April 2023
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Yale lawprof Tracey Meares (UChicago Law ’91) goes back to high school in Springfield, Illinois…
…where they are making up for injustices done to her many years ago. A nice story!
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Reed on Rustin
This certainly makes a nice contrast with this. Professor Reed writes: Bayard Rustin’s commentary between 1965 and 1975 on race, class, and politics in the U.S. was sharply insightful and can be read profitably for cultivating a nuanced understanding of the crucial period between the victories won by the civil rights movement and institutional consolidation…
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Good work if you can get it
Ibram Kendi, well-known "anti-racism" grifter, was paid $30,000 by Rutgers for a 30-minute meeting with some Rutgers students, and a one hour "moderated lecture" with a sympathetic Rutgers law professor at the Camden campus. Plus, he demanded first-class airfare (from Boston to Philadelphia?). The rich get richer, including in academe, and even when they have…
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Howell from SMU to Rice
Robert Howell (philosophy of mind, metaphysics), who is currently a Distinguished Professor in and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, where he will also be Chair of the Department. Professor Christian Emden, the current Chair of Philosophy at Rice,…
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Gooding-Williams from Columbia to Yale
Robert Gooding-Williams, currently professor of philosophy and African-American studies at Columbia University, will become Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, effective July 1, 2024. Professor Gooding-Williams is especially well-known for his work in philosophy of race (including influential work on Du Bois) and on 19th-century European philosophy (esp. Nietzsche). (As an aside: Gooding-Williams, who was…
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“Irrational exuberance” about AI
This seems right: AI doesn’t have to be all that smart to cause a lot of harm. Take this week’s story about how Bing accused a lawyer of sexual harassment — based on a gross misreading of an op-ed that reported precisely the opposite. I am not afraid because GPT is too smart, I am…
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A strike seems imminent at Rutgers
MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING: THE STRIKE IS ON! Rutgers philosophers Kati Balog and Barry Loewer write: You have likely heard that the Rutgers unions have been negotiating with the Rutgers administration over working conditions and salary. The administration has been very resistant and to a degree duplicitous. The primary issue is working conditions…
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The assault on New College of Florida
Philosopher Nicolas Delon at New College talks about how these developments are affecting the faculty; an excerpt: We have seven or eight tenure-track candidates coming up for tenure this year. Everyone has a positive recommendation for tenure. The next step is supposed to be the Board of Trustees, which in April will approve or deny…
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Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, because no one rises from the dead
So why is a secular newspaper running an interview that treats this as a serious possibility? It's one thing for a Church newspaper to feature such an interview, but the New York Times? Maybe they should now run an interview with a Hume scholar on Hume on miracles and the comparative worthlessness of "testimony" in…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Budgie, “Homicidal Suicidal,” 1971
We haven't featured a new tune from the great Welsh heavy metal trio in quite some time (we reposted an earlier item last fall); here's the closing track from their debut album:
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2023 Stanton Prize of the Society for Philosophy & Psychology…
…goes to philosopher Eric Mandelbaum (CUNY Graduate Cener & Baruch College).
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Yao from Rice to UCLA
Vida Yao (ethics, moral psychology), Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Let me observe (as I first did many years ago) that no department (outside the "top five") in the country has a better eye for junior…
A remembered Dreyfus remark on the Maharishi: I recall hearing Dreyfus say in a recorded lecture, perhaps twenty-five years ago,…