Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Supporting tenure

For those looking for academic employment, there are two main options: tenure track and non-tenure track. Check back for the latter in my second post of the day, when I’ll be writing about the issues facing non-tenure track faculty, especially adjuncts. But in this post, I’ll focus on issues related to tenure.

Tenure is a hallmark of the academic profession. It has long existed to provide safeguards for those entrusted to examine the hard issues and research questions that may not be popular or even popularly understood. It guarantees a right to due process before dismissal from employment. And our society would be much worse off without such protections.

But tenure has gotten a bad rap. According to much of public opinion, and unfortunately according to some in power in universities and our nation’s legislatures, tenured professors are paid too much to work too little, and can’t be removed from duty even if they’re doing a terrible job. Little attention is paid to the ways that tenure advances our society, and the public message instead focuses on the myths about the tenure system. As a result, lawmakers and university leaders have, at times, taken to undermining tenure, whether because they believe the myths about it or as a shortsighted financial “solution” in a bad economy.

The APA stands with other academic associations and disciplinary societies in supporting tenure and working to preserve this important practice. For philosophers who feel their tenure rights have been violated, our Committee on the Defense of Professional Rights of Philosophers can be an excellent resource and ally. The APA, like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), censures institutions when “conditions for academic freedom and tenure are unsatisfactory at a college or university”; these institutions are also marked in Jobs for Philosophers so that applicants considering employment with such institutions can be aware of their censured status.

Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate that attacks on tenure will go away anytime soon, but so long as we are around to do so, the APA will continue to fight for the institution of tenure and for our tenured members’ rights.

How a hiring department should handle a call-back

Spiros has some good advice that will make life more pleasant for job candidates and make the visit more productive.

Making the job market experience more bearable

Searching for a job, especially in this economy, isn’t a picnic for anyone. But the academic job market is unique, and uniquely challenging. Academic jobs for philosophers, especially tenure-track positions, have become scarcer, yet the number of philosophy degree-earners has not similarly dropped. As a result, the jobs that are available—even those that might have been less desirable in years past—are more competitive. And this is to say nothing of the stresses that have always come with the philosophy job market (building a placement file, interviewing for positions, and so on).

The APA has long served an important role in the job market, and as times change and the job market evolves, we are committed to continuing to provide value and resources to our members and the profession.

We’ve already put in significant effort in building the new, more fully featured, online-only Jobs for Philosophers, and we will continue to take user feedback into account as we develop it further. We also this year partnered with Interfolio to offer complimentary free trials of their Dossier service for candidates and ByCommittee service for hiring committees to all APA members. We’re reexamining the APA’s placement service at divisional meetings, looking for ways to improve the experience for candidates. And as you know, in response to member feedback, the Eastern Division meeting will soon be held in early January rather than the last week of December.

The APA task force on membership and member services last year made a number of recommendations related to the job market, including studying the relative merits of in-person and electronic (i.e., Skype) interviews and clarifying the role of the meeting receptions to the effect that these receptions are not to be used for supplementary or additional interviewing. Michael Bratman, chair of the board of officers, has been tasked with assigning these recommendations to APA committees for review and implementation as part of our efforts to improve the job market experience for all involved.

We at the APA are thinking carefully right now about how to sustain our important relationship to the job market—that is, how we can continue to provide safeguards for candidates, such as our non-discrimination policy and prohibitions against inappropriate interviewing practices, and a comprehensive clearinghouse for jobs that makes the application process easier—in light of the ways the job market is evolving. We strongly believe that the APA can and should continue to serve this important role; we believe we have a duty to the profession to do so.

The job market in philosophy is complex and changing rapidly. And while we don’t have all the answers, we’re working hard to make a difficult process at least a little bit easier for all involved.

11 Dogmas of "Analytic" (i.e., armchair) Philosophy

According to naturalist Paul Thagard (Waterloo).

John Haldane (St. Andrews) interviewed...

...at 3AM.

More on the compensation of University Presidents

Noticing last week's item on the eye-popping compensation of disgraced Penn State President Spanier, reader Blake Taylor calls my attention to the Harper's Index which reports this gem:

• Percentage increase since 2000 in the compensation of full professors at the fifty wealthiest
       private U.S. universities : 14
• In the compensation of the presidents of those universities : 75

What can we do about diversity?

To begin by stating the obvious: philosophy is one of the least diverse humanities fields, and indeed one of the least diverse fields in all of academia, in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. Philosophy has a reputation for not only a lack of diversity but also an often hostile climate for women and minorities. There have been, in recent years, a number of efforts to bring awareness to and address this lack of diversity, including the well-known blogs Feminist Philosophers, What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?, and What We’re Doing About What It’s Like. These efforts have drawn attention to important issues that have often gone unacknowledged, but they alone cannot suffice to transform the discipline of philosophy into the diverse and inclusive field it should be. And of course, these efforts focus on gender, and while efforts to improve the climate for women in philosophy may help the situation for other underrepresented populations, there must be more focus on how to improve the climate specifically for people of color, LGBT people, people with disabilities, and other minority groups.

