-
Federal judge reads ICE’s Greg Bovino “the riot act” (as it were) (UPDATED)
Thank God for federal judges doing their jobs, and reining in the lawless ICE officers. 11/1/25 UPDATE: The 7th Circuit has stayed the requirement that Mr. Bovino report daily to the judge, but left the other aspects of the district court’s order in place. May not be wrong on the legal merits, but it is…
-
What is it like to be a philosopher? Shaun Gallagher edition
Courtesy of Clifford Sosis.
-
How Trump will steal the 2026 elections (and 2028, of course)
Perfectly plausible scenario.
-
H1-B visas and the $100,000 fee: the latest
CHE reports: Student-visa holders and others who switch their legal status within the United States won’t have to pay a new $100,000 fee on skilled-worker visas. Guidance issued…by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security clarified that international graduates of American colleges will be exempt from the fee imposed by the Trump administration. Both higher-education and employer…
-
More trouble afoot at UT Austin
Psychology professor Art Markman has been removed from an administrative position due to “ideological differences” with University leadership, which now consists in a President with no academic background, and a Provost who does have academic credentials, but whose primary qualification appears to be his conservative bona fides. Contrary to some reporting, academic freedom does not…
-
In the 1960s, political persecution of radical political groups by the FBI was kept under wraps…
…but now it is out in the open.
-
Are the latest “tariffs” on Canada legal? Of course not
Law professor Paul Horwitz comments.
-
10th annual meeting of the International Society for Nietzsche Studies: Bonn, September 2026
The new “call for papers” is here: submissions are due March 31, 2026. Our first meeting was in Bonn, so we are happy to return, now that ISNS has established itself as the premier forum for philosophically serious work on Nietzsche.
-
Hiring departments: make your application process Interfolio friendly!
Some jobs still require individual submission of letters of recommendation, sometimes accompanied by absurd check-lists (the candidate is in “the top 1%” of…whatever). No doubt these are requirements imposed by university bureaucrats. Departments: tell your bureaucrats that this imposes a huge cost on faculty, and probably results in some letters never being submitted at all!
-
“The Scum Manifesto, or how to get a job in the Trump Administration”
This essay by John Ganz is, sadly, probably on point: I’m sure by this point we’ve all seen some horrific videos of ICE abductions of migrants. Something looks off about those guys: They don’t look like feds or even cops; they look more like Proud Boys or Jan 6ers. That makes sense, since DHS is using white nationalist…
-
Trump’s growing, and “shadowy”, federal police force…
…you know the ones that go around in masks snatching people off the streets and throwing them into the back of vans, like in any authoritarian society. That police force is growing, and I would bet its purview expands beyond alleged immigration enforcement.
-
Vanderbilt, Wash U/St. Louis among schools “in dialogue” with Trump Admin about the extortionist “compact” that violates academic freedom
So CHE reports. Faculty at those schools need to let their leaders know that any school that signs on to a Trump compact will become the target of a nationwide boycott!
-
“Bloodless Pedantry”
Philosopher Tim Crane on “analytic” philosophy: If analytic philosophers were to reflect in a more disinterested, less defensive way about their tradition, it could help them understand why philosophers of other traditions find it so obscure, and why those outside philosophy can find it so pointless. The truth is that the point of philosophical questions…
-
Blast from the past: “How Trump Thinks”
I posted this shortly after the 2016 election, but sadly, it remains as relevant as ever.
-
Philosopher Jaime Edwards talks about Marx on ideology and class…
…at Brain in a Vat. (I talked about other parts of our Marx book last month.)
-
“If God does not exist, then we are locked without hope in a world filled with gratuitous and unredeemed suffering”
I was astonished to learn this had been presented as an objection to atheism in this informative review of Professor Nagasawa’s recent book. How can truth be an objection to a view?
-
The U.S. “Insurrection Act” is our “Enabling Act” (the 1933 German law)
This piece explains why: The Insurrection Act is a dangerous law that gives the president broad powers to authorize far-reaching uses of the military in the domestic sphere. It is based on highly permissive standards for action and provides neither a role for Congress nor a basis for serious judicial review…. The president in March…
-
Universities continue to reject Trump’s “compact”
Besides MIT, Brown, Penn, and the University of Southern California have all declined. Again, if any school accepts the compact, then academics must boycott that university, and treat it as a pariah. CHE has a useful piece by some leading academic freedom experts (David Rabban, Robert Post, Keith Whittington) and other academic defenders of free…
-
Cornell suspends Jewish and pro-Palestinian history professor (UPDATED)
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–UPDATED Given how much federal money is at stake for Cornell, it’s hard not to interpret this incident as a case of “anticipatory obedience.” If the account of the students in the seminar is correct, then the professor, correctly, asked a disruptive student (who was Israeli) to leave the class, not…
-
The imbecile RFK Jr. is destroying the FDA…
….like everything else he touches. An excerpt: The inquiry came in August, and struck scientists at the Food and Drug Administration as highly unusual. The leader of the center that regulates prescription medicines wanted to know what they thought about leucovorin, a generic drug that’s mainly used to alleviate side effects of cancer therapies. He’d seen…
-
It turns out some Republicans really are racists and fascists
Who would have guessed?
