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Legal remedies for libel are not instances of “cancel culture”
I was astonished a couple of weeks ago when a British lawyer actually took J.K. Rowling to task on this score; lawyers, at least, shouldn't be so stupid. Rowling was a signatory to the Harper's letter about "cancel culture." She didn't thereby forfeit her legal right to be protected from unlawful speech, such as libel. …
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Australian philosophers push back on government plan to increase fees for humanities students
As well they should. (Prior coverage of this malicious plan by the Australian government–I fear other state-controlled university systems may soon follow suit.)
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What is “cancel culture”?
This is a pretty apt characterization of some of the markers of "cancelling", including, e.g.: 1) Punitiveness: Are people denouncing you to your employer or your social connections? Are you being blacklisted from jobs and social opportunities? Does what is being said to or about you have the goal—or foreseeable effect—of jeopardizing your livelihood?…
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Why the current COVID testing regimen is useless from a public health standpoint…
…and why we need different, cheaper, less accurate tests. Interesting, and not as strange as it sounds!
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President of the University of Southern Maine understands neither academic freedom nor the First Amendment
You can't call on members of the community to sign an "anti-racism pledge," just like you can't call on them to sign a loyalty oath to American capitalism. Of course, this isn't quite as bad as mandating as a condition of employment a profession of loyalty to the ideology of anti-racism (whatever that is: "I…
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Jared Kushner eviscerated
God, if he existed, would bless the Lincoln Project!
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Another free will podcast
The Free Will Show, from philosophers Taylor Cyr (Samford) and Matt Flummer (Porterville College).
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Someone in the general counsel office at Auburn University needs to explain the First Amendment to the admin
A brief comment on Twitter about the latest university that doesn't get it.
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Nematodes are no joking matter!
This story is bizarre, even by the standards of the Twitter Red Guard! (Thanks to David Velleman for the pointer.)
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Belated blog annivesary post
I started the blog 17 years ago on Monday, August 3–I forgot! Reflections on the 14th and 10th anniversary are still relevant. I note that at the 10-year mark the blog had averaged 2.3 million visits and 3 million page views per year. In the last five years, the blog has averaged more than 3.5…
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“Free Will Matters”
A new podcast as part of the LATAM Free Will Project, featuring, among others, Carolina Sartorio (Arizon), Eddy Nahmias (Georgia State), Dana Nelkin (UC San Diego), Derk Peereboom (Cornell) and others. (Thanks to Manuel Vargas for the pointer.)
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Matt Drudge’s turn against Trump
I know most readers have better things to do than spend time in America's right-wing crazy media land; I do too. I don't have TV any longer, so can't watch Fox (thankfully), and I can't imagine actually listening to deranged morons like Rush Limbaugh. But I do follow the on-line "Drudge Report," which has…
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When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail
That was one reader's prior gloss on the remarkable tunnel-vision of Twitter's favorite feminist philosopher, but this latest public intervention confirms the myopia. Biden, given his age and his decrepit cognitive condition, is likely picking the next President of the United States by naming his VP candidate, given the huge advantage "name recognition" confers in…
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Another Philosophy PhD program drops the GRE
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the latest to no longer require the GRE. (Thanks to Nir Ben-Moshe for the information.) UPDATE: Philosopher Kenny Easwaran (Texas A&M) writes: I noticed your announcement that UIUC no longer requires the GRE for graduate admissions. Texas A&M's philosophy department actually made the decision last year as well…
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A young person gets the good news that “God is dead”
(Via Neil Sinhababu on Facebook.)
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Metz from Johannesburg to Pretoria
Thaddeus Metz (African philosophy, legal and political philosophy, value theory), Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg, has accepted appointment as professor of philosophy at the University of Pretoria, where he will start later this year.
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Advertising update
October is fully booked, but September may still have a 3rd from the top spot open ($500). The next open top spot is in November (there's one left, $700), and there are also 2nd from the top spots that month still available ($600), but no 3rd spots. E-mail me for more information.
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2020-21 PGR postponed due to COVID-19
MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 30 Due to the disruption and stress that so many in higher education are still facing caused by the world-wide pandemic, not to mention the uncertainty of what the fall holds, we, the editors, in consultation with Wiley-Blackwell, have decided to postpone a new set of PGR surveys until at…
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Diversity, Silicon Valley-style
And not just Silicon Valley, of course:
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Twitter redux
With some more regular blogging resumed, I will also resume linking posts here on Twitter, for those who prefer to follow the blog that way. In addition, I also post some things exclusively on Twitter (e.g, making fun of America's current most malevolent jackass, Alex Berenson, or choice quotes, and even bits of philosophy).
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Ten more commandments found!
This is pretty funny.
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How will the pandemic and economic crisis affect the landscape of higher education
Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU (so he takes pleasure in markets and the destruction they wreak), has prepared a detailed analysis grouping colleges ranked by U.S. News into four categories: Thrive, Survive, Struggle, Perish. According to Professor Galloway (warning: some "management-speak" coming), This dataset compiles numbers from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System…
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Academic freedom is dead in Hong Kong
This is horrible, and a very ominous sign for what the future holds. (Thanks to Chris Fraser for the pointer.)
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Cullity from Adelaide to ANU
Garrett Cullity (moral & political philosophy), who previously held a Chair at the University of Adelaide, has taken up a "research intensive" Professorship in philosophy at the Australian National University. (Thanks to Christian Barry for the information.)
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Josefus, “Country Boy,” 1969
We haven't featured this good-but-raw Houston-based hard rock outfit in quite awhile, but here's another number from their debut album:
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Jail time for Jared?
One can hope so after these revelations, assuming they are confirmed in subsequent legal proceedings. This version cuts to the chase.
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Schneider from U Conn to Florida Atlantic University
Susan Schneider (philosophy of mind and cognitive science, artificial intelligence), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, will take up a Chair at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. The FAU announcement is here. That's a big catch for FAU!
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The Lincoln Project makes the best anti-Trump ads
Let's make this official: it may have started as the Wuhan virus, but it's now the "Trump Virus": Somewhat more regular blogging resumes tomorrow.
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Five philosophers elected to the British Academy
The new regular Fellows (i.e., resident in the UK) are Ursula Coope (Oxford) and Katherine Hawley (St Andrews); the Corresponding Fellows (i.e., those outside the UK) are Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan), Rainer Forst (Frankfurt), and Elliot Sober (Wisconsin). Frederick Schauer (Virginia), a well-known First Amendment expert and also a legal philosopher, was also elected. I'll resume…
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Board of Illinois Wesleyan spares Philosophy–this time
(Earlier coverage.) Other programs were not so fortunate: Anthropology, Greek & Roman Studies, Religious Studies, French & Italian are all being closed. As a philosopher at IWU wrote: "Although the Philosophy Department survived—-this time—this is *not* a day for celebration. Academic freedom and tenure have been undermined at our institution, and we will continue to…
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Academic freedom and independence of Israeli universities under threat from new Minister of Higher Education
Legal theorist Alon Harel (Hebrew U) asked me to share immediately this statement from the President of Tel-Aviv University: Download Message of the president – Significant risk to the independence of the higher education system in Israel -7.2020 (003)
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Lawyer Wendy Kaminer on the unhinged responses to the Harper’s letter about “cancel culture”
I was amazed to learn that the letter (referenced in passing earlier today) was actually controversial, albeit among the usual herd animals, who never met an independent thought they could abide. The lawyer Wendy Kaminer, who signed the letter, has a suitably stinging rebuke: ‘I rest my case’, I’m tempted to say, reviewing the unhinged…
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Several dozen Princeton faculty call for massive and systematic violation of their colleagues’ contractual right to academic freedom…
…for the holy cause of "anti-racism." ("Anti-racism" doesn't, in fact, mean opposition to racism any longer, for those who have not been paying attention. And what is the connection between an abusive cop killing George Floyd in Minneapolis and alleged racism at Princeton? There isn't any, of course.) Some portions of the letter are harmless…
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Reminder about my July blogging hiatus
MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 28 Just a reminder that I'm taking a break from blogging for July (so starting Wednesday), so as to make progress on a book and deal with some other matters. I'll resume a reduced blogging schedule in August. If there's something very time-sensitive I may post something in July, but…
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A petition in support of philosophy at Illinois Wesleyan
Here. (Thanks to Aaron Garrett for creating it.)
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Is Illinois Wesleyan V-P for Finance Matt Bierman responsible for the disastrous proposals there?
Philosopher Christopher Pynes (Western Illinois), one of the editors of the PGR, writes: I have to say that I feel bad for Illinois Wesleyan. Back in 2018, when Matt Bierman became a VP of finance there, I thought, maybe I should email the philosophers and warn them about him. Matt Bierman was the budget director at…
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News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…
Everything you say is true, but what is the alternative? I don’t think people are advocating a return to in-class…
The discussion here assumes an institutional context where returning to supervised in-person assessment is at least theoretically feasible, a reasonable…
Cyber security professional here -reliably determining when a computational artifact (file, etc.) was created is *hard*. This is sorta why…
Agreed with the other commentator. It is extremely unlikely that Pangram’s success is due to its cheating by reading metadata.
I see this question as a bit naïve. There is metadata on every document created by a modern word processor…
I first met Professor Hoy when I returned to UC Santa Cruz in Fall of ’92 to finish my undergraduate…