March 2006
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Friday Poem: “I Must Learn”
I Must Learn I must learn new wordsAnd new ways to say themRaise myself above myselfTo gaze down sagely I must be done with dignityI must be wrong at lastI must give quarterAnd let the past pass I must educate myselfTo love the hypocritesI must when wrestling angelsLet them pin me flat I must concede…
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Philosopher of Mind Noordhof from Nottingham to York
Paul Noordhof, currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, has accepted appointment as Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, a post awarded in a university-wide competition. (Noordhof, who is also Book Review Editor of Mind, will join Mind‘s new editor, Tom Baldwin, at York, among many other philosophers.) For his…
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Congratulations to Neil Sinhababu…
…a PhD student here at UT Austin who has just won a prestigious Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship to support finishing his doctoral dissertation on "A Treatise of Humean Nature" (which David Sosa and I are supervising). Neil will be known to denizens of the blogosphere for his "Ethical Werewolf" blog and to those who…
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Legal Historian Mann from Penn to Harvard
Bruce Mann (legal history) at the University of Pennsylvania Law School has accepted a senior offer from Harvard Law School. HLS has made a strong push in legal history in recent years; recent and prospective visitors in that field include John Witt (Columbia), Michael Klarman (UVA), Mary Dudziak (USC), and William Forbath (Texas).
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Lehrer to be Half-Time at Miami
Keith Lehrer, Regents’ Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and well-known contributor to epistemology, philosophy of action, and other areas, has accepted appointment as Research Professor at the University of Miami, where he has visited in recent years and been involved in supervision of PhD students. As a Research Professor, he will be…
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Honest Talk by Retired Delta Force Sergeant Major (Leiter)
Here; an excerpt: Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military’s elite covert counter-terrorist unit. He culled his experiences for "Inside Delta Force" (Delta; $14), a memoir rich with harrowing stories, though in an interview, Haney declines with a shrug to estimate the…
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Some good news for a change (Wilson)
Not in the U.S., of course. But a recent Lancet study shows that HIV infections in south India are down by 1/3, thanks to condom and education programs. From the study abstract: A reduction of more than a third in HIV-1 prevalence in 2000–04 in young women in south India seems realistic, and is not…
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O.B.E.? Want Canoodle. (Edmundson)
Surely to the chagrin of his soulmate in the White House, Tony Blair, of Downing Street memo fame, has gotten himself caught in a scandal that would make Jack Abramoff blush and "Duke" Cunningham envious. It seems that Blair, personally, has been running an off-books loans-for-peerages scheme out of Number 10, for years. Scotland Yard…
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Reputation Rank vs. Overall U.S. News Rank
How do the reputation scores, as determined by U.S. News surveys, compare to the overall rank assigned by U.S. News? There are some striking discrepancies. (An explanation of the baroque U.S. News formula for the overall rank is here.) Schools by Average Reputation Rank (Overall U.S. News Rank) 1. Yale University (1) 1.5. Harvard University…
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New U.S. News Rankings of Law Schools: Facts and Fictions
Dan Markel (Law, Florida State) has come up with a copy of the new U.S. News law school rankings. It’s old news, of course, that the ranking methodology is baroque and indefensible and prone to gaming, but let’s put that aside. Even if U.S. News rankings of law schools are, to put the matter gently,…
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How the U.S. News Undergrad Rankings Mislead Students (Leiter)
A note from a prospective PhD student in philosophy prompted thoughts on this topic, though since the issue more often affects prospective law students, the other Brian Leiter decided to write about it.
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How the US News Undergrad Rankings Mislead Students
An undergraduate philosophy major considering PhD programs in philosophy wrote to me wondering about the overall quality of the universities he was considering. He remarked: [A] cursory glance [at various sources] suggests that UCLA might be better than Notre Dame. I found this surprising since if you check the US News undergraduate/overall rankings, Notre Dame…
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Expressing Disapproval, Constitutionally (Edmundson)
In seclusion earlier this month, Pres. Bush executed yet another extralegal, unconstitutional "signing statement," immediately following his public, ceremonial, fake signing of Congress’s renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act. The statement disapproved the Act as Congress passed it, but the President did not return the legislation to Congress, as required by Article I of the…
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Message for Students Considering Admissions Offers Currently (Leiter)
There are a number of senior offers for which I have not received permission to publish the particulars, but they are offers students considering the affected programs should know about. Therefore, let me urge students considering any of the following programs to make inquiries with those departments. The following departments have senior offers outstanding to…
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Columbia Law School Faculty Hiring and Conservative “Conspiracy Theories”…
…are ably debunked here.
I don’t think it’s that the philosophical debates will become irrelevant in your example, so much that your example demonstrates…