To its credit, the Department of Philosophy at National University of Singapore, in a timely manner, emailed some applicants to its recently advertised open rank position to inform them that they were no longer being considered for the job. Unfortunately, the email addresses of all of the recipients of the rejection letter were visible in the “cc” section of the message. The result was that over 200 people were exposed as having applied to the position. For some, this is no big deal, for others, it is. It’s a kind of privacy violation, but as one reader of Daily Nous put it in an email, the error also puts some “scholars in precarious positions at risk, since many do not want their employers to know that they are applying elsewhere,” for fear of upsetting them, or giving them reason to not renew their contracts. Once notified of the error, the search committee member responsible for it wrote to the affected candidates to apologize.
professionalism
“Philosophical inquiry thrives when it is conducted in a spirit that risks overreaching a bit,” yet “the current incentive structure of academic philosophy in the United States favors cautious and modest research agendas for early career philosophers.” The journal Axiomathes is becoming Global Philosophy, and in a forthcoming editorial about the change, John Symons (Kansas) discusses a variety of obstacles to global philosophy. “Deglobalization” and the resurgence of nationalism is one kind obstacle, he says, but so is hyperspecialization and the pressure to conform to narrow disciplinary standards. Here’s the passage from which the above quotes were excerpted: In the decades prior to the financial crisis of 2008, when Anglo-American philosophy departments were relatively financially healthy, a narrowly defined research niche in a fashionable topic could provide easy rewards in the early career of a young philosopher. With cleverness (or a good advisor in graduate school) one’s work could be crafted to satisfy the preferences of a manageably small