Philosophy News Share: End of May, 2022


As mentioned in my Summer 2022 Plans, to help keep readers up to date with philosophy news this summer, I’ll be be creating a space each month for individuals and institutions to share news.

This is the first of these, for the remainder of May.

If you have news of the sort that would typically appear on Daily Nous, please share it in the comments. By now most readers have a sense of what such news is, but just in case, here are some examples:

  • faculty moves at the associate level or higher involving at least one department with a graduate program in philosophy
  • philosophers winning awards, prizes, or other honors
  • philosophers receiving substantial grants
  • new philosophy journals
  • new philosophy programs
  • new research resources for philosophers
  • new associations or groups for philosophers
  • policy changes of note at philosophy journals, publishers, institutions
  • data regarding philosophers, philosophy students, and philosophy (or efforts to gather such data)
  • innovative presentations of philosophical information (e.g., visualizations)
  • recognition or development of new methods of teaching philosophy
  • new or unusual forms of public-facing philosophy
  • major programs or initiatives regarding issues in the profession
  • philosophy programs, majors, faculty, threatened with cuts
  • noteworthy discoveries in the history of philosophy (such as a previously unknown manuscript by a well-known philosopher)
  • scientific findings or technological developments of particular interest to philosophers
  • current events regarding philosophers and academic freedom and freedom of speech
  • philosophers involved with government or government policy
  • philosophers filing amicus curiae briefs
  • philosophers or philosophy playing a major role in society and culture
  • episodes of harassment and discrimination in academic philosophy
  • episodes of research or writing misconduct in academic philosophy
  • major interviews of philosophers
  • deaths of philosophers

This is not an exhaustive list, so if you have something that you think is worth sharing but you’re unsure whether it fit into any of the above categories, give it a shot. Please note:

  • you’re welcome to include links in your comments, though note that comments with more than one link may get held back automatically for moderation until I have a chance to approve it
  • images can be included in your comments by clicking on the image icon in the bottom right part of the comment entry box.
  • self-promotion is okay, provided what your promoting about your self is newsworthy (i.e., yes to “big grant to study such-and-such”, no to “my article about X is coming out in Y.”)
  • after you publish a comment, you may edit it for up to 15 minutes by clicking on the gearwheel icon that will show up on the bottom right part of your comment as you mouse over it
  • you can obtain a link directly to your comment for sharing purposes by clicking on the link icon that appears in the top right corner of your comment when you mouse over it after it is published
  • you may not make original accusations of wrongdoing in the comments; if you’re going to post something regarding such an accusation, you may only post what has been officially reported in reputable news outlets elsewhere, and must include a link to said outlets
  • your comments are subject to moderation and possible removal. Sometimes there can be news that, for various reasons, I don’t believe is worth sharing, or things I’m not interested in promoting. (Comments may take a little while to appear.)

This is an experiment; we’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for your help with making it work.

COMMENTS POLICY

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Daniel Reid
1 year ago

Dear Colleagues:

I write to call to your attention in particular to one of the new recipients of the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, which we are just announcing today; this competitive national grant program supports public humanities projects that tackle pressing challenges in communities around the country. 

Melissa Jacquart, an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cincinnati, will work with the Bringing Philosophy to Science Fairs team to pilot an after-school Philosophy & Science Fair Club for 7th and 8th-grade students in Cincinnati. Jacquart will partner with the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Public Engagement with Science and the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative to create lesson plans designed to introduce students to the philosophical and other humanistic aspects of science by identifying a theme, such as space exploration or climate change, and then deploying philosophical methods of inquiry to deeply investigate it. For example, students may consider how scientists’ intellectual context and worldviews impact the scientific method and process of discovery, or the role trust plays in the public’s understanding of scientific findings. Over the course of fifteen weeks, students will develop individual projects related to the shared theme and informed by philosophical discussion. The club will culminate with each student entering their project in the Southwest Ohio Science and Engineering Expo Science Fair, one of the nation’s largest student science fairs.

We are thrilled to support Professor Jacquart, the other 2022-23 Fellows and Seed Grantees, and their collaborators as they infuse the humanities into public culture. You can see the full cohorts online and in the attached and appended press release.

