Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

In Memoriam: Jim Edwards (1939-2021)

A longtime member of the department at the University of 'Glasgow, Professor Edwards was well-known for his work in philosophy of language and epistemology.  The Glasgow Department has posted some memories from friends, colleagues, and former students here.

(Thanks to David Bain for the pointer.)

Lectures recorded because of COVID that might be available to the public?

Reader Neil Webb writes:

One of the consequences of Covid is that lectures have been delivered online.

While many of those lectures will only be available to students within an institution some are available to anyone with internet access.

Would you mind asking those who do have lectures available and are happy for them to be shared more widely to provide a link so that others can benefit from them?

As I explained to Mr. Webb, often these lectures can not be shared outside the university (that is the rule here, for example).  Often student privacy rights under FERPA are implicated in sharing recordings, another obstacle.   But readers can post links to lectures being recorded during COVID that are widely available (maybe there is already an archive with such links somewhere?).

Richard Marshall interviews Walter Horn...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: James Bohman (1954-2021)

Well-known for his contributions to political philosophy (esp. democratic theory), Professor Bohman spent almost his entire career at Saint Louis University, where he was emeritus.  I will post links to memorial notices as they appear.

MLK's philosophy of "Personalism"

Interesting essay by philosopher Aaron Preston (Valparaiso), about an aspect of King's thought I was not familiar with.

Ithaca College announces plans for draconian cuts, including in Philosophy

Here.  (Earlier coverage.)  Comments are open for those with more information, additional links, etc.  Submit comments only once, they may take awhile to appear.

(Thanks to Zena Hitz for the pointer.)

Another perspective on the open letter on academic freedom opposing the anti-Stock letter

Philosopher Teresa Marques (Barcelona) writes with an interesting observation:

The importance of this letter is not the in-fighting among factions in philosophy, but the broader conflict of rights at issue, and threats to academic freedom in universities around the world across a range of academic areas. The letter has been signed by more than 450 people, from clinicians and psychologists to sociologists, chemists, historians, surgeons, journalists, school teachers, etc., and by people based in more than 30 countries. Had it been open to signatories a bit longer it would have reached more people in Latin America, the south of Europe (although there were already 10 people based in Spain who signed it), and Eastern Europe. I've been contacted by many people who wanted to sign it and were surprised to see it closed.

Philosophy summer programs for "diverse" undergraduates

A list of programs here.  (What each program counts as "diverse" varies a bit, so do read the descriptions.)

Christa Peterson's "hit piece" on Kathleen Stock

Christa Peterson (Southern California) will be known to readers of the blog for her penchant to tell all philosophers to "fuck off," to denounce work by feminist theorists and philosophers she doesn't like as "dumb as shit,", or just "shit", and, of course, her frequent tweeting "fuck Brian Leiter," after she tired of merely expressing her impatience that I wasn't dead and comparing my speech to that of Nazis.  

I mention all this because Peterson has now taken to scolding Kathleen Stock for being, shall we say, "unpleasant" on Twitter.  Seriously.   Peterson has taken her own voluminous tweets and turned them into an essay attacking Kathleen Stock.  (The essay has been retweeted more than 1,500 times!)  Stock replies at length here, noting that "Christa Peterson...has monitored my tweets for two and a half years, offence-mining my twitter feed for anything that looked like it might harm my reputation and archiving it."  (Philosopher Tomas Bogardus also analyzes Peterson's claims and arguments here.   I will try not to duplicate points made by Stock or Bogardus.) 

Big chunks of Peterson's essay are given over to assertions about what she deems to be obvious about trans identity, and pronouncements about how to interpret empirical evidence.   Readers can evaluate those for themselves; I found them mostly unpersuasive.  (For a contrasting view on "gender identity," see this.)   Peterson does not deign to discuss Stock's paper for the Aristotelian Society, she just refers to it derisively. This is a standing pattern with Peterson; recall her response to the paper "Are adult human females women?" by philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT) that appeared in Philosophical Studies:

That's Alex Byrne alright, he shall henceforth be known as Mr. Bad, Lazy Philosophy Guy.  But it's not just Byrne.  Leslie Green--the Professor of Philosophy of Law at Oxford who has written for decades about philosophical issues about sex and gender--commented on transgender issues in an interview, which led Peterson to declare his views "repulsive and DEEPLY UNSERIOUS haha philosophy is horrible!"   Condescension from below, with no self-awareness, may not be horrible, but it is certainly risible.

