Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

What happened to the Twitter maniacs from a couple of years ago?

The good news is that many of them have left academia (e.g., this one, this one, and this one), some self-destructing in a way consistent with their online antics, others just failing to find academic positions.   Alas, some of the juvenile jackasses remain in the academy, at least for now.  Let me add that the only ones who ought to have their online stupidity held against them are those who are openly hostile to academic freedom.  There are enough threats to the latter without multiplying them from within the academy.

MARCH 18 UPDATE:  A reader just flagged for me that the aforementioned juvenile jackass, Dallas Jokic, offered this response (on Twitter of course) to the original post:   "It is very strange indeed that a prominent philosopher is gloating about his graduate student critics having left academia following his bullying of them. Stranger still that he seems to view this as a victory for 'academic freedom.'" There really is no bottom to dumb with these pathetic people: none of the three who have left academia were critics of me, let alone "bullied" by me or anyone else, and all three made clear their hostility towards core academic freedom values, which is why their departure is good news for the academy.

Professor Hay is apparently unrepentant for her misconduct

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 14, 2022--IT'S NOW BEEN MORE THAN A MONTH, AND THE FALSE TWEET IS STILL THERE, AND NO APOLOGY HAS BEEN ISSUED

So ten days have passed since philosopher Carol Hay decided to humiliate Professor Byrne on Twitter based on a misrepresentation, and although she has resumed tweeting, the original tweet remains, without any acknowledgment that it is false and without any apology, which is all the more remarkable given that she learned of her misinterpretation at the Q&A on November 4.   The only conclusion I can draw is that Professor Hay views her behavior as professionally appropriate.  Conference organizers take note.   

Meanwhile, other dishonest philosophers have also been coming to her defense on Twitter, despite first-hand reports from people who were actually at the talk confirming what we all now know about its actual content.

More on Professor Hay's Twitter misrepresentation of Professor Byrne at the PPE conference in New Orleans

A propos this, philosopher Chris Surprenant (who was also at the session) makes the following interesting point on Twitter:

What should be getting the most attention -- and it's not -- is that the content of her tweet was addressed in the q&a and Hay acknowledged that she was mistaken. But then she left the Tweet up anyway and didn't say anything to correct what she had written.

I think it's fair to say that Professor Hay has behaved rather badly and ought, as others have remarked on social media, apologize to Professor Byrne.

Conference organizers may want to think twice before inviting Professor Carol Hay (U Mass/Lowell) to their event

This bizarre case of unprofessional behavior occurred while I was in Rome, and so I only just caught up on this nonsense in the last day.

On November 4, philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT) presented a paper at the PPE conference in New Orleans; here is the abstract:

Patriarchy and the Original Position
If politics is the art of the possible, political philosophy is the science of the possible. What kinds
of societies could there be, not just for Homo economicus, but for Homo sapiens, a recent product of
a long lineage of primate ancestors? One obvious—in political philosophy, often ignored—
feature of sapiens is sex. Unlike economicus, humans come in two distinct sexed forms, female and
male. And one striking apparently universal feature of past human societies (including at least
many contemporary societies), is patriarchy: the dominance of males in political and social
decision-making. As the historian Yuval Noah Harari says, it is plausible that some ‘universal
biological reason’ accounts for patriarchy. If that is right, then patriarchy may seem inevitable,
or at least hard to avoid. The first part of the paper outlines some evidence for Harari’s
‘universal biological reason’. The second part brings the first part to bear on Rawls’s use of the
original position, and the subsequent feminist adoption of it by Susan Okin. I will argue that
ignorance of one’s sex in the original position fails to deal with the problem of patriarchy, and
that the Rawlsian approach should be abandoned.

During Professor Byrne's talk, philosopher Carol Hay tweeted out the following:

Even if that were what Professor Byrne had argued--it was not, as Professor Hay has known for several days now without removing or qualifying her tweet--it is not appropriate to take to social media to humiliate a speaker behind his back during an academic conference.  But this is made worse by the fact that Professor Hay completely misrepresented Byrne's argument, as several pointed out on Twitter and as I've now had confirmed by various attendees at the session who heard the entire paper.   To do a Twitter "gotcha" at a conference is childish and stupid enough, but to do it and be wrong is beyond belief.

