Leigh M. Johnson

Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and the APA’s “Code of Conduct”

by Edward Kazarian and Leigh M. Johnson A little over two years ago, more than 600 philosophers petitioned the American Philosophical Association to “produce a code of conduct and a statement of professional ethics for the academic discipline of Philosophy.” The immediate motivation for the petition was several high-profile cases of sexual misconduct by philosophers, which…

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Sick Of This Sh*t: On Professional Philosophy’s Boiling Frogs

There’s an old anecdote about boiling frogs that is often employed by philosophers to explain the sorites paradox. If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the story goes, it will immediately sense the heat and the danger, jump out of the pot, and be spared its life.  But if you put…

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Well Actually, This Is How Erasure and Appropriation Happens

Women’s voices, ideas, engagements, and critiques are constantly being erased and/or appropriated– in academia, on the internet, at workplaces of every ilk– sometimes through slick and malicious moves, but much more often as a consequence of careless inattention. Also, water is wet. I was just recently “disappeared” in an essay by my friend Joshua Miller…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 23: Your Favorite Song This Time Last Year

It’s funny how quickly pop songs start to sound “old.” In order to figure out what I was listening to this time last summer, I’ll admit that I had to consult iTunes and a couple of music blogs to see what the top tracks were for June 2015.  In almost every case, my first thought…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 22: A Song You Wish You Had Written

Ok, at this point– I’m writing this on June 37– I’m already six days behind on the 30 Day Song Challenge.  I was just about to give up and call it quits, but then I remembered that I’ve been doing this for a long time and, even if this year’s iteration ends up being the…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 12: A Song From A Band You Hate

I don’t actually “hate” a lot of bands, mostly because I don’t really listen to bands that I don’t like long enough to log the emotional time it takes to generate real hatred. For today’s 30 Day Song Challenge selection, I was going to pick a song by Creed… but then I figured everyone with any kind of musical taste at all…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 10: A Song That Helps You Fall Asleep

I don’t usually listen to music when I’m trying to sleep, mostly because I find it difficult to not actively listen. At the same time, I absolutely cannot abide total silence. When I’m in my office, I always have earbuds in. When I’m at home or in my car, there is always something playing. And so, against…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 14: A Song No One Would Expect You To Love

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become far less confident in my ability to correctly predict what other people think. That seems counterintuitive to me, since one would expect that more years of experience– more interpersonal “data points”– would make it easier to recognize patterns and improve one’s predictive capabilities.  Not so in my experience.  Rather,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 13: A Song That Is A Guilty Pleasure

Oh man, seriously, I love ABBA soooooo much. I once said that if I were ever to get a tattoo, I would have “Super Trouper” tattooed on my shoulder. For the record, no tats here. My skin remains as clean as the driven snow. I kind of wish I did feel guilty about my ridiculously unrestrained ABBA fandom, but…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 15: The Theme Song To Your Life

It seems like bad juju to pick the theme song to your life before you’ve finished living it, but oh well. [*throws salt over shoulder*] I miss the days when television gave us real theme songs, by which I mean songs with words, not the sonic mood-setters typical of so many popular programs now. (Listen:…

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