In Memoriam: John Corcoran (1937-2021)

Well-known for his contributions to mathematical logic and to the history and philosophy of logic, Professor Corcoran spent most of his career (from 1969 onwards) at the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

More on the allocation of scarce medical resources during the pandemic, and a lack of consensus among bioethicists about how to proceed

Bioethicist Thomas Cunningham (Loyola Marymount Bioethics Institute) writes:

Thanks as always for your continued commentary and wise read of the news of interest to the world and to philosophers, broadly conceived.

Sometime around March, you discussed allocation of scarce resources in US hospitals on your blog. At that time I suggested there was a consensus in the bioethics community about how to do this. I am writing today to revise my assessment, as this is very much in the news and may remain of interest to you and your readers.

Here in Los Angeles, we are experiencing absurdly low supplies for various resources. Speaking generally, and not about my health system in particular, I am aware of shortages in ventilators, machines that deliver high concentrations of oxygen to patients, oxygen itself, hemodialysis machines, feeding pumps, IV machines, the lines that they require to deliver therapies to patients, and other equipment. Hospitals are also seeing such unprecedented volumes of hospitalized patients that they have considered implementing triage protocols to allocate patients to lower levels of care that have adequate staffing, as reported here.

Graduate students afraid to support the open letter on academic freedom

A PhD student at one of the very top programs (who asked to not be named, for reasons that will become apparent) writes:

Thank you for your blog coverage of the recent open letters on Kathleen Stock's work. You have noted an asymmetry in the relative seniority and prestige of the signatories. I write to note another asymmetry. Signatures from graduate students in philosophy abound below the anti-Stock letter, but are hard to find below the academic freedom letter. I and other graduate students in my program feel we cannot publicly support the latter without risking future professional consequences. Graduate students are hardly weighty voices here, of course, but it is nonetheless indicative of the state of the discipline that its junior members perceive support for a sober and mainstream philosophical position like that expressed in the academic freedom letter as a liability.

This is unfortunate if understandable.  It's important to remember that the Twitter Red Guard is loud but unrepresentative.

UPDATE:  Chris "I make things up" Bertram is at it again.  His response to the preceding:

The "open letter" in support of academic freedom and against the "Anti-Stock" letter...

...has attracted strong support, with several hundreds of signatures now.  As I noted on Twitter, "What's particularly striking is that most of the academic philosophers who signed (a far more distinguished group than denounced Prof. Stock) are not part of the Twitter echo chamber."  I see among the signatories Kit Fine (NYU), Timothy Williamson (Oxford), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney), Peter Singer (Princeton), Ned Hall (Harvard), Alex Byrne (MIT), Chandra Sripada (Michigan), Thomas Hurka (Toronto), Tim Crane (CEU), David Velleman (NYU emeritus; Johns Hopkins), Peter Simons (emeritus, Trinity College Dublin), Daniel Jacobson (Colorado), R.A. Duff (emeritus, Stirling), John Divers (Trinity College Dublin), Paul Russell (UBC & Lund), Gerald Dworkin (emeritus, UC Davis), Peter Carruthers (Maryland), Samir OKasha (Bristol), among many others who will be known to readers of the blog.  I don't think this supports Jason Stanley's hypothesis that most senior faculty support Stock--once again, most philosophers are sitting this out--but it does show there is strong support for basic academic freedom values and an end to the "reign of terror" of open letters attacking individual philosophers.

Richard Marshall interviews Richard Smith (Durham)...

...at 3:16 AM.

University of Dallas appoints a philosophy professor as President

Jonathan Sanford, who works in virtue ethics.

"Transient global amnesia" and the self

Philosopher Steven Hales (Bloomsburg) comments on his experience.  I had not heard of this, it's quite remarkable.

Against the "anti-Stock letter": an opposing open letter

Here.  They are also accepting signatures.  I strongly agree with this from the new letter:

It cannot become our standard that where analysis and discussion of matters of public concern may cause offense, the social and institutional consequences of engagement are so costly that few will be willing to do the work. It cannot become our standard that the mere allegation of harm caused by some writing or speech, in the absence of any specific evidence to that effect, is sufficient to trigger such consequences. And it cannot become our standard that the mere fact that someone who causes harm agrees with something said or written by an academic is sufficient to saddle that academic with responsibility for that harm.

The Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy is the latest depressing example of an increasing inclination in the Academy to adopt precisely these kinds of standards. The effect can only be to discourage those whom we employ to research, think, write, and speak about these issues from doing so and to deprive students of a diverse and intellectually rigorous education. This will neither benefit our laws, regulations, and public policies nor improve the education that students receive.

In Memoriam: Margaret Morrison (1954-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

A leading philosopher of science, Professor Morrison was emerita in philosophy at the University of Toronto, where she had taught since 1989.   You can learn more about her work here.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Professor Stephan Hartmann [LMU Munich] for notifying me of her passing, and for the link, above.)

UPDATE:   A memorial notice from Toronto.

Some sensible comments on the anti-Stock letter

The error-ridden letter attacking Kathleen Stock now has several hundred signatures; strikingly, most signatories are students (some, I believe, undergraduate students), and maybe a third are actually philosophy faculty.  (The majority of signatories, faculty and students alike, are active Twitter users, a notable aspect of this display, related to the "group polarization" phenomenon on Twitter we've noted before.)   As philosopher Jason Stanley (Yale) observed on Twitter, "maybe 1% of tenured professors in top 20 Philosophy departments" signed the letter.  I count just nine, out of some 350 or so faculty in these departments, so maybe 2-3%.  I saw no signatories at all from NYU, Rutgers, Harvard, Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, Texas, Brown, Notre Dame, Arizona, etc., and only one each from MIT, Yale, Pittsburgh, CUNY, North Carolina, Michigan, and Stanford.  Southern California has the "distinction" of being the only U.S. top 20 department with two signatories.  I also saw no faculty signatories from Oxford or Cambridge.

Jason concludes from all this (and the fact that Stock got an OBE and was invited to speak at the Aristotelian Society in the UK [Jason notes he's never been invited]) that senior philosophers support Stock.   I hope that's right, but I don't think the abductive inference is very strong:  senior philosophers haven't much of anything to do with the OBE, and the Aristotelian Society regularly invites philosophers "despite [their] having very few publications or citations" (compared to Jason).  But the real problem, I suspect, is that (1) most senior philosophers have no views at all about Stock's Gender Critical Feminism; and (2) most senior philosophers are skeptical of "open letters," especially those involving "the usual suspects" in philosophy whose credibility is nil, and especially now that everyone knows the letter is a mess.

The injunction to be fully present "in the now"

Philosopher John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) comments.

An amusing tweet from yesterday...

...from philosopher Nate Charlow (Toronto).

"Virtual Dissertation Groups," once again

Joshua Smart asked me to share this, which I'm happy to do:

What it is: VDG is a free service for those working on their doctoral dissertations in philosophy. Since 2014, we’ve connected students from over 30 countries to provide peer feedback on dissertation work with a minimal time commitment.

How it works: Each dissertator is placed in a group of three on the basis of a short survey about their project/area of work. About once a month, one member sends some work to the others—3,000 – 6,000 words—who then return feedback and comments in a week or so. (While this has typically been in the form of written comments, the survey now includes an option to indicate a preference for holding video discussions.)

Why it’s good: While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one’s work with peers in a lower-stakes environment, and it can be particularly enlightening to do so with those who take a different approach, outlook, or focus. Not only that, but there is evidence from psychological research that even just thinking about problems in relation to persons who are geographically distant can promote creative insights. With students in programs from many states, countries, and every continent (well, except Antarctica), Virtual Dissertation Groups is a great way to capture some of these benefits!

How to Join: To sign up, just fill out the short survey at www.jasmartphilosophy.com/virtual-dissertation-groups. Sign ups are open through January 16th (conditional on availability afterward).  

APA announces 2020 prizes

The full list is here.

The "Anti-Kathleen Stock" open letter is full of mistakes, fact-free speculation and misleading innuendo

Various folks have contacted me about the errors in the open letter defaming Kathleen Stock for being awarded an OBE.  (I suppose no one should be surprised by this given the involvement of smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa in drafting this.)  It might be useful to address the major errors in one place, so here goes:

1.  The letter states, falsely, that Professor Stock is "best-known" for her “opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act and the importance of self-identification to establish gender identity.”  In fact, Professor Stock supports the UK's Gender Recognition Act (GRA), and it is the letter's signatories who oppose it in its current form.   Professor Stock opposed a proposed amendment to the Act that would have changed the legal process for altering one's gender, so that self-identification as a particular gender would trigger a change in one's legal rights.  (The letter also adds, misleadingly, that Professor Stock is "best-known" for "advocating that trans women should be excluded from places like women’s locker rooms or shelters,” even though Professor Stock is on record as supporting "the continued function of single-sex spaces as traditionally understood," which already includes trans women (consistent with the GRA).  The concern has always been that permitting self-ID to determine legal gender will result in people with obviously male phenotypic features, including genitalia, into these spaces:   some women, obviously, might find this unpleasant. She also is on record as supporting current UK law which makes "gender reassignment" a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.)