Increased diversity is needed throughout all levels of philosophy: undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and professional leaders. Increased diversity is needed in publication in philosophy: a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicated that philosophy is one of the five fields with the largest gender gaps in publishing, and though publication of women in philosophy is rising, these numbers are increasing at a slower rate than other fields, so philosophy is still losing ground. And more inclusive representation at philosophy conferences is also needed (see the Gendered Conference Campaign).

Now is the time for philosophy to put in the hard work necessary to improve the climate for underrepresented populations and increase the number of women and minority philosophers. There is no one right answer as to how to do so, but there are at least a few key strategies we at the APA see as promising.

Mentoring programs can help people of color, women, and other minorities who are already in philosophy to feel comfortable and supported, to respond to incidents of discrimination and fight bias (including internalized prejudices), and to overcome the often challenging climate with which they are faced. A pilot program for mentoring junior female faculty in philosophy—one that the APA has been proud to support this year and last—is, I hope, just one of many such efforts to come aimed at supporting philosophers from underrepresented communities.

It is also essential that students in philosophy courses see themselves in the discipline—in the instructors and in the authors of the materials taught. Building more inclusive curricula and increasing diversity among teachers of philosophy can go a long way toward helping young minority students continue their study in philosophy.

Improving the climate for women and LGBT people in philosophy also means addressing the very serious problem of sexual harassment. The APA board of officers has recently charged an ad hoc committee on sexual harassment to focus specifically on this issue, and we strongly encourage individual departments to investigate and address sexual harassment as it affects them. One excellent resource for departments will be the APA Committee on the Status of Women’s forthcoming site visit program (loosely modeled on a similar program by the American Physical Society's Committee on the Status of Women in Physics), which will be piloted in 2013.

And perhaps the most powerful tool we have to increase diversity in philosophy is data collection: there are many good ideas about how to make philosophy a more welcoming place for minorities and women, but we have no way of knowing whether our efforts are effective if we cannot measure their impact. And there are minorities about which we have little or no data: the prevalence of LGBT philosophers and disabled philosophers, for example, has rarely been tracked, so it’s very difficult to know how philosophy compares to other fields on inclusiveness in these areas. The APA has already begun collecting data on our members and on philosophy programs (see the just-relaunched Guide to Graduate Programs in Philosophy) and additional data collection efforts are in the works as well.

We have a long road ahead of us as we work to increase philosophy’s diversity, and we need the full cooperation of philosophy programs and our members to make these efforts as comprehensive as possible, so I hope that you will join with us in these efforts and contribute to their success.

Better technology, more communication

Communications and technology are paramount for any modern organization, and the APA can do much better in these areas than we have in the past. And I promise you, it’s my mission—and the mission of the APA board of officers, the association’s main policy-making body—to do better.

First, the big news. As we announced just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the APA is seeking a new logo and branding, in conjunction with a new website. We’ll be developing that new website as part of our transition to an association management system that will offer much of what so many people have been demanding: online membership application and renewal, online meeting registration, and more resources and functions for users. The new website should launch in the spring.

We’re also preparing to join the 21^st century with a Facebook page and Twitter profile so that you can communicate with us more directly. And if you’re a member, you may have already noticed that you’re receiving emails from us just a little more often—we won’t flood your inbox, but we want to make sure you’re getting the information you need and want from us in a timely manner.

We’ve got more ideas for the longer term—an APA blog, more interactive online communities, and mobile applications, for example—but we’re taking care of the basics first.

We’re also working on new approaches to our publications, including moving more of them online. We know that many of you aren’t satisfied with the current delivery method for the Proceedings & Addresses (that is, by snail mail), and we’re working on plans to provide that content to you in new and more useful ways. We aim to highlight the content in our newsletters more prominently, and we’re reviving defunct and out-of-date publications (the Guide to Graduate Study in Philosophy, for example) and contemplating new ones (such as email bulletins).

The board of officers is now considering proposals from publishers for an APA journal, and we are in the process of setting up a committee to develop the journal’s editorial structure and nominate its inaugural editor(s). The journal will aim to address a number of issues for the profession, not the least of which will be to increase conversation across the dividing lines and sub-disciplines of philosophy, providing an opportunity for better communication not only between the APA and the philosophical community but also within the profession itself.

These modes of communication are largely new to the APA. Our goal is simply to provide the best services that we can to our members and the philosophical community. I hope you’ll continue to communicate with us as these efforts move forward. You’ve shown a lot of patience with the APA (though I know many of you lost that patience long ago), and I can’t fully express how much we appreciate your continued interest in and support of the APA’s work. We take very seriously these efforts to prove ourselves to you all over again.

We welcome your feedback—we want to know what kinds of communications and technology you want to see from the APA.

As is standard practice on this blog, signed comments only:  full name and valid e-mail address required.

