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Tyler Harper on the Arday affair…
…at The Atlantic, and worth reading.
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Habermas’s destruction of the Frankfurt School, an ongoing saga
I’ve remarked on this for years (and more systematically), and although Habermas has a lot of groupies and loyalists, occasionally others do remark on this as well. This rather uneven piece by the philosopher Lorna Finlayson is the latest example. (You have to skip the first part of the essay to get to the interesting…
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Jason Arday dead
Readers will no doubt have heard this news already, but here is one account. No cause of death is given, although one suspects suicide of course given the public humiliation and vilification he suffered. A tragic story. (Earlier coverage here.) (Thanks to David Zimmerman for calling this to my attention.)
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In Memoriam: David Charles (1947-2026)
Professor Charles, who was emeritus at Yale (where he taught from 2014 to 2023), was a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, especially Aristotle. Prior to Yale, he taught at Oxford from 1979 until his move to Yale. Most recently, he was visiting professor of philosophy at Stanford. Comments are open for remembrances from those who…
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Do “liberal” faculty “indoctrinate” their students to be liberal?
This study says the answer is “no.” I cannot comment on the methodology, but let’s remember that many of the most important right-wing figures in American life are graduates of Harvard and Yale (e.g., Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Vivek Ramaswamy, and on and on). Perhaps they are anomalies, or…
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If Abdul El-Sayd is smart and articulate, Francesca Hong (who, fortunately, lost the primary for Governor in Wisconsin)… (UPDATED)
…is not so much–she comes across as more like a flaky teenager. Someone who thinks the police “promote white supremacy” is not a serious person of the left. And her Twitter blather about Thanksgiving et al. is just embarrassing. Fortunately, the Milwaukee County Executive, David Crowley, prevailed (despite polls showing Hong with a big lead).…
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El-Sayd, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan…
He is obviously smart and articulate, and it serves him well given the “shit” being thrown at him. And here’s a good ad that’s running: I’m worried, to be sure, how anti-Muslim and anti-Arab prejudice will affect the vote, but he seems like a skillful politician, so let’s hope he can pull it off.
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Fascinating piece by Tyler Harper on the “diversity” madness at Bates College…
…where he used to teach, before joining The Atlantic. Harper is Black and also a socialist. I first encountered him on Twitter, where he was a sharp critic from the left of the excesses of the Wokerati. This new piece is beautifully written and both horrifying and laugh-out-loud funny at points. Some excerpts (but there…
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University of Minnesota pays $250,000 settlement after wrongfully rescinding job offer to Holocaust scholar who called Israeli retaliation in Gaza “genocide”
They would have had to pay more except the scholar does have a tenured job elsewhere. (Thanks to Phil Bold for the pointer.)
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On appeal, employment tribunal affirms that “anti-Zionism” is a protected “philosophical belief” under UK law
We noted the case of Professor Miller at the University of Bristol a couple of years ago. The appeals tribunal has now concurred with the lower tribunal’s ruling that “anti-Zionism” is protected under the UK Equality Law (see paragraphs 132 ff. in the opinion). (Thanks to Joe Cairns for the pointer.)
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Some sensible comments on the Cambridge/Jason Arday fiasco…
…from Ato Quayson, an English professor at Stanford who taught previously at Cambridge.