Richard Marshall interviews Richard Swinburne (Oxford)...

...at 3:16 AM.

The Anti-Kathleen Stock letter is now public

The one we alluded to the other day is now public.   The first sentence reads:

We are professional academic philosophers committed to the inclusion and acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people, both in the public at large, and within philosophy in particular.

I strongly agree with that and would have signed any statement whose message was that (as anyone paying attention knows).   The rest of the letter, however, is a non-sequitur on that opening statement, whose shorter version is:   "Fuck you Kathleen Stock."   (Given the role of smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa in writing the statement, this is hardly a surprise.)

What is it like to be a philosopher? Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò (Georgetown) edition

Here.

Richard Marshall interviews Andrew Brook (Carleton)...

...at 3:16 AM.

The smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa is up to his usual mischief

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) tweets:

Professor Antony Duff (emeritus, Stirling), a distinguished philosopher of law, sent me the letter, with this apt observation:

The draft "open letter" is of course disgraceful, though quite unsurprising, given its author(s), but I was particularly struck by the request that I not "pass on the details of this invitation, or this letter, for the time being": I'm not sure whether to find this conspiratorial tone, with its suggestion of a risky attempt to fight back against oppressors from whom the plans for resistance must be kept secret, pathetic or sinister.

I can predict at least three dozen of the first signatories, as I'm sure any reader who has been following this nonsense can do as well.

Dominic Berry is drawing a line!

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY:  UPDATED

As Professor Alice Sullivan (Sociology, UCL) notes on Twitter, Dr. Berry (LSE) was sufficiently outraged by the OBE awarded to Professor Stock, that he has announced on Twitter that he will not tolerate anyone even "following" Nigel Warburton on Twitter, since Dr. Warburton (host of the great PhilosophyBites podcast) had the audacity to interview Professor Stock*:

While this display certainly makes Dr. Berry look like an intolerant nut, I disagree with Professor Sullivan that this is a matter for his employer.  Until this behavior crosses over from Twitter ranting to workplace misconduct, the LSE should stay out of it.

ADDENDUM:   Amusingly, Dr. Warburton has gained many followers since Dr. Berry's ultimatum.

ANOTHER:   Dr. Berry's "infantile and illiberal" attitude has prompted a rare serious rebuke from the funniest academic on Twitter!

UPDATE:   On Twitter, Colin Wight points out to me that the unhinged Dr. Berry has gone beyond purging his Twitter following, making clear that he will not confine his intolerance of those with differing and lawful views to Twitter, but will bring it into the workplace.  (By "transphobe," he means people, like Professor Stock, who think biological sex, rather than "gender identity," should form the basis for legal protections for women.)   So Professor Sullivan was correct:  LSE needs to speak to this maniac.   Zealots like this are a threat to the integrity of the academy.

(For those who can't see the Twitter link, here is what Dominic Berry writes:  "Being a keyboard warrior isn't enough...I also hope these statements show transphobes, even polite clever ones, they aren't welcome anywhere near where I work. At all. Zero."

ANOTHER:  Nigel Warburton points out that LSE has a rather good code about free speech.  It's plain that Dr. Berry rejects its principles and has now made a public threat to put that rejection into practice in his workplace at the LSE.

*Nigel Warburton tells me that he actually did the interview with Professor Stock about her work in aesthetics, and that David Edmonds did the interview with Professor Stock about gender identity.  So either Dr. Berry is very strongly opposed to Professor Stock's views on fiction or he is shunning the wrong person!

Articles from the Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism...

...are currently open access (not sure how long this will last, however).

In Memoriam: David Charles McCarty (1953-2020)

Professor McCarty, who  taught for many years at Indiana University in Bloomington, was best-known for work in the history and philosophy of logic and mathematics.   The Indiana memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Dirk Schlimm (McGill) for alerting me today about Professor McCarty's death in November, which I had missed.)

