Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

University of Reading, in accordance with a foolish U.K. law, "warns" students about an essay by politics professor

When last seen around here, the late Norman Geras was shilling for the criminal war of aggression against Iraq.  Prior to disgracing himself, he had been a politics professor at the University of Manchester and author of some decent articles on Marx and other topics in political theory.  But one of them has now garnered a "warning" to students at the University of Reading, who might be led down the road to terrorism by reading an article justifying political violence in some circumstances.

(Thanks to several readers for sending this along.)

The ruling class vs. the rest

No surprises here, but good to have it set out plainly:

Most of the wealthiest US billionaires – who are much less visible and less reported on – more closely resemble Charles Koch. They are extremely conservative on economic issues. Obsessed with cutting taxes, especially estate taxes – which apply only to the wealthiest Americans. Opposed to government regulation of the environment or big banks. Unenthusiastic about government programs to help with jobs, incomes, healthcare, or retirement pensions – programs supported by large majorities of Americans. Tempted to cut deficits and shrink government by cutting or privatizing guaranteed social security benefits.

The obvious solution to this problem is massive state confiscation of wealth from these pernicious characters (I'm a nice guy, let them each keep $10 million).

 

Here we go again: prominent BBC host set to speak at Oxford until her verboten thoughts are revealed

What is going on in the UK?  It comes complete with this typical, melodramatic falsehood:

A statement said: "The decision to offer her a platform is not apolitical or neutral, especially when her views cause tangible harm to vulnerable members of our society."

The thing about "tangible harms" is that they're tangible:  so let someone identify a single one of them.   But of course no one can, because this is nonsense.  I hereby quote myself:

[T]he pressure to violate academic freedom [also] comes from within the universities too.   Indeed, some humanists have concocted a whole new metaphysics of “silencing” and “marginalizing” and “violence” to describe the expression of ideas that are offensive and insulting to certain minority groups.  For these academic insiders, Marcusian “indiscriminate” toleration in academic discourse is not acceptable, since the expression of ideas that might be hurtful to individuals based on group membership—in particular, membership in groups that have been victims of historical practices of subordination (e.g., African-Americans in the United States, though more recently, transgender individuals)—is alleged to “silence” members of that group and do “violence” to them.    

Marcuse himself wanted to suppress speech advocating for actual violence against and silencing of human beings:  murdering their political leaders, dropping chemical bombs on their country, destroying their society and livelihood through military violence.    But neoliberalism—the idea that the preferences of the consumers of products, including education, determine the value of what is offered—now rules in the capitalist universities too, with the result that some self-styled “progressive” faculty and students--even in institutions of higher education that protect expressive rights quite resolutely--believe that denigrating and offensive ideas “silence,” “marginalize” and “do violence” to them.   (Ironically, one need only watch videos, easily available on-line, of minority students challenging and ridiculing the pathetic NeoNazi Richard Spencer on various campuses to realize that no one was “silenced” and no one suffered actual “violence.”)  In both research and teaching in the human sciences, such metaphysical flights of fancy deserve no consideration at any university committed to academic freedom.

An interview with Chomsky in Scientific American

Here; some excerpts, one from the start of the interview, the others a bit later on:

Do you ever chill out?

Would rather skip personal matters....

Do you take seriously the Singularity, the idea that artificial intelligence and other fields will soon radically transform humanity?

One can certainly imagine how, in principle, systems that can detect patterns with massive data processing might find hitherto unknown ways of constructing theories that surpass those within the reach of human intelligence.  And that could have all sorts of effects.  But among the concerns we face, this doesn’t seem to me to rank high.  Even tasks mastered almost reflexively by infants are far beyond the capacities of contemporary AI....

"Scott Walker was a national disgrace"

Now that's to the point!

Republicans voters are in the minority in the U.S.

Example 1:  "Voters cast 44.7 million votes for Democratic Senate candidates and 32.9 million votes for Republican Senate candidates — in other words 57 percent of Senate votes went for Democrats. But given how states and cities and stuff work, and which of the former happened to be up for election this year, this gap translated into at least a two-seat gain for Republicans."

