New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Woolf Report on Saif Ghaddafi and LSE's Philosophy Department

At NewAPPS we have been following the embrace of Ghaddafi oil money by LSE with interest ever since it became clear that Saif Gaddafi got a MA and Phd in philosophy from LSE (which it turns out were largely plagiarized). LSE commissioned an investigation, and the Woolf report has now been released to the public (thanks Jeroen Van Bouwel for the pointer). I have not read the whole report, but skipped to the conclusions, especially pp. 132-133, which offer astonishing detail about the lengths to which the philosophy department at LSE went to accommodate Saif and to ignore red flags about possible "outside assistance" he was receiving.

The philosophers come out looking as "idealists," who thought that exposing Saif to "Liberal values" would be beneficial (despite the fact that he was not considered a good philosopher--it is interesting how sons of dictators get to receive affirmative action). The report details considerable effort at providing remedial instruction to Saif by the philosophy department. (One cannot help but wonder if the lure of money didn't help people overestimate the potential here.)

Strikingly, the Government department at LSE showed more concern for academic standards or, perhaps, were more jaundiced about the whole situation; they repeatedly rejected Saif (despite the philosophers' efforts to get him admitted there).
Appendix 4 (pp 157-158) shows how nobody can be responsible for an offer of admission to do a PhD in philosophy at LSE.

Poems for people who hate poetry

Sarah Skwire has more.

Sexism and herd mentality in philosophy

THE HEADLINE TO THIS BLOG WAS A SERIOUS MISTAKE. I APOLOGIZE TO OUR COLLEAGUES AT MIZZOU HERE.

This essay is written by Zachary Ernst on the tenure case of his wife at Mizzou. (We link with permission of the author.) It makes for sobering testimony.

UPDATE: As outsiders we are in a bad position to judge the merits of her case. The interest of Prof. Ernst's piece is his testimony of sexism he witnessed and his arm-chair sociological analysis of academic mores. Sometimes anger makes us discern and speak truth, after all (but cf. Coetzee's Slow Man).

Further UPDATE: The link is not an endorsement of Prof. Ernst's allegations.

Do Women Serve Disproportionately in their Institutions and in the Profession?

A professor writes:

I get the sense that women are disproportionately serving in their institutions, if not in their profession.  I suspect that most of this is the result of nothing but the very best intentions - in fact, the kind of intentions that the GCC is promoting: namely, that women be represented significantly in professional activities.  People think consciously about how a committee, or a task force, or some other form of service ought not consist solely of men.  However, because women are under-represented in the profession and in many institutions, this means that women are asked more frequently to serve.  It's a matter of a wonderful intention gone awry.  I am worried about this on three fronts.  Most practically, if women say 'yes' to these invitations as often as men do, with the same practical considerations as men do, they will nevertheless serve more often than men do.  Second, how does this figure into the kind of arguments we are seeing about women having been invited to this or that, but declining?  People haven't been asking why these women are declining.  Third, as you note, a conference organized by a woman with an unfortunate all-male main speaker lineup is better on the whole (given our present circumstances) than a conference organized by a man with an unfortunate all-male male speaker lineup.  However, if women serve disproportionately, for example, in terms of organizing conferences, can the kinds of solutions we are offering exacerbate the problem?  That is, are women disproportionately involved in organizing philosophical spaces in which they are not represented as main speakers?  These really are questions, not statements.

Thoughts from readers? My sense is that women do serve disproportionately in their institutions and in the profession. Mark Lance had some similar thoughts on this. He pointed out that approximately half of the undergraduate students are women. Young women tend to gravitate to female faculty as mentors. So female faculty will tend to be busier than their male colleagues with letter writing, meeting students in their office, and so on. Like the reader, Mark also noted that many committees want to ensure that women are represented. So the few women in each department will tend to serve on more committees than their colleagues.