Press ethics in Britain

Philosopher Rae Langton (MIT) calls my attention to the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics in the U.K., coming on the heels of various scandals involving the tabloids and their intrusive and sometimes illegal techniques for acquiring "information." Interestingly, as Professor Langton pointed out to me, several philosophers and political theorists gave evidence during the Inquiry, including Jeremy Waldron, Onora O'Neill, John Tasioulas, Jennifer Hornsby, Susan Mendus, Rowan Cruft, Neil Manson, John Thompson, as well as Professor Langton.   Professor Hornsby comments on some of the issues raised by the Inquiry here.

By way of introduction

As the new executive director of the American Philosophical Association, I am acutely aware that there are many pressing issues facing both the discipline of philosophy and the APA itself. I am committed to ensuring that the APA is a leader in addressing the problems facing philosophy and philosophers, and I am guest blogging at Leiter Reports this week in an effort to open more lines of communication between the APA and the philosophical community. This blog has been the venue for many discussions about issues in the profession, but the APA has not participated enough in those discussions; I aim to change that. Many thanks to Brian Leiter for offering me this opportunity and sharing this space with me this week.

To start, I would like to introduce myself.

As you likely know, I joined the APA as executive director this past August. Unlike my predecessors, I come to this position not as a philosopher by training, but as a nonprofit administrator.

Immediately before joining the APA, I was the associate director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a national organization advocating for civil liberties in the context of post-9/11 national security policies. My work there and at other past organizations included communications, technology, diversity, and development.

I also have a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and a master’s degree in public policy and administration, both from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While at UMass, I served on a faculty search committee and a department diversity committee, and got experience in both research and teaching.

You may have noticed, at this point, that I haven’t yet mentioned philosophy. That’s because, prior to joining the APA, my connection to philosophy was not professional but personal: my husband is a philosopher. I met him during the ABD phase of his pursuit of his Ph.D., which he earned early this year. Together, we watched as the economy collapsed, just as he was preparing to go on the job market for the first time. We reviewed many issues of Jobs for Philosophers together, frustrated at both the lack of opportunities for him and the technology’s limitations. I attended the Eastern Division meeting, offering what moral support I could to both him and our friends in similar circumstances. And I supported him as he searched for adjunct positions, trying to maintain his connection to the profession—and his financial security—as the job market failed to recover.

When the APA began its search for a new executive director last year, it was my husband who noted that the board was looking primarily for an administrator—someone who was familiar with the profession of philosophy but who had the experience to run a national organization—and suggested that I might be the right person for the job. And now, here I am.

All of this is simply to say that while I am not a philosopher by trade, I am keenly aware of and prepared to take on the issues facing the profession: the lack of diversity, the struggling job market, the attacks on tenure and tenuous situation for those without it, the need for improved technology and communication, pluralism in the discipline… the list goes on. I look forward to having a conversation this week—one that will continue throughout my time at the APA—looking closely at what the APA and philosophy as a profession can and must do to make things better. And I look forward to having more conversations in other venues as the APA works to broaden and improve the ways we communicate.

[Please note: My appearance on this blog does not constitute an endorsement by the APA of the blog or its content.]

Log-rolling in our time: the Nagel/Plantinga saga

Mohan Matthen (Toronto) comments on the peculiar spectacle of Thomas Nagel and Alvin Plantinga trading laudatory reviews of their recent anti-naturalist books in different high-profile publications, especially when at least one of the books (Nagel's) is obviously not very good (I have not read Plantinga's, though I'm not optimistic given what I've read about it).  (Commenting on Professor Matthen's post, the distinguished Oxford philosopher of physics David Wallace offers the amusing quip:  "I was initially shocked to find that two such distinguished philosophers were so remarkably ignorant of basic science. It totally violated my common sense.  Then I realised that in that case, it couldn't be true. So that's okay.")

Plantinga's review begins on a remarkably disingenous note; he informs his readers that:

NAGEL IS NOT AFRAID to take unpopular positions, and he does not seem to mind the obloquy that goes with that territory....Nagel has endorsed the negative conclusions of the much-maligned Intelligent Design movement, and he has defended it from the charge that it is inherently unscientific. In 2009 he even went so far as to recommend Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, a flagship declaration of Intelligent Design, as a book of the year. For that piece of blasphemy Nagel paid the predictable price; he was said to be arrogant, dangerous to children, a disgrace, hypocritical, ignorant, mind-polluting, reprehensible, stupid, unscientific, and in general a less than wholly upstanding citizen of the republic of letters.

I suppose it testifies to the influence of this blog that most of Plantinga's sarcastic aside clearly references criticisms levelled at Nagel on this blog (and other authors to whom I linked).  But Plantinga's silliness aside, let's be clear why Nagel earned the criticism:

1.  There is no scientific controversy about Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

2.  There is no evidence for Intelligent Design or any other religiously motivated alternative.

3.  As good fallibilists, we can acknowledge that, despite (1) and (2), Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection might turn out to be false.  But fabrications, confusions, and bone-headed philosophcial speculations give us no reason to be skeptical.

