October 2017
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Tomlin from Reading to Warwick
Patrick Tomlin, currently Associate Professor in Political Philosophy (in the Department of Politics and International Relations) at the University of Reading, has accepted appointment (effective April 2018) as Reader in Philosophy (in the Philosophy Department) at the University of Warwick.
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Leon Wieseltier, pompous windbag…
…and serial sexual harasser. "Very important hair," though, as Gore Vidal used to say. We've had so much fun with him over the years that's I'm (only a bit) sad to know this will be the end of him.
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“White fragility” can “kiss my ass” too
What a disgrace that Dalhousie University is conducting a disciplinary investigation of a student for a Facebook comment along the lines of the title of this post. American free speech law has a lot of problems, but on this kind of issue it gets things quite right. As the U.S. Supreme Court said (in upholding…
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How one journal, Ergo, dealt with scholarly recklessness in a published article
During the summer, I noted the bizarre case of an article (on philosophy of love) by Carrie Jenkins, published in Ergo, that devoted one section of the paper to criticizing the (alleged) views of Alan Soble, a leading contributor to the philosophy of love literature–except it turned out the target of the criticism was an anonymous…
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When Trump is history (assuming he doesn’t take all of us with him)…
…then a few contemporary Republican figures will emerge looking very good: Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, John McCain. But will this be enough to bring the rest of the caucus to its senses? I do believe that with some sufficiently good pretext, the Republicans will move to impeach Trump and end this nightmare.
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The crisis in social psychology, with a case study
Interesting article, touching on issues we've noted here previously. I was amused that the passive-aggressive Andrew Gelman, the Columbia statistician, makes an appearance in this saga (you can get a feel for his obsession with Cuddy, the psychologist, from this).
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Fascist MP asks universities for the syllabi of lecturers teaching about Brexit
Unbelievable. Will the universities comply? Only collective refusal would be an adequate response. Tenure does not exist in Britain, but academic freedom enjoys statutory protection. This episode, depending on how it unfolds, may test the status of its protections.
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A profile of Oxford’s Jeff McMahan…
…at Quartz.
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Placement in PhD-granting programs in the new academic job placement report
MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 3 I’ve started to look a bit more at the data from the new placement analysis (commissioned and paid for by the APA no less), and there were plainly some peculiar choices made in how to frame the data. As David Chalmers points out, post-docs are lumped in with fixed…
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Second Rutgers Lecture series in philosophy…
…featuring Sir Richard Sorabji. (Earlier coverage of this new series.)
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University of Pittsburgh advertising in airports its “Quirky Silliness” philosophy ranking
Peter Klein and Clifford Sosis have both passed on this photo from Newark airport: Now it's understandable why the University of Pittsburgh would do this: they do have an excellent philosophy program, and this recognition (even if it's absurd, and comes from an absurd source) is a nice way of branding the University as a…
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Light (maybe no) blogging this week…
…as I'm on the road. At the University of Turin currently to receive the Paolo Bozzi Prize from the Philosophy Department and give some talks and seminars, and then off to Harvard Law for a panel as part of their bicentennial. More next week!
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Placement and Funding Information for Prospective Graduate Students
As you may know, Christopher Pynes and I are currently in the process of preparing the 2017-2018 edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report. There are some unintended delays in the process, owing to the transfer of technology, the learning curve, negotiating a new contract with Wiley-Blackwell, etc. However, one thing that came up in our…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Humble Pie, “The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake,” live on Beat Club, 1970
This is from their little-known 1969 album (their second), here performed on Beat Club (that's Peter Frampton on the left, Steve Marriott [the greatest rock vocalist in my book] on the right):
And the second paragraph?