April 2017
-
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may monitor Student Loan Servicers more closely (Michael Simkovic)
Kathleen Engel (Suffolk), Jonathan Glater (U.C. Irvine), and 13 more legal scholars and economists who study higher education and consumer finance have submitted a comment letter supporting a recent proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to monitor student loan servicers more closely. The scholars have also suggested that anonymized versions of the resulting data should be…
-
Top U.S. Research Universities, 2017
I've produced these lists before, using the reputational data from U.S. News surveys. This year, they did new surveys of humanities and social science fields (as well as the professional fields). In the past, I gave more weight to breadth of strength; this time I've used a weighting system that gives more weight to depth (i.e.,…
-
I’m done at this point posting excerpts from Kipnis’s book or reviews of the book…
…and while I have commented at various places about inaccuracies or dubious innuendo in Kipnis's account that I had noticed, I do plan to have a bit more to say about aspects of her account that appear to be inconsistent with other evidence. That will come over the next week or two, so that we can try…
-
2017 Templeton Prize for intellectuals friendly to religion goes to Alvin Plantinga
He is certainly an appropriate choice given the Templeton Prize criteria, and the press release gives a nice description of his work related to religion, but I was surprised by this claim: Alvin Plantinga, an American scholar whose rigorous writings over a half century have made theism – the belief in a divine reality or god…
-
Three law professors win Guggenheim Fellowships in 2017 competition
They are: Heidi Kitrosser (Minnesota), Adriaan Lanni (Harvard), and Hiroshi Motomura (UCLA).
-
Professor Kipnis responds to the letter from the Northwestern graduate students
She sent me a copy and gave permission to share it; she is responding to the letter noted here. This is her response in its entirety: In response to the letter about my book, Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, posted by the Northwestern Philosophy Graduate Student Association: I understand these are painful subjects…
-
In Memoriam: Hubert Dreyfus (1929-2017)
MOVING TO FRONT–ORIGINALLY POSTED APRIL 22 He spent most of his career at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was emeritus. Best-known for his interpretations of Heidegger and Foucault, as well as his (Heidegger-informed) critiques of artificial intelligence, he trained many prominent scholars in the field during his roughly half-century of teaching at Berkeley. …
-
Blast from the past: the “Pluralist [sic] Guide” to PhD programs and the fraudulent “climate for women” section
Back in 2011: first, second, third.
-
Philosophical Gourmet Report, 2017-18
I'm very pleased to report that philosopher Christopher Pynes (Western Illinois)–familiar to readers here for his many guest-blogging stints–has agreed to join Brit Brogaard as co-editor of the PGR for 2017-18 (and subsequent iterations). Professor Pynes will bring good philosophical values and moral and intellectual backbone to this demanding undertaking. I am grateful to him…
-
3rd annual meeting of the International Society for Nietzsche Studies at Birkbeck, University of London March 16-17, 2018: Call for Papers
I'm pleased to report that the call for papers is now open for the third annual meeting of the International Society for Nietzsche Studies that will take place in London next March. Once again, we will be able to cover the airfare and lodging for those whose papers are accepted during the blind review process. …
-
The most important Western philosophers of all time?
So our poll got over 1160 votes (even more than the one eight years ago); in the final 48 hours there was a surge of voting by pro-metaphysics philosophers, leading Hegel to overtake Nietzsche (though he still did not fare as well as previously), Aristotle to overtake Plato, and David K. Lewis to crack the…
-
A new war on the Korean peninsula…
…would be ghastly.
-
Ousted Cincinnati Law Dean Jennifer Bard sues the university and the interim Provost
Blog Emperor Caron, who used to teach at Cincinnatti, has the complaint.
-
Letter from some Northwestern graduate students in philosophy about the Kipnis book
Here; an excerpt: Kipnis dedicates a chapter of her book to questioning a sexual assault allegation our fellow graduate student brought against a faculty member. Kipnis questions this allegation on the basis of a limited set of evidence, without consulting with our colleague or those close to her to check a number of important details…
-
Stop Chelsea Clinton!
This is funny and apt. Bill Clinton was the first Democratic President of the Reagan era, who did more to destroy the Roosevelt vision of the Party than anyone else. Hilary Clinton was one of the most inept Presidential candidates since, well, Mike Dukakis. Their progeny needs to be deposited in the dustbin of history…
My former colleagues at another university in Middle East have also been moved to online teaching indefinitely, with the students…