Example 2:  "Democrats apparently won the House 'popular vote' by 7%."

Your idiosyncratic 2018 midterm election post-mortem

The Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, despite the Republican gerrymandering advantage:  good.  The Repugs increased their margin in the Senate, by picking up Democratic seats in Florida (bad), North Dakota (not surprising), Indiana (disappointing), and Missouri (bad, that state has moved further to the right in the last twenty years), but they did forfeit Nevada (yeah!) to a rather lackluster Democrat, but a Democrat nonetheless.  (Her Republican opponent was Trump-endorsed.)  Many Governorships flipped to Democrats (7 in total), which will help with the 2020 round of gerrymandering.

Although RealClearPolitics is a right-leaning site (boo!), I like their way of listing election results since they highlight "pickups" very clearly.

Let's start with the state Governor races.  First, two bits of happy news:  that reactionary, union-busting moron Scott Walker lost to the Democratic challenger in Wisconsin--that means hope for labor and for universities in Wisconsin; and the Trump-endorsed immigrant-bashing lunatic Kris Kobach lost to a Democrat in the deep red state of Kansas.  (Illinois sent Repug Bruce Rauner back to his country club, as expected, and replaced him with a Democratic billionaire, which is better, but still indicative of the depths of pathology in these benighted states of America.)  Second, one very bad bit of news:   Andrew Gillum, an African-American who led in all the polls in Florida, lost to the Republican.  Since Florida is a big state, with lots of house seats, this is bad news vis-a-vis redistricting in 2020.  Third, bad news but with a silver lining:  an African-American woman in Georgia--a state rife with voter suppression efforts--performed consistently with the polls and appears to have lost by only 2 percentage points to the Republican--and this in the heart of the deep South! 

Moving now to the Senate, it was mostly bad news, as already noted, and not unexpected given the seats in play.  The 2020 map will favor the Democrats in the Senate, this one did not. Given the composition of the new Senate, impeaching Trump in the House will be particularly pointless, since there is no chance as things stand now of getting 2/3rds of the Senate to convict.  One notable fact:   the loathsome Ted Cruz beat his Democratic opponents by only 2.5 percentage points in the still-benighted-but-less-so state of Texas.  He is vulnerable.

Against the use of police informants

Philosopher Luke Hunt (Radford) comments.  (Interestingly, Professor Hunt is also a former FBI agent.)

Watching the midterm election results in America

I found this useful.  If the Repugs keep the House of Representatives that will be as shocking as Trump winning in 2016--and maybe even more frightening. 

Vote Antonio Delgado in New York Congressional District 19

It's not just that he's the Democrat, he also studied philosophy at Colgate University and did fabulously well, earning a Rhodes Scholarship.

Is sex binary?

Philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT) comments.

As the liberal order declines, what's next?

Some provocative prognostications from the Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University in India; some excerpts:

Here are some elements of the new constellation that will characterise the politics of more countries.

First, greater polarisation between Left and Right. The only object of consensus in global politics seems to be that relatively status-quoist centrist politics is anathema....

Second, the rise of majoritarianism. One of the challenging trends in world politics is the anxieties of dominant cultural majorities in most countries about their ability to maintain their hegemony. This issue is manifested in the debate over immigration. But this anxiety is more subtler and far reaching than that. It is borne of the thought that while multiculturalism recognised the rights of cultural minorities to maintain their culture, the majority culture is now either demographically under threat, or simply derided as hegemonic and oppressive....

Third, expect more attacks on intellectual and cultural life. Though politically not significant, culturally the assault on universities will grow. Universities across the world will be constructed as purveyors of ideas that above all are contemptuous of the ordinary sensibilities of the majority. They will be accused of a double sin: Conflation of reason with identity, and then privileging some identities at the expense of others. As a description, this charge may be exaggerated. But the expectation that universities return to becoming flagbearers for cultural nationalism against multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism will grow.

