New APPS

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    • You can’t take it personally

      Discussion on FB of this post at Leiter Reports about rejection led me to remark: 

      I hesitate to say this, since I made it through the wars by dint of being married to the right person, but here goes. My wife likes to say "you can't take rejection personally; there are too many factors involved that have nothing to do with your qualifications. [Wait two beats.] In fact, you can't even take acceptance personally, for exactly the same reason."

      Further reflections below the fold, taken from a talk on inclusivity in conference organizing (points which hold, mutatis mutandis, for hiring decisions) at the APA Eastern, 2013. (See also this post, on why we should change our frame away from "job market".)

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    • How to promote the safety and effectiveness of vaccines

      In a few months, my son will get the MMR vaccine. I count myself very fortunate to live in a place and time when this amazing protection against is made available for free, and I will of course have him vaccinated. When I had my oldest child vaccinated, nearly 10 years ago, there was (at least where I lived, Belgium) no vaccine debate. I was dimly aware there were some very religious people who refused vaccines, but they were so clearly an outgroup that people did not seriously consider them and their arguments. Not vaccinating didn't even seem like a live option to me. Now, fast-forward post-Wakefield UK…

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    • The Effects of Ratings Systems

      There's a worrying piece over at Inside Higher Ed quoting the president of "a mildly selective private nonprofit institution that is tuition-dependent" saying that the institution has begun to reject some applicants that it would previously have admitted because of worries about meeting outcomes targets in the ratings system proposed by President Obama in his Higher Education Plan last year. Not surprisingly, the effect of this shift has disproportionately affected applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds — and while this is only one case,* it seems to neatly exemplify what many have feared will be the effect of the proposals. 

      I've written before — and I plan to write more — about the effects of prestige races on the state of higher education in the U.S. Until now, these races have been fostered primarily by the proliferation of ranking systems (US News and World Report, etc.) as structuring elements of the enviornment in which institutions are operating.  It is not difficult to link competition for prestige to the sorts of spending and other institutional policy decisions that have led to rising costs of attendence and increased institutional debt loads** — all of which has also created pressure on institutions that traditionally serve less advantaged populations to abandon or de-emphasize those missions. The Obama proposals, as the article shows, seem to have already added to that pressure without even having been put into effect. 

      *There are definitely reasons to think carefully about what type of institution is being disucssed here, which may not be typical of those doing the most to serve students from disadvantaged populations.

      **See, for instance, this New York Times piece from 2012

    • The future of electronic currency

      With all the stories in the news lately about bitcoins, and with our recent discussions of the role of central banks in creating money, I thought I would post two recent articles/blog posts that I think provide a good analysis of the present situation as well as some good proposals for what the future of electronic currency really ought to look like.

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      The first argues that bitcoins are mostly designed to solve problems that only exist in the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists.    And the second one outlines the real problems that a genuine electronic currency ought to solve–and how one could do it.

    • A new open access journal: Feminist Philosophy Quarterly

      From time to time, this blog has discussed the benefits (and the challenges) of open access journals; see, e.g., here, here, and here.  New APPS  has also discussed the temporary moratorium that Hypatia had to institute (now over) because of a large backlog of submissions.  So, I am very pleased to see an announcement for a new open access feminist philosophy journal.  (Keep your eye on Feminist Philosophers for future announcements).

      Below the fold, the announcement from the editors:

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    • It’s Just a Website. We’re Not Going to the Moon.

      Interesting story in Time (of all places) about how the Obama campaign tech team rescued the broken healthcare website.

    • Brazilian music on Fridays: ‘Que bloco é esse – Ilê Aiyê’

      Carnival has already started in Brazil. The internationally most famous carnival celebration is the parade of samba schools in Rio, but two equally strong carnival traditions thrive in Salvador (Bahia) and Recife/Olinda (Pernambuco) – democratic, street carnival in both cases. What the samba school is for carnival in Rio (and a few other places, like São Paulo), the ‘bloco’ is for street carnival. Blocos are (more or less) organized groups with their own music band and participants who dance along. In Bahia, the most famous bloco is probably Ilê Aiyê, created in 1974 as an affirmation of black pride and a celebration of the Afro cultural heritage in Bahia and in Brazil more generally. When it first came into existence, it was viewed as ‘racist’ given its emphasis on the value of African-Brazilian culture, and to this day only blacks are allowed to parade with the group. Ilê Aiyê remains one of the symbols of the strength of the Afro-Brazilian culture – here is a song by Caetano Veloso celebrating their existence.

