online teaching
Philosophy in Prison Program at U.Missouri Kansas-City Wins Prize from APA and PDC
The Philosophy in Prison Program of the Philosophy Department at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) has won 2016 Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. The prize is awarded jointly by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and the Philosophy Documentation Center (PDC). The prize award is campus-wide electronic access to a bund..
APA Joins Condemnation of Turkey’s Attacks on Academic Freedom
The board of officers of the American Philosophical Association (APA), in a unanimous vote, decided to officially sign on to a statement from the Middle East Studies Association condemning the Turkish government’s recent attacks on academic freedom, according to a post at the Blog of the APA. (more…)
Australasian Association of Philosophy Awards
The Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) has announced the winners of several of its 2016 awards. The list of prizes and winners is below. But first, notice that the AAP issues an award to non-philosophers: its Media Professionals’ Award. (more…)
Benhabib on Pogge (Updated with Clarification from Benhabib)
The German newspaper, Zeit, has an article on the recent allegations of sexual harassment and other unprofessional behavior against Thomas Pogge. In it, Seyla Benhabib, Pogge’s colleague in Yale’s Department of Political Science, is reported as calling for Yale to act.
Guide to Graduate Study in Aesthetics
The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA) has released the fourth edition of its Guide to Graduate Aesthetics in North America.
Philosophy For Children on the US/Mexico Border
Local school teachers, professors and students of philosophy at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), and several community organizations have teamed up for a bilingual project called Philosophy for Children in the Borderlands: (more…)
New Funding Source for Public Philosophy Projects
PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) is a national network devoted to promoting pre-college philosophy education. It just created the PLATO Philosophy Fund (PPF), “which will provide funding for a wide range of innovative philosophy programs with the aim of broadening philosophy’s reach,” according to a post by PLATO founding president and PPF chair..
Three Recent Plugs For Philosophy’s Practical Value
In the span of a day or so at least three paeans to the practical value of studying philosophy have appeared online, at… (more…)
Plenty Of Woe To Go Around: A Post About A Philosophy Journal
What the hell is going on? You might occasionally ask yourself that question when confronted with the problems, missteps, malfunctions, and other obstacles that seem to be part of the normal experience of academic life—for example, when you send in an article to a journal and it, and the journal’s staff, seem to vanish. A reader of Daily Nous recently wrote in: (m..
Diversifying Your Syllabus Made Easier (guest post by Simon Fokt)
The following is a guest post* by Simon Fokt (Edinburgh), who, among other things, created the Diversity Reading List, a resource for those interested in including in their teaching works by authors from groups traditionally underrepresented in philosophy.
Why Do Undergraduate Women Stop Studying Philosophy? (guest post by Morgan Thompson)
The following is a guest post* by Morgan Thompson (Pittsburgh), who, along with Toni Adleburg (UCSD), Sam Sims (Florida State), and Eddy Nahmias (Georgia State), authored the newly published “Why Do Women Leave Philosophy: Surveying Students at the Introductory Level” (Philosophers’ Imprint). Below, Thompson covers some of the main points of the paper for the purpos..
Professors, You Were Not Normal
Professors, you were not normal. You weren’t normal back when you were an undergraduate, and you aren’t normal now. Even back then, you cared about stuff (yes I’ll say “stuff”) that most of your fellow students didn’t even ever think about, and now that you’ve spent so much time studying that stuff, writing about that stuff, credentializing yourself in that stuff, a..
Open Syllabus Project
Colleen Cressman (MIT) draws our attention to the Open Syllabus Project. The project is a work in progress aimed at creating “the first large-scale online database of university course syllabi as a platform for the development of new research, teaching, and administrative tools.” It has a collection of over a million syllabi culled from the internet and other source..
Ten Projects Receive APA Grants
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of ten grants—eight from its Small Grant Program and 2 from its Diversity and Inclusiveness Grants Program. What follows is from the APA’s press release:
Small Grant Program
Each year, the APA Eastern Division provides $25,000 for the APA’s Small Grant Program. This year’s grant applicati..
New Heights (Lows?) in Philosophy Job Application Requirements
A correspondent who prefers to remain anonymous brought to my attention the job advertisement of California State Sacramento, and sent along the following commentary:
As those on the market all know, the application process can be a hassle. In addition to all the intellectual investment and tedious editing that goes into putting together a decent portfolio, depar..
