In my view Jewish analytic philosophy reduces to S. Morgenbesser's, if P, why not Q?
Others, however, think more can and must be explored. And this has created a developing mini-scandal first reported by TheProsblogion. Philosophy Updates is a very useful WMU based philosophy listserv. It recently rejected an announcement from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem: Philosophical Investigation of Hebrew Bible, Talmud and Midrash. (Full disclosure: I am relieved that Michael Rea broke the news first, because I have been a guest at Shalem and happily enjoyed their hospitality even if we disagree on some political matters.) Michael Rea "emailed one of the moderators of Philosophy Updates to find out why they would not announce this conference." He was told that "they try to avoid posting ads for conferences that appear to pertain more to theology than to philosophy, and that one part of the policy is to avoid posting ads for conferences that have an explicitly biblical or scriptural focus." One of the folk at Shalem confirmed to me that they had received a similar explanation from Fritz Allhoff.
Now in the past Allhoff has rejected postings that I have submitted to his service for conferences that he deemed too regional or of local interest only. While I did not always agree with his judgment about how local European workshops can be, that policy struck me well within his reasonable discretionary power and not something worth complaining about.
But this case is manifestly different. There is a thriving academic industry of analytic Christian metaphysics (and epistemology). It seems extremely unlikely that Allhoff would decline postings for these conferences. (On Rea's discussion list somebody noted that that on April 7, 2009, Philosophy Updates allowed a comment advertising a conference entitled "The Bible and Philosophy.") Yet now that a group wishes to promote analytic Jewish metaphysics (and epistemology) such an enterprise counts as "theology." Moreover, the rejected posting by Shalem makes entirely clear that the point is to spend good money to promote analytic Jewish philosophy of the sort that we're familiar with from, say, Protestant and Catholic analytic philosophers. No doubt the motivations for this enterprise may go well beyond philosophic idle curiosity, but as they used to say when I lived in the Midwest, Let He Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone!
Allhoff has misjudged the situation. It is his listserv and he can do as he wish, but the rest of us can kvetch (in the technical sense) about it.
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