An "open letter" from twenty-one law faculty–this largely (but not wholly) a group of right-leaning law professors, though many of the issues have been raised by others across the political spectrum in law.

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Strange.  Here's the key chart, which tells the real story: Figure 3: Reported plans of new history PhDs following graduation, 2004–14.    

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The full list of new members here.

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MOVING TO FRONT FROM MAY 12–MR. STRASSFELD WELCOMES MORE FEEDBACK Jonathan StrasSfeld, a PhD student in History at the University of Rochester working on an interesting project on the history of American philosophy in the mid-20th-century (especially the fates, respectively, of phenomenology and analytic philosophy), asked me to share this data on philosophy faculty at…

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Probably only Leibniz.

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Philosopher of science J.D. Trout (Loyola/Chicago) comments.

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The ramifications of this trend for the future of private higher education are grim.  The U.S. is, at present, the only nation that enrolls a substantial portion of college-age students in institutions with 10:1 student-faculty ratios.   It's hard to see how this will survive fifty years hence, outside the ranks of the super rich…

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This early tune by the eclectic Welsh band is still one of their best; they remain better-known in Europe than on this side of the Atlantic.    

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An apt commentary by a Yale undergraduate philosophy major in Boston Review.  President Salovey's decision is so bizarre on its face that one can only surmise how many threats from rich alumni must have poured into his office.  But even if Yale isn't quite as filthy rich as Princeton, it's surely filthy rich enough to be…

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Informative.

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..as this action well-illustrates.  No Republican Admin would have taken on the bigots so aggressively.

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No further comment necessary.

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It is related to the incidents mentioned here.  The allegations in this new case are, from what I can gather, much more serious than in prior cases.  The interesting question will be how the university involved responds to a light being shone on events.

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I know there are always some readers thinking about law school, but also hoping to continue in academia, so you may find this data of interest concerning the 2015-16 law teaching job market.   Applications to law schools have declined by about 30% since 2010, as the recession took its toll on legal employment.  Prior to…

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IHE has the story.  And the data is bullshit:  productivity without any screen for quality.   The more shit shovelled per capita, the "better" a department is.  Whoever cooked up this scam must be laughing all the way to the bank.  But that some administrators actually pay for this is what's really amazing.

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…at least in the person of two serious practitioners, Joshua Knobe (Yale) and Daniel Kahneman (Princeton). (Thanks to Richard Marshall for the pointer.)

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…to write his "policy" statements.  Count the sentence fragments, and other grammatical errors, in this piece (doing so is more pleasant than contemplating the substance of the proposed shakedown).

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It's hard to escape that conclusion after reading this account.  And there's a sad lesson here, which is don't walk into a meeting with a former prosecutor hired to do an investigation by your university without having your own attorney present.  What a shame that an apparently devoted teacher should be smeared by her institution.…

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…there would surely be vigorous public discussion of how much of this wealth should be confiscated in order to meet human needs:  99%?  50%?  Less?  But, of course, there isn't.

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A propos this, Professor Wolff is completely right.  Professor Wood is a moralizing reader of Marx, in my sense. ADDENDUM:  Some readers appear to have drawn the wrong inferences from this brief comment of mine and the link to Prof. Wolff.  Allen Wood's book on Marx is terrific; Allen was my first choice to write…

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I'd be curious to hear from knowledgeable readers about the presentation of the psychological research in this piece.  Is it accurate?  Is there countervailing evidence or do the authors accurately report the consensus view?

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…and loses his job at a small Iowa newspaper.  Perfectly legal, by the way, and quite contemptible.  But the biggest threats to free speech in America have always come from the private sector.

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This is very funny and totally apt.  She does not suffer fools–and crypto-fascist charlatans–gladly.

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Philosophical Quarterly's announcement is here, and the paper is available free here.

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…Donald Chump.  If it's on Twitter, it must be true.  (On Trump's record of incompetence.)

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At SSRN; the abstract: This essay discusses a lengthy review by Professor Michael McConnell of the Stanford Law School in the Yale Law Journal of my 2013 book WHY TOLERATE RELIGION? (Princeton University Press). I identify two important objections that Prof. McConnell raises, but also identify eight different mistakes or misunderstandings that mar other parts of…

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I look forward to meeting some longtime readers and correspondents then (as well as seeing old friends from Italy and elsewhere):

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Jonathan Wolff (political philosophy, ethics & public policy), a longtime member of the faculty at University College London, has accepted a Chair in Oxford's relatively new public policy school, the Blavatnik School of Government, effective this fall (though he will be part-time at UCL for 2016-17, moving full-time to Oxford thereafter).

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The silly and the serious. (Thanks, respectively, to Robert McGarvey and Michael Swanson for the pointers.)

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…in NYRB.  Interestingly, since I chided NYRB for its inadequate coverage of philosophy a few years back, there seems to have been a bit more in its pages:  I note just in the last year, for example, philosophical essays and reviews by Samuel Freeman, Tamsin Shaw, Peter Singer, Rebecca Goldstein, John Gray, and Jeremy Waldron.  Cause…

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…"conducted" the premier of his 9th Symphony.  Oh to have been there.  Here's the Chicago Symphony, under Muti, doing their version last year:  

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…at 3AM.  The interview gives a nice, synoptic account of his (revisionary) account of Kant's ethics in particular.  As always, Allen also offers fierce and bracing judgments on matters philosophical and political.  Three examples from this interview (I disagree with them to varying degrees, but that's not the point).  First, on utilitarianism (vide "effective [sic]…

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Another English band to come out of the hard rock/blues explosion, whose most famous representative was Free; this tune is from their second album.  Members of Trapeze later went on to join better known outfits in the 1970s, such as Deep Purple and Judas Priest.  This is from their second album, Medusa, which has a couple of…

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Really?  Bristol Admins, are you nuts?

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Votes of no confidence spread.  President Cross is in a difficult situation; the Regents should all resign, they have more power and they have been complicit in laying the seeds for the destruction of what was a great state university system.  Shame, shame.

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A modern translation, thanks to Rachel Barney (Toronto).

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At last, a scientific explanation for the problem that afflicts so many philosophy-related blogs (among others, no doubt).

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This is quite interesting, though it does proceed on the assumption that Trump actually means what he says, but who really knows?  But Mearsheimer is plainly correct that Hillary Clinton is a "super hawk" with a record of terrible judgment on foreign policy matters.  Mearsheimer clearly likes that he hears Trump as moving away from…

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This time involving the Antioch Review.  IHE quotes excerpts from the "offending" article which seem like rather mild criticism, and certainly not "hate speech" under any known statutory definition of the latter.  It all brings to mind the thought police tantrum that accompanied the discussion of Germaine Greer's views.  Alas.

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