast from the past: philosophers on their conception of "philosophy"

Back in 2010.

Blast from the past: Gutting on the "analytic" and "Continental"

Back in 2012.

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.