Now that the Chicago affair has shamed the SJWs pretty clearly, can we move on to Colorado? Kipnis’s boo is quite useful there too. We need to use this momentum to turn the tide. Then on the back of those high profile cases we must try close the Title IX loopholes that allowed the femphils’ power grab. Finally, stop hiring the SJWs and their students. Voila’, analytic philosophy is safe.
Kipnis’ coverage of the Colorado case wasn’t very detailed, though (for understandable reasons).
I did think that one important point that she made which I didn’t know before was that Barnett tried unsuccessfully to help the accused grad student get a lawyer before Barnett wrote his own report. This is important because I remember shitheads in comment sections back when it happened saying “well, he should have just gotten the grad student a lawyer”.
Although I realize that 12:21’s post may be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I fail to share any of his optimism.
This is because of two pernicious tends that, as fate would have it, have temporally coincided.
First, there is the near total collapse of the academic job market. In part, I think we’re still feeling the residual effects of the economic downturn in 08. But there is something else afoot. I wasn’t on the market this year, but I keep up with Philjobs. My sense is that this year was worse than last year, which was worse than the year before.
Second, there is the rather sudden emergence of a vocal critical mass of analytic philosophers with personal and/or scholarly interests in the strain of illiberal left politics that colonized the other humanities disciplines thirty years ago. These people are strongly interested in creating a patronage system in which they hand out rewards to their ideological allies (although, in fairness, I don’t think most of them are fully conscious of this)
Given these trends, the number of jobs going to current or future (when they realize they can’t get the work in “core” areas into the best journals) regressive leftists has been disproportionate to their actual number among job-seekers. Indeed, part of what I see happening is this: the available jobs for apolitical, liberal, or conservative philosophers (who, in prior years, would have helped balance out the zealots) have been cut in half or worse. The number of jobs for diversity candidates and ideological allies has grown.
Although some of them are genuinely talented philosophers, others aren’t. We can expect some of the less talented to double down on political brinksmanship in the coming years as they struggle to justify their place and purpose in professional philosophy.
As is sometimes said in other contexts, demography is destiny.
Thanks. I think this is a measured and insightful analysis. The only place where I disagree with you is that I’m more sympathetic to the leftists to which you’re referring: I’m not convinced they’re illiberal (at least in a pejorative sense) or regressive; in fact, I think the sort of radical politics these people defend is an area in which philosophy has to its embarassment been lagging behind the rest of the humanities and qualitative social sciences, and increasingly behind intellectual culture more broadly. So I think their increased presence in the discipline is, at least to a nontrivial extent, a good thing. (Of course, this isn’t to say that this sort of radical politics can’t be done badly; I’m reminded of the experimental philosophy gold rush in the early aughts, when it was possible for lazy grad students to get published in top journals basically by giving their undergrads surveys about the experience machine.)
But again, I do think you’re right about basically everything else. I guess I’m a bit more optimistic than you, though, maybe just because of the people I’ve met who (like me) agree a lot with the radical leftists but are quietly infuriated with their social and intellectual excesses. (I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve talked to who thought Jason Stanley’s propoganda book was lazy, irresponsible crap.) This makes me hope that the trends you’re describing will moderate rather than later.
And yet everyone ate it up. I see it cited all over the place. Several people I know in political theory and communications-type departments (e.g., communications; media and cultural theory; etc.) think that his book is garbage.
Also, how does someone who is so rude to so many people – and who has such difficulty being respectful of younger colleagues, including women – end up with a reputation of being a social justice-y good guy?
There are so many stories of Stanley being a complete jerk. I’ve witnessed him interrupt a junior woman giving a talk and literally take the stage. He stood in front of her. This is no metaphor. The guy is such a hypocritical creep.
And yet people say, “oh Jason! he’s just so energetic. he means well!”
But if acting like a creep doesn’t matter but intentions and charismatic energy do, then I guess all the stanley lovers really ought to say the same about Peter Ludlow, too, then. Right? He meant well, even if he acted like a creep.
I don’t know whether the fact that the propaganda book is cited all over the place is evidence that everyone ate it up. More likely, it’s evidence that some people ate it up, some people glanced at it and felt good about it, some people wanted to associate themselves with it, and some people cited it mainly out of subconscious cliquishness.
It was surprising to me when the book came out how much enthusiasm it got from people who I thought really ought to know better; to this day I really have no idea whether these people were being intellectually dishonest, whether they were engaged in motivated reasoning, or whether they’re just not as good philosophers as I thought.
But yeah, I agree with you, it’s annoying how people like Jason get a pass. But honestly I think it has less to do with social justice-y people in particular than with the fact that rationalizing cliquishness and social power plays in terms of moral virtue is nothing new, to put it mildly.
okay, a concrete example I can’t resist: I remember Kate Manne crowing on facebook about a piece she was writing with “one of her favorite political philosophers” and I was like “oh, awesome, she’s doing something with Liz Anderson!” But no…
lol! Was this the “they’re just engaging in free speech by demanding that others be forbidden from speaking” piece? That one was stunningly incompetent. Thank god the real philosophers are here to rescue value theory!
I recently read some of Kate Manne’s published work and thought it was pretty good. Not brilliant but good. She has a huge reputation. She’s clearly on the road to tenure at Cornell. So, why does she feel the need to produce garbage with Stanley? I guess it’s because he is a big shot and people want to tie themselves to big shots for the sake of their careers. Or maybe Stanley offered her the chance to do that and she thought that this was the only chance she’d get for her work to be seen by a wide audience.
I dunno. But I do think that Jason Stanley is a cowardly little bully who almost always punches down.
He’d never treat Sally Haslanger or Ned Markosian the way he treats no-name people.
Brief clarification to 2:17: I would not categorize the folks I have in mind–whom I’ve called illiberal leftists because I’d prefer to avoid the SJW label–as political radicals (or as economic leftists in the more traditional mold).
Indeed, as folks like Adolph Reed have argued at great length, the political projects associated with the “academic” left are rather like a moral shoring up of the neo-liberal imperium. If you’ve not read Reed on this subject I’ll try to find some links.
Anyway, I think of them as illiberal because they often speak and behave in ways that are inconsistent with the basic liberal–and academic–values of freedom of inquiry, speech, and assembly.
One interesting question is what the intersection of the illiberal left and the broader “academic” left looks like. I have the sense that it’s significant, because the academic left tends to downplay the value of solidarity. Solidarity–which is necessary to build nuts and bolts political movements, but not to publish in academic journals–tends to predispose one to give folks the benefit of the doubt rather than twittering about how they are “literally Hitler” whenever they violate a linguistic norm that was stipulated into existence last week. This is just a “sense” though; I’m sure there are folks in other humanities disciplines who work on topics in identity politics but are not grandstanding pricks. My experience suggests, however, that they are in the minority.
Thanks for the clarification; I agree that “radical” was infelicitous too. But it’s hard to find a label that’s both neutral and accurate!
I like the point about solidarity (and about the relation between the academic left and neoliberalism; I’m a fan of Adolph Reed too). It’s pretty obvious (and probably discussed to death) that the internet generates a similar incentive structure to the academy in this respect. I suppose how depressing this should be has a lot to do with how much political discourse on the internet and in academia corresponds to political discourse in actual political movements; my “sense” is that they correspond a lot less than people tend to suppose.
+1
I wonder what will happen first. either students will leave because we turned academic philosophy into SJ crap, or they won’t enrol because of another economic crisis worse than 2008. here in Canada economic downturn is already underway for those with eyes to see it (“bankruptcy” signs everywhere).
either way, we are doomed.
I still have to make up my mind whether I should wait until we are all laid off, or I should start looking for another job right now.
12.21, you make it all sound a bit like cowboys and Indians. I don’t think anyone’s going to ‘turn the tide’, much less ‘stop hiring SJWs’ (plenty of people who would be considered SJWs around here are decent philosophers). It’s only because the worst of them are the most strident that one tends to lose sight of the fact that a great deal of the relevant ideological conflict falls under the heading of reasonable disagreement. If everyone considered here an SJW were magically expelled from the profession, we’d end up with a much narrower ideological monoculture than the one we have now, it seems to me.
Do we have any moral philosophers out there? Is it possible to ascribe degrees of evil to the malefactors in the Ludlow affair? Is Jennifer Lackey more evil than Lauren Leydon-Hardy? What about Heidi Lockwood?Who gets the bulk of the ethical blame for this fiasco?
It’s really hard to take the critics seriously if they are going to keep up their posture of “Kipnis got a bunch of factual claims wrong, but we aren’t going to say what they are”.
These idiots continue to dig their graves with their mouths and pens. They should shut up and pray people someday forget the crime they have committed against an innocent man.
From the Northwestern student letter:
“Kipnis’ failure to consult those in a position to give a well-informed report of our colleague’s history and the situation in which she found herself, or to check basic facts about the case, instantiates the very phenomenon Kipnis takes herself to be railing against: one-sided and irresponsible investigations into sexual assault.”
That’s odd. I thought that the relevant thing Kipnis is “railing against” is one-sided and irresponsible investigations that result in people being put into campus dismissal proceedings. The Kipnis book will not lead to dismissal hearings against anyone, not even the Northwestern students who recklessly filed charges against Kipnis.
these “replies” to Kipnis are incredible. my favorite bit is where they imply that Kipnis may have, maybe, sort of, kind of, perhaps someone should look into it, violated the privacy rights of a student.
because bringing a different lawsuit against Kipnis is really the right move here
Just as I will usually bet that a lawyer won’t file paperwork containing claims easily demonstrated to be false by evidence known to opposing counsel, I’ll bet that Kipnis’s publisher has lawyers vetting this stuff more accurately than the legal minds of the Northwestern philosophy graduate student community.
The Northwestern Defense? The fact that a person is charming and intelligent implies they have not engaged in wrongdoing.
The NU graduate students apply this to Leydon-Hardy, as well as not disputing any material facts that Kipnis had laid out on the basis of the evidence.
Rumor is that some of the NU philosophy grad students didn’t agree to sign on to this sophomoric statement, and all sorts of pressure (shaming, shunning) has been brought to bear on them to get in line. The group-think of these scoundrels throughout this whole case has been absolutely contemptible.
I wondered about that when I saw it. Such behind the scenes dissent often comes out after stupid political statements by graduate students supposedly as a body.
Where did you see this rumor? Is anyone else talking about it, especially anyone not anonymous who’s in a position to know the facts? Or did you really just make up an assertion in a discussion of accusations based on made-up assertions?
This rings sort of true to me. What is the “The Northwestern Philosophy Graduate Student Association” anyway? It doesn’t seem to have any other online presence. I’d be interested to know who its members are and what procedure determines whether it does or doesn’t endorse the contents of a letter.
If I had to bet, I’d bet that this is an attempt by a group of Northwestern philosophy graduate students to implicate — without outright saying it, for reasons of plausible deniability — that they speak for all Northwestern philosophy graduate students.
BL weighs in on the NU grad student statement re: Kipnis:
“In general, it is fair to say that responses to Kipnis would be more compelling if they were able to offer concrete examples of mistakes, rather than blanket assertions without supporting evidence.”
Right? I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Whineberg’s extraordinary, protracted silence on anything to do with the widely and generally positively reviewed Kipnis book especially makes DN look like a source of propaganda as opposed to what ‘Nous’ is supposed to be a pun on, given that when the torches-and-pitchforks narrative was generally uncontested, and Jessica Wilson’s misgivings were being countered by sarcastic questions about whether she thought she was a brain in a vat, he couldn’t do enough to keep the story alive and therefore make it maximally damaging to Ludlow.
Given how awful this makes DN look, I think that whatever the reason for his news blackout might be, it must weigh with him a great deal. It can’t just be reluctance to give publicity to the other side: they’re getting a huge amount of publicity anyway, and no such minimal gain to the moral majority could be worth this kind of hit to the reputation of DN. My guess is that he’s genuinely friends with some of the key players, and can’t bear to have them witness his providing a forum for a discussion which would inevitably embarrass the hell out of them. The only way he could pull that off without destroying such relationships would be for him to host the debate in an incredibly partisan way. Of course, that’s something he does pretty often, but in this case it’s gotten to the point where he couldn’t even make a token effort without making a complete fool of himself. More of a fool, that is, than he looks now. Hence the explanatory power.
I do feel a bit bad for him. Then again, no-one forced him to join the Inquisition.
“My guess is that he’s genuinely friends with some of the key players, and can’t bear to have them witness his providing a forum for a discussion which would inevitably embarrass the hell out of them.”
That, or if he loses the support of that clique he’s back to being a nobody. The New Consensus is his brand, and he has no actual philosophical accomplishments to sustain his status if he loses that.
Schliesser has no doubt gained visibility from his blog. But he’s at least a serious scholar who just happens to have a side interest in leftwing politics. He’s respected in intellectual circles on the basis of his work. Weinberg, on the other hand, is a total lightweight. Have you seen him try to do actual philosophy? If professional philosophy were a high school faculty, he would be the substitute gym teacher. If the blog loses its audience he’s right back to the philosophical equivalent of giving handjobs behind a 7-11.
“Make no mistake. Schliesser is herein calling for the profession to bully philosophers into shutting up if they think that certain rights have been violated (including their own). If a student or colleague knowingly spreads malicious falsehoods about me and I take legal action against that individual in response, I am to be blacklisted.”
Schliesser works at a good European R1, yes, but his reputation among historians of philosophy is patchy at best. Hardly anyone would know him if not for his blog. I agree on Weinberg.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know if it was Jennifer Lackey who demanded that Ludlow be fired? If not, then who was it that make the decision to “initiate termination proceedings”, as Kipnis puts it?
According to Kipnis, Lackey was agitating behind the scenes, with the Philosophy Department Chair and with the Title IX Officer, to initiate an investigation of Ludlow before there was even a formal complaint from the undergraduate student. After that complaint was filed, it is highly likely, given the timeline Kipnis presents, that Lackey then persuaded (probably pressured) her advisee, the grad student with whom Ludlow had had a relationship two years prior, to being new charges. It was the new charges that caused the termination proceedings to be initiated. Lackey has been, throughout this entire process, a prime mover in the witch hunt against Ludlow, largely because of departmental rivalries (which Kipnis also outlines). It is she, not Ludlow, who was and is the true manipulator and abuser of power. And it is she who deserves to be fired.
It was also Lackey’s husband, a faculty senator, who told Lackey that the Senate Chair, Kipnis’s informal advisor during her Title IX interview, had spoken up about the external investigator’s abuse of academic freedom at a Senate meeting. Lackey then persuaded her students to file a Title IX complaint against the Senate Chair and tried to have him removed from office. Kipnis also reports that, after Lackey’s students (again, in all likelihood, at her behest) had filed Title IX complaints against Kipnis for her first Chronicle article, Lackey contacted the Chronicle’s editors and (violating confidentiality) informed them of the complaint and urged them to distance themselves from Kipnis. Of course, they ignored her and subsequently published Kipnis’s second article about her Title IX inquisition, which made monkeys out of all these idiotic schemers in NU’s totally dysfunctional and corrupt Philosophy Dept. These students need a better adviser: Lackey is singlehandedly destroying their credibility and their reputations, in all likelihood in a desperate effort to shore up her own.
At the very least Lackey should be compelled to reimburse NU for the expense of all these external investigators and lawyers set in motion by her schemes.
She is apparently still in the grad program at Northwestern, if their web site is up to date. Does she want a job in philosophy? Would anyone hire her? We may eventually find out.
Could we somehow mount a campaign to go after Lackey? Hostile working environment or something? Would be good to visibly do justice so as to scare off SJWs for the future.
You can be sure that there are several grad students in NU’s Philosophy Dept. who have never been with the anti-Ludlow–now anti-Kipnis–program, but they’re terrified of Lackey and her minions, LLH and KP. Remember too, as Kipnis shows in her book, the Department chair, Sandy Goldberg, is also part of the witch-hunt posse. If somebody were brave, they would speak up, wait for the inevitable blowback, and then file a retaliation complaint against Lackey and Goldberg, but most folks are content to keep their heads down and avoid the incoming.
The good news is that Kipnis has really shown a bright, painfully public light on their corruption, and most of the major bad actors are crawling for cover of darkness. It seems they’ve deputized Itchy to bravely Tweet at Kipnis while the rest of them crouch behind the “Northwestern Philosophy Graduate Student Association.”
The witch hunt against Ketland in Oxford was no less extreme than the one against Ludlow and involved similar players and actions. The outcome was also similar. Public vilification with unfounded accusations, unemployment, blacklisting and unemployability.
The pitchfork wielders are out after Kipnis now, but she is bulletproof (to mix my metaphors). Here’s hoping she makes future witch-hunters think twice.
The way to make them back down is for individuals who suffered similar fates to fight back. And if they do fight back, the corrupt system and its methods will fall apart. Laura Kipnis had no intention of getting involved with Ludlow’s mistreatment until she was subjected to attack from the witch hunters at NU in early 2015. As soon as they had tried to fire her for writing just “eight words” in March 2015, she took a strong interest in what they were doing and was horrified to discover what they were doing. Kipnis has the academic community on her side and lawyers. The NU witch hunters will only make fools of themselves by attacking her.
