Category: Academia
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Is Leftism a Religion?
Via Malcolm Pollack, I came to an essay by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar in which surprising claims are made with which Pollack agrees but I don't. Deresiewicz: Selective private colleges have become religious schools. [Emphasis added.] The religion in question is not Methodism or Catholicism but an extreme version of the belief system…
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Leftist Crocodile Tears Over the College Radicals They Themselves Created
Dennis Prager: In the last few weeks, there has been a spate of columns by writers on the left condemning the left-wing college students who riot, take over university buildings and shout down speakers with whom they differ. These condemnations, coming about 50 years too late, should not be taken seriously. [. . .] Here's…
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Middlebury Shouts Down Charles Murray
Here: It’s been exactly 40 years since my late wife and I quit as English profs at Middlebury College, where hundreds of screaming students wouldn’t allow Charles Murray, one of the nation’s foremost conservative intellectuals, to speak to them yesterday, as a campus conservative group had invited him to do. See also The Middlebury Meltdown.
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Omertà Among the Philosophers
Here: Neven Sesardic’s recent book, When Reason Goes on Holiday, provides a detailed account of the morally questionable actions undertaken in the interest of political causes by some of the most important philosophers in the analytic tradition: Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Imre Lakatos, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, among several others. Some of their actions were…
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Academic Adjuncts
John Pepple weighs in. There is quite a lot of good material at his place. Don't be put off by his blog's strange name. Related: In Praise of a Lowly Adjunct. Wherein I recall the best undergraduate philosophy teacher I had.
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On Teaching Philosophy
It is pointless to supply answers to unasked questions or to promote questioning among those who have all the answers.
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Why Milo Scares Students and Faculty Even More
Here
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Reading Now: When Reason Goes on Holiday (Encounter, 2016)
Neven Sesardić is a Croatian philosopher, born in 1949. He has taught philosophy at universities in Croatia, the United States, Japan, England, and Hong Kong. An earlier book of his is Making Sense of Heritability (Cambridge U. P., 2005). “Gripping, thoroughly researched and documented, judiciously argued, and alternately depressing and infuriating, Sesardić’s courageous book offers the astounding…
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Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
An important essay by Robert Nozik. (HT: C. Cathcart) Teaser quotation: Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. But, by and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals. Ludwig von…
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A Bias of the Intellectual
Robert Paul Wolff: A rich, complex vocabulary properly deployed is one evidence of a strong mind endowed with a wealth of knowledge. As I was watching portions of Trump’s press conference yesterday, despite being made physically ill by the man, I somewhat reflexively noticed the extraordinary paucity of his linguistic resources. Even when he is…
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The Trials and Tribulations of Anthony Esolen
"Because of recent events at the school where I teach, Providence College, I have come to see that the winning side of the so-called culture wars has no interest in rational or equable conversation about the neuralgic issues of our time." Here. Defund the bastards, I say. It does no good to speak truth to…
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Radicals Have Taken Over Canadian Universities
Unbelievable