Philosophy is a booming field, so philosophers don’t need to worry about the job market. As a result, they are entertaining themselves with public unravelings. The most recent scandal in philosophy has to do with a professor who posted a statement of principles on her blog and a colleague who took her post personally. He wrote an email to her that she made public.
I’m used to academics behaving in weird ways in public and not caring about the consequences because, hey, they’ve got tenure, their field is doing great, so who cares what the consequences are for everybody else? But I find it beyond strange that philosophers would be so oblivious to the concept of ethics that they would publish personal emails online. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they also snoop through their children’s pockets, spouses’ email accounts, and colleagues’ briefcases.
At this time in my life, I’ve pretty much had it with academics who get upset over nothing and start freaking out publicly and obnoxiously without any care as to whom and what they damage.
Clarissa's Blog 
Wow. I just read that exchange. It’s bananas! They are both so nasty and unpleasant!……….But side note: I am curious that you said Philosophy was a booming field. Philosophy is in terrible shape from what I know. Many smaller schools are cancelling their philosophy majors and eliminating their philosophy departments. (My institution hasn’t has a philosophy major in about ten years.) Many of the grad students I knew in Philosophy were/are struggling considerably more than English and Spanish grad students to find tenure track placements.
The common wisdom I constantly hear is that “Philosophy is dead;” and what remains of philosophy, many English departments have “eaten up.” It’s generally English faculty– trained in critical theory– who teach people like Said, Foucault, Butler, Kristeva etc etc. So I’m just wondering why you think the field is booming?
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Philosophers have better employment possibilities than physicists: https://clarissasblog.com/2013/10/09/placement-rates-in-philosophy/
Philosophers are smart. They managed to create “Critical Thinking” (or equivalent) courses and made them a gen ed requirement on most campuses. They are untouchable as a result because their enrollments are humongous. At our campus, for instance, they are doing better than anybody in Humanities, by far. And good for them.
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My impression is that placement in philosophy is more rigidly hierarchized than in other humanities disciplines. That is, graduates of top-10 programs do very well, graduates of less programs, not so much. This tendency might have something to do with the power that Leiter’s PGR has exerted and against which the discipline as a whole has just rebelled.
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I’m all for rebellion. But it would have been great if it had taken a more dignified form. What I’m seeing now very unlikely to raise the prestige of the field. Every participant looks like a 3-year-old throwing a tantrum.
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Slightly off topic. Do you have any theories about why Philosophy as a field is doing well when other fields in the humanities (English, Foreign Languages, Classics, Religion) are struggling?
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^ And you already answered. Gotta love the efficiency on this blog!
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Philosophy and English have managed to place themselves at the center of gen ed requirement with courses in critical thinking, composition, rhetorics, ethics, and logic. So they have become nook eyelet indispensable to college curricula everywhere. Brilliant thinking on their part.
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It’s also a field in which considerations like this: http://insocrateswake.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/would-philosophy-be-better-off.html are possible.
Still nimble, this old bear.
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They are abandoning a sinking ship. Evildoers.
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As a mathematician, I often feel that we belong in the humanities rather than the sciences.
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I’m not a mathematician but I agree.
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You do. Math is one of the seven liberal arts.
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“I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they also snoop through their children’s pockets, spouses’ email accounts, and colleagues’ briefcases.”
I have known them to do it, yes. They are generally socially awkward and — with exceptions, of course, but usually fairly nasty. The paranoia, the self-involvement, and the I-will-sue talk, are common as well in my experience. Then there is all the harassment of women, as in that scandal at Boulder earlier this year. I think the reason they are vulnerable to cuts is that they are so unpleasant — if you have to cut a department, and you can cut the one that is almost all made of jerks, I can see it being hard to resist. This is just my perhaps skewed perspective. I liked my philosophy professor in college, so I am not talking about my alma mater.
Why Foucault etc. are taught in English, Comp Lit, etc. — because US Phil departments favor analytic, not continental philosophy.
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Here’s my philosophy crap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywwv0msW3Ps
But actually I am right now uploading a much more interesting diatribe called:
“Rhodesia, how I was & and what caused my ‘shamanic’ initiation”
I think this is a bit of historical trash that I am inclined to ressurect from the garbage. In fact, people have no historical sensibility whatsoever today, therefore by speaking historically, I am also speaking esoterically.
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Why do you think it was unethical for the philosophers in question to publish those emails publicly? They were sent by a very a powerful figure in the profession. Is it not morally required to expose such inappropriate behavior? I think they are extremely laudatory for publishing those emails!
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Publishing personal correspondence is as disgusting as going through another person’s pockets or emails. Has nobody ever told you that? Is this really the first time you hear this?
And the phrase “they are extremely laudatory for publishing” does not exist in the English language.
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Yes, you’re correct, I should have written laudable.
How, then, should the recipients of the abusive emails proceeded? Suffer them silence?
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I don’t understand the expression “abusive emails.” I also don’t understand the expression “to suffer emails.”
In these emails, the guy threatens to sue. That’s his right. If he does sue, then the person sued should hire a lawyer and proceed from there. I don’t think there was initially any likelihood of him bringing this to court. Now, after the publication of the emails and the ensuing “he is abusive, he is threatening, everybody run for cover”, he actually might have a legal case.
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