4.  Given 1-3, it's an outrage to try to encourage high schools to teach children anything other than Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection as part of the standard biology curriculum.  The raison-d'etre of the Discovery [sic] Institute and its paid shills like Stephen Meyer are to perpetrate this outrage.

No one doubts that Nagel and Plantinga are capable philosophers, who have done high quality professional work during their careers.   Plantinga at least has the excuse of his religion to explain his more doubtful philosophical forays.  But neither can be excused for trying to legitimate the hucksters at the Discovery [sic] Institute and the Intelligent Design scam.  This really isn't a hard issue, and one can predict with certainty that both Nagel's and Plantinga's trafficking with this nonsense will not redound to their credit over the long haul.

Advice for job-seekers in North America looking at positions overseas?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOV. 27 IN THE HOPE THAT MORE READERS WILL CONTRIBUTE

Philosopher Corey Dyck at the University of Western Ontario writes:

In light of this recent article in the Washington Post (the spouse of the author is a philosopher in Hong Kong) I wonder whether you might open a thread seeking advice from philosophers employed overseas for job-seekers who might be considering such a position in the months to come? I would be particularly interested in hearing feedback--what should candidates take into consideration before accepting those positions? what institutional differences might they expect?--regarding positions in the relatively fast-growing Middle Eastern (Egypt, UAE, Lebanon) and Asian (Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong) markets.

Thoughts/advice from readers?

Who is your favorite philosopher?

(LINK NOW FIXED)

PhilosophyBites asked lots of philosophers (and some others), and collected all the answers here.  Participants inlude Frank Jackson, Tim Crane, Kit Fine, Martha Nussbaum, Raymond Geuss, Cynthia Freeland, Helen Beebee, Joshua Knobe, Sean Kelly, Gideon Rosen, Noel Carroll, and me, among many others; in the "others" category there's Nicola Lacey, Catharine MacKinnon (a disappointing answer, I thought, more political than intellectually revealing), and Alison Gopnik, among others.

Guest-Blogger: Amy Ferrer, Executive Director of the APA

I'm very pleased, indeed, that Ms. Ferrer, the APA's recently appointed Executive Director, has accepted an invitation to be a guest blogger here next week (Monday, December 3 through Friday, December 7).  I will put up a few items next week as well, but Ms. Ferrer will be the main attraction, and I'm sure readers will appreciate her contributions.

New Books in November

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month:

Corrective Justice by Ernest Weinrib (Oxford University Press, 2012).

The Idea of Privae Law by Ernest Weinrib (revised edition, Oxford University Press, 2012).

Love:  A History by Simon May (Yale University Press, 2011; paperback edition, 2012).

Reading Putnam edited by Maria Baghramian (Routledge, 2013).

Donald Davidson:  Life and Words edited by Maria Baghramian (Routledge, 2013).

The Concept of Law by H.L.A. Hart, 3rd Edition, with a new Introduction and Notes by Leslie Green (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Conscience and Conviction:  The Case for Civil Disobedience by Kimberley Brownlee (Oxford University Press, 2012).

 

Apparently it pays to be a disgraced university President

Wow.  The real story, of course, is the extent to which university presidents are being paid like CEOs.  Another triumph of the market.

Assholes

The blog, courtesy of philosopher Aaron James (UC Irvine).

Senior offers declined

For a long time, my basic policy was not to report senior offers that had been declined unless I had also reported the fact of the offer.  At least, I thought that was my policy (one designed to save me time), but some readers point out that there have been occasional exceptions going back a few years, and also point out that such information is useful, since, of course, the fact of a senior offer is a more tangible indication of how at least one other department evaluates the philosopher's work.  That latter point strikes me as especially persuasive, so I am officialy revising the practice going forward:   I will report senior offers declined when it is confirmed by the candidate or his/her (home or hiring) department chair.  I will periodically post an aggregation of such information, like the one below.

What follows is a list of philosophers who declined senior offers in 2012 or 2011.  I am opening comments, and invite additions either by the candidate or the candidate's chair of department of other offers those years that were declined that are not listed below.  Here are those I know about during this period (and which were not otherwise posted because the fact of the offer had been posted):

Thomas Christiano (political philosophy) at the University of Arizona turned down an offer from the University of Southern California.

Carl Craver (philosophy of neuroscience and biology; metaphysics, moral psychology) at Washington University, St. Louis turned down an offer from Duke University.

Joshua Dever (philosophy of language) at the University of Texas at Austin turned down an offer from the University of St. Andrews.

John Martin Fischer (philosophy of action, metaphysics, ethics) at the University of California at Riverside turned down an offer at the University of California at Irvine.

Mark Johnston (metaphysics) at Princeton University turned down an offer from the University of Notre Dame.

Niko Kolodny (ethics) at the University of California at Berkeley turned down an offer from Harvard University.

David Owens (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics) at the University of Reading turned down an offer from the University of Texas at Austin.

Adam Pautz (philosophy of mind) at the University of Texas at Austin turned down an offer from Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Agustin Rayo (philosophy of language and logic) at Massachussetts Institute of Technology turned down an offer at Stanford University.

