Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004) His distinguished career in Italian intellectual and political life is remembered here.

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Fred D’Agostino (philosophy of linguistics, philosophy of the social sciences, political philosophy, philosophy of science) of the University of New England has accepted a senior offer from the University of Queensland. This is the 3rd senior appointment for the Queensland department in the past two years; the others were Mark Colyvan and Phil Dowe, who’ve

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…and Michigan philosopher Peter Ludlow in the New York Times.

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Yet another distinguished philosopher and PGR Advisory Board member, Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion) at Yale University, has turned down an offer from another top department, in this case the University of Arizona. This leads me to wonder: is there a correlation between being a PGR Advisory Board member and market

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Pennsylvania State University at Altoona is going to find it awfully hard to hire anyone if they follow through with this persecution of a tenured professor. Shame on them!

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Distinguished philosopher and PGR Advisory Board member John Martin Fischer (University of California, Riverside) will be the guest on John Perry and Ken Taylor’s radio program, “Philosophy Talk,” Tuesday January 20 at noon PST. The topic will be “immortality”. There will be a live stream on the internet at the KALW website, KALW.org. The first

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Leave it to the sensible Canadians to clear things up here: “Some refer to George W. Bush as another Hitler. This is a gross exaggeration. He has constructed no death camps and only one concentration camp — at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “While it does seem, in Nuremberg terms, that Bush could be called a

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…go after the judiciary. More from Miami Law prof Michael Froomkin here.

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Ned Block, a leading figure in the philosophy of mind currently at New York University (and even more distinguished, of course, as a member of the PGR Advisory Board!), has turned down the senior offer from Harvard. That’s a setback for Harvard, which has plans to try to replenish its strengths in what is sometimes

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I’ve heard from various friends and acquaintances who had expected to see me on the Sunday morning (January 4, 2004) panel on “Motivations for Legal Scholarship: Why We Write?” at the annual meeting of the AALS in Atlanta. I was listed in the program, along with Yale Kamisar (Michigan/San Diego), Jonathan Macey (Cornell), Kimberly Yuracko

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With permission, I’m printing below a lucid and gripping account from a U.S. soldier with a reserve unit of the 82nd Airborne in the vicinity of Fallujah. (This came via a colleague, though I touched base with the solider directly to secure permission. Identifying references have been removed.) ============= Hi guys, I got some internet

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…is here. So much for the Enlightenment…

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But the day happens to be the day of his orals…more here. Very funny. (Thanks to Michael Sevel for the pointer.)

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Anyone interested in legal philosophy will want to read my colleague Les Green’s new essay on the subject in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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So far the discussion among myself, Steve Bainbridge, and Dean Sargent (and now add philosopher Brian Weatherson as well) has focused on whether existing faculty should get “scholarly” (or perhaps “service”) credit for the work they do on their blogs. But what about those bloggers who are not presently faculty but may be looking to

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Dean Sargent from Villanova has offered some additional thoughts in response to my comments on the subject here.My thanks to Dean Sargent for continuing the discussion. His comments follow: In his thoughtful comments on my post, Brian Leiter advances the discussion, as usual. I’m glad to see we agree “in principle” that blogging can constitute

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Philosopher Sean Kelly (Princeton) has called to my attention something important, namely, that the American Philosophical Association has issued an official policy statement on offers of employment here. Note, in particular, the APA’s recommendation that: “In normal circumstances, a prospective employee should have at least two weeks for consideration of a written offer from a

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Steve Bainbridge (UCLA law) reports remarks by Mark Sargent, the distinguished and successful Dean of Villanova Law School, here that suggest a case for giving scholarly credit for blogging by law professors. Law faculty are typically evaluated along three dimensions: scholarly publication, teaching, and “service” to both the institution and the community. It seems to

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…here and they certainly make clear why Bush is the worst President in the history of the United States. How embarrassing that so many law professors who blog won’t say as much.

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…are trying to strike a blow for ignorance, and Pharyngula wipes the floor with them. Bravo!

