Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Lawyer Wendy Kaminer on the unhinged responses to the Harper's letter about "cancel culture"

I was amazed to learn that the letter (referenced in passing earlier today) was actually controversial, albeit among the usual herd animals, who never met an independent thought they could abide.   The lawyer Wendy Kaminer, who signed the letter, has a suitably stinging rebuke:

‘I rest my case’, I’m tempted to say, reviewing the unhinged responses of cancel-culture fans intent on cancelling the judicious defence of free speech in our ‘Letter on Justice and Open Debate’, published by Harper’s this week. I signed emphatically, which makes me one of ‘the worst people in the world of public intellectualism’, according to In These Times. What’s so bad about defending ‘the free exchange of information and ideas’ and critiquing ‘intolerance for opposing views’ and ‘a vogue for public shaming and ostracism’? In doing so we were not really defending the right to debate and criticise, according to In These Times: we were trying to squelch debate and censor our own critics, exhibiting a ‘bizarre aversion to being argued against … [that] now borders on the pathological’.

This is what citizens of cancel culture have apparently learned from Donald Trump: confound your critics by accusing them of precisely the sins you’re busy committing. Social-justice warriors have long demanded protection from the ‘trauma’ of hearing speech they deem offensive, calling for suppression of the speech and shunning of the speaker. So, employing Trumpian tactics, they accuse free-speech advocates of the censoriousness and psychic fragility that’s the raison d’être of their movement.

"Anywhere out of this world," said Baudelaire.

And with that I'm going back on hiatus to work on the book on Marx, as well as the drearier tasks presented by post-mortem bureaucracy in the modern world.

There is no bottom to dumb, part 392: protesters in Madison tear down statue of an abolitionist

Yikes.

David Hume statue targetted by protestors in Edinburgh

Who knew there were so many Kantians in Edinburgh?  Joking aside, if holding the same view as your 18th-century contemporaries is grounds for being de-statued, not many will last.

(Thanks to Filippo Contessi for the pointer.)

Australian government decides to destroy humanities in higher ed

What a disaster.

UPDATE:  Philosopher Antony Eagle (Adelaide) has more details about this mischief, which has ramifictions beyond the humanities.

The self-destruction of the American press

Very amusing and mostly right too!

(Thanks to Mark Couch for the pointer).

Another one bites the dust at the NYT...

...James Bennet, the opinion page editor responsible for Senator Cotton's now notorious "bring in the troops" op-ed, but who should have been fired long ago for other crimes against intellectual decency and literary good taste.

Yet another charlatan in the Trump administration

But at least he thought pretending to have a PhD in philosophy was better than having a PhD in management!

(Thanks to John Casey for the pointer.)

Looks like Illinois will need to build a border wall with Wisconsin...

...given this bizarre decision.  Hopefully most people will continue to take precautions.

Federal government turned down offer from private company to produce millions of N95 masks

People really should hang for this.

Pulitzer Prize for "Commentary" has gone to...

...Bret Stephens, Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer and, this year, Nikole Hannah-Jones.   (The Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting have a better history, fortunately.)

New Infantilism at Oxford

This is more pathetic than alarming:

A motion which mandates the Oxford University Student Union (SU) to condemn the use of “hateful material” in mandatory teaching was passed in Student Council this Thursday....

Named the ‘Academic Hate Speech Motion’, the motion sets to establish a new policy on hate speech within the University to include ‘incitement of hatred on the grounds of gender identity, disability, and socio economic status, including to trans, non-binary, disabled, working-class, and women*’.

Current University policy on academic free speech protects most academic speech as long as it is within the law. The motion notes that hate speech which is ableist, misogynistic, classist or transphobic is not criminalised but believes that the University should amend the relevant policy to ‘ensure that trans and non-binary people, women, and disabled people receive equivalent protection from hateful speech within University contexts as groups which are protected by the criminal law’.

A committee member of the Student Union’s Disabilities Campaign, who seconded the motion, told The Oxford Student “....The University’s current policy towards such issues falls short of protecting many students who are particularly vulnerable to hate speech due to the shortfall in legal protection – the examples given in the motion are particularly concerning for student wellbeing...."

The motion also mandates the SU to lobby for trigger warnings on readings lists and for lectures, tutorials, and examinations with content deemed prejudicial against the aforementioned groups to be non-compulsory for students....

Under the new policy set by the motion, courses that contain ‘prejudicial content’, such as the FHS Medical Law and Ethics course- which was noted as the sole example in the motion- should revise their course content and reading lists. The motion states that articles on the Medical Law and Ethics reading list are ‘ableist content’. An article entitled “Why We Should Pick the Best Children” [by the philosopher Julian Savalescu] advocates for a moral duty not to have disabled children whilst another advocates for the ‘murder of disabled children after they have been born’, the motion noted.

