Philosophy at Chicago, then and now

The University of Chicago’s “current students” page is wonderful. Here’s a quote.

Graduate students in philosophy once represented a comparatively homogenous cross-section of American society — as the above photograph of John Dewey and his cohort, taken in 1885 (nine years before Dewey joined the faculty of the University of Chicago and became the Philosophy Department’s first Chairman) helps to make evident. Now almost evenly divided between students from North America and elsewhere, our current cohort of graduate students constitutes an altogether different kind of crew. Look below and see for yourself!

It’s great to see both that they’ve managed to recruit a remarkably diverse bunch of students, and that they’ve found such an elegant way to advertise this. Perhaps we should all spend some time gazing it these counterstereotypical exemplars.

Many thanks to Mike Otsuka for mentioning this in a comment on NewAPPS.

Why was Joe Diaz Arrested?

I couldn’t stop reading this.

And so there I stood, in jail, naked, in between two other naked male strangers, with a 3^rd male, a Law Enforcer named ‘Dog’, eyeing me over.  Just hours before I was presenting on Gadamer’s Truth and Method.  Now, I was made to put my arms by my side and stand up straight so that Dog could get a good look at me.  Dog took the liberty to comment on my body.  Us 3 inmates, while still naked, were then told to face the wall and squat

I too struggle with the question in his title. I imagine it was the intersection of his gender, his ethnicity, his youth, his small physical stature, and his downright temerity (that is, his insistence on proceeding as though rational adult citizens are equals who are responsive to moral contexts and social exchanges).  But of course, none of this is really explanatory.  Recommended reading.

(Posted on Leiter Reports, crediting Corey McGrath for the pointer.)

The Sunday Cat visits old friends