      In their first carnival, in 1975, Ilê Aiyê paraded with a song that remains emblematic for the black pride movement in Brazil: ‘Que bloco é esse – Ilê Aiyê’. And so to join the carnival spirit this week I’ll be posting numerous versions of this song. It’s really a great song, and here is a bit of the lyrics translated (as usual, very hard to come up with a decent translation):

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    • Student sues Ludlow

      Article here. This suit is in state court. The previous suit was in federal court, against Northwestern, under Title IX.

      A Northwestern University student who sued the University earlier this month, accusing them of failing to adequately follow up on her allegations of sexual harassment against a professor, is now suing that professor in state court….

      And last night, the University’s Student Government organization added its voice, endorsing a series of reforms including the immediate suspension of any staff or faculty member found to be in violation of the school’s sexual harassment policy.

      Read more on the Northwestern campus community reaction here. 

    • Scotland and the Pound

      I have been thinking about Québec separatism for a long time now—the PQ won its first election a few months after I arrived here. I abhor the very idea of separation except in conditions where the separating entity is actively being oppressed. On the other hand if a jurisdiction votes to separate, it should be allowed to do so without undue fuss. (The Québec situation is the paradigm case of undue fuss, though, prolonged as it has been for forty or more years, with the attendant destabilization of the Canadian polity and economy. Vote yes and then goodbye, or vote no and hold your peace forever.)

      This said, I am puzzled by the stand of all three national UK parties regarding the pound. Their position, and that of the Governor of the Bank of England, is that an independent Scotland cannot have the pound. I don't understand.

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    • The meaning of ‘harassment warning’

      Many of you are now waking up with the distressing news of another ‘harassment scandal’ in philosophy, this time at Oxford, involving Jeffrey Ketland (a lecturer at Pembroke College) and a student who committed suicide in June of last year. The reports available so far come from news outlets such as the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and The Times (especially the first two, not known for a high level of journalistic impartiality).

      Full disclosure: Jeff is a friend of mine, we co-blog at M-Phi and have been friends for a few years. There is much information concerning these tragic events that I got from him, and which I am not at liberty to share at this point (obviously). What does seem to me to be worth pointing out now is that the articles on the story seem to suggest that the harassment accusations have been confirmed, which is not the case at this point. Jeff merely received a harassment warning, and for those of us not familiar with the British legal system, it may not be clear what this amounts to. Brian Leiter links to a useful Guardian article that clarifies the concept, and here are some relevant passages:

      Harassment warnings can be issued by police officers with little or no prior investigation of the original allegation and there is a real concern that this is later incorrectly presented as, or perceived by some to be, little short of a conviction.

      A harassment warning can be given by police following an allegation which, if true and if repeated, would amount to an offence under the PHA. Until or unless further similar allegations are made, there is not enough evidence to charge the person with harassment, hence the warning. 

      A harassment warning is not a criminal conviction – simply a notice that a complaint has been received. The behaviour complained of, by itself, does not amount to a crime.

      To be clear, the harassment accusations have so far not been confirmed (or disconfirmed, for that matter) by any official investigation, so at this point in time there is no official conclusion as to what exactly happened. Thus, at the very least, at this point we should be careful when using factive terminology like ‘the student was harassed by the lecturer’, ‘the harasser’, ‘the victim’ and such like, as none of this has been corroborated by investigation. That the student took her own life is an extremely distressing turn of events, obviously, but to draw causal connections between this outcome and her complex interactions with Jeff Ketland (they had known each other since 2008), as these reports seem to suggest, is (at this point in time at least) entirely unwarranted. (Some of the articles do mention other distressing recent events in the student's life.)

      (Some readers may also be wondering why this is coming up now, if the suicide took place in June last year. What happened is that the inquest, the juridical procedure to establish cause of death, took place yesterday, February 26th, and this is how the story 'leaked' to the press.)