Thanks for your response. I agree it is a fraught enough topic. But the actual thrust of my question, one that you could perhaps respond to within the confines of the format, was whether you’d draw a line somewhere.

Is there *anything* someone could say in a public political discussion that would make you question their abilities as a philosopher so that it would be justified to let that inform a hiring decision?

I am asking because if there is a line, then we merely disagree about where it is. If there isn’t a line, we have a more substantial (but also more interesting) disagreement.

On the matter you raise: I can’t claim to speak for Felix, but I figure that Daniel K is decreasing his prospects in some ways, but increasing them in others.

I try not to impute intentions to anyone, but it seems to have become a viable career path to make a name for oneself as a right-wing thinker to then get hired at a think tank or at a donor-funded center at some institutions (or become a creature of the media).

Thanks for this. I respect this as a view and agree to the substance of it.

I do think that that longer political contributions (such a amicus briefs) are more informative than off-the-cuff social media posts. So it seems that we merely disagree on where the line is.

I think your empirical claims are true as they go, but the recommendation to asymmetry does not apply in the case at hand. This is because this amicus brief (and others like it) is (a) explicitly philosophical and (b) drawing heavily on the reputation for clear thought of a few of its signatories.

If someone puts their name (and thereby their authority and reputation, in the case of some signatories here) to a brief like this, this is only meaningful if that reputation is then meaningfully at stake.

You can’t have cake and eat it. Either the authors’s expertise matters here (and then it can also matter negatively), or it does not (and then there is no reason to attend to this brief any more than any old substack post).

And the authors and signatories _very clearly_ want us to go on the first leg of the disjunction.

That’s fair. But my point is easily generalized.

When someone in a political context makes a facile argument _with explicit or implicit appeal to their academic expertise_, we are entitled to draw negative conclusions about their expertise.

Daniel Kodsi related that some people he asked didn’t sign out of fear of professional consequences. Felix said that was ridiculous–signatories are aligning themselves with an authoritarian government, so they’re safe. I replied that they’re safe *from the government*–whose authoritarian nature I don’t dispute–but that the government doesn’t control academic hiring.

It has long been clear that anti-trans commentators are capable of thriving in academia, the media, and government. One could argue that perhaps bigotry should result in professional consequences, but it’s clear that if someone like Trump can occupy high office, all bets are off. The same cannot be said for the targets of anti-trans commentators, who are much more vulnerable and much less visible in academic, media, and government.

I’m inclined to suspect that both 1 and 2 are true, and I lament both of them.

The problem here is that 1 and 2 are not equivalent. It is good to be an outspoken critic of authoritarian governments and it is wrong to sign this brief, especially as it furthers the aims of an authoritarian government.

There’s a tendency among some philosophers, particularly in forums such as this, to try to “both sides” the matter, and it always ends up with them arguing (whether they mean to or not) that bigots should suffer no professional consequences for their bigotry, whereas their targets should have to simply weather the consequences. You can see this most clearly with “race science,” which the “both sides” view defends, at the expense of one side (the targets of those holding that view). This perverse approach suits itself to two places: certain academic venues and “debate me bro” culture, and it’s probably no coincidence that both those circles are dominated by people who are less likely to have to face the consequences of the bigotry they are (deliberately or not) defending, but who are damn sure concerned about any whiff of professional consequences for the bigots.

Thank you for your thoughts, David. I just want to clarify: I stated that it was arguable whether there should be professional consequences. I didn’t commit to a position saying that there should be, much less take a stance on what those consequences ought to be. I only recognized that one could make such a case. Perhaps it would begin by drawing on the reasons Matthew gave, which is that signing this brief is a political act that renders the signers complicit in the authoritarian project to which this brief contributes. Then again, maybe the consequences there should simply be that the academics who have signed on to it are criticized for that complicity; those sorts of “professional consequences” (criticism) are ones that we’re actually pretty used to, aren’t we? It’s not as though there are ever no consequences to our work, unless our work is truly inconsequential. That being said, there’s a gray area here; I’m not sure whether signing on to this brief can be counted as part of one’s work anyway.

In any case, I am not advocating for any specific consequences for those who signed it, beyond the criticism that signing it warrants. And, in at least partial agreement with your point, I do not claim to be certain of the motives of every person who signed it. I am quite confident of the motives of some of the signers, though, being familiar with their commentary.