Fourth, there will be a rise in militarism. As the international environment moves to a more zero sum game, the pressures to modernise militaries will, of course, increase, possibly unleashing a new arms race. But there will be a subtle rehabilitation of militarism as an ideology — the idea that military style tactics might be needed to keep assorted real and imaginary internal threats to nations at bay will become more acceptable. Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil is the starkest example of this. But this temptation is lurking under the surface in many other countries....

There's several others in the full essay.

The only worrisome form of vote fraud in the United States is the suppression of minority voters by Republicans

Full stop.   The rest is fantasy.   The only hope for this benighted country is that the young, racial and ethnic minorities, the non-religious, and women either won't vote for Republicans or hate them.  Those demographics might save America.

Want to write a computer science paper?

Now you can!  (Maybe computer science isn't a Wissenschaft?)

(Thanks to Joe Hatfield for the pointer.)

The invisible migrant caravans

A useful bit of humane reporting about migrants.

Should scholars avoid citing the work of bad people (e.g., sexual harassers, anti-semites)?

My latest Academic Ethics column at the Chronicle of Higher Education takes up the topic. Some examples, unsurprisingly, are drawn from philosophy, but the issue is arising in many fields.

The real dangers of a reactionary U.S. Supreme Court

This is a well-informed explanation of what's at stake from a colleague of mine who is far to my right, but also very far from being a reactionary maniac!

On living with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Read this essay.  Very honest and illuminating.  (I knew the author when he was a PhD student in philosophy at UT Austin.  He was a smart young man, facing a lot of challenges that he describes briefly in this essay.)

A (mostly) substantive response by three philosophers to arguments put forward by philosopher Kathleen Stock and other gender critical feminists

Here.   I do not ultimately find it persuasive (see this comment by philosopher Sophie Allen [Keele] which identifies a key weakness of the response), but it is mostly serious and substantive (unlike most of the responses to Professor Stock from Nathan Oseroff & the Twitter Red Guard, I. Pohl, Talia Mae Bettcher, L. Mollica, Asia Ferrin et al.) and worth reading for anyone who has been following this debate.  (It goes off the rails towards the end, however, in trying to rationalize the idiotic rhetoric of those who would silence debate--speaking of which, this reaction is representative of the totalitarian mindset in parts of academic philosophy.)

ADDENDUM:  The last link no longer works, but Professor Stock caught a screen shot of this disgraceful performance by philosopher Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown).

Disciplines are the foundation of a university: against the interdisciplinary fad

Jonathan Kramnick, a philosophically-informed English professor at Yale, has a long and generally plausible takedown of the "interdisciplinarity" blather that has now overrun the universities; it is unfortunately behind a paywall, but here's an excerpt:

A discipline is an academic unit. It is neither a naturally occurring category nor an arbitrary relic of the history of higher learning. Rather, a discipline is an evolving body of skills, methods, and norms designed to explain parts of the world worth knowing something about. To recognize the importance of disciplines — to fight for their survival — is therefore to advocate for a picture of the world, an ontology. It is to insist that the world does not have a single order that is adequately captured by, for example, biology or physics or computation.

A pluralistic array of disciplines matches up with a pluralistic vision of the world: endocrine cells for the biologists, tectonic plates for the geologists, librettos for the musicologists, and so on. Pluralism of this variety should put limits on the way disciplines are coordinated. It should insist that no one discipline is reducible to another. It should also provide the foundations for an interdisciplinarity that is interactive, not reductive, one that takes as its premise that each discipline has something to contribute to matters of shared concern in virtue of its own methods and objects. This is an interdisciplinarity worth having....

A cliché sprung from the tech industry and business schools in the mid-’90s to describe how companies can appeal to neglected sectors of the market, "innovation" is now so ubiquitous in academic culture as almost to pass without notice. [Steven] Pinker pairs it however with a sibling piece of corporate jargon — "silo" — that is worth our attention. "If anything is naïve and simplistic," he writes, "it is the conviction that the legacy silos of academia should be fortified and that we should be forever content with current ways of making sense of the world." Surely many readers of this essay have at some point heard a dean or outside consulting agency decry faculty lodged in silos, or departments siloed in tepid irrelevance, each split off from the other. The history of this pejorative and its migration into the lexicon of university administration tells a fascinating story.

