August 2006
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Hiring Practices, Voting Rules, and Delegation of Authority at Law Schools
A law professor writes: I am the new chairman of my school’s hiring committee and would find benchmarking on several issues helpful. Here are my questions: 1. Is the selection ever delegated to a committee? If so, why?2. Which categories of faculty do not vote on hiring decisions? LR&W? Clinical?3. With…
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Academic Funding and Two Types of Error (Wolff)
Comments on my ‘How Many Universities?’ post included interesting reflection on how many people with PhDs should a subject like Philosophy produce. The discussion concentrated on whether there is, or ought to be, a prospect of gainful employment for everyone with a PhD, and if, not, whether it is irresponsible to encourage so many people…
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Mississippi Taliban (Leiter)
Little to add to the facts recorded here: Flip Benham was going to burn a Koran at Mississippi’s state Capitol on July 18 but he couldn’t get a fire permit. The blaze was to be the culmination of an antiabortion rally that Benham, director of Operation Save America, billed as an "ecclesiastical court." His attack…
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Lempert on “Empirical Legal Studies”
Richard Lempert (Michigan) has apt comments here; an excerpt: I have concerns about the quality of some of the empirical work being done and how empirical work, even good scholarship, is used. To put it bluntly too much empirical scholarship is being deployed normatively, downplaying caveats that should be attached to findings, and some research,…
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Why I Can’t Solve The Problems in the Middle East (Wolff)
I know that any blogger worth their day in the sun should be expressing a view about the Israel/Lebanon conflict, and/or Iraq and/or Iran, and I have tremendous admiration for my co-bloggers in their attempts to understand and come to terms with the complexities of these situations. But I am an amateur: the motivations of…
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Taking Diplomacy Seriously (Edmundson)
Since I credit diplomacy more than prophecy, I am astonished and dismayed by the continuing bloodshed in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza. In June I told an Israeli-born friend, in London, of a report in the Guardian (June 28) that Hamas was ready to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Wasn’t that a hopeful sign? She replied…
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The “Socratic Method”: The Scandal of American Legal Education
With a new school year soon upon us, it might be timely to revisit this topic.
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How Many Universities Does A Country Need? (Wolff)
This question is prompted by visits to a number of smaller (in terms of population) countries in the past year or two: what counts as a saturation point for a country in terms of having enough universities? To focus the question, consider only those universities – call them research universities – which can award PhDs,…
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Blame It On The…Weather? (Nadelhoffer)
As if denying the U.S. ever had a civil war was not enough to establish how stark raving mad Rumsfeld has become (see here), he has recently blamed the problems in Iraq on…the weather (see here). I have already suggested that once Rummy finally gets his well-deserved pink slip from the Pentagon he should consider…
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Helping Prophecy Along (Edmundson)
As the rest of the world anguishes, certain highly placed figures in the Bush regime exult in the miseries in the Middle East, as Dan Froomkin reports in the "What’s the Motivation?" (Washington Post, Aug. 4). Essential reading but not for the faint of heart. Perhaps most chilling is this, from Imad Moustapha, the Syrian…
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Academic Freedom in the UK (Wolff)
The Times Higher Education Supplement today leads with the story that in a survey “some 38 per cent of professors, 45 per cent of senior lecturers and 36 per cent of lecturers said that their academic freedom was under attack.” I wonder whether this is like one of those “80% of 12 year olds smoke,…
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Barrett Speaks Out (Nadelhoffer)
In the past few weeks, I have posted a few things (see here and here) about the unfolding battle in Wisconsin over academic freedom that was sparked by Kevin Barrett’s suggestion on a radio talk show that 9/11 was an inside job (Barrett is an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). On Tuesday The…
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Rumsfeld Declares U.S. Never Had A Civil War (Nadelhoffer)
OK. OK. That’s not quite what Rummy said. Rather he used the following argument to support his otherwise fantastical view that what’s going on in Iraq is not a civil war (see here): So there’s a number of good things happening. There are four provinces in the country where almost all the violence is occurring,…
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Hiett Prize in the Humanities (Leiter)
This lucrative award is open to junior philosophers throughout the United States, though it is administered by the Dallas Institute of Humanities & Culture. I usually don’t advertise awards like this, but this one, I think, has not been sufficiently noticed by the philosophical community, and a member of the Dallas Institute board encouraged me…
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In Memoriam: Iris Marion Young (1949-2006)
MOVING TO FRONT: See Update Larry Solum (Law, Illinois) has what details are presently available. UPDATE: The Chicago memorial notice is here.
I am a freelance editor that works entirely for major university presses. I’ve even been brought in when outsourced book…