Category: Academia

Free Speech and Open Inquiry Under Attack at Major Universities

In September 2016, one of the living giants of Christian scholarship, the Oxford emeritus philosopher Richard Swinburne, gave an address to the Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers, in the US. He spoke about Christian sexual ethics. In an aside — meaning this wasn’t the main topic of his talk — he affirmed the orthodox Christian view that homosexuality is morally wrong. For this, he was denounced by some Christian philosophers in the audience, and the head of the group quickly apologized for the keynote speaker, Swinburne, affirming Christian orthodoxy in an address to Christian philosophers. I wrote about it here. 

It is scandalous that a leading Christian philosopher cannot state an orthodox Christian position — something that all Christians affirmed until the day before yesterday — at a gathering of Christian philosophers.

Here is something equally scandalous, but far more dangerous. John Finnis is equally a giant in the world of Christian scholarship. He is a philosopher of law who specializes in natural law theory. Though he’s now based at Notre Dame, he is an emeritus professor at Oxford. Among his past students: Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, and Princeton constitutional law professor Robert George.

Finnis is now the object of a petition at Oxford asking that he be removed from teaching postgraduate students because of his views on homosexuality.

Read it all: The John Finnis Line in the Sand

Academentia and the Need for Fumigation

Here:

Everyone is buzzing today about the revelation of the three academics—James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian—who placed over a dozen complete hoax articles with various premier “cultural studies” or “identity studies” academic journals. All three professors, it should be noted, consider themselves left of center, as does Alan Sokal, the New York University physicist who placed a hoax article about the supposed subjectivity of physics in the postmodernist journal Social Text 20 years ago. 

There are termites everywhere, undermining the foundations of sanity, reason, and moral decency.  There is Bergolio and his bunch in the Roman church; the lamestream media is infested with the little buggers; the academic world is lousy with leftists; the deep state is corrupt to the core; Big Tech is inimical to free speech; the Democrat Party is the party of slander and senselessness, and Hillary is on the loose.  It's a stinking lousy mess all around.

When I was a young man knockin' around in the years between college and graduate school I worked at various jobs. For a time I was an exterminator for Pan American Pest Control out of Santa Monica, California. The boss wanted to set me up in the business but I had my sights set higher.  I fancied philosopher a higher calling than bug killer.

It occurs to me now that I am still working in pest control and fumigation. But on the ideal, as opposed to the real, plane.  I am out to exterminate willful stupidity, groupthink, the misuse of language, political correctness . . . .

Is Graduate School Really That Bad?

100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School is now at reason  #98.  Despite its unrelenting negativity, prospective applicants  to graduate programs will find the site  useful.  I cannot criticize it for being negative since that is its implied purpose: to compile 100 reasons not to go.  But there is something whiny and wimpy about it.

Grad school dropoutSuppose you are paid to spend five years, from age 22 to age 27, studying in depth a subject you love and have an aptitude for in the idyllic environs of a college campus.  You have been give tuition remission and a stipend on which to live.  You really enjoy reading, writing, thinking, and studying more than anything else.   You have good sense and avoid the folly of assuming debt in the form of student loans.  You live within your very modest means and have the character to resist the siren songs of a society bent on crazy consumption.   You understand that a little monkishness never hurt anyone, and might even do your soul some good.

You spend five years enjoying all the perquisites of academic life: a beautiful environment, stimulating people, library privileges, an office, a flexible work schedule, and the like.  At age 27 you are granted the Ph.D.  But there are few jobs, and you knew that all along.  You make a serious attempt at securing a position in your field but fail.  So you go on to something else either with or without some further training.

Have you wasted your time?  Not by my lights.  Hell, you've been paid to do what you love doing!  What's to piss and moan about?  You have been granted a glorious extension of your relatively carefree collegiate years.  Five more years of being a student, sans souci, in some exciting place like Boston.  Five more years of contact with age- and class-appropriate members of the opposite sex and thus five more years of opportunity to find a suitable mate.  (But if you marry and have kids while a grad student, then you are a fool.  Generally speaking, of course.) 

Of course, if your goal in life is to pile up as much loot as possible in the shortest possible time, then stay away from (most) graduate programs.  But if the life of the mind is your thing, go for it!  What's to kvetch about? Are you washed up at 27 or 28 because you couldn't land a tenure-track position?  You have until about age 40 to make it in America. 