Nope, ketland is still creepier for fucking an actual crazy student and then acting surprised that things didn’t end well. Following all that up by posting disparaging comments about the dead crazy girl solidifies his place as the creepiest.
Why don’t you fuck off, Anon? Charlotte Coursier was a psycho, a sexual harasser and a stalker, whose victims were terrified. You’re a rape apologist and lying piece of shit.
All Coursier did was assault someone and stalk someone’s wife. What’s wrong with that?
Yes, ketland’s awesome. According to ketland’s sad wife, the student made an “uncountable” number of suicide threats, “virtually on a daily basis,” for several years, and (despite knowing all that) Ketland left his wife to have an affair with her–-a student roughly half his age.
I agree with Anon. There’s nothing wrong with Coursier assaulting someone and stalking someone’s wife.
Anon seems to struggle with what happened, I think. Coursier made all those threats in 2008. She assaulted Ketland in 2010, two years later. And Coursier stalked his wife two years later still, in 2012.
I know what happened, Ketland left his wife to fuck a crazy student. Said crazy student killed herself after Ketland fucked her. The end.
Knock it off, Anon. You sound like a dishonest jerk. Coursier assaulted him in 2010, stalked him, and followed him and his wife to Oxford in 2012, where she stalked his wife, and then him.
Coursier’s boyfriend Benjamin Fardell forced her to have an abortion (she felt she had “murdered her child”) and then he later dumped her, ignoring her suicide threats; so she killed herself the same day.
Trying to blame the victim of a stalker make you sound insane, Anon. Knock if off.
It’s great how Ketland reveals himself by not admitting he fucked the crazy person. Hi Jeffrey, you devil!
We’ve heard this dishonesty from you repeatedly Anon and no one buys it. You continue trying to hide Coursier’s record of violence and stalking against her victims (plural), including stalking someone’s wife.
Didn’t Fardell fuck a crazy person, impregnate her, get her to have an abortion, and then dump her, ignore her threats, whereupon she killed herself?
OK I got it I got it. Anon, you’re Brooke Boddingson and we’re all watching a Mills and Boone romance where you’re the heroine who’s determined to get the hero to finally plumb her deeps with his manly virtue. Still, don’t you think stalking Ketland here is a bit desparate?
Others reported that Paula Boddington and Brooke Berndtson were both “obsessed” with him, so maybe.
By “we”, do you mean metametabros?
Of course we couldn’t. Metametabros don’t mount campaigns. It’s not what we do. Admittedly, if we ever did mount a campaign it would be to “go after” someone. But in real life we’ll just bare our teeth and shout loudly at people walking over our bridge, and they’ll ignore us.
I read it the same as Fellow Traveller. Lackey was the driving force behind both students’ complaints. She also seems to be instrumental (or at least supportive) of the undergraduate’s lawsuit against NU. But I have a question: Who is “Professor X.”
Does the book say that Lackey contacted the editors of the Chronicle after title IX charges had been lodged against Kipnis to inform them about the accusations and to warn them to distance themselves from her? If she did that, didn’t she violate confidentiality? Didn’t she know about the charges, which should’ve been confidential? How did you know about them? And why would she do something as spectacularly stupid as that?
“In February 2014, shortly after Eunice Cho’s allegations against Ludlow were made public, a philosophy grad student named Nola Hartley [Leydon-Hardy] and a philosophy professor named Jocelyn Packer [Jennifer Lackey] had a discussion about Ludlow while the two were at an academic conference. Packer was Hartley’s thesis advisor; she was also the colleague of Ludlow who, back in the fall of 2011, approached the philosophy department chair with her suspicions about Ludlow, which he’d relayed to Joan Slavin.” (p 91)
Nothing sinister here, and as BL noted, Hartley talked to Packer at the academic conference because that is when the Cho lawsuit broke.. Hartley had an obligation to report what she heard, as did the department chair. Learn a little about Title IX, no wrongful action here by any of the faculty.
That is not relevant to the question raised above. The question concerned the factual matter of who was involved, and not the separate question of whether it was an “obligation” or not. The question was whether Jennifer Lackey “had a hand in all these Title IX lawsuits”. You Anon said “it is not true and Kipnis’s book doesn’t claim that”.
It is true and Kipnis’s book does claim that. More: “Based on the information Professor Packer [Lackey] had provided, Joan Slavin contacted the University’s general counsel” (p. 98).
According to Kipnis, NU’s counsel then hired Patricia Bobb to investigate Ludlow, which involved a “four hour” interview, and “Bobb told him he was allowed only a ‘support person,’ no lawyer.” (p. 100).
What is the evidence that Prof. Lackey encouraged the students to file the Title IX complaints against Kipnis? Many people seem to assume that she did, but I have never seen any evidence supporting this claim, and I have been paying close attention for more than 2 years.
Was there a mandatory reporting by Lackey to the Chronicle editors, in violation of confidentiality? I love how everyone keeps dancing around that hot potato.
Precisely. It is very sad to see philosophers who claim to believe in social justice not grasping basic principles like due process and equal protection under law.
So, no answer to my question (at 3:22 pm) about what evidence there is that Prof. Lackey encouraged the students to file Title IX complaints against Kipnis?
The question of whether she ought to have contacted the Chronicle of Higher Ed is obviously a totally different question.
Not surprising at all. Social justice has got nothing to do with equal protection and due process. Nor has it got anything to do with justice, for that matter.
In the book, Kipnis briefly mentions that someone with knowledge of the players suggested Lockwood might be behind the Title IX complaints against her, though she acknowledges that she has no proof of this.
There’s some confusion about which Title IX complaint the comments are referring to at any given moment, I think. The (one of many) downsides of there being so many Title IX complaints involved in the saga.
For the record, I believe there were a total of seven Title IX complaints in all:
two against Ludlow (one by Cho and one by LLH),
three against Kipnis (LLH and HP both alleging retaliation for her writing the first Chronicle article, and KP alleging retaliation for Kipnis’s supposed role in her support person speaking out at the Faculty Senate),
one against Kipnis’s support person (by KP, probably, targeting the Faculty Senate chair who protested the process at a Senate meeting),
and one against the University President (by KP, probably, for his writing an article supporting free speech!).
Now, either KP and LLH were completely out of control–or they were being advised to do all this. Given Lackey’s role in contacting the Chronicle editors, after the complaints were lodged against Kipnis, it makes sense to me to see her hand in this mess. Personally, I believe both she and Heidi Lockwood pressured LLH to bring her complaint against Ludlow, after the Cho story broke in the press. After all, Lackey was agitating against Ludlow as early as 2011, three years before Cho brought her initial complaint, and she had put him on the Title IX Director’s radar screen, so that she was predisposed (as Kipnis shows) to be biased against him.
As Kipnis comments in her book, “Were these people mad?” Answer: no, just arrogant, self-righteous, and besotted with their own power.
“It makes sense to me” is not the same as there being evidence for it. It’s a shame that you haven’t, in following this case, learnt one of the most important lessons from it – that it’s not OK to go around publicly accusing people of things and trashing their reputation online when there is no evidence for the claims you are making.
Hmm. You mean the way Lackey and her minions have trashed Kipnis et al. I must agree!
Seriously? After the way that scoundrels like Lackey and Lockwood have behaved, they deserved a good online trashing. Why treat them with kid gloves after the horrors they have visited on others?
No. As is clear from the context, I mean the way you are trashing Lackey. As is also clear, I am *disagreeing* with you that there is any evidence that Lackey has done what you are accusing her of. Either that wasn’t obvious to you or you are deliberately pretending I meant what it is clear that I didn’t mean. Either way, it doesn’t make you look clever.
Anon59, you do realize that you are begging the question, right?
There is plenty of evidence for those with eyes to see. Read Kipnis’s book closely and carefully. Then try and make sense of the record we have in a way that does *not* postulate Lackey’s central role in orchestrating the charges.
Anon59, if there is ‘plenty of evidence for those with eyes to see’ then perhaps you could produce some. And speculation is not evidence. Do you have any objective evidence to substantiate your claims?
Read the book.
‘Read the book’: total cop out. Whether or not Kipnis implies in the book that lackey ‘hand a hand in’ or ‘encouraged’ things is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not there is *evidence* of this. Either there is actual objective evidence for this claim, or there isn’t. If you can’t produce any, you should stop smearing Lackey without evidence.
What sort of nonsense is what? Are you having an opinion about the question “Can science explain everything? Why or why not?” used as an exam question for students in an introductory course who have read Nagel and Jackson? If you are having an opinion could you pass it and give your reasons so I can be enlightened by you and become a better person?
Surprised there are no comments on the post as of yet. Are Jess and Benj just sharpening their swords or is there some heavy-handed “moderating” going on?
I’d bet anything you like he’s censoring discussion. The post mentioned earlier in the thread still isn’t up (what a surprise). Whineberg clearly thinks he needs to control the narrative on what is surely a sore topic.
After seeing Justin Weinberg again try to produce an actual argument in writing, I once again feel sorry for him. The guy is just not very bright. Justin: stick to more traditional blogging and leave the philosophy to the pros.
You are (very transparently if I MIGHT say so) falling for his clever false flag operation. Kate Pogin, bless her heart, is recently gaining prominence from “Style Saturdays” at The Daily Ant. But because she is taking over, he needs to distance himself. This is why the Heap ‘Ol Links has had ZERO (count them, I dare you) posts of Philosophy Phridays ever since he began being silent about your complaint here. Do NOT be distracted. Do NOT be blindsided or brainwashed or gas lighted. This is about TDA and it always has been. Why the sudden silence? They said that in the twinkle of an eye we would be changed. But they didn’t say into what, and I’m not liking the prospects.
Good answer! You must be a philosopher or something! Anyhow, how else do you explain “I’m done posting excerpts” but “I do plan to have a bit more to say about aspects of her account that appear to be inconsistent with other evidence … so that we can try to have a more balanced public record of what has transpired”?
What he seems, prima facie, to be saying is, “some of what Kipnis has brought out seems right and important to put into the public record, but some seems unwarranted or wrong or glib. I’m going to step back to try to present a more complete picture.”
From DN Heap of Crap: “Every morning before I get up I read my email on my phone, and am delighted if I can turn down three or four invitations… before I even get up” — Martha Nussbaum answers some questions
Every interview with Martha Nussbaum I read increases my credence that she is among the most pompous, overrated philosophers currently working.
She was pretty good (for being an American scholar, that is) as long as she was working on textual stuff in Aristotle. then she understood she wanted to be a star.
I like her cheesy interview with the Guardian where she waxes about her so romantic relationship with Sunstein. Couple of months later they are divorced. She is a wannabe-Jew that apparently does not know how to dress appropriately for her age.
“Every interview with Martha Nussbaum I read increases my credence that she is among the most pompous, overrated philosophers currently working.”
Completely agreed. I would say she must just do something to rub interviewers and other media (e.g. The New Yorker) the wrong way, but this impression is confirmed by many first and second hand reports from other philosophers. The only positive personal things I’ve heard have come from gushing fans of her work.
Her work seems derivative and philosophically insubstantial. Do philosophers really still take her work seriously? Seems like the reviews I’ve read of her most recent works are generally (and rightfully) negative.
But hey, when you become a star who cares, so long as those invitations and media inquiries keep rolling in, right?
Believe me, if the vote had been unanimous, they would say so. (I do wonder why they felt compelled to add that proviso.)
There are some *very* disgruntled grad students in that Department, who have either never bought the Ludlow-is-a-WITCH! orthodoxy or who fear that all the clueless agitprop of Lackey’s minions will damage their chances of getting a job.
Your problem (which is a diamond in the rough among many haystacks) is that you do not understand what explanation is. Or, for that matter and others, when explaining is not only needed but necessary. For help, you might try a search for “explain” on the newspaper that Justin WINEberg (he is drunk on the ability to write posts for his own blog) has been ignoring, The Daily Ant: https://dailyant.com//?s=explain&search=Go
Am I the only person here who notices that ever since Justin Wineberg (drunk on his own ability to open and close comments on his personal blog) started being silent about important matters, one of those matters was Philosophy Phridays at The Daily Ant? Many Philosophy Phridays have gone by…… yet crickets. What’s going on?
There are no coincidences, and I”m thinkingt hat ever since Karka-ryn Pogin became their “style saturdays” c’zar, he has started distancing himself from her since she’s taking over. Thoughts?
There actually was a post about toxic ants! But it was not by Karka-ryn Pogin. She does not know anything about ants. This much is obvious. Will she learn more about ants when she goes to Yale to study Law with Brian Leiter (sic)? Hard to say!
Professors, it is really easy to not fuck graduate students in your department.
I’m not trying to be funny here, but is that really always true? And if it is true, is it obvious, in the way that Justin’s ‘humorous’ intent clearly presupposes, when he spells it out in a separate paragraph in bold italics (‘like, do I have to draw you a picture?‘)?
I mean, I’ve never fucked a graduate student in my department, and I don’t intend to, and I don’t need to be persuaded that, other things equal, it’s a really bad idea. But I’m inclined to think that if, for example, a graduate student in my department and I had fallen in love, I might well have fucked a graduate student in my department. And if someone said to me, ‘Jeez, how hard could it have been not to have fucked that graduate student?’, I probably would have thought that that person didn’t have a very well-developed understanding of human beings. And if a professor ended up getting married to a graduate student in their department (and remember we’re not necessarily talking about a supervisee) (yes, I know that’s not supposed to make any difference), and said or implied something along the lines of ‘Of course, it would have been the easiest thing in the world not to get into this relationship with this person, but I just thought, “What the Hell? Rules are made to be broken!” And here we are!’, I’d think that was pretty weird. And I don’t mean that I’d think it was a weird thing to say — that’s obvious enough — but that it would be pretty weird if it were true.
And even apart from the ‘high-minded’ cases, what if a grad student you’re really attracted to makes it obvious that they really want to fuck you? One can concede that it would be irresponsible, stupid, exploitative, deeply wrong, whatever, and still want to say: ‘Really easy?’ Are you fucking kidding me?
Now of course someone might say, Are you going to have this attitude to doctors sleeping with their patients? That’s a good rhetorical question, but I think it has a good answer. That’s just a massive, ancient Hippocratic taboo. It’s not like there are no circumstances in which getting involved is just really reprehensible. And no doubt plenty of cases of profs sleeping with grad students are reprehensible, and some of those are really reprehensible. The problem is that there are also plenty of cases of a professor and grad student falling for each other that just don’t seem remotely like that. Especially not to themselves. But not really to the people who know them either. I think this has a lot to do with why the moral majority are prone to massively overplaying their hand here (Justin’s ‘joke’ being a good example). They seem to think that if they huff and puff and wag fingers and perform pantomimes of outrage enough — and pretend with sufficiently straight faces that their ban could never under any circumstances be considered a big ask — they can make it come true, and this thing will go from zero to totally unacceptable overnight. It’s not going to happen.
I think that Kipnis’s book gets some things wrong, but I don’t think it’s wrong about the moral majority tending toward a self-deceivedly infantile view of sexual matters. Justin’s ‘burn’ kind of encapsulates that. Since when was anything about normal human sexuality really easy?
FFS Tristan, are you seriously telling me that you really felt compelled to get it on with that crazed Irishwoman?
Juliet, don’t you get it? It’s like there’s only one rule! Don’t fuck a Montague! Which part of that didn’t you understand?
(Plus, now that Justin’s joined the Sex Police… any other profs feel weirdly very slightly less averse to getting involved with a grad student? Kidding!)
Much like the previous reply, this tl;dr comment does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays. Maybe try staying on topic for once in your entire live long life for once? Yes, I said it. And I said it loud!
Not without showing poor taste. As I now understand it, graduate students are ugly and too old so shouldn’t be fucked by anyone. She fucks graduate students. Ergo she lacks taste.
As the editor-in-chief of The Daily Ant, I simply cannot understand why the most saliant point (voiced by Antonymous, above) is not being discussed, which is: Why has Justin stopped supporting our good work of Philosophy Phridays? The philosophers who have contributed and continue to contribute to the series have generously donated their time to produce some of the best work to date in myrmecological philosophy. Where is the support? And if the Trump Administration cuts NEA and NSF funding, what then?
I am sorry Benjamin!!! Many of the people here have distracted from the issues that the metal blog is originally supposed to promote. For one thing (and for two!) they are falling for Justin’s false flag operation to make us ignore the silence on Philosophy Phridays. Not good at all.
Search Committee Chair: Do you think if Joshua began “identifying” as a woman and then married a man, would that be enough to pardon his crime of having commented at the metablog?
Hi, Search Committee Chair! Thank you for your concern about job market prospects. I don’t know how it is in philosophy, but in the sciences, interdisciplinary work is rewarded! What is your favorite thing about ants?