Kathleen Stock reflects on last year's events

Interesting essay.  This was especially striking:

I still face the challenge of dealing with the fact that sections of my former profession and the press have a vested interest in winning the disinformation war about what a heinous villain I must be. Though I tend to insulate myself well from idiots, in occasional moments of weakness I take a look within the Twitter bubbles of others and immediately wish I hadn’t. Reading Academic Twitter can be like encountering your most critical inner voices spread out on the screen for everyone else to read too — except that for some reason, my inner voices now speak in fake American accents. They say “y’all”, and talk about “trans folks”, and call me a “grifter” for continuing to make my way in the world without collapsing into ignominy. I close the laptop and remind myself that there are various ways to be in a mental prison.

We noted one such disgraceful incident involving philosopher Bryan van Norden, for which he has not, at least as far I'm aware, apologized.

President of American Historical Association criticizes "presentism" in history scholarship and its usurpation by politics...

...singling out, inter alia, the 1619 Project, the misuse of history by conservative Supreme Court justices, ignoring the role of Africans in the slave trade, and a few other items.  He has now issued an absurd and abject apology:

My...Perspectives on History column has generated anger and dismay among many of our colleagues and members. I take full responsibility that it did not convey what I intended and for the harm that it has caused. I had hoped to open a conversation on how we “do” history in our current politically charged environment. Instead, I foreclosed this conversation for many members, causing harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association.

"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:

A pernicious form of "cancel culture" exists...

...and thankfully the longtime feminist critic at The Nation has taken the trouble to document it, given the ostriches on the putative left who pretend it doesn't:

Gillian Philip, one of a group of writers producing popular children’s books under the pseudonym Erin Hunter, put #Istandwithjkrowling in her Twitter bio, for which she was subjected to a storm of online abuse and fired by her publisher. Whatever you may think of Rowling, Philip isn’t her. Without the security that comes with unparalleled wealth and celebrity, she’s just a person with an opinion—right or wrong, that’s what cost her her job. She now works as a truck driver.

"Mob review" rather than "peer review"?

Last week the Twitter mob panned a book they hadn't read, and now we have this:

The blurb for the book “Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology” says that it “engages with the overlap of Black experience, hip-hop music, ethics and feminism to focus on a subsection known as ‘trap feminism.’”

But the book, written by Jennifer M. Buck, a white academic at a Christian university, was criticized by some authors and theologians as academically flawed, with deeply problematic passages, including repeated references to the ghetto. The project was also widely condemned on social media as poorly executed and as an example of cultural appropriation.

In response to the criticism, the book’s publisher, Wipf and Stock Publishers, decided on Wednesday that it would pull the title from circulation.

The incident touched on a larger debate in the world of publishing over when, how, and even whether, it is appropriate for authors to write about subjects outside their own culture....

There is actually a whole academic discipline in which authors write "about subjects outside their own culture":  it's called anthropology.

(Thanks to John Doris for the pointer.)

OUP publishing a book="organized violence"

Thus spake this English professor in Canada, who apparently doesn't know what words mean:

If only Hitler had realized that a book could constitute "organized violence," he could have just published his way to the Third Reich.   Naturally, the University of California professor who flagged this for me said,

I hate to have to add that, if you say anything about this on your blog, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention my name. My husband is still working at [our UC campus], which, as you know, is a hotbed of Diversity etc. I am looking forward to his retiring so I can speak my mind about the [insert expletives here] mess we’re in with regard to gender and biological sex.

The academy, or at least some campuses, are in a "mess" if faculty don't feel they can object in public to stark-raving idiocy like the tweet, above.

UPDATE:  An alert reader points out to me this extraordinary response on Twitter:

Philosophy thought police, redux

Philosopher Raja Halwani (School of the Art Institute, Chicago) discusses the reaction he got from some of the usual suspects (plus some new would-be censors, like Alex Bryant [British Columbia]) when he decided to include an essay by philosopher Kathleen Stock in his well-known Philosophy of Sex anthology.  Professor Halwani provides an admirably patient dissection of the objections.

More "Social Justice [sic]" kittens for 2021

Here.

(Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)

Cancel culture, redux

It's certainly pathetic when right-wingers only give attention to free expression issues when it's their ox being gored, but it's even more pathetic when those nominally on the left pretend that there aren't serious problems with free expression in the academy and the broader culture emerging from the neoliberal identity-politics movement.   This article is a good antidote to the latter group of dissemblers; an excerpt:

Critics of the idea of “cancel culture” have a point when they argue that pushback against speech and expression we find morally offensive is a vital part of free speech. While disinvitations should be avoided on principle, there is nothing wrong with forcefully arguing that a college campus should not extend a speaking invitation to a far-right hate peddler like Ann Coulter or a progressive [sic] white-guilt grifter like Robin DiAngelo. Likewise, while taking down published articles should be a no-no except in case of egregious factual errors, plagiarism, or other misconduct, it’s not illiberal to argue that respected media outlets should not platform certain odious views, whether they’re unabashedly racist anti-immigration tirades or arguments that sexual liberation should extend to pedophiles. But it also seems clear that in a liberal society, the range of truly “cancelable” viewpoints should remain as narrow as possible, and the lines should be very carefully drawn.

The "cloak and dagger" campaign against Professor Kathleen Stock

The Times of London reports; an excerpt:

Rio Jacques, 23, a second-year history student at the university...is the first activist from the campaign to speak openly, added: “It’s very much cloak and dagger, but that’s not the way we want it to be. The masks — it’s not meant to be threatening. It’s just for the protection of the people that want to be vocal.

“No one wants to lose their place at university, but at the same time we don’t want to sacrifice our right to defend ourselves with our words.”

Jacques, who is transgender, is one of the leaders of Reclaim Sussex and is involved with Anti Terf Sussex, the two most prominent groups spearheading the campaign....

The group’s suggested reading includes an essay by Christa Peterson, a PhD student at the University of Southern California. For the past two years years, Peterson has led a Twitter campaign against Stock, culminating in the essay published earlier this year.

On "cancel culture" and online mobs

A balanced assessment, related to a point we have made before:  the "sanctions" are often wildly disproportionate to the offenses.  An excerpt:

[T]he modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. Yet the values of that online sphere have come to dominate many American cultural institutions: universities, newspapers, foundations, museums. Heeding public demands for rapid retribution, they sometimes impose the equivalent of lifetime scarlet letters on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime....

The actual left in America has always supported robust civil liberties...

...unlike the New Infantilist left in the universities, on social media today, and even in some of the leftist media.  This piece is a useful reminder; an excerpt:

The founders of Dissent were fiercely anticommunist, yet you’ll find them repeatedly, heatedly, defending the free speech rights of Stalinists.

I’ll cite just one example. In an article about the state of liberalism in 1955, Irving Howe criticized Americans for Democratic Action for passing a resolution that supported “the right to advocate unpopular political proposals.” Why would Howe have objected to this? He objected because the ADA had changed the wording of a previous draft, which supported “the right to advocate unpopular political proposals, including communist ideas.” They’d taken out “including communist ideas.” In other words, he was attacking them for the failure to explicitly affirm the free speech rights of communists.

The early editors of Dissent, defending the free expression rights of a political group they loathed and feared, were in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg, who said, “Freedom is always and exclusively the freedom of the one who thinks differently . . . all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political life depends on it"....

Contemporary skepticism about the idea of free expression seems to rest on two pillars.

 

Philosophy as the "handmaiden of the human resources" department

Amusingly apt description of this, in an essay by philosopher Justin E.H. Smith (Paris 7) mostly concerned with literature.

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!

Dembroff v. Singer

The Twitter smear merchants have been working overtime since The New Yorker interview with Peter Singer, but this exchange is really something:

The anecdote sounds aprocryphal to me, inconsistent with everything I've heard about Peter Singer.  (This is a more likely explanation.)  I have no shortage of harsh criticisms of Peter Singer's work (for example), but what is wrong with people that they stoop to repeating alleged anecdotes to impugn his character?  (Even if it were true, what is the point of repeating it?)   It really is one of the sicker aspects of Twitter.

UPDATE:  A philosopher elsewhere writes:

The Dembroff story about Peter Singer strikes me as very likely to reflect a misinterpretation.  In my times visiting at Princeton, I've been in a lot of seminars with Peter, and I never saw him playing anything like the "I'm extremely famous" card. On the contrary, he was unfailingly self-effacing, wryly funny, constructive, and very good at philosophy; in short, a model citizen.  I'm sure lots of people who have been around the Values Center can confirm this. 

