Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Mark Robert Taylor's avatar

    At the risk of self-advertising:… You claim “AI is unusual in degree, not in kind” and “It is not clear…

  2. F.E. Guerra-Pujol's avatar

    Apropos of Sagar’s wish to foist the A.I. industry by its own petard, this article appeared in print in yesterday’s…

  3. Claudio's avatar

    I teach both large courses, like Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Thinking (a.k.a Legal Argumentation), and small seminar-based courses at Edinburgh…

  4. Charles Pigden's avatar

    Surely there is an answer to the problem of AI cheating which averts the existential threat. . It’s not great,…

  5. Mark's avatar

    I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…

  6. A in the UK's avatar
  7. Jonathan Turner's avatar

    I agree with all of this. The threat is really that stark. The only solution is indeed in-class essay exams,…

Good luck to those heading to DC to interview for law teaching positions!

Here's a couple of words of advice I typically share with Chicago candidates, but others might appreciate:

First, although this can be stressful, it should also be fun:  lots of law faculty will want to talk about you and your ideas over the next couple of days!   You will form intellectual and professional relationships even from interviews that don't lead to callbacks.  Enjoy the scholarly dialogue and learn from it.

Second, remember that every hiring committee is a black box:  you don't know its internal priorities and squabbles, its biases and agendas.  So don't waste time speculating about how you did (candidates, in my experience, are uneven judges of their performance, in both directions), and remember you are bound to bomb an interview, but life will go on.  Forget about it.

Third, bear in mind that hiring committees come to the hiring convention with different charges from their home schools.  Some will be authorized to offer some callbacks even before the weekend is out; others will have to report back to the rest of the committee at home before doing anything.  Don't draw inferences from silence, or from the fact that someone you know got a callback before the weekend was over–even when hiring committees are allowed to make some quick callback offers, it's almost always the case that the full hiring committee back home will make decisions about other callbacks at a later date.

Best of luck to all the job seekers out there!

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