Hi Anonymous! Thanks for the reply. What species of ant are you thinking of? I’m a little confused, because a single Paraponera clavata worker, for example, would not fill the gap between my front teeth (maybe it could fit along the petiole?). On the other end, quite a few Discothyrea workers could fill the gap between my front teeth – maybe even a whole colony! That would probably be kind of interesting.
Search Committee Chair, do you think I care about the job prospects of Joshua Blanchard of UNC Chapel Hill so much that I would stay silent (mum’s NOT the word) about the false flag snow job covering up Professor Pogin’s takeover vis-a-vis stopping the Daily Ant updates in the heap of links? I’ll say it once, and they will say it again to the mountains: This is not normal, not in the very least.
Jeffrey Ketland was booted out of the daily Ant due to an unfair and malicious witch hunt and power grab. So much for intellectual property rights! The hypocrasy of these people knows no limits
Hi Anonymous! I was previously unaware of Ketland, prior to a Google search. He seems like a rather nasty fellow – Ketland is to humanity what Solenopsis invicta is to ants!
Heh. Blanchard. Boddington and Brooke will say whatever they like about you stalking that woman who committed suicide. They’ll smear you in the coroner’s court and then the Daily Mail will call you a stalker and some moron who knows nothing will call you a nasty fellow when he googles you.
It is not an attempt at humor. It is confronting Blanchard with his vulnerability to false accusation when morons like himself are willing to accept lies of people like the disgusting Boddington and Brooke.
I suppose “insanity” is in the eyes of the beholder. For example, humans have given Anoplolepis gracilipes the common name of “yellow crazy ant”. Is this justified? Who knows! In any case, invasive ants give the thousands of other ant species a bad name.
Alas no. Boddington and Brooke can make up any smears they like for the coroner’s court, publicise their smears to Leiter while pretending to be soberly reporting the coroner’s court and Oxford will not protect you from their harassment.
Read the comment yourself, moron. Unless you can track IPs, how do you know it is a “he”?
Now stop lying and making things up. The identity of the person making the accusations referred to is a “she”, not a “he”; a well-known feminist activist.
I didn’t claim it was a he, dipshit. But let me get your reasoning right: I can’t know it’s a he, but somehow you *can* know not only that it’s a she, but that ‘she’ is also a ‘well-known feminist activist’? So either you admit you’ve been tracking the IP addresses of anonymous metabloggers, or you admit you’re a liar. Which is it?
No, I didn’t. I’m not 8:17. From which we can conclude that you are not tracking IP addresses. So you have just admitted you’ve been lying through your teeth about this ‘well-known feminist activist’ business the whole time. Not too smart, dipshit! Tripped yourself up there.
its pronounced HIM
The Ant stuff reminded me of Pilos Boy. Neither smart nor funny, it comes off as try-hard and a little autistic.
Hi Anonymous (not to be confused with Antonymous – a noble name by the way, I like it)! I’m not sure who “Pilos Boy” is, but, it’s interesting you bring this up. Pilosity is a key trait for species identification in a few genera, including Formica, which is widespread throughout the U.S. (among other places). It’s kind of annoying, because small hairs often fall off after collection, so it’s nice when species keys don’t include pilosity traits. But, such is the myrmecological life!
It is unclear to me what you mean by “leaving aside ants”, like… you know leaf-cutter ants alone recycle something like 1/6th of all the leaf matter in the Amazonian Basin, right? You can’t just “leave aside” ants lol.
What do you guys think about the allegations that Eric Clanton, a community college philosophy instructor, was the masked Antifa who split someone’s head open with a bike lock in the recent Battle of Berkeley?
What do you think about it? In your reply, please remember to include adequate references to ants! Otherwise you will fall victim to the base ant fallacy, so easy.
He asks that they leave his family alone. The whole thing is ugly, but the episode shines a light on the vigilante ”””justice””” of Antifa and the online mob.
It is important to note that Antifa is a small, minority vertebrate group that, despite its name, bears no relationship to ants. So, please don’t insinuate that the actions of Antifa speak poorly of broader myrmecological movements!
Here’s a summary of how they found him. He was evidently there all day, and there are videos of him attacking other people with that bikelock. He aims for the head.
Now that the Chicago affair has shamed the pro-vertebrate crowd pretty clearly, can we move on to Polyrhachis? Morphological analysis is quite useful there too. We need to use this momentum to turn the tide. Then on the back of those high profile cases we must try close the vertebrate bias that allowed the mammalogists’ power grab. Finally, stop hiring the pro-verts and their students. Voila’, entomology is safe.
What I meant in my aforeposted comment is that it is NOT plausible (even a bit) that there is a “bot” of you (if it really is you…. a girl can dream!).
a. The eusocial order Hypermoptera is ants, bees, and wasps
b. wasps are only a small amount of them, in other words
3. most hymenopticons aren’t wasps
4. therefore they’re mostly (>2/3) ants and bees. MOST
4. most ants are bees (ma=b)
lol actually this blog is problematic and glib about violence and sexual assault. and the intervention of the daily ant’s editor in chief (and the brief cameo of joshua blanchard of unc chapel hill) is a welcome relief. this place is super gross and its owner should delete it.
There should be no forums on the internet without babysitters strictly monitoring all comments for PROBLEMATIC content. All future comments about the profession should have to be approved by good Millians like Justin Weinberg.
Hi Anonymous! A very well-reasoned point, although you miss the fact that no one is asking for a babysitter per se, they just want more premier ant content! Sadly, the Vertebrate Agenda is pretty much ubiquitous at this point, and I can see you’ve caught the bug – or, I should say, haven’t!
Hi Anonymous! Thank you for your insightful question. Yes, I think there are a couple of people on here that know some ant facts. But, The Daily Ant is the only source that regularly deals in such facts – because, as the Good Book says, go to the ant!
“lol actually this blog is problematic and glib about violence and sexual assault.”
The blog can’t possibly be glib about violence and sexual assault. It never posts anything. You mean some of the commenters are glib about violence and sexual assault. But, some aren’t.
That’s because it’s the only genuinely free forum in the philosophy blogosphere. Naturally some philosophers want it to be deleted. (But “super gross”? Are you fourteen?)
commenters cant be glib an violant, they never post anything. you mean some of the time slices of some of the comenntersare glib and violence about sexual assphault
but some aren’t
that’s because free will and identity over time and worms and sleep
Someone should tell the Blanchards how the job market works. You see, there are committees made up of several people. On most committees, there will be at least one grown-up who wouldn’t want a colleague who responds to ideas they don’t like by interfering with discussion of them. In most departments, the number will be much larger. So at either stage in the voting process, if the grown-ups are aware of your behavior here (or even suspect it), you’re going to be at the bottom of their ranking of options by default. There are lots of candidates who have not thrown fits online and participated in trolling. Why put yourself at a disadvantage relative to them from the get go?
Hi, Anonymous! Let me know if anyone wants to tell me something, I’m all ears! Anyways, I am a little worried, because the field of science has many people who read this blog, and even more people who agree with the least myrmecolgocial views expressed here. Did you know this?
Hi Most Noble Anonymous! I am happy that you appreciate my “intervention” (antervention?), but I have to say I don’t view myself that way. I just like to talk about ants! Hopefully the Anonymous Army here will realize that boys and girls just wanna have fun – that is, they want to discuss ants.
Hi Anonymous! Thank you for your interest in the “ant blog” (it’s a news site, The Daily Ant). While we appreciate Ms. Pogin’s recent contribution to our popular Philosophy Phridays series, the causality you suggest is suspect at best. We have had 10 noble contributors to the series to date, and only one is by Ms. Pogin! Pretty basic point, but I guess it had to be said.
Anonymous @ April 30, 2017 at 12:55pm is right about one thing: there IS a connection to prof Karka-ryn Pogin. It is detailed in too numerous comments of me above to count. Here they are:
Number 1: You are (very transparently if I MIGHT say so) falling for his clever false flag operation. Kate Pogin, bless her heart, is recently gaining prominence from “Style Saturdays” at The Daily Ant. But because she is taking over, he needs to distance himself. This is why the Heap ‘Ol Links has had ZERO (count them, I dare you) posts of Philosophy Phridays ever since he began being silent about your complaint here. Do NOT be distracted. Do NOT be blindsided or brainwashed or gas lighted. This is about TDA and it always has been. Why the sudden silence? They said that in the twinkle of an eye we would be changed. But they didn’t say into what, and I’m not liking the prospects.
Number 2: Am I the only person here who notices that ever since Justin Wineberg (drunk on his own ability to open and close comments on his personal blog) started being silent about important matters, one of those matters was Philosophy Phridays at The Daily Ant? Many Philosophy Phridays have gone by…… yet crickets. What’s going on?
There are no coincidences, and I”m thinkingt hat ever since Karka-ryn Pogin became their “style saturdays” c’zar, he has started distancing himself from her since she’s taking over. Thoughts?
Number 3: You are (very transparently if I MIGHT say so) falling for his clever false flag operation. Kate Pogin, bless her heart, is recently gaining prominence from “Style Saturdays” at The Daily Ant. But because she is taking over, he needs to distance himself. This is why the Heap ‘Ol Links has had ZERO (count them, I dare you) posts of Philosophy Phridays ever since he began being silent about your complaint here. Do NOT be distracted. Do NOT be blindsided or brainwashed or gas lighted. This is about TDA and it always has been. Why the sudden silence? They said that in the twinkle of an eye we would be changed. But they didn’t say into what, and I’m not liking the prospects.
Number 4: Your problem (which is a diamond in the rough among many haystacks) is that you do not understand what explanation is. Or, for that matter and others, when explaining is not only needed but necessary. For help, you might try a search for “explain” on the newspaper that Justin WINEberg (he is drunk on the ability to write posts for his own blog) has been ignoring, The Daily Ant: https://dailyant.com//?s=explain&search=Go
Number 5: Am I the only person here who notices that ever since Justin Wineberg (drunk on his own ability to open and close comments on his personal blog) started being silent about important matters, one of those matters was Philosophy Phridays at The Daily Ant? Many Philosophy Phridays have gone by…… yet crickets. What’s going on?
There are no coincidences, and I”m thinkingt hat ever since Karka-ryn Pogin became their “style saturdays” c’zar, he has started distancing himself from her since she’s taking over. Thoughts?
Number 5: There actually was a post about toxic ants! But it was not by Karka-ryn Pogin. She does not know anything about ants. This much is obvious. Will she learn more about ants when she goes to Yale to study Law with Brian Leiter (sic)? Hard to say! https://dailyant.com/2016/12/26/the-exploding-ants-of-borneo/
Number 6: This does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays! Get with the program!
Number 7: Much like the previous reply, this tl;dr comment does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays. Maybe try staying on topic for once in your entire live long life for once? Yes, I said it. And I said it loud!
Number 8: I am sorry Benjamin!!! Many of the people here have distracted from the issues that the metal blog is originally supposed to promote. For one thing (and for two!) they are falling for Justin’s false flag operation to make us ignore the silence on Philosophy Phridays. Not good at all.
Number 9: Search Committee Chair, do you think I care about the job prospects of Joshua Blanchard of UNC Chapel Hill so much that I would stay silent (mum’s NOT the word) about the false flag snow job covering up Professor Pogin’s takeover vis-a-vis stopping the Daily Ant updates in the heap of links? I’ll say it once, and they will say it again to the mountains: This is not normal, not in the very least.
If so, this sentence is particularly (and painfully) ironic given her role in enforcing an unjust and oppressive consensus on the NU philosophy grad students: “when communities are structured by injustice, by oppression, or by marginalization, the values and expectations that surround us will be distorted in such a way as to interfere with our epistemic access to truths about one another.”
If you’re not using TOR or taking other measures to mask your location, note that clicking on any of these links to the daily ant will hand your IP address to Brian Blanchard.
Hi Anon! I am not sure what this “we” is that you speak of, but I appreciate the pluralistic orientation. Each person is best thought of as one in a colony we call “humanity”, rather than an isolated individual (like a dragonfly or something similarly inane).
The Blanchards are just embarrassed sympathizers of the New Consensus who want to shut down discussion of the Kipnis case because they are unable to dispute anything she says.
Hi Anon! Thank you for the suggestion. However, I think most of the people here want to learn more about the many ants among us, and I’m not sure why you’re trying to promote censorship? Inverts not your thing? If so, that’s pretty typical…
We can talk around Benjamin and Joshua Blanchard (Pilos Boy), two people who evidently think it was just for Northwestern philosophy students to bring Title IX charges against Laura Kipnis.
Hi Anonymous! Yeah, I remember reading a Poginette once, it was pretty good. I tend to favor novels, so I was surprised to find that the Poginette I read was quite insightful and thought-provoking. It just goes to show you: You never know what little formicid gems you may find under the nearest punky log!
I can’t speak from philosophers (though I often speak to and with philosophers – a long tale for another time!), but I can say that some have argued (not naming names) that ants were the first free speech pioneers. Remember how some Neotropical species were the first farmers, millions of years before humans? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you forgot – that’s ok! Why would free speech be any different?
Hi Anonymous! I can’t speak from philosophers (though I often speak to and with philosophers – a long tale for another time!), but I can say that some have argued (not naming names) that ants were the first free speech pioneers. Remember how some Neotropical species were the first farmers, millions of years before humans? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you forgot – that’s ok! Why would free speech be any different?
Remember when Matt Drabek used to post those idiotic ASCII thingies all the time? Benjamin Blanchard is just the Matt Drabek of our age — except even more white-knightey. He’s probably also tripping on Adderall or something, that might explain the slightly manic quality of many of his posts.
Hi, Anonymous! Thanks for stopping by. I have tripped many times in my life, but I always say to myself: “Get back up Benjamin, you can do this!!!” I try not to be a white knight – or even a white ant (白蚁), as that is actually a name for termites. No thank you!
“Someone should tell the Blanchards how the job market works. You see, there are committees made up of several people. On most committees, there will be at least one grown-up who wouldn’t want a colleague who responds to ideas they don’t like by interfering with discussion of them. In most departments, the number will be much larger. So at either stage in the voting process, if the grown-ups are aware of your behavior here (or even suspect it), you’re going to be at the bottom of their ranking of options by default. There are lots of candidates who have not thrown fits online and participated in trolling. Why put yourself at a disadvantage relative to them from the get go?”
Do people agree with this? Would the Blanchards’ antics here hurt them on the market? If so, why?
I love the idea of the “grownup” on a committee being the one to scroll through anonymous blog comments on random controversies and care about them.
But also, why would someone hiring an ant specialist care about ant jokes in an anonymous gossip forum like this? And why would someone hiring a philosopher care that Josh stopped by to ask a question and tell a joke?
Depends on how the Kipnis debacle plays out. Right now this shit-show is making the anti-Kipnis people look pretty bad in the wider sphere of academia. If Blanchard allies himself with that clique, by interfering with the one open forum in philosophy that is not policed by the self-righteous crowd, that could certainly come up in the course of a hiring committee’s discussion about his candidacy.
Personally, insofar as he wants to have a say, I think he would be better served by sincerity. I bet there are plenty here who would reciprocate. But right now he looks kind of silly.
Everybody keeps bringing up Kipnis in an effort to interfere with Benjamin’s discussion of ants. This blog was set up to discuss ants. I know because I am the one who created it. Anybody talking about Kipnis is an enemy of free speech.
NC1: You know that blog with all the problematic comments? I just posted a comment like one somebody made before, but I changed it to be about ants.
Sally Haslanger, Mark Lance, Rachel McKinnon, and 13 others have liked this post.
NC2: OMG that’s so funny. I just did one too.
NC3: I just did another one.
NC1: This is important work. We cannot allow these unmoderated forums to exist. As it stands, any moron with an internet connection can write something, and other people can see it. Truly dystopian. Very problematic.
NC2: I daresay it is even neoliberal.
NC3: Burn.
Half-Serious Search Committee Member: “I have grave misgivings that this potential colleague may be the person who used to post under the name Definitely A Metablog Founder to mock an angry internet weenie. I simply cannot advocate hiring someone who finds the modal poster at the philosophy metablogs risible.”
Search Committee Member: “Really? Who gives a shit? Can we look at the publications and…”
Moast Serious Search Committee Member: “Nice Try Femtroll – Everybody Here Hates You. When Glaucon and I set up the metametablog, it was not so that five years later departments could hire people who…”
I’m guessing that many will think it unlikely that although Josh’s non-philosopher brother was all over this board, Josh himself had nothing to do with it, and was not posting any of the other anonymous or antonymous troll comments.
Suppose your small department is hiring someone who is likely to be your colleague for the next 30 years. Wouldn’t you google at least the final few candidates to see if there was anything out there to suggest they’d be a bad colleague?
I’m not sure what you mean, because commenters here have reacted in lots of different ways to various rumors. Also, rape accusations are slightly more serious than predictions that some faculty members in some hiring departments will suspect someone of anonymous trolling and not like it.