More signs of the times, this time from San Diego State University

Social media is driving this nonsense, and in two ways:  social media facilitates mobbing based on selective reporting; and social media shows others that by seeking out occasions for faux offense, they too can occupy the limelight, get administrators, more often than not, to capitulate, etc.

(Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)

The Twitter smear campaign against journalist Jesse Singal

Speaking of Twitter fabrications, this is a useful catalogue of Twitter lies about journalist Jesse Singal, who has had the audacity to write articles on verboten topics (like this). 

Some further thoughts on Twitter

The first round of observations was so popular (especially on Twitter!), I thought I'd add a few more based on things I've learned and observed the last couple of months.

1.  I came across this interesting chart via Justin Weinberg's blog, which shows that the vast majority of U.S. adults do not use Twitter at all (thank God!), and that usage varies, unsurprisingly, by generation.  38% of those 18-29 use Twitter (the highest percentage), while only 7% of those over 65 use it.  I'm in the distinct minority in my age range (only 17% of those 50-64 use it), and I mostly use it to provide links to the blog for the benefit the readers who now follow the blog by Twitter. 

2.  This data is consistent with an e-mail shared on Twitter awhile back by the journalist Jesse Singal: 

"[T]he vast majority of both psychologically healthy and accomplished philosophers stay off twitter like their life depends on it. The vast majority of people I know in academic philosophy either ignore, mock, or disdain philosophy twitter." - professional philosopher in email

Although many Twitterati reacted with rage and denial to Mr. Singal's tweet, the claim about "the vast majority" is consistent with the data about usage by age alone.  (Are the non-users psychologically healthier and more accomplished?  Probably, but the preceding data are neutral on that.)   I strongly suspect that relatively few non-Twitter users "mock or disdain philosophy twitter" (although that would be a warranted response were they to look), and that most simply ignore it. 

The cancel mob of 2014 and subsequent events (a comment on the serial dissembler Jonathan Ichikawa)

Last month, bizarrely, the Twitter Red Guard discovered the 2014 campaign to take down the PGR, thanks to typical dissembling by smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa.  Of course, Ichikawa lied about lots of it and misrepresented his own misconduct and that of his wife, Carrie Jenkins, including their role in inciting--based on falsehoods--a mob to bully me.  I've written about this in the past, for example, here and here, but I'll recap the basics here (see the prior links for details, evidence, further links).  Feel free to link this on Twitter if and when this nonsense starts up again.  Readers who wisely avoid Twitter and remember these events can skip this post.

How the Wokerati talk: a guide

This was a rare gem from one of the old metablogs; it's a shame the author can't be given credit for their guide to the special (mis)use of language by the "woke":

The vocab is hard to keep up with. Should we start a running glossary?

"Problematic": adj. (of arguments) false; (of pratices) must be banned; (of utterances) must be retracted and apologised for; (of tweets) must be deleted;

"Free speech": n. a problematic concept [see above]

"Censorship": n. the alleged suppression of problematic ideas, a largely mythical practice. [compare "silence"]

"Silence": v. (1) to ignore, not talk about. (2) to disagree with (3) to discuss a marginalized individual [see below] in terms they would prefer not to be discussed

"erase": v. synonym for silence

"identity": n. an (esp. marginalised) individual's conception of themself. NB all other definitions, such as those which have been explored by philosophers over the past two millennia, are problematic [see above]

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.

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:

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.

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!

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.

When all you have is a hammer...

...everything looks like a nail, redux.   A well-known philosopher in the UK, a more serious and alert Twitter user than me, shared the following regarding what he aptly called "Kate Manne's non-falsifiable thesis" (he asked not to be credited for his find!):

Re the limits of Kate Manne's one trick: "Without misogyny as a factor, I fully expect Tuesday to be a landslide for Biden."

...she has now contorted the pony 180 degrees: "We can never again underestimate the political appeal of toxic masculinity. It inspires loyalty like nothing else."

And see this response to a challenge: https://twitter.com/kate_manne/status/1324034496639979521

(Amusing interlude from November 1: "I don't think I'm often wrong tbh. (And it's hardly apocalyptic to predict a Biden win, as I did yesterday.) But I'm the first to admit it when I am.")

