Last week and this week, I’m participating in the annual seminar that reviews and (occasionally) amends the curriculum of the core humanities course-sequence at my college. Some of the work that we do is tedious and bureaucratic, but a lot of it includes really interesting sessions on pedagogy, core text discussions, interdisciplinarity and more general…
Read MoreThere’s an interesting review of Brithish philosopher Roger Scruton’s new book, Beauty, that looks at the value (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of kitsch. In “Finding Kitsch’s Inner Beauty,” Robert Fulford praises Scruton’s text for holding the “now marginalized view” that philosophers should help the rest of us “think about issues that really matter.” (Marginalized?…
Read MoreJust a couple of quick recommendations for those of you keeping up with the current scandal over the so-called “torture memos.” I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this stuff over the course of the past year as a part of my research, and I plan to include both of these texts in my…
Read MoreIt’s really surprising how long it takes to acclimate oneself to a full-time position in academia. I’m nearing the end of my second year now, and I still find myself constantly tweaking all of my best-laid-plans for “balancing” the Holy Triumvirate of responsibilities: scholarship, teaching and service. As I’ve said many times before, one of…
Read MoreIn an article titled “Philosophy’s Great Experiment,” David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton (hosts of one of my favorite podcasts, Philosophy Bites) consider the recent rise in what has come to be known as “experimental philosophy” or “x-phi.” Experimental philosophy is exactly as it sounds: a form of inquiry that makes at least partial use of…
Read MoreThere’s quite a bit of chatter going on in the American Philosophical Association right now concerning that organization’s antidiscrimination policy– more specifically, it’s policy forbidding institutions from discriminating against homosexuals in hiring. Professor Charles Hermes (University of Texas- Arlington) authored a petition, which now has over 1300 signatures, calling for the APA to either (1)…
Read MoreAccording to President Obama, I was solidly within the majority American opinion last Monday when I breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing his decision to lift the ban on federal funding for stem-cell research using destroyed human embryos. In his trademark careful and conscientious rhetoric, Obama acknowledged the deep moral difficulties this issue poses,…
Read MoreI forgot to mention that Angela Davis visited my institution a couple of weekends ago and delivered the keynote address for the Women’s and Gender Studies Conference that we hosted. (Aside: I’m not generally inclined to be star-struck, but I definitely was a little around Dr. Davis. I was charged with taking care of her…
Read MoreAs compromises go, this doesn’t seem to be a good one: the State Board of Education in Texas recently approved its science curriculum standards, which Board members describe as “a compromise between those who are critical of teaching evolutionary theories without scrutiny and those who feared attacks on evolution would lead to the teaching of…
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