August 2003
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How Students Use the PGR
The following letter from a student (who gave permission to post it) well expresses how students actually use the PGR in my experience and the experience of everyone I’ve talked to about this (except, of course, that “really strange” guy). Here is what the student wrote: “I am a reader of the Philosophical Gourmet Report…
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Vanderbilt Prof Says “No” to Northwestern
Vanderbilt University’s Nancy King, one of the leading criminal procedure scholars of her generation in the legal academy and co-author of the leading treatise in the field, has turned down an offer from Northwestern University School of Law. That’s a big coup for Vanderbilt, which in the past has tended to lose hiring battles with…
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New Development in the Texas Textbook Wars
I have just received, via e-mail attachment, a letter from Judith Fowler, the President and CEO of Holt, Rinehart, responding to the criticisms here.It is a long and detailed letter, which I won’t be able to digest right away because of other pressing duties (involving my *real* job). If I can secure her permission, I…
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Debating Intelligent Design
[Note: a first version of this posting disappeared from the site, for reasons I don’t understand…This is my attempt to recreate it.] Some readers have remarked on my recommendation of Michael Rea’s book World Without Design, a stimulating critique of philosophical naturalism that suggests, ultimately, that ours may be a “world with design.” At the…
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Christian Philosophers and Creationism
Keith DeRose—famed philosopher at Yale, valued member of the PGR Advisory Board, and creator of the Epistemology Page (highly recommended!)—writes with the following comments on one of my earlier posts about the attack on biology textbooks in Texas: ”Regarding your recent post on the treatment of evolution in textbooks by the ‘Texas Taliban’: Since you…
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Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them–Intelligent Design round 3
Francis Beckwith, Associate Professor of Church-State Studies at Baylor University, owner of a “.com” homepage (!), and a frequent poster boy for the Discovery [sic] Institute, is the “new face” of the Intelligent Design scam run by the Institute. Quite presentable, he almost sounds reasonable, though he turns out to be as big a liar…
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More PGR Feedback
In today’s in-box, a graduate student at a top 50 department writes: “I should also pass along my thanks to you for all your work on the Report. Naturally, as a student at [a program not ranked more highly], I’m somewhat disgruntled about the rankings. Nevertheless, I have found the Report extremely informative and helpful,…
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“Some Philosophers Are Really Strange”
Professor Brad DeLong, noting one of Professor Heck’s arguments, describes it, from the viewpoint of economics, as being “completely, ludicrously, laughably false.” From the viewpoint of philosophy, too, I assure you.
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Yet Another Student “Harmed” by the PGR
Now they’re really coming out of the woodworks–another “victim” of the PGR speaks out here.
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More Students “Harmed” by the PGR
Add Juan Comesana, a recent PhD graduate of Brown, and his wife Carolina Sartorio (PhD, MIT), to the purportedly long, but so far invisible, list of students “harmed” by the PGR. Comesana and Sartorio were two of the top candidates on the philosophy job market last year, and have now accepted tenure-track posts at the…
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Leo Strauss Redux and How Others See Philosophy
My introduction to the blogosphere came as a result of my May 5th posting to the Update Service, commenting on the tiresome fact that the media continue to portray Leo Strauss and his acolytes as though they’re serious thinkers, when, as philosophers know, they’re just the right-wing versions of Judith Butler: intellectual poseurs and frauds,…
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Pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute Caught Red-Handed
Here’s a nice example of the chronic and pathological dishonesty of the Intelligent Design proponents at the Orwellian “Discovery [sic] Institute.” John West from the Institute (“John West, Ph.D.”, as he’s always keen to list himself–by the way, I’m “Brian Leiter, Ph.D., J.D.”–don’t you feel more confident already in what I have to say?) had…
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Petition in support of sound science in biology textbooks
Many thanks to Jonathan Ichikawa, a recent graduate of Rice University, who has put together a petition aimed at Holt, Rinehart, the publisher of biology textbooks that appears to be caving to political pressure from anti-Darwinians, as I discussed here. The on-line petition is available here. I hope many readers will sign the petition, and…
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More on Citations to Philosophers
Brian Weatherson, a philosopher at Brown University, writes with the following additional data on cites to philosophers at the SEP cite: “If you do a search for David Lewis you get 80 mentions in 44 entries. It’s hard to know how to compare this to other rankings, but here’s some other searches for full names…
This doesn’t exactly guarantee meaningful work, let alone jobs, for most mathematicians…