Marxists are sometimes chided for "class reductionism," but as reductionist explanations go, it seems a better bit of tunnel vision in the political realm than "gender reductionism."  Indeed, one might think class plays some role in explaining the fixation on the latter.

ADDENDUM:  Even the Twitter Red Guard is making fun of Manne's claim!

Classics professor at UT Austin defamed last December as a "pedophile" by deranged students...

...has now, thankfully, sued them (complaint here:   Download BLAKEMORECOMPLAINT(Final)).   (Earlier coverage (and also), and see also this for more details, including about material since deleted from the Twitter account of the deranged students.)  Professor Hubbard's lawyer issued this statement, which sums up what is documented in the various new sources and also reveals UT Austin's failure to act honorably in defense of academic freedom:

In December of 2019 Professor Hubbard’s home was violently attacked by a mob of masked University students.   They vandalized his home, distributed leaflets to neighbors falsely accusing him of pedophilia, and chanted threats of violence against him.  Dr. Hubbard does not have this sexual orientation, and has never been convicted or even accused of such conduct before now.  He was forced to flee his home under police protection and move out permanently.  Dr. Hubbard’s treatment is a matter of public record and known to UT.  Dr. Hubbard is unaware of any serious effort by the University to identify or sanction the students involved in the mob attack and vandalism on his house, or the blatant libel and slander he has suffered through a systematic and coordinated effort by UT students both on campus and off.   He reluctantly takes this step to defend himself because UT Austin leadership has not taken sufficient action. He will hold responsible anyone who alleges he has encouraged pedophilia, engaged in pedophilia, or has any interest in doing so.  Until these recent attacks on him he had worked for 33 years at UT without a single allegation of sexual impropriety.  The climate at UT Austin that allows students to freely lodge harmful, false allegations needs to stop and adult students must be held accountable for their actions. Dr. Hubbard has pledged that any award he wins will go directly to charities that work on behalf of gay, lesbian, and trans people, who have been tarred by false charges of pedophilia since the 'Save Our Children' crusade of Anita Bryant in the 1970s.

On "cancel culture" again, and a philosophy anecdote

Linguist John McWhorter (Columbia) takes another stab at the topic (earlier attempt here):

Our national reckoning on race has brought to the fore a loose but committed assemblage of people given to the idea that social justice must be pursued via attempts to banish from the public sphere, as much as possible, all opinions that they interpret as insufficiently opposed to power differentials. Valid intellectual and artistic endeavor must hold the battle against white supremacy front and center, white people are to identify and expunge their complicity in this white supremacy with the assumption that this task can never be completed, and statements questioning this program constitute a form of “violence” that merits shaming and expulsion.

Skeptics have labeled this undertaking “cancel culture,” which of late has occasioned a pushback from its representatives. The goal, they suggest, is less to eliminate all signs of a person’s existence—which tends to be impractical anyway— than to supplement critique with punishment of some kind....An indication of how deeply this frame of mind has penetrated many of our movers and shakers is that they tend to see this punishment clause as self-evidently just, as opposed to the novel, censorious addendum that it is.

Professor McWhorter goes on to review various examples of cancelings, successful and attempted.   One of his anecdotes concerns former philosophy PhD students:

I have heard from not one but two philosophy doctorates who left academia. One explained that he was driven out by the “accelerating creep of what felt to me a pretty stifling orthodoxy. The hiring market was dominated by a concern for diversity statements, the ability to teach fairly ideologically-slanted courses on philosophy and critical race theory or philosophy and gender, etc.; and more generally it felt progressively less like a profession where I could opt out of those trends while still being a competitive job applicant.”

There has certainly been a striking increase in job ads for philosophy of race and gender, but otherwise this may be a slight exaggeration about the state of the profession.  (After all, despite my "unwoke" condition, this is still the most heavily trafficked philosophy blog in the world--admittedly, a minority of the benighted "woke" read to get aggravated!). 

Chomsky on the Harper's letter about free speech and "cancel culture"...

...which he of course signed, but which has been controversial with the wokerati.  From the interview:

The letter is anodyne. It's a simple statement that it's worth being careful to preserve freedom of speech. The main attack on freedom of speech was not discussed there. It's the mainstream establishment, which for years has been engaged in massive cancel culture.

