I'm sure most of you have seen it over at Leiter's blog that the UNLV philosophy program will most likely be terminated completely in the coming months. This is an unbelievably tragic development, again illustrating that higher administrations are particularly fond of singling out philosophy as 'dispensable'. (As it turns out, I have a good friend who works there, James Woodbridge.)
Budget-cutting is an ubiquitous phenomenon, also affecting academia in e.g. continental Europe at the moment. But there is a variety of ways to go about it, and it is truly distressing when the chosen path is the elimination of an entire department, Philosophy in that case. One can make a case for the centrality of philosophy in the humanities and academia in general (as Leiter does), but it is of course not so surprising that we philosophers see philosophy as crucial. (My first reaction is to think that philosophy is *certainly* more central that, say, Women's studies, another program to be terminated, but I concede that it might not be a neutral, objective reaction.) Arguably, the real absurdity is the elimination of an entire program in one stroke, and that's bad enough.
Anyway, yet again confirmation that these are sad, sad times... As Leiter did not open the post for comments, I thought that it might be useful to do it here so as to create an outlet for people's views and feelings on the matter. So feel free to spill out your thoughts!
UPDATE [JP]: W 9 March 9:07 am CST: From Leiter's post: the email of the Dean at UNLV is chris.hudgins@unlv.edu.
UPDATE [JP]: W 9 March 11:09 am CST: Leiter has a list of the Regents, to whom comments should be addressed, rather than to the Dean.
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