Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Katja Thieme gets her moment of Internet fame

In a charitable spirit, I once described Professor Thieme--an Associate Professor of Teaching in the English Department at the University of British Columbia--as "rabid and deranged," and people like that inevitably become Internet famous at some moment given their lack of self-control.   Professor Thieme's moment has arrived, in a predictable context no less.  She also had the misfortune to make The Daily Mail.  Needless to say, her remarks provide no basis for her university to sanction her, even under Canadian law as I understand it.

An amusing review of what sounds like a very bad book critiquing "Effective [sic] Altruism"

Richard Yetter Chappell is a partisan of "Effective [sic] Altruism" (i.e., measurable short-term effects altruism), and I am not, but he certainly does a good number on what sounds like a very weak collection of criticisms; an amusing excerpt:

At the end of the first chapter (p. 7), we’re told that:

"[failing to fund] work being done by a Black activist in Black communities is upholding white supremacist ideas about which communities are worthy of support and which ones aren’t. In other words, it’s racist, plain and simple."

The second chapter tells us that featuring endorsements from attractive celebrities constitutes “body shaming, ableism, and sexism.” (p. 13)

From the third, we learn that “Normative Whiteness is cooked into the ideological foundation, because it focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of donors’ resources.” (p. 28)

And so on.

It’s like a caricature of delusional humanities professors invented to provide fodder to Tucker Carlson. Except it’s real. Apparently some people really think this kind of thing passes for argumentation.

A strike seems imminent at Rutgers

MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING:  THE STRIKE IS ON!

Rutgers philosophers Kati Balog and Barry Loewer write:

You have likely heard that the Rutgers unions have been negotiating with the Rutgers administration over working conditions and salary. The administration has been very resistant and to a degree duplicitous. The primary issue is working conditions for part time and non-tenure track faculty. Our unions are asking for pay parity, job security, and medical insurance for PTLs, among other things. Their current salaries are below a living wage when teaching 6 courses a year. If someone can obtain 6 courses a year that is not enough to live on in northern New Jersey so adjuncts try to obtain other work leading them to travel around the state and undermine their teaching. It is in Rutgers’s interest as a university to meet these demands. They have sufficient resources (according to the union, about $800M in unrestricted reserves), in any case, the football coach has a $4million salary and like many universities, the administration is bloated. We hope there is no strike, but if necessary, there will be one for the sake of Rutgers and higher education generally.

Here is a link to an article about the current strike, and some  background:

https://truthout.org/articles/one-of-uss-largest-public-universities-could-see-first-strike-in-its-257-years/

Here is a link to a letter to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway calling on him to refrain from court action against union activity, which can be signed:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qDit6KCecVM7qHQr0LeD-GbYpIesQ5zi/view

Please post any of this information that you think is pertinent and ask for support from your readers.

One can also donate to support the strikers.

 

Katha Pollitt on the "kinder, gentler" Roald Dahl fiasco (with a guest appearance by the Orwellian "Inclusivity Ambassadors"!)

Apt and cutting, as usual; an excerpt:

You may have read that Roald Dahl’s classic tales have been altered to be, well, nicer. Because as we all know, niceness is what Roald Dahl is all about. Forget the misanthropy, physical disgust, and delight in transgression and violence and extravagance that give his stories bite and edge. Forget, too, the dependence of wit and vividness on specific, concrete words, on their sounds and evocative associations. What matters is that no one in the whole world be offended and that no opportunity be missed for moral improvement.

"Identity politics" neoliberalism meets millenial narcissism

Many readers will have heard the story of the ex-Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez (age 39), who called out a colleague for retweeting a stupid sexist "joke" (it wasn't even funny)--the colleague Dave Weigel was then suspended for a month without pay even though he immediately deleted the tweet and apologized!--and then went on a Twitter jihad about her colleagues who didn't support her adequately and, of course, her feelings.  Glenn Greenwald, himself a world-class narcissist (who at least sometimes can focus on the issues), did peg this whole display correctly:

It looks like Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis has lost his mind

We noted early on during the Covid fiasco one of his peculiar interventions, but his latest "publication" (basically trashing his critics for having lower citation counts) is bizarre.

 

All objections to the PGR and the work I do on this blog are principled and objective, and never self-serving (never!)

For example, here is philosopher Helen De Cruz on Twitter, making a principled objection based on racial and gender bias to my noting last year that Saint Louis University's loss of John Greco to Georgetown "may" lead to the department dropping out of the top 50, notwithstanding having hired De Cruz:

Clearly the only possible explanation for my prediction was that Greco is a white man, and De Cruz is not.  The fact that Greco is much more senior than De Cruz, and that his work has had much more impact than that by De Cruz (in part, at least, because he's much more senior) had nothing, of course, to do with the prediction--which, as it happened, came true.  Go figure!