-
Trump now offering his “compact” to all universities
Academics must make a commitment to boycott any university that accepts the “compact,” given that it violates core academic freedom values. Please share that idea widely!
-
Trump used to be a “dove,” but now he is a war-monger
I guess that’s the nature of social systems. In any case, he’s increasing the chances of nuclear war now. (Robert Paul Wolff had called him a “dove,” for good reasons at the time.)
-
On this year’s Nobel “Peace” Prize
Like the “literature” (and to a lesser extent the economics prize), the “peace” prize has an erratic record. Consider this year’s winner.
-
“Prosthetic Gods” podcast
Philosopher Nir Eisikovits writes: I think your readers might find some of the recent episodes of Prosthetic Gods interesting: they touch on questions that many academics are grappling with: AI and the future of writing, AI and the future of higher ed, and some more philosophical debates such as the merits (or lack thereof) of…
-
It’s not every day that a law professor is on the front page of the NY Times…
…but it’s UVA’s Caleb Nelson’s turn. I don’t bet on his scholarship affecting the super-legislature, but one may hope!
-
“After the Hunt,” the tale of possible plagiarism and sexual harassment putatively set in the Yale philosophy department…
…sounds as awful as one might hope it would be. This line from the linked review was a giveaway that the film’s creators have no idea what goes on in Yale’s philosophy department (or in philosophy): And because Hank and Alma are assistant professors of philosophy in hot pursuit of tenure, the story is littered…
-
Will the current authoritarian administration in Washington DC be appeased….
…if universities adopt a non-discrimination principle regarding political ideology? Universities obviously cannot agree to the administration’s outrageous demand to hire based on “conservative” political ideology and to shut down programs hostile to “conservative ideas.” But universities could, consistent with academic freedom, endorse a “statement of non-discrimination based on political ideology”: All candidates for faculty positions…
-
Eisgruber’s selective account of the universities and free speech
Len Gutkin at CHE holds Princeton President’s Eisgruber’s feet to the fire, rightly so.
-
Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Christine McVie, “I Want You,” 1970
Before she married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, Christine Perfect was already part of the British blues scene, most notably with the band Chicken Shack. This great tune was a solo number recorded in 1970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJONhfJOEII Feel free to add links to other Christine Perfect favorites, including with Chicken Shack.
-
Williamson “the bullet-biter”
I found this review of Timothy Williamson’s latest book by philosopher Daniel Greco illuminating, and it raises some deep issues about methodology in analytic philosophy. Curious what informed readers think about all this.
-
MIT responds to Trump “compact”: no thanks
The full response from the MIT President is here, and is worth reading. She makes the correct point that scientific funding should be awarded based on scientific merit. Unfortunately, prior administrations have not always observed that principle (recall, e.g., when “diversity” was a criterion [or strong desideratum] for federal science funding), but the Trump proposal…
-
A Republican Governor speaks out against deployment of Texas National Guard in Illinois
The “federalism” and “state’s rights” angle (emphasized by Professor Hunt the other day) has moved the Oklahoma Governor to come to the (partial) defense of Illinois: Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican and the chairman of the National Governors Association, on Thursday criticized the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois as a…
-
Still more on the authoritarianism unfolding daily
From Thomas Edsall at the NYT (read the whole thing to get the full list of authoritarian behaviors) (all that follows is quoted from his article): President Trump has unleashed new weaponry in his war against Democrats, liberals and the left. Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form…
-
More signs of the times: Rutgers historian who writes about Antifa relocates to Spain…
…after death threats. (Thanks to several readers who sent this along.)
-
What authoritarianism looks like
ICE edition.
-
Here’s a creative bit of anti-Trump political theater
Here; an excerpt: So for example, let us say that New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois declare a national emergency. The governors invite a select number of similar-minded anti-Trump states to send delegates selected either by the people or the legislature. The delegates’ job would be to draw up an inter-state compact, a declaration of…
-
Journals that publish symposia on recent books?
A philosopher elsewhere writes: “I’m trying to put…comments [received on the philosopher’s recent book] together in the form of a book symposium, which would also include my replies. After learning that PPR no longer publishes book symposia — I’m not sure why — it occurred to me that it might be useful to list journals…
Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
An interesting, and in my view, entirely welcome dimension of the “new” PPA has been a return to discussion of…
Daniel says a lot I agree with but on a few of the issues I’d slightly disagree. We’re facing the…
I doubt enough experts have read enough of the articles published in the top 10 value theory journals over the…
It’s hard to see the old PPA publishing some of what the new PPA has been publishing, although that’s not…
Richard, this is all fair and certainly, impressions of the current quality of the discipline are a subjective matter. I…
The stigmatisation of certain theories, counter-intuitive to many, as ‘preposterous’ should be avoided. It is not ultimately conducive to discovering…
“given the actual number of career-worthy jobs (i.e. not per-course or adjunct positions)” The “id est” seems mistaken. Many tenure-track…