January 2019
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Erik Olin Wright
A sociologist and social theorist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for many years, he has also been an important contributor to "analytical Marxism," and makes available much excellent material on his webpage. But what prompts this particular post is that, as I've learned from many friends and colleagues, he is dying of leukemia,…
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SEALS decides to screw over academic job seekers…
…by creating a competitor hiring conference (the Blog Emperor reprints the self-serving announcement in its entirety, although at least Professor Weaver dropped some of his earlier false claims about its purpose). I'm not aware of any other academic field where there are competing hiring conferences. Their absence is easy to explain: it's costly enough–in time…
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Improving peer review
Philosopher Leora Dahan Katz (currently a Polonsky Fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, soon to join the Hebrew U faculty) writes: It has been my experience that submission rejections (in philosophy and legal philosophy journals) that are not accompanied by reviewer comments are not only frustrating but also highly inefficient. Clearly whomever decided…
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JHP article prize to Quebec’s Perinetti
Philosopher Jack Zupko (Alberta), editor-in-chief of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, writes: The Board of Directors of the Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded the prize for the best article to appear in volume 56 of the JHP to Dario Perinetti for "Hume at La Flèche: Skepticism and the French Connection,"…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Trapeze, “Touch My Life,” 1970
It's been awhile since we've featured this British blues/rock band; here's another good number from their second album Medusa:
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New Senator Sinema from Arizona, who is openly agnostic, declines to take her oath of office on the Bible
A small symbolic gesture, but a good one, since religion (usally some orthodox brand) stands behind all the evil and stupidity in this benighted country.
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Nichols from Arizona to Cornell
Shaun Nichols, a leading figure in moral psychology, philosophy of cognitive science, and experimental philosophy at the University of Arizona, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Cornell University, where he will start this coming fall. That's a big catch for Cornell!
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Why the increase in law school applications?
The Onion has the answer.
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More on USC’s portal
Someone from IT at USC kindly reached out to me to report that they had identified the issue affecting some submissions, and fixed it, so that my letter (and others) went through. Recommenders: do let schools know if you encounter problems with on-line systems, they do happen! Kudos to USC for addressing the issue in…
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Raja Halwani has a blog
A philosopher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, his blog is here.
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Tushar Irani (Wesleyan) talks with Andy Fitch about Plato and the art of argument…
…at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Don’t wish Antonio Gramsci a “happy new year”
This is delightful. An excerpt: Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s Day. That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its…
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A great opportunity for someone, or some institution, in the Midwest to acquire philosophy of science journals
Gregory Mayer, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside, writes: For various reasons, the library here at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside has been discarding it's journal collection. Isis, Philosophy of Science, and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science are among those that have been discarded. The biology department took in the…
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A profile of the great British popularizer of philosophy Bryan Magee…
…in The New Statesman. This appeared last year, but I only just came across it. Many of his interviews are here.
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii