April 2026
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“Great” moments in (what is definitely extremely) obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Holy Rockin’ Band, “Guns,” 1981
Continuing last week’s journey down (my) memory lane, I wrote this song after the murder of John Lennon and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. It’s lyrical content is still relevant, given America, alas. (I still haven’t heard anyone say: “ban all guns.”) (As noted in the earlier post, this is a 4-track recording, literally…
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Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, volume 6 will be published…
…in May 2026 (not January 2027 as the website still says), with new essays by Hasan Dindjer (Oxford), Amanda Greene (UC Santa Barbara), Gabe Mendlow (Michigan), Sophia Moreau (NYU), James Penner (NUS), Ralf Poscher (Freiburg), Sabine Tsuruda (Toronto), and Daniel Viehoff (Berkeley), and covering a wide range of topics in general and normative (or specific)…
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University of Kentucky chooses federal district judge as its new Dean…
…despite the opposition of a “substantial majority” of the faculty. Oddly, a Kentucky spokesperson suggests that the judge’s opinions constitute his record of “scholarship.”
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Spacetime does not exist
Philosopher Sam Baron (Melbourne) discusses. As always, I’m interested to hear what the philosophers of physics make of a bold claim like this.
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8 philosophers elected to the American Academy of (each other’s friends in the) Arts & Sciences
They are: Julia Driver (UT Austin), Melissa Lane (Politics, Princeton), Jane Maienschein (Arizona State), Paolo Mancosu (Berkeley), James Weatherall (UC Irvine), David Wong (Duke), Gideon Yaffe (Law, Yale), and Lea Ypi (LSE).
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Six law professors elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
They are: William Baude (Chicago), Alison LaCroix (Chicago), Angela Riley (UCLA), Elizabeth Scott (Columbia, emerita), Patricia Williams (Northeastern), and Gideon Yaffe (Yale [elected in the “Philosophy” section]).
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Maybe Borat was right after all about that part of the world?
Unbelievable. (Borat reference.)
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What an embarrassment: Harvard raising money to hire faculty who contribute to “viewpoint diversity” which is not an academic value
Pathetic. Public universities can’t do anything when their legislatures create institutes and schools for the purpose of hiring right-wing faculty. But Harvard departments will need to stand firm in what looks to be massive push for affirmative action for faculty with the right “politics” but not the right scholarly bona fides to be appointed on…
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A useful catalogue of the casualties of Trump’s reign of malevolent buffoonery
Here. Mr. Edsall notes many lives that have been or will be loss because of his policies, without even mentioning the many victims of his reckless use of U.S. military power, most recently, in Iran. UPDATE: And more on the most corrupt President in the history of the U.S.
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Top 10 Corporate & Securities Articles of 2025…
…via Corporate Practice Commentator: Teachers in corporate and securities law were asked to select the best corporate and securities articles from a list of articles published in legal journals during 2025. More than 440 articles were on this year’s list. Because of the vagaries of publication and indexing, some articles on the 2025 list have…
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USC’s Andrew Bacon turns down the Wykeham Professorship in Logic at Oxford
That’s a notable retention for USC! Offering it to Professor Bacon does reflect a pattern with many of the Oxford chairs, which have been offered to younger philosophers (e.g., Ofra Magidor, Amia Srinivasan) rather than more established senior figures (there are exceptions, of course: e.g., David Owens for the White’s Professorship and Mike Martin for…
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The problem for parents in America is that “America hates people”
Yes, indeed, a nice takedown of a bit of sociological idealism in the NYT: The article mentioned that policymakers need to focus on supporting parents, but in equal weight, if not more so, was the argument that America’s culture of parenting was the problem. Having raised kids for 18 years in the United States and…
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Why prefer “beautiful” theories?
Scientific anti-realists have long raised the question. Philosopher Jane Forsey poses it here.
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Trends in major gifts to law schools
Some interesting data from lawprof Sloan Speck (Colorado). Professor Speck references an earlier post of mine about whether “transformative” gifts really transform. It’s not clear to me that any of them “transformed” any of the affected schools. (Penn is ranked higher now in the silly USNews.com, but that’s due to a change in the formula…
It’s worth noting that NYU, MIT, Rutgers, UT and Harvard (prior to pausing admissions) all list the GRE as required…