Professional Academia

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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An Experiment in the (Re)Distribution of Grades (Part 2)

September 4, 2026 Leigh M. Johnson Blog, Capitalism, Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Democracy, ERG, Ethics, Justice, Public Philosophy Comments Off on An Experiment in the (Re)Distribution of Grades (Part 2)

Pearl clutch! Turns out Gen Z is socialist!

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Gender Trouble at SPEP

June 9, 2024 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

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology Comments Off on ISO Philosophical Moonshiners

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”

June 9, 2024 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

June 9, 2024 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

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Philosophy, Politics, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on 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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Campuses Are Not Sovereign Nation-States

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Democracy, Ethics, Politics, Professional Academy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on Campuses Are Not Sovereign Nation-States

The photo to your left is of a sock-monkey, hung by a noose from one of the windows on the campus of Rhodes College this week. It should go without saying, I hope, that not only is the sock-monkey itself a manifestly racist symbol (echoing the colonialist project of comparing blacks to apes in order to justify their…

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Philosophy’s Gatekeepers

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Professional Academy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on Philosophy’s Gatekeepers

Yesterday’s piece by Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden’s in NYT‘s The Stone (“If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is”) has already generated some of the most interesting online discussion about the discipline and profession of Philosophy that I’ve seen since our last salacious exposé. (What are we at now, philosophers? 190 days…

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“Trial by Internet” and the Presumption of Innocence

June 9, 2024 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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