Brian Leiter's Blog, page 1433

Former Philosophy Professor Poised to Become Next President of Columbia

Story here. Felipe De Brigard, who flagged the story for me, tells me that Mockus taught logic and ancient Greek philosophy at university (and he taught logic in both the math and philosophy departments).

"Moral Skepticism and Moral Disagreement: Developing an Argument from Nietzsche": Reply to Comments, Part II

Here. My sincere thanks again to everyone who participated, and to the National Humanities Center, and the editor, Gary Comstock, for this great forum.

Crane and Grayling Discuss Religion at the LSE

Information and a link to the audio podcast here. I haven't had a chance to listen yet. The blurb introducing the discussion seems a bit odd--religion has obviously been in steady decline for the last two hundred years; that there...

Philosophy and the Universities

An interesting thought experiment raised early on in Michael Dummett's new The Nature and Future of Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2010): It is by no means obvious that universities...should support philosophy but for historical precedent. If universities had been an...

Getting Up to Speed on the Middlesex Fiasco

This column by John Protevi (Louisiana State) is a good place to start, and also covers some of the recent developments, and sitautes the issue, appropriately, in a broader political-economic context.

What is the NY Times Thinking?

They create a blog forum related to philosophy ("The Stone"), and then choose a complete hack as its moderator. Simon Critchley? Even among scholars of Continental philosophy (his purported area of expertise), he's not taken seriously, let alone among philosophers...

You finally get that tenure-track job and then you discover this!

A young philosopher at a ranked PhD program writes: I'm in a top 50 research university. While on the job market recently, being humiliated in interviews in cramped bedrooms, the phone continually ringing, faculty members emerging from the shower still...

In Memoriam: Paul Hoffman (1952-2010)

I am sorry to report that Professor Hoffman, a distinguished scholar of early modern philosophy and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Riverside, has passed away very suddenly. I will post links to memorial notices as they...

A Searing Indictment of the Texas State Board of "Education"

Here. Although the immediate damage is to children in the nation's second-most populous state, the misconduct by the Texas Taliban on the SBOE has ramifications nationwide, because of the power of Texas in the national market for school textbooks. (Thanks...

New Worry for American Citizens Travelling Abroad

The U.S. government might decide you should be assassinated. I guess they are relying on the little-noted "deprivation of life via killer drone without due process of law" clause of the Constitution. (Thanks to Adam Taylor for the link.)