Poseur du jour: Moira Weigel edition

When I came across Weigel's sneering review of The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, I thought it a bit thin on substance and a bit thick on rhetorical tricks:  here was another standard-issue comp lit PhD invested in identity politics and pissing all over the enemy.  (I confess to having little patience for Haidt, who did some clever psychology experiments early in his career--although he consistently misinterpreted their philosophical import--before becoming a public pontificator who apparently believes the main issue in academia these days is not enough Republican faculty:  go figure?)  Now someone has gone to the trouble to eviscerate the review, rather amusingly so.  But let's not knock ad hominem attacks, at least when not strictly fallacious.  Dr. Weigel's father, it turns out, is a retired tax partner at a "white shoe" New York law firm; I'd bet she even has a trust fund.  Any reader of Adolph Reed would hardly be surprised that an elite female child of ruling class privilege would turn out to be deeply invested in identity politics, to the point that its opponents are unintelligible to her.

Robot teaching introduction to ethics at West Point

Given the dreary state of moral philosophy, this doesn't seem that far-fetched, does it?  Next up:  robot teaches armchair metaphysics.

'The Hard Problem,' the play

Of all the hard problems in the world, this one is way down the list, but still!

'Self-identification, sex, and gender' and the law in the UK

Sensible and balanced analysis of some of the issues by philosopher Leslie Green (Oxford).  Because it is sensible and balanced, he will surely be vilified by the usual brainless automatons in cyberspace!

Non-neutral 'neutrality' and the case of assisted dying

Philosopher Jerry Dworkin comments.  It's quite an interesting essay, I commend it to anyone interested in the topic of assisted "suicide" or "dying."

My five favorite Americans of the 20th-century

1.  Eugene Debs.  Stalwart if unsuccessful socialist agitator for an alternative to devotion to the market.

2.  H.L. Mencken.  Merciless critic of religious, patriotic and other bullshit, with his own parochial prejudices to be sure, but a great writer who punched up, down, and sideways without apology.

3.  A. Philip Randolph. The most important labor and civil rights leader of the century, who made MLK possible, and who always championed, from the beginning, the interdependence of racial and economic progress.

4.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He betrayed his class and saved America from fascism and probably saved the world from the Nazis.  The Reagan reaction of the last forty years was against his vision for social democracy.

5.  Bayard Rustin.  He organized the 1963 March on Washington, and worked with A. Philip Randolph on behalf of the same goals:  Randolph and Rustin were a team.  He did all this as a gay African-American, and in the face of enormous bigotry both within and outside the movement.  A person of enormous dignity and courage, whom I had the privilege to interview in the early 1980s.  I will never forget it.  

Your favorites?  Comments may take awhile to appear, so post only once!  But I'm curious to hear from readers and I will require you to post with your full name and valid e-mail address

Everyone in NYC real estate knew Donald Trump was a crook...

...and the NYT now documents some of the thievery and fraud.  If the Democrats capture the House of Representatives, this will make a useful hunting ground for some of their investigations.

Against inheritance

Philosopher Adam Swift (Warwick) discusses.  It's tricky, however, to design a successful confiscatory estate tax, but one leading wills & estates scholar (my former Texas Law colleague, Mark Ascher) took a stab at it some thirty years ago.  (By the way, Ascher votes Republican, but his impetus in writing the paper was the same egalitarian thoughts expressed by Swift:  Ascher always referred to himself [truly] as "a farmboy from Kansas":  the idea of inherited fortunes rubbed him the wrong way.)

