teaching
Advertising Exploitative Positions
Derek Bowman, a recent philosophy PhD who is currently employed as a part-time lecturer, writes in with a suggestion for addressing the increasingly prevalent practice of hiring part-time or adjunct faculty to meet teaching needs. I present it here for your consideration and discussion.
In recent years, the philosophy blogosphere has done an admirable job mak..
Telling Your Students Your Beliefs
Adam See (Brooklyn College) wrote a letter to his philosophy students at the end of the past semester. It begins:
Dear students,
I am no longer your professor. Throughout the semester many of you have asked me what my personal beliefs are on the topics we’ve discussed. As I understand it, the reason that professors are reluctant to discuss their own beliefs come..
Why Study the History of Philosophy?
In his contribution to A Teacher’s Life: Essays for Steven M. Cahn, David Rosenthal (CUNY) raises questions about philosophy’s fit with the humanities and the sciences, framed around the study of history.
A striking difference between those fields we classify as humanities and those we regard as sciences is the attitude within each field toward its history. Learning..
Heap of Links
1. A sculpture of Edgar Allen Poe, crafted by philosopher Stefanie Rocknak (Hartwick), will soon be unveiled at the corner of Boylston Street and Charles Street South in Boston. This story’s a triple win: philosopher, art, and, of course, aptonym. Here’s other sculptural work by Rocknak. And here’s a post about how Poe anticipated the idea of the Big Bang.
2. A sea..
Intro to Philosophy…Department
At Texas Christian University, Introduction to Philosophy is team taught—and by “team” they mean the whole department, as a brief article in the school paper describes.
McCormick said she… enjoys the concept of team-teaching because each faculty member has the opportunity to introduce students to the different topics of philosophy they specialize in.
“We’re ea..
What Was I Thinking?
As I pressed the “publish” button on the “Philosophical Topics of Interest to Women?” post, the old Saturday Night Live commercial for “Chess for Girls!” popped into my head. It was a warning, but one that I allowed to go unheeded. In part this was owed to exhaustion, in part to distraction, in part to what might be a less-than-optimal amount of conscientiousness ab..
Update on Barnett
David Barnett, whom the University of Colorado is attempting to fire based on claims that he retaliated against a graduate student for her accusations of sexual assault by fellow graduate student (previously), “has been given relief from teaching duties, with pay, until he is given a hearing on the allegations against him,” according to his attorney. Barnett, an ass..
Heap of Links
1. Jason Stanley (Yale) brings political philosophy to bear on Detroit and the idea of “emergency managers” in The New York Times. Detroit’s Metro Times calls it the “most interesting read on the situation.”
2. “Things you should know before publishing a book.”
3. Looking for a brief, clear, and motivated explanation of likelihoodist, Bayesian, and frequentist meth..
Whose Problem Is It? (Guest Post by Heidi Lockwood)
Heidi Lockwood is associate professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, where she focuses on questions in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. She also works on issues in the philosophy profession, particularly regarding the treatment of women (see this post for example). She kindly authored the following guest post* on the issue of whose resp..
Public Philosophy – the Idea and the Challenges (Guest Post by Jack Weinstein)
Jack Russell Weinstein is a Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life at the University of North Dakota. He is the host of the radio show Why? Philosophical Discussions about Everyday Life and the author of its blog, PQED. He generously agreed to author a guest post* on the meanings and methods of public philosophy. Comm..
Heap of Links
1. Is Žižek a plagiarist? Update: Newsweek gets on the story. Update 2: Žižek’s response.
2. “Philosophers ought to do their best to find a female captain, not merely a ship’s figurehead,” says Susannah Kate Devitt, reviewing the latest Australian Association of Philosophy (AAP) Conference.
3. The ethics of sex with dead people? Of course, there’s dignity. But maybe..
Heap of Links
1. Heather Douglas (Waterloo) and others on how to fix Canadian science policy (audio here).
2. “Good luck idiots. I hope you enjoy your new kangaroo overlords,” said Machiavelli.
