Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

The House should send its sergeant-at-arms to arrest Rudy Giuliani

Now this is some creative and constructive legal thinking!

The U.S. Supreme Court case on protecting LGBT individuals from workplace discrimnation

This is a hopeful account of the recent oral arguments from a strong supporter of legal and constitutional protections for LGBT rights.  I hope he's right!  (Earlier coverage.)

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Although the field is far afield of my competence and understanding, I took vicarious pleasure in seeing John Goodenough recognized, since he was a legend during the years when I taught at UT Austin, and his work has literally affected everyone reading this!  Unlike the Nobel prizes in peace and literature, or the fake Nobel in economics, all of which are thoroughly politicized, the other Nobel Prizes, including for chemistry, reflect genuine cognitive accomplishments.   Now they need to recognize the other chemistry legend in Texas, Allen Bard!

Yeats on Trump

This is funny.

Neglected works of intellectual history...

...at the Journal of the History of Ideas blog with substantive explanations of the choices.  Philosophers will find several of these of interest (one of the works is by a historian of philosophy).

Mr. Conway for the prosecution: Mr. Trump is psychologically unfit for office

We all knew that, of course, but Mr. Conway here lays out the case methodically and powerfully.  (As many readers will know, Mr. Conway was a litigation partner at New York City's most profitable law firm for many years.)

MEANWHILE a less reputable lawyer.

ANOTHER GOOD SIGN:  FOX TV commentator says Trump's conduct is illegal and impeachable; as important, this was linked by the DrudgeReport, which is the Internet counterpart to the FOX propaganda machine.

Federal trial judge sides with Harvard in admissions lawsuit about discrimination against Asian-Americans

IHE has an account of the decision; it will certainly be appealed and will land, eventually, before the U.S. Supreme Court which, I expect, will side with the plaintiffs and might even declare "diversity" rationales for admission decisions to be unconstitutional.

The moral bankruptcy of techno-elites

This is certainly true, but what shows their moral and intellectual bankruptcy is the prattle that comes out of their mouths about just about everything. But in a capitalist society, having made money is invariably interpreted as having opinions that are worth hearing, although the opposite principle might be a sounder one.

Abortion, miscarriage, and the Swedish artist Klint

Leave it to my colleague Agnes Callard to weave them all together!

Rosenberg on climate change and PPE

"The Stone" blog at the NYT is mostly a forum for contemporary philosophers to reveal how little they know about the world (and, sometimes, even about philosophy), but every now and then a good piece, with actual intellectual content, appears:  I commend this one by Alex Rosenberg (Duke).

Jury sides with student found guilty of sexual assault in Boston College proceeding

Colleges have not in genreal covered themselves in glory with their campus "courts," but this is certainly a dramatic rebuke of Boston College's proceedings.

The major affirmative action program at Harvard is for the children of alumni, donors, and faculty, plus athletes

(LINK ADDED--sorry about that!)

43% of (only) white students are at Harvard because of these affirmative action programs.   I'm sure a significant number of non-white students benefit from these same preferences.  What a joke the crown jewel of the "meritocracy" is!

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith on FB for the pointer.)

Robert Paul Wolff on Trump's firing of John Bolton

This is funny:  "Bolton is a genuinely dangerous man, and I am delighted to see him gone. His summary dismissal highlights the odd but welcome fact that Trump is a dove. A belligerent dove, a bullying dove, a bombastic dove, an ignorant dove, a feckless dictator-loving suck up of a dove, but a dove nonetheless. This is a dangerous world. We must take our comfort where we can find it."

America is crazy, Florida edition

Jesus Fucking Christ.  Next up:  arm the children.  

Why does "evil" fascinate?

Literary critic Terry Eagleton, philosopher Susan Neiman, and others discuss.

This week in actual "fake news" making the rounds on social media

Pretty ridiculous.  (I say "actual 'fake news'" to distinguish it from the Trump "fake news" category which consists of "accurate news coverage unfavorable to me.")

"Napping while Black" at Yale--what really happened?

This thorough account puts last year's incident in a different light, and while hardly uncritical of the philosophy graduate student involved, also makes clear she was badly treated by the media, both actual and social. It's particularly notable that Yale, upon investigation, did not find that there had been any racial harassment.

Ms. Braasch, the student at the center of the controversy, is seeking funding for legal redress; certainly some of the media accounts were defamatory or portrayed her in a "false light."  The statute of limitations may run soon on some of these damaging accounts, so I hope she is able to secure legal counsel.

The funniest Brexit melodrama tweet...

