Issues in the profession
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More on the difficult choices facing faculty at Exeter
A propos this, philosopher John Dupre writes with an update: The redundancy project is continuing at Exeter, with at least a heartening level of resistance from staff and the staff union. There is some hope that they will succeed: a lot about the process seems entirely unjustified and of debatable legality. Please everyone consider signing…
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New APA Job Market Mentoring Program accepting applications
Philosopher Amy Berg, Chair of the relevant APA Committee, kindly calls to my attention this new program (more details here), which should be helpful to philosophy job seekers this coming year. Kudos to Professor Berg and the APA for this initiative.
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An open letter calling for disclosures of conflicts of interest in publications by philosophers
I was pleased to be asked to sign this well-done letter by philosophers of science Craig Callender (UC San Diego) and Cailin O’Connor (UC Irvine), which is now public and taking signatures from any interested philosophers. From the letter: In recent years, philosophical writing on areas such as climate change, technology, misinformation, and artificial intelligence…
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An interview with philosopher Rebecca Tuvel at CHE
Here, almost a decade on from the defamatory harassment of her orchestrated by the “usual suspects” in academic philosophy (Alcoff, Trott, Winnubst, et al. [see] . We first wrote about this misconduct here, and quite a bit thereafter. An amusing bit from the interview: Goldstein: Two hallmarks of the Hypatia crisis strike me as relevant…
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UK higher education watch: Exeter threatening to cut 150 academic staff
So reports the BBC. I reached out to the well-known philosopher of science and biology, John Dupre, at Exter, who tells me he has received a possible redundancy notice, although he is already 80% retired. He adds: I expect I’ll go quietly to relieve the pressure slightly on people who need their jobs. I’m certainly…
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Philosophy at Dundee slated for elimination
There’s a petition in support of the program here. (Thanks to Don Sudduth for the pointer.)
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Philosopher Daniel Greco is training AI systems to replace him
He explains at CHE. An excerpt: [O]ne of my main takeaways from gig work [for AI companies] over the last few months is just how hard it is to catch the most sophisticated frontier LLMs in philosophical blunders. When ChatGPT first emerged, a common pastime among my philosopher friends was posting screenshots on social media of its…
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The “Boghossian Report” on the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences (UPDATED)
The full report is here, and there is a collection of choice excerpts here. Readers of Professor Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge* will recognize themes from that book in the report. (Of course, it has to be open to scholars to defend relativism and constructivism, especially since relativism and constructivism in some domains are probably true!)…
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Nottingham faculty protesting proposed bloodbath
A philosopher at the University of Nottingham calls my attention to this: He summarizes the situation as follows: – the removal of just over 600 FTE posts, if necessary through compulsory redundancy in January 2027 (that’s around 50% of academics in arts). – local union (UoNUCU) has declared a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) starting on the…
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Another blow for American universities trying to recruit and enroll foreign students
From CHE: The [new Trump Administratin] guidance, which is expected to be released any day, would make visas valid for four years or the anticipated length of a student’s degree — whichever is shorter. Students in longer programs like doctorates would have to apply for an extension to finish their studies. It’s a shift from…
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How is your school responding to the “Canvas” security breach by hackers?
Most academic readers will have heard of this fiasco. How is it affecting grades, finals, etc.? Is your administration expecting instructors to carry on as though nothing happened? You can post anonymously, but please include a valid university email address (which will not appear).
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A philosopher takes on the “pedagogy experts”
Paul Schofield (Bates) makes the case against them at CHE. (Thanks to Brian Skyrms for the pointer.) UPDATE: Philosopher Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin writes: As both a tenured philosophy professor and director of a teaching and learning center, I read Paul Schofield’s recent CHE piece, “Why Pedagogy ‘Experts’ Are Wrong,” with great interest when I saw it…
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Virtual APA, redux
Pacific APA Program Chair Colin Marshall reflects on the recent virtual APA, which may prove to be the last. Curious what readers who attend APA meetings more than I do think about all this.
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More on PhD admissions: waiting lists etc.
Some apt advice from philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel.
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LLMs and graduate education in philosophy
A philosopher elsewhere (who does more formal work) writes: [S]ince publicly available LLMs significantly reduce a lot of mechanical writing labor (great example: those who write in LaTeX needn’t spend hours and hours trying to code a complicated diagram, since even the medium-grade LLMs do it quickly and, with minimal back and forth, fairly accurately),…
With the disclaimer that I read Appiah’s ‘report’ quickly, and only had access to the excerpt of Kramnick’s that you…