But now segments of the left are picking up part of the same pathology. It's harmful; they shouldn't be doing it; it's wrong in principle. It's suicidal. It's a gift to the far right. So here's a quiet statement saying, "Look, we should be careful about these things and not undertake this." Should've been the end. Then comes the reaction, which is extremely interesting. It proves that the problem was much deeper than was assumed. The reaction is pretty hysterical, mostly totally irrational. Sensible people, personal friends of mine, are writing articles attacking the statement because of the people who signed it. Just think what that means for a second. I'm sure you, like any other person who's well-known, are deluged with requests to sign statements on human rights issues, civil liberties issues, and so on.

Do you take account of who the signers are going to be? You can't. You can't know who the signers are going to be. If this position of the critics were adopted, there would never be a statement. Nobody in his right mind would sign a statement if the content of the statement is going to be judged by who might sign it tomorrow.

This criticism is much to the pleasure of the right wing, which hates these statements. So it's another massive service to the right wing. Just as breaking up a meeting of somebody you don't like is a service to the right wing. You want to play their game? Do it straight. Don't pretend you're on the left.

The interview covers other topics, and is mixed.  He's right that activists, and Sanders in particular, pushed Biden to the left.   It's silly, though, to compare the supposed popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement with that of Martin Luther King, since the former stands for almost nothing (and nothing threatening to anyone except maybe some police and all actual racists), while the latter stood for a substantive program of social, legal and economic reform that was a threat to the status quo, and not just in the apartheid South.

Nematodes are no joking matter!

This story is bizarre, even by the standards of the Twitter Red Guard!

(Thanks to David Velleman for the pointer.)

When a bidding war for moral purity turns into a proxy war for power

"The Purity Spiral," which we've seen plenty of in philosophy cyberspace, with an occasional intrusion into the real world; an excerpt:

A purity spiral occurs when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation. The result is a moral feeding frenzy.

But while a purity spiral often concerns morality, it is not about morality. It’s about purity — a very different concept. Morality doesn’t need to exist with reference to anything other than itself. Purity, on the other hand, is an inherently relative value — the game is always one of purer-than-thou.

It’s not just another word for ‘woke culture’, or even ‘cancel culture’, or ‘virtue signalling’. Even though intersectional social justice is a pretty great breeding ground for purity spirals, it is one among many. Nor is it confined to the Left: neo-Nazi groups offer some of the clearest examples of purity spirals: the ongoing parsing of ethnic purity into ever-more Aryan sub-groups. Perhaps the most classic one of all hails from Salem, Massachusetts.

It is a social dynamic that plays out across that community — a process of moral outbidding, unchecked, which corrodes the group from within, rewarding those who put themselves at the extremes, and punishing nuance and divergence relentlessly.

A purity spiral propagates itself through the tipping points of preference falsification: through self-censorship, and through loyalty tests that weed out its detractors long before they can band together. In that sense, once one takes hold, its momentum can be very difficult to halt.

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.

APA Blog gets a "new look" and a change in staff

Kudos to Skye Cleary (the EIC of the APA Blog) on the new look!  And further congratulations for the apparent shake-up in the staffing for the APA Blog, most strikingly the disappearance of Nathan Oseroff, whose repeated abuse of his position at the APA Blog we noted previously.

I was particularly struck by the new statement of expectations for behavior of APA Blog staff:

Nathan Oseroff and Christa Peterson are not victims, they are wrongdoers

Kate Manne (yes that Kate Manne) is now on Twitter misrepresenting (or just lying about?) their abusive treatment of gay and feminist philosophers like Kathleen Stock, Holly Lawford-Smith, Leslie Green and others:  for details, see here and here (the update).  (Oseroff apologized for his misconduct, because that's what it was, but he's been dissembling about it ever since.) 

UPDATE:  A  reader points out that Prof. Manne is also feeling bad for this maniac.  Apparently calling a philosophy professor a "vile fucking human" is OK with Kate Manne (indeed she "admires greatly" all these abusive adults).  Good to know!