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) recognized in Queen's "Honours" for 2020...

...with an OBE for "services to higher education," no doubt in recognition of her advocacy for free intellectual discussion of the idea of "gender identity" and the ramifications of replacing biological sex with "gender identity" for various legal protections afforded women.   Professor Stock uses the occasion to note some of the threats to the former here.

For a typically gracious reaction to this news, here is philosopher Liam Bright (LSE):

Professor Bright's insult was retweeted by Dominic Berry (LSE), Chris Bertram (Bristol), Rebecca Buxton (Oxford), and others well-known for their contempt for academic freedom.   The attempt by philosopher Peter Cave, in the response to Bright and Bertram, to elicit rational discussion went nowhere, unsurprisingly.  It is curious that, although Professor Stock's arguments and advocacy on these issues has been well-known since May 2018, there has been exactly one substantive response by philosophers (as distinct from sneering dismissiveness, like Liam Bright's, above), itself not successful (see Sophie Allen's comment at the preceding link) but at least (mostly) serious in its engagement.

Some free philosophy from Oxford University Press

Most-read (online) journal articles and book chapters of 2020.

Two recent books skeptical of meritocracy

Philosopher Agnes Callard (Chicago) comments.

Some observations about Twitter, esp. philosophy-related Twitter

Max Noichl, a graduate student at the University of Vienna, made a map of philosophy tweeters (based on followers and retweets) which is making the rounds on Twitter.  I'm not really sure what it means, but it looks neat!  (Mr. Noichl offers some explanation here.)

Friends and colleagues like Leslie Green at Oxford and Queen's, and Eric Posner here at Chicago, used Twitter for awhile, but then gave up (Green later returned, but, wisely, doesn't engage).   I don't abandon the medium because I know some folks now follow the blog through Twitter links (my main activity on Twitter), and some of those I follow also post interesting material.   Prompted by the new Twitter map, herewith some observations about this strange medium:

1.  Putting aside those already famous, "success" on Twitter (i.e., lots of followers) seems to track three things:  actual expertise (e.g., about infectious diseases, about criminal law) which one shares on Twitter on a regular basis in long threads; championing a political or partisan cause on a regular basis, which attracts a flock of like-minded partisans; or extensive tweeting and extensive engagement with others (e.g, retweeting, responding, entering "dialogues" on Twitter).   There are outlier cases (e.g., Scott Shapiro, the funniest academic on Twitter, with his serial shticks), but most of the Twitter users with substantial followings (e.g., 30k or more followers) seem to fall into at least one of these categories, and sometimes more than one.

2.  Blocking nuisance Twitterati is, itself, a nuisance.  Twitter basically has all the worst features of an unmoderated comment thread on a blog or anywhere else in cyberspace, and so all the laws of cyber-dynamics apply.  "Condescension from below" is the primary form of expression for the average active Twitter user which, combined with the Dunning-Kruger effect, makes for a mess.

"Killology" and "sheepdogs"

Philosopher Susanna Siegel and a Harvard colleague comment.  If there were any doubts that large parts of America are nuts, this essay will eliminate them.

Differing perceptions of affirmative action

We noted after the election the fact that a solidly blue state like California, which voted nearly 2-1 for Biden over Trump, also rejected affirmative action by decisive margins.   Philosopher Thomas Mulligan makes an interesting point in this op-ed about attitudes towards affirmative action (supported by research like this):

Whites oppose affirmative action because they believe it violates merit-based hiring. Blacks support affirmative action because they believe it enables merit-based hiring, by nullifying racial bias and other forms of disadvantage.

Despite appearances, when it comes to affirmative action, there is no moral disagreement. Both Blacks and whites believe that the best-qualified applicant should be hired. What we disagree about is a factual question: Does real-world affirmative action enable, or detract from, our shared moral goal?

I suspect the answer to that last question varies by profession (and region of the country).  In two academic fields I know most about (law and philosophy) it has reached the point where it tends to detract from merit-based hiring, but there are other professions (e.g., law enforcement, especially in some parts of the country) where the available evidence suggests it remains important to "nullify racial bias" as Mulligan puts it.  (I take no position on whether merit-based hiring is a worthy moral goal:  sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but that's a different topic.)