If anything, I suspect that it would help him. By endlessly spamming this board, Blanchard is signalling that he belongs to the New Consensus set. Just from experience, I strongly suspect that openly belonging to the New Consensus is a plus on the job market. (“He stood up against the nasty metabros for poor lil’ Pogin and LLH and with such wit and humor! How wonderful!”)
Wait, do you think that Ben is actually Josh? Pilos isn’t Josh because we know who he is, but Josh himself only left two comments and they weren’t particularly spammy. (And actually Pilos also didn’t leave many comments)
You’re right, my bad. Got confused about the two Blanchards and which one is the philosopher. It does make one wonder, though, why Ben, the non-philosopher, is obsessed with shutting this board down. Maybe it’s because he knows LLH and Pogin personally and is taking unholy amounts of Adderall.
Who said anything about shutting this board down…? My express hope is that this board continues to blossom into it’s ant-centric destiny! I can see why you might have missed that at first, though. No worries!
It depends on the hiring department’s voting rules and makeup. In general, it’s not a good trade to go from having a couple people in the department favorably disposed to you and the rest indifferent, to having a couple people love you and the rest think you’re immature and unprofessional.
Hi, Anonymous! Interesting take – in fact, I really want people to discuss ideas more. Of course, by “ideas” I mean substantive comments on formicid facts (obviously), but that seems to be going way over everyone’s collective head. I forgive you!
We might consider out of fairness that he might have less sinister motives. He might just be hoping that if he posts enough comments, one of the Title IX complainants will peg him. Be careful about who you let into your ass Benjamin. It could be a Title IX complaint waiting to happen.
“I’m guessing that many will think it unlikely that although Josh’s non-philosopher brother was all over this board, Josh himself had nothing to do with it, and was not posting any of the other anonymous or antonymous troll comments.
Suppose your small department is hiring someone who is likely to be your colleague for the next 30 years. Wouldn’t you google at least the final few candidates to see if there was anything out there to suggest they’d be a bad colleague?”
It is hard to believe Benjamin would do this before running it by his brother first. And Kathryn Pogin. But it is also hard to believe Joshua would think it a good idea. Now Pogin on the other hand…
The Kipnis book has been out for one month now, and we are still awaiting a genuine, detailed, and thoughtful rebuttal. All we’ve gotten thus far are:
a nasty letter from the “NU Grad Student Association” [sic] that makes no substantive points and suggests further retaliation against Kipnis for speaking out
a couple of sophomoric blog posts from Itchy in which he curries favor with the feminist philosophers who got him a job in the first place
ant spam.
This suggests that what Jessica Wilson said on Lackey’s Facebook thread is correct: “They got nothing.”
I suspect Lackey and her minions never expected anyone to look too deeply into their plot against Ludlow. Kipnis’s book really lifted up a rock, and now all the ants and centipedes are scuttling for cover. But there is nowhere for them to hide.
The most charitable reading of this claim that comes to mind is that the rules of his institution were followed in the attempt to fire him. Is that what you mean? If so, that’s a pretty lame interpretation of due process. Hopefully you had something more plausible in mind.
From the Kipnis book, I had thought that the charge was that there was a pattern of behavior justifying termination. Though of course if the events making up that pattern were not actual rule violations, that’s an issue. But I’m not done with that chapter yet, and don’t know other details.
“If anything, I suspect that it would help him. By endlessly spamming this board, Blanchard is signalling that he belongs to the New Consensus set. Just from experience, I strongly suspect that openly belonging to the New Consensus is a plus on the job market. (“He stood up against the nasty metabros for poor lil’ Pogin and LLH and with such wit and humor! How wonderful!”)”
My sense is the NC set is a small but vocal minority that managed to shout down dissenters for a while, but that the tide is turning. The excesses and moral failings of the movement are too much for good-willed people to continue permitting uncontested. What do others think?
Bullshit, you must be referring only to people prominent in the philosophy blogosphere. Do you really think that there are only 14 people in the entire world of professional philosophy who share the values of Justice Whineberg or Jenny Saul?
Yeah, 12:18’s number is low. But the point that they aren’t as numerous as they might seem is well taken. In the past few years the philosophers making up their public face have been so vocal that the movement seems more dominant (numerically) than it actually is.
Serious question: what kind of idiot would take such a job? How low must your self-respect be to take such a salary? I love philosophy very much, despite everything, and I’d love a teaching job, but at those salaries they can fuck off.
Maybe this is their way of crafting the position for a particular applicant. Say, visiting prof in some other faculty has a trailing philosopher spouse. Doesn’t need a housing allowance because of spouses appointment, but having some appointment is better than nothing for the year.
The best way to troll the New Consensus trolls is to talk around them. Benjamin Blanchard is no different from any of the others. He’s just stuck in an ego-eddy about posting here.
Ok, you guys win. A friend told me it would be a good idea to troll here, but I now realize that was a mistake. The only thing I accomplished was to further fuel the discussion, which was already dying out.
I just think the kind of things that are being said here about Lauren Leydon-Hardy and Kathryn Pogin are fundamentally cruel and misguided. I know them both, and they’re great people.
This place, on the other hand… there’s enough bigotry on this site to fill a Trump rally. My fatuous posts about ants were just an attempt to counter that. But they weren’t that clever and they weren’t that funny.
I’m out. I’m glad I work in myrmecology where people are a lot nicer than in philosophy.
Hi Anonymous! I am glad you appreciate true joy – lucky for you, the “Benjamin Blanchard” above is a (fairly ant-free) attempt to mimic me. But I’m sure you can tell the difference!
moderators, have you thought about introducing a feature so we can know who the people are we’re talking to? that’d make it easier to keep track of things, and maybe also we could make some new friends (or lovers????)
I vote we keep things the way the are. It forces us to focus on what is said without having to think about who is saying it. Posters can adopt pseudonyms if they’d like.
Kipnis: “If the portrait I draw in the book is dissonant to her colleagues, perhaps it’s because private and public behavior aren’t always consistent.”
Benjamin, I’m glad you’ve had better experiences with KP and LLH. People are complicated. From the public record, it looks like they’re not always so nice. Most of us are lucky enough that our bad moments don’t draw any significant attention. Unfortunately, their bad moments involved using an institutional apparatus ripe for exploitation. That’s what people here are responding to, obviously. I agree that some things people say are cruel and misguided, and I wish they wouldn’t say them. Unfortunately there’s no alternative forum for free discussion in our field to discuss issues like the ones raised in Kipnis’s book. If there were such a forum with a reasonable moderator, this place would probably die out quickly.
As for bigotry, only one person in this thread posted a Hitler meme: antonymous, who seemingly arrived with you. Some of your other posts were a little funny. Come back to visit!
Lol, someone posted pretending they are me, but that is fine with me. Batesian mimicry is the sincerist form of flattery!
Also, as if I would every say “you guys win” – that’s a nonsensical concept, because there is no “winning” here, only a march towards myrmecological progress!
Everybody, 3:47 and 4:57 are not me. My brother and I had a disagreement about whether We should keep spamming and he wanted to continue. Come on, Josh, let’s give it up.
I may have many ant-related issues, but incorrect capitalization is NOT one of them! My brother and I are like two larvae in a pupa, and everyone knows this. Carry on!
I just think the kind of things that are being said here about Peter Ludlow are fundamentally cruel and misguided. I know him and he is a great person.
Anyone who has read the texts between LLH and Ludders should know that neither of them are any kind of Great Person. They come across as narcissists who have nothing in common apart from a need to tell each other that they are better than everyone else. Best solution to the whole thing would be to drop them both in the middle of Lake Michigan at 1am in February.
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Justin Weinberg (formerly WINEberg, for drunkenness on powerplay) for my public attacks on him. I am apologizing because he has now caved to my attacks, as appropriate, with including The Daily Ant on the Heap of Links. All y’all metal bros thought you were pathetic fringes on the disciplinary boundaries – very true but it is now also true that Justin listens and he listens well.
Philosophymetametametablog 
Now that the Chicago affair has shamed the SJWs pretty clearly, can we move on to Colorado? Kipnis’s boo is quite useful there too. We need to use this momentum to turn the tide. Then on the back of those high profile cases we must try close the Title IX loopholes that allowed the femphils’ power grab. Finally, stop hiring the SJWs and their students. Voila’, analytic philosophy is safe.
Kipnis’ coverage of the Colorado case wasn’t very detailed, though (for understandable reasons).
I did think that one important point that she made which I didn’t know before was that Barnett tried unsuccessfully to help the accused grad student get a lawyer before Barnett wrote his own report. This is important because I remember shitheads in comment sections back when it happened saying “well, he should have just gotten the grad student a lawyer”.
Although I realize that 12:21’s post may be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I fail to share any of his optimism.
This is because of two pernicious tends that, as fate would have it, have temporally coincided.
First, there is the near total collapse of the academic job market. In part, I think we’re still feeling the residual effects of the economic downturn in 08. But there is something else afoot. I wasn’t on the market this year, but I keep up with Philjobs. My sense is that this year was worse than last year, which was worse than the year before.
Second, there is the rather sudden emergence of a vocal critical mass of analytic philosophers with personal and/or scholarly interests in the strain of illiberal left politics that colonized the other humanities disciplines thirty years ago. These people are strongly interested in creating a patronage system in which they hand out rewards to their ideological allies (although, in fairness, I don’t think most of them are fully conscious of this)
Given these trends, the number of jobs going to current or future (when they realize they can’t get the work in “core” areas into the best journals) regressive leftists has been disproportionate to their actual number among job-seekers. Indeed, part of what I see happening is this: the available jobs for apolitical, liberal, or conservative philosophers (who, in prior years, would have helped balance out the zealots) have been cut in half or worse. The number of jobs for diversity candidates and ideological allies has grown.
Although some of them are genuinely talented philosophers, others aren’t. We can expect some of the less talented to double down on political brinksmanship in the coming years as they struggle to justify their place and purpose in professional philosophy.
As is sometimes said in other contexts, demography is destiny.
Thanks. I think this is a measured and insightful analysis. The only place where I disagree with you is that I’m more sympathetic to the leftists to which you’re referring: I’m not convinced they’re illiberal (at least in a pejorative sense) or regressive; in fact, I think the sort of radical politics these people defend is an area in which philosophy has to its embarassment been lagging behind the rest of the humanities and qualitative social sciences, and increasingly behind intellectual culture more broadly. So I think their increased presence in the discipline is, at least to a nontrivial extent, a good thing. (Of course, this isn’t to say that this sort of radical politics can’t be done badly; I’m reminded of the experimental philosophy gold rush in the early aughts, when it was possible for lazy grad students to get published in top journals basically by giving their undergrads surveys about the experience machine.)
But again, I do think you’re right about basically everything else. I guess I’m a bit more optimistic than you, though, maybe just because of the people I’ve met who (like me) agree a lot with the radical leftists but are quietly infuriated with their social and intellectual excesses. (I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve talked to who thought Jason Stanley’s propoganda book was lazy, irresponsible crap.) This makes me hope that the trends you’re describing will moderate rather than later.
“Jason Stanley’s propoganda book was lazy, irresponsible crap.” Amen to that.
And yet everyone ate it up. I see it cited all over the place. Several people I know in political theory and communications-type departments (e.g., communications; media and cultural theory; etc.) think that his book is garbage.
Also, how does someone who is so rude to so many people – and who has such difficulty being respectful of younger colleagues, including women – end up with a reputation of being a social justice-y good guy?
There are so many stories of Stanley being a complete jerk. I’ve witnessed him interrupt a junior woman giving a talk and literally take the stage. He stood in front of her. This is no metaphor. The guy is such a hypocritical creep.
And yet people say, “oh Jason! he’s just so energetic. he means well!”
But if acting like a creep doesn’t matter but intentions and charismatic energy do, then I guess all the stanley lovers really ought to say the same about Peter Ludlow, too, then. Right? He meant well, even if he acted like a creep.
I don’t know whether the fact that the propaganda book is cited all over the place is evidence that everyone ate it up. More likely, it’s evidence that some people ate it up, some people glanced at it and felt good about it, some people wanted to associate themselves with it, and some people cited it mainly out of subconscious cliquishness.
It was surprising to me when the book came out how much enthusiasm it got from people who I thought really ought to know better; to this day I really have no idea whether these people were being intellectually dishonest, whether they were engaged in motivated reasoning, or whether they’re just not as good philosophers as I thought.
But yeah, I agree with you, it’s annoying how people like Jason get a pass. But honestly I think it has less to do with social justice-y people in particular than with the fact that rationalizing cliquishness and social power plays in terms of moral virtue is nothing new, to put it mildly.
okay, a concrete example I can’t resist: I remember Kate Manne crowing on facebook about a piece she was writing with “one of her favorite political philosophers” and I was like “oh, awesome, she’s doing something with Liz Anderson!” But no…
lol! Was this the “they’re just engaging in free speech by demanding that others be forbidden from speaking” piece? That one was stunningly incompetent. Thank god the real philosophers are here to rescue value theory!
yeah, it totally was!
I recently read some of Kate Manne’s published work and thought it was pretty good. Not brilliant but good. She has a huge reputation. She’s clearly on the road to tenure at Cornell. So, why does she feel the need to produce garbage with Stanley? I guess it’s because he is a big shot and people want to tie themselves to big shots for the sake of their careers. Or maybe Stanley offered her the chance to do that and she thought that this was the only chance she’d get for her work to be seen by a wide audience.
I dunno. But I do think that Jason Stanley is a cowardly little bully who almost always punches down.
He’d never treat Sally Haslanger or Ned Markosian the way he treats no-name people.
I’m a non-name. And … yeah.
edit: the last sentence should have been:
“This makes me hope that the trends you’re describing will moderate _sooner_ rather than later.”
No doubt they were infuriated with Stalin and Mao’s excesses. So annoying. Makes it so much harder to defend their leftist fantasies.
Brief clarification to 2:17: I would not categorize the folks I have in mind–whom I’ve called illiberal leftists because I’d prefer to avoid the SJW label–as political radicals (or as economic leftists in the more traditional mold).
Indeed, as folks like Adolph Reed have argued at great length, the political projects associated with the “academic” left are rather like a moral shoring up of the neo-liberal imperium. If you’ve not read Reed on this subject I’ll try to find some links.
Anyway, I think of them as illiberal because they often speak and behave in ways that are inconsistent with the basic liberal–and academic–values of freedom of inquiry, speech, and assembly.
One interesting question is what the intersection of the illiberal left and the broader “academic” left looks like. I have the sense that it’s significant, because the academic left tends to downplay the value of solidarity. Solidarity–which is necessary to build nuts and bolts political movements, but not to publish in academic journals–tends to predispose one to give folks the benefit of the doubt rather than twittering about how they are “literally Hitler” whenever they violate a linguistic norm that was stipulated into existence last week. This is just a “sense” though; I’m sure there are folks in other humanities disciplines who work on topics in identity politics but are not grandstanding pricks. My experience suggests, however, that they are in the minority.
Thanks for the clarification; I agree that “radical” was infelicitous too. But it’s hard to find a label that’s both neutral and accurate!
I like the point about solidarity (and about the relation between the academic left and neoliberalism; I’m a fan of Adolph Reed too). It’s pretty obvious (and probably discussed to death) that the internet generates a similar incentive structure to the academy in this respect. I suppose how depressing this should be has a lot to do with how much political discourse on the internet and in academia corresponds to political discourse in actual political movements; my “sense” is that they correspond a lot less than people tend to suppose.
+1
I wonder what will happen first. either students will leave because we turned academic philosophy into SJ crap, or they won’t enrol because of another economic crisis worse than 2008. here in Canada economic downturn is already underway for those with eyes to see it (“bankruptcy” signs everywhere).
either way, we are doomed.
I still have to make up my mind whether I should wait until we are all laid off, or I should start looking for another job right now.
12.21, you make it all sound a bit like cowboys and Indians. I don’t think anyone’s going to ‘turn the tide’, much less ‘stop hiring SJWs’ (plenty of people who would be considered SJWs around here are decent philosophers). It’s only because the worst of them are the most strident that one tends to lose sight of the fact that a great deal of the relevant ideological conflict falls under the heading of reasonable disagreement. If everyone considered here an SJW were magically expelled from the profession, we’d end up with a much narrower ideological monoculture than the one we have now, it seems to me.
Here’s one modest and totally actionable proposal: people with tenure, grow a spine and speak up!
Do we have any moral philosophers out there? Is it possible to ascribe degrees of evil to the malefactors in the Ludlow affair? Is Jennifer Lackey more evil than Lauren Leydon-Hardy? What about Heidi Lockwood?Who gets the bulk of the ethical blame for this fiasco?
official professional opinion: who cares??
Sir Ranksalot? Is that you???
LOL. No, who’s that?
Degrees of non-existent properties sum to zero.
Anyone who cares about justice. Not you, sadly.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/04/23/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-kipnis-book-misrepresents-grad-student-employs-irresponsible-research/
It’s really hard to take the critics seriously if they are going to keep up their posture of “Kipnis got a bunch of factual claims wrong, but we aren’t going to say what they are”.
