RMWMTMBM Archive

Grading War Letters to Home, Winter 2014 (Day One)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson GradingWarLetterstoHome, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

These are the letters from the first day of the 2014 Grading War.  If you landed here by accident and don’t know what you’re reading, click here for the backstory. Day One, 12:40am My Dear Leigh, It has been far too long since I’ve written to you. For this transgression, I can only hope you can…

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Grading War Letters To Home, Winter 2014 (The Unabridged Collection)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson GradingWarLetterstoHome, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

My good friend and colleague Charles McKinney and I are continuing our #GradingWarLetterstoHome correspondence this term.  If you’re unfamiliar with the backstory of how this hilariously ridiculous endeavor got started, I refer you to the archive of last year’s correspondences here, which also explains the origin and style of these letters. To save you a click…

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What Public Philosophy LOOKS Like

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson #BlackLivesMatter, Memphis, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

A pen (or keyboard) has, for millennia, been both the preferred and most essential tool of a philosopher, but I consider my camera to be a very close second as a 21stC philosopher.  Since completing the American Values Project in 2012, I’ve come to understand my camera as another weapon in the struggle against ignorance and,…

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Waiting for Ferguson

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Ferguson, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

We continue awaiting the decision of a grand jury on whether or not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, exactly 15 weeks ago today on a suburban street in Ferguson, Missouri. News reporters from across the globe have been camped out in Ferguson for…

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Witch-Hunting in the Digital Age

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Salaita 0 Comments

Much to my own embarrassment, I’ve neglected to post here on the Steven Salaita controversy thus far, an affair with far-reaching implications not only for how we determine what constitutes both the civic and academic limits to the “right to free speech,” but also for a number of hiring-and-firing practices that are customary within the Academy but…

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Archive of The Meltdown [Now Closed]

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

If the current results of Brian Leiter’s poll (which asks whether or not he should continue producing the Philosophical Gourmet Report) are any indication– it’s 1709 to 1118 in favor of “No” votes as I write this– and if Leiter intends to take those poll results as some sort of mandate, then Philosophy may very well…

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Normalizing Civility, Policing Critique, Enforcing Silence and Misunderstanding Collegiality

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Philosophy, Politics, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Salaita, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

How we ought to understand the terms “civility” and “collegiality” and to what extent they can be enforced as professional norms are dominating discussions in academic journalism and the academic blogosphere right now.  (So much so, in fact, that it’s practically impossible for me to select among the literally hundreds of recent articles/posts and provide…

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A Note on “The Archive”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

This is just to let readers know that I continue to update the Archive of The Meltdown daily.  I’m trying to catch everything substantive that shows up in re the recent events surrounding Leiter, the PGR and the September Statement– and I’m aiming to avoid redundancy as much as possible– but there has been a…

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Professional Philosophy Triage

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

Justice tempered by Mercy Because I’m maintaining an Archive of (what I’ve called) The Meltdown here on this blog, I think I’ve read most, if not all, of what professional philosophers have said publicly in the last several days’ scrum regarding  Brian Leiter’s objectionable behaviors (or “civility” more generally) as well as the merits and demerits…

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Interactive Timeline of the Leiter/PGR Controversy

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, Rankings, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

As readers know, I have maintained an Archive on this blog with links to most (if not all) of the public essays, statements and posts regarding the recent controversy surrounding Brian Leiter and the Philosophical Gourmet Report.  A lot as been said over the last few weeks and, if you’re interested, you can trudge through…

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