About the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics

One notable aspect, already much-remarked upon, is that one of the recipients, Donna Strickland (Waterloo), is the first woman to get a Nobel Physics Prize in more than a half century!  Less-remarked upon, but also striking, is that she is only an "Associate Professor" in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo.  Two questions:  has someone not at the full professor rank ever gotten a Nobel Prize (at least where such a rank was relevant)?  And why is she not a full professor?  From her Google Scholar page, she seems to have had a steady stream of publications, though her most-cited piece, from 1985, was co-authored with her teacher, Gerard Mourou, who also shared in the Prize.  Any readers with insights on either point?

ADDENDUM:  I note that her last article to get a significant number of citations was in 1994, although she has published many articles since then.  Is that an indicator of anything in physics?

Brett Kavanaugh, psychoanalyzed

This is brilliant, from Robert Paul Wolff.

This essay makes a strong case that Judge Kavanaugh lied or dissembled about a lot in his testimony

There's too much lead-in blather, but when it gets into the meat of the testimony it makes clear that Judge Kavanaugh was not honest with the Judiciary Committee on a lot of points.   His dishonesty about the stuff in his high school yearbook is particularly egregious and will come back to haunt him in subsequent impeachment hearings when the Democrats are in control--assuming he doesn't withdraw in the next week and resign from the D.C. Circuit thereafter.  Since his alcohol consumption and relations with females in high school was absolutely central to the circumstantial evidence, including in his defense, lies about these matters would be perjury.

Rachel Maddow dissects the testimony by Judge Kavanaugh

Useful if you didn't have the time or the stomach to watch the whole ordeal; the judge does not come off well:

 

Farewell Judge Kavanaugh, but who will be next?

Dr. Ford seemed to me a highly credible witness (I watched bits and pieces of the testimony), straightforward and almost guileless, not someone who could concoct such an extraordinary story for ulterior purposes.  I've checked with a few other folks, academics and civilians, who had the same reaction.   Given how awful Kavanaugh was on TV the other night, I can't see him redeeming himself.  (I will say the Republicans were smart to have a Ms. Mitchell, the veteran sex crimes prosecutor from Arizona, do the questioning.  Senator Grassley of Iowa can barely speak coherently as it is, it would have been a disaster for the Repugs to have Grassley and Hatch questioning Dr. Ford.)

The real question now is who will be up next.  My bet is either Judge Joan Larsen from the 6th Circuit or Judge Amy Barrett from the 7th Circuit.  But if the Dems take the Senate in the midterm elections, they will need to do everything to pull a Merrick Garland and delay everything until January.

UPDATE:  Well, this isn't over yet.  Judge Kavanaugh is mounting a much more vigorous defense than his tepid TV performance the other night.  Although he's overplaying the "vast left-wing conspiracy out to get me" angle, he is otherwise giving a strong performance on his own behalf.

Ford's testimony about the Kavanaugh assault

It's very good (she obviously had help from the lawyers in crafting it, but that's par for the course); if she delivers it effectively it will sink the rich Catholic boy for good.  God Bless her!

The latest allegations against Kavanaugh

I think he's finished now.  There's just too many, and too much circumstantial evidence of an entitled rich jock behaving like a stereotypical entitled rich jock.   The real question now is whether the Democrats can prevent confirming someone else to the seat before the New Year.  (My guess is if Kavanaugh goes down, Trump will try to nominate Amy Coney Barrett or Joan Larsen, both of whom would be preferable based on what I know--though neither would be preferable to Merrick Garland!)

More on slimy Ed Whelan

From law professor Rick Hasen (UC Irvine).

Judith Butler and Ed Whelan

Whoever dreamed a conjunction would unite these two?

Dutch anti-Nazi resistance fighter dies, age 93

What a remarkable story.  (Link now fixed.)

The Ed Whelan fiasco and the Kavanaugh nomination

Law professor Rick Hasen (UC Irvine) comments.

The Kavanaugh confirmation drama just got messier...

...and two Yale law professors don't come off looking too good.

(Thanks to several readers who sent this along.)

The New York Review of Each Other's Books had gotten better under Ian Buruma...