Shorter version: “The failing Laura Kipnis was very unfair to my friend. Disgraceful that she’s allowed to say these things. FAKE NEWS. Apologize!”
These idiots continue to dig their graves with their mouths and pens. They should shut up and pray people someday forget the crime they have committed against an innocent man.
From the Northwestern student letter:
“Kipnis’ failure to consult those in a position to give a well-informed report of our colleague’s history and the situation in which she found herself, or to check basic facts about the case, instantiates the very phenomenon Kipnis takes herself to be railing against: one-sided and irresponsible investigations into sexual assault.”
That’s odd. I thought that the relevant thing Kipnis is “railing against” is one-sided and irresponsible investigations that result in people being put into campus dismissal proceedings. The Kipnis book will not lead to dismissal hearings against anyone, not even the Northwestern students who recklessly filed charges against Kipnis.
these “replies” to Kipnis are incredible. my favorite bit is where they imply that Kipnis may have, maybe, sort of, kind of, perhaps someone should look into it, violated the privacy rights of a student.
because bringing a different lawsuit against Kipnis is really the right move here
Just as I will usually bet that a lawyer won’t file paperwork containing claims easily demonstrated to be false by evidence known to opposing counsel, I’ll bet that Kipnis’s publisher has lawyers vetting this stuff more accurately than the legal minds of the Northwestern philosophy graduate student community.
When Kafka-ryn Pogin leaves Northwestern to go off to Yale Law School, do you suppose she might actually learn some law?
if the book really is full of misrepresentations and privacy rights violations, seems like a lawsuit would be exactly the right move here
The Northwestern Defense? The fact that a person is charming and intelligent implies they have not engaged in wrongdoing.
The NU graduate students apply this to Leydon-Hardy, as well as not disputing any material facts that Kipnis had laid out on the basis of the evidence.
Rumor is that some of the NU philosophy grad students didn’t agree to sign on to this sophomoric statement, and all sorts of pressure (shaming, shunning) has been brought to bear on them to get in line. The group-think of these scoundrels throughout this whole case has been absolutely contemptible.
I wondered about that when I saw it. Such behind the scenes dissent often comes out after stupid political statements by graduate students supposedly as a body.
They should read Nietzsche on scapegoating. They might learn something.
lol
the rumor you just made up
lol yourself. Do you seriously think all the graduate students in that Department buy the bullshit “consensus” that has been foisted on them?
Where did you see this rumor? Is anyone else talking about it, especially anyone not anonymous who’s in a position to know the facts? Or did you really just make up an assertion in a discussion of accusations based on made-up assertions?
Fellow Traveller just admitted to making the rumor up
Rumor is Fellow Traveller is a lying liar who doesn’t know shit
Like you do.
This rings sort of true to me. What is the “The Northwestern Philosophy Graduate Student Association” anyway? It doesn’t seem to have any other online presence. I’d be interested to know who its members are and what procedure determines whether it does or doesn’t endorse the contents of a letter.
If I had to bet, I’d bet that this is an attempt by a group of Northwestern philosophy graduate students to implicate — without outright saying it, for reasons of plausible deniability — that they speak for all Northwestern philosophy graduate students.
Perhaps they subscribe to some non-standard social epistemological position…
The silence from the Daily Snooze is deafening. Has anyone tried posting something about Kipnis to the Heap of Links thread?
“Hey Justin, I don’t know if you were aware, but there’s been a good amount of discussion online about a recent book by Laura Kipnis…”
BL weighs in on the NU grad student statement re: Kipnis:
“In general, it is fair to say that responses to Kipnis would be more compelling if they were able to offer concrete examples of mistakes, rather than blanket assertions without supporting evidence.”
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/letter-from-some-northwestern-graduate-students-in-philosophy-about-the-kipnis-book.html
And another BL item on the credibility of Ludlow’s undergrad accuser:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/kipnis-on-the-undergraduate-students-case-against-ludlow.html
Or, we could talk about plagiarism.
Right? I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Whineberg’s extraordinary, protracted silence on anything to do with the widely and generally positively reviewed Kipnis book especially makes DN look like a source of propaganda as opposed to what ‘Nous’ is supposed to be a pun on, given that when the torches-and-pitchforks narrative was generally uncontested, and Jessica Wilson’s misgivings were being countered by sarcastic questions about whether she thought she was a brain in a vat, he couldn’t do enough to keep the story alive and therefore make it maximally damaging to Ludlow.
Given how awful this makes DN look, I think that whatever the reason for his news blackout might be, it must weigh with him a great deal. It can’t just be reluctance to give publicity to the other side: they’re getting a huge amount of publicity anyway, and no such minimal gain to the moral majority could be worth this kind of hit to the reputation of DN. My guess is that he’s genuinely friends with some of the key players, and can’t bear to have them witness his providing a forum for a discussion which would inevitably embarrass the hell out of them. The only way he could pull that off without destroying such relationships would be for him to host the debate in an incredibly partisan way. Of course, that’s something he does pretty often, but in this case it’s gotten to the point where he couldn’t even make a token effort without making a complete fool of himself. More of a fool, that is, than he looks now. Hence the explanatory power.
I do feel a bit bad for him. Then again, no-one forced him to join the Inquisition.
“My guess is that he’s genuinely friends with some of the key players, and can’t bear to have them witness his providing a forum for a discussion which would inevitably embarrass the hell out of them.”
That, or if he loses the support of that clique he’s back to being a nobody. The New Consensus is his brand, and he has no actual philosophical accomplishments to sustain his status if he loses that.
That’s basically it. Who would have heard of people like Weinberg or Schliesser if not for their screeching blogs?
Schliesser has no doubt gained visibility from his blog. But he’s at least a serious scholar who just happens to have a side interest in leftwing politics. He’s respected in intellectual circles on the basis of his work. Weinberg, on the other hand, is a total lightweight. Have you seen him try to do actual philosophy? If professional philosophy were a high school faculty, he would be the substitute gym teacher. If the blog loses its audience he’s right back to the philosophical equivalent of giving handjobs behind a 7-11.
LMAO. So true.
“Make no mistake. Schliesser is herein calling for the profession to bully philosophers into shutting up if they think that certain rights have been violated (including their own). If a student or colleague knowingly spreads malicious falsehoods about me and I take legal action against that individual in response, I am to be blacklisted.”
http://realfeministphilosophers.blogspot.com/2014/11/schliesser-advocates-collective-bullying.html
Schliesser works at a good European R1, yes, but his reputation among historians of philosophy is patchy at best. Hardly anyone would know him if not for his blog. I agree on Weinberg.
And Kipnis responds to the simpering idiots in the NU Philosophy Grad Student Association:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/professor-kipnis-responds-to-the-letter-from-the-northwestern-graduate-students.html
“If the portrait I draw in the book is dissonant to her colleagues, perhaps it’s because private and public behavior aren’t always consistent.”
It’s like she’s having to explain the world to children.
That’s because she is. We live in a world of overgrown children. Big kids in big adult bodies. Sad.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know if it was Jennifer Lackey who demanded that Ludlow be fired? If not, then who was it that make the decision to “initiate termination proceedings”, as Kipnis puts it?
According to Kipnis, Lackey was agitating behind the scenes, with the Philosophy Department Chair and with the Title IX Officer, to initiate an investigation of Ludlow before there was even a formal complaint from the undergraduate student. After that complaint was filed, it is highly likely, given the timeline Kipnis presents, that Lackey then persuaded (probably pressured) her advisee, the grad student with whom Ludlow had had a relationship two years prior, to being new charges. It was the new charges that caused the termination proceedings to be initiated. Lackey has been, throughout this entire process, a prime mover in the witch hunt against Ludlow, largely because of departmental rivalries (which Kipnis also outlines). It is she, not Ludlow, who was and is the true manipulator and abuser of power. And it is she who deserves to be fired.
It was also Lackey’s husband, a faculty senator, who told Lackey that the Senate Chair, Kipnis’s informal advisor during her Title IX interview, had spoken up about the external investigator’s abuse of academic freedom at a Senate meeting. Lackey then persuaded her students to file a Title IX complaint against the Senate Chair and tried to have him removed from office. Kipnis also reports that, after Lackey’s students (again, in all likelihood, at her behest) had filed Title IX complaints against Kipnis for her first Chronicle article, Lackey contacted the Chronicle’s editors and (violating confidentiality) informed them of the complaint and urged them to distance themselves from Kipnis. Of course, they ignored her and subsequently published Kipnis’s second article about her Title IX inquisition, which made monkeys out of all these idiotic schemers in NU’s totally dysfunctional and corrupt Philosophy Dept. These students need a better adviser: Lackey is singlehandedly destroying their credibility and their reputations, in all likelihood in a desperate effort to shore up her own.
At the very least Lackey should be compelled to reimburse NU for the expense of all these external investigators and lawyers set in motion by her schemes.
Good lord. How much must she hate Ludlow to go through all this to destroy him? He was leaving for Rutgers!
Did Lackey not also destroy Leydon-Hardy as well? Leydon-Hardy appears to be collateral damage, whom Lackey used to destroy a colleague.
She is apparently still in the grad program at Northwestern, if their web site is up to date. Does she want a job in philosophy? Would anyone hire her? We may eventually find out.
The New Consensus crowd may find a job for her. They should for the sake of their power grab, or else they’ll start lacking new volunteers.
That’s a real possibility
But she teaches prison inmates! LOOK: http://dailynous.com/2017/01/11/prison-illinois-publication-new-yorker-help-philosophy-professor/ See?
Could we somehow mount a campaign to go after Lackey? Hostile working environment or something? Would be good to visibly do justice so as to scare off SJWs for the future.
You can be sure that there are several grad students in NU’s Philosophy Dept. who have never been with the anti-Ludlow–now anti-Kipnis–program, but they’re terrified of Lackey and her minions, LLH and KP. Remember too, as Kipnis shows in her book, the Department chair, Sandy Goldberg, is also part of the witch-hunt posse. If somebody were brave, they would speak up, wait for the inevitable blowback, and then file a retaliation complaint against Lackey and Goldberg, but most folks are content to keep their heads down and avoid the incoming.
The good news is that Kipnis has really shown a bright, painfully public light on their corruption, and most of the major bad actors are crawling for cover of darkness. It seems they’ve deputized Itchy to bravely Tweet at Kipnis while the rest of them crouch behind the “Northwestern Philosophy Graduate Student Association.”
We mustn’t let them get away with this.
Incidentally, Lackey’s pseudonym in Kipnis’s book is “Jocelyn Packer,” in case you want to find out all the awful things she did.
I do think that Kipnis missed an opportunity in her creation of the legally-necessary pseudonyms, I would have chosen “Juniper Flunkey”.
Indeed.
When I write a book and need pseudonyms, I will definitely mine the poetic resources of the philosophy metametametablog.
Is she calling Lackey a meat packer then?
The witch hunt against Ketland in Oxford was no less extreme than the one against Ludlow and involved similar players and actions. The outcome was also similar. Public vilification with unfounded accusations, unemployment, blacklisting and unemployability.
The pitchfork wielders are out after Kipnis now, but she is bulletproof (to mix my metaphors). Here’s hoping she makes future witch-hunters think twice.
The way to make them back down is for individuals who suffered similar fates to fight back. And if they do fight back, the corrupt system and its methods will fall apart. Laura Kipnis had no intention of getting involved with Ludlow’s mistreatment until she was subjected to attack from the witch hunters at NU in early 2015. As soon as they had tried to fire her for writing just “eight words” in March 2015, she took a strong interest in what they were doing and was horrified to discover what they were doing. Kipnis has the academic community on her side and lawyers. The NU witch hunters will only make fools of themselves by attacking her.
Kipnis has female privilege. If she’d been a man she would have been fired.
Except that Ketland seems to have been the creepiest of all the alleged harrassers.
Then why were Boddington and Brooke stalking him with their lovestruck faces?
Easy: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Except that the creepiest harasser seems to be Charlotte Coursier, who was stalking someone’s wife for months.
Nope, ketland is still creepier for fucking an actual crazy student and then acting surprised that things didn’t end well. Following all that up by posting disparaging comments about the dead crazy girl solidifies his place as the creepiest.
Why don’t you fuck off, Anon? Charlotte Coursier was a psycho, a sexual harasser and a stalker, whose victims were terrified. You’re a rape apologist and lying piece of shit.
All Coursier did was assault someone and stalk someone’s wife. What’s wrong with that?
Yes, ketland’s awesome. According to ketland’s sad wife, the student made an “uncountable” number of suicide threats, “virtually on a daily basis,” for several years, and (despite knowing all that) Ketland left his wife to have an affair with her–-a student roughly half his age.
I agree with Anon. There’s nothing wrong with Coursier assaulting someone and stalking someone’s wife.
Anon seems to struggle with what happened, I think. Coursier made all those threats in 2008. She assaulted Ketland in 2010, two years later. And Coursier stalked his wife two years later still, in 2012.
I know what happened, Ketland left his wife to fuck a crazy student. Said crazy student killed herself after Ketland fucked her. The end.
Knock it off, Anon. You sound like a dishonest jerk. Coursier assaulted him in 2010, stalked him, and followed him and his wife to Oxford in 2012, where she stalked his wife, and then him.
Coursier’s boyfriend Benjamin Fardell forced her to have an abortion (she felt she had “murdered her child”) and then he later dumped her, ignoring her suicide threats; so she killed herself the same day.
Trying to blame the victim of a stalker make you sound insane, Anon. Knock if off.
It’s great how Ketland reveals himself by not admitting he fucked the crazy person. Hi Jeffrey, you devil!
We’ve heard this dishonesty from you repeatedly Anon and no one buys it. You continue trying to hide Coursier’s record of violence and stalking against her victims (plural), including stalking someone’s wife.
Didn’t Fardell fuck a crazy person, impregnate her, get her to have an abortion, and then dump her, ignore her threats, whereupon she killed herself?
OK I got it I got it. Anon, you’re Brooke Boddingson and we’re all watching a Mills and Boone romance where you’re the heroine who’s determined to get the hero to finally plumb her deeps with his manly virtue. Still, don’t you think stalking Ketland here is a bit desparate?
Others reported that Paula Boddington and Brooke Berndtson were both “obsessed” with him, so maybe.
By “we”, do you mean metametabros?
Of course we couldn’t. Metametabros don’t mount campaigns. It’s not what we do. Admittedly, if we ever did mount a campaign it would be to “go after” someone. But in real life we’ll just bare our teeth and shout loudly at people walking over our bridge, and they’ll ignore us.
Laura Kipnis, whom the witch hunters “mounted a campaign against” and “went after”, is a troll?
Try harder.
This response makes no sense unless you think Laura Kipnis is a metametabro.
I read it the same as Fellow Traveller. Lackey was the driving force behind both students’ complaints. She also seems to be instrumental (or at least supportive) of the undergraduate’s lawsuit against NU. But I have a question: Who is “Professor X.”
Professor X = http://phil.ucalgary.ca/profiles/jeremy-fantl
LOL. When metal bros fail, they fail quite hardly. There is an actual profess x, not hard to find with Google!
Holy shit. Is that true about Lackey’s hand in all these Title IX complaints?
As far as Kipnis’s response to the NU grad students, this seems right:
“philosophy grad students seem awfully eager to bend federal power to silence someone with views they don’t approve of.”
“Holy shit. Is that true about Lackey’s hand in all these Title IX complaints?” No it is not true, and Kipnis’s book doesn’t claim that.
Does the book say that Lackey contacted the editors of the Chronicle after title IX charges had been lodged against Kipnis to inform them about the accusations and to warn them to distance themselves from her? If she did that, didn’t she violate confidentiality? Didn’t she know about the charges, which should’ve been confidential? How did you know about them? And why would she do something as spectacularly stupid as that?
“In February 2014, shortly after Eunice Cho’s allegations against Ludlow were made public, a philosophy grad student named Nola Hartley [Leydon-Hardy] and a philosophy professor named Jocelyn Packer [Jennifer Lackey] had a discussion about Ludlow while the two were at an academic conference. Packer was Hartley’s thesis advisor; she was also the colleague of Ludlow who, back in the fall of 2011, approached the philosophy department chair with her suspicions about Ludlow, which he’d relayed to Joan Slavin.” (p 91)
Nothing sinister here, and as BL noted, Hartley talked to Packer at the academic conference because that is when the Cho lawsuit broke.. Hartley had an obligation to report what she heard, as did the department chair. Learn a little about Title IX, no wrongful action here by any of the faculty.
That is not relevant to the question raised above. The question concerned the factual matter of who was involved, and not the separate question of whether it was an “obligation” or not. The question was whether Jennifer Lackey “had a hand in all these Title IX lawsuits”. You Anon said “it is not true and Kipnis’s book doesn’t claim that”.
It is true and Kipnis’s book does claim that. More: “Based on the information Professor Packer [Lackey] had provided, Joan Slavin contacted the University’s general counsel” (p. 98).