Ahmed, Bertram, Bird

Philosopher Arif Ahmed (Cambridge) complains in Unherd about ideological indoctrination at the universities.  Philosopher Chris Bertram (emeritus, Bristol), who keeps track of scholars who write for publications with "incorrect" views, tweets:

Alexander Bird, a Cambridge philosopher, replies:

Smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa still dissembling

Somehow Ichikawa (part of the miscreant team from Vancouver) thinks that the unfortunate disagreement (and, in part, misunderstanding) between the PGR editors, Professors Brogaard and Pynes, and Wiley-Blackwell, shows that I'm not honest (!).  (A reader sent me his tweet [we are mutually blocked on Twitter] stating, "Brian Leiter is not an honest person, and the PGR is intellectually bankrupt.")  Since I literally have nothing do with any of this (I appointed Brogaard as a co-editor in 2014, and then Pynes as another co-editor for 2017, at which point they were in charge, and I have only offered them advice about the PGR when asked, and that's it), this really is a stretch even by Ichihkawa's standards of dishonesty, which are, to be sure, peerless.  (Recall that when Ichikawa and Carrie Jenkins were challenged over their defamation of me, their own lawyer would not defend their statements as true [see #5], arguing only that they were "lawful.")

There are two other ironies here, beyond the "pot calling the kettle black."

Nothing is too trivial to nonetheless inspire a grievance

Many in the STEM fields now use "JEDI" as the acronym for "justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion."   This, however, is offensive according to these academics (mostly from education schools).  One mathematician who sent this to me, singled out this passage from the article:

[T]he Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work. They are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.). The Jedi are also an exclusionary cult, membership to which is partly predicated on the possession of heightened psychic and physical abilities (or “Force-sensitivity”).

The mathematician added:  "At first I was certain it was Onion-style parody. But the rest is too sanctimonious. Maybe we *are* in end-times?"  Characteriznig the Jedi as "white" makes about as much sense as characterizing Plato as "white."  Vide Professor Reed.

Dominic Berry (LSE) once again threatening gender critical feminists

When we last heard from Dr. Berry, he was busy severing Twitter ties (seriously) with anyone who was merely "following" Nigel Warburton on Twitter--Warburton's "thought crime" had been including philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) on his podcast.  That was comical, rather than alarming, although more concerning was his threat to not tolerate gender critical feminists in his workplace.

And now a reader points out to me that he's doing it again, this time threatening to make gender critical feminists unwelcome in philosophy of science.  Amazing.  Will philosophers of science tolerate this kind of behavior I wonder?

UPDATE:   A reader calls to my attention that Lewis Powell (Buffalo)--aka, "the smear merchant," as he's known on social media--has actually come to the defense of Dr. Berry, with the curious suggestion that describing his post, above, as "threatening gender critical feminists" defames Dr. Berry.  Good luck with that theory of the case!

These people are all out of their minds

Female white Yale professor serving on a nearby town council makes a "point of order" while a male Black councilmember is speaking; the latter refers to her as "councilwoman," she demands to be called "Dr."  He declines (rightly so, the title is irrelevant in a democratic body--he's the only sane person in the mix!), she calls him a sexist on her Facebook page.  Now there's a petition denouncing her as a "racist" and demanding her removal from the council.

"Anywhere out of this world," said Baudelaire.

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.)

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!

This is what happens when you read too much Kant

You can't even enjoy your Schadenfreude when a wicked man falls ill.  Stuff like this is an embarrassment for philosophy; maybe it should be preached from the pulpit on Sundays, or revealed in the confession booth, but to pass it off as a philosophical "insight." Oy veh.

(Thanks to Henry Cohen for the pointer.)

ADDENDUM:  Also relevant.  The explanation, of course, is either that the Democrats don't really believe Trump is a fascist dictator wannabe or they don't want to alienate the many voters who don't view the monster-child that way.  (Thanks to S. Wallerstein for the pointer.)

Jimmy Swaggart and Mark Alfano: when the morally self-righteous are wicked

Philosopher Daniel Kaufman (Missouri State) comments.

Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson) on "guilt-by-association" and the Twitter Red Guard

This is funny; an excerpt:

Last week, I published a piece on the website Quillette. Founded by Aussie Claire Lehmann, Quillette has frequently been associated with the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW). It’s not left-leaning, though if you rummage around you’ll find pieces from a number of different orientations. They’ve sparked controversy here and there: on James Damore’s once-infamous Google memo, for example. They’re pretty obsessed with attacks by the woken on free speech on campus. And the sort of reaction they’ve provoked often provides excellent examples of the intolerance they condemn....

I was surprised by the responses I got on Twitter and in a number of emails. Almost nobody wrestled with my argument; rather, they focused on the sheer fact that it was in Quillette. Actual philosophy professors seemed to argue that where it was published showed it was false, or that it doesn’t at all matter whether it is, just that it was published in Quillette and hence associates me with people they repudiate, and thus refutes my reasoning and my very person.

“Crispin,” wrote @nathanoseroff, “not a good look to publish on the pro-eugenics, pro-‘culture war’, anti-trans website started by a far-right explicitly anti-feminist Australian that previously worked for The Blaze, a Canadian anti-Muslim disinformation website.” In the course of our discussion, he added, “Guess a website dedicated to mainstreaming eugenics doesn’t cross the line.” What he objects to, he said in the subsequent discussion, is “mostly the explicit pro-eugenics propaganda, really.” I tried to get Nathan to show me the pro-eugenics editorials, but to do that would force him to link stuff that he repudiates, and that was a non-starter. Googling “quillette eugenics” produced only a review that presupposed that eugenics was wrong and disgusting.

