April 2021
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American College Health Association recommends all colleges mandate vaccination for COVID before fall enrollment
This is obviously sensible, and will give ammunition to schools in benighted states who will no doubt face opposition from local politicians of a certain flavor. Colleges already mandate vaccinations for many illnesses, the only thing new here is the disease. (Thanks to Jeff Roland for the pointer.)
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On the etymology of the “N-word”
This is fascinating and informative.
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Philosopher Manon Garcia (Yale) discusses her new book on…
…"why women’s submission in a patriarchal system is understandable, rational, and pleasurable, though not in their best interests."
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Linfield University is a disgrace
MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING–UPDATED It is not "cause" for firing a tenured faculty member that he was "insubordinate" and harmed the university's reputation by making allegations of sexual misconduct. I hope a lawyer can help vindicate his legal and contractual rights. ADDENDUM: Reactions to Lindfield's outrageous misconduct. (Thanks to Jonathan Kramnick for the…
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Excess mortality due to COVID (directly or indirectly)
Useful representation of the data by sociologist Kieran Healy (Duke).
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Dembroff v. Singer
The Twitter smear merchants have been working overtime since The New Yorker interview with Peter Singer, but this exchange is really something: The anecdote sounds aprocryphal to me, inconsistent with everything I've heard about Peter Singer. (This is a more likely explanation.) I have no shortage of harsh criticisms of Peter Singer's work (for example),…
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Texas House authorizes public universities in Rio Grande Valley and El Paso to establish up to two new law schools
The bill still has to get through the state Senate. Texas established a new public law school at the University of North Texas (near Dallas), which began admitting students in 2014, but is only still provisionally accredited by the ABA. Texas acquired an additional public law school when Texas A&M University acquired the former Texas…
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The actual contents of the “Journal of Controversial Ideas” reviewed…
…by Leslie Green (Oxford & Queen's/Canada). From his apt conclusion: There are immoral and outrageous ideas that cause no controversy whatever, raise no twitter-storms: ideas that not only don’t put your job at risk, but that actually lead to promotions, chairs, salary increases, and fellowships in our academies. As we learned from Gramsci—and Mill—there is…
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On the Blake Bailey biography of Philip Roth
This is the best piece I've seen about this controversy, by Katha Pollitt at The Nation.
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Death threats for denying free will?
Sadly, some philosophers have received them, but it provides the occasion for an informative article in The Guardian about free will, quoting many philosophers. (Thanks to Joshua Selby for the pointer.)
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More signs of the times, this time from San Diego State University
Social media is driving this nonsense, and in two ways: social media facilitates mobbing based on selective reporting; and social media shows others that by seeking out occasions for faux offense, they too can occupy the limelight, get administrators, more often than not, to capitulate, etc. (Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)
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Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” evaluated in light of the replication crisis in social psychology
Interesting. Thoughts from readers?
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“Derrida made simple” and other Twitter delights
As I've noted before, I do post links to items on the blog on Twitter, so you can follow the blog there (if you participate in that godforsaken medium of the resentful and never-ending condescension from below!). And I post a few other things that don't make it to the blog, like "Derrida made simple."
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Peter Singer interviewed…
…in The New Yorker. Some interesting bits, although I was sorry to see Professor Singer took the bait on this absurd question: A lot of your works cite white male academics who, for lack of a better phrase, take up a lot of space in intellectual conversations: Joshua Greene, Steven Pinker, Timothy Garton Ash, Michael…
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Want to rise in the QS university rankings? Paying QS for “consulting” services may be a good bet!
We've noted the "Quirky Silliness" rankings before (and see also), but this new study is an eye-opener: Results show that universities with frequent QS-related contracts experienced much greater upward mobility in both overall rankings and in faculty-student ratio scores over five years in the QS World Rankings. Positions of Russian universities that had frequent QS-related…
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…