According to Kipnis, NU’s counsel then hired Patricia Bobb to investigate Ludlow, which involved a “four hour” interview, and “Bobb told him he was allowed only a ‘support person,’ no lawyer.” (p. 100).
What is the evidence that Prof. Lackey encouraged the students to file the Title IX complaints against Kipnis? Many people seem to assume that she did, but I have never seen any evidence supporting this claim, and I have been paying close attention for more than 2 years.
Was there a mandatory reporting by Lackey to the Chronicle editors, in violation of confidentiality? I love how everyone keeps dancing around that hot potato.
The view seems to be that confidentiality is required only if you’re on Ludlow’s side of the dispute.
Precisely. It is very sad to see philosophers who claim to believe in social justice not grasping basic principles like due process and equal protection under law.
So, no answer to my question (at 3:22 pm) about what evidence there is that Prof. Lackey encouraged the students to file Title IX complaints against Kipnis?
The question of whether she ought to have contacted the Chronicle of Higher Ed is obviously a totally different question.
Not surprising at all. Social justice has got nothing to do with equal protection and due process. Nor has it got anything to do with justice, for that matter.
In the book, Kipnis briefly mentions that someone with knowledge of the players suggested Lockwood might be behind the Title IX complaints against her, though she acknowledges that she has no proof of this.
There’s some confusion about which Title IX complaint the comments are referring to at any given moment, I think. The (one of many) downsides of there being so many Title IX complaints involved in the saga.
For the record, I believe there were a total of seven Title IX complaints in all:
two against Ludlow (one by Cho and one by LLH),
three against Kipnis (LLH and HP both alleging retaliation for her writing the first Chronicle article, and KP alleging retaliation for Kipnis’s supposed role in her support person speaking out at the Faculty Senate),
one against Kipnis’s support person (by KP, probably, targeting the Faculty Senate chair who protested the process at a Senate meeting),
and one against the University President (by KP, probably, for his writing an article supporting free speech!).
Now, either KP and LLH were completely out of control–or they were being advised to do all this. Given Lackey’s role in contacting the Chronicle editors, after the complaints were lodged against Kipnis, it makes sense to me to see her hand in this mess. Personally, I believe both she and Heidi Lockwood pressured LLH to bring her complaint against Ludlow, after the Cho story broke in the press. After all, Lackey was agitating against Ludlow as early as 2011, three years before Cho brought her initial complaint, and she had put him on the Title IX Director’s radar screen, so that she was predisposed (as Kipnis shows) to be biased against him.
As Kipnis comments in her book, “Were these people mad?” Answer: no, just arrogant, self-righteous, and besotted with their own power.
“It makes sense to me” is not the same as there being evidence for it. It’s a shame that you haven’t, in following this case, learnt one of the most important lessons from it – that it’s not OK to go around publicly accusing people of things and trashing their reputation online when there is no evidence for the claims you are making.
Hmm. You mean the way Lackey and her minions have trashed Kipnis et al. I must agree!
Seriously? After the way that scoundrels like Lackey and Lockwood have behaved, they deserved a good online trashing. Why treat them with kid gloves after the horrors they have visited on others?
No. As is clear from the context, I mean the way you are trashing Lackey. As is also clear, I am *disagreeing* with you that there is any evidence that Lackey has done what you are accusing her of. Either that wasn’t obvious to you or you are deliberately pretending I meant what it is clear that I didn’t mean. Either way, it doesn’t make you look clever.
Anon59, you do realize that you are begging the question, right?
There is plenty of evidence for those with eyes to see. Read Kipnis’s book closely and carefully. Then try and make sense of the record we have in a way that does *not* postulate Lackey’s central role in orchestrating the charges.
Anon59, if there is ‘plenty of evidence for those with eyes to see’ then perhaps you could produce some. And speculation is not evidence. Do you have any objective evidence to substantiate your claims?
Read the book.
‘Read the book’: total cop out. Whether or not Kipnis implies in the book that lackey ‘hand a hand in’ or ‘encouraged’ things is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not there is *evidence* of this. Either there is actual objective evidence for this claim, or there isn’t. If you can’t produce any, you should stop smearing Lackey without evidence.
honestly this says more about the decline of the simpsons than the decline of the left.
600k views on youtube, though
Just posted this on the latest links thread over at the DN:
“I don’t know if Justin is aware of it, but Laura Kipnis has a new book out on the use and abuse of Title IX. It features a number of cases from philosophy, including some that have received a lot of discussion around here. I’d like to suggest a couple of links for discussion: the review of the book in the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/books/review-laura-kipnis-unwanted-advances.html) and in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/laura-kipniss-battle-against-vulnerability). I’m sure the resulting discussion would be of interest.”
What do you think the odds are that it gets posted?
FAVORITE STUDENT EXAM ANSWER THIS TERM
Question: “Can science explain everything? Why or why not?” (Expected answers to discuss black-and-white Mary or bats.)
Student writes: “Science cannot explain Trump, or why he bombed Syria.”
Fail.
Why? Sorry I’m a little dense. Could you explain why it is a fail?
I would fail the instructor. what sort of nonsense is that?
What sort of nonsense is what? Are you having an opinion about the question “Can science explain everything? Why or why not?” used as an exam question for students in an introductory course who have read Nagel and Jackson? If you are having an opinion could you pass it and give your reasons so I can be enlightened by you and become a better person?
I take back everything I said. Weinberg was absolutely right to say nothing about Kipnis’s book, and he should have stuck to this policy.
+1
So:
1. Whineberg bows to metablog pressure.
2. Flimsy case against Kipnis.
Surprised there are no comments on the post as of yet. Are Jess and Benj just sharpening their swords or is there some heavy-handed “moderating” going on?
I’d bet anything you like he’s censoring discussion. The post mentioned earlier in the thread still isn’t up (what a surprise). Whineberg clearly thinks he needs to control the narrative on what is surely a sore topic.
Are comments even open on it? I can’t even see a place to submit one.
How could he possibly permit comments? Any comment would inevitably shred the flimsy bullshit he has emitted.
After seeing Justin Weinberg again try to produce an actual argument in writing, I once again feel sorry for him. The guy is just not very bright. Justin: stick to more traditional blogging and leave the philosophy to the pros.
You are (very transparently if I MIGHT say so) falling for his clever false flag operation. Kate Pogin, bless her heart, is recently gaining prominence from “Style Saturdays” at The Daily Ant. But because she is taking over, he needs to distance himself. This is why the Heap ‘Ol Links has had ZERO (count them, I dare you) posts of Philosophy Phridays ever since he began being silent about your complaint here. Do NOT be distracted. Do NOT be blindsided or brainwashed or gas lighted. This is about TDA and it always has been. Why the sudden silence? They said that in the twinkle of an eye we would be changed. But they didn’t say into what, and I’m not liking the prospects.
So, Leiter seems to be backing off his support for Kipnis. Thoughts?
No he’s not.
Good answer! You must be a philosopher or something! Anyhow, how else do you explain “I’m done posting excerpts” but “I do plan to have a bit more to say about aspects of her account that appear to be inconsistent with other evidence … so that we can try to have a more balanced public record of what has transpired”?
What he means, as I take it, is “inconsistent with the evidence” presented to date.
What he seems, prima facie, to be saying is, “some of what Kipnis has brought out seems right and important to put into the public record, but some seems unwarranted or wrong or glib. I’m going to step back to try to present a more complete picture.”
Let’s hope he does.
He definitely is.
From DN Heap of Crap: “Every morning before I get up I read my email on my phone, and am delighted if I can turn down three or four invitations… before I even get up” — Martha Nussbaum answers some questions
Every interview with Martha Nussbaum I read increases my credence that she is among the most pompous, overrated philosophers currently working.
She was pretty good (for being an American scholar, that is) as long as she was working on textual stuff in Aristotle. then she understood she wanted to be a star.
I like her cheesy interview with the Guardian where she waxes about her so romantic relationship with Sunstein. Couple of months later they are divorced. She is a wannabe-Jew that apparently does not know how to dress appropriately for her age.
Thanks but fuck off, I’m here for good old fashioned takedowns of the intellectual ‘elite,’ not this creepy bullshit.
+1
“Every interview with Martha Nussbaum I read increases my credence that she is among the most pompous, overrated philosophers currently working.”
Completely agreed. I would say she must just do something to rub interviewers and other media (e.g. The New Yorker) the wrong way, but this impression is confirmed by many first and second hand reports from other philosophers. The only positive personal things I’ve heard have come from gushing fans of her work.
Her work seems derivative and philosophically insubstantial. Do philosophers really still take her work seriously? Seems like the reviews I’ve read of her most recent works are generally (and rightfully) negative.
But hey, when you become a star who cares, so long as those invitations and media inquiries keep rolling in, right?
guys, she stopped doing philosophy decades ago. now she makes $$$.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/04/23/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-kipnis-book-misrepresents-grad-student-employs-irresponsible-research/
Interesting addition: “The Northwestern philosophy graduate students adopted this letter by majority vote”.
Someone at Northwestern is reading the PMMB…
Also, the reception of the book has made it to the right wing blogs: https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/32326/ and https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/04/27/students-claim-professor-broke-law-in-writing-book-critical-of-title-ix/
Believe me, if the vote had been unanimous, they would say so. (I do wonder why they felt compelled to add that proviso.)
There are some *very* disgruntled grad students in that Department, who have either never bought the Ludlow-is-a-WITCH! orthodoxy or who fear that all the clueless agitprop of Lackey’s minions will damage their chances of getting a job.
When Weinberg says, “Professors, it’s really easy not to fuck graduate students in your own department”, is he talking about Martha Nussbaum?
By contrast, it is very difficult not to fuck graduate students in other departments. Right Justin?
LOL. He really is a total tool.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain what is wrong with fucking graduate students. Are they ugly or something?
Your problem (which is a diamond in the rough among many haystacks) is that you do not understand what explanation is. Or, for that matter and others, when explaining is not only needed but necessary. For help, you might try a search for “explain” on the newspaper that Justin WINEberg (he is drunk on the ability to write posts for his own blog) has been ignoring, The Daily Ant:
https://dailyant.com//?s=explain&search=Go
They’re too old.
Am I the only person here who notices that ever since Justin Wineberg (drunk on his own ability to open and close comments on his personal blog) started being silent about important matters, one of those matters was Philosophy Phridays at The Daily Ant? Many Philosophy Phridays have gone by…… yet crickets. What’s going on?
There are no coincidences, and I”m thinkingt hat ever since Karka-ryn Pogin became their “style saturdays” c’zar, he has started distancing himself from her since she’s taking over. Thoughts?
What is Pogin’s role? Any involvement by her in any project would be absolutely toxic.
Never mind. I found it. Ugh, what an awful person she is.
There actually was a post about toxic ants! But it was not by Karka-ryn Pogin. She does not know anything about ants. This much is obvious. Will she learn more about ants when she goes to Yale to study Law with Brian Leiter (sic)? Hard to say!
I forgot the link!!!!
https://dailyant.com/2016/12/26/the-exploding-ants-of-borneo/
Hello Anonymous. It is like 3am where I am – much too early to watch this video!!! Does it have ants?
This does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays! Get with the program!
Professors, it is really easy to not fuck graduate students in your department.
I’m not trying to be funny here, but is that really always true? And if it is true, is it obvious, in the way that Justin’s ‘humorous’ intent clearly presupposes, when he spells it out in a separate paragraph in bold italics (‘like, do I have to draw you a picture?‘)?
I mean, I’ve never fucked a graduate student in my department, and I don’t intend to, and I don’t need to be persuaded that, other things equal, it’s a really bad idea. But I’m inclined to think that if, for example, a graduate student in my department and I had fallen in love, I might well have fucked a graduate student in my department. And if someone said to me, ‘Jeez, how hard could it have been not to have fucked that graduate student?’, I probably would have thought that that person didn’t have a very well-developed understanding of human beings. And if a professor ended up getting married to a graduate student in their department (and remember we’re not necessarily talking about a supervisee) (yes, I know that’s not supposed to make any difference), and said or implied something along the lines of ‘Of course, it would have been the easiest thing in the world not to get into this relationship with this person, but I just thought, “What the Hell? Rules are made to be broken!” And here we are!’, I’d think that was pretty weird. And I don’t mean that I’d think it was a weird thing to say — that’s obvious enough — but that it would be pretty weird if it were true.
And even apart from the ‘high-minded’ cases, what if a grad student you’re really attracted to makes it obvious that they really want to fuck you? One can concede that it would be irresponsible, stupid, exploitative, deeply wrong, whatever, and still want to say: ‘Really easy?’ Are you fucking kidding me?
Now of course someone might say, Are you going to have this attitude to doctors sleeping with their patients? That’s a good rhetorical question, but I think it has a good answer. That’s just a massive, ancient Hippocratic taboo. It’s not like there are no circumstances in which getting involved is just really reprehensible. And no doubt plenty of cases of profs sleeping with grad students are reprehensible, and some of those are really reprehensible. The problem is that there are also plenty of cases of a professor and grad student falling for each other that just don’t seem remotely like that. Especially not to themselves. But not really to the people who know them either. I think this has a lot to do with why the moral majority are prone to massively overplaying their hand here (Justin’s ‘joke’ being a good example). They seem to think that if they huff and puff and wag fingers and perform pantomimes of outrage enough — and pretend with sufficiently straight faces that their ban could never under any circumstances be considered a big ask — they can make it come true, and this thing will go from zero to totally unacceptable overnight. It’s not going to happen.
I think that Kipnis’s book gets some things wrong, but I don’t think it’s wrong about the moral majority tending toward a self-deceivedly infantile view of sexual matters. Justin’s ‘burn’ kind of encapsulates that. Since when was anything about normal human sexuality really easy?
FFS Tristan, are you seriously telling me that you really felt compelled to get it on with that crazed Irishwoman?
Juliet, don’t you get it? It’s like there’s only one rule! Don’t fuck a Montague! Which part of that didn’t you understand?
(Plus, now that Justin’s joined the Sex Police… any other profs feel weirdly very slightly less averse to getting involved with a grad student? Kidding!)
Much like the previous reply, this tl;dr comment does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays. Maybe try staying on topic for once in your entire live long life for once? Yes, I said it. And I said it loud!
Excellent and well-considered remarks.
Thank you! Progress really is possible, if only for a fortnight hence.
Actually, my comment was intended for the long post above yours. Sorry!
I forgive you but I accept your praise still! I am weary of mistakes, but enduring.
Martha can fuck whoever she likes. She’s royalty.
Not without showing poor taste. As I now understand it, graduate students are ugly and too old so shouldn’t be fucked by anyone. She fucks graduate students. Ergo she lacks taste.
As the editor-in-chief of The Daily Ant, I simply cannot understand why the most saliant point (voiced by Antonymous, above) is not being discussed, which is: Why has Justin stopped supporting our good work of Philosophy Phridays? The philosophers who have contributed and continue to contribute to the series have generously donated their time to produce some of the best work to date in myrmecological philosophy. Where is the support? And if the Trump Administration cuts NEA and NSF funding, what then?
I am sorry Benjamin!!! Many of the people here have distracted from the issues that the metal blog is originally supposed to promote. For one thing (and for two!) they are falling for Justin’s false flag operation to make us ignore the silence on Philosophy Phridays. Not good at all.
Joshua Blanchard of UNC Chapel Hill’s philosophy department, I don’t think this is helping your job market prospects. Welcome future googlers!
Why do you think that the exchange between Benjamin Blanchard and Antonymous won’t help my prospects?
(I am neither my brother’s nor his ants’ keeper.)
Search Committee Chair: Do you think if Joshua began “identifying” as a woman and then married a man, would that be enough to pardon his crime of having commented at the metablog?
Hi, Search Committee Chair! Thank you for your concern about job market prospects. I don’t know how it is in philosophy, but in the sciences, interdisciplinary work is rewarded! What is your favorite thing about ants?
My favorite thing about ants is the number of them it would take to fill the gap between your front teeth.
Hi Anonymous! Thanks for the reply. What species of ant are you thinking of? I’m a little confused, because a single Paraponera clavata worker, for example, would not fill the gap between my front teeth (maybe it could fit along the petiole?). On the other end, quite a few Discothyrea workers could fill the gap between my front teeth – maybe even a whole colony! That would probably be kind of interesting.
Search Committee Chair, do you think I care about the job prospects of Joshua Blanchard of UNC Chapel Hill so much that I would stay silent (mum’s NOT the word) about the false flag snow job covering up Professor Pogin’s takeover vis-a-vis stopping the Daily Ant updates in the heap of links? I’ll say it once, and they will say it again to the mountains: This is not normal, not in the very least.
Jeffrey Ketland was booted out of the daily Ant due to an unfair and malicious witch hunt and power grab. So much for intellectual property rights! The hypocrasy of these people knows no limits
Ketland was the victim of a stalker Coursier, who assaulted him, had a police record and who stalked him for years.