Identity politics and power

This essay is plainly on to something; an excerpt:

What if the people who speak in the language of identity politics were to recognize that their framework was the culturally dominant one? The one that helped you get into an elite college or win a coveted internship? If you spoke that language, you were working with dollars in a world of people who earned only rupees, or some other less valuable currency.

I’m not commenting on the accuracy or worth of wokeness. I’m commenting more on its increasing dominance in...the world bounded by players like Harvard and The New York Times.

Would the way wokeness navigated the world have to change if the self-understanding was that it was powerful rather than marginalized? What would it do to, say, the way the word “oppressed” was used? Or to how we understand call-out culture? What if the people doing the calling out and the canceling are viewed as the dominant ones beating up on the weak ones? What if the woke of the world were viewed as the bullies on the playground, filling the other kids with fear, beating someone up every couple of days with a call-out or a cancel in case anyone needed a reminder of their brute strength?

Isn’t it all about power?

There are many domains where this infantile pathology called "wokeness" still has no power, fortunately, but that may be changing.

"Are you a moral grandstander?"

Some folks in philosophy should definitely read this (you know who you are!).

Carrie Jenkins (British Columbia) assures readers that people in and around her generation...

...are only "speciously characterized by their narcissism and political correctness."  No further comment.

ADDENDUM:  For those newer to the clown show that is on-line academic philosophy, I want to affirm that, in fact, most millenials are not narcissists and politically correct.   Carrie Jenkins, however, was perhaps not the best witness for that purpose...hence the humor.

Are "Social Justice Warriors" concerned with justice?

Not at all clear.

(Thanks to several readers who sent this along; it's been a crazy month, so I only just got to take a look at this.)

Philosophers behaving bizarrely in cyberspace: Dan Hicks edition

Dan Hicks has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, and is taking up a tenure-track position at the University of California, Merced this year.  Congratulations to him!  But for reasons known only to his therapist, or perhaps known to no one, he decided to attack Robert Paul Wolff (at Professor Wolff's blog) for having dinner with me.  Seriously.  Let me explain.

Philosophy's "woke triangle"

This is funny and apt about the "woke" cult in philosophy; an excerpt (but read it all, really):

As is so often the case, these recent woke outbursts were caused by something utterly ordinary and reasonable, specifically, a short piece that appeared in Inside Higher Education, in which twelve philosophers called for an end to the no-platforming and silencing of critics of contemporary gender identity theory and for a conversation on sex and gender within the discipline that is simultaneously rigorous and civil. (2) In making one’s way through the woke responses to the piece, one finds oneself confronted with rhetorical maneuvers straight out of the Oceanian playbook: repeated outrages to reason and common sense; bold inversions of reality; a constant refrain of “nothing to see here,” regarding things that are staring you right in the face; and of course, cynical manipulations of language and rejection of the ordinary, standard uses of common words.

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!

Philosatire on Twitter

Still the funniest and most apt description of Twitter.  ("Philosatire" arose after the "site visit" fiasco at Colorado back in 2014:  for example.)

Another triumph of infantile stupidity and faux outrage, this one at Harvard...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

...as the university caves in to calls to oust a clinical law professor from his role as head of one of the residential colleges.  Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy made all the right points about this a couple of months ago. 

UPDATE:  A NYT story with more details.   We're learning something about the hierarchy of marginalization and oppression at Harvard:   being on the "wrong side" of sexual harassment allegations trumps being African-American!   Good to know that's how the Harvard Red Guard currently thinks!

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Michelle Mason Bizri kindly shared and gave permission to post her letter to Dean Khurana at Harvard, who made the decision to remove Professors Sullivan and Robinson:

Dear Dean Khurana,

As a moral philosopher who strives to teach her students the values of seeking the truth, promoting the good, and remaining courageous in the face of those who would sacrifice both in the interests of expediency, I am appalled at your recent cowardice in failing to come to the defense of your colleagues, Professor Ronald Sullivan and Stephanie Robinson. If someone of your stature and privilege cannot be counted on to defend principles such as the constitutional right of the accused to counsel and the contractual right of professors to defend themselves against politically motivated attack, then the academy is in a sorry state, indeed. As professors, our first allegiance should be to educate those students in our care. You, Sir, have revealed yourself to be derelict in that duty. I respectfully request that you resign.

Yours most sincerely,

Michelle Mason Bizri
Adjunct Associate Professor | Department of Philosophy
Brown University
Website: Researchers at Brown 

Associate Professor | Department of Philosophy
University of Minnesota
Website: @cla.umn.edu

AND ANOTHER:  This article suggests there may have been other factors at play in the decision to remove Professors Sullivan and Robinson; unfortunately, the Dean's statement does not shed any light on that.  As it stands, it appears the trigger for this decision was the misguided student protests.

