Category: Academia
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A Reader Needs Advice re: Graduate School
The following is from a reader who approves of my idea of soliciting advice from the rest of you, many of whom are better apprised than me of the current academic climate and job market. Name and identifying details have been elided. If you have a moment to offer some advice on the situation I've…
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Academentia
The Mandatory Banality of University Presidents. Excerpt: Outrage has been stirred. An “incomprehensible loss” (Bacow) has befallen us. “Anger, pain, and fear” (Casey) have been unleashed. Something must be done to bring about communities that are “truly safe, supportive, and inclusive for all” (Price). Worse, this killing comes on top of the epidemic that “has…
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Political Correctness in the Philosophy Journals
I found the following in a technical article on the philosophy of time by a male author: The defender of the spotlight theory also embraces past and future objects, but she accepts a "fuller" conception of these objects than the Williamsonian. According to her . . . . Suddenly I am distracted from the abstruse…
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The Case of Bo Winegard
I've Been Fired. A cautionary tale for young academics. Winegard's Twitter presence appears to have been part of his undoing. Related: Why Would You Want an Academic Job?
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A Paradox of Plenty
Complain if you like about the low level of your students, but bear in mind that you probably wouldn't have a teaching job if if it weren't for the decline in standards that is both cause and effect of the expansion of 'higher education.' A better term would be 'higher remediation.'
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David Stove Pays Tribute to David Armstrong and Comments on the Malignancy of the Left
Excerpt: But, while David has never aspired to put the world right by philosophy, the world for its part has not been equally willing to let him and philosophy alone in return. Quite the reverse. His tenure of the Chair turned out to coincide with an enormous attack on philosophy, and on humanistic learning in…
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Old and Jaded
The trick is to get old without becoming jaded. My valued colleague H. N. couldn't pull it off. He had a certain depth and a certain wisdom, and we were on good terms. He knew how to take my intensity and he wasn't threatened by my intelligence: his was a healthy self-confidence. But he had…
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Overheard in the Philosophy Department
We are all made of crooked timber, but only some of us are dead wood.
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Truth No Defense
The truth is no defense in the court of the politically correct. In present-day academe, all must toe the party line and woe to him who doesn't. The universities have become leftist seminaries.
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The Fall of John Searle
By now you will have heard that the distinguished philosopher, John R. Searle, has been stripped of his emeritus status at the University of California, Berkeley. He was found to have violated sexual harrassment policies. A long-time reader of this blog astutely observes that things went worse for Peter Abelard, and then adds: Also, behaviour…
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Why Would You Want an Academic Job?
I quit a tenured position at a good school in 1991 at the relatively young age of 41. One of my reasons was the increasing political correctness and groupthink of the universities which, since the '60s, have become leftist seminaries. Now it is far, far worse. So why would any right-thinking person want an academic…
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Why Is Cambridge Afraid of Jordan Peterson?
Rod Dreher Filed under: Academia. Perhaps the category should be retitled: Academentia.
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Too Late by Five Months! Remembering Robert C. Coburn
This morning I happened to re-read the chapter "Metaphysical Theology and the Life of Faith" in Robert C. Coburn's, The Strangeness of the Ordinary (Rowman and Littlefield, 1990). I first read it in May of 1997. I was so impressed with it this second time around that I resolved to send Professor Coburn a note…