APA’s Best Practices for Interviewing
Interview season is creeping up on us. Interviewers and interviewees may wish to check out the new edition of the American Philosophical Association’s Best Practices for Interviewing. It includes an overview of the typical stages of the interviewing process, along with advice for those hiring.
For example:
Members of the hiring committee should confine themsel..
Philosophers and Welders and Politicians (updated)
Oh my.
In last night’s Republican primary debate, Florida Senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio criticized U.S. higher education for being “outdated.” It is too expensive, he said, and too hard to access. Additionally, “it doesn’t teach 21st century skills.” Like welding.
I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more mo..
Intellectually Safe Space
What is an “intellectually safe space”? In “What Does Intellectual Safety Really Mean?” Katelyn Hallman (North Florida) notes:
An intellectually safe environment, as typically construed, is something like an environment “in which a person feels comfortable sharing ideas and opinions without fear of harsh judgment or repercussions.” This conception of intellectual..
The Lecture Strikes Back
Lecturing as a teaching style is not particularly trendy these days, but perhaps it is particularly well-suited for the humanities. Writing in the New York Times, history professor Molly Worthen (UNC) makes the case:
In the humanities, there are sound reasons for sticking with the traditional model of the large lecture course combined with small weekly discussion..
The Tricky Truth about Tractatus Trees (updated)
Earlier in the week I put up a website that allows one to click through the tree-like structure of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the Heap of Links (in the right sidebar). I believe the visualization is by Pierre Bellon, a web engineer who has “old-school philosophy” as a hobby.
In response, David Stern (Iowa), sent in this helpful message:
T..
Ethics of Suicide Digital Archive
In what is being referred to as “an unprecedented example of library-author-publisher collaboration,” a new philosophy book and accompanying digital archive of its material were recently launched. The book is The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources, by Margaret Battin (Utah). Professor Battin worked with her publisher, Oxford University Press, and the University o..
Trolls in the Philosophical Blogosphere (Ought Experiment)
Welcome back to Ought Experiment! We had ourselves quite the weekend, didn’t we? Well hang on to your armchairs, folks, because apparently it’s time for a Very Special Episode. After the heated conversation about professional cliques, a certain blog editor wrote in with a question about the role and consequences of anonymity in online philosophical discussion:
De..
Microaggressions and Academic Freedom
Any characterization of the United States as “a melting pot,” for example, is classified in widely used training materials as a microaggression signaling a refusal to acknowledge the role that race plays in American society. The same goes for saying “Everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough” or “I believe the most qualified person should get the..
Diversity Reading List for Philosophy
A new website sponsored by the School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at the University of Leeds offers philosophers a way to find “high-quality texts in philosophy, written by authors from under-represented groups. Its aim is to promote the work of such authors and facilitate finding and using their texts in teaching.” It’s called Diversity Reading ..
APA Names Blog Editor
The American Philosophical Association is starting a new blog later this year and has named Lewis Powell, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Buffalo, as its lead editor. In the press release, Powell says:
My goal for the APA blog is to create a forum for issues of importance to APA members, whether those issues relate to service, teaching and..
Answers from Academic Publishers
Two weeks ago I put up a post soliciting questions for academic publishers. If you submitted a question, thanks. Editors at various presses—Peter Momtchiloff, Peter Ohlin, and Lucy Randall at Oxford University Press, Stephen Latta of Broadview Press, Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge University Press, Philip Laughlin of MIT Press, Rob Tempio of Princeton University Press..
Yik Yak Yuck
Margaret Crouch, a philosophy professor at Eastern Michigan University, was team-teaching a large group of students with two other professors, while, unbeknownst to the three, many of the students were using the class time to post hostile and vulgar remarks about them via Yik Yak. (If you don’t know Yik Yak, think of it as a local anonymous twitter feed in which old..
How Do You Want Your Students To Assess You?
Most colleges and universities have students fill out forms to evaluate their instructors’ performance at the end of the term. Semesters are just beginning around now, but it is not too early to start thinking about those evaluations. One study found that “students’ ratings 2 weeks into the semester did not differ from end-of-semester evaluations.”
There are lots..