Philosopher Daniel Silvermint explains why it's OK to call a professional philosopher a "piece of shit" and "vile fucking human""

Good thing he earned a PhD to develop this level of insight.  And see also. 

ADDENDUM: Leave it to Justin Weinberg to show up on my Twitter feed asserting that Silvermint didn't mean what he said, and to declare the evidence adduced as "misleading."  (The link is above:  search hard for Silvermint's judgment that Shalfiei acted wrongly in deploying vulgar epithets worthy of Donald Trump at another philosopher.  The whole display is a transparent rationalization of the wrongful conduct, starting from the fabrication that there was an "attack" by Professor Lawford-Smith.)  Weinberg apparently didn't get the message last time:  I don't want to "wrestle with pigs," so I've had to block him on Twitter.

AND TWO MORE:   First, dozens of people have asked Professor Silvermint over the last 48 hours to explain or identify the "attack" that allegedly provoked the vulgar epithets directed at Professor Lawford-Smith.   There has been no response, and for the obvious reason:  there was no attack.  Second, someone discovered that during my sixteen years on social media, I once referred to an anonymous person on the Internet (seriously)--who had actually been attacking and defaming me at length and for quite awhile--as a "vile piece of garbage."  They neglected to mention I deleted the comment not long after, since it was made in anger and I thought better of it, despite their hiding behind a mask while abusing me and others (they are still pretty vile, judging from their twitter feed).  In any case, no one, that I'm aware of, defended my deleted tweet (I had no Silvermints coming to my defense) and plenty criticized it at the time.  

Justin Weinberg does it again

Many readers have been writing me about Weinberg's coverage of the 3AM fiasco--in which Richard Marshall's interview with Holly Lawford-Smith was withdrawn because it offended those who "think correctly"--which may have set a new low for the ridiculous contortions required by the New Infantilism that he has long championed.  I'll let a couple of my correspondents do the commentary, although they have asked for anonymity for the obvious reason that Weinberg's standard modus operandi is to feign a commitment to civility while letting the anonymous commenters at his blog dish out the insults, abuse, and lies about the disfavored.

Weinberg titled his post "Richard Marshall resigns from 3AM Magazine," which manages to omit all the significant facts about what happened from the headline.   One reader amusingly suggested some other possible headlines in the spirit of Weinberg Whitewash:

"John F Kennedy Dies Suddenly"

"Sudetenland Now Part of Germany"

"Berlin Wall Disappears"

Of course, Weinberg can't wholly avoid acknowledging what transpired in the body of his post, but he quickly shifts gears to pandering to the thought police and their alleged special "knowledge."  (Philosopher Kathleen Stock [Sussex] tweeted aptly about this display, as did Daniel Kaufman [Missouri State].)  But a philosopher elsewhere who wrote to me put it best:

Thanks for your coverage of the 3AM nightmare. Watching Justin Weinberg turn that into another occasion to lecture us about the need for interpretive charity (!! -- and "moral resisters", FML) was enough to make me want to put a fork into my eye.

Despairing philosophers:  put down your forks, and remember that the most salient perspectives are often not the most sensible or typical.

UPDATE:  Another reader (not a philosopher, but a writer and journalist) writes with more amusing thoughts about the Weinberg Whitewash:

Uncomplicated

Here's something that's not complicated:  Justin Weinberg (South Carolina) has been a consistent opponent of academic freedom and freedom of speech, from the case of Laura Kipnis at Northwestern to the case of John McAdams at Marquette.   As the cyber-cheerleader for the New Infantilism, he consistently favors punishing people for speech offensive to the children, the law and principles be damned.  The Finnis case is only the latest in that series.

Is this a joke?

Even by the ordinary passive-aggressive standards of the "safe space" philosophy blog, it seems hard to believe that this could be meant seriously.  But more than one reader has sent it along expressing varying degrees of incredublity, so maybe it's not a joke?   

Co-author of APA Code of Conduct violates it, without embarrassment

The APA Code of Conduct, with its violation of the academic freedom rights of faculty, was always an absurd document.  But one might have thought at least those responsible for it would care about it.  Apparently not!

One co-author of the Code, philosopher Yolonda Wilson (Howard), while disagreeing with my views about the APA, decided she also needed to do so by deeming me a "mediocre-ass white man."  (We shall bracket the inaptness of the characterization, apart from the "man" bit.)  Let's note some of the provisions of the Code Professor Wilson helped write which this seems to violate:

1.  Section IV, regarding "Electronic Communications," provides that "it’s best to avoid ad hominem arguments and personal attacks, especially if they amount to slander, libel, and/or sexual harassment and "Language used in professional electronic communications should use the same kind of inclusive language and reflect the same kind of mutual respect as is expected in the classroom or other face-to-face interactions."  Professor Wilson might defend her use of personal attacks and lack of mutual respect and inclusive language by noting that this was not a professional communication (although its subject was a matter of professional concern) and perhaps it was not made from her Howard University computer.  (I note in passing that in response to my pointing out her hypocrisy, she offered as a defense the claim that she would "say it to my face."  I admire that forthrightness, though if anything would violate the APA Code of Conduct, surely it would be face-to-face abuse with epithets...one hopes!)

