April 2025
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Suitably scathing assessment of the first two months of authoritarian government under Trump…
…from Andrew Sullivan; an excerpt: Trump has also abandoned habeas corpus and due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to seize mere suspects off the streets and transport them instantly to a terrifying foreign jail in El Salvador. The law has only been used twice before in wartime, and, ahem, we are not…
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The right to voluntary euthanasia
Philosopher Antony Flew discusses in 1980. (Thanks to Richard Marshall for the pointer.)
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Finlay, formerly of ACU and Southern California, will join Illinois/Urbana
Stephen Finlay, a leading figure in metaethics, will become Professor of Philosophy at the Univeristy of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (from which he received his PhD many years ago) this fall. Finlay was formerly Professor of Philosophy and Director of the ill-fated Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University, and, before that, Professor of Philosophy…
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More than 380 books purged from the Naval Academy Library…
…which is what fasicsts do when they don't simply burn books. Philosopher George Yancy tells me his books were among the purged, as were books by other philosophers, including Linda Alcoff and Charles Mills, among others.
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The Multi-Day In-Class LockDown Browser Essay Assignment
Interesting proposal from philosopher John Robison: Download Lockdown browser post 3.30.2025
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Universities must make a collective commitment to fight the lawlessness of the Trumpistas in court
A sensible proposal from three law professors (Samuel Bagenstos [Michigan], Ryan Doerfler [Harvard], David Pozen [Columbia]). Faculty should send a link to this piece to their university leadership!
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It looks like the “Skadden Fellow” brand is now tarnished after the firm’s capitulation to Trump…
…in the opinion of hundreds of former Skadden Fellows.
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Another journal (this time in math) abandons Wiley
In this morning's email, a letter from the former editors of Mathematical Logic Quarterly: Today, 7 April 2025, the entire editorial board of the journal "MLQ: Mathematical Logic Quarterly" published by Wiley-VCH GmbH has announced its coordinated resignation. The editors (with the exception of those still under contract with Wiley) have simultaneously launched a new English-language…
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If you could change one thing in the world…
…what would it be? Academics, including philosophers, discuss on this podcast.
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With students being blacklisted and rounded up…
…philosopher Mathias Risse issues a "call to action."
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The Trump war on universities
The targets so far: Columbia, Penn, Harvard, Princeton, Brown. All but Princeton have medical schools, and research medical schools get very large amounts of money from the federal government through the NIH. Major research universities without med schools–like Princeton, but also Berkeley, MIT, and Caltech–may be somewhat less vulnerable precisely for this reason, although they…
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Now the Trumpistas come for Brown University…
….let's hope they also don't capitulate.
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The ruling class can’t be happy with Trump’s destruction of global markets…
…and there are signs they've been speaking to their bought-and-paid-for Senators. Manuavering in the House of Representatives may be trickier, but I will bet the votes are there.
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NEH grants cancelled
It starts. Garbage people like Musk and the Trumpistas have no use for culture, of course.
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Anti-government speech no longer allowed at NYU…
…or at least at the medical school. The fear of medical schools of losing government support has been a thread in many of these capitulations.
I would be interested to hear more about the assumptions that would imply climate change ends civilization within your lifetime.…