Category: Academia
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Subordinating the Humanities’ Scholarly Enterprise to Political Goals (updated; comments now open)
[Originally published on June 8th, 2026, 9:02am. Reposted by request.] “In our view there are several worrying tendencies in contemporary academic scholarship in the…
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Acts of Professional Kindness
“Many of us owe our careers to… well-timed acts of professional kindness in the face of bureaucratic mechanisms or capricious supervisors.” (Pinning this to…
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The Double-Binds of First-Generation (and other “Different”) Academics
Jennifer Morton (University of Pennsylvania) is the author of the latest contribution to #first-gen philosophers, a collection of reflections by philosophers who were among the…
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Loneliness & Academic Life
The Philosophers’ Cocoon has had a pair of posts on loneliness in the academy recently.
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A Philosopher’s Role in the Texas A&M Debacle (updated)
Texas A&M University will be paying Kathleen McElroy $1 million as part of legal settlement over the university’s botched efforts at trying to hire…
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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)…
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Grieving Academic Philosophy (guest post)
The following guest post* is by “S”, a philosopher who recently lost his tenure-track position because of his university’s budget cuts.
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Philosophical Research after the Virus (guest post by Eric Steinhart)
The following is a guest post* by Eric Steinhart, professor of philosophy at William Paterson University, on the possible consequences of the widespread disruptions…
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“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.
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“The problem is not that humanities jobs are disappearing”
In an interview at Inside Higher Education, Jason Brennan (Georgetown) and Phillip Magness (American Institute for Economic Research), answer a question from interviewer Scott Jaschik about…
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The Making of the Disaster at the University of Tulsa (Updated)
Last week, I reported on the proposal of the administration of the University of Tulsa (TU) to reorganize the school, reorient it towards vocational training,…
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Hypatia and other Journals Successfully Tricked Into Accepting “Fake” Papers (Updated)
Three writers, working as a team and using pseudonyms, produced and submitted to academic peer-reviewed journals 20 “fake” papers—papers written with the intent to spoof…
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Advice for Mental and Physical Self-Care
[moving this up the page to encourage more responses] A reader has requested “a post about soliciting physical and mental health tips for overworked early career…
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Generosity and Kindness in Academia
“Generosity is not impossible in today’s precarious times. It can be embedded in the small acts we perform every day and in the behaviors…
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Leave Room for Uncertainty and Confusion
“My trouble is usually… that I don’t entirely know what I think. And not knowing what to think is itself sometimes cast as shameful.”
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Fawning Sycophancy Is Unprofessional, Gross, and if Ongoing, the Professor’s Fault
“I only now [received] your beautiful and exquisite message… I thank you for your infinite understanding and sensitivities which are always beyond measure.”
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American Catholic Philosophical Association Issues Statement Defending Philosophy
The American Catholic Philosophical Association (ACPA) has issued a public statement defending the role of philosophy in higher education. It is a response to a…
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AAUP and AAC&U Issue Statement in Defense of Liberal Arts Education
“We believe that institutions of higher education, if they are truly to serve as institutions of higher education, should provide more than narrow vocational training and…