academia
TagDyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Academic Philosophy (guest post)
An undergraduate student in philosophy has been wondering whether their dyslexia gives them a strong reason to avoid pursuing graduate study and a career in academic philosophy. (more…)
Work-Life Balance
Times Higher Ed (THE) has released results from its 2022 Work-Life Balance survey. (more…)
Mental Health and Academia: What Can Departments and Individuals Do?
There appears to be a mental health crisis in academia, especially among graduate students. Some of its contributing factors are discussed in what follows, with the hope of soliciting suggestions for steps departments or individuals can take to help.
Philosophy & Activism (guest post)
While some people have argued that political activism is in tension with academic inquiry (here, for example), there have been plenty of well-regarded scholars who have engaged in such activism, including in philosophy. (more…)
What You Like About Your Philosophy Department
Sometimes you need to remember the good things in life, including your professional life. (more…)
How Can Journals Better Serve Authors?
A philosopher who was recently appointed to an editorial position at an academic journal has a question for authors. (more…)
If You’re An Egalitarian, How Come You Teach At An Elite College?
The title of this post, a riff on G.A. Cohen’s If You’re An Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?, is one way Jonny Thakkar (Swarthmore) described to me the question at the heart of his recent essay, “Elite Education,” in The Point. (more…)
Blowing the Whistle on John Searle
“I’m writing to you in the hope that you can shine a public light on the behavior of John Searle, a renowned academic in Berkeley’s philosophy department.” (more…)
“Biting the Bullet”: A Note on Style from Caspar Hare
In his 2013 book, The Limits of Kindness, Caspar Hare (MIT) includes a brief “stylistic note” that gets across an important lesson for academic writers: don’t overestimate the familiarity of your readers with specialist terminology—even when the intended readers are others in your discipline. (more…)
Will Conferences Recover? Should They?
With promising news of a vaccine, one might hope not just for saved lives, but a return to “normal life,” including the regular features of academic work. Among these are the typically in-person events of conferences, workshops, and talks. (more…)
What Academics Can Do Now to Prevent a Coup Later
The U.S. presidential election is five weeks away and there are worries that Donald Trump will not leave office should he lose, or that he will interfere with or stop the counting of votes if he believes continuing counting would reveal he lost. (more…)
“Liberal Bias” in Academia: Media Narrative vs. Social Science
“Available data do not support the claim that university professors are excessively and disproportionately liberal, much less that a majority of students are being educated by left-wing professors. So why do so many people have the impression that they are?” (more…)
University of South Carolina Announces Plan to Restart In-Person Classes the Fall
Yesterday, my school, the University of South Carolina, announced it is planning to restart in-person teaching this fall. This seems like a good move. (more…)
Lasting Lessons of the Academic Lockdown
Most university and college campuses have been mostly closed for a month or so at this point, with professors teaching their courses online from home and meetings happening via videoconferencing. (more…)
AAUP Faculty Compensation Report Released
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has published the results of its 2019-20 Faculty Compensation Survey. (more…)
Tenure in the Time of Corona (guest post)
The following is a guest post* by a philosopher who went up for tenure this year. (more…)
The Status of Searches, Job Offers, and Hiring Plans During the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic and the various measures taken in response to it are disrupting and delaying normal university processes as well as having broader economic consequences. How have academic job searches in process and plans for hires in the near future been affected? (more…)
Socially Distanced, yet Virtually Convened: a Model of Online Conferencing (guest post)
The following is a guest post* by Fabrizio Calzavarini (Bergamo, Turin) and Marco Viola (Turin), who together run Neural Mechanism Online, an organization dedicated to the philosophy of neuroscience and to bringing together philosophers and neuroscientists via webinars, webconferences, and the like. (more…)
The Online-First Model: On Hosting an Awesome Online Academic Conference (guest post by Catharine St. Croix)
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing disruptions to the professional life of academics in many ways—for instance, by making in-person conferences and workshops highly inadvisable, if not practically impossible. What to do? In this guest post*, Catharaine (Cat) St.Croix, a philosopher at the University of Minnesota, provides some helpful guidance. (more…)
Coronavirus & Philosophy Department Events, Visits, Talks
A reader has asked I create a post that can serve as a place for people to share information about how the coronavirus is affecting events in philosophy departments, including visits from prospective graduate students, small workshops, and guest lectures. (more…)
“A Tale of Two Philosophy Students” (and other poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman)
The following is a guest post* of poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman, professor of philosophy at Brown University. (more…)
Crowdsourcing University Responses To Coronavirus (keeping this near top of page / updated with spreadsheet)
What policies, procedures, restrictions, or warnings is your university or college issuing in regards to the coronavirus (COVID-19)? (more…)
A Threat to the Quality of Academic Research in France (guest post by Philippe Huneman)
The following is a guest post* by Philippe Huneman, Professor and Director of Research at Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences (CNRS / Paris I Sorbonne). (more…)
Students Have Easy Access to Ghostwriters for Hire — What Should Teachers Do?
Recently, Eric Winsberg (South Florida), as an experiment, tweeted, “Who could I pay to write a five-page essay for me that I need to turn in for my philosophy class?” (more…)
APA Board Expresses Support for Grad Student Right to Unionize
“Whether unionization will best serve their employment interests and educational objectives and values is something that faculty and graduate students should be entitled to decide for themselves,” says the Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association (APA) in a statement released yesterday. “It is thus the APA’s position that graduate students should ..
Videoconferencing for Climate Practice (guest post by Colin Marshall and Sinan Dogramaci)
The following is a guest post* discussing the practice of making videoconferencing a regular component of academic conferences and the like, for the sake of the environment, by Colin Marshall (UW Seattle) and Sinan Dogramaci (UT Austin). (more…)
A Way Philosophy Differs from the Other Humanities, or a Caricature of the Humanities?
Professors of the humanities make judgments about value. Art historians, literary scholars, musicologists, and classicists say to our students: These works are powerful, beautiful, surprising, strange, insightful. They are more worth your time and attention than others… Yet such judgment violates the principle of equality. So humanists have to pretend we’re not do..
Sexual Harassment in Philosophy, Part 2 (guest post by Janice Dowell and David Sobel)
The following is a guest post* by Janice Dowell and David Sobel, professors of philosophy at Syracuse University, with help from several other philosophers. It is the second in a two-part series on sexual harassment in philosophy. Part 1 is here. (more…)