In the interests of full disclosure, however, I should say that I was one of the lucky ones. I spent five years in graduate school and received my Ph.D. at age 28. In the same year I accepted a tenure-track appointment and six years later I had tenure at age 34.

For more on this and cognate topics, see my Academia category.

Society of Christian Philosophers Succumbs to Political Correctness

The following taken verbatim from Appeared-to-Blogly.

SCP: 1978-2018

Filed under: Philosophy — camcintosh @ 5:09 pm 

Well, the Society of Christian Philosophers had a good run, celebrating its 40th anniversary at a vegan-catered conference this past weekend. Like the American Philosophical Association, the SCP is a shell of its former self, having been soul-sucked by political activists on the left. Compare Alvin Plantinga’s vision of nearly 40 years ago, as detailed in his “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” to the SCP’s vision today as gravestonesummarized by one of the conference organizers:

The future is about teaching philosophy better, engaging in community outreach, rethinking “the cannon”, willing to think about mental illness, seeking to be compassionate and caring, promoting diversity and inclusion, and working to be less white. And it includes children.

This vision, relayed in typical Orwellian code, could just as well be that of any other progressive, secular organization’s. Hence, the Society of Christian Philosophers can no longer be said to exist as a distinctively Christian or philosophical organization. Its acronym should henceforth be understood to stand for the Society of “Christian” Progressives. I’m sure Uncle Al and Sr. Swinburne are proud of this bold, counter-cultural direction.

…………………………………..

BV comments: rethinking "the cannon"? I'd like to take  a cannon to the numbskull who wrote the above statement. The word, of course, is 'canon.'
 

Of ‘Blind Review’ and Pandora’s Box

This is a repost from 1 April 2014. I was reminded of it by a missive from Spencer Case who rightly complains about a more recent bit of related academentia.  But if I link to it, you won't read what I have to say below. I will talk about the latest outrage perhaps tomorrow.

……………………………….

This is not an April Fool's joke.

Blind review is a standard practice employed by editors of professional journals and organizers of academic conferences.  The editor/organizer removes the name of the author from the manuscript before sending it  to the referee or referees for evaluation.  My present concern is not  whether this is a good practice, although I believe it is.  I am concerned with the phrase that describes it and whether or not this phrase can be reasonably found offensive by anyone.  There are those who think that the phrase is offensive and ought to be banned.  Shelley Tremain writes,

For the last few years, I have tried to get the APA [American Philosophical Association] to remove the phrase “blind review” from its publications and website.  The phrase is demeaning to disabled people because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers.  Because the phrase is standardly used in philosophy and other academic CFPs [Calls for Papers], it should become recognized as a cause for great concern.  In short, use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates.  Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way.

Let's consider these claims seriatim.

1. "The phrase is demeaning to disabled people . . . "  Well, I am a disabled person and the phrase is not demeaning to me.  As a result of a birth defect I hear in only one ear.  And of course there are innumerable people who are disabled in different ways who will not find the phrase demeaning. 

2. " . . . because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers."  This is not just false but silly.  No one thinks that blind people cannot be knowers or that knowers cannot be blind. Or at least no sane person thinks that.

Besides, it makes no sense to say that a phrase associates anything with anything.  A foolish person who is precisely not thinking, but associating, might associate blindness with ignorance, but so what?  People associate the damndest things.

To point out the obvious:  if the name has been removed from the manuscript, then the referee literally cannot see it. This is not to say that the referee is blind, or blind with respect to the author's name: he could see it if it were there to see.  'Blind review' means that the reviewer is kept in the dark as to the identity of the author.  That's all! 

3. ". . .  it should become recognized as a cause for great concern."  Great concern?  This is a wild exaggeration even if this issue is of some minor concern.  I say, however, that it is of no concern.  No one is demeaned or slighted or insulted or mocked or ridiculed by the use of the phrase in question.

4. ". . . use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates."  One could argue that the practice of blind review discriminates against those who have made a name for themselves.  But that is the only discrimination in the vicinity.  I said at the top that this post is no joke.  What is risible, however, is that anyone would find 'blind review' to be discriminatory against blind people.

5. "Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way."  This presupposes that the use of the phrase 'blind review' inflicts harm.  This is just silly.  It would be like arguing that  the use of 'black hole' inflicts harm on black people because its use associates blacks with holes or with hos (whores).