A further interesting point mentioned by the reader is that it could be that women sometimes turn down invitations to speak because they contribute more to the profession than their male colleagues. For example, if they are more actively involved in organizing conferences, then they might not have the time to accept invitations to travel and give talks.

New APPS Interview: Lee Braver

Today’s New APPS Interview is with Lee Braver, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hiram College.

Thank you, Lee, for doing this interview with us. Let’s start with your personal practice of philosophy.  Do you work alone for the most part? 

Doing philosophy is a primarily solitary activity for me—except in the sense that reading is like having conversations with the greatest minds, as Descartes says.  My mind is sharpest in the morning so I try to do as much as possible then, after I’ve gotten my kids off.  Writing is especially important for me to do in the morning, when my mind is still limber and open, while I can read and do work for classes in the afternoons.  I like listening to music while I work.  Piano music generally goes best with writing for me—Bach, Keith Jarrett, James Booker all work well.

Pleasure in reading is quite close to a necessary condition for success in philosophy, wouldn’t you say?  I suppose there are exceptions, but it would be hard to think how it would be worth it if reading weren’t a thrill for someone. Anyway, has your writing changed over the years?

Becoming the philosopher you are

Berit and Mohan have offered very interesting autobiographical posts recently. I thought I would take my turn, concentrating not on the path I took to get a TT job, but on how I’ve dealt with that terrible zombie, the thing that would not die: the distinction of “analytic” and “continental” philosophy.

First, to clear the ground, I don’t think there’s a conceptual distinction to be made, no set of necessary and sufficient conditions for identity in a group that would divide the history of philosophy, or its current setup, in two distinct sets. If we take up a family resemblance position, Catarina has made some very interesting comments about possible methodological distinctions, though there’s still work to be done there. From a sociological position, there seems to be some distinction in hiring and citation networks, even when the same philosophers are discussed, but again, there’s a lot still to be done there. 

What I’d like to do is instead talk about identity-formation from my “political affect” perspective. That is, I’m going to offer my story as a case study in how I became a “continental philosopher” by incorporating a set of beliefs / desires / tastes / emotional triggers, and so on, about what constitutes “the sort of thing our people do.”

I think this process is better described in terms of initiation or acculturation than it is in terms of rational deliberation. I certainly never had equal exposure to both analytic and continental philosophy in my undergraduate training, and my decision to pursue continental philosophy training at the graduate level can’t really be said to be the result of rational deliberation as to the relative merits of the two fields. One – CP – just felt right to me – I knew enough about it to know that it was a challenge I wanted to take up; the other – AP – was largely terra incognita. I suspect it’s the other way around for those who ended up in AP, but I’d be happy to hear from others with different experiences.

The future of philosophy as seen from Mt. Olympus...

In a recent solicited note on the future of philosophy (which Brian Leiter found interesting), Matti Eklund is committed to three very unfortunate (even pernicious to philosophy) doctrines (some of which are widely shared, I fear, which is why I am blogging about them). I discuss them in descending order of severity:

(i) We should think of philosophy as a kind of scientific enterprise that operates as a normal Kuhnian science ("Without borrowing wholesale Kuhn’s picture of science, I think some ideas Kuhn introduced are important to keep in mind when considering the trajectory of philosophy. Research programs are adopted, consciously or not, by a certain part of the philosophical community:").

Now, from 1900 onward, when various "scientific philosophy" movements started to gather full steam, this approach is always motivated by the desire to get rid of-the-embarrassing lack of consensus within philosophy (as opposed to some idealized version of science, where consensus is supposed to be normal). [This is also true of various social sciences, economics especially.] Often the means toward finding consensus is some privileged method or some technical inferential decision procedure. Often some arbitrary problem or result is taken as a baseline from which progress is possible, even desirable [I have analysed this in terms of "Newton's CHallenge"]. (And predictably, here's Eklund: "And while this [the normal science thing--ES] may not immediately constitute progress, a means to progress is to keep looking for where there is interesting research to be done and progress to be made." Think about the logic of that sentence for a while!)