JHP Book Prize for books published during 2019

Jean-Luc Solère (Boston College), the Book Review editors of Journal of the History of Philosophy asked me to share this announcement,which I am happy to do:

The 2020 Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize (books published in 2019) is awarded to: Sanford Shieh (Wesleyan University) for his Necessity Lost: Modality and Logic in Early Analytic Philosophy, vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 2019). A special Honorable Mention goes to: Ada Bronowski, The Stoics on Lekta: All There Is to Say (Oxford University Press, 2019), which came in as a very close second.

Five philosophers win NEH Fellowships for research projects

They are:  Richard Cross (Notre Dame), Katharina Kraus (Notre Dame), Samuel Newlands (Notre Dame), Christopher Pincock (Ohio State), and Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers).

(Thanks to J.C. Beall for the pointer.)

Berggruen Prize abandons any pretense of being interested in philosophy

This year's prize makes it official, but it was clear enough from last year's.  This is what happens when intellectuals are hostage to fickle rich people with money to burn.

(Thanks to Steven Hales for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews Sophia Connell (Birkbeck/London)...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Quentin Smith (1952-2020)

Professor Smith, who wrote extensively in metaphysics (especially the philosophy of time) and philosophy of religion, taught for more than two decades at Western Michigan University, which had and continues to have one of the stronger terminal MA programs in the country.  Outside his areas of specialization, he also became well-known for championing the misleading idea that the core elements of Kripke's new theory of meaning and reference were really due to Ruth Barcan Marcus; Stephen Neale (CUNY) wrote a decisive refutation of this a number of years ago.

An obituary for Professor Smith is here.

(Thanks to Glenn Branch for the pointer.)

ADDENDUM:   You can see the Neale essay here.

The Frankfurt School in exile in America

Interesting interview with the historian Martin Jay (emeritus, Berkeley), that also touches on Walter Benjamin, and the post-WWII return to Germany.

Five important books in philosophy of language...

...lucidly described by Scott Soames (USC).

Cambridge University adopts robust free expression policy

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed played a role in the policy.

(Thanks to Nick Zangwill for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  As reader Joe Cairns points out to me, despite this laudable endorsement of free expression, Cambridge has also adopted a tendentious defintion of anti-semitism that can clearly be deployed to restrict debate about Israel and its policies (including debates and criticisms that would be lawful and permissible in Israel itself).  They did so, it appears, under pressure from the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson.   What an embarrassment.

Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) is a disgrace, cancels philosopher's talk for political reasons

UPDATED BELOW WITH IDENTITY OF ACADEMIC WHO INITIATED THE COMPLAINT

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) was invited to speak in a session on "Bodies, Gender Identity, and Misogyny" at a conference, whose main them is "oppressive speech," with a sub-theme on free speech.   After first accepting Professor Stock's abstract for the session, the organizer of the panel (a junior person, who was clearly pressured to do this by others) wrote back to say that Professor Stock would not be included, finally admitting that the talk was too politically controversial.  (The organizers even changed the theme of the session, I suppose to justify their exclusion of Professor Stock for political reasons.)  Professor Stock tweets about it here.  I print Professor Stock's abstract below the fold.  

If anyone knows who is responsible for this no-platforming of Professor Stock, please e-mail me.   And I do hope that the many fine philosophers on these panels will withdraw from the conference in protest.  (Some participants are on record as having open contempt for academic freedom, but most are not:  I hope they will stand up for principle here.  I'll post a follow-up about what happens.)

Philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö (Stockholm) wins the "Ethics Prize" from the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics

The announcement, in Swedish, is here.   What makes this particularly notable is that, as Professor Tännsjö told me, "Thirty years ago the leader of the Swedish Christian Democratic party, Alf Svensson, demanded that I be sacked from my position as 'dozent' at Stockholm University, since I was a utilitarian who defended the right of free access to prenatal diagnosis and abortion."  (All political parties,including the Christian Democrats, are represented on the Swedish National Council.)

I discuss "Moral Psychology with Nietzsche" at Trinity College Dublin...

...here, with Professors Donna Lyons (TCD), Brian O'Connor (University College Dublin), and Alexander Prescott-Couch (Oxford).   If you haven't read the book (which will be out in paperback in Spring 2021), my essay for the Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology will give you a pretty good overview of the main themes.

(As an aside, Professor Lyons has been running a delightful workshop series discussing recent books with authors, mostly by law professors, but some others too.

Richard Marshall interviews Ana Maria Mora Marquez (Gothenburg)...

...at 3:16 AM.