FUNNY:  The Twitter Red Guard is responding to the evidence of what those mentioned above said and did (follow the links, it's all public evidence) by declaring it to be "lies" and "smears" (at least they didn’t call the actual news “fake news”).  (Addendum:  A reader sent a link in which one of the Twitter Red Guard zealots compared Stock, Lawford-Smith et al. to Milo Yannopoulos!)

Statement in defense of the academic freedom of philosophers to discuss sex and gender

Kudos to philosophers Ned Hall (Harvard) and John Schwenkler (Florida State) for drafting the initial statement, and to those philosophers who have joined them: Jose Bermudez (Texas A&M0, Clare Chambers (Cambridge), Cordelia Fine (Melbourne), Benj Hellie (Toronto), Thomas Kelly (Princeton), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Francesca Minerva (Ghent), Peter Singer (Princeton & Melbourne), Nicole Vincent (Technology Sydney), and Jessica Wilson (Toronto).   From the statement:

• We affirm the right of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals to live free of harassment and abuse, and we welcome them enthusiastically as fellow participants in the profession of philosophy.
• We reject calls for censuring or deplatforming any of our colleagues on the basis of their philosophical arguments about sex and gender identity, or their social and political advocacy for sex-based rights.
• We condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at these philosophers in response to their arguments and advocacy.
• We urge that the philosophical discussion of sex, gender and related social and political issues be carried out in a collegial and mutually respectful manner, reflecting the full range of interests at stake and presuming the good faith of all parties.

I strongly agree with this statement, and I am hopeful the majority of philosophers also agree.  (Professors Hall and Schwenkler shared an early draft with me, but we agreed that since I have been out front longer and louder than anyone else defending gender critical feminist philosophers from harassment and vilification I should not add my name.)

UPDATE:  In keeping with the freak show that is Twitter, the overwhelming response from many of the culprits this statement is meant to target has been denial, ridicule, and disbelief.  (In the real world, everyone agrees, and is puzzled the statement was needed.)  Several readers, who have not been following the misconduct on social media, did ask whom the statement is referring to with this:  "We condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at these philosophers."  Among the philosophers, faculty and graduate students (the latter marked with an *), who have been guilty of such rhetoric, and sometimes worse, directed not only at gender critical feminists but anyone perceived as supporting them (or even just supporting their right to express their views) are B.R. George (Carnegie-Mellon), Jonathan Ichikawa (British Columbia), Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown), Eugene Marshall (Florida International), Rachel McKinney (Suffolk), Rachel McKinnon (Charleston), Garret Merriam (Cal State-Sacramento), *Nathan Oseroff (King's College, London), *Christa Peterson (Southern California), *Keyvan Shaifiei (Georgetown), *Joshua Stein (Calgary), and Matt Weiner (Vermont), and that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but these are the worst offenders (some are really sick puppies, like Shaifiei and Stein).   Professor Stock has documented many other instances of attacks on the academic freedom and free speech of gender critical feminists, mostly by non-philosophers.

Earlier this summer philosopher Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) called out the hypocritical nonsense of Christa "Fuck Brian Leiter" Peterson, one of the worst offenders for "cruel and abusive rhetoric":

Ms. Peterson has been leading the Twitter charge against Gender Critical feminist philosophers for the last year, dishing out insults, mockery, lies, half-truths, and more, and then playing the victim when anyone calls her on it.  (Her capacity to misread and thus misrepresent what she cites is also breathtaking; I suppose she counts on most of her Twitter followers not bothering to actually check.)  We first encountered Ms. Peterson more than a year ago denouncing an essay by radical activist and feminist Robert Jensen (UT Austin) as "dumb as shit."  She also denounces as "shit" this post by feminist philosophers Sophie Allen, Holly Lawford-Smith and others, refers repeatedly to philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) as "a noted bigot" and mocks her continuously, calls the views of Leslie Green (the Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford University) "repulsive and deeply unserious," and on and on and on, to the order of hundreds if not thousands of tweets full of sneering mockery, misrepresentation, and abuse of philosophers.

Like another bad actor, Nathan Oseroff (who did finally apologize for his misconduct), Ms. Peterson is an adult in her late 20s.  She is free to be as rude and abusive as she wants, but she can't complain when others comment on it.  She can be held to account for what she says in public, just like anyone else.  As someone in Twitter-land once observed:

 

 

'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?) 

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: