News for & about the philosophy profession

  • DesAutels is 2014 Distinguished Woman in Philosophy

    The Eastern Division of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) has announced that it has named Peggy DesAutels, professor of philosophy at the…

  • Ludlow Sues Undergraduate (updated)

    Peter Ludlow (Northwestern) is suing the undergraduate who accused him of sexually assaulting her. The lawsuit “alleges that the student knowingly made false statements…

  • What Do PGR Evaluators Need to Know?

    I very much doubt that I would be able to provide anything like reliable judgments of philosophical quality based on the names of individuals…

  • Mathematical Logic & Foundations Chart (w/ further updates)

    The above photo is a detail from a large, hand drawn chart entitled “Mathematical Logic and Foundations, 1847-1947.” It was made in 1976 by…

  • Pre-PhD Program Coursework

    A student writes in with a question: I’m a student in my first semester at a terminal masters program, and as an undergraduate I…

  • Drunk Utilitarians

    Laboratory assistants have to do all sorts of terrible, embarrassing things, but surely this is among the silliest: Enter a bar in Grenoble, France.…

  • Famous Papers First Rejected

    “The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973) by sociologist Mark Granovetter is an extraordinarily influential paper, one of the most cited in sociology (with nearly…

  • Assessment and Philosophy Courses

    Most of the discussions regarding “assessment” are fine examples of exactly what we do not want to see college producing: vague and uniform truisms,…

  • Dudley Knowles (1947 – 2014) (updated)

    Dudley Knowles, professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow, has died. Professor Knowles worked in political philosophy and on Hegel. The department has…

  • Martin Tamny (1941-2014)

    Martin Tamny, Professor of Philosophy at CCNY and the CUNY Graduate Center, has died. Professor Tamny worked in the philosophy and history of science.…

  • Philosophy Summaries

    Alexander Dietz, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, has been working on a project called Philosophy Summaries. It features “hierarchical summaries”…

  • Hobbies of Philosophers: Lauren Ashwell

    Lauren Ashwell is assistant professor of philosophy at Bates College. She works in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and feminist ethics, and her work has…

  • Andrei Marmor (USC) to Cornell (official)

    It’s now official: Andrei Marmor, currently Professor of Philosophy and Maurice Jones Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, will be moving…

  • Another Explanation for Philosophy’s Whiteness

    In most philosophy classes the religious traditions of the Middle East and Asia are in the periphery as the other to philosophy – the impulses to…

  • Philosophy Professor Implicated in UNC Academic Fraud Investigation (several updates)

    Philosophy professor Jan Boxill was named as an active participant in an academic fraud scheme in a 136-page report issued earlier today by the University…

  • Open Letter from the Northwestern Philosophy Graduate Students (Guest Post)

    In June it was reported that Peter Ludlow was suing officials, a professor, and a graduate student at Northwestern University for defamation, gender discrimination and…

  • Open Access and Journal-less Publishing

    Recently I was asked by the editors of a journal whose mission and scholarship I support and respect to review a book by a…

  • Comment Linking, Accessing the Heap

    Two minor updates about the site: Some of you may have already noticed this but a bug of the recent redesign has just been fixed:…

  • How Philosophers Dress

    “Academics dress badly because we are so fulfilled in our work,” says Jonathan Wolff (UCL) in his column in The Guardian. Maybe. Or perhaps it…

  • Mele Replies to Dennett on Templeton Funding (Guest Post)

    Yesterday’s post, “Funding and Philosophical Results,” on Daniel Dennett’s critique of Alfred Mele’s acceptance of money from the John Templeton Foundation, generated a fair…