From Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s address of Feb. 11, 2003, just published in the S.Ct. Historical Q. as “From Benjamin to Breyer: Is There a Jewish Seat?”: “Jews in the United States, I mean to convey, face few closed doors and do not fear letting the world know who they are. … What

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Anecdotal evidence, in the form of inquiries from students here and elsewhere, suggests that there is a real desire for a good introductory text on metaethics, on the whole range of issues about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of value (esp. moral value). There are, of course, some excellent anthologies, like Sayre-McCord’s 1988 Essays on

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From a faculty member at Cambridge: “About four or five weeks ago, Andrew Sullivan posted on his Web site a missive from a Jewish American who apparently studied Law in Cambridge. The writer of the missive (whose name was not revealed) claimed that he had experienced anti-Semitism in a number of contexts while in Cambridge.

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…slams U.S. human rights hypocrisy. Story here: “Iran’s Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday and sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it of hiding behind the Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights.”

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…is here. Don’t expect this coverage of Afghanistan to turn up in the New York Times. (RAWA is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan; they are the authors of what remains the best statement on the 9/11 atrocities, which is in my links column to the left.)

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Do see Jessica Wilson’s useful links on this subject and follow the links to Verified Voting.

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The distinguished legal historian A.W. Brian Simpson, reviewing the journal Feminist Legal Studies in the TLS (of November 7 2003), writes: “The successful production of a feminist law journal is an aspect of the more general proliferation of specialist law journals, a phenomenon which reflects the tendency of professional groups to fragment, with their members

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A philosopher from a liberal arts college writes about letters of recommendations based on the experience of s/he and several colleagues having “read literally hundreds of ethics applications….” in recent years: “We now regard as essentially devoid of cognitive content the evaluative statements in letters from [three very prominent philosophers, names omitted]. “We also had

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Everyone knows about the loads of blogs by law students, but philosophy graduate students are also in on the act, including three folks here at Texas: check out Brandon Butler, Conor Roddy, and Michael Sevel. I would be remiss if I also didn’t mention Brown grad student Jonathan Ichikawa, who made an early contribution in

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Michael Jubien (metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language) at the University of California at Davis has accepted a senior offer from the University of Florida at Gainesville, to start next fall. Last year, Florida made another significant senior appointment of David Copp (ethics, metaethics) from Bowling Green State University (Copp was, prior to that, a

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I just noticed, via Chun the Unavoidable, that the Chomsky haters in the blogosphere are all fuming over the following banal remark from an interview given by Chomsky in The Independent: Question: Is anti-Semitism on the increase? Answer: In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past. All the worldclass

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This week and next, philosophy departments around the U.S. will be deciding whom to interview at the philosophy convention between Xmas and New Year. That means that hundreds of philosophers are now immersed in reading letters of recommendation from their professional colleagues. The experience is a curious one, since the letters (at least the ones

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A rather bracing report by an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma.

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Jessica Wilson, a very talented young philosopher at Michigan (whom we, among others, tried to recruit a couple of years back), has a new blog here, devoted to political matters. As befits a smart philosopher, of course, she is on the left.

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Burnele Powell, former Dean at the University of Missouri (Kansas City), will be the new Dean of the University of South Carolina. Story here.

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I am told (by someone at Cornell) that the new Dean will be Stewart Schwab, a longtime member of the faculty and very distinguished scholar who is one of the key figures in their outstanding law and social sciences group there. UPDATE: Confirmation here.

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…is here. A good group of contributors, including leading figures in the field like Antony Duff and Stephen Morse. UPDATE: Just 4-5 hours ago I told my colleague Mitch Berman about this new blog, and I now see he’s already been invited to join as an official contributor! That’s good for the Punishment Theory Blog,

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…are here. Mosquitoes are “annoying”; the folks on this list demean human existence.