3. A continental philosopher complains about the “imperialistic approach of analytic philosophy.”
4. How confronting moral dilemmas in a foreign language makes you more utilitarian, in The..
Heap of Links
1. Is it exploitative or otherwise wrong to travel to Brazil to see the World Cup? Daniel Campos asks what an ethical fan should do.
2. For those continental philosophers who felt immune from Unger’s critique of analytic philosophy,there’s this: “Geuss describes teaching philosophy as ‘a mildly discreditable day job’ largely directed towards churning out the next ge..
Heap of Links
1. Matthew Burstein has a blog, thought.o.matt, on “academia, media, philosophy, social institutions, teaching, and technology.” Included among the posts are his annotated syllabi for courses on queer theory, philosophy and film, and the moral dimensions of power.
2. Some updates on that class photo of Wittgenstein and Hitler (scroll down).
3. Chimps perform more ra..
Social Psych in the Philosophy Classroom
Normally, self-affirmation is reserved for instances in which identity is threatened in direct ways: race, gender, age, weight, and the like. Here, Nyhan decided to apply it in an unrelated context: Could recalling a time when you felt good about yourself make you more broad-minded about highly politicized issues, like the Iraq surge or global warming? As it turns o..
Philosophical Critique of Piketty
Kevin Vallier (Bowling Green) has begun a five part series of posts assessing the normative political philosophy in Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. He writes:
In this series, I am interested only in the following question: supposing that Piketty is right about the nature of capitalism, what are the normative implications? My answer will be that it’s fa..
PIP #1: Huebner Interviews Maffie
A “pip” is defined variously as a small fruit seed, a dot on dice or dominoes, an exemplar. It is a verb meaning to crack or chip a hole in a shell. Wonderfully evocative, no? (It’s also the name of a disease which causes a crust on the tongues of birds but let’s ignore that for now as it is gross and doesn’t really work for what I’m going for.) For here, PIP stands..
The Legality of Hiring for Diversity
There is a great discussion on the thread about diversity in philosophy departments at undergraduate institutions, with many thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions still coming in.
One set of concerns that arises in these discussions has to do with the legality of trying to hire in a way that will make for a more diverse department. This was a topic addre..
Weinberg Donates $7.7m to Michigan
No, not me. Nor, alas, anyone related to me (as far as I know). But Marshall Weinberg, a University of Michigan alumnus, has donated $7.7 million to the University of Michigan for a new cognitive science institute, which will be a cooperative effort between the Departments of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology. The Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, as i..
2014 Lenssen Prize Winners
The American Association of Philosophy Teachers awarded their 2014 Lenssen Prize to Ann J. Cahill and Stephen Bloch-Schulman, both of Elon University, for their paper, “Argumentation Step-By-Step: Learning Critical Thinking through Deliberative Practice,” published in Teaching Philosophy 35(1) in March 2012. The Lenssen Prize is awarded to the best paper concerning ..
The Anthropology of the College Professor
Anthropologist John Ziker (Boise State) applied the tools of his trade to the species homo academicus and reports the first of his findings on how professors use their time. Some excerpts:
On average, our faculty participants worked 61 hours per week. That is 50 percent more than a 40-hour workweek. It’s a good thing they love what they do. They worked just over 10 ..
Heap of Links
1. A philosophy undergrad reflects on anxiety and racial stereotypes in philosophy teaching (via Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins, who shares her thoughts on the post here.)
2. At North Idaho College, the philosophy club arranged an event at which “impassioned students met with faculty to discuss the possibility of adding three classes into the curriculum.” The meeting and ..
Are Junior Faculty Overburdened with Service?
How much service, and what kinds, are appropriate for junior faculty? Is more teaching preferable to more service? Do service burdens vary by gender? Brian Weatherson presents some anecdata and comments at And Another Thing, and Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins discusses her experience at her blog, Field Notes. Have any readers had noteworthy experiences in this regard? Does..