August 2014
-
More on the First Amendment, academic freedom, contractual rights, and state universities
UPDATE (AUG. 29): See also this later post on Salaita's contractual claims and the AAUP letter. Corresponding with philosophy friends and colleagues on Facebook and via e-mail alerts me to the fact that there were certain implicit assumptions in my Huffington Post piece that would benefit from some more explicit discussion. (HuffPo generally does not want…
-
One reason Steven Salaita (and any decent person) would be really angry about the Israeli assault on Gaza
The names and ages of the 504 children killed in Gaza.
-
Psychologist Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” at the Boston Review…
…with commentaries from several philosophers, including Nomy Arpaly (Brown), Jesse Prinz (CUNY), and Peter Singer (Princeton/Monash), as well as others.
-
Unhappiness with “Oxford Scholarship Online”
Michel-Antoine Xhignesse, a PhD student at McGill, calls my attention to these complaints about OSO; hopefully Oxford will remedy them before long.
-
Tweets, woofs, and aphorisms…
…from Jerry Dworkin.
-
Fall advertising update
September is almost here, and there is still one 3rd from the top spot available, as well as both 4th from the top spots. October is already sold out (all four spots on both sides), but November still has one 4th from the top spot left. December has at least one 2nd spot, as well as…
-
More musical Wittgenstein
Reader Richard Baron writes: You mention Numminen's performance. Let us not forget Elisabeth Lutyens' motet, opus 27: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tVjyYY4hRg For those who wish to pursue this topic, there is at least one article on the piece: Parsons, Laurel, "Music and Text in Elisabeth Lutyens’s Wittgenstein Motet", Canadian University Music Review, volume 20, number 1, 1999. I…
-
IHE on Colorado cases: is the university being “heavy-handed”?
The odd thing about this article is that neither of the two cases mentioned (David Barnett and Dan Kaufman) involve allegations of sexual harassment: Barnett was alleged to have retaliated against a student who complained about a graduate student, whereas Kaufman was the victim of gross wrongdoing by the university in violation of the Americans…
-
ASU’s annual “Aspiring Law Profs” conference…
…is coming up!
-
For those interested, I’ll be on “Chicago Tonight” tonight to discuss the Illinois/Salaita case
The program starts 7 pm Central time, but the segment about Illinois will begin about 7:25 pm. ("Chicago Tonight" is a program of the local PBS affiliate in Chicago.) The HuffPo column picked up 5,400 "likes" and made it to the front page of HuffPo. Glenn Greenwald kindly tweeted it out to his 400,000 "followers." Thanks…
-
“Why Tolerate Religion?” now in paperback…
…and with a new preface.
-
IHE reveals that University of Illinois was lobbied by wealthy alumni and other Israel supporters to block Salaita appointment
Not a surprise, but at least it is now a matter of public record: The communications show that Wise was lobbied on the decision not only by pro-Israel students, parents and alumni, but also by the fund-raising arm of the university. The communications also show that the university system president was involved, and that the…
-
M.A. Numminen sings Wittgenstein
We shall let this pass in silence.
-
On Rebecca Schuman and web journalism
This is very funny, and, in my experience, apt. The author, it bears noting, is a Canadian, and usually prone to being so non-committal as to drive a person crazy. So this is quite something!
David J. Gunkel «Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond» (MIT, 2023) Link:…