fredleept

Not to be judgy, but no one really respects a scholar who hasn't learned anything since grad school. (I mean, publishing the same damn paper over and over is at least... instrumentally rational.)

The broadest way goes in every direction. So does a broad mind.

When some one is playing "smartest guy in the room," that's your cue to leave the room

ICE OUT of UConn Since its inception in 2003, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has terrorized American communities. Recent escalations of federal presence in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, as wel...

Here's how you can ACTUALLY "support our students"

Please sign and share

actionnetwork.org/petitions/ic...

The world is not divided into disciplines and departments; only the university is.

You can't put me in my place when I don't have one. Keep trying.

"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha"
(good advice for all NAME-ists)

Past thinkers discussed how to establish good institutions out of bad people. Our task here and how is to see how to disestablish bad institutions made of good people.

We should spend less time talking about Chomsky's relationship with Epstein and more time talking about Norman Finklestein's refusal of Epstein.

There's also a reverse problem, where the rather self-serving/self-promoting claim is that college/university is the _only_ place to pursue such explorations.

Notice that the type to say that college/university is not a place to explore interests, passions, and ethics never explain where the place to pursue such things is.

I suspect the axiology is, practically speaking, the primary and decisive factor. It is "good" to do this analysis because "I want a career." It really can be that simple.

The dominance of quantitative methods is clearly a claim of epistemology. But it is more deeply a claim of ontology (reality is structured like "data"... the stand in for capital). It is, at a yet deeper level, a claim of -axiology- (it is good for this analysis of data to control/create "reality").

The ethics of self-assertation, unsurprisingly, suspects that all modesty is false.

Philosophies of the Trail — The Caribbean Philosophical Association Shifting the Geography of Reason.

From UConn IIREP MA student Adam Vine

caribbeanphilosophy.org/blog/philoso...

I suspect they know, though they try hard to deny it. They look utterly miserable.

"Doing less" means doing less bullshit work. Not doing less work. We all know the difference.

I mostly think European culture is overrated but for one phase: concert music from Bach through Beethoven. Truly an amazing run.

Modestly disappointed at Ursula K. Le Guin's _Planet of Exile_. It's a settler colonial fantasy of "indigenization," with the standard repertoire of displacements, projections, etc. Not sure whether the problem is her white Americanness, her anthropological heritage, or what.

A symposium on the scholarly writing, work, and life of Kirstie McClure. I can only hope we, her students and her colleagues, were able to do justice to her legacy. Thanks to all who participated, especially co-organizers Megan, Kye, and Arash.

I’m grateful for the experience of editing this symposium for our teacher Kirstie McClure with my friends @megangallagher.bsky.social, @arashdavar.bsky.social, and @fredleept.bsky.social. I am also grateful for the pieces by our contributors which I think do justice to Kirstie’s memory.

Now that all of the pieces in our symposium in honor of Kirstie McClure are available online from Philosophy and Global Affairs, here's a little thread with each of the pieces. (1/8)

An orange and yellow gradient poster titled "The Revolutionary Life of Grace Lee Boggs" presented by The Society for Women of Ideas (SWI). Below the title is the subtitle: "An intergenerational conversation on transformative ideas and action." A large, central photograph features Grace Lee Boggs, an elderly Asian woman with short white hair, smiling warmly. Overlaid on the photo are the event details: Date: February 20 Time: 3:00–4:30 PM Eastern Time Format: "This is a virtual event" The featured speakers listed are: Meena Krishnamurthy (Queen’s University) Lily Luo (University of Connecticut) Summer Chan (Queen’s University) At the bottom of the poster, text provides further information: Registration: For more details and to register: womenofideas.com Sponsorship: Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Toronto Metropolitan University

Grace Lee Boggs event with Lily Luo

Header and Visual Elements Institution: At the top left, the Trinity College logo is displayed alongside "Political Science." Decorative Pattern: The left side of the flyer features a vertical border of repeating geometric icons. Similar icons are scattered in the top left corner of the main dark green background. Main Title: "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx" is written in large, bold, green font. Event Details Speaker: David Lay Williams, Professor of American Studies at DePaul University. Date: Thursday, February 5, 2026. Time: 4:30–6:00 p.m. Location: Mather Hall, Washington Room. Attendance: Open to the Trinity community. Descriptive Text The bottom of the flyer contains two columns of text: Left Column: Describes economic inequality as one of the most daunting challenges of our time, noting that public debate often focuses on whether it is an inevitable outcome of economic systems and what can be done about it. It poses the question: "But why, exactly, should inequality worry us?" Right Column: Features a quote stating that the lecture "demonstrates that this underlying question has been a central preoccupation of some of the most eminent political thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition."

If you haven't experienced this place as "the bad place" until the last decade or so, I'd urge you to consider that it is because you are "the bad guys."

Nice thought, but this isn't a Mencius quote

It's pretty recent, I think. I associate it with Obama.

Privacy is a sense, the sense that something is not fit to appear to the many. In an opposite sense, so is publicness.

Almost is never enough. Enough is never enough.

If you want to know why you're doing 90% bullshit work for every 10% administrative work, it's because a middle aged middle manager is microaggressing and micromanaging with miserable relish within his little "fiefdom."