...after the death of the awful Robert Silvers, so I'm rather sorry to learn that he's been canned for one questionable editorial decision.  I read the piece in question--it was certainly self-serving, but it was also interesting to hear from a serial miscreant.  But for the first time in awhile, under Buruma, the NYRB had more intellectually diverse contributors, and was less a "friends of Silvers" affair.

University of Glasgow aims to make amends for its profits from slavery

This is interesting, though in an ideal world one would compensate descendants of the victims, but they may be too hard to determine given the time that has elapsed.  Another approach would be to compensate countries from which most of the victims came, if that could be determined.  Creating a center for the study of slavery is fine, of course, but I'm a fan of putting "cash" (or material opportunities) in the hands of victims of wrongdoing or those to whom they are related.

(Thanks to Jacob Seeley for the pointer.)

'How the Light Gets In,' London 2018

David Maclean at IAI, which sponsors the event tells me readers can get a discount of 20% off tickets by using the code "LEITER20".   Philosophers speaking include Helen Beebee, Rae Langton, Tim Lewens, Chris Timpson, and Barry C. Smith, among others.   You can read an earlier thread for comments about prior events.

Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh and the Republican Senators who hate Trump

Who would have guessed?  SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh has now been accused of sexual assault while in high school.  Senator Flake of Arizona, who sits on the Judiciary Committee and is not running for re-election, has indicated that things need to slow down so this can be investigated.  Senator Corker of Tennessee--he of the famous quip that the White House is now "an adult daycare center"--has said the same.  Can some of the female Republican Senators like Murkowski and Collins be far behind?  And with those folks out front, Democratic Senators up for re-election in states that went for Trump have all the cover they need to vote 'no' should it come to a vote.

In an ideal world, these new allegations drag on the process for a few more weeks, and Kavanaugh then withdraws or is voted down right before the midterm elections.  In the midterms, the Democrats capture the Senate (this is a very ideal world, mind you), and borrowing from the Mitch McConnell playbook refuse through any and all means to let any hearings on a new candidate begin until the new Congress in 2019, which they would then control.  Trump would then be forced to nominate a non-reactionary to the super-legislature or SCOTUS would remain split 4-4 for the foreseeable future.  Oh happy days.

Are the allegations against Kavanaugh true?  The fact that the Republicans had ready in waiting a statement by 65 women from his high school as to Kavanaugh's character suggests they knew trouble was afoot.  (And who are these women kidding?  You knew in high school he wasn't an attempted rapist kind of guy?)  And my goodness, all the Yale professors (Amar, Chua) drooling over Kavanaugh now look especially ridiculous.

On the abuse of the concept of "harm"

Philosopher Dan Kaufman (Missouri State) comments; an excerpt:

The way this goes is depressingly familiar to anyone who has been paying attention over the last few years. A professor articulates a view on a controversial social or political subject that is at odds with the prevailing view in the academy or at least, with the view that is most fiercely promoted by academic activists. It is then claimed that the professor in question has “harmed” the relevant population, i.e. racial minorities, trans people, women, etc., and that consequently, his or her writing/speech is outside the frame of acceptable discourse. If the professor decides to stand up for him or herself and reaffirm the position in question, even perhaps marshaling additional arguments or evidence on its behalf, what only can be called a “mob” is then unleashed, first on social media, and then later, depending on the circumstances, against the professor’s home institution, with the aim of exacting some penalty, up to and including the termination of his or her employment.

The issue arose in Professor Stock's reply to Professor Ferrin as well, and Professor Stock's rejoinder was right on the mark:

Ferrin starts by claiming that saying that ‘trans women aren’t women’ (or, in the new, more accurate construction, saying that they aren’t females) ‘hurts’ and ‘harms’ (her italics) trans women, in that it leads to physical violence against them. This is highly tendentious, for a number of reasons. For one, it is very difficult to work out precise causal routes to physical violence against trans people, in the cases we know about — is it violence on the basis of being gender-non-conforming (not all gender non-conforming people are trans)? Is it violence on the assumption the person is gay (i.e. homophobia)? I have looked at many a survey on violence against trans people since I started writing about this, and none of them have done anything to try and sort this out question, in relation to responses given. (Such surveys also tend to be commissioned by trans activist organisations and done on the basis of self-selection and self-report, with no follow-up surveys; but I digress). Crime reports are also mostly impotent to settle it.

