February 2022
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U.S. Universities by membership in the National Academy of Sciences (through 2021)
We last did this in 2018 (although Rockefeller University was incorrectly omitted last time). The National Academy of Sciences is the even more selective "science only" cousin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. While it does elect faculty in the social sciences, its focus is on the natural sciences, engineering and other applied…
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What’s going on in Canada?
A reader writes: I am a long time follower of your blog, and wanted to write in to ask whether you might consider a post soliciting comments (or giving your own thoughts) regarding the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act by the Canadian Trudeau government in response to the Trucker Convoy Protest. I would be…
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Richard Marshall interviews Justin E.H. Smith (Paris VII)…
…at 3:16 AM. Entertaining and eclectic!
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U Mass/Boston adopts new “mission statement”
The shorter version: "We are no longer a university."
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More thoughts on academic freedom and offensive speech by faculty
Georgetown law professor Paul Butler calls for a newly hired colleague, Ilya Shapiro, to be fired for an offensive tweet, but offers no account of academic freedom or its limits. (A faculty letter organized by F.I.R.E. correctly noted that it would violate AAUP academic freedom rules to fire Shapiro. See also.) As mathematician Craig Larson…
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Garcia from Yale to Free University Berlin
Manon Garcia (feminist philosophy, 20th-century Continental philosophy, moral & political philosophy), currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, has accepted appointment as Junior Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin; given her work already, I expect she will be tenured there soon. (Yale's ranking in 20th-century Continental philosophy and perhaps…
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“Highest need” students to attend Yale Law tuition-free
The announcement doesn't specify what constitutes the eligible level of need, but indicates that 45-50 students (out of about 600 in the law school) will get the scholarships to cover all their tuition. So that's a significant investment! UPDATE: My colleague Ryan Doerfler calls my attention to this informative piece, with further details: The plan,…
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Heart disease risk increases substantially after Covid (even a mild case)
A rather disturbing report in Nature; an excerpt: Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study1 shows. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from…
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Philosophy PhD admissions decisions are starting to come out in significant numbers
Here. Good luck to all readers who are applying this round!
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JHP Article Prize for 2021
Prof. Deborah Boyle (Charleston), editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, writes: The Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded the prize for the best article published in the journal in 2021 to Matthew D. Walker’s article, “Aristotle’s Eudemus and the Propaedeutic Use of the Dialogue Form” (JHP 59.3 [July 2021]: 399–427). Professor Walker is Associate Professor of…
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Former Vice-Provost at Penn supports violation of AAUP academic freedom principles
Anita Allen (Penn) is a distinguished legal scholar and philosopher, whom I greatly respect, which makes her remarks here all the more shocking. She is clear that she is expressing only her "own opinion," but given that she was a highly-regarded Vice Provost at Penn for many years, one can only worry about the future…
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“Strong disciplines” are the foundation of genuine interdisciplinarity
Philosopher of science Paul Griffiths (Sydney) gets this exactly right; an excerpt: An interdisciplinary team is not a group of people trained in “interdisciplinarity”. It’s a group of people who have deep knowledge and sound judgment in their disciplines.… A discipline is much more than a particular stream of courses in the undergraduate syllabus, despite…
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Fascist Lt. Governor of Texas Dan Patrick wants to end tenure, and ban teaching of “Critical Race Theory” in higher education
This really is becoming the McCarthy Era all over again, except that there is no foreign power committed to the CRT bogeyman: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is proposing to end tenure for new hires at Texas public universities and making the teaching of critical race theory a cause for tenure revocation. He said tenure should…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: The Frost, “Baby Once You Got It,” 1969
We haven't featured in quite awhile this Michigan psychedelic band that never made it as big as its contemporaries (like Grand Funk and Bob Seger); this comes from their debut album:
John Searle was one of the professors who changed the trajectory of my education. I took several seminars with him…