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The Hattiesburg American is reporting that operating cuts to make up a 15 million dollar shortfall this year will land particularly hard on Philosophy and Religion at the University of Southern Mississippi. From the article:

USM faculty, staff cuts begin

Philosophy and religion department hit hardest

Hit especially hard was the department of philosophy and religion, which saw three tenured professors let go. They are religion professor Daniel Capper and newly-tenured philosophy professors Morgan Rempel and Chris Meyers.

A follow up article this morning reprints the letter from the President announcing the cuts, but offers no real justification for the apparent targeting of Philosophy and Religion. The letter claims that:

29 USM Faculty cut today  read more »

Hampshire joins Austin College in the wise decision to be headed up by a Philosopher. Austin was recently ranked as one of the top colleges to work for, so I'm sure great things are in the cards for Hampshire!

Hampshire College picks acting president - BostonHerald.com

Marlene Gerber Fried, who also is director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program at Hampshire College, will serve until July 1, 2011, when a new president is expected to be appointed.

In all seriousness, beyond the possibly Platonic fantasies, I believe that Philosophers make excellent administrators. We tend to be sharply critical thinkers, excellent communicators, keen observers of social phenomena and a high degree of intolerance for bullshit.  All of these are excellent character traits for a college president.

The Mail and Guardian (South Africa) has a short bit on the Philosophy department at UJohannesburg, which is, according to Thaddeus Metz (chair), "probably the most well-rounded [Phil department] one in the country, offering first-rate instruction in all three areas" (Analytic, Continental, African):

UJ philosopher on 'the meaning of life'

Always good to see a little Philosophy coverage in the press no? Now how do I get the local press to cover my inauguration as chair of our department? I can barely get our PR office to return my calls!

Wiley is introducing a new line of 'Popular' philosophy books called "Philosophy for everyone," edited by Fritz Allhoff of Western Michigan University.  The first few books titles promised include:

• College Sex: Philosophers With Benefits
• Cycling: A Philosophical Tour de Force
• Climbing: Because It’s There.
• Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life
• Porn: How to Think with Kink
• Cannabis: What Were We Just Talking About?
• Serial Killers: Being and Killing.

And in 2011:

• Dating: Flirting with Big Ideas
• Gardening: Cultivating Wisdom
• Fatherhood: The Dao of Daddy
• Motherhood: The Birth of Wisdom.

You can read the coverage at Publisher's Weekly here:  read more »

The Sioux Falls ArgusLeader has a profile of hip-hop artist Dessa, who has a Philosophy degree from the University of Minnesota. 

Artist Dessa Darling found a place in the hip-hop world, teaching the music, too | argusleader.com | Argus Leader

Dessa, who has a philosophy degree from the University of Minnesota, combines gritty, soulful lyrics with literature and philosophy references.

See? A philosophy degree is good for anything.

 The Queen's Courier published a short story today profiling John Chaffee's success at building a program at LaGuardia Community College.  According to Chaffee:

The students enjoy the courses and find them to be valuable and tell others about the courses and that really fuels the growth of it.

And:

A crucial ingredient in the development of the program has been the excellence of the teaching,” Chaffee said. “They really inspire students and really bring them into an understanding of everything philosophy has to offer.

Congratulations to John Chaffee! Sounds like an excellent program you've got going there.

 The BBC has a nice little article about work by William Irwin (King's College in PA and the 'Philosophy and Popular Culture' series) and Christopher Bartel (Appalachia State)'s teaching Philosophy with superhero comics:

Teaching Philosophy with Spider-Man

Time published an article this morning by Coeli Carr on the 'Philosophy And...' books:
The Meaning of Mad Men: Philosophers Take on TV - TIME
There really isn't that much there - it reads something like a press release. But still, any coverage of philosophy in the popular press is a good thing right?

My paper 'Teaching Modeling in Critial Thinking' was just published in Teaching Philosophy. I moved the URLs that are included in the paper slightly since I wrote it (one of the many problems with the long review process in Philosophy), but left aliases in place so everything should still work.  However, just in case there is a problem getting to the flash movies mentioned in the text, I'll post them here:

Before you begin, put your name (any name will do) in the box of BOTH flash movies and press 'OK'. Using the same name allows me to match up your actions and see how you investigated Gizmo.

Click on the three buttons on the controller to turn gizmo on. Click 'open' to open gizmo and reveal the hidden nodes. And use the three tools to activate, stimulate and lesion Gizmo's nodes.

You can model Gizmo using this tool:

Two of my Senior Philosophy Majors - Ryan Allnut and John Modica - were interviewed on local radio about their nonprofit 'First Global Visions'. They were even asked why their major in Philosophy was relevant to their work!

This section was a part of a large clip that interviewed Jim Hindman, one of our alumni, who is the founder of Jiffy Lube. Mr. Hindman is starting a new venture on energy efficiency:

http://www.1430wnav.com/jimhindman

(It's an Mp3, even though it doesn't like it from the URL)

Currently - and it is excruciatingly slow. At least I'm consistent, however.