I wish someone would start a movement to restore Ketland to his rightful place as owner of the Daily Ant
Hi Anonymous! I was previously unaware of Ketland, prior to a Google search. He seems like a rather nasty fellow – Ketland is to humanity what Solenopsis invicta is to ants!
Heh. Blanchard. Boddington and Brooke will say whatever they like about you stalking that woman who committed suicide. They’ll smear you in the coroner’s court and then the Daily Mail will call you a stalker and some moron who knows nothing will call you a nasty fellow when he googles you.
This attempt at humor isn’t very funny. Are you insane?
It is not an attempt at humor. It is confronting Blanchard with his vulnerability to false accusation when morons like himself are willing to accept lies of people like the disgusting Boddington and Brooke.
Benjamin Blanchard appears to be insane, yes.
Who is Brooke? You mean Brooke Berndtson?
I suppose “insanity” is in the eyes of the beholder. For example, humans have given Anoplolepis gracilipes the common name of “yellow crazy ant”. Is this justified? Who knows! In any case, invasive ants give the thousands of other ant species a bad name.
Insanity is measurable by a standard series of clinical tests. You, Benjamin Blanshard (if it is you), would fail those tests.
Was Paula Boddington or Brooke Berndtson disciplined after Ketland was reinstated?
Alas no. Boddington and Brooke can make up any smears they like for the coroner’s court, publicise their smears to Leiter while pretending to be soberly reporting the coroner’s court and Oxford will not protect you from their harassment.
Interesting comments at the Pilos with profiles of Rawls and Kripke and others
http://philosophymetablog.blogspot.com/2017/03/john-rawls-philosopher-of-justice-1935.html
Interesting comments at the Philosophy Betablog about the reliability and morality of anonymous comments about people’s sexual misconduct
https://philosophymetametametablog.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/june-open-thread/#comment-3358
To his credit though, he did mention Searle.
The author of those accusations is a well-known feminist activist, not a “he”.
Unless you’re somehow doing something creepy involving tracking IPs, you have no idea who wrote an anonymous comment on the metablog.
The commenter above assumed the accusations were made by a “he”. They were made by a “she”, not a “he”: a well-known feminist activist.
Did you even read the above comment? Everyone here knows that you are just making that up. Repeating an obvious lie doesn’t make it more convincing.
Read the comment yourself, moron. Unless you can track IPs, how do you know it is a “he”?
Now stop lying and making things up. The identity of the person making the accusations referred to is a “she”, not a “he”; a well-known feminist activist.
I didn’t claim it was a he, dipshit. But let me get your reasoning right: I can’t know it’s a he, but somehow you *can* know not only that it’s a she, but that ‘she’ is also a ‘well-known feminist activist’? So either you admit you’ve been tracking the IP addresses of anonymous metabloggers, or you admit you’re a liar. Which is it?
“I didn’t claim it was a he, dipshit.”
Yes you did, liar. Now fuck off.
No, I didn’t. I’m not 8:17. From which we can conclude that you are not tracking IP addresses. So you have just admitted you’ve been lying through your teeth about this ‘well-known feminist activist’ business the whole time. Not too smart, dipshit! Tripped yourself up there.
its pronounced HIM
The Ant stuff reminded me of Pilos Boy. Neither smart nor funny, it comes off as try-hard and a little autistic.
Hi Anonymous (not to be confused with Antonymous – a noble name by the way, I like it)! I’m not sure who “Pilos Boy” is, but, it’s interesting you bring this up. Pilosity is a key trait for species identification in a few genera, including Formica, which is widespread throughout the U.S. (among other places). It’s kind of annoying, because small hairs often fall off after collection, so it’s nice when species keys don’t include pilosity traits. But, such is the myrmecological life!
I wonder what you don’t like about Kripke.
I love Kripke, honestly. He has been a major stimulus to my own philosophical work. Doesn’t mean I can’t also talk about him on the Pilos. – Pilos Boy
can we go back to trash the dailynous, leaving aside ants and other such things?
It is unclear to me what you mean by “leaving aside ants”, like… you know leaf-cutter ants alone recycle something like 1/6th of all the leaf matter in the Amazonian Basin, right? You can’t just “leave aside” ants lol.
Nah, Pilos Boy and his brother want to share their po-mo absurdist twaddle.
“Po-mo”? Not sure how that’s related to the topic, but maybe you’re referring to Pogonomyrmex, the seed-harvester ant?
Loon.
Lol, no, this is a loon:
This is Pogonomyrmex:
Pretty basic (no offense)!
I guess pmmm censors ant photos!
Loon:
Pogonomyrmex:
Loon
See, this is why we need funding for science education! A loon in hand is worth two in the bush.
Loon
Between the two of them the Blanchard brothers don’t have a single funny bone in their bodies. Sad!
Doesn’t bother me – bones are for vertebrates!!!
So you admit you are spineless.
^Hate speech
Yes, although you seem to not realize that is a compliment! As the Chinese would say, you are like 热锅上的蚂蚁.
Leiter on Kipnis and FERPA:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/a-few-notes-on-ferpa-the-law-protecting-the-privacy-of-the-educational-records-of-students.html#more
Problems with Title IX:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/expelled-for-sex-assault-young-men-are-filing-more-lawsuits-to-clear-their-names/2017/04/27/c2cfb1d2-0d89-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_rhp-card-national%3Ahomepage%2Fcard
Um, that article is clearly flawed, given the lack of premier myrmecological content. Maybe you should better-sourced material. Just a thought!
What do you guys think about the allegations that Eric Clanton, a community college philosophy instructor, was the masked Antifa who split someone’s head open with a bike lock in the recent Battle of Berkeley?
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/04/antifa-terrorist-beat-bloodied-trump-supporter-bike-lock-identified-professor-video/
What do you think about it? In your reply, please remember to include adequate references to ants! Otherwise you will fall victim to the base ant fallacy, so easy.
Well, if the accused was a philosophy instructor on the other side of that conflict we would be talking about it on The Daily Dissembling.
Wow, very insufficiant ant content… contrary to jokes made in the vertebrate mainstream media, what we really need is more ANTS! I don’t understand what you’re not getting…?
Loon
Someone claiming to be Clanton put up a contrite apology at the weboard that outed him.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=49e_1493473663
He asks that they leave his family alone. The whole thing is ugly, but the episode shines a light on the vigilante ”””justice””” of Antifa and the online mob.
It is important to note that Antifa is a small, minority vertebrate group that, despite its name, bears no relationship to ants. So, please don’t insinuate that the actions of Antifa speak poorly of broader myrmecological movements!
Here’s a summary of how they found him. He was evidently there all day, and there are videos of him attacking other people with that bikelock. He aims for the head.
Boring.
Yeah, exactly – last I checked, humans aren’t ants!
Now that the Chicago affair has shamed the pro-vertebrate crowd pretty clearly, can we move on to Polyrhachis? Morphological analysis is quite useful there too. We need to use this momentum to turn the tide. Then on the back of those high profile cases we must try close the vertebrate bias that allowed the mammalogists’ power grab. Finally, stop hiring the pro-verts and their students. Voila’, entomology is safe.
The victim was a noncombatant. The women are being used by Antifa as shields from behind whom to attack and retreat.
[Something about ants]
YES! Finally someone gets it!
Not plausible.
Hi Antonymous! I don’t get what you mean – how is [Something about ants] implausible? Is there anything more plausible?
What I meant in my aforeposted comment is that it is NOT plausible (even a bit) that there is a “bot” of you (if it really is you…. a girl can dream!).
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3242/2426837069_432710c357_z.jpg?zz=1
loon
pretty good idea!
https://philosophymetametametablog.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/your-ip-addresses-have-been-logged-and-sent-to-feminist-philosophers/#comment-2410
thoughts?
most ants are actualy bees
Well, although your conclusion is founded on a false premise, I congratulate you for staying on topic!
please learn to argue rationally
Hi Anonymous,
Ok!
a. The eusocial order Hypermoptera is ants, bees, and wasps
b. wasps are only a small amount of them, in other words
3. most hymenopticons aren’t wasps
4. therefore they’re mostly (>2/3) ants and bees. MOST
4. most ants are bees (ma=b)
QED
Hi Anonymous! Thanks again for staying on topic. But watch out for sand!
The Blanchards’ glib disregard for violence and sexual assault is problematic.
no ur problematic
lol actually this blog is problematic and glib about violence and sexual assault. and the intervention of the daily ant’s editor in chief (and the brief cameo of joshua blanchard of unc chapel hill) is a welcome relief. this place is super gross and its owner should delete it.
There should be no forums on the internet without babysitters strictly monitoring all comments for PROBLEMATIC content. All future comments about the profession should have to be approved by good Millians like Justin Weinberg.
Hi Anonymous! A very well-reasoned point, although you miss the fact that no one is asking for a babysitter per se, they just want more premier ant content! Sadly, the Vertebrate Agenda is pretty much ubiquitous at this point, and I can see you’ve caught the bug – or, I should say, haven’t!
or maybe it should let the ants have it, ants can probably turn glib problematic things into awesome things, can ants do that?
does anyone here know anything about ants?
what are some ant facts
Hi Anonymous! Thank you for your insightful question. Yes, I think there are a couple of people on here that know some ant facts. But, The Daily Ant is the only source that regularly deals in such facts – because, as the Good Book says, go to the ant!
“lol actually this blog is problematic and glib about violence and sexual assault.”
The blog can’t possibly be glib about violence and sexual assault. It never posts anything. You mean some of the commenters are glib about violence and sexual assault. But, some aren’t.
That’s because it’s the only genuinely free forum in the philosophy blogosphere. Naturally some philosophers want it to be deleted. (But “super gross”? Are you fourteen?)
+1
And which philosophers want it deleted?
commenters cant be glib an violant, they never post anything. you mean some of the time slices of some of the comenntersare glib and violence about sexual assphault
but some aren’t
that’s because free will and identity over time and worms and sleep
but you are too grown-up and shitty to understnad
Agreed.
Someone should tell the Blanchards how the job market works. You see, there are committees made up of several people. On most committees, there will be at least one grown-up who wouldn’t want a colleague who responds to ideas they don’t like by interfering with discussion of them. In most departments, the number will be much larger. So at either stage in the voting process, if the grown-ups are aware of your behavior here (or even suspect it), you’re going to be at the bottom of their ranking of options by default. There are lots of candidates who have not thrown fits online and participated in trolling. Why put yourself at a disadvantage relative to them from the get go?
Hi, Anonymous! Let me know if anyone wants to tell me something, I’m all ears! Anyways, I am a little worried, because the field of science has many people who read this blog, and even more people who agree with the least myrmecolgocial views expressed here. Did you know this?
I forgot that scientists all use a special search engine that ignores results from philosophy blogs.
Hi Most Noble Anonymous! I am happy that you appreciate my “intervention” (antervention?), but I have to say I don’t view myself that way. I just like to talk about ants! Hopefully the Anonymous Army here will realize that boys and girls just wanna have fun – that is, they want to discuss ants.
So the Blanchards are here because of Kathryn Pogin’s recent post at the ant blog. Now why would Pogin have anything to do with the metablogs?
Hi Anonymous! Thank you for your interest in the “ant blog” (it’s a news site, The Daily Ant). While we appreciate Ms. Pogin’s recent contribution to our popular Philosophy Phridays series, the causality you suggest is suspect at best. We have had 10 noble contributors to the series to date, and only one is by Ms. Pogin! Pretty basic point, but I guess it had to be said.
Anonymous @ April 30, 2017 at 12:55pm is right about one thing: there IS a connection to prof Karka-ryn Pogin. It is detailed in too numerous comments of me above to count. Here they are:
Number 1:
You are (very transparently if I MIGHT say so) falling for his clever false flag operation. Kate Pogin, bless her heart, is recently gaining prominence from “Style Saturdays” at The Daily Ant. But because she is taking over, he needs to distance himself. This is why the Heap ‘Ol Links has had ZERO (count them, I dare you) posts of Philosophy Phridays ever since he began being silent about your complaint here. Do NOT be distracted. Do NOT be blindsided or brainwashed or gas lighted. This is about TDA and it always has been. Why the sudden silence? They said that in the twinkle of an eye we would be changed. But they didn’t say into what, and I’m not liking the prospects.
Number 2:
Am I the only person here who notices that ever since Justin Wineberg (drunk on his own ability to open and close comments on his personal blog) started being silent about important matters, one of those matters was Philosophy Phridays at The Daily Ant? Many Philosophy Phridays have gone by…… yet crickets. What’s going on?
There are no coincidences, and I”m thinkingt hat ever since Karka-ryn Pogin became their “style saturdays” c’zar, he has started distancing himself from her since she’s taking over. Thoughts?
Number 3:
You are (very transparently if I MIGHT say so) falling for his clever false flag operation. Kate Pogin, bless her heart, is recently gaining prominence from “Style Saturdays” at The Daily Ant. But because she is taking over, he needs to distance himself. This is why the Heap ‘Ol Links has had ZERO (count them, I dare you) posts of Philosophy Phridays ever since he began being silent about your complaint here. Do NOT be distracted. Do NOT be blindsided or brainwashed or gas lighted. This is about TDA and it always has been. Why the sudden silence? They said that in the twinkle of an eye we would be changed. But they didn’t say into what, and I’m not liking the prospects.
Number 4:
Your problem (which is a diamond in the rough among many haystacks) is that you do not understand what explanation is. Or, for that matter and others, when explaining is not only needed but necessary. For help, you might try a search for “explain” on the newspaper that Justin WINEberg (he is drunk on the ability to write posts for his own blog) has been ignoring, The Daily Ant:
https://dailyant.com//?s=explain&search=Go
Number 5:
Am I the only person here who notices that ever since Justin Wineberg (drunk on his own ability to open and close comments on his personal blog) started being silent about important matters, one of those matters was Philosophy Phridays at The Daily Ant? Many Philosophy Phridays have gone by…… yet crickets. What’s going on?
There are no coincidences, and I”m thinkingt hat ever since Karka-ryn Pogin became their “style saturdays” c’zar, he has started distancing himself from her since she’s taking over. Thoughts?
Number 5:
There actually was a post about toxic ants! But it was not by Karka-ryn Pogin. She does not know anything about ants. This much is obvious. Will she learn more about ants when she goes to Yale to study Law with Brian Leiter (sic)? Hard to say! https://dailyant.com/2016/12/26/the-exploding-ants-of-borneo/
Number 6:
This does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays! Get with the program!
Number 7:
Much like the previous reply, this tl;dr comment does not in any way respond to my question about why WINEberg is suddenly silent about Philosophy Phridays. Maybe try staying on topic for once in your entire live long life for once? Yes, I said it. And I said it loud!
Number 8:
I am sorry Benjamin!!! Many of the people here have distracted from the issues that the metal blog is originally supposed to promote. For one thing (and for two!) they are falling for Justin’s false flag operation to make us ignore the silence on Philosophy Phridays. Not good at all.
Number 9:
Search Committee Chair, do you think I care about the job prospects of Joshua Blanchard of UNC Chapel Hill so much that I would stay silent (mum’s NOT the word) about the false flag snow job covering up Professor Pogin’s takeover vis-a-vis stopping the Daily Ant updates in the heap of links? I’ll say it once, and they will say it again to the mountains: This is not normal, not in the very least.
Number TOO MANY TO COUNT:
[ERROR]
Do you mean this post by Pogin?
https://dailyant.com/2017/04/28/philosophy-phriday-ants-and-women/
If so, this sentence is particularly (and painfully) ironic given her role in enforcing an unjust and oppressive consensus on the NU philosophy grad students: “when communities are structured by injustice, by oppression, or by marginalization, the values and expectations that surround us will be distorted in such a way as to interfere with our epistemic access to truths about one another.”
If you’re not using TOR or taking other measures to mask your location, note that clicking on any of these links to the daily ant will hand your IP address to Brian Blanchard.
Do we really think this is actually Benjamin Blanchard as opposed to someone pretending to be BB?
Hi Anon! I am not sure what this “we” is that you speak of, but I appreciate the pluralistic orientation. Each person is best thought of as one in a colony we call “humanity”, rather than an isolated individual (like a dragonfly or something similarly inane).
WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EUTHANASIA
Soon. https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/large/s3/comment/2016/02/15/raid.gif
Lol, do you think there would be 13,000+ species of ants if some #basic chemicals could stop them? Hm, I’m thinking, NOT!
So how does the Kipnis Affair relate to the Blanchards?
Kipnis…? Do you mean Kartidris?
Well, to know that, we’d have to know what Laura Kipnis thinks about ants.
The Blanchards are just embarrassed sympathizers of the New Consensus who want to shut down discussion of the Kipnis case because they are unable to dispute anything she says.
Hi Anonymous! I am actually quite familiar with the “Kipnis” case, assuming you mean the Kartidris case. They’re actually pretty neat looking:
big butt
I know, right?
Racist.
Hound this mant out of the profession.