This came to my attention on FB from a colleague at Oxford (not Professor Savalescu) who teaches in the "Medical Law and Ethics" course who was contemplating legal action given the defamation of the professional competence of the teachers of this course.  Perhaps a libel judgment would wake these New Infantilists up?

ADDENDUM:  Several readers point out that philosophy's leading champion of New Infantilism, Justin Weinberg, has a typically convoluted rationalization for this display (as usual, it's mostly unreadable, but for those with morbid curiosity, I include the link).  You would think a philosopher at a public university in a reactionary state would be motivated at least by prudence, if nothing else, in actually defending academic freedom for a change.

America is nuts, part 732: Michigan State Capitol edition

Is there any civilized nation on the planet that would permit heavily armed morons to parade about in a state government building like this (with the result, by the way, that state legislators are wearing bullett proof vests)?

A drink for our times

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

Who has been more incompetent in dealing with the coronavirus: Trump or Boris Johnson?

Johnson is giving the monster-child a run for the money!

Mentally ill raving reactionary happens to be right about coronavirus...

...and so is featured in the NYT, thus effectively legitimizing someone who belongs in a cell.

Fucking moron watch: Louisiana pastor to hold Easter services for 2,000...

...and he's even explicit about his "thinking":

“Satan and a virus will not stop us,” Rev. Tony Spell told Reuters. “God will shield us from all harm and sickness. We are not afraid. We are called by God to stand against the Antichrist creeping into America’s borders. We will spread the Gospel"....

“Like any zealot or like any pure religious person, death looks to them like a welcome friend. True Christians do not mind dying. They fear living in fear,” Spell told TMZ in an interview this week.

In one California county, 30% of COVID-19 cases are traceable to church gatherings...

...and yet one religious crazy is ready to fight for the right to sicken his parishioners!

(Thanks to Jill Landowski for the pointer.)

The morbid reactionary fantasies of Adrian Vermeule

The latest.  Do note that Professor Vermeule is a "moral realist"!

As usual, religious zealots are a threat to human well-being

Unbelievable.  And some of these morons think that the First Amendment protects their right to endanger public health:   it doesn't.

UPDATE:  Good news, one of the pastors breaking the law has been arrested.  A few civil suits down the line for reckless indifference to human life would be appropriate too!

Even in the midst of a pandemic...

...Chris Bertram (Bristol) still can't stop his petty sniping. Amazing!  (More on Bertram for the uninitiated; new readers can safely ignore:  academic philosophy has a lot of resentful pests on its margins.)   Meanwhile, in the real world, here's a representative nice message I got from a non-philosopher:

I discovered your blog just about a week ago. In my search for people who were asking big questions about the virus and humanity, I googled "philosophers" and "corona virus."  And there you were!  Your blog is that welcome breath of sanity in a cluttered universe of internet claptrap. I have a round of sites I visit when I'm feeling especially powerless about our lives, and I've moved you right up to the top tier (between the Guardian and the Boston Globe). Bravo!

Fox, the fascist propaganda network, is now an official threat to public health

 

This ad makes clear why Trump is a threat to public health

 

Why having an incompetent President is a problem during a national emergency

Yesterday I noted that Governors, not the President, have authority to take public health measures like shutting down businesses and requiring individuals to stay home, but this interview makes very clear why having an imbecile as President is a real problem; an excerpt:

What is supposed to happen is the federal government has to activate the Defense Production Act immediately. Now, what Defense Production Act does is it allows the federal government to step in and aggressively force the private sector to produce what we need. And what is so critical in this is timing. Because you can't simply build factories from scratch; what you can do is identify a supply chain in order to make it work.

For example, if New York needs rubber gloves, New York cannot simply build rubber glove factories overnight. However, there might be a rubber glove factory in Ohio that could produce it, but they might not have the latex. So therefore, the Defense Production Act allows the federal government to go to the condom factory in Missouri and say, "Listen, you have barrels of latex we need. We are requisitioning those. We are giving them to the rubber glove factory in Ohio. And then we are transporting the finished rubber gloves to New York." That's how it is supposed to work.

The authority to lockdown business and quarantine people rests with the states, not the federal government...

...so the decision-maker who matters in the U.S. is your Governor not the monster-child.   See the comments on Twitter from law professor Bobby Chesney (Texas).