Pandora's BoxIn the early-to-mid '80s I attended an APA session organized by a group that called itself PANDORA: Philosophers Against the Nuclear Destruction of Rational Animals.  One of the weighty topics that came up at this particular meeting was the very name 'Pandora.'  Some argued that the name is sexist on the ground that it might remind someone of Pandora's Box, which of course has nothing to do with the characteristic female orifice, but in so reminding them might be taken as a slighting of that orifice.  ('Box' is crude slang for the orifice in question.)  I pointed out in the meeting that the name is just an acronym, and has nothing to do either with Pandora's Box or the characteristic female orifice.  My comment made no impression on the politically correct there assembled.  Later the outfit renamed itself Concerned Philosophers for Peace ". . . because of sexist and exclusionary aspects of the acronym."  (See here) 

Time to Shut Down the Leftist Seminaries?

The universities have become seminaries of leftism.  'Seminary' is from semen, seed. The universities have become seed beds in which the seeds of America's destruction are planted in skulls full of mush. Time to shut them down says philosophy professor Jason D. Hill.  You decide whether he has gone too far or is basically on track.

When the term "Western civilization" is equated with racism, cultural superiority and pervasive oppression, and students in my political philosophy class refuse to study the works of John Stuart Mill or John Locke (or any other white thinker) because they consider them white supremacists, there is no lower level of educational hell.

[. . .]

Cultural Marxism, defined as anti-capitalist cultural critique, is the educational trope that mediates all forms of learning in today's universities – and it is simply a guise under which to politically indoctrinate students into becoming socialists who will do anything to prohibit freedom of speech on college campuses. We are witnessing a generation that will not tolerate other perspectives, students who will not hear opposing ideologies.

Socialism advocates vesting ownership and control of the means of production, capital and land in the community as a whole. Socialism is not a morally neutral system. Any system of governance presupposes an answer to the questions: Are you a sovereign entity who owns your life, work and mind? Is your mind something that can be nationalized and its material contents distributed by the state? Socialists think the answer is yes. They believe the products of one's efforts belong to the community; that the state and society have a moral and financial responsibility to care for other people's children; and that the most successful and productive people should be the most penalized.

[. . .]

You who fund our universities do so with trust that intellectuals will act in your interest and reflect your pro-American values. You are wrong. Your hard work has been financing people who think they are better than your crass materialism, who think that you (but not they) are complicit in an evil system (capitalism).

Withdraw your support and leave them to fund themselves. Let them pit their wares on the free market, where they will be left homeless. The world you desired no longer exists in our universities. It lies elsewhere, in a philosophic system waiting to be discovered or created.

Jason D. Hill is honors distinguished professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy, cosmopolitanism and race theory. He is the author of several books, including "We Have Overcome: An Immigrant's Letter to the American People" (Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press). Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6.

The Kavanaugh Nomination: Leftist Crazy Talk at Yale

Heather Mac Donald:

This press release rendered the letter signatories, who include several law school and Yale College professors, “ashamed” of their alma mater. “Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination presents an emergency—for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country,” the letter stated. The use of “safety” rhetoric signals that we are in prime identity-politics territory. Students across the country regularly claim that they are unsafe at college campuses—threatened by reading Milton, threatened by politically unorthodox views. “Without a doubt,” the letter continues, “Judge Kavanaugh is a threat to the most vulnerable. He is a threat to many of us, despite the privilege bestowed by our education, simply because of who we are.” This fear, the authors clarify, is not hyperbole. “People will die if he is confirmed,” the letter alleges.

What can we do about the destructive, self-induced stupidity of 'liberals'?  I have noticed that even a crazy-headed 'liberal' can achieve a modicum of clear thinking when money is at issue. So one thing you can do is withhold funds.  If you are a Yale alumnus or alumna, and not a self-enstupidated bonehead, then, when Yale asks for money, tell them "No money for you until you regain your sanity."

But be kind to the poor peon who is calling you during the dinner hour. Be kind, but be firm.

Identity-Political Infiltration of the Hard Sciences

More proof that leftists are destructive:

A scientist at UCLA reports: “All across the country the big question now in STEM is: how can we promote more women and minorities by ‘changing’ (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?” Mathematical problem-solving is being de-emphasized in favor of more qualitative group projects; the pace of undergraduate physics education is being slowed down so that no one gets left behind.