Sincerely,

Daniel Reid
Executive Director 
Whiting Foundation
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Melissa Jacquart
Reply to  Daniel Reid
1 year ago

If anyone is interested in updates on this Whiting project as it develops — including information on the future workshop on how to deploy the model developed in this project in your own local context — please complete this form! I’d love to keep you in the loop. https://forms.gle/5rgJLGUkcwJzgJpB6

Kirk Ludwig
1 year ago

I am writing to report two new faculty are joining the Philosophy Department at Indiana University, Bloomington, fall 2022:
 

  1. David Sussman as the Oscar R. Ewing Associate Professor of Philosophy
  2. Sharon Berry as Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Crispin Wright
1 year ago

The Editors of Thought, hitherto a subscription journal published by John Wiley, Inc., are pleased to announce that new publication arrangements for the journal have at last been agreed. From volume 11 onwards Thought will be published online only on an open access basis by the Philosophy Documentation Center (https://www.pdcnet.org/wp/)
           As before, each annual volume will comprise four quarterly issues, each of a target length of 8 papers, and will retain an emphasis on short (c.4000) word contributions on any of the following areas of analytic philosophy: philosophy of maths, philosophy of logic, logic (where there is clear and explicit philosophical relevance), philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and value theory.  The submissions and refereeing systems will be unchanged.
           The Editors would like to express their gratitude for the patience shown by those authors the processing of whose submissions has been delayed in the negotiations that have preceded the conclusion of our new publishing arrangements. We now hope to move forward speedily.  Accepted papers submitted under the previous arrangements will be published without any charge.
           At this time, we ask that authors respect a moratorium on new submissions until we have cleared the present backlog. A further announcement will be made when we are ready to receive new submissions— prospectively, towards the end of the summer.
 
Crispin Wright, for the Editors of Thought.

Tim O'Keefe
1 year ago

George Rainbolt and Sandy Dwyer just had an article published in the APA’s newsletter on teaching philosophy. It describes Georgia State’s program for preparing its MA students to teach their own classes. Although it’s self-promotion about a recent publication–I teach at Georgia State and I’ve been heavily involved in this program–I hope it fits Justin’s guidelines for a post here by being of general interest.

We don’t claim to have the best way to help graduate students learn to teach, but we developed a model that has worked well for us. The article isn’t long, but to summarize it here: at GSU almost all of our students are responsible for teaching their own courses in their second year, with most teaching Critical Thinking, but a fair number teaching Intro to Philosophy or Intro to Ethics. All students in their first year take a letter-graded, 3 credit hour class to prepare them to teach. For 2 hours a week, they sit in on a section of Critical Thinking, and they take all of the exams, to make sure they know the material they’re going to teach. (Critical Thinking is a heavily standardized “course in a box,” to help make things easier for our grad students and improve the quality of the course.) For the 3rd hour they meet to discuss the course content and various pedagogical issues.

When they’re teaching their own classes, there are 2 more courses they take. The first one (for students when they first teach) involves weekly meetings to talk about the administrative aspects of teaching, and it gives instructors the opportunity to talk with one another about how things are going and any challenges they’re facing. The second one (for students later on) helps students develop a teaching portfolio and other teaching documents.

We have a lecturer whose main job it is to run all of this. Having all of our grad students teach in their second year has allowed us to fund all of our grad students–albeit at a lower level than we’d like–because we took the teaching budget that used to go to adjuncts and moved it over to fund grad students.

Anyway, please see the article for more details. If people feel like commenting, I’d like to hear people give their own thoughts on our model and how it compares to what they experienced as graduate students and what they do at their own departments, if they have a graduate program.

Jeff Sebo
1 year ago

Dear colleagues,

I want to invite you all to sign an open letter on animal welfare and sustainable development that I recently co-authored, which has now been signed by 200+ researchers and other experts, including a wide range of philosophers.

The background is that I recently worked with a team of researchers on a policy report about animal welfare and sustainable development, which is now published as a background paper for the upcoming UN Stockholm+50 conference, and which also feeds into the official independent scientific report for the conference (coverage here). The authors of the policy report also hosted a Stockholm+50 associated event this week and wrote an open letter to further raise awareness about these issues. These materials all examine how animal welfare and sustainable development are linked, and how governments can improve human and nonhuman lives at the same time.

My request is that you consider signing and sharing the open letter with researchers and other experts, broadly construed to include all philosophy professors and PhD students. The open letter was published last week as an open access Commentary in the inaugural issue of CABI One Health, as well as on a separate website with additional signatories, including philosophers such as Dale Jamieson, Christine Korsgaard, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, and Peter Singer. We would love to collect as many additional signatures as possible in advance of Stockholm+50, so anything that you can do to help us get the word out would be greatly appreciated.

Questions, comments, and suggestions very welcome. Thanks all!

Best,
Jeff