Mark Schroeder (ethics) at the University of Southern California turned down an offer from Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Nordic Wittgenstein Review

The inaugural issue is free on-line.

Florida's Campaign Against the Humanities

These developments bear watching, since venal "ideas" like these usually spread to other states with large numbers of right-wing crazies (the Florida Governor is a "Tea Party" favorite).

Cambridge's Huw Price says...

...watch out for your computer!

(Thanks to Brad Wray for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  David Chalmers (NYU/ANU) discusses related issues here.  (Thanks to Varol Akman for the pointer.)

Plutocracy Watch: The "Bipartisan" Consensus to Destroy Public Education

Here.

Foreign Policy's Curious List of 100 "Global Thinkers"...

...is out once again, and it includes, as usual, some non-thinkers (Paul Ryan, Dick & Liz Cheney [!]), as well as a few philosophers, or folks in the vicinity of philosophy:   Jurgen Habermas, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, and Slavoj Zizek.

Another Interfolio issue

An employed philosopher who is also a job seeker writes:

Interfolio’s privacy policy and terms of use authorize the sharing of job seekers’ full dossiers and application histories with anyone working for their university. This means that if you are employed at a university, your colleagues may be allowed to see your dossier. This is what Interfolio says in its privacy policy:

"If you are affiliated with a University, you hereby authorize us, and we may disclose your Dossier, related Personal Information and your Dossier's delivery history to your University and its University Users, unless you opt-out of such disclosure in your account settings."

They define “University User” as follows:

"'University User', which means you are an employee, contractor or agent of a University operating in such capacity. A 'University' is a college or university with whom Interfolio has a contractual relationship, generally with the career services department or a specific academic department, to provide services to students, employees and faculty members... "

Their privacy policy is here.

In practice, it appears that Interfolio only shares your dossier with select individuals at your institution (so called “University Users”). At my department, I know that this includes our placement officer and the department chair. This is alarming. Job applicants who are currently employed at a university may not want their chair or placement officer to know that they are seeking alternative employment or the details of their job search.

Interfolio has a page with what appear to be screenshots of what placement services etc. can see:  https://secure.interfolio.com/demo/screenshottour/administrators.cfm

This policy deserves attention for two main reasons. First, Interfolio considers you to be affiliated with a university if you declare it as your affiliation when you sign up. Interfolio does not ask you about the nature of your affiliation.  People who are employed at a university are liable to enter their employer as their affiliation. If you declare your current employer as affiliation, your colleagues may have access to your dossier. The placement officer at my institution has told me that they have access to the dossiers of many faculty members at my university, so this is a real concern.

Second, Interfolio does not limit access to individuals in your department. Anyone from your university is equally eligible for access to your dossier. Even for graduate students who don’t have the seeking-other-employment concern, this seems like a serious breach of privacy. For example, I imagine graduate students in ancient philosophy might not want their dossier shared with placement officers in classics departments, whose students might be competing for the same jobs.

As Interfolio’s privacy policy implies, you are opted-in to this "feature" by default. Interfolio users can opt out by logging in and following the “Account Settings” link at the top-right of the screen.

This is especially alarming given the sudden widespread usage of Interfolio following the APA’s recent endorsement. For example, my graduate institution is now requiring all job seekers to use Interfolio. People have to know what’s involved in handing over such responsibilities to a private company that, it seems, doesn’t really understand academia.

It’s not clear to me how a “University User” gets to have access to dossiers from their university. But it looks like their university needs to set up a special “University Partner” account with Interfolio. Interfolio has listed a sample of their “University Partners”:
http://www.interfolio.com/about/clients/partners/

Neurofeminism

Houston's Anne Jacobson at 3AM.

Academic freedom crisis at University of San Diego

Not good!

"Analytic" Philosophers vs. SPEPPies

Spiros doesn't make this exlicit, but this anecdote concerns a university with a department with a large SPEP contingent.

Plutocracy Watch: Bill O'Reilly/Ronald Reagan Edition

Reagan sent America off the rails, and this cartoon makes the point powerfully.

UPDATE:  Krugman on so-called "New Republicans" is also relevant.

Philosophy Students Thinking about Law School?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOV. 7

If you've studied philosophy at the undergraduate or graduate level, and are thinking about law school, I would like to urge you to consider the University of Chicago Law School.  The Law School trails only Yale in per capita placement in law teaching, and graduates are also hugely successful in the private firm market, and in clerkships.  Although we have a relatively small faculty (35 full-time academic faculty), we have two philosophers full-time in the Law School (myself and Martha Nussbaum), and a large number of colleagues with philosophical interests.  There is an annual Law & Philosophy Workshop (this year's theme is "Freedom and Responsibility," speakers include Derk Pereboom, Gary Watson, Pamela Hieryonmi, John Martin Fischer, and others; last year's was "Global Justice"), and regular offerings in the Law School in jurisprudence, feminist philosophy, political philosophy and other areas.  Each year we have both a Law & Philosophy Fellow in residence, and a week-long Visiting Political Philosopher in residence (this year it is T.M. Scanlon).  In addition, there are usually one or more conferences each year in the Law School related to philosophical topics, and there is now a large and lively group of philosophically-minded students here.  Of all the law schools in the U.S., the Chicago experience is also probably most like that of a graduate program in a PhD field, in terms of the intellectual engagement of both faculty and students.