Politically correct physics? Is there no limit to leftist lunacy? A leftist is someone who never met a standard he didn't work to erode.

The Catholic Cave-In to Leftist Claptrap

This is getting boringly predictable, and predictably boring. Here is yet another example, St Mary's College of California.

. . . administrators encourage students to equate opinions with personal identity. Disagreement is not just disagreement—it is an attack. Staff in the Mission and Ministry Center, the Intercultural Center, and the New Student and Family Programs encourage students to use the “oops/ouch” method. If someone forgets to use politically correct language or says anything deemed offensive, these staff members encourage bystanders to interject “oops” as a corrective, and “ouch” if they have been personally harmed. One male friend recalls being chastised for saying “you guys” instead of “you all” to a group of men. Especially offensive opinions may be reported to our Bias Incident Reporting Team (BIRT). More than fifty such reports were filed last year. 

I am tempted to say that sending your kid to this leftist seminary is equivalent to child abuse. Save your money and for a lot less you can buy him or her a copy of Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

I'm reading it. Your kid will learn something. Peterson talks sense.

For more examples of 'academentia' see my Academia category. 

I 'appropriated' the cute coinage from Keith Burgess-Jackson.  Appropriate, but do it with gratitude giving credit where credit is due. 

Lunacy in excelsis at the ‘Universities’

This from a reader: 

You might be interested to know that a Canadian university recently had a job ad that might be even worse than the one you mentioned from the University of California at San Diego:

. . . candidates shall demonstrate a capacity for collegial service and a commitment to upholding the values of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as it pertains to service, teaching, and research activities.

So not only will the successful applicant spit out Far Left idiocies in class but, in addition, he'll make sure that his philosophical research demonstrates his commitment to Far Left idiocies.  It's okay to argue that God doesn't exist, or that no one knows that the external world exists, or that Bruce Jenner is a woman.  It's not okay to argue that Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are questionable ideals.  It's not even okay to hold on to a few shreds of dignity by just ignoring the topic.  No.  The successful applicant will demonstrate his commitment to these idiotic "values" in published work.  

They didn't explain how to do that if you only do research on vagueness or compatibilism, say.  I'm guessing it would be enough, for now, to choose the right kinds of examples.  Maybe if you wanted to illustrate some point about vagueness you could say this:  "Satumbo is counting the pink hairs around Bruce's pierced nipple, in Arabic…"  Or if you were writing about compatibilism:  "Suppose that Sally is trying to decide whether ze will come out as genderqueer on Facebook.  Suppose ze has a higher-order desire not to desire to come out…"  I don't know.  Just guessing.  Maybe in the future it won't be okay to write about these topics at all, since they make it hard to demonstrate one's Far Left commitments.

What Have You Done for Diversity Lately?

Are you thinking of applying  for a faculty position at the University of California at San Diego?  As part of your application you will be required to submit a statement detailing your work on behalf of diversity and inclusion.

A bit more evidence that the universities of the land have become leftist seminaries.

It is a curious development. The private universities in the United States founded by religious orders have almost all been stripped of their religious character. It survives only as window dressing. But the move has not been in the direction of ideological neutrality, but toward a substitution of leftist indoctrination for religious indoctrination.

The public universities too have become seed beds of leftism, at least in the non-STEM disciplines.

The sad upshot is that indoctrination dominates inquiry in all the institutions of so-called 'higher' education in the land. There are a few holdouts, of course, and again I am speaking of the non-STEM fields, or most of them: climate science has become highly ideologized.

So I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that university is dead.  It is dead in its idea, in its classical understanding.

Part of what killed it is the levelling consequent upon the foolish notion that everyone can profit from university studies. But that is a large separate topic.

Hat tip: Rod Dreher 

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A Budding Thomist Seeks Advice

This from a reader:

I'm a junior year theology major. I recently found your blog and it's now one of my favorites. You are a voice of reason in this dark postmodern era.

As someone pursuing a BA in theology and considering grad school, I love learning, reading, and writing. I've always wanted to be the person to have ideas and spend my life thinking and writing about them.

Since you are someone who does this exact thing, I'm curious as to what it takes. How much time did you devote to studying theology or philosophy outside of classes and assignments? Did you ever write theological or philosophical essays for fun?

Any advice, especially in light of your personal experience, would be greatly appreciated. I eagerly await your response.

