Month: September 2014

A Note on “The Archive”

This is just to let readers know that I continue to update the Archive of The Meltdown daily.  I’m trying to catch everything substantive that shows up in re the recent events surrounding Leiter, the PGR and the September Statement– and I’m aiming to avoid redundancy as much as possible– but there has been a…

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Professional Philosophy Triage

Justice tempered by Mercy Because I’m maintaining an Archive of (what I’ve called) The Meltdown here on this blog, I think I’ve read most, if not all, of what professional philosophers have said publicly in the last several days’ scrum regarding  Brian Leiter’s objectionable behaviors (or “civility” more generally) as well as the merits and demerits…

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Archive of The Meltdown [Now Closed]

If the current results of Brian Leiter’s poll (which asks whether or not he should continue producing the Philosophical Gourmet Report) are any indication– it’s 1709 to 1118 in favor of “No” votes as I write this– and if Leiter intends to take those poll results as some sort of mandate, then Philosophy may very well…

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Normalizing Civility, Policing Critique, Enforcing Silence and Misunderstanding Collegiality

How we ought to understand the terms “civility” and “collegiality” and to what extent they can be enforced as professional norms are dominating discussions in academic journalism and the academic blogosphere right now.  (So much so, in fact, that it’s practically impossible for me to select among the literally hundreds of recent articles/posts and provide…

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Witch-Hunting in the Digital Age

Much to my own embarrassment, I’ve neglected to post here on the Steven Salaita controversy thus far, an affair with far-reaching implications not only for how we determine what constitutes both the civic and academic limits to the “right to free speech,” but also for a number of hiring-and-firing practices that are customary within the Academy but…

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The Ferguson Lesson: Another Way To “Take Up Arms”

As someone who has spent the better part of her career researching, analyzing and teaching not only about the structure and nature of oppressive power regimes, but also better and worse ways to resist or transform such regimes, I’ve nevertheless been unable to settle in my own mind, to my own satisfaction, my position with…

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