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    Alan Musgrave: Life and Work We mourn the death of Emeritus Professor Alan Musgrave (1940-2026) who will be remembered as…

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    I should clarify that this was the conclusion of university counsel as a matter of policy as well. But of…

Now here’s a tough poll to answer!

I wouldn't know whom to vote for myself.  Think of this as asking:  which of these folks brings the most disrepute on to our discipline by being associated with it?

Which person do you most wish the media would stop referring to as a "philosopher"

View Results

Free poll from Free Website Polls

UPDATE:  Wow!  Philosophers really loathe Ayn Rand.  With over 300 votes cast, it's 71% for Rand, 24% for Derrida, and 4% for Strauss.

ANOTHER:  Tad Brennan (Cornell) writes:  "I think the disproportionate turnout for (against!) Rand is just a function of the recent week's news (with republican congressmen reading "Atlas Shrugged", utterly unproductive rich people "threatening" to remove their non-productive selves from the economy
by "going John Galt",  etc.).  If you had asked this question during the run-up to the Iraq War, when the neo-cons were basking in the Intellectual Seriositude of being the descendants of that brilliant philosopher, Leo Strauss, then the numbers would have tipped the other way.  It's just a reflection of what's in the press at the time."  Perhaps that's right.

A FINAL UPDATE (MARCH 14):   So, with some 1500 votes cast, it's Ayn Rand by a landslide (75% of the vote), following by Derrida (21%), and then Strauss (4%).  Of course, it would be nice if the media just stopped referring to any of them as philosophers.  For Rand:  "novelist" or perhaps "libertarian crank."  For Derrida:  "literary theorist."  For Strauss:  "political science professor" or "well-known academic cult leader."

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