October 2017
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Today in Trump wickedness
He's taking steps to insure that health insurance is ultimately unaffordable for those in desperate need of healthcare.
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Is it Wittgenstein?
Galen Strawson calls my attention to this in the current TLS: If you ask philosophers – those in the English speaking analytic tradition anyway – who is the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, they will most likely name Ludwig Wittgenstein. Galen was skeptical, though do recall the results of this survey. If not…
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Professor Wax addresses Penn audience regarding op-ed controversy
There is an account, of sorts, at the Penn student newspaper (it's sub-headline comletely mischaracterizes through innuendo what Wax said about slavery, judging from the account later in the body of the article–but this makes me wonder how reliable the whole thing is). I can not tell to what extent Professor Wax addressed, if at…
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What is going on at Drexel? And is Drexel a real university?
Several readers flagged this other IHE story about political science professor Ciccariello-Maher, whose case I wrote about at CHE last Spring, when Drexel seemed to be doing reasonably well. His latest "controversial" tweets seem to me vaguely idiotic, but that's not the issue: the issue is that however insightful or idiotic they are, they led to…
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When is a Presidential order to use nuclear weapons illegal? And when it is, is there then a duty of other to disobey the order?
A Southern Methodist law professor addresses the topic, which is, rather alarmingly, timely. I haven't read the paper, so can't vouch for its quality, but if anyone with pertinent expertise does read it, shoot me an e-mail with comments (for publication or not, as you prefer).
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On the Mexican earthquake
A philosophy graduate student writes about his experience living through it. (Thanks to Jonny Thakkar for the pointer.)
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Students disrupt Columbia law professor’s class to protest her handling of Title IX cases at the university
IHE reports on the latest pointless incident. Being a law professor, Professor Goldberg may have some regard for procedural fairness in how she runs university Title IX cases, which was perhaps unacceptable to the students. The more interesting question is how the university will respond. The students have no legal or moral right to disrupt…
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In Memoriam: Kent Johnson (1970-2017)
Professor in the Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine, Professor Johnson was an expert in philosophy of linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology. Professors John Manchak and Kyle Stanford kindly shared with me this message they sent to colleagues and students at Irvine: It is with saddened and heavy…
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An open letter about events in Catalonia
This is from a group of academics (including philosophers and lawyers) and others about recent event; it is informative: Download Letter on Catalonia EN
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How the “adult daycare center” known as the White House works
This is a remarkable account. Impeach the baby-in-chief!
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How Newton changed science and philosophy
It had nothing to do with apples, as philosopher Andrew Janiak (Duke) discusses.
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The University of Chicago’s embarrassing campaign against TA unionization
Like Yale and NYU and every other private university whose TAs think about unionizing, the University of Chicago is busy trotting out the same old idiotic arguments and rationalizations against unions. Labor lawyer Jason Walta, happily, pointed me to this site ridiculing the arguments. I understand why the administration opposes unionization: it will raise costs. …
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Publisher of Third World Quarterly capitulates to criminal threats of violence…
…and withdraws controversial article on colonialism. Unbelievable. Now everyone with a grievance about a publication decision knows how to get the result they want. What a foolish decision by the publisher.
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More worries about on-line application systems
A graduate student writes: Since you posted recently on letters of recommendation and online portals, maybe you would be interested in giving some airtime to another supremely vexing issue in this regard: a number of proprietary application portals prevent applicants from generating the emails with upload links before submission, and instead only send referees links…
I use ChatGPT Luna 5.6 because the Cal State system has a contract with OpenAI. I might prefer to use…