Academic Labor
CategoryCambridge: All Lectures Online Until Summer 2021
There will be no in-person lectures at the University of Cambridge until the Summer of 2021 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school announced today. (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…)
Villanova Graduate Students Seek Assistance
In March, doctoral students in philosophy and theology at Villanova University wrote to their administration seeking support in light of the economic effects of the COVID pandemic. Their request was acknowledged as received, but the semester is winding to a close and they’ve not yet heard much in response. (more…)
Scholars Threaten Boycott in Solidarity with Graduate Students & Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
A number of scholars, including over forty philosophers, have signed onto a statement saying they “will not accept invitations for speaking engagements, workshops, and conferences” at universities and colleges that have failed to include non-tenure-track faculty and graduate students in their pandemic-prompted plans for extensions and accomodations to tenure-track a..
Universities Announce Furloughs and Salary Reductions
The University of Arizona, The University of Wisconsin system, and Valparaiso University have all announced they will be instituting furloughs—mandatory unpaid days off from work—or salary reductions for at least some of their employees. (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…)
COVID-19 and Teaching Evaluations
The abrupt transition to online teaching, the hasty reorganization or course schedules in light of cancelled classes, and the move to pass/fail grading options characteristic of many schools’ responses to the pandemic will likely affect students opinions of the courses they’re taking and the instructors teaching them. (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…)
Concerns About The Sudden Move To Online Teaching
As some schools are now responding to the spread of the coronavirus by cancelling in-person classes and replacing them with online teaching, faculty are beginning to voice concerns. (more…)
Are Philosophers Using Publons?
About four years ago in a post about getting credit for refereeing articles, I mentioned Publons, a site that allows you to “track your publications, citation metrics, peer reviews, and journal editing work in a single, easy-to-maintain profile.” (more…)
Recognizing Graduate Student Service Work Beyond Compensation (guest post by Angela Sun et al)
The following is a guest post* by Angela Sun (Michigan), Carolina Flores (Rutgers), Milana Kostic (UCSD), Elise Woodard (Michigan), and Jingyi Wu (UC Irvine), graduate students in philosophy who comprise the organizing team of Minorities and Philosophy (MAP). It follows up on a previous guest post by MAP, “Compensate Graduate Students for Service Work.” (more…)..
The Challenges Faced by Adjunct Faculty
Jonathan D. Parsons, adjunct professor of philosophy at the College of DuPage, will be giving a presentation on the curricular and professional challenges faced by adjunct faculty at the upcoming Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA). (more…)
A Thoughtful and Thorough Academic Job Ad
What if I told you it was possible for an advertisement for an academic position to explain why the hiring department is hiring in a particular area, provide a profile of the kind of colleague the existing faculty are looking for, describe the work environments the successful candidate will find themself in, convey the values the department aims to promote, and deta..
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 ..
Compensate Graduate Students for Service Work (guest post by Carolina Flores et al)
The following is a guest post* by Carolina Flores (Rutgers), Milana Kostic (UCSD), Angela Sun (Michigan), Elise Woodard (Michigan), and Jingyi Wu (UC Irvine), graduate students in philosophy who comprise the organizing team of Minorities and Philosophy (MAP). (more…)
Philosopher-Created Research and Productivity Software for Philosophers
Jason Winning, who worked developing commercial database software for medical professionals before recently earning a Ph.D. in philosophy and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, has created a free, open source “personal productivity/database application” designed to be especially useful to philosophers. (more…)
Flying Less, Videoconferencing More (guest post by Colin Marshall)
Seven Principles of Humane PhD Advising (guest post by Eric Schwitzgebel)
The following is a guest post* by Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California, Riverside). It originally appeared at his blog, The Splintered Mind.
Philosophy’s Plagiarism Patrol
The body of published scholarship in my discipline—academic philosophy—suffers from a host of authorship violations, including plagiarism, undisclosed pseudonyms, and duplicate publication. These problems appear to be largely unknown to many in the field, even though some of the most egregious cases have appeared with the top presses. (more…)
Criticism, Care, and Colleagues
“If you agree with me that we have an ethical responsibility to support our colleagues who are harassed for their public scholarship, and you also agree that it is extremely difficult for those colleagues to respond in an appropriate manner to reasoned critique, how do we protect our ability to critique each other?” (more…)
Bullshit Jobs in Higher Ed
“The degree to which those involved in teaching and academic management spend more and more of their time involved in tasks which they secretly—or not so secretly—believe to be entirely pointless” is a hot topic on academic social media this week, owing to an article about it by anthropologist David Graeber (LSE) in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (more…)..
Loyola’s Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Strike
Non-tenure-track faculty at Loyola University Chicago went on strike this morning, after two years of negotiations between between their union (Service Employees International Union Local 73 Branch, which they joined in 2016) and the university’s administration. (more…)
Leeds Declares Punitive Pay Measures Against Faculty; Philosophers Respond By Resigning As External Examiners
The University of Leeds has told its faculty and staff that they will not be paid while on strike, and will be docked 25% for each day, after they’ve returned to work, that they fail to reschedule class time missed during the strike, according to Leeds Live. (more…)
Why Are UK Academics Striking?
Since late February, professors and staff at UK universities have been striking over changes to their retirement plans. (more…)
University of Illinois Grad Students Strike Today
Graduate Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are set to go on strike, starting this morning. (more…)
When To Engage With Harmful Ideas
Are some ideas so harmful or offensive that scholars should not work on them, or even bother to respond to them? And if so, how do we figure out which ones? (more…)
Plagiarist’s University Issues Criticism …of the Whistleblower
Last month we learned how philosophy professor Michael V. Dougherty (Ohio Dominican) and his students discovered and reported that Peter J. Schulz, a Professor of Communication in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Lugano (also known as Università della Svizzera italiana, or USI), plagiarized the work of philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny and Pope..
Philosophical Conflicts of Interest
As the discussion of funding in philosophy and its disclosure continues, it might be worth considering some related questions, prompted by this tweet from John Christmann, a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder: