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Strategies for Keeping Warm in the Classroom
It has happened to all of us. It has happened to someone who someone you know heard about from someone else: a perfectly competent professor disciplined for saying something totally innocuous in class after being reported to the administration by oversensitive students.
We talked about this a bit here. In “Professors Running Scared? A less dramatic rendering of p..
New Blog on the Ethics of War
The Ethical War Blog is a new group blog hosted by the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. The Centre’s Jonathan Parry writes:
The Ethical War Blog will publish short and timely opinion articles on war-related topics in the news, written by specialists in the field, in an accessible and digestible format. The blog launches with five articles, with n..
Barnett to Resign from Colorado (updated)
David Barnett, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will be resigning from the school with a $210,000 settlement. Barnett had gone through termination proceedings last year on grounds that he had retaliated against a student who had complained about another student sexually assaulting her (previous stories on this here). The D..
Philosophers’ TV Guide
No, no one has created one yet, but it would be useful. Something close to it is the philosophy page at TV Tropes, which lists various philosophical themes that, when clicked on, will take you to a page describing the theme in more detail and giving examples of it in a variety of mediums, including television.
Speaking of TV, Alison Gopnik (Berkeley) sent over t..
Confidence & Performance in Philosophy
There’s an interesting post at Show and Tell about the speaking styles of philosophers. It begins with this:
There is a telling anecdote about G.E.M. Anscombe and A.J. Ayer. Anscombe said to Ayer, “You know, if you didn’t talk so fast, no one would think you were so clever.” Ayer rapidly replied, “And if you didn’t talk so slowly, no one would think you were so v..
Application Fees and Timely Decisions
A prospective graduate student—call him Prospecto—has reported the following:
I applied to the Philosophy Ph.D. program at , submitting a completed application and paying the substantial application fee by the deadline. I then I heard nothing. On April 16, the day after one has to decide -– if one is lucky –- what grad school offer to accept, I wrote to the s..
Ned Markosian from Western Washington to UMass (updated)
Ned Markosian, currently professor of philosophy at Western Washington University (current website, Academia.edu page), has accepted an offer as professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, effective Fall 2015. Professor Markosian received his PhD from UMass, Amherst. He works primarily in metaphysics.
(No word yet on whether the Bel..
Inaugural Issue of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association
The first ever issue of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association is now available online. According to a press release from the APA, “All current APA members have free online access to the journal. Members will also receive a complimentary copy of the journal in the mail.” The journal is published by Cambridge University Press. The journal’s editor-in-c..
Who Deleted What From Heidegger’s Works, And Who Knew About It? (updated)
FAZ, one of the main newspapers in Germany, reports on the unraveling scandal regarding Heidegger’s anti-Semitic writings. The latest, I am told, is that Peter Trawny, one of the editors of the Gesamtausgabe, the definitive collection of Heidegger’s works (he edited the now infamous Black Notebooks) has admitted in a recent interview that he was pressured by the lea..
Brian Barry Literary Archive
There is a new site dedicated to archiving the writings of and about the late, great, political philosopher Brian Barry. The Brian Barry Literary Archive, as it is called, is still in development, but already contains some of his unpublished work (books and articles), links to obituaries, and a brief biographical note. There are plans to include on the site a comple..
Public School Curriculum Denies Moral Facts
Our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.
The inconsistency in this curriculum is obvious. For example, at the outset of the school year, my son brought home a l..
What’s Going On at the Central?
The Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association is underway. Let’s hear about it.
Online Conferences: Pros, Cons, Tips
“I am about to be involved in organizing an online conference and I am interested in how the group mind of philosophy thinks about it,” writes a regular Daily Nous reader in an email. Reasons to make your conference an online conference? Reasons not to? Reports on how they’ve gone from both organizer and participant points of view? Technical suggestions? Organizing ..
Summer Programs for Philosophy Undergraduates
Here’s some information about two summer programs for undergraduates thinking about continuing their studies in philosophy. First, there’s the 2015 Summer Program for Women in Philosophy:
The Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego is pleased to announce a call for applications for the 2015 Summer Program for Women in Philosophy, which wi..
This Year in Philosophical Intellectual History
This fall, one of the most powerful institutions in the field of philosophy in this country began to collapse…
In “The Rise and Fall of the Philosophical Gourmet Report,” a brief post at the U.S. Intellectual History Blog, historian Ben Alpers takes a look at one of the major stories in the philosophy profession this year. Alpers is cautious about his account o..
T-Shirt Update and Charity Poll (updated)
The first ever Daily Nous t-shirt sale is over. An elite group of 38 people with apparently really good taste were lucky enough to secure their shirts during the limited sale period, raising $190 for charity. While the shirts are being made, we have a decision to make: which charity? I’ve selected a few of the suggestions from the previous thread for us to choose am..
New Political Philosophy Prize
David Sobel (Syracuse) announces the creation of the Marc Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy:
The Marc Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy is a biennial essay competition open to scholars who, at the time of submission deadline, are within fifteen (15) years of receiving a Ph.D. or are students currently enrolled in a graduate program. Independent scholars may..
Oregon Grad Students Warned of Deportation (see updates)
The University of Oregon administration has told international graduate students that they will be deported if they join the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation strike, according to UO assistant professor of philosophy Mark Alfano. Additionally, the administration is attempting to undermine the strike by decreeing that undergraduates taking courses that use teachin..
Response to McAdams’s Attack on Abbate
The following is a guest post* from a philosopher who has been in communication with Marquette University philosophy graduate student Cheryl Abbate about the events that occurred in her class and that have been at the center of much controversy recently. The post aims to correct several mistaken and misleading elements in associate professor of political science Joh..
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..
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..
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 ..
Patrick Suppes (1922-2014) (several updates)
Patrick Suppes, emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford University, has died. Suppes was known for his work in several areas, most notably philosophy of science. Stanford University has posted a memorial notice here. His complete bibliography and the text of an intellectual autobiography he wrote in 1978 can be found here, and here is another site that collects..
Philosophy Grad Student Target of Political Smear Campaign (several updates)
A philosophy graduate student and instructor at Marquette University is the target of a political attack initiated by one of her students, facilitated by a Marquette political science professor, and promulgated by certain advocacy organizations.
Cheryl Abbate, a Marquette PhD student working on a dissertation in ethics, has provided me with information about the ..
Teaching on Same-Sex Marriage
Most colleges offer lower-level philosophy courses on contemporary moral problems, one of the aims of which is to teach students how to think philosophically about assorted social and political issues. There are more of these kinds of issues than could be covered adequately in a semester, so the instructor must select which to include, and there may be some difficul..
Update on Stubblefield Case
Anna Stubblefield, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers-Newark who had been accused of sexually assaulting a mentally disabled student in her office (previously), will be in court in December and January for a pair of evidence hearings, according to an article at NJ.com.
From the article:
Prosecutors allege Stubblefield, 44, of West Orange, repeatedly sexually..
Group Work in Philosophy Class
Here are problems with group-work that I have observed or heard about multiple times from students:
- the members of the group (unless the group is the whole class) do not include an expert on either the topic for discussion or the assigned reading on it, so mistakes can go uncorrected and misunderstanding can be increased (if plausibly, confidently, or charisma..
Causes of Deaths of Philosophers
Maintained by Hugh Mellor but apparently last updated in 2005, the Causes of Deaths of Philosophers website humorously speculates about, well, the causes and descriptions of deaths of philosophers. To wit:
Husserl: Phenomenally bad luck
Ryle: Gave up the ghost
Dancy: No particular reason
Sellars: Not given
Benacerraf: Number was up
Wittgenstein: Became the l..