Beyond that, I think you may have missed the purpose of me mentioning this at all, which is that concern for “professional consequences” is frequently invoked when it comes to certain speech acts—ones that, despite the criticism they face (a consequence in itself), are nevertheless still tolerated and even, in some cases, elevated, in academia, media, and government. It’s difficult to reconcile this narrative about the purported “professional consequences” these speech acts incur with the reality that they are not only still occurring, despite supposed consequences, but are often amplified, greatly extending their reach.

Just as crucial to my point, however, is that while such speech acts are amplified, often alongside a narrative that they are being suppressed, the voices of those whom such speech is about, who are very likely to be critical of it, are rendered increasingly invisible. And, although I didn’t mention it initially I think it deserves to be spelled out, that process itself has consequences—in particular, consequences for those whose are made invisible by it but who nevertheless have to live by the consequences of a discourse they’ve been pushed out of. They have to, as I put it earlier, “weather the consequences” of decisions made about them but which do not treat them as equal participants in the proceedings that frame and set the decision.

I want to be clear that I am not accusing you, David, of doing this. I’ve found that, in the DN comment section, sometimes people can personalize a reply in a way that isn’t helpful. My replies here are intended as general comments, ones that I know some are likely to disagree with. And I also want to emphasize, again, that I’m not advocating for the signers to face any consequences beyond the ordinary criticism that their act of signing warrants. But I want to draw attention to how the purported fears regarding consequences are much more significant for the people the brief targets than for the signers of the brief—some of whom, due to their “stature” (a virtue Daniel emphasizes) are likely to enjoy institutional protection, especially in an environment where universities are reluctant to do anything that would draw the ire of a government determined to reshape higher education in its image.

I wonder whether some of those commenting here might be talking at cross-purposes. There’s the discussion of academic hiring but also the conversation about the Trump administration’s crackdown on academia. These are arguably separate topics, but there are notable points of intersection.

For one, while you are right that those lending their name to the brief are “safe from the government,” I think it’s worth noting that the reason they’re safe from it, in a way that many of their colleagues aren’t, is because the brief is ultimately in line with the administration’s outlook and serves its desired ends.

For another, although you are correct on the point about academic hiring, various institutions have recently acted in ways seemingly intended to appease the administration, frequently at the expense of their own scholars. If this pattern continues, it’d be reasonable to consider that the subjects of the brief (trans people), rather than the signatories, are more likely to face adverse consequences. If it continues, as it seems likely to, then that would be a reason for professional communities to actively extend care and solidarity to trans folk—a position that may put them at odds, in various respects, with some of the brief’s signatories and even with their own institutions, where such institutions work to appease the administration.

My example was only to elicit a judgment from Daniel G. I posted specific criticism of the brief downthread.

My actual view is that gendered categories in sports are a proxy for something, but a rather poor and arbitrary proxy. Consider that a genetic variation that culturally reads “sexed” (e.g. chromosomal or hormonal) is treated as exclusionary whereas any other genetic variation (e.g. related to height or wing span) is regarded as unproblematic.

That’s arbitrary, and philosophers interested in fairness should be interested in this. But that’s not what’s happening here, is it?

Maybe? Sometimes? Depends on what the purpose of segregating is. I don’t see what this has to do with anything I said.

I said nothing at all about racial segregation. I said that one particular argument for it would be facile. Even if I believed that racial segregation is justified (I do not), I would reject the argument from naturalness.

You’re a philosopher, you must understand the difference between assessing an argument and assessing its conclusion.

Reasons of naturalness are plainly and obviously unsuitable to justify segregation (so plainly that it makes me think less of the philosophical abilities of those who think otherwise). That this is so is wholly independent of whether some segregations could be justified another way.

In the scenario I put to Greco, someone was making this argument. And you responded to this scenario by making all sorts of assumptions, and you still continue to do so. I don’t really know what you want from me.

I wrote my critique of the brief downthread. It is likewise sufficiently poor that I think substantially less of the signatories as philosophers. But if you want to discuss this, you need to stop imputing random things to me.

Yes, but only on the assumption of typical, cisnormative development—something that does not apply in the same way to people who did not undergo typical, cisnormative development or who, by virtue of certain interventions, are no longer in the same ranges.

We can ask. So here is the question, asked in complete good faith: what easily measurable, widespread, and statistically significant physical characteristic is more predictive of physical capacity other than biological sex? We know T level will not do (see one of the threads above). So what else?

This problem (height, wingspan) has been addressed in the sports philosophical literature: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00948705.2023.2167720

“Addressed in the lit” doesn’t mean “consensus in the lit.”