But as Feyerabend and Popper realized such a Kuhnian model is itself a way to de-legitimatize criticism and disunity. For rather than being responsible to critics, one is now working on problems that may further progress. Eklund unintentionally confirms this when he happily admits that "It has been known for some time that modal notions cannot be used to draw all distinctions that can intuitively be drawn; it was just that a time came when it seemed to many more fruitful to look at what can be said about fundamentality, grounding, etc. than to stick with the old framework and try to use only modal notions for serious theorizing."

Of course the outside-the-paradigm-folk that had pointedly complained about the fact that modal notions can't do all the philosophical work could simply be ignored until the "many" (I am not making this up) decide it is time to move on. Here's not even an attempt to disguise how self-serving this rhetoric is. It is an exercise of naked power if you can choose to ignore systematically sound objections. (I have never met Eklund. I am sure he is a nice guy, and very open-minded, etc. I am characterizing an all-too-familiar habit of thought.) Now this whole approach to philosophy reduces philosophy to mastery of technique to solve problems. It is a taming of philosophy to puzzles and a completely uncritical stance toward power structures, etc. (It became popular in context of McCarthy witch hunts, after all.)

Here's a further reason why all of this is pernicious from the point of philosophy-an-sich (some other time I will explain why it is also a bad bet on the future given certain inconvenient sociological facts):

On the Ethics of Assertion

Sometimes, empirical findings about the mind have surprising consequences for ethics and conduct. The empirical results may provoke little resistance, but the implied consequences for conduct run counter to intuition. Two of my posts to this blog ran into this kind of dissonance. An earlier post about an empirical result was mostly approbated. A later post about consequences for conduct were emphatically contested.  (Admittedly, my application of the ethical principle was controversial--some thought it was sleight of hand.)

Let me put the two together in a single post.

First, the empirical bit. How do we arrive at a belief or decide on a course of action? The intuitive model is single-track reasoning. In any given situation, a subject sums up her reasons, and arrives at a considered reason. (It may be poorly considered, but it's a summary that purports, at the moment of choice, to be complete.) Rationally choosing a belief or action is acting on the considered reason. Of course, you might act irrationally: that is, some other kind of motivation—emotion, desire—may win out. Or you may just behave automatically. But let's consider rational action here.

Consider a petty lie, for instance to a Customs agent who asks the value of the goods you purchased while out of the country. . .

CFP: Call for Parity

The first 8 conferences on PhilEvents announcing CFPs today have zero female keynotes or invited speakers. All keynotes or invited speakers are men.

CFP: Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy 2012 Meeting

CFP: Left and Right: The Great Dichotomy Revisited

CFP: Formal Epistemology Festival

CFP: Ideals and Reality in Social Ethics

CFP: Pragmatism, Law, and Language

CFP: South Carolina Society for Philosophy 2012 Meeting

CFP: Thinking Feeling: Critical Theory, Culture, Feeling

CFP: Nothing but the truth

Additionally, out of the first 46 conferences on PhilEvents announcing CFPs today (the first page) only 23 (50%) have a female keynote or invited speaker on the program. For more info on the Gendered Conference Campaign, see here.

"Women were asked." No defence---Philosophy Compass

"Now, here’s where I get fundamentally annoyed. I would think that people who make a life out of thinking hard about difficult things could wrap their big brains around one fairly simple idea: it might be a function of un-interrogated privilege that allows you to say, in your defense, that women were asked to participate, but alas, did not. It might also be a function of said privilege that allows you to then wash your hands of something that you didn’t really think was a priority to begin with. It might be a function of the same privilege that lets you carry on as though all is really just fine, without even noting that you think it unfortunate that there aren’t any women on your list (and one person of color, as best as I can tell)." Here's the link to Eesha Pandit's full article. [Thank you Alice MacLachlan for calling my attention to it via Facebook.] Here's a link to the Philosophy Compass blog .

