politics

The Tie That Binds

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Weak Humanism Comments Off on The Tie That Binds

At the beginning of the 2008 film Doubt (an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s play by the same name), a priest challenges his congregation with an unorthodox sermon about the nature of the ties that bind us together. Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) asks his flock: “What do you do when you’re not sure? ”…

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Human, All Too Human (In Memorium: Michael Jackson)

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Music, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Weak Humanism 2 Comments

The memorial service for Michael Jackson is being broadcast on television here in the United States today and, not surprisingly, there is mixed reaction from talking heads and the public. There is no denying that Michael Jackson will go down in history as the archetype of a “pop icon,” nor that he was an almost-unrivaled…

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Cosmobama

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Philosophy, Politics 3 Comments

Carlin Romano (Univ. of Pennsylvania) recently wrote an excellent piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education heralding President Obama as our first “Philosopher-in-Chief,” an honorific given to him largely as a result of the nuanced cosmopolitanism that characterized his Cairo speech entitled “A New Beginning” (full text and video of that address here). I was…

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Frankly, my dear…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching, The Search for Values 1 Comment

Last year, in my section of our College’s great books program (which is called “The Search for Values”), I taught Michel Foucault’s Fearless Speech for the first time. The book is an edited volume comprised of six lectures that Foucault delivered at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall of 1983, all centered around the…

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Gitmo Soldiers On

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics Comments Off on Gitmo Soldiers On

Just a reminder that the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay is still open and operating. President Obama, as one of his first acts in office, vowed to close the facility within the year… but there are still over 200 detainees waiting there. It’s still unclear what awaits them, though, when they are released. The…

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Gates-gate

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics 8 Comments

As you have probably heard by now, Harvard professor and academic superstar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge today in a completely bizarre story. It’s still not clear what exactly transpired–though you can read the police report here— but Gates got cuffed-n-stuffed for “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior” in the…

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You Are Not Going To Be Famous

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Teaching 3 Comments

Take a look at this short lecture (only about 10 minutes) that Jim Hanas delivered as a part of the “useless lecture series” that he helps curate. According to Hanas, the point of his address was to debunk what he calls “America’s Big Lie,” the one perhaps best epitomized by Andy Warhol’s famous remark about…

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Anonymity

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 4 Comments

Listening to the Digital Dialogue conversation about Identity the other day, coupled with reading way-too-many of the “comments” sections on the Skip Gates’ arrest story, has gotten me thinking a lot about the merits and demerits of online anonymity. Anyone who spends more than a second on the Internet surely knows the drawbacks– “flame” wars,…

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Digital Dialogues

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy Comments Off on Digital Dialogues

Friend and fellow philosopher-blogger Chris Long (Pennsylvania State University) has started a really interesting project that he’s calling “Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue,” which is a series of philosophical conversations/interviews that Chris is making available as podcasts. (You can subscribe on iTunes by searching for “Digital Dialogues” under the podcast section.) This is a summer…

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“Weak Humanism” Interview on Digital Dialogues

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Weak Humanism 6 Comments

I recently had the good fortune of doing an interview with Chris Long (Penn State University) for his “Digital Dialogues” philosophy podcast discussing my work on “weak humanism.” (You can listen to my interview here.) I’ve been working on the Weak Humanism manuscript all summer now, so it was a welcome respite from that work…

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