2.  Section V, on "Bullying [sic] and Harassment," purports to apply to conduct by APA members not simply towards colleagues and students but "others in the profession."  This is specifically said to prohibit "any degrading, hostile, or offensive conduct or comment by a person towards another that the person knew or reasonably ought to have known would cause the target to be humiliated, intimidated, or otherwise gratuitously harmed. Typical examples of bullying and harassment include verbal aggression" and "calling someone conventionally derogatory names or using derogatory stereotypes to describe them."  Obviously Professor Wilson is in plain violation of this provision of the Code.  Professor Wilson, however, explained that she was not being hypocritical in her conduct because, "Truth-telling is not hypocritical."  Now in the Code as written, there is clearly no exception for "truth-telling" via verbal aggressionn and the use of derogatory names and stereotypes.  But for those originalists out there, please take note:  according to one of the framers, none of these provisions apply when one takes onself to speak truthfully!

Shall we hold our breath to see whether any officer of the APA deigns to condemn this violation of the Code by an APA member involved in drafting it?  Of course not!

Reader mail

This one was quite funny, from longtime reader Michael Bramley in the U.K.:

As a longtime reader of your philosophy blog (10+ years) I wanted to write a note of thanks for your tireless coverage of these permanently furious, bloodthirsty dogmatists on the Left that give the rest of us (on the same side!) such a bad name. I referring to all this crap about diversity and New Infantilism and of course the nonsense on stilts regarding Tuvel and Stock.

One wonders what bile these True Believers would produce if you *weren't* shining a light on these specimens of slave revolt! Despite my love for medical statistics, here is one situation where I am truly glad there is no control group!

2 350 years ago, Aristotle wrote that, 'To entertain a thought without accepting it is the mark of an educated mind.' In 2018, even entertaining a hypothetical (that is contrary to the party line) is the mark of the devil . This is how the world ends, then: not with a bang, but with a hashtag. (And this is what we're trying to send to Mars?!)

I suspect the item last week on Professor Trott's hypocrisy prompted this, but he raises a good question:  namely, if someone were not shining a very public light on their misconduct, their hypocrisy, their mobbing, their attempts to suppress ideas and speech, would they be doing even worse?  It's hard to imagine what that would be, but maybe vocal opposition does slow them down a bit.  It is at least, as I know from much correspondence, helpful to the targets of the thought police to know they have much support.

'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?) 

'New Infantilism' comes to The Nation

This is disgraceful (the abject apology, and the abuse of the language of "harm"), on a par with the misconduct towards Rebecca Tuvel by the former Associate Editors of Hypatia or the mistreatment of Tommie Shelby by the Society for Analytic Feminism.  Adults would do well to remember John Gardner's comments on an earlier thread:

That something offends you, or more generally makes you feel bad, does not show that it does you any harm. We all feel bad about something most days and come out of it unscathed, just as we come out of most physical pain unscathed. Of course there may be harms that are consequences of offence and pain. Torture harms people by the use of pain. Upset may turn to depression and may then be disabling. I have yet to see any evidence that anything Rebecca Tuvel said had any such consequences. Whereas people are certainly inflicting such consequences on her.

The Nation has now inflicted similar professional damage on the poet it has so prominently published and then rebuked.  Any poet with integrity should stop submitting to The Nation until its poetry editors are replaced with competent professionals.

UPDATE:  Philosopher Jerry Dworkin writes:

The amazing thing is that their initial reading was spot on. Although why it is "profane" is a puzzle. Maybe "Christian" is a bad word.

When we read the poem we took it as a profane, over-the-top attack on the ways in which members of many groups are asked, or required, to perform the work of marginalization. We can no longer read the poem in that way.

They don't give their new reading. But it seems that the mere appearance of "ableist" and "disparaging" language is sufficient to condemn a poem.  So much for Huck Finn.

Tracey Ullman's "Woke Support Group"

This is very funny because the characters are all too recognizable in current philosophy cyberspace ("problematic").

Speaking of posturing, preening wankers...

...one of these is being serious the other is offering a parody, but which is really which?  You decide.

(I thank a reader who asked for anonymity for being the source of these links; somehow I had missed this delicious display.)

Gustavus Stadler, random twitter crazy of the day

Stadler, an Associate Professor of English, at Haverford College weighs in with the following on twitter (with reference to this):

I was really alarmed to see many people I follow so uncritical about something coming from Leiter, a troll with tenure who wields enormous power to keep philosophy the fortress of white maleness it is.

Let's review:

1.  It is "trolling" to expose Judith Butler's shameful defense of a colleague accused of sexual harassment or misconduct under Title IX; Stadler hurls this epithet even after CHE has confirmed that the letter was, as I said, real.

2.  For good measure, Prof. Stadler adds in a fact-free smear of my mentorship of students;  more than half of those now in philosophy departments are either women, or are racial or ethnic minorities, or sometimes both.  So much for my securing "the fortress of white maleness."

