News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
Apropos of Sagar’s wish to foist the A.I. industry by its own petard, this article appeared in print in yesterday’s…
I teach both large courses, like Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Thinking (a.k.a Legal Argumentation), and small seminar-based courses at Edinburgh…
Surely there is an answer to the problem of AI cheating which averts the existential threat. . It’s not great,…
I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…
Hear hear
I agree with all of this. The threat is really that stark. The only solution is indeed in-class essay exams,…
I’m not sure I’d yet go so far as to call LLMs an existential threat to universities. But I do…
Professor Spelman, who was emerita at Smith College, where she taught for many years, died at the end of 2025. She was an early, and influential, figure in feminist philosophy, where she wrote widely. There is an obituary here. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Spelman or for those who wish to comment on the significance of her work.
(Thanks to Steven Gross for the pointer.)
I read Spelman’s and Lugones’ “Have We Got a Theory for You!” as an undergraduate in a Feminist Philosophy course (2002ish). It influenced me in the following ways:
1. It sparked my wonder about anti-theory in ethics, which I later took a graduate course on.
2. It made me take note of the fact that people with some influence can use their position to give a platform to worthwhile people and ideas who are silenced.
3. It made me think: Is THIS philosophy? It was quite unlike anything else I read in my other courses. I later figured that if there’s plenty of controversial men in the history of philosophy who are counted as philosophers, then this could count, too.
Leave a Reply to Jennifer Lee Lawson Cancel reply