April 2018
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Cal State-Fresno President talks to the lawyers…
…and backs off the misplaced suggestion that they could lawfully discipline the tweeting professor. The Fresno President is still a disgrace: he should have said nothing at all, except that the First Amendment protects offensive speech.
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The rise of female law deans
It's striking that the Deans of the very top law schools (there are 18 for those keeping count, not 14 as the dumb-dumbs indoctrinated by USNews.com believe) are now almost 50% female: Yale (Gerken), Stanford (Magill), Columbia (Lester), Virginia (Goluboff), Duke (incoming, Abrams), Northwestern (incoming, Yuracko), UCLA (Mnookin). Just on the cusp of the top…
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Social science catching up with Nietzsche, part 127: the case of aesthetic pleasure
This; and for an explanation of Nietzsche's view, see this.
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Paul Krugman explains how the war against taxes became a war against education (Michael Simkovic)
In today's New York Times, Professor Krugman writes about the war on education. Krugman's generally smart post overlooks an important part of the story. Many wealthy Democratic Donors also want low taxes and are therefore also hostile toward teachers unions and increases in public funding for education. Republicans are not the only ones's responsible for the current state…
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Speaking of twitter mobs and employment repercussions
This is a curious story out of Canada: In my experience, what hurts the most on Twitter isn’t the threats, insults, smears, and verbal abuse you get from random trolls. Rather, it’s the betrayal from those who you thought were on your side: colleagues, friends, community members, political allies. If Men’s-Rights Activists tell me I’m…
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The Fresno tweeter and the uneven response of academia to such cases
Useful overview at IHE. Note, in particular, the cases (Salaita most infamously) where faculty lost their jobs because of their lawful speech on social media.
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Longtime Northwestern faculty member Kimberly Yuracko named Dean
She succeeds Dan Rodriguez. I will post a link to the university's announcement as soon as it appears. UPDATE: Northwestern's announcement.
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Ratcliffe from Vienna to York
Matthew Ratcliffe (philosophy of mind, psychology, and the emotions), currently Professor of Philosophy and Head of Department at the University of Vienna, will take up a Professorship in Philosophy at the University of York, effective this fall.
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Someone who actually understands Marx, better than most professional philosophers and “analytical” Marxists
The former Greek finance minister Varoufakis, of course (thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer); an excerpt: As it turned out, the [Communist] manifesto was right, albeit belatedly. It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union and the insertion of two billion Chinese and Indian workers into the capitalist labour market for its prediction to…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Quill, “Too Late,” 1970
This Boston-based band sounds like it could have come out of San Francisco; they performed at Woodstock and then released but one album, from which this likable tune comes:
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Now this is quite a puppet show
Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx and "the sociopath" Ayn Rand. (Thanks to David Lobina for the pointer.)
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Irvine/Edinburgh’s Duncan Pritchard interviewed…
…at 3AM. He is one of those rare professional philosophers to come from a genuinely working-class background–an interesting story!
I first met Gabriele Taylor when I was a graduate student in philosophy at St. Anne’s, studying for the B.Phil.…