News
CategoryUniversity of Tehran Statement on Khatami
The University of Tehran has issued a statement on the plagiarism allegations against Mahmoud Khatami (reported earlier here and here). I have been provided with two translations of the statement. One is by someone who prefers to remain anonymous. It is reprinted below. The other is by Shirzad Peik Herfeh, assistant professor of philosophy at Imam Khomeini Internat..
Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Marquette (updated)
The Westboro Baptist Church, a bizarre anti-gay cult comprised largely of the extended family of its late founder, is planning to picket on the campus of Marquette University this Sunday (correction: next Monday) morning, citing Fox News’ misleading account of Marquette graduate student Cheryl Abbate’s handling of an undergraduate’s desire to discuss same-sex marri..
Colorado Won’t Allow Outside Observer at Barnett’s Hearing (updated)
A faculty group is concerned that David Barnett, the tenured University of Colorado philosophy professor fighting for his job will not be allowed to have an outside observer at his dismissal hearing next week.
Barnett and the Colorado conference of the American Association of University Professors sought to have one of the group’s members watch a closed-door facul..
Update on Khatami Plagiarism Case
University of Tehran philosophy professor Mahmoud Khatami, who has been accused of extensive plagiarism (including his Durham University PhD, several articles, and an allegedly ghost-written book about him) is on sabbatical in Canada and has not yet responded to inquiries about the charges, according to sources in Iran.
The story has been pursued in several Irani..
Philosophers Protest the Murder of 43 Students
Over a month has passed since the forced disappearance of the normalistas (student teachers) of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College of Ayotzinapa, and still 43 remain missing.
On September 26, members of the Iguala municipal police and the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel ambushed the caravan of students as they traveled by bus within their home state of Gu..
How Many Police Shootings Are Too Many?
Let’s step back and be honest. This is a big country. Thousands of dangerous confrontations occur between police and civilians, decisions need to be made in a split second and under duress. Tragic mistakes will happen. And beyond innocent mistakes” we can surely foresee some “mistakes” that won’t be innocent. In investigating these cases we can, sadly, also predict ..
APA Protests UIUC Treatment of Salaita
The American Philosophical Association (APA) Board of Officers have written a letter in which they “protest the action of the Chancellor and Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in withdrawing the offer of a tenured position to Professor Steven Salaita.” The Board condemns the actions of these officials based on considerations of free ..
Possible Graduate Strike at Univ. of Oregon (Updated)
Graduate student teaching fellows at the University of Oregon have published a letter expressing their intent to strike, starting on December 2nd, over the university administration’s unwillingness to offer the graduate teaching fellows (GTFs) two weeks of paid leave for illness or childbirth. The conflict between the negotiating parties has been exacerbated by the ..
Financial Return on Humanities Degrees
Jeffrey Dorfman, an economics professor at the University of Georgia, has analyzed the value of undergraduate degrees in a variety of fields and reports some of the results in a column at Forbes. Conventional wisdom may hold that philosophy and other humanities fields are “destined to produce underemployed graduates, struggling to pay off their student loans, and pe..
Support for Cheryl Abbate (updated w/ statement from Marquette Pres.)
As reported a few days ago, Marquette University philosophy graduate student and instructor Cheryl Abbate has been the subject of defamatory and hostile politically-motivated blog posts by Marquette associate professor John McAdams. The story has predictably spread across the internet, and has now appeared on the Fox News website with a lying headline, typical slant..
Letter of Support for Abbate from Marquette Dept Chairs
The heads of several departments in Marquette University’s Klingler College of Arts and Sciences met about the Abbate case and have written a letter to their administration, below, which they invite other members of the Marquette University community to sign by posting their names in the comments. (Note: such “signings” will be the only comments allowed on this post..
A Case of Extensive Plagiarism (guest post) (updated)
The following guest post* provides evidence that Mahmoud Khatami, a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran who is well-known and widely-celebrated in Iran, plagiarized parts of his dissertation, which he wrote for his 1996 Ph.D. degree from Durham University. It also provides evidence that a book about Khatami’s work was plagiarized (and notes that the ..
Philosophers to Help Mine Big Data for Biomedical Research
Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy is teaming up with the University of Pittsburgh to form a new “Center for Causal Modeling and Discovery in the Biomedical Sciences.” The center is funded by an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Its aim is to “help scientists capitalize more fully on enormous and growing collections of data..
#APSAOnFire
Way back in the 2000s, at the Eastern APA’s conference hotel in DC, the fire alarms went off in the middle of the night. The hotel was briefly evacuated, but, because it was winter, rather than keep everyone outside, the hotel let people take shelter in the ballroom—the very ballroom at which the Smoker had taken place earlier that night. The tables were still in ..