What to do about inflated letters of recommendation

In the midst of the job season, Leiter has an interesting discussion on the practice of inflated letters of recommendation. It's no longer sufficient that you have positive recommendations, with no doubt raisers, but importantly, the letters have to be long (i.e., at least 3 pages), full of praise (without raising ridiculously high expectations), comparative (lack of comparative claims make the candidate look weak), and very detailed. 
Also, letter writers are preferably famous, or at the very least established figures in the field. Here are some problems with this emphasis on inflated letters of recommendation: 

“Our whole approach presupposes a teleological account of concepts” (Benardete 1964: 224)

According to José A Benardete, philosophy can (also) be “an investigation of utopian concepts that transcend the empirical” (Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics, 1964: 285). Now even most of our metaphysicians today do not durst to write so boldly; this is a radical break with the authority of SCIENCE (which knows one religion: the authority of the empirical). The enterprise is not, however, anti-scientific; for Benardete ontology and natural science are conversation partners (although with a reference to Hamlet, Benaderdete also observes that "in the absence of practical wisdom, [physical] theory itself may be pressed into the service of folly." (225)) Now a utopian concept belongs literally to no-place. It is beyond measure. But it does not mean it does not belong to this world. (Think of Spinozistic "eternal truths"--i.e., things that can't be negated; it is no surprise, then, that Benardete invokes Sponoza at the end of Infinity and in an old JPhil piece wishes to make room for the investigation of "invariants that preside over, and constitute, the eternal order.") Is there more to be said about philosophy's task according to Benardete? (And as I observed in an earlier post about Benardete's work this is not far removed from what Jeff Bell and I have advocated in a different key.)

Yes, there is.

Positive Discrimination in the UK

Good news regarding positive discrimination in the UK (also known in the US as 'affirmative action') -- buried in comments in this thread:

Most UK philosophers doubtless know this, but lest any are uncertain (as I was), it is worth noting:

That a candidate is a woman now may legally be taken as grounds for preferring her over a man for recruitment or promotion purposes.

This is so only if the candidates are equally qualified, and women are disadvantaged or under-represented in the relevant "activity" (presumably, in our case, academic philosophy), and the positive action is considered proportionate.

(The same applies mutatis mutandis to any "protected characteristic", defined here)

Since I am no lawyer, and this is my gloss, see Section 159 of the Equality Act 2010 for chapter and verse.

David Bain

Thanks to David for having taken the time to research this.

 

Philosophy books for non-philosophers

During a Thanksgiving dinner conversation I was asked by someone who knows next to nothing about philosophy what one book they should read in order to get a sense of what philosophy is about. Now I am long habituated to conversations with people unfamiliar with philosophy, and to addressing various questions, but this time I did not have a standard, prepared answer. I did suggest they read either Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Plato's Dialogues, especially the Five Dialogues collection, but then I couldn't quickly add to the list, so I am intersted to know what book (or books) others would recommend if they were asked the same question.

The Wanderer

When I got my PhD from Stanford University at the beginning of 1976, I had already started on a one-year job in Claremont Graduate School in California. The future seemed golden. It didn’t occur to me that it would be 1983 before I landed a tenure-track job. But that’s what happened.

Did the DHS coordinate police action against OWS?

I had already been thinking that the incidents of police violence at UC Davis and UC Berkeley (whose chancellor is no less a creep than Katehi at Davis) seemed to be following a pattern.

Now Allison Kilkenny at In These Times reports that mayors at eighteen cities where Occupy groups have camped took part in a conference call “to share information and advice on how various cities were handling the demonstrations” (so said Mayor Sam Adams of Portland). Rick Ellis, a journalist in Minneapolis, spoke with an official from the Justice Department:

The official, who spoke on background to me late Monday evening, said that while local police agencies had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies, the ultimate decision on how each jurisdiction handles the Occupy protests ultimately rests with local law enforcement. According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

Naomi Wolf offers an explanation for the Federal government’s involvement. I’m not entirely persuaded by the details. It seems to me that in any case the story above is “explosive” enough. If Obama’s DHS has a plan to suppress the Occupy protests by force, then I think he has broken faith entirely with the people who came out in such numbers to support him in 2008.