Leiter v. Trump

A funny message, from longtime reader Larry Franz:

Thank you for your COVID-19 posts. The public needs reliable information like you've been providing. We also need TV networks to stop giving the president free access to misinform the public. He's a risk to public health.

Alas, I can only address one of these issues!

Trump's and the right-wing media's disinformation campaign on coronavirus

A philosopher elsewhere kindly invited me to share the following:

I think we're seeing that Trump's initial misinformation about the risk posed by the coronavirus is causing fewer Americans to socially distance than otherwise would. Willingness to socially isolate tracks party affiliation, with way fewer Republicans than Democrats saying they're willing to do so: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/republicans-are-far-more-likely-than-democrats-to-think-the-coronavirus-threat-is-exaggerated-new-survey-finds-2020-03-10 . It's not hard to find people not just defying recommendations to socially isolate, but doing so proudly.

Right-wing media is almost certainly responsible for this.

Until sometime in March, Trump's downplaying of the pandemic was part of Fox News' editorial stance. They would often slip this in as they criticize Democrats for trying to use the crisis to their own advantage.

Fucking Moron Watch: David A. Clarke, Jr. edition

JFC!

Matt and Noah Colvin should be arrested for endangering public health

They're apparently too stupid to realize that being featured in the NYT is going to bring the wrath of people and law enforcement down on them.

Trump and Kudlow should both be moved into the Kirkland, Washington Life Care Center...

...for the duration of this fiasco they helped create.

Bristol newspaper names and shames adult men threatening Greta Thunberg on social media

What a collection of winners!

In case anyone forgot that Rush Limbaugh is the scum of the earth (with apologies to scum)...

...a small sampling, but one that does no justice to the extent to which he has damaged the polity and the democracy over the last thirty years.

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.

Everything is bigger in Texas...

...including the morons.

Not even Karl Kraus could have imagined James Bennet, the NYT editorial page editor

This account is horrifying.  If the quotes are accurate, the man is both illiterate and an imbecile.  Here he is commenting on Brett Stephens, the worst NYT op-ed writer since Abe "I'm writing as bad as I can" Rosenthal:   "I just think he’s an exceptional writer and thinker.”   Only someone not familiar with writing or thinking could say this.

Vigilante justice comes to NYU...

...as a reader points out to me.  Professor Ronell was at least found to have violated sexual harassment rules on her campus, unlike Professor Hubbard, but her case was adjudicated and she was sanctioned.  Unless universities respond quickly and harshly to these student mobs (in this case, a small one), this is going to spread and eventually lead to violence and criminal misconduct.

Biologist Jerry Coyne on Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's paper on "white empiricism"

Professor Coyne is very patient in going through this stuff.  (We encountered Professor Prescod-Weinstein once before.  You can read her demand for honoraria here.)  An excerpt from near the end of Coyne's piece:

I am growing weary, for I have dissected papers like this before—papers on white glaciology, the racism of Pilates, lattes, and pumpkins, and so on. The difference here is that Prescod-Weinstein is a working physicist with respectable accomplishments in the field. It is a sad testimony to the power of ideology, though, that her interpretation of what science is has been so severely distorted by her anti-white feminism.  Instead of arguing, as I’ve said, on moral grounds, she argues that the objectivity of science itself is in conflict with the supposed dismissal of black women’s experiences of racism, and that such an attitude is not just racist but anti-science.

In view of the paucity of black women physicists with a Ph.D. (there have been only a few dozen in history), what should we do? I agree that there may be a problem here, and my solution is, as always, twofold. First, rectify any inequality of opportunity starting at the ground—the limited opportunities afforded to minorities by living conditions and poor schooling, themselves byproducts of racism. Second, for the time being practice a form of affirmative action, realizing that diversity in the physics community is an inherent good for several reasons (providing role models to eliminate roadblocks to opportunity, for one).

Deranged UT Austin students now harassing classics professor at his home

They're proud of it!   This faculty member's "crime" is his scholarship.  The students should be prosecuted under any applicable criminal statutes, and Professor Hubbard, the victim of this abuse, should bring a civil action against the students (including for defamation:  calling someone a "pedophile" when they are not is per se defamatory, meaning he won't even need to prove damages).   I will be glad to raise money for his legal action if there is one.

(Thanks to Joel Pust for the pointer.)

The author of the "1619 Project," Nikole Hannah-Jones...