 

Stock v. Ferrin

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) replies to a piece critical of her (alleged) views by philosopher Asia Ferrin (American).  In addition to Prof. Stock's rejoinder, I recommend looking at the comments on Prof. Ferrin's piece at the APA site, which make several good points as well.

Anthony Appiah talks about 'Against Meritocracy'

Video here.

'Complete and utter dickhead' watch: social media edition (UPDATED)

There's nothing like rational discussion of the gender self-ID law in the U.K. to bring the crazies out of the woodworks on social media.   The talk below by philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) was offered by some pseudonymous person on twitter to me as evidence of her "hatefulness."  Watch it to see the disconnect from reality with such people (UPDATE:  some folks on twitter tell me that the person who sent this to me was being sarcastic and is a supporter of Prof. Stock; that doesn't change the fact that plenty of people, including some of the folks mentioned below, have been calling her hateful, bigoted and worse--so watch the talk, and decide for yourself):

In this same round of social media insanity, Nathan Oseroff (KCL) libeled philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex), and when she responded with appropriate indignation, he made his account, and the libel, private.  (Amusingly, some philosophers on twitter are so ignorant that they don't realize "academic freedom" is not a defense to unlawful speech, such as libel.)  I learned subsequently that Mr. Oseroff is involved with the APA blog.  Given his on-line misconduct, he should be removed from involvement with an  organization that purports to represent all members of the profession.  Meanwhile, Joshua Stein (Calgary) joined in smearing Professor Stock because she actually objected to Oseroff's libelous stupidity.  At least Mr. Stein aptly describes himself as a "troll."  (What is it with some folks at Calgary acting like asses on social media?) 

Race, Class and 'uplift' films

A trenchant analysis by Adolph Reed; some excerpts, but one really does need to read the whole thing to appreciate the points noted here:

What sets the contemporary genre of inspirational black hero films [like Black Panther] apart is the way the fantasies they enact connect with the race-first sensibilities prominent among black and other professional-managerial strata. These race commentators share a body of ideological assumptions and material interests, deeply invested in parsing, interpreting, and administering inequality in terms of racial disparities. Specifically, this genre of critique typically looks to measure and remediate the exclusion of black professionals from traditionally white power elites....

The striking hostility to...[class-based] politics within the higher reaches of antiracist activism illustrates the extent to which what bills itself as black politics today is in fact a class politics: it is not interested in the concerns of working people of whatever race or gender. Indeed, a spate of recent media reports have retailed evidence that upper-class black Americans may be experiencing stagnant-to-declining social mobility—which is taken as prima facie evidence of the stubbornly racist cast of the American social order: Even rich professionals like us, elite commentators suggest, are denied the right to secure our own class standing. It is also telling that the study that provoked the media reports – Raj Chetty, et al., “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective” – rehearses the hoary recommendation that “reducing the intergenerational persistence of the black-white income gap will require policies whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men.” These include “mentoring programs for black boys, efforts to reduce racial bias among whites, or efforts to facilitate social interaction across racial groups within a given area.” That’s pretty thin gruel, warmed over bromides and all too familiar paternalism and no actually redistributive policies at all....