Addendum: In response to a FOIA request from Truthout, the FBI denied that it had any documents pertaining to Occupy Wall Street. For what it’s worth, the FBI has also denied involvement with local police in “addressing” Occupy Wall Street camps: “these reports are false. At no time has the FBI engaged with local police in this capacity”.

Joshua Holland at Alternet denies that there is any evidence for a federally ordered crackdown, while at the same time granting that there was “cooperation”. He talked to an official in the mayor’s office in Oakland, who, not surprisingly, downplayed the significance of the conference calls. There was, however, an independent avenue of coordination through the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) (see Shawn Gaynor, “The cop group coordinating the Occupy crackdowns”, SFBG 18 Nov).

One may well want to draw a moral distinction between the White House’s urging or demanding that Occupy sites be cleared and its merely acquiescing in their (politically convenient) removal. For the record, their position is this: “[…] obviously every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues, and we would hope and want, as these decisions are made, that it balances between a long tradition of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in this country and obviously of demonstrating and protesting, and also the very important need to maintain law and order and health and safety standards, which was obviously a concern in this case”.

I think Holland is correct in holding that the immediate violations of civil liberties and the violence perpetrated by the police, rather than speculations about forces behind the scenes, provide ample motive for political action. (Thanks to GPTLA in comments for the links leading to the Alternet story.)

Some like it hot

In a recent post, Brian Leiter asked what is hot in philosophy of mind. Declan pointed out that while it's fun to know what's hot and what's not, writing papers or dissertations on what's hot probably isn't a good idea. By the time you have researched the area fully and completed your paper or dissertation, the area that once was super-hot probably is now only lukewarm.

Communizing the biological necessities cannot be tolerated

The Occupy Oakland "Solidarity with the Indigenous" celebration yesterday was attacked by police when they brought portable toilets to the site.  

This shows something very important, I think. One of the things most objectionable to the powers-that-be in the Occupy movement is communizing the biological necessities of life, because that attacks the privatization of the material means to support life, and thus threatens one of their most powerful anxiety-producing tactics by bringing the homeless into the commune. So giving away food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and even toilets, must be crushed. Even giving away the chance for shared joy -- come share this space and dance -- that cannot be tolerated. 

Must philosophers be poetic to be philosophers?

"Although oracular witches are contrary to nature, the poet may invoke them in the antecedent of a contrary-to-fact conditional and thereby reveal, in the consequent, what no mirror of life could reveal."--José A Benardete (ca 1970).

In recent methodological writings, Jeff Bell and I have been advocating that creating and articulating concepts is a core philosophic activity (within philosophy and the sciences). But a seemingly other philosophic activity (within philosophy, the sciences, and poetry) is revealing the way things are and how they could be. Ever since the post-Newtonian rise of science, philosophers have been on the defensive in revealing the way things are. Moreover, as the sciences hone in on robust counterfactuals, they also displace philosophical authority in articulating what could be.

Yet, sometimes it takes a poet, Wallace Stevens, to remind us of a few facts:

• "The magnificent cause of being,
• The imagination, the one reality
• In this imagined world"

In context it is pretty clear that Stevens is not diagnosing Idealism. Rather, he is reminding us of the homely truth that (painful) social reality is not independent of our thoughts/attitudes/beliefs. To take an argumentative short-cut, thus, science can't track all social counterfactuals as long as philosophers are willing to articulate concepts that create the conditions that no science thinks could be, yet -- oh alchemy of opinion -- are revealed-to-be-so.

The Principle of Transactional Superiority

I have been thinking more about gendered conferences. The question is what to do when one is invited to an all-male conference or workshop. This happens surprisingly often. I was invited to eight workshops/conferences in 2011. Three of them were all male. Should one simply refuse? Should one suggest politely that there are qualified women, and that one doesn’t mind giving up one’s slot for one? Or does one do nothing (except gratefully accept)?

It strikes many that doing nothing is cowardly and weak. Perhaps so. But for me it is the only permissible course of action. Let me explain.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Os Mutantes

Today I'll post two songs by Os Mutantes, to mark the visit of my friend James Woodbridge to the Netherlands (he's sitting next to me in the train as I type!). Besides being an accomplished philosopher, James is a celebrity in the Las Vegas music scene, where he is a co-organizer of the Neon Reverb Festival. He is a big fan of Os Mutantes, and we went to one of their 2000s comeback concerts together, in NYC in 2006.

The songs are 'Batmacumba' (in fact composed by Gilberto Gil) and 'Cantor de Mambo', where they allegedly make fun of Sergio Mendes, the 'Mambo singer' in question. There are numerous songs by Os Mutantes that deserve being posted, but these two are pretty good examples of their, how shall I put it, mojo.

Linda Katehi and the neoliberal reform of Greek Higher Education

Guest post by Panagiotis Sotiris, Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean [email] 

Linda Katehi has come under the spotlight because of her role as Chancellor of UC Davis, her support of an openly corporate Higher Education and her stance regarding brutal police tactics against peaceful demonstrators at UC Davis. However, there is also another aspect of Linda Katehi’s politics that must be brought forward, namely her role in implementing neoliberal reforms in Greek Higher Education.

Implicit Attitudes

I have never thought that I associated women with stay-at-home work. It would be rash for me (as it would be for anybody, male or female) to deny that they have any sexist attitudes. And I won't claim this. But I never thought I associated women with stay-at-home work.

After all, my mother was a broadcast journalist. Among my contemporaries, all the women worked outside the home. This is an economic necessity in India. Finally, I have three daughters and have always preached to them on the importance of economic independence for women. They all take it for granted that they will have careers. Who doesn't, these days?

Babies and Biases

I wanted to follow up on Catarina's inspiring post. This post is not primarily about babies inside or outside the tummy (love the title!) but about issues related to my friend and co-editorial board member Edouard Machery's reference to the article by Ceci and Williams in the comment section of my own post. I will get to Catarina's points at the end of this blog.

I hasten to say that I would be the last person to reject any studies published in PNAS on philosophical grounds (or other non-empirical grounds) but I do think Eric is right that these kinds of studies are potentially damaging.  We all know how hard it is to detect implicit discrimination and biases. We all think we are great and unbiased and then when we take the Harvard IAT test, we realize just how biased we really are.  In a recent conversation with a colleague, my colleague claimed to my face that he was completely unbiased with respect to women and people of color, that he had overcome any potential biases a long time ago. I begged him to take the Harvard IAT test(s), he did and he then had to admit that what he had said earlier was wrong.

New draft resolution for Faculty Senates concerning nonviolent civil disobedience

The previous draft went through a number of revisions, making it difficult to read. Here is the current version. Comments still accepted on the blog or by email to me.

-----

Whereas the theory and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience is one of the great moral achievements of the past 200 years,

Whereas in particular the use of nonviolent civil disobedience was an essential part of the movements for women’s suffrage and for African-American civil rights that changed American society forever,

Whereas our charge as educators includes the nurturing of proper means of expression of the consciences of our students,

Securitization, the FBI, and UC Davis

Dave Zirin unearths a connection between UC Davis Chancellor Katehi and Penn State ex-President Spanier via the "securitization" of FBI and University relations:

The names Spanier and Katehi are now synonymous with the worst abuses of institutional power. But their connection didn’t begin there. In 2010, Spanier chose Katehi to join an elite team of 20 college Presidents on what’s called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which “promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI."