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Finally, my law school adopted a new curve, moving the mean from 3.0 to 3.3–basically the move the University of Virginia School of Law made 5-6 years ago. (Stanford has a mean of 3.4, Cornell a mean of 3.35, Michigan a mean of 3.19, among others.) It’s effective immediately (i.e., it affects grades for this

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…is here.

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…courtesy of another very funny law student. And another funny take on law school exams from another very funny law student.

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I concur with this UT law student’s letter to the Green Party here.

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For understandable, if philosophically frivolous, reasons the collapse of the Soviet Union has been taken—especially in popular culture (including popular “intellectual” culture, such as the blogosphere)—as signalling the defeat of Marx qua philosopher. (The mock interview with Marx that was making the rounds of the blogosphere awhile back gave expression to this kind of view.)

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Jay Rosenberg at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has penned (in the November 2003 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA–APA members can access it on-line here) a splendid memorial notice for his late colleague Paul Ziff (1920-2003), that richly evokes both the man and his philosophical work. (I think it’s the most

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…is here. An excerpt: Private Charles Sanders, who has been stationed in Iraq since the invasion said: “I was supposed to be back home by now. It was really getting depressing, but this is great. Sure, I don’t get to look into the eyes of my little girl, or hold my wife tenderly in my

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Chris Ragan, a McGill University economist, observed: “You can be a social conservative in the U.S. without being a wacko. Not in Canada.” (from The New York Times). As one of my Canadian friends (someone who has been all over Europe and Israel) observes, coming to the U.S. is like arriving on the planet mars:

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BREAKING SUPREME COURT NEWS! The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. this Christmas. This isn’t for any religious or constitutional reason. They simply have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the nation’s capital. There was no problem, however, in finding enough

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As the blog approaches the 50,000 mark–just in time for its 4-month anniversary, tomorrow–I’ve received a nice note from a very good former student in Jurisprudence who says the blog “is always a contentious polemical delight.” We aim to please…contentiously and polemically, of course.

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…is waiting to happen with the increasing prevalence of electronic voting. For more, see Krugman.

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…is chillingly described here. The target: a man of the cloth. Shame on him, doesn’t he know whose side God is on?

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Looking for holiday gifts for your cosmopolitan friends? Check out the titles that are part of the Routledge Classics. It’s a terrific catalogue, something for almost all intellectual tastes. (By the way, while I edit a series for Routledge, I’ve no connection to these offerings and make no money on their sale. If you want

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NEW UPDATES AT THE END Academic job seekers in philosophy may already be familiar with the short article the Chronicle of Higher Education asked me to write some time ago on “Landing a Faculty Job in Philosophy.” And anecdotal evidence suggests many of those on the law teaching market have seen my longer document on

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Dan Brock, one of the most talented philosophers (perhaps the most talented) working in medical ethics, will be leaving the National Institute of Health at the end of March 2004 to take up a new Chair at the Harvard Medical School, where he will direct the Division of Medical Ethics and participate in a new

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Dick Posner provides further evidence for my earlier points about legal realism and judicial confirmation (e.g., here). From this interview, discussing the “politicization” of the judicial confirmation process: “I don’t object to the fact that Senators are concerned about the ideology of judicial candidates; the President is concerned, so why shouldn’t the Senators be? Anyone

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At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a

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Interesting data here (courtesy of Brian Weatherson) on the distribution of jobs advertised this year by area of philosophy.

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Hugh Kenner (1923-2003) The New York Times obituary is here. 11/30 UPDATE: And see also this appreciation from the NY Times as well.

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…read about it here. Who knew?

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This post by philosopher John Holbo on a volume that tries to defend the “bad writing” of Judith Butler et al. is certainly worth reading. I especially enjoyed the dismemberment of the hopeless John McCumber. But here’s something for philosophers to puzzle about: can we say, with confidence, that Judith Butler et al. are really

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His explanation is here. He observes: “I think OBEs compromise writers and poets, and laureates suddenly go soft….” And not just OBEs…

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