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MOVING TO FRONT BECAUSE OF FUNNY UPDATE, BELOW Speaking of Blogopaths…this right-wing blogger (according to his bio: Pepperdine Law grad, “licensed to practice in the State of Illinois”) claims to have been having an e-mail debate with Noam Chomsky, but Noam made him promise not to publish it, so all he can do is tell

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A student at a top law school writes with comments on the Arab poet Adonis’s defense of French secuarlism: “I check your website regularly; thanks for the insightful posts. I write to respond to one of them. “I begin by writing that I feel blessed to not live in France. I’m a law student at

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An assistant professor of history writes here about the deluge of mindless hate mail he got for an op-ed critical of Bush. He concludes: “So I suppose what gets me the most about this whole ugly episode is the creeping realization that some members of the audience “out there,” the people that I’ve always felt

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…in trouble: vide Bainbridge and the UCLA press release for more. UPDATE: Philosopher Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis) writes with the following useful perspective on the preceding: “The fact is that almost all of the cuts that have taken place are in things like outreach programs, agricultural extension, etc. As far as I can see core

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Visit Jessica Wilson’s site, if you haven’t already–one of the best political sites on the web, with loads of great links.

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(The first installment in this series is here.) Two questions: How do I prepare for a campus visit, and what information should I get from the school where I’m interviewing? Suppose my spouse/partner is also seeking an academic job. Is it appropriate to raise that issue with the schools interviewing me, and if so, when?

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…have all coalesced here in “The Brian Leiter Project.” Rather amusing I thought.

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Lee Anne Fennell (behavioral law and economics), currently an Assistant Professor here at Texas, has accepted an offer from the University of Illinois (where her husband–alas for us, good for them–secured a tenure-track post in the Anthropology Department). Sigh… David Hyman (health law), currently at the University of Maryland, has accepted an offer from the

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…is here. An excerpt: What hope is there for the international community? The main prospect for the future of the world is that perpetual war waged by the United States against small countries it declares to be “rogue states” will lead to the slow growth of a coalition of enemies of the United States who

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The Arab poet Adonis comments on the French approach, especially as it affects Muslims here. He writes: “Public institutions belong to all citizens: schools and universities, in particular, are open to all. They are places from which all external marks of denomination and distinctive ‘signs’ should be excluded. And to this category of ‘public institutions’

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…by a gifted Philippino writer is here. (If this link doesn’t take you directly, click on “Columnists” and then “Red Constantino.”) Also nicely done is “remember, refuse, resist.”

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Christmas Cancelled as Security Measure by Austin Pastor Jim Rigby (Ellis Island) The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as “frankincense” and “myrrh.” While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse

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A bit more than 5 months have passed since I started this blog. The first month I got 4,941 visits. The second month 9,387 visits. The third 13, 790. The fourth 20, 372. And the fifth, 23,458. It’s clear my readership is heavily, but not exclusively, academia-based: the first two weeks of December, for example,

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…is plugging my blog (sort of). According to their December updates: UT LAW PROF CALLS CONSERVATIVES THE “TEXAS TALIBAN” University of Texas Law Professor Brian Leiter refers to Christian conservatives as the “Texas Taliban” on his website: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/.“While Professor Leiter is certainly well within his First Amendment rights, this kind of rhetoric is not only

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First a singer with the Dixie Chicks dissed President Bush by saying she was “embarrassed” he was from Texas. And now country music and Texas legend Willie Nelson has gone a step further, casting his support for Dennis Kucinich and penning a scathing anti-war, anti-Bush song. Nelson’s friend, the great Houston trial lawyer Joe Jamail

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There will be little new between now and the week of January 5. Best wishes to all for the New Year.

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…is discussed here. It says something about the sorry intellectual condition of the country that this nonsense occurs even in a progressive state like Minnesota.

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MWM, age unknown (mature, not elderly), famously ugly but a good talker. I like questions, not answers; reason, not passion; wisdom, not wealth; Euripides, not Aristophanes. Seeks ignorant and irrational woman or handsome youth to do what is wrong. [Note: Nietzsche helped Socrates write this one.] (More Personal Ads of the Philosophers are here.)

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Two of my favorite academic bloggers, Chun the Unavoidable and John Holbo, are having an interesting discussion of the Modern Language Association, which is often the target of ridicule in the media. Chun is a literary theorist and scholar, Holbo a philosopher. It’s a good discussion.

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Thanks to Ciceronian Review for this gem: John Stuart Mill, letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March, 1866): “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly

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