March 2025
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Farewell to the old American constitutional order
Apt remarks by one of my colleagues, in the NYT: Aziz Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said that assessing whether a given development is a constitutional crisis is “generally unhelpful.” “I think it’s more useful to say that this is moving us into a completely different kind of constitutional order, one…
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“The Case for Boycotting the U.S.”
Unfortunately, it's a pretty good case.
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In authoritarian societies without the rule of law, the leader unlawfully detains individuals and defies the courts
And that's now Trump's America: [L]ate last week, immigration agents arrested a Lebanese doctor on a legal visa, despite a court order temporarily blocking her immediate removal. That followed the detention of German tourists, a former Columbia University graduate student with a green card and multiple immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens or have long lived in the United States. And…
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Mytaxe.uk: run for the hills!
Last week, I was in the UK, with legal philosophy talks at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and a Nietzsche workshop at King's College, London. Because it was a compressed visit (I arrived Tuesday, and had talks Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday), I booked a taxi service from Cambridge to Oxford (the trains are almost as expensive…
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“Existential Questions”
An apt title for a philosophy conference in a war zone, organized by Jason Stanley, with talks by David Chalmers and Laurie Paul, among others.
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Universities must hold the line on free speech and academic freedom against the Trump Administration’s attacks
Via Shamik Dasgupta, I learn of this petition/open letter addressed to the universities, which is certainly timely and right. I have signed.
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Trump’s war on transgender people
This seems exactly right: Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany in 1933, later wrote that long before Jews, Roma, gays, Communists and others could be herded into death camps, they had to be “denationalized” — excluded from the society that guaranteed their legal rights. Enlightenment thinkers had posited that just by virtue of existing, each person…
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60 more universities targetted in Trump’s fake war on anti-semitism on campus
This is ominous, and I hope all these schools are preparing legal action to stop this abuse of power. The University of Chicago is not on any of these lists, and not because we didn't have anti-Israel demonstrations on campus. We aren't on these lists because: (1) there is no anti-semitism problem here, to put…
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Columbia law professors explain why Trump’s “Title VI” demand letter to Columbia…
…violates both Title VI and the Constitution. One may hope this forms the basis for the legal action the university needs to file against Trump this week.
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Trump’s withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella will likely lead to nuclear proliferation
So argues (quite plausibly) Berkeley law professor David Grewal.
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Trump is gaslighting American universities
Philosopher Mathias Risse comments.
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The Trumpistas are coming for the judges…
…with threats of bombs and impeachment. While many of these threats originate from the sick people Trump has always riled up, some are coming from public figures, including the disgusting Elon Musk (how can anyone use Twitter/X while this appalling creature owns it?).
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Trump’s “Title VI demand letter” to Columbia University violates both Title VI and the Constitution
Several Columbia law professors explain. I hope this forms the basis of the lawsuit Columbia needs to file against the Trumpistas this week. It's also well past time for Columbia to challenge the "anti-semitism" crisis narrative (which Columbia has stupidly fed). Len Gutkin, at CHE, reviewed Columbia's own report, and wrote this: [I]ts second antisemitism…
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Typepad, the blog service provider, was out of comission the last 24 hours…
…but now is back. Some additional Monday posts will be coming.
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“The singularity is bullshit”
An interview with Oxford's Michael Wooldridge on the history of AI. (Thanks to Tanmay Khale for the pointer.)
I only just learned of Barry’s passing, and I’m enormously saddened at the news. I wrote my PhD on his…