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Professional Academy

An Experiment in the (Re)distribution of Grades (Part 3)

September 5, 2026 Leigh M. Johnson Blog, citizenship, Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Democracy, ERG, Ethics, Justice, Labor Issues, Pedagogy, Politics, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy Comments Off on An Experiment in the (Re)distribution of Grades (Part 3)

Why don’t we give students space to critically reflect upon the way they are assessed?

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Paying It Forward

July 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Blog2024+, Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, Teaching, Uncategorized Comments Off on Paying It Forward

Are you a recent grad student who just got hired or a junior faculty member stressing out about your Fall syllabi? I’m here to help.

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Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 31: Whose History?

November 6, 2021 Leigh M. Johnson Democracy, Hotel Bar Sessions, Philosophy, podcast, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, Relativism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching Comments Off on Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 31: Whose History?

  The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. to talk about whose history is (and isn’t) being taught. Following on the heels of a recent and very contentious political debate over the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, we invited Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. (Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies and Associate Professor…

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Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 29: Defending the Humanities

October 17, 2021 Leigh M. Johnson Capitalism, Ethics, Hotel Bar Sessions, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive Comments Off on Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 29: Defending the Humanities

  The HBS hosts present their best defense of humanities-based education and, in doing so, try to justify their existences. As higher education has become more corporatized and STEM-focused, areas of study are often “pitched” to students on the basis of their future income-earning potential. However, college students now are entering a workforce where more…

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Gender Trouble at SPEP

October 25, 2018 Leigh M. Johnson Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, SPEP, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on Gender Trouble at SPEP

Last week, I began my second year on the LGBTQ Advocacy Committee for The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). This organization and this committee are important to me, personally and professionally, and I take my service responsibilities to both very seriously. Contrary to the general demographics/trends of professional Philosophy writ large, SPEP has…

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ISO Philosophical Moonshiners

April 23, 2017 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology 1 Comment

What if academic Philosophy really invested in making itself understood to the general public? Over the last few years, I’ve seen the emergence of a number of initiatives aimed at cultivating what is now called “public philosophy.” The discipline of Philosophy’s largest professional organization constituted a committee dedicated to it (the APA Committee on Public Philosophy)….

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

October 29, 2016 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on 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

October 8, 2016 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on 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

July 1, 2016 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 3 Comments

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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“Trial by Internet” and the Presumption of Innocence

May 27, 2016 Leigh M. Johnson Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on “Trial by Internet” and the Presumption of Innocence

Only a couple of weeks ago, I noted on this blog (in “Philosophy’s Gatekeepers”) that it had been 190 days since the last major breaking-news story about sexual harassment or assault in professional Philosophy. That was a noteworthy fact, And then, last Friday, the Thomas Pogge story broke. I’ll just direct readers to the news coverage…

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