Chicago currently has substantial merit aid to offer to very strong students (the best-known are the Rubenstein Scholarships, but there are other sources of aid, including for students interested in a JD/PhD).  Philosophy students, both those with undergraduate majors and those with advanced degrees, have been very successful in getting this aid, and have performed very well at the Law School; as a result philosophy students receive favorable consideration here.   Excellent numerical credentials are very important, of course, but even within that pool, applicants with philosophy backgrounds stand out.  Students with philosophy backgrounds have recently turned down Yale, Harvard, and other peer law schools to come to Chicago.   If you have questions about law study at Chicago, feel free to e-mail me at bleiter-at-uchicago-dot-edu.

U.S. Philosophy Faculties by British Academy Membership

Unsurprisingly, the numbers are smaller:

1.  New York University (R. Dworkin [cognate, part-time], K. Fine, T. Nagel, D. Parfit [part-time], J. Waldron [cognate, part-time], C. Wright)

2.  Columbia University (J. Elster [cognate], C. Peacocke, J. Raz [cognate, part-time])

3.  Harvard University (T. Scanlon, A. Sen)

3.  University of California, Los Angeles (T. Burge, D. Kaplan)

3.  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (R. Adams, S. Blackburn [part-time])

3.  University of Texas, Austin (H. Kamp [part-time], M. Sainsbury)

Other U.S.-based (or partly based) philosophers elected to the British Academy include Nancy Cartwright (UC San Diego [part-time]), R.A. Duff (University of Minnesota [part-time]), John Finnis (Notre Dame [part-time]), Frank Jackson (Princeton [part-time]), Saul Kripke (CUNY Grad Center), John McDowell (Pittsburgh), Martha Nussbaum (Chicago), and Barry Stroud (Berkeley).

Georgia State's Jessica Berry...

...at 3AM.

"Live like a Stoic" week

Next week at Exeter.

(Thanks to P.S. Horky for the pointer.)

Steve Fuller Makes Things Up

A few readers pointed out that the putative "review" of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos by Steve Fuller is full of bizarre howlers on top of everything else.  Anyone familiar with Fuller's actual "scholarly" work knows that he makes up his history of science to suit the polemics of the moment:

Fuller's grasp of history of science, and of the sciences themselves, turns out to be equally interesting. A few examples will be worthwhile. Newton is supposed to have "presented his mathematical physics as the divine plan that was implicitly written into the Bible [emphasis added]" (p. 54). Fuller must have access to an otherwise unknown veridical edition of the Principia. In the early nineteenth century, Cuvier and Agassiz were supposed to have been thinking of climate change (p. 59). Around the same time, Lamarck is supposed to have held that "lower organisms literally strove to become higher organisms, specifically humans, who at some point in the future would be Earth's sole denizens" (p. 146), a view to be found nowhere in the Lamarckian corpus.

The "Darwinian doctrine" is supposed to consist of the belief that "chance mutations are the driving force of evolution" (p. 31). One wonders what happened to natural selection. Fuller has an answer: "compounded historical accidents" are also known as "natural selection" (p. 48). This issue is particularly troubling because what separates the neutral model of evolution from the selectionist or "Darwinian" model of evolution is the question whether chance mutations drive evolution: the neutralists claim they do whereas the selectionists argue for the primacy of natural selection. For some mysterious reason, Fuller has reversed the selectionists' position.

Returning to Fuller's book, Mendel is supposed to have had his work rejected by scientific experts before he published it in a local journal in Brünn (p. 61), a rejection of which no other historian is aware. Pearson and Galton's biometry is supposed to have been based on a "blending theory of inheritance" (p. 145) even though Pearson explicitly denied assuming any theory at all and Galton reported experiments to refute the blending theory. William Jennings Bryan is supposed to have been an "expert witness for the prosecution" (p. 115) in the Scopes trial, rather than what he was: the prosecutor who famously agreed to be an expert witness for the defense. Thanks to molecular biology, genes are supposed to have been "[broken] down into ordered strings of amino acids" (p. 135); one wonders what happened to DNA nucleotide bases. All microevolution is supposed to have been designed by humans (p. 141); presumably ancient humans were privy to enough biological warfare techniques to design malaria and cause the spread of the sickle cell allele in tropical and subtropical populations.

The modern theory of evolution is often interpreted to be a synthesis in the 1930s of Mendel's theory of inheritance with Darwin's theory of natural selection (along with natural history). But, for Fuller, it was a synthesis "between molecular genetics and natural history" and it is supposed to have happened a decade before 1955 (p. 58) even though there was no possibility of a molecular genetics before the Watson-Crick double helix model of DNA which, incidentally, appeared in 1953. (Elsewhere in the book he accepts the standard interpretation of the synthesis [e.g., p. 134].)