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In Memoriam: Anthony Kenny (1931-2026)
Professor Kenny, who spent his career at Oxford University (where he was also Master of Balliol College), wrote widely in the history of philosophy, free will, Wittgenstein, and philosophy of religion (where he was a leading “analytical Thomist”). Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Kenny or for those who wish to…
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Is this Black Cambridge professor a plagiarist and fabulist? (MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 5–UPDATED)
A balanced account of the controversy that started on social media. UPDATE: Several hours after Cambridge University announced it was investigating Professor Arday’s qualifications and record, Professor Arday resigned his position. (More details here.) Cambridge did not conduct itself very honorably in this sad case, but Professor Arday was probably wise to resign rather than…
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Umberto Eco on the Internet
Yes indeed: “The tragedy of the Internet is that it has elevated the village idiot to the status of a bearer of truth.” “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak—people who once only talked at the bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. They were quickly silenced. Now they…
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Illinois-Penn Seminar in Legal Theory on Zoom invites inquiries about attending
Leo Katz (Penn) and Michael Moore (Illinois, formerly Penn) shared this announcement: This year’s iteration of the annual Zoom-only Illinois/Penn Legal Theory Seminar taught by Leo Katz and Michael Moore will be devoted to a chapter-by-chapter examination of a new book by Heidi Hurd and Michael Moore, The Morality of the Criminal Law (Edward Elgar…
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Farewell to the Twitter/Musk cesspool, back to Bluesky
MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 31 After my prior blog service provider closed last year, I returned to Twitter to help build traffic for the blog at its new WordPress location (this one). That served its purpose–indeed, the blog is now running nearly 250,000 views per month even in summer. So I am returning to…
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Amended complaint in philosopher Stephen Kershnar’s lawsuit against SUNY Fredonia for violating his First Amendment rights
His former colleague Neil Feit kindly shared it with me: You can start reading from paragraph 52 onwards for a case study in how not to handle a public relations crisis because of a faculty member’s lawful, but controversial, speech. Every SUNY official mentioned behaved terribly, and there is no question they violated Professor Kershnar’s…
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The Trump collaborators: Michael Crow (Arizona State), Ron Daniels (Johns Hopkins), Douglas Girod (Kansas), Andrew Martin (Wash U/St. Louis)
These four university President have participated in drafting a new “call to action” from Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive turned Secretary of Education, to the nation’s universities. Crow and Martin are no surprise, but Daniels is, and he and Martin have now disgraced their universities, since the “call to action” is both internally inconsistent…
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Afterword to “Bernard Williams’s Debt to Nietzsche: Real or Illusory”
This is strictly for those interested in Nietzsche (and Bernard Williams). A propos this post, here is the paper for those who do not have access to Google Drive (the Afterword starts at p. 21 of the typescript):
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“The Collective: Women in Legal Philosophy”
Information about this organization and its events here. As legal philosopher Barbara Baum Levenbook (a member of the Executive Committee) wrote to me: The mission of The Collective is to promote and support women in legal philosophy and legal theory (broadly defined) who have a commitment to analytical methodology. The Collective began in 2022 as the brainchild of…
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In Memoriam: David Berman (1942-2026)
Professor Berman, who spent his career at Trinity College Dublin, was well-known for his work on Berkeley and also on Schopenhauer, and also wrote widely on Irish philosophy. The TCD memorial notice is here. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Berman or for those who wish to comment on the significance…
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In Memoriam: Alan Soble (1947-2025)
Professor Soble, emeritus at the University of New Orleans, died last year. Philosopher Raja Halwani at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago kindly shared this lovely tribute to his friend and collaborator: A Tribute to Alan Soble Raja Halwani Alan Soble died on March 5, 2025. I didn’t know that he had…
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Trump may kill us all even without nuclear war
Ships stuck because of the Strait of Hormuz blockage are breeding grounds for biological disaster.
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In Memoriam: Thomas E. Hill, Jr. (1937-2026) (MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 22–READERS WHO MISSED IT MAY ENJOY THE SPLENDID TRIBUTES TO PROFESSOR HILL IN THE COMMENTS)
Professor Hill was a leading moral philosopher, known especially for his work on Kantian ethics. He was emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught from 1984 until his retirement in 2017 (he taught at UCLA from 1968 until his move to Chapel Hill). Comments are open for remembrances from…
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Graduate admissions in the age of AI, redux
Last January, we had a thread about how to protect the integrity of philosophy graduate admissions given the possibility that applicants might be using LLMs to generate some or all of their writing samples. I thought it would be useful to have a follow-up thread to see what worked and what didn’t. For those new…
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Another UK academic staff “bloodbath” in the works: U of Lincoln proposes making 140 faculty “redundant”
Oy veh. This comes on the heels of cuts in prior years at Lincoln. This round of cuts will affect philosophy, among many other units. The British university system is in serious crisis (although not because of “market ideology” [as the preceding piece says], but because of an unstable halfway house between “market ideology” and…
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“Philosophy in 3D”
Wittgenstein and Kant. Pretty weird! Has anyone tried these? Are they any good? (Thanks to Guy Elgat for the pointer.)
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Hopkins from NYU to Oxford
Robert Hopkins (aesthetics, philosophy of mind), Professor of Philosophy at New York University, will take up a Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford University in October 2026.