The lag is undoubtably the curse of a shout-out by @pzmyers. The experiment is a great idea - but they're running the game via *.cgi scripts! Surely we can rally the community to get them some jquery or flash-based system to alleviate the server load? @soulonefifteen - I'm looking your way.
Battleground God

A big welcome to Michael McClain, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at St. Joseph's College (NY).  His blog is:

http://mmcclain.philosophyteachers.org/

And the RSS feed is here:

http://philosophyteachers.org/aapt-members/blog/211/feed/

@garns, @johnbasl and I (@pbradl42) presented on Sunday 8/1 at the 2010 AAPT Biennial meeting - the International Workshop Conference on Teaching Philosophy on using social networking technology to improve teaching philosophy.  We archived the presentation using Wimba, which allowed us to show slides during the talk while simultaneously video conferencing John, who was in Wisconsin at the time. You can watch the archive here (you may have to run a wizard to test for Java):

http://mcdaniellive.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?room=_mcdan_s__93713_1_541332_2010_0801_1340_34

In a quick note about the 'Askphil' app for the iPhone (which got me through the last graduation ceremony I attended),  Lisa Heldke opens with this brilliant bit: Dial PHI for Philosophy - Posted on July 16th, 2010 by Lisa Heldke

Are you stranded in a boat in the middle of the ocean that you are repairing one plank at a time/stranded in a crowded lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with only enough supplies for half the people aboard/lost in the Clouds Cuckooland/suddenly in control of the switching mechanism of a train track on which hundreds of people are milling about, oblivious of the train bearing down on them/standing in a paint store where the shade of blue you need to complete your living room–the shade you know must exist–is just plain missing?

Thought y'all might get a kick out of it...

Our own Peter Worley inspired a very nice article on 'Teachers.tv,' a website for British teachers at the (American) pre-college level:
Should philosophy be taught in schools? | Teachers TV

On another note, the BBC has an article where Julian Baggini and Raymon Tallis 'debate' deep thinking:
That thinking feeling

While there are great problems in the way the UK supports (or fails to support) academic philosophy, they are light years ahead of us when it comes to recruiting students in the pre-college set.  I do wish we'd improve. Which would take, of course, a cultural shift so that those with interests in pedagogy and *gasp* pre-college pedagogy were no longer see as failures or sellouts. And that's a long, long ways off...

From the Wall Street Journal:
Japan’s New TV Craze: Philosophers - Japan Real Time - WSJ

“I am astonished and delighted by the popularity of ‘Justice’ in Japan,” Prof. Sandel told JRT by email. “There seems to be a great yearning, in Japan as in the U.S., for public discussion of big ideas, especially about ethics and values.”

While Sandel is good at his delivery style, I'm always taken aback by the praise he gets in the press. It's not like there aren't thousands of us who do the same thing, day in and day out, at Small Liberal Arts colleges - albeit to a smaller crowd.  Maybe we can start using this meme to promote SLAC's to Japanese students: Like Michael Sandel? Enroll at any of the SLAC's in the US, and you'll meet 25 of him!

Elliot Cohen has an entry on his Psychology Today blog promoting his forthcoming book:
Conquer Your Anxiety with Philosophy | Psychology Today

Conquer Your Anxiety with Philosophy

While I generally agree that psychology has a historical tendency to overextend itself and medicalize normality, I worry about this approach.  Cohen appears to be promoting basic critical thinking mixed with pop-psychology (i.e. 'cognitive dissonance') as an alternative to psychological therapy. Consider:

If you push yourself to formulate the premises of your thinking, it is then possible for you to refute them with a little critical thinking, that is, prove to yourself that they are irrational.

Uh... yeah. That's why anxiety is a disorder. Because it is irrational. If it were rational anxiety, one wouldn't be seeking counseling.

But maybe this is just a part of the natural correction to over-diagnosis and Psychiatric classification-creep. 

Three stories here in quick succession. The first announces the move:
Middlesex philosophy department moves to Kingston (From Enfield Independent)

MIDDLESEX philosophy department will move to Kingston University following a six-week campaign to stop it being shelved.

The second a follow-up:
Middlesex promises 'seamless transition' for philosophy school (From Enfield Independent)

MIDDLESEX University has promised the moving of its philosophy school to Kingston University next year will be a "seamless transition".

And the third - which is actually interesting - is a commentary from the Financial Times comparing those who cut university programs to Franco's fascists (really):

FT.com / Weekend Columnists / Harry Eyres - To cut or not to cut

No politician or bureaucrat in our time would dare to cry “death to intelligence” but closing down successful university philosophy departments, such as the one at Middlesex University currently facing the axe, amounts to pretty much the same thing.

 read more »

Or, as Pedro Tabensk,  associate professor of Philosophy at Rhodes University, puts it:

Daily Dispatch Online

“What do you mean by ‘useless’?”

Alan Smith has a nice reflection piece in the Guardian on his experience teaching Philosophy in prison:

In prison, the philosophy class must start again | Education | The Guardian

Before we can start up, I have to talk to the old-timers about Nietzsche. Finish him off. Lee listens for a bit and then interrupts: "He ought to be tied up and stuck in the corner." "Straight up," says Casey, "the sonofabitch." "To hell with him then," I say, "let's talk about Aristotle."