...is a journalist (Karl Kraus, where are you?), not even an historian, and she puts on quite a display on Twitter (e.g., announcing that as a Black person in America she doesn't have to consider historians like James McPherson "preeminent").  Most striking is her main line of defense against the criticisms we've noted the last few days:  "there is no such thing as objective history so complaints that the 1619 is an illegitimate reframing of history deny that all history is framed."   There may be no uniquely correct account of historical events, but there are certainly better and worse ones, correct and incorrect ones, and the objections are that the 1619 Project makes a number of contentious, and indeed false, claims about the history.   It's hard to believe an imbecile like this is writing for the NYT.

(Thanks to a young philosopher on the job market for calling this to my attention.  Because of the culture of open debate and tolerance for competing views in academic philosophy, this student did not want to be named.)

Scholarship by classics professor with "incorrect" views is now as bad as sexual harassment according to students at UT Austin

I'm glad the university has rebuffed these benighted students, but it's no doubt a symptom of what's to come as the campaign against actual sexual harassment gets mixed up with the general New Infantilist hysteria about "harmful" ideas:

A group of students at the University of Texas are calling for the firing of a classics professor who has written extensively on “pederasty”—socially acknowledged romantic relationships between adult men and teen boys—in ancient Greece....

“Contemporary American legislation premised on children’s incapacity to ‘consent’ to sexual relations stems from outmoded gender constructions and ideological preoccupations of the late Victorian and Progressive Era,” Hubbard reportedly wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Thymos: Boyhood Studies. “We should consider a different ‘age of consent’ for boys and girls"....

A group called Students for Safety issued a press release last month which claimed that Hubbard “has used his position to further a community of individuals hoping to prey on underage boys” and that his writings “encourage these illicit acts.”

Siena philosophy professor Emanuele Castrucci is a Nazi sympathizer

What an embarrassment.  I am unsure of the legal status of pro-Nazi speech in Italy, although I would not be surprised if, as in many European countries, it is illegal.  In any case, it appears that academic freedom in Italy does not protect extra-mural speech.  There's more here (in Italian).

UPDATE:  Some of this maniac's creepy musings and comments are translated here.   And more news coverage (in English).

The Internet, defined

"Costless, rapid communication of lazy, angry thoughts," from philosopher Christopher Morris (Maryland).  It could hardly be more apt!

Ibram Kendi, totalitarian

Amazing:

He wants unelected “formally trained experts on racism” (presumably all from critical race-theory departments) to have unaccountable control over every policy that won’t yield racial equality in every field of life, public or private. They are tasked with investigating “private racist policies.” Any policy change anywhere in the U.S. would have to be precleared by these “experts” who could use “disciplinary tools” if policymakers do not cave to their demands. They would monitor and control public and private speech. What Kendi wants is power to coerce others to accept his worldview and to implement his preferred policies, over and above democratic accountability or political opposition. Among those policies would be those explicitly favoring nonwhites over whites because “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Philosophy graduate student at Berkeley gratuitously (and rather stupidly) insults rural Americans...

...and faces a predictable right-wing lapidation.  Having occasionally come across Mr. Kernion on social media, where he  seems a sanctimonious scold, I'm not wholly surprised by his outburst, which says more about his class position than about residents of rural America.  But I'm even less surprised that the usual suspects have pounced on this; I hope and expect Berkeley will do the right thing, and continue to make "no comment."  Mr. Kernion's speech is lawful, however foolish, and it is none of the university's business.

I'll give the final word to a correspondent from the UK who flagged this episode for me yesterday:  "Yet another junior scholar bringing shame to the profession on social media, but this one stands out for his utter ignorance of how countries and economies work. Conservatives are pointing to him as just another philosopher who is clueless about the 'real world.' And in this case they are correct!"  But let's remember that Mr. Kernion, like anybody, is a lot more than some unfortunate and ill-considered tweets.

Regarding the monster-child...

...this is perceptive.

The very sick and stupid person described in this news article...

...could kill us all in the next half-hour.  Everyone should be following George Conway who is documenting this horror show.   We have only two hopes:  (1)  General Mattis told the narcissistic idiot that Manhattan would be leveled first if he goes nuclear; and (2) the military professionals will, in fact, disregard him.

UPDATE:  A predictable response from the Turkish strongman to the fool's bluster.  But once the monster-child hears about this, I expect he'll reverse course on Syria nad Turkey.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Dr. Johnson noted...

...but religion is surely in the top three, as this noxious blather by the disgraced Attorney General William Barr nicely illustrates:   a mix of historical falsehoods, confusions about cause and effect, and right-wing talking points.

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

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.

The moral bankruptcy of techno-elites

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

America is crazy, Florida edition

Jesus Fucking Christ.  Next up:  arm the children.  

The President of the United States is an imbecile, an ongoing saga

Why didn't General Mattis save us from this imbecile?