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Who were the invited guests at Alfred North Whitehead’s 70th birthday party in 1931?
There’s a website that answers this pressing question! It’s an interesting snapshot of philosophy and elite intellectual culture at the time. Among the guests was the logician Henry Sheffer, about whom we learn: Henry Maurice Sheffer (1882–1964) was born in Odessa, Russia (now Ukraine) later becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States (1904). He…
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Interview with philosopher Alex Byrne…
…in CHE. What happened to his wife, the evolutionary biologist Carol Hooven, is really awful, and should perhaps remind the zealots that there are human costs to their sanctimonious crusades. Byrne does not come off, per the article’s title, as a “smug dickhead” (unlike the pathetic Twitter pest Jonathan Weisberg who called him that!).
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Statement by British Academy President on the UK “higher education crisis”…
…and its disproportionate effect on the humanities and social sciences. I was sad to see that she felt the need to say this early on: “Important skills and capabilities – qualities we know employers value and the economy needs – are being lost.” So much for the Humboldt ideal that universities teach knowledge and skills…
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Open access philosophy books, a thread: Part IV (moving to front from May 28)
The last thread had fewer entries than earlier ones, but several months have past, perhaps readers can supply some new links. The instructions, as before: In light of the growing number of these volumes, I am going to run a thread periodically in which I invite authors or readers to share links to philosophical works…
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Philosophy book sales, a snapshot
I recently got some information from Oxford University Press about book sales. Readers who wonder, “How much do philosophy books sell?” may find this interesting. I should note that Nietzsche books typically do well (by academic standards), since he has a multi-disciplinary audience of interested readers. I should note that many academic philosophy books (including…
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If Trump weren’t such a short-sighted malevolent buffoon…
…it might have occurred to him that murdering another country’s head of state (who was also a major religious figure) would result in threats like this to him and his family (see also). Of course, one suspects that the Iranians won’t dare act on this, since it would compel our humane leaders to murder millions…
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The latest in scams targeting academics: Amy Bloom, the “art curator” in Monaco
The saga continues: philosopher Warren Goldfarb (emeritus, Harvard) shared the email below with me, suspecting it too was a scam: From: Amy Bloom <amybloom1254@gmail.com> Subject: Reflections on Logic, Philosophy, and Cultural Narratives Date: March 13, 2026 at 4:29:11 PM EDT To: [omitted] Dear Professor Goldfarb, I’m Amy, an art curator from Monaco. I work with collectors…
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CHE editor Len Gutkin on Appiah’s report on “literary studies”
For those who didn’t have time to read Appiah’s report, this is a balanced overview and assessment. An excerpt: The most trenchant of the report’s methodological critiques is on “identity as a basis for criticism.” Appiah prosecutes an attack on a deformed version of standpoint epistemology by which, in the words of the anthropologist David Stoll, an…
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Journal of Medical Ethics retracts article with fake AI-generated references
JME retraction notice is here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2026/07/07/jme-2025-111085ret. And here is the Bioethics article that exposed the fraud: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bioe.70099. Johann Go, who flagged this for me, observes that, “The author submitted using a French Yahoo email address, and claimed to be affiliated with the French anti-doping agency (though apparently no evidence could be found on their website…
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Alex Byrne comes to the defense of the traditional radical feminist theory of patriarchy…
…which does seem far more plausible than the candidate successor. (Regarding the Nietzsche quote which makes an amusing appearance near the end of Byrne’s essay: Nietzsche is obviously thinking of, among others, Kant, who finally confesses that the purpose of the critique of pure reason is to make room for faith.)
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Dear Terence (if I may) We are rather wandering off-topic, but yes I stand by my relatively low estimate of…
Is it so? I would have liked to have overlapped more with Williams’ writing career, for the joy (or experience…
I asked Claude about the notion of “planetary telepathy,” based on the concept and architecture of an Internet of Things…
Thank you, this is very helpful. If you’re willing to indulge me, I have a few questions. First, there’s a…
Very clever, but why stop at validity? Surely a sound argument for the existence of God is better than an…
Modern logic is a branch of philosophy and ALSO a branch of mathematics, but the profession of logic seems to…
https://youtu.be/G29DXfcdhBg I’m sure many other practical philosophy teachers feel the same way, but thirty years ago I simply would not…