...from philosopher Mary Leng (York), a propos this: 

Bro Jo says “no, no” in low blow to BoJo.

Philosopher Sophie Allen (Keele) replies to a Twitter critic

This makes for a delightful read, and not only because Dr. Allen is so much more dialectically acute than her sanctimonious critic (who appears to be Prof. Kay Kirkpatrick, a mathematics professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).

The NYT 1619 Project and the true story of America

Robert Paul Wolff comments.

San Francisco Board declares National Rifle Association a "domestic terrorist organization"

Good for them, although it's fair to say they are more an aider and abettor of domestic terrorism than a terrorist organization proper--but it's the thought that counts!

"Neurodiversity" and the trivialization of autism

This is interesting.

(Thanks to James O'Connor for the pointer.)

The British ruling class is unhappy with Boris Johnson

This is a pretty harsh editorial for the Financial Times.

What can be done about Boris Johnson's attempted coup?

This is informative (via MIchael Rosen on Facebook).

Human rights vs. laudable aspirations

Philosopher John Tasioulas (KCL) comments.

Scaramucci on Trump

He's another New York "trash talker" (recall), and he's quite funny now that he openly hates Trump; an excerpt:

[L]et me explain to you why he’s not a racist, ’cause this is very important. He’s actually worse than a racist. He is so narcissistic, he doesn’t see people as people. He sees them as objects in his field of vision. And so therefore, that’s why he has no empathy. That’s why he’s got his thumb up in the air when he’s taking a picture with an orphan. That’s why when someone’s leaning over the desk and asks [Nobel Prize–winning human rights activist Nadia Murad], “Well, what happened to your family members?”—they were murdered—he just looks at her and says, “Okay, when are we getting coffee here?”

You know, he doesn’t look at people—and by the way, if you and I were in his field of vision and he had a cold and the two of us had to die for him to get a Kleenex, you’re fucking dead. I mean, there’s no chance. You understand that, right?

"Experts" in slashing state budgets and increasing human misery

Instructive about these venal characters, who destroyed Kansas, and are now destroying Alaska.

(Thanks to Bennett Gilbert for the pointer.)

Rituals of childhood and the institutionalization of mass shootings in America

Observations from sociologist Kieran Healy (Duke).

Tuvel-style mobbing comes to sociology: young Marxist sociologist pens critque of Black Lives Matter and its academic reception...

...and is now being pilloried because--you guessed it--he's white, didn't cite scholars of the preferred identity, etc. etc. etc.  The peer-reviewed article is here and the "open letter" of defamation is here.  (For those who don't recall the spectacular misconduct by some feminist philosophers in the Tuvel case, see here and here.) Black Lives Matter identified a real phenomenon--police violence--and then consistently misdiagnosed it, as Adolf Reed has written (and we've noted before).

Bayard Rustin, where are you when we need you?

Sociologists need to speak out, as so many philosophers did in the Tuvel case.

(Sorry I can't write more about this outrageous case now, but as noted a few days ago, I'm a bit overwhelmed.)

ADDENDUM:  The journal is standing by the article, as it should.

Mark Twain on the Internet

"A lie can travel around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes."

--Mark Twain

"A lie can travel around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes."

--Mark Twain

Twitter is not the real world, an ongoing saga

Twitter is the only place where people think that the bloggers at the trashy on-line tabloid Above the Law are (a) reliable, and (b) authorities.  When I tell this to my legal practitioner and legal academic friends, most can't believe it's true!

UPDATE:  Since most of my readers do not use Twitter, I realize the latter was a bit opaque--sorry!  Briefly, one of the dopey bloggers at Above the Law was mocking me last week for allegedly thinking I could copyright my tweets so no one can retweet them, and then other people retweeted his mockery.  This would have been silly, but it had nothing to do with the issue I was raising.  What was omitted is that my Twitter account is protected (i.e., only approved followers can see my tweets--much better, I must say!); when your account is protected, not even your followers can retweet anything you post to your account.  Yet someone then among my followers was taking screen shots of my tweets, and then reposting them elsewhere and sending them to non-followers--which defeats the point of protecting the tweets, of course.   The Twitter terms of service do not directly address the status of protected tweets, but one extreme possible solution, suggested by my lawyer (who is an actual lawyer specializing in intellectual property and defamation for 25 years, not a failed lawyer like the ones at Above the Law), was to register the copyright for the protected tweets.  Not worth the trouble, obviously, and in any case the problem has been solved by other means since.   What's amazing is that even nominally adult tenured faculty--like Jacob Levy (McGill) and Kate Manne (Cornell)--retweeted the Above the Law nonsense (Manne makes a particular fool of herself with her commentary).  I'm not sure what explains their gullibility:  malice?  stupidity?  both?  Oh well.