Now in the "review" of Nagel, Fuller declares Kripke a functionalist and, even more bizarrely, writes,

Fodor and Nagel were the leading non-naturalist philosophers of mind of the 1980s, in relation to which students such as myself had to stake out their own positions. Interestingly, both wrote their doctoral dissertations in the 1960s exploring Existentialism from an analytic-philosophical standpoint - Fodor on Kierkegaard, Nagel on Sartre.

Put aside the weirdness of calling Fodor a "non-naturalist," what's even stranger is that Fuller simply makes up out of whole cloth the claim that Fodor wrote a dissertation on Kierkegaard and Nagel on Sartre.  No, they didn't.  Fodor worked with Hilary Putnam at Princeton, and Nagel with John Rawls at Harvard, and neither wrote one on Kierkegaard or Sartre.  No wonder Fuller was an expert witness for the Intelligent Design folks in the Dover case:  facts don't matter!

An actually interesting observation about the tabloid melodrama involving General Petraeus and his mistress

Here; an excerpt:

So over the weekend I read All In, Paula Broadwell's slobberific  biography of General David Petraeus. It was nothing special, just a typically  crappy piece of fawning, noncritical journalism, full of passages like the  following:

"At Petraeus's change of command in Baghdad in the summer of 2008, Secretary  Gates claimed that 'history [would] regard Petraeus as one of the nation's great  battle captains . . .' Petraeus's success on the battlefield, his status as a  military intellectual and his will to succeed allowed him to shape not only  doctrine but also organizational design, training, education and leadership  development in the Army and, in many respects, the broader military . . .."

You can pretty much guess the rest of the plot from there. Every environment  Petraeus enters is instantly bettered by his majestic personage. We see him  passing through destroyed hamlets in Afghanistan, the weight of the world on his  rugged shoulders, scratching his figurative chin as he worries which strategies  to choose "so that villagers could once again live in peace and prosperity"....

Spinoza on the radio

Actually, Susan James (Birkbeck), Beth Lord (Dundee), and Steven Nadler (Wisconsin) talking about him.

(Thanks to Dirk Felleman for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Spinoza is on twitter too.  (Thanks to Kevin A. for the pointer.)

New Philosophy App: Phi2Phi

Courtesy of philosopher Jonathan Weisberg (Toronto); this is a peer-to-peer iPhone/iPad app for philosophers to test counterexamples, ask questions, and float ideas-—all anonymously.  And it's totally free! 

Rawls won the election, Nozick lost!

According to an article in Slate.  I suppose put that way, it's true, though the difference principle, or something vaguely like it, hasn't done much work in Democratic politics since LBJ.

(Thanks to John Doris for the pointer.)

Steve Fuller is a Shill for Intelligent Design

(The reason for the title of this post will become clear, below.)

Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education called my attention last week to this putative review by Steve Fuller of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos; the review was aptly described by another correspondent as "a largely content-free mix of self-promotion and derogation of his Enemies, in which you held the place of honour."  (Michael Weisberg, co-author of the review in The Nation, is not on Fuller's "Enemies list" so was erased from Fuller's score-settling.)  Just to give the flavor of Fuller's "review," a short excerpt:

On-line courses...

...story in The Washington Post.

Twenty Million Visits

It was only in February 2010 that this blog crossed the ten million threshold, and now today we crossed the twenty million visitor mark.  It took not quite seven years to hit ten million visits, and less than three years to add another ten million, a tangible indication that, even as the philosophy blogosphere has become busier and more lively, blog readership is not a zero-sum game:  more and more philosophy students and faculty (as well as others) continue to read, and to read more blogs.  I've nothing really to add to my reflections from the 10 million mark, but I will reiterate my thanks to you, the readers, and to the many who send me interesting material and links, which makes it feasible to keep the blog going while doing my actual job!

Undergraduates in China interested in exchange programs in the US

A reader in China writes: 

I am a Chinese undergraduate philosophy major who wants to pursue a PhD degree in North America. For 2012-2013 I have a chance to study philosophy at a U.S. department as an exchange student. My experience in the States so far has made me realize how unlikely it will be for a Chinese student to be admitted to a good program. 

As there are more any more students who enjoy analytic philosophy (China has been greatly influenced by continental philosophy) want to get their degrees abroad, especially in North America, I believe my situation is not particular. On behalf of them, and of course me myself, I want to get to know whether US professors can provide some advice. Further, will they accept students from another country whose english isn't perfect and who in their college education analytic philosophy isn't emphasized, though they try very hard on their own to study analytic philosophy?

Can you post my concerns on your blog so people can talk about it and more students from China may benefit?

Thoughts from readers--e.g., students from China now studying in North America, or faculty who have done admissions and admitted students from China to their PhD programs?  Also, of course, any information about exchange programs for undergraduates from China would be welcome.