Honorable members of the English profession should denounce these irresponsible and unprofessional smears.

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

A reader, who asked for anonymity, writes:  "I was struck by Butler letter's uncanny echoes of Jacques Derrida's 2004 letter in defense of vampire theorist Dragan Kujundzic, the UC-Irvine professor sanctioned over allegations of sexual harassment. In particular, how both appeal to nepotism and prestige rather than disinterest and due process."

Here's the threatening letter Derrida sent to UC Irvine; bolded bits do, indeed, suggest that the current "theory" illuminati learned from the master:

For years, as you probably know, I have made a gift of all my archives (I emphasize gift because I know that such papers are generally sold and sometimes at a very high price)... I underscore the long-standing and deep nature of these ties so as to convince you that everything regarding the future, the reputation, and the worthiness of our university profoundly touches, concerns, and involves me.

​Even though I am not qualified to make a judgment concerning a confidential file and although I wish to trust the Senate Committee and yourself, Chancellor, as well as the sense of justice that guides you, I believe it is my duty to bear witness here as what is called in France, but also I believe in the United States, an “amicus curiae.” ​

​It would seem that the allegations of the plaintiff are unfair and in bad faith (I will not yet say perverse).  When there has been neither any coercion or violence brought to bear on her, nor any attack (moreover very improbable!) on the presumed “innocence” of a 27- or 28-year-old woman, where does she find the grounds, how can she claim to have the right to initiate such a serious procedure and to put in motion such a weighty juridico-academic bureaucracy against a respectable and universally respected professor? 

​For more than twenty years, I have followed and admired his work, his intelligence, his rigor, and his integrity, his strict sense of ethical, intellectual, and academic responsibility.  (In particular, I know him to be absolutely incapable of using or abusing his power with students, abuse being implied, in the strict sense, by the concept of “sexual harassment”).

​One cannot imagine or measure the gravity of the damage that a sanction, no matter how light, would do to our university, to its most interesting and fruitful activities, as well as to its honor and the image it has on the outside... The truth is this:  if the scandalous procedure initiated against Dragan Kujundzic were not to be interrupted or cancelled, for all the reasons I have just laid out, if a sanction of whatever sort were allowed to sully both his honor and the honor of the university, I would sadly be obliged to put an end, immediately, to all my relations with UCI. 

CHE article on the letter defending Professor Ronell

Here.  A few striking (or in some cases, amusing) bits, with my comments:

[Judith Butler] said in an email to The Chronicle that the letter pulled from Leiter’s blog was an "incorrect version" and that it contained errors in the list of names. Butler declined to provide a correct version of the letter or explain how this version was incorrect.

It was obviously a draft version, sent out to solicit more signatories.  But what was not "incorrect" was the content, as the CHE article goes on to make clear:

[A]nother scholar listed as a signatory, Joan W. Scott, a professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, confirmed that she signed the letter and stood fully by her decision to do so....

When asked if the letter suggested that Ronell’s should be treated with dignity because of her international reputation or if the signers were trying to influence the outcome of an investigation, Scott agreed that the letter had some "inconsistencies" in it.

"Many people who signed the letter knew more than they could say," she said. She added that it was written and signed quickly because some of the signers had a growing and urgent sense that they had to do something. "The idea was to somehow testify that this was somebody who was beyond reproach not because of her international reputation, but because there have been no other allegations of this kind against her," Scott said.

Catharine R. Stimpson, an English professor and former dean of NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science, also signed the letter and stood by her decision to do so.

"I’m a believer in due process," she said. "I believe the timing was in response to a fear of possible revocation of tenure."

Professor Scott at least has the decency to distance herself from the disgraceful suggestion that Prof. Ronell is too "famous" to be guilty of a Title IX violation, though she endorses an almost equally preposterous position, namely, that Prof. Ronell could not be in violation of Title IX because she has not previously been alleged to be in violation of Title IX.  More striking is that the former Dean of the Graduate School at NYU (who must presumably be familiar with Title IX and its retaliation provisions) offers no qualifications about signing the letter.

Blaming the victim is apparently OK when the accused in a Title IX proceeding is a feminist literary theorist

That would seem to be the takeaway from this remarkable letter (written, I am told, by Judith Butler) in support of Avital Ronell, who teaches in German and Comparative Literature at NYU:   Download BUTLER letter for Avital Ronell.   The signatory list reads like a "who's who" of "theory" (as they call bad philosophy in literature departments), from Butler to Zizek (with a few honorable exceptions, of course).  But far more revealing is the content of the letter.

Professor Ronell, it seems, is the target of a Title IX complaint and investigation at NYU; the details are not known to me, and are not revealed in the letter.  But this is apparently irrelevant.  From the remarkable first paragraph (boldings added by me):

Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor Ronell and accumulated collectively years of experience to support our view of her capacity as teacher and a scholar, but also as someone who has served as Chair of both the Departments of German and Comparative Literature at New York University.  We have all seen her relationship with students, and some of us know the individual who has waged this malicious campaign against her.  We wish to communicate first in the clearest terms our profound an enduring admiration for Professor Ronell whose mentorship of students has been no less than remarkable over many years. We deplore the damage that this legal proceeding causes her, and seek to register in clear terms our objection to any judgment against her.  We hold that the allegations against her do not constitute actual evidence, but rather support the view that malicious intention has animated and sustained this legal nightmare.

