public philosophy
Philosophers on Rachel Dolezal (updated)
Rachel Dolezal, “in recent years… has portrayed herself physically, and on social media platforms, as a woman of black African-American heritage. However, her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, who are both white and live in the Troy/Libby area in Montana, their daughter is not African-American. They backed up the claim with a copy of their daughter’s birth cer..
Crash Course: Causation
A few weeks ago we started a new series of “crash course” posts here at Daily Nous. The idea is borrowed from Natalia Cecire (Sussex): to come up with a “one-week self education program” for “students who suddenly need to get up to speed in a field, and don’t have time to take a course or immerse themselves in it for a year,” or for professors seeking to learn about..
SEP, IEP, NDPR Weekly Update
Below are last week’s updates and new additions to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. They appear here via special arrangement with Philosophical Percolations, where they were first posted, along with many other goodies, by Jon Cogburn, BP Morton, Mark Silcox, Duncan Ric..
A Guide for US Students Applying for UK Jobs
A group of rather successful philosophers currently or formerly employed at universities in the UK have put together a guide for students and other applicants from US universities who are interested in academic jobs in the UK, and kindly offered to allow me to post it here. The authors of the guide wish to remain anonymous because, apparently, human resources depart..
A Response to Daily Nous (guest post by Laura Kipnis)
The following is a guest post* by Laura Kipnis, professor in Northwestern University’s School of Communication. Professor Kipnis wrote an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” in which she argued against certain policies and attitudes regarding sexual relations between faculty and students. In doing so, she referred ..
One of the Kipnis Complainants Speaks Out
The following guest post* is by one of parties who filed a Title IX complaint against Laura Kipnis (Northwestern). The author wishes to remain anonymous.
Thoughts from One of the Title IX Complainants
a guest post by Anonymous
Laura Kipnis is right. Those involved in the Title IX complaints at Northwestern, responding to her essay “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Ac..
Ludlow to Face Hearing; Accuser Regrets Coming Forward
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new article (paywalled) on the complaints at Northwestern University regarding Peter Ludlow and the recent discussion of those complaints by Laura Kipnis in a pair of articles (for CHE). According to CHE, “Northwestern has banned from the campus, he said, and has scheduled a hearing for next month on whether he should be fire..
Philosopher Named “Global Cities” Fellow
Michael G. Tiboris, currently a lecturer at San Diego State, has been awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He will be a “Global Cities Fellow” at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
The primary responsibility of the Global Cities Fellow is to work with the studies team to develop policy-focused research, writing, and pub..
Northwestern and Title IX: What’s Going On (updated)
Title IX issues at Northwestern University are currently receiving a lot of attention, largely in editorial pieces and comments that obscure or omit certain facts. Since these facts may be relevant to your opinion about the events at Northwestern and Title IX more generally, and since the events in question centrally involve a philosophy professor and a philosophy g..
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..
The Endarkenment at Home: Benchmarking Academics (guest post by Elijah Millgram)
The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization is a new book by Elijah Millgram (Utah). In the book, Professor Millgram looks at the implications of our becoming, more and more, “a society of specialists” in which “communication across the barriers between the professions and disciplines is our own very pressing problem,” a problem that “threat..
Philosopher Attributes Job Loss To Challenging White Hegemony (updated)
Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, a research associate with a term appointment at University College London, is claiming that his contract was not renewed “because his plans to ‘put white hegemony under the microscope’ were considered too much of a challenge to white-dominated academia,” according to an article in The Independent.
Coleman, who crosses out his surna..
Litland (Texas) Wins Sanders Prize in Metaphysics
Jon Litland (University of Texas, Austin) has won the 2015 Sanders Prize in Metaphysics for his paper, “Grounding Ground.” The prize is given to the winner of an annual essay competition open to scholars who are within fifteen years of having received their Ph.D., or students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program (independent scholars may also be eligible..
Using Initials to Hide Gender
There is some evidence that women scientists use their first initials, rather than their first names, at a greater frequency than men do in their publications. It would not be surprising if this were also true in philosophy and some other non-science disciplines. Reasons for women using initials might include worries about sexism in non-fully-anonymized peer review,..
How Philosophers Can Help Cosmologists
Cosmology’s hot streak has stalled. Cosmologists have looked deep into time, almost all the way back to the Big Bang itself, but they don’t know what came before it. They don’t know whether the Big Bang was the beginning, or merely one of many beginnings. Something entirely unimaginable might have preceded it. Cosmologists don’t know if the world we see around us is..