Problems with Title IX:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/expelled-for-sex-assault-young-men-are-filing-more-lawsuits-to-clear-their-names/2017/04/27/c2cfb1d2-0d89-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_rhp-card-national%3Ahomepage%2Fcard
Would the owner of this blog please block this Blanchard guy.
And you hate ants and free speech… because???
Hi Anon! Thank you for the suggestion. However, I think most of the people here want to learn more about the many ants among us, and I’m not sure why you’re trying to promote censorship? Inverts not your thing? If so, that’s pretty typical…
We can talk around Benjamin and Joshua Blanchard (Pilos Boy), two people who evidently think it was just for Northwestern philosophy students to bring Title IX charges against Laura Kipnis.
What is just is what is just for the ants! Again, this is clear in Scripture. Proverbs, much?
LOL. Funny theory but I think it is well-known who Pilos Boy is (http://www.philpercs.com/2015/09/the-pilos-is-thriving-the-philosophy-metablog.html) and it’s not Josh. I’m guessing he is one of the anons here, maybe “Antonymous.” (And certainly “Joshua Blanchard”, though I guess that could be someone pretending.)
Nah, better to let the Poginettes have their moment. It shows we are getting to them.
Hi Anonymous! Yeah, I remember reading a Poginette once, it was pretty good. I tend to favor novels, so I was surprised to find that the Poginette I read was quite insightful and thought-provoking. It just goes to show you: You never know what little formicid gems you may find under the nearest punky log!
This is the only genuinely free forum in the philosophy blogosphere. Naturally some philosophers want to destroy that.
I can’t speak from philosophers (though I often speak to and with philosophers – a long tale for another time!), but I can say that some have argued (not naming names) that ants were the first free speech pioneers. Remember how some Neotropical species were the first farmers, millions of years before humans? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you forgot – that’s ok! Why would free speech be any different?
“This is the only genuinely free forum in the philosophy blogosphere. Naturally some philosophers want to destroy that.”
+1
Hi Anonymous! I can’t speak from philosophers (though I often speak to and with philosophers – a long tale for another time!), but I can say that some have argued (not naming names) that ants were the first free speech pioneers. Remember how some Neotropical species were the first farmers, millions of years before humans? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you forgot – that’s ok! Why would free speech be any different?
Loon
+2 +3 +4
no censorship, free speech, no bans
more ants
Remember when Matt Drabek used to post those idiotic ASCII thingies all the time? Benjamin Blanchard is just the Matt Drabek of our age — except even more white-knightey. He’s probably also tripping on Adderall or something, that might explain the slightly manic quality of many of his posts.
Hi, Anonymous! Thanks for stopping by. I have tripped many times in my life, but I always say to myself: “Get back up Benjamin, you can do this!!!” I try not to be a white knight – or even a white ant (白蚁), as that is actually a name for termites. No thank you!
It does have a manic feel.
“Someone should tell the Blanchards how the job market works. You see, there are committees made up of several people. On most committees, there will be at least one grown-up who wouldn’t want a colleague who responds to ideas they don’t like by interfering with discussion of them. In most departments, the number will be much larger. So at either stage in the voting process, if the grown-ups are aware of your behavior here (or even suspect it), you’re going to be at the bottom of their ranking of options by default. There are lots of candidates who have not thrown fits online and participated in trolling. Why put yourself at a disadvantage relative to them from the get go?”
Do people agree with this? Would the Blanchards’ antics here hurt them on the market? If so, why?
I love the idea of the “grownup” on a committee being the one to scroll through anonymous blog comments on random controversies and care about them.
But also, why would someone hiring an ant specialist care about ant jokes in an anonymous gossip forum like this? And why would someone hiring a philosopher care that Josh stopped by to ask a question and tell a joke?
Depends on how the Kipnis debacle plays out. Right now this shit-show is making the anti-Kipnis people look pretty bad in the wider sphere of academia. If Blanchard allies himself with that clique, by interfering with the one open forum in philosophy that is not policed by the self-righteous crowd, that could certainly come up in the course of a hiring committee’s discussion about his candidacy.
Personally, insofar as he wants to have a say, I think he would be better served by sincerity. I bet there are plenty here who would reciprocate. But right now he looks kind of silly.
Everybody keeps bringing up Kipnis in an effort to interfere with Benjamin’s discussion of ants. This blog was set up to discuss ants. I know because I am the one who created it. Anybody talking about Kipnis is an enemy of free speech.
It’s amazing how derivative the New Consensus crowd has become. Like cultists.
NC1: You know that blog with all the problematic comments? I just posted a comment like one somebody made before, but I changed it to be about ants.
Sally Haslanger, Mark Lance, Rachel McKinnon, and 13 others have liked this post.
NC2: OMG that’s so funny. I just did one too.
NC3: I just did another one.
NC1: This is important work. We cannot allow these unmoderated forums to exist. As it stands, any moron with an internet connection can write something, and other people can see it. Truly dystopian. Very problematic.
NC2: I daresay it is even neoliberal.
NC3: Burn.
I’m not sure who all these people are, but I know that they are not purveyors of premier ant content. Which, when you think about it, is kind of sad!
Half-Serious Search Committee Member: “I have grave misgivings that this potential colleague may be the person who used to post under the name Definitely A Metablog Founder to mock an angry internet weenie. I simply cannot advocate hiring someone who finds the modal poster at the philosophy metablogs risible.”
Search Committee Member: “Really? Who gives a shit? Can we look at the publications and…”
Moast Serious Search Committee Member: “Nice Try Femtroll – Everybody Here Hates You. When Glaucon and I set up the metametablog, it was not so that five years later departments could hire people who…”
I’m guessing that many will think it unlikely that although Josh’s non-philosopher brother was all over this board, Josh himself had nothing to do with it, and was not posting any of the other anonymous or antonymous troll comments.
Suppose your small department is hiring someone who is likely to be your colleague for the next 30 years. Wouldn’t you google at least the final few candidates to see if there was anything out there to suggest they’d be a bad colleague?
this is the same blog that completely flips the fuck out if someone posts a comment offering a rumor that someone is a rapist
I’m not sure what you mean, because commenters here have reacted in lots of different ways to various rumors. Also, rape accusations are slightly more serious than predictions that some faculty members in some hiring departments will suspect someone of anonymous trolling and not like it.
TIL metablog is one person.
If anything, I suspect that it would help him. By endlessly spamming this board, Blanchard is signalling that he belongs to the New Consensus set. Just from experience, I strongly suspect that openly belonging to the New Consensus is a plus on the job market. (“He stood up against the nasty metabros for poor lil’ Pogin and LLH and with such wit and humor! How wonderful!”)
“endlessly spamming”
Wait, do you think that Ben is actually Josh? Pilos isn’t Josh because we know who he is, but Josh himself only left two comments and they weren’t particularly spammy. (And actually Pilos also didn’t leave many comments)
You’re right, my bad. Got confused about the two Blanchards and which one is the philosopher. It does make one wonder, though, why Ben, the non-philosopher, is obsessed with shutting this board down. Maybe it’s because he knows LLH and Pogin personally and is taking unholy amounts of Adderall.
Who said anything about shutting this board down…? My express hope is that this board continues to blossom into it’s ant-centric destiny! I can see why you might have missed that at first, though. No worries!
Dude, please take less Adderall. It’s bad for your health (mental and physical).
please take all and only the medications prescribed by your licensed health professionals
Adderall is massively over-prescribed, dude (at least in the States, where Ben is).
It depends on the hiring department’s voting rules and makeup. In general, it’s not a good trade to go from having a couple people in the department favorably disposed to you and the rest indifferent, to having a couple people love you and the rest think you’re immature and unprofessional.
The real worry is that it will be judged worse than immature and unprofessional. I don’t think it’s wise to bet against Kipnis in this moral lottery.
“a colleague who responds to ideas they don’t like by interfering with discussion of them”
That does look like what is happening.
Hi, Anonymous! Interesting take – in fact, I really want people to discuss ideas more. Of course, by “ideas” I mean substantive comments on formicid facts (obviously), but that seems to be going way over everyone’s collective head. I forgive you!
Loon
Yup.
We might consider out of fairness that he might have less sinister motives. He might just be hoping that if he posts enough comments, one of the Title IX complainants will peg him. Be careful about who you let into your ass Benjamin. It could be a Title IX complaint waiting to happen.
“I’m guessing that many will think it unlikely that although Josh’s non-philosopher brother was all over this board, Josh himself had nothing to do with it, and was not posting any of the other anonymous or antonymous troll comments.
Suppose your small department is hiring someone who is likely to be your colleague for the next 30 years. Wouldn’t you google at least the final few candidates to see if there was anything out there to suggest they’d be a bad colleague?”
It is hard to believe Benjamin would do this before running it by his brother first. And Kathryn Pogin. But it is also hard to believe Joshua would think it a good idea. Now Pogin on the other hand…
The Kipnis book has been out for one month now, and we are still awaiting a genuine, detailed, and thoughtful rebuttal. All we’ve gotten thus far are:
a nasty letter from the “NU Grad Student Association” [sic] that makes no substantive points and suggests further retaliation against Kipnis for speaking out
a couple of sophomoric blog posts from Itchy in which he curries favor with the feminist philosophers who got him a job in the first place
ant spam.
This suggests that what Jessica Wilson said on Lackey’s Facebook thread is correct: “They got nothing.”
I suspect Lackey and her minions never expected anyone to look too deeply into their plot against Ludlow. Kipnis’s book really lifted up a rock, and now all the ants and centipedes are scuttling for cover. But there is nowhere for them to hide.
Fellow Traveler is clearly Ludlow. Or someone exceptionally obsessed with Ludlow.
LOL. Try again. I’m obsessed with due process, which Ludlow did not get.
He did get due process – you just don’t like the outcome of that process.
Do you think the right to confront your accuser is not included in due process?
Hahahaha. That’s very funny. Tell another one!
Are you daft 9:16? How on earth does Ludlow’s treatment count as due process?
The most charitable reading of this claim that comes to mind is that the rules of his institution were followed in the attempt to fire him. Is that what you mean? If so, that’s a pretty lame interpretation of due process. Hopefully you had something more plausible in mind.
Actually, the rules were *not* followed. He was disciplined for actions that were expressly *not* covered by NU’s faculty code of conduct.
From the Kipnis book, I had thought that the charge was that there was a pattern of behavior justifying termination. Though of course if the events making up that pattern were not actual rule violations, that’s an issue. But I’m not done with that chapter yet, and don’t know other details.
Whomever it is, I appreciate the perspective.
Am I the only person here who thinks that Benjamin Blanchard is actually Thomas Nagel?
I miss Glaucon.
“If anything, I suspect that it would help him. By endlessly spamming this board, Blanchard is signalling that he belongs to the New Consensus set. Just from experience, I strongly suspect that openly belonging to the New Consensus is a plus on the job market. (“He stood up against the nasty metabros for poor lil’ Pogin and LLH and with such wit and humor! How wonderful!”)”
My sense is the NC set is a small but vocal minority that managed to shout down dissenters for a while, but that the tide is turning. The excesses and moral failings of the movement are too much for good-willed people to continue permitting uncontested. What do others think?
The tide will turn only if others stand up to them and their ‘excesses’, as you put it.
The NC set consists of about 14 people, maybe 16 or 17.
Bullshit, you must be referring only to people prominent in the philosophy blogosphere. Do you really think that there are only 14 people in the entire world of professional philosophy who share the values of Justice Whineberg or Jenny Saul?
Yeah, 12:18’s number is low. But the point that they aren’t as numerous as they might seem is well taken. In the past few years the philosophers making up their public face have been so vocal that the movement seems more dominant (numerically) than it actually is.
Where are the voices speaking out against them? Jessica Wilson, Benj Hellie…?
Here
Clearly that number is only including the philosophers and not the myrmecologists. NSCU has a very solid ant lab.
To those who think the ratio of NC moral scolds to reasonable people is small, I ask: where are all the reasonable voices?
What is this, a center for ants?
LOL
A center for antics.
sheesh, what a ped🐜
And for ontics!
AGAIN OXFORD
https://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/content/two-stipendiary-lectureships-philosophy
THESE ARE TWO FULL TIME POSTS
SALARY £15,000-17,000 (+no housing)
HOW IS OXFORD GETTING AWAY WITH THIS????
Oxford is admired for its high quality student and employee care.
Serious question: what kind of idiot would take such a job? How low must your self-respect be to take such a salary? I love philosophy very much, despite everything, and I’d love a teaching job, but at those salaries they can fuck off.
Maybe this is their way of crafting the position for a particular applicant. Say, visiting prof in some other faculty has a trailing philosopher spouse. Doesn’t need a housing allowance because of spouses appointment, but having some appointment is better than nothing for the year.
The best part: “depending on experience”
Right, like… that can’t even deign to ask for experiants? Kind of shocking.
Loon
Don’t feed the troll.
Hi Anonymous! I’m sorry you feel this way… I hope it gets better soon.
It’s fine. Surely we can troll the troll.
Tell us about your research Benjamin!
I already have been – lol!
For those with eyes to see and ears to hear – or antennae!
The best way to troll the New Consensus trolls is to talk around them. Benjamin Blanchard is no different from any of the others. He’s just stuck in an ego-eddy about posting here.
Ok, you guys win. A friend told me it would be a good idea to troll here, but I now realize that was a mistake. The only thing I accomplished was to further fuel the discussion, which was already dying out.
I just think the kind of things that are being said here about Lauren Leydon-Hardy and Kathryn Pogin are fundamentally cruel and misguided. I know them both, and they’re great people.
This place, on the other hand… there’s enough bigotry on this site to fill a Trump rally. My fatuous posts about ants were just an attempt to counter that. But they weren’t that clever and they weren’t that funny.
I’m out. I’m glad I work in myrmecology where people are a lot nicer than in philosophy.
Go away, bigot.
the past few days have been the greatest days in the history of the metablog
thank you for joy
Hi Anonymous! I am glad you appreciate true joy – lucky for you, the “Benjamin Blanchard” above is a (fairly ant-free) attempt to mimic me. But I’m sure you can tell the difference!
it’s hard to tell who is saying what around here!
moderators, have you thought about introducing a feature so we can know who the people are we’re talking to? that’d make it easier to keep track of things, and maybe also we could make some new friends (or lovers????)
Yeah, and that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do on my own: Make lovers of ants!
I vote we keep things the way the are. It forces us to focus on what is said without having to think about who is saying it. Posters can adopt pseudonyms if they’d like.
Kipnis: “If the portrait I draw in the book is dissonant to her colleagues, perhaps it’s because private and public behavior aren’t always consistent.”
Benjamin, I’m glad you’ve had better experiences with KP and LLH. People are complicated. From the public record, it looks like they’re not always so nice. Most of us are lucky enough that our bad moments don’t draw any significant attention. Unfortunately, their bad moments involved using an institutional apparatus ripe for exploitation. That’s what people here are responding to, obviously. I agree that some things people say are cruel and misguided, and I wish they wouldn’t say them. Unfortunately there’s no alternative forum for free discussion in our field to discuss issues like the ones raised in Kipnis’s book. If there were such a forum with a reasonable moderator, this place would probably die out quickly.
As for bigotry, only one person in this thread posted a Hitler meme: antonymous, who seemingly arrived with you. Some of your other posts were a little funny. Come back to visit!
Lol, someone posted pretending they are me, but that is fine with me. Batesian mimicry is the sincerist form of flattery!
Also, as if I would every say “you guys win” – that’s a nonsensical concept, because there is no “winning” here, only a march towards myrmecological progress!
Everybody, 3:47 and 4:57 are not me. My brother and I had a disagreement about whether We should keep spamming and he wanted to continue. Come on, Josh, let’s give it up.
I may have many ant-related issues, but incorrect capitalization is NOT one of them! My brother and I are like two larvae in a pupa, and everyone knows this. Carry on!
Josh, seriously?
lol http://blog.jichikawa.net/2017/04/kipnis-on-sexual-assault-and-sexual.html?showComment=1493275337028#c3845051641562529295
Oh my! Poor little Itchy!
he seems to be holding his own
Yes, JJI is a well-known pro-ant philosopher – which is to say, he is a genuine philosopher.
I just think the kind of things that are being said here about Peter Ludlow are fundamentally cruel and misguided. I know him and he is a great person.
Anyone who has read the texts between LLH and Ludders should know that neither of them are any kind of Great Person. They come across as narcissists who have nothing in common apart from a need to tell each other that they are better than everyone else. Best solution to the whole thing would be to drop them both in the middle of Lake Michigan at 1am in February.
Ludders fucked LLH. She then got him fired. The end.
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Justin Weinberg (formerly WINEberg, for drunkenness on powerplay) for my public attacks on him. I am apologizing because he has now caved to my attacks, as appropriate, with including The Daily Ant on the Heap of Links. All y’all metal bros thought you were pathetic fringes on the disciplinary boundaries – very true but it is now also true that Justin listens and he listens well.