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Women and Gender Issues

What You Can Do To Support PIKSI (which you *should* support) OTHER THAN Donating Your Money (which, if you are able, you *should* also do)

October 2, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on What You Can Do To Support PIKSI (which you *should* support) OTHER THAN Donating Your Money (which, if you are able, you *should* also do)

It’s been a busy (in fact, record-breakingly busy) month here on RMWMTMBM, so I wanted to take a momentary break from the Leiter/PGR/SeptemberStatement brouhaha–about which this blog has more or less unfortunately become something akin to professional Philosophy’s version of TMZ— and instead remark upon an initiative as important to our discipline as, and not wholly…

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Professional Philosophy Triage

September 29, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on Professional Philosophy Triage

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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Archive of The Meltdown [Now Closed]

September 24, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Leiter, PGR, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 8 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

September 14, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Philosophy, Politics, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Salaita, Women and Gender Issues 1 Comment

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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“Somehow Philosophy Got Left Behind”

August 15, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on “Somehow Philosophy Got Left Behind”

There’s a really great essay by Eugene Sun Park entitled “Why I Left Academia: Philosophy’s Homogeneity Needs Rethinking”  that appeared yesterday on HIPPO Reads.  Stop whatever you’re doing and go read it now. I’ve posted a fair bit of material on this blog addressing the racial and gender disparity in professional Philosophy, which remains truly embarrassing, but…

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“But Quiet, Be Quiet a Minute”: On The Death of Fred Phelps

March 20, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on “But Quiet, Be Quiet a Minute”: On The Death of Fred Phelps

The news has just been released that Rev. Fred Phelps, founder and lifelong shepherd of the Westboro Baptist Church (in Topeka, Kansas) has died at the age of 84.  I find it difficult, I confess, to summon the normal human compassion that usually accompanies news of another’s death in this case, largely because Phelps dedicated…

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On “Solidarity”

March 13, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on On “Solidarity”

Let’s face it: exercising solidarity is tricky business, not the least of which is because “solidarity” itself is a tricky concept, which requires the subordination of real differences (across a whole host of important categorical domains) for the sake of some particular common interest that might prioritize similitude– often for prudentially strategic reasons– over, across…

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Please Do NOT Revise Your Tone

March 13, 2014 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on Please Do NOT Revise Your Tone

As some of you already know, I am also one of the bloggers at NewAPPS.  I’m re-posting here a piece co-authored by Edward Kazaian and I that appeared this past Tuesday on NewAPPS.  It’s generated a lot of conversation so far, and I’ll have a post forthcoming soon on my take on that conversation. What…

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Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends

November 29, 2013 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues Comments Off on Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends

Prompted by a recent piece on newAPPS, I’m (somewhat reluctantly) forced to acknowledge the renewed attention to a not-at-all-new phenomenon in the world of Philosophy over the last couple of years, namely, the dramatic under-representation of women in our profession.  Here’s what you need to know up front, assuming that some of you readers are…

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Tolerance Is Not A Virtue

November 20, 2013 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 2 Comments

Let me be clear at the outset: when I say that tolerance is not a virtue, I’m saying that as a philosopher for whom virtue has a conceptually substantive meaning.  I do not mean to imply that tolerance is a vice, a claim to which I think no reasonable moral agent, and no philosopher worth…

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