Spanier said upon the group’s founding in 2005, “The National Security Higher Education Advisory Board promises to help universities and government work toward a balanced and rational approach that will allow scientific research and education to progress and our nation to remain safe.” He also said that the partnership could help provide “internships” to faculty and students interested in “National Security issues.”

Read the whole thing. Then go read this on Katehi's role in ending University asylum rules in Greece that restricted the ability of police to enter university campuses. These became inconvenient when facing anti-austerity protests. Luckily enough for Katehi, she had her own police force, who didn't need no stinkin' badges.

A gender-imbalanced journal issue in 1978: 100% female

A lovely story about a forerunner of the GCC, Renford Bambrough -- courtesy of Cora Diamond, but 'buried' in comments in this thread:

The point "there are tons of top scholars in this field who are women" reminded me of what Renford Bambrough once did, as editor of the journal Philosophy. There were then (as there are now) 'tons of top scholars' in philosophy who are women. He had some papers by women ready for publication in the next issue, and he saw that, with some other accepted papers, that had been scheduled for later publication, he could (by altering date of publication) publish an all-women issue. The point was to bring out that we don't notice an all-men issue of a philosophy journal. Publishing an all-women issue brings to our attention our failure to notice that all the authors of papers in some issue of a journal are men, our taking that to be just normal and unexceptionable. He should be regarded as an honorary posthumous member of the GCC. (The issue was vol. 53, no. 204, in 1978.)

In Memoriam: Lynn Margulis

The great biologist Lynn Margulis, one of the foremost scientists of the 20th Century, died yesterday. This Spanish language obituary is the only one available so far. I'll add links to others as they become available. 

[UPDATE: Margulis in action at Oxford, discussing evolution.]

[UPDATE 2: In comments, Catarina points us to a nice post on her ideas and her courage.]

[The NYT obituary is here.]

Rawls, Robbins, and Blaug

Yesterday, I wrote about Mark Blaug's influence on Rawls' Theory of Justice. Now, the creative economist, David Levy (who like Mark Blaug was a PhD student of George Stigler), collects Rawls' political economy holdings, and he has been kind enough to share a few images. These include marginalia by Rawls. Here's p. 203 of Rawls' copy of Blaug's Economic Theory in Retrospect:

Now Rawls is one of the great historians of utilitarianism, and he knew the suggested readings quite well already. (How many philosophers today know what Rawls knew of the history of utilitarianism as an integral tradition?) But it is striking that when it comes to justice, Rawls found quite a bit worth remembering in Blaug's book:

Babies at professional events (inside and outside the belly)

In Brit’s post of today, the topic of making professional appearances while pregnant came up, and was further discussed in comments. Brit reported that she chose not to appear at conferences and give talks during pregnancy; Sara Uckelman and I both narrated our positive experiences as pregnant women at professional events. L.A. Paul then offered reasons why this is a real concern for women:

It isn't that people would be negative about your pregnancy to your face. It's that when you show up pregnant you are suddenly re-categorized as a mommy. Sure, as a mommy who does philosophy, but in effect as someone who is somehow less serious about philosophy, or less committed, or somehow less likely to produce good work. That's the discrimination that women fear, and I think it is a real fear.

I do not for a second doubt that this is a real concern, and everything I will say in this post must not be taken as indication to the contrary. Nor do I in any way intend to criticize women who, like Brit, prefer not to make professional appearances during pregnancy if they can avoid it. But… I wonder if by avoiding this kind of exposure, we are also not missing a chance to counter the stereotype described by L.A. Paul in the comment above. I remember once attending a talk by Alice Crary at the CUNY Graduate Center many years ago; she must have been at least seven months pregnant then. I remember clearly how absolutely marvelous it was to see her deliver a great talk with a huge belly (so much so that it was the first time I felt like being pregnant again – my older daughter was then just past her first year).