September 2020
-
Penn will not admit PhD students this coming year in any humanities/science fields
This is remarkable; we noted a couple of philosophy departments that were not admitting PhD students this year, but this is the first school-wide suspension of PhD admissions in the humanities and sciences. Comments are open if readers know of other schools following a similar path; please include links.
-
English Department at University of Chicago embarrasses itself
IHE has a story, and UChicago biologist Jerry Coyne also comments. Departments do have the right to choose what fields to emphasize in graduate admissions, but to limit admissions to a single subfield (is it even a subfield in English?) to make a political statement is irresponsible and is another data point for those skeptical…
-
Characteristics of young adults (ages 18-34) hospitalized with COVID
This is informative. Of 63,103 hospitalized patients (April through June of this year), only 5% (3,222) were in the 18-34 age bracket (median age of 28.3). 36.8% were obese, and 24.5% were morbidly obese! 2.7% of the young adults died. 41% of those patients who died or needed mechanical ventilation were morbidly obese. From the…
-
Today in falsehoods about Nietzsche, courtesy of the “Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy ejournal” from SSRN…
…which is one of the handful I subscribe to, even though about a quarter of the content is not "jurisprudence & legal philosophy" (authors self-select categories, and the ejournal editors are rather too tolerant). Yesterday's ejournal included a piece by Professor Nicholas Aroney (Queensland), whom I do not know, writing about "The Rise and Fall…
-
Byrne’s reply to controversial Dembroff paper in Phil Studies rejected
In June, philosopher Stewart Cohen (Arizona) resigned as editor of Philosophical Studies in protest after the journal published a paper by Robin Dembroff (Yale) containing personal attacks on Alex Byrne (MIT) (journal policy forbids such attacks), the author to whom Professor Dembroff was responding. (Earlier coverage here, here, and here.) Even by the standards of…
-
Evangelicals and climate denial
Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments.
-
Bad news for restaurants (but not a surprise)
CDC reports that in a sample of those recently diagnosed with COVID, having dined in a restaurant in the two weeks prior emerged as an important risk factor. With colder weather approaching in large parts of the United States, this is bad news for restaurants and diners. When this world-historic catastrophe is over, will there…
-
Why the right needs to pretend the “left” is more powerful than it really is
Political philosopher Lea Ypi (LSE) comments. Her point about the Gramscian pedigree of the right's rhetorical strategy is amusing. (Her focus is Britain, but most of the points apply in the U.S. too.)
-
Regional law schools that do strong hiring… (MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–CORRECTED)
…as measured by the number of faculty from the 2006-07 academic year that were subsequently hired by a top 18 law school (i.e., Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, NYU, Penn, Stanford, Texas, UCLA, USC, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Yale). This is a propos the discussion I had with Orin Kerr noted the other…
-
Hume and Edinburgh, once again
A propos this, longtime reader Roger Albin (Medicine, Michigan) writes with apt observations that he kindly gave permission to share: This would be the second time Hume is rejected by the University of Edinburgh. Hume was denied a Chair at Edinburgh by some of the ideologically “woke” of his time, conservative clergy who suspected Hume…
-
Dianoia Institute of Philosophy/Australian Catholic University now accepting applications for MPhil and PhD
There are more details here; note that the deadline is in October, and the term starts in February 2021. Because all the faculty at the Institute hold research appointments, there are no courses, so this is degree by individual faculty supervision. The faculty is quite narrow in its strengths (e.g., there is no history of…
-
How to evaluate history’s heroes
Sensible comments from philosopher Steven Hales (Bloomsburg), and timely again given the Hume fiasco at Edinburgh. From the concluding paragraphs of the essay: Newton wrote to Robert Hooke that if he saw further than others it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. That was a medieval metaphor that went back to before…
-
Does morality need metaphysics?
Philosopher Simon Blackburn and others discuss.
-
Let’s out-woke “the woke”: from now on David Hume will be known as “40 George Square”
A propos this: "As 40 George Square argues in the Treatise…" "Kant was awoken from his dogmatic slumber by reading 40 George Square…" "Did you know that 40 George Square was not opposed to slavery?" "According to the 40 George Squarean theory of motivation…" (Thanks to my colleague Agnes Callard for the idea.) UPDATE: Courtesy…
-
David Hume has now been “cancelled” at the University of Edinburgh
When I first saw this on social media, I thought it was a joke. It's not. If members of the Edinburgh philosophy department don't raise hell about this (some members are, alas, confirmed knuckleheads), then let's cancel them too! Indeed, let's cancel the University of Edinburgh! What's bizarre about the mass delusion now gripping the…
If you were the head recruiter for a professional basketball team, would you require height and weight measurements for prospective…