The black leadership role was always at best an accommodation to disfranchisement, going back to its first modern incarnation with Booker T. Washington and his cohort of racial advocates. It is a politics of elite transaction. That is not in itself necessarily a bad thing—President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “black cabinet,” or Federal Council of Negro Affairs, advised him on matters related to black Americans. But unlike today’s freelance racial voices, they were administration functionaries, and most had standing in racial advocacy, education, labor, and government institutions prior to joining the “cabinet.” The backdoor dealings between King and Johnson during the Selma campaign that DuVernay found too messy to include in her portrait of King’s heroic persona were also part of mundane political maneuvering, the inside-outside game of institutional politics. King and the SCLC, like FDR’s black cabinet, had constituencies that underwrote their standing as representatives of racial interest—which in turn gave them leverage to make political demands and pursue policy agendas. A. Philip Randolph used the March on Washington Movement to pressure President Roosevelt in 1941 to issue “Executive Order 8802,” prohibiting racial discrimination in the national defense industry. Randolph, Bayard Rustin, the Negro American Labor Council, and others organized the 1963 March on Washington as part of an inside-outside strategy to build support for a jobs program and passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

All this painstaking political effort could not be farther from the careerist pursuits of contemporary racial voices, whose standing depends entirely on the favor of powerful opinion-shaping elites in corporate media and elsewhere. Thus, for example, Touré Neblett and others in MSNBC’s stable were unceremoniously expunged from the lineup of talking heads when the network reconfigured its marketing priorities. More dramatically, Melissa Harris-Perry, apparently believing that her viewing audience gave her leverage, openly rebuffed the network’s demand to reorient her program to fit in with its election coverage. In short order, she and her program vanished without a trace from its schedule. Such incidents, and scores of others like them, make it indelibly clear where the lines of authority run when it comes to winning elite-media recognition as a black voice....

The race voices I’ve discussed express a particular class perspective among black Americans, one that harmonizes with left-neoliberal notions of justice and equality. That harmony may help explain why those racial voices—like the black political class in general—are so intent on disparaging the social-democratic politics associated with Bernie Sanders, even though a 2017 Harvard-Harris survey found that Sanders was far more popular with African Americans than with any other demographic category except declared Democrats. He boasted a 73 percent favorable rating among black voters—higher than his approval numbers among Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and considerably higher than those for whites or even 18-34 year-olds....

Harassment by trans activists of philosopher Kathleen Stock and others continues in the UK

Details here; an excerpt:

A transgender lecturer orchestrated a smear campaign against academics across the UK in which universities were described as dangerous and accused of “hate crime” if they refused to accept activists’ views that biological males can be women, it can be revealed.

Natacha Kennedy, a researcher at Goldsmiths University of London who is also understood to work there under the name Mark Hellen, faces accusations of a “ludicrous” assault on academic freedom after she invited thousands of members of a closed Facebook group to draw up and circulate a list shaming academics who disagreed with campaigners’ theories on gender.

The online forum, seen by The Times, also revealed that members plotted to accuse non-compliant professors of hate crime to try to have them ousted from their jobs. Reading, Sussex, Bristol, Warwick and Oxford universities were among those deemed to have “unsafe” departments because they employed academics who had publicly disputed the belief that “transwomen are women” or questioned the potential impact of proposed changes to gender laws on women and children....

Members of the group claimed that the philosophy department of the University of Sussex was “clearly an unsafe environment” because of the presence of Kathleen Stock, a professor who has argued against redefining the category of woman and lesbian to include men.

“File a hate crime report against her, and then the chairman and vice-chair,” advised one. “Drag them over the f***ing coals"....

Professor Stock said: “What would make a philosophy department unsafe is if its academics weren’t allowed to challenge currently popular beliefs or ideologies for fear of offending. Deliberately plotting to have my department lose students, or to have me dismissed, through covert means, is surprising behaviour from a fellow academic...."

Last month Brown University, the Ivy League institution in Rhode Island, was accused of cowardice by leading academics in the US after it caved into pressure on social media to pull a piece of research from its website that had concluded that social contagion could be a reason why clusters of young people were identifying as trans.

Professor Stock said: “It is head-scratchingly bizarre how so many public organisations, many of them ostensibly progressive, have capitulated to passive-aggressive, emotionally blackmailing, and sometimes even outright threatening behaviour from trans activists, often online.”

(Thanks to Neil Webb for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  This recent case out of the UK illustrates some of the issues that Professor Stock has raised.