Imagine that such a letter had been sent on behalf of Peter Ludlow, Colin McGinn, John Searle, Thomas Pogge or anyone other than a feminist literary theorist:  there would be howls of protest and indignation at such a public assault on a complainant in a Title IX case.  The signatories collectively malign the complainant as motivated by "malice" (i.e., a liar), even though they admit to knowing nothing about the findings of the Title IX proceedings--and despite that they also demand that their friend be acquitted, given her past "mentorship of students".  (I imagine many faculty members found guilty, correctly, in a Title IX proceeding have also mentored lots of students, chaired a department, and produced notable scholarship.)  If Professor Ronell had any role in soliciting this letter, it looks to me like a clear case of retaliation against the complainant that will compound her and the university's problems.

But you get a real sense of the hypocrisy and entitlement of these precious "theorists" in the concluding paragraph of the letter addressed to the NYU President and Provost:

Annals of twitter hypocrisy: the case of "condescension from below"

This past Saturday morning, I woke up early and had some time to kill, and so when I checked twitter, instead of blocking the usual jerks and knuckleheads there, I actually engaged some of them.  Before I get into the delicious details of what ensued, a reminder about a long-standing meme here, the idea of "condescension from below."  I owe the brilliant phrase to Stephen Stich.  We were both attending a conference where a philosopher (who shall remain nameless, except to note that no one would consider him a major figure) delivered what he took to be a devastating critique of Quine.   But the paper was not simply critical--that would hardly make it notable, this being philosophy after all--it was remarkably condescending in tone and substance--hence Stich's quip to me, "Condescension from below":  this philosopher was feigning an air of superiority towards a philosopher he was plainly inferior to.

"Condescension from below" is a staple of twitter, and for the obvious reasons:  the lack of barriers, group polarization effects, and the limits of the medium are all conducive to it.   And now for Saturday morning's amusement:

Speaking of twitter mobs and employment repercussions

This is a curious story out of Canada:

In my experience, what hurts the most on Twitter isn’t the threats, insults, smears, and verbal abuse you get from random trolls. Rather, it’s the betrayal from those who you thought were on your side: colleagues, friends, community members, political allies. If Men’s-Rights Activists tell me I’m a “man-hating,” “anti-sex,” “cunt”—that’s just another day at the office. But what may surprise some readers is that the bulk of the abuse I receive online—lurid demands that I should be variously guillotined, curb stomped, drowned, or bludgeoned—comes from those who claim to be leftists.

By way of background: I am sometimes smeared as a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (or “TERF”) because, as a feminist, I believe that gender is imposed on people through socialization, rather than innate factors; that trans-identified males have different life experiences than those of females; and that people who were born male, and have spent most of their lives as men, should not automatically be admitted to every space that is otherwise reserved for women. And unlike the many young gender studies apostates one often finds at the vanguard of trans activism, I regard the sex trade as an inherently misogynistic and exploitative industry (which is why I support the so-called Nordic model, under which pimps, johns, sex traffickers, and brothel-owners are criminalized).

In May 2015, Maggie’s Toronto—a lobby group that supports the legalization of prostitution—launched a petition against me, with the intended audience being my bosses at rabble.ca. The petition claimed (falsely) that I had published “material that dehumanizes and disrespects women with different experiences and perspectives…in particular Black women, women in the sex industry, and trans women.” I also was accused of “racism, whorephobia and transmisogyny.”

Many philosophers present one public face to the world, but behave very differently "in private"

The title of this post should make any moderately sophisticated person laugh (of course they do that!), but many academic philosophers are so psychologically naive that it may be necessary to emphasize the point.

Here's what has made the problem vivid to me.  Over the last few months, I've had multiple readers report to me that:

1.  A prominent--on social media--opponent of sexual harassment, who has called for informal social sanctions of suspected sexual harassers, was in fact found guilty of sexual harassment by his university.

U of British Columbia drafts statement on free speech principles...

...and then abandons the draft when it becomes clear it's really about all the reasons for suppressing speech:

The trouble is, many of the academics on the working group tasked with drafting this statement don't actually seem to believe in free expression. Only this can explain the hopeless, incoherent mishmash they came up with. (I am sorry to note that their grammar and syntax are hopeless, too.) No wonder the president, Santa Ono, wanted to shelve it.

"In my view this is a feeble and troubling document that is unworthy of a university that wants to be taken seriously," Paul Russell, a philosophy professor who has been involved in other speech debates on campus, said via e-mail.

(Amusingly, one of the drafters of the failed statement on freedom of expression was none other than our old friend Alan Richardson, the apparatchik posing as a philosopher at UBC, who tried to bully his colleagues into not communicating with me back in 2014, to no avail.)