An Exchange on Disgust
Many of you will remember Nina Strohminger‘s amusing review of Colin McGinn’s book, The Meaning of Disgust. The review, written with the kind of frankness McGinn’s own reviews are known for, appeared in the journal, Emotion Review. Several months after its publication, the journal received a letter from McGinn responding to the review. That letter, along with Strohm..
Wide-Ranging Interview with Michael Ruse (FSU)
At his new site, What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher, Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) has posted a long and wide-ranging interview with Michael Ruse (Florida State). The interview covers a lot of his personal life and how he got into philosophy, evolution and creationism and his testimony in the McLean versus Arkansas Board of Education lawsuit, interdisciplinary ..
Course Evals from Prisoners and Princetonians
Sukaina Hirji and Daniel Wodak, two graduate students at Princeton, are currently teaching a class of fourteen prisoners at the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in New Jersey. You may recall that they were two of the philosophers interviewed here previously about their experiences teaching philosophy in prison.
Their course this term is called “Philos..
Center for Dewey Studies Is at Risk
The Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, is facing drastic budget cuts that would severely curtail its activities, according to a report in The Daily Egyptian, the school paper.
Over the past fifty years The Center for Dewey Studies put together and published 37 volumes of John Dewey’s Collected Works, and over 22,000 pieces of De..
Philosophers Among The New Canada Research Chairs
The Canadian Minister of State recently announced the recipients of 150 new and renewed “Canada Research Chairs.” Two new Canada chairs have been awarded to philosophers: Travis Dumsday (Concordia U. College of Alberta), who works in philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and medieval, and Gregoire Webber (Queen’s University), who works on quest..
Data on the Humanities
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has published its Humanities Indicators report for the United States, “The State of the Humanities: Higher Education 2015.” Among its findings:
- Humanities represent a little more than 10% of all Bachelor’s degrees, slightly more than 8% of all doctoral degrees, and just under 4% of all masters degrees.
- The number of stu..
Norms of Self-Promotion (updated)
A graduate student in philosophy who prefers to remain anonymous writes in with questions “concerning self-promotion and marketing oneself in order to move up in the world of philosophy.” He asks: “Is blatant self-promotion just a feature of the discipline now? Is doing anything necessary to sway the public opinion a necessary evil? Or should we be calling these p..
Answering the Taxpayers
I am a professor of philosophy at a public university. What is the value of philosophy to the taxpayers who subsidize my teaching? Philosophy is an abstruse and difficult field. Many of those whose taxes support higher education probably would have a hard time seeing the point of most philosophical debates. Why ask people to pay for discussions of seemingly arcane a..
Police Violence, Race, and…?
By now most of you will have heard about the two most recent publicized incidents of police killing unarmed black men in the United States. (Warning: the following videos are very disturbing.) One was a shooting that took place in South Carolina:
The other, even more horrifically, was the allowing of a police dog to maul to death a New Jersey man who had alread..
Website Responsibility
“If Your Website’s Full of Assholes, It’s Your Fault” is a 2011 post from well-known blogger Anil Dash in which he writes about a specific kind of challenge faced by bloggers and online media providers. They are often forced to defend their enterprises “because so many of the most visible, prominent, and popular places on the web are full of unkindness and hateful b..
Lack of Philosophical Progress Owed to Procrastination, Study Hopes to Find
Historians of philosophy and experimental philosophers have teamed up to determine why there has been so little progress in philosophy. “Socrates asked ‘what is the nature of the good life?’ a couple of thousand years ago,” says Jeffrey McDonough (Harvard), “and now, in 2015, my department is stuffed full of people still—supposedly—working on this question and o..
Hobbies of Philosophers: Steff Rocknak
For this installment of “Hobbies of Philosophers”, I talked to Steff Rocknak, professor of philosophy at Hartwick College. Steff works on Hume, Quine, philosophy of art, and philosophy of mind. But she also has a successful career as a sculptor—it is certainly much more than a hobby, so in this case, the title for this series is terribly inapt given the central im..
Questions about the Confucius Institute
Kansas State University is about to open a Confucius Institute on its campus and some there, including associate professor of philosophy John Mahoney, are raising concerns. He writes in a guest editorial in The Collegian:
Is there an important difference between an international exchange program in which students cross borders to study abroad, and a international..