ANOTHER:   One might have hoped Prof. Manne would have learned something about the risk of relying on out-of-context snippets from a protected Twitter account, but it appears not yet.  In any case, I hope she can  get over her obsessive Twitter vendetta against me (of which the above was but one example over the last few weeks) and move on to more productive activities.  (I do regret my choice of language on Twitter, but the fact is she has been retweeting insults, lies and mockery of me for several weeks now.  Since I don't know her, I am wondering what would explain this weird behavior.)

Every interview with Mayor Pete from South Bend rolled into one

This is funny.  The good news is, despite raising a lot of money, he can barely crack 4-5% in most polls; Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris dominate.

Medically-assisted dying and "suicide"

Philosopher Jerry Dworkin (emeritus, UC Davis and Illinois/Chicago) comments.

Prospect's "top 50 thinkers" in the world

What an eccentric list!  A mix of philosophers, economists, politicians, historians, activists, and others--some very good, some fashionable, some not so good.  Identity politics and "diversity" seem to have been the overriding consideration for inclusion; I didn't see any Marxists, for example.  Everyone should write in "Robert Paul Wolff" if they vote! 

Alex Gourevitch: Three facts about Trump's Presidency when it comes to foreign policy

Political theorist Alex Gourevitch (Brown) posted these interesting remarks on Facebook, and kindly gave me permission to share them here; I'll permit comments, which will be moderated as usual for relevance and substance (submit only once, they may take awhile to appear).   Herewith Professor Gourevitch:

 

So here are three facts about the Trump presidency, when it comes to foreign policy, that I think are worth thinking through.

First, in the history of the modern presidency - say FDR onward - he has been among those presidents most reluctant to use military force. There has been a lot - too much - attention to what he says, but not enough to what he does. There are very few American presidents who by their third year had not started a major war, dramatically escalated an existing one, or otherwise materially supported new, major conflicts in various countries. In terms of the actual use of force Trump is closest to Carter, Clinton first term, and Obama. And Carter and Obama were objectively constrained by Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan fallout respectively in ways that Trump is not, while Clinton was arguably more willing to send troops off in the first year (Somalia escalation, invasion of Haiti) than Trump has been during the equivalent period. There have been no new invasions of countries, no major increase in troop levels nor direct escalation of conflicts. If anything, Trump's tendency has so far been to de-escalate: threaten North Korea then walk it back and be the first President to set foot there, bomb an empty airport in Syria then move on, a half-hearted effort to stage a coup in Venezuela but again he just moves on, even Iran he calls of a strike and in the name of not wanting to kill Iranians! (Hard to imagine Hillary having said that had she been at the helm). He partially withdrew forces from Iraq more successfully than Obama. Yemen stands as a horrendous stain, but that has been more or less going along with the Obama policy he inherited, not some major escalation nor does it involve any major militarization of foreign policy generally. There is little evidence that Trump really has the stomach for a sustained, military engagement with significant casualties with anyone.

Second, the one place Trump has quite confidently sent troops - against the grumblings of the military itself - has been the border. The militarization of the border, not just the family separation stuff but the actual deployment of forces, has been, while not some radical departure from the past, a clear escalation. And there are the promised interior raids as well. He has pursued that project of militarizing the border and policing immigration with far more focus and consistency than any kind of foreign adventurism. Where the foreign affairs stuff has involved crazy tweets, full of bluster, without much follow through - to the clear frustration of the foreign policy establishment including his own neocon/warmonger advisors like Bolton and Pompeo - the control over borders has been a much more seriously pursued goal as a practical matter, not just as a matter of rhetoric.

IHE must be desperate for news...

...if they're organizing a story around tweets by random maniacs, ignoramuses, and self-promoters on Twitter.  And I say this as someone who doesn't much care for Professor Pinker!

Strategies for writing: daily doer or holiday writer?

This is interesting and perhaps useful for some readers.

Here's what happens in a country where the laws protect reputations, not defamers

Gender critical MP quickly prevails over irresponsible allegations of "homophobia" in a publication, which apologizes, pays her legal fees, and donates money to a charity of her choice.  In the U.S., she would have likely lost.

This example confirms what I said long ago:  namely, that Nathan Oseroff clearly defamed Kathleen Stock under English law, and he was fortunate she didn't pursue a remedy.  (That's in addition, of course, to abusing his role at the APA Blog and other mischief, for which he finally apologized, although his recent on-line ranting suggests that remorse was short-lived and he's learned nothing.)