In a follow-up editorial, a Canadian newspaper wrote:

The UBC draft statement subsequently asks the right questions, such as, "How can we equip students to tackle future challenges, if they are shielded from demanding, provocative thought?" Or, "How can we create significant breakthroughs if entire lines of inquiry are forbidden?"

But after citing these critical goals, it reaches the startling conclusion that the freedom of expression required to achieve them is not of paramount value.

"Freedom of expression does not trump all other rights," the draft says. "In the university community, freedom of expression can only thrive constructively when accompanied by other rights, including the equality rights of equity, diversity and inclusion." 

The statement raises worries about "deliberate attempts to create a toxic environment." And it makes the claim that "freedom of expression rests on the potential of making positive, constructive contributions to the university community" – an implication that the school can decide which expression is positive and which isn't.

American universities that have wrestled with the issue have come to a different conclusion: that, as the University of Chicago puts it in its own statement on freedom of expression, "concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community."

I reached  out to the UBC philosopher Paul Russell, who kindly gave me permission to share his apt observations about the draft statement: 

Leon Wieseltier eviscerated

This is quite amusing, and certainly captures the pompous fraud in all his ridiculousness (though wastes too much time on his physical appearance); a taste:

After his years at Harvard, a school useful above all for making connections, Leon had acquired a job at the New Republic, a liberal weekly that had not long before been bought by a man named Martin Peretz, a wealthy, part-time instructor at Harvard. During his early days on the magazine, Leon published a longish piece there on, of all things, nuclear war. Nothing very distinguished about it, either, the thought of taking him seriously on such a large subject was in fact slightly gigglesome, but it suggested to me that young Leon, with all the possibilities open to him, the good student with superior tuchus-lecking skills, was considering that of becoming our next Henry Kissinger. I subsequently learned he was aiming higher.

Before long Leon was given control over the back of the book, the literary and cultural sections of the New Republic. His byline would appear mostly over something like a column, not every week but fairly often, on the last page of the magazine. These columns increasingly became moral diatribes. Whatever the subject, one thing they all had in common was that he, Leon Wieseltier, not only had a clearer vision of the world and what was important in it than anyone he was writing about, but also a deeper moral imagination. Along the way, he had developed a style which entailed short-sentences that suggested the aphorism. This style worked nicely to elevate himself while dismissing anyone who happened to disagree as a moral idiot, scum really, who if he understood how wretched he was would go instanter into the intellectual equivalent of a witness protection program.

In this new style, on his single page containing 800 or so words, Leon took on the role of moral conscience of the intellectuals, the Jews, the nation at large. His self-emplacement as spokesmen for the Jews especially caused me to wince and shiver. Still a fairly young man, Leon Wieseltier was setting up shop as one of the leading moralists of our day, and with absolutely no legitimate claims to it that I could see, and a few, from personal experience, that I knew disqualified him.... 

In 1995 an article appeared in Vanity Fair written by a man named Lloyd Grove, commenting on Leon’s social-climbing skills, his unbreakable connection with Martin Peretz and the power it gave him at the New Republic, his all-but-self-confessed cheating on his first wife (the Pakistani daughter of a man described in the article as a “merchant prince”). The article also remarked on how these various activities apparently got in the way of Leon, despite his rather extravagant intellectual pretensions, getting any serious intellectual work done: no books, few articles beyond those back-page moral diatribes. He was, he told Grove, contemplating a book on sighing, a fine Leon touch, in the realm of intellectual pretension. The unspoken charge was laziness....

 (Thanks to Michael Sevel for the pointer.)

Leon Wieseltier, pompous windbag...

...and serial sexual harasser.  "Very important hair," though, as Gore Vidal used to say.  We've had so much fun with him over the years that's I'm (only a bit) sad to know this will be the end of him.

On New York bluntness...

...and other serial offenders against WASP decorum, the latter itself an artifact of class hierarchy.  While suburban Republican women might have been put off by Trump's rude mouth (as the Clinton campaign hoped), it was a matter of indifference to many working-class voters, just as it was in New York with respect to Koch and Giuliani.  (Ironically, the role of "suburban Republican women" is played in academic philosophy by a group that has a different ideology, but shares the etiquette prejudices of its prissy class.)

ADDENDUM:  Also relevant.

A sensible commentary on the Hypatia/Tuvel affair in CHE

Here, from the editor of a well-known feminist journal Signs (apparently written before the statement by the Hypatia editor, Prof. Scholz).  The contrast with Haslanger's intervention is telling.

A facebook comment sums up perfectly what normal people in the philosophy profession are up against these days

This individual is responding to two of the "usual suspects" in these debates, but the individuals matter less than the type:

You people are living caricatures -- the puritan outrage, the over-the-top sanctimony, moralizing, and preaching, the hilariously rapid shift from feigned neutrality to meanness and aggression (didn't take long for that mask to come off) -- statements like "I have publicly made criticisms. Those criticisms are correct...seriously, piss off" -- It would all be rather comic if you weren't professional teachers, passing on this deranged attitude to impressionable people. But that's a tale as old as time, I guess.