Leave it to the far right Jerusalem Post to issue the decisive call for genocide

One can't make this up:

We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza.  The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering  fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in  Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call  for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be  unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and  civilians spared.

 

Co-authorship rates by discipline?

Jason Clark, a postdoc at the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck, writes:

It seems clear that philosophers co-author papers far less often than scientists do, but while there has been some discussion on your blog as to the market value of co-authored works, I haven't found any mention of comparative data on co-authorship rates by discipline (not to mention the potential significance of such differences).  Do you know of any such research, or could you post this question for comments?

Thoughts/information from readers?

Harvard's Richard Moran...

...at 3AM.

Women as academic authors

Interesting charts from CHE.

(Thanks to Richard Marshall for the pointer.)

Cambridge's Tim Crane...

...at 3AM.

Philosophy Faculties by American Academy Membership

MOVING TO FRONT, WITH CORRECTIONS

Here are the faculties with at least two elected Fellows of the American Academy (bear in mind the usual caveats about how the Academy works):

1.  New York University (Block, Boghossian, Dworkin [cognate, part-time], Field, Fine, Garrett, Longuenesse, Nagel, Parfit [part-time], Scheffler, Schiffer, Waldron [cognate, part-time], Wright)

2. University of California, Los Angeles (Burge, Copenhaver, Herman, Kaplan, Martin, Normore, Parsons, Shiffrin)

3.  Princeton University (Appiah, Burgess, Cooper, Garber, Harman, Nehamas, Pettit [cognate])

4.  University of Pittsburgh (Brandom, Grunbaum, Gupta, McDowell, Rescher, Wilson)

5. Columbia University (Elster [cognate], Greenawalt [cognate], Ph. Kitcher, Peacocke, Raz [cognate, part-time])

5.  Harvard University (Kamm, Korsgaard, Parfit [part-time], Scanlon, Sen)

5.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (Fodor, Goldman, Parfit [part-time], Sosa, Stich)

5.  Stanford University (Bratman, Cohen, Friedman, Mints, Skyrms [part-time])

5.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Anderson, Gibbard, Railton, Regan [cognate], Sklar)

10.  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (R. Adams, Blackburn [part-time], Hill, Wolf)

11. Brown University (Guyer, Kim, Larmore)

11.  Carnegie-Mellon University (Glymour, Seidenfeld, Sieg)

11. University of California, Berkeley (Dreyfus, Searle, Stroud)

14. Massachussetts Institute of Technology (Stalnaker, Yablo)

14. University of California, Irvine (Maddy, Skyrms)

14. University of Chicago (Nussbaum, Pippin)

14. University of Notre Dame (Ameriks, van Inwagen)

14. University of Southern California (Higginbotham, Soames)

14. University of Wisconsin, Madison (Hausman, Sober)

14.  Yale University (Benhabib [cognate], Darwall)

And just to put this in some perspective, past philosophy members of the American Academy include Harry Berger, Julius Bixler, Jacob Bronowski, Victor Cousin, Irwin Edman, Franklin Gamwell, William Hamilton, Levi Hedge, Laurens Hickok, George Lindbeck, Henry Mansel, Arthur Murphy, James Pratt, Francisco Romero, James Walker, John Wild, and James Woods--and also Henri Bergson, Rudolf Carnap, Benedetto Croce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Karl Popper, Jean-Paul Sartre, Henry Sidgwick, and William Whewell.  

Richard Davenport-Hines Did Not Like David Halperin's Book

As part of our periodic series of scathing book reviews, from the TLS:

The tragedy of queer studies is that a subject of exceptional importance to  humanity is left in the clutches of show-offs who reduce it to self-centred  banality. Sexuality and gender are at the heart of understanding human  motivation. Treated with intelligence and authorial modesty, the innate  differences, indoctrinated codes and enforced disciplines of masculinity and  femininity – to say nothing of the sumptuous diversity of sexual  inclinations and expressions – should be central to historical  understanding. These inspiriting topics underlie many kinds of conduct:  aggression, loyalty, fear, altruism, envy, intuition, hatred, creativity.  Instead, the subject is dominated by inhumane pedants who pride themselves  on meretricious mental perversity and teach their pupils to use words such  as virtuous, self-respecting and dignified as pejorative epithets.

More evidence that white men in the U.S. need to be disenfranchised

Here.

More Audio Lectures

Reader Sean Wellock writes:

I was happy to see your recent posts with links to the valedictorian speech by G.A. Cohen, and to the collection of philosophy podcasts.  I think free audio lectures can be a great resource, particularly for recent graduates like myself.  In case some other readers are interested, here is a link to an excellent collection of audio lectures on topics in  European Cultural History from 1500 through 1920 given by George L. Mosse at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In my opinion, Mosse,  John Searle, Daniel Robinson (Oxford), and James Hall (University of Richmond) are among the best free lecturers on the airwaves today.    

I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet, but perhaps some readers will enjoy it.