(Thanks to Stefan Sciaraffa for the pointer.)

ADDENDUM:  It's hard to believe that there are disturbed people on Twitter so obsessed with me that within the hour they lash out. Anyone who has doubts about Mr. Oseroff's pattern of misconduct can follow the links.  No more needs to be said.

ANOTHER:   A couple of readers point out that Mr. Oseroff is back in self-pity mode:

The reason no one, other than members of the Twitter Red Guard, object is, Mr. Oseroff, because you're a wrongdoer, and I've exposed your malign behavior to other academics.   I have no interest in whether you stay in or leave philosophy; I do have an interest in getting you to stop your misconduct.

On justifications for inequalities in salaries

Sensible comments, as usual, from Robert Paul Wolff.

It's time to end life tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court

It sure is.  Related.

"Trump's charisma"

A bit of Weber, a bit of Freud, but an interesting take.

Happy July 4th to my American readers!

Celebrate freedom, burn the flag.

"Never Again" doesn't mean "No more exterminating Jews, but OK to exterminate anyone else"

It's hard for a sentient person to keep pace with the venal stupidity of the American right, and because I was traveling and teaching (and dealing with family emergencies!) I have not yet commented on AOC's apt description of the concentration camps on the U.S. border with Mexico as "concentration camps" and the reaction by the usual suspects to speaking truthfully...but then the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC denounced the comparison, and now Holocaust scholars have spoken out, so "God Bless Them," in the emotive sense of that language. AOC is the most brilliant user of Twitter on the nascent left in America.  And Nazis are not only German:  vide Stephen Miller.

(Thanks to Jason Stanley for flagging the response of scholars to the Holocaust Museum.)

Of course Iran wants nuclear weapons...

...any country at odds with the most dangerous nation on earth would be foolish not to want them.

The Internet: inspiration for murder

Yet one more reason the free speech norms that worked for the traditional media won't work for the cyber-world of unmediated insanity and nonsense.

Historian Richard Evans did not like historian Norman Stone's life...

...and said so in a remarkable obituary.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

Some hopeful news in American politics

Senator Elizabeth Warren is creeping up the polls, overtaking Bernie Sanders in some of them to move into second behind Biden (who is busy doing what Biden does, i.e., self-destructing with his mouth--I'd vote for Biden too at the end of the day).  On substance, Warren and Sanders are close, except Warren has clearer plans, in part because she's smarter (indeed, she's the smartest candidate in the race, by several orders of magnitude, and that includes the fake Cory Booker and the current vacuous media darling, the Mayor from South Bend).  She's also younger, and a she, and is from Oklahoma, and a better talker, and is not a "democratic socialist," which Sanders isn't either, but he stupidly claimed that label long ago and stuck with it (the difference between a "democratic socialist" and, say, Stalin, will be lost in some parts of America, hard as that may be to believe).   Warren will also do to Trump what is needed, namely, expose his vacancy and venality on the substance of what he's done and stands for.   I've given money to Senator Warren, and will do so again if the momentum continues.   I just hope that if she gets the nomination she chooses an African-American man as her running-mate, to both (1) motivate African-American voters who are crucial to any Democratic candidacy, and (2) counteract the sexism of some portion of the electorate.

150 million GBP (about U.S. two hundred million) gift for humanities at Oxford University...

...from U.S. hedge fund manager Stephen Schwarzman (who could have afforded to give a lot more!).  It will also include a new institute for the study of the ethics of artificial intelligence.  Philosopher Alan Thomas (York) summed it up well on FB (he gave me permission to quote):  "The 'ethics of AI' is about as complex as the ethics of pencils. ('Don’t stab people with your pencil!') But, you know, follow the money."

ADDENDUM:  It's a bit unclear where all the money is going--it sounds like most of it is going to a new building which will finally permit Timothy Williamson to interact easily with his colleagues in literary studies and religion!

ANOTHER:  This article tells you everything you need to know about Mr. Money Bags.

Plato's case for "political correctness"

Political theorist Johnny Thakkar (Swarthmore) comments.

The jury verdict against Oberlin, a brief comment

A number of readers have written me about this case.

Large jury verdicts for libel at the trial level are not uncommon, and are frequently overturned on appeal, as I expect this will be, on First Amendment grounds.  But the verdict about tortious interference with contract is a different matter, and that may survive.  (This is a strange tort, but plaintiffs sometimes prevail on it, with dramatic results.)  This is all unfortunate publicity for Oberlin College, of course, which has a track record of students doing foolish things.