One question is whether one should go to graduate school in the humanities. I have addressed this question on several occasions. Here are some links:

Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy?

Graduate School and Self-Confidence

Thinking of Graduate School in the Humanities?

Is Graduate School Really That Bad?

Another question concerns the life of an academically unaffiliated philosopher. This is what I have been for over a quarter century now after resigning from a tenured position at age 41. So I don't conduct classes, give assignments, or waste time on the absurd chore of grading papers by students who could not care less about the life of the mind or about becoming truly educated. 

To be perfectly blunt, I found teaching philosophy to undergraduates to be a meaningless activity in the main. Philosophy is a magnificent thing, but to teach it to bored undergraduates with no intellectual eros is like trying to feed people who aren't hungry. Depressing and absurd. Of course I did have some great students and some memorable classes. But my experience was similar to Paul Gottfried's:

Having been a professor for over 40 years at a number of academic institutions, I find Caplan’s main argument to be indisputable. The vast majority of my students, particularly those towards the end of my career, had little interest in the material I was trying to transmit, whether classical Greek, European history, or modern political theory. [ . . . ] Caplan also rolls out statistics showing most college students spend shockingly little time studying, and when polled express utter boredom with most of their courses. The overwhelming majority who graduate admit to having forgotten most of what they learned even before graduation. 

It's a bit of a paradox: I would never have had the opportunity to enjoy the comfortable and relatively stress-free life of a professor for all those years if it were not for the fact that all sort of kids were attending college who had no business doing so. It is a paradox of plenty in the sense of Quine's great essay, Paradoxes of Plenty. The explosion of higher education in the 1960s, together with the Viet Nam war and other factors led to a glut of students which led to a need for more professors. So the good news is that guys like me got to be professors, but the bad news was that we had to teach people not worth teaching for the most part.

More on this in The Academic Job Market in the 'Sixties.

Things get worse and worse thanks to the Left's ever-increasing destruction of the universities, STEM disciplines excepted. Higher Education has become Higher Infantilization what with 'safe spaces,' 'trigger warnings,' and other incomprehensibly idiotic innovations.  

I say this so that my young reader has some idea of what he is in for if he is aiming at academic career.  The universities have become leftist seminaries. No conservatives need apply. Express heterodox opinions and you will be hounded and doxxed. Of course, it is not just leftists that do these things.

How much time do I spend on philosophy? Most of the day, every day. Do I write for fun? That is not a word I would use in this connection. Let's just say that I find wrestling with the big questions to be deeply satisfying and the meaning of my life. I see philosophy as a vocation in the deepest sense and a spiritual quest and something best pursued outside of the precincts of the politically correct present-day university.

Use, Mention, ‘Quotation’ Marks, and Political Correctness

The title of a recent Weekly Standard article reads:

Professor Uses 'N-Word,' Student Shouts 'F-You,' 'Free Speech' Class Canceled at Princeton.

I would write it like this:

Professor mentions N-word [no inverted commas], Student Shouts 'F-You,' [correct use of inverted commas for quotation], 'Free Speech' Class Cancelled at Princeton [correct use of inverted commas as sneer quotes].

Pedantry aside, the real problem is in the following paragraph:

Last week Prof. Rosen received national attention for using the N-word in this class on freedom of expression. Some students walked out and protested the term’s use. One report, cited in Princeton’s main campus newspaper, says that Rosen asked, “What is worse, a white man punching a black man, or a white man calling a black man a n****r?” And when Rosen was met with disagreement of his use of the N-word, and on his continued use of the term in the academic setting, he said, he would use it, “if I think it’s necessary.”

Rosen didn't use the N-word, he mentioned it.  Rosen was talking about the word 'nigger' and asking whether it would be worse for a white man to punch a black man or to apply the word 'nigger' to him. That is a perfectly legitimate question and there is nothing racist about it.

There is also nothing racist about my mentioning of the word in question in the second-to-last sentence.  I am talking about the word in the way I would be talking about it were I to say that it is disyllabic and consists of six letters.  I am not applying it to anyone. 

Which is worse, to punch a Jew (without provocation) or to apply 'kike' to him? Does it make one an anti-Semite to ask this question? Obviously not.

Read the rest to fully savor how the Left has destroyed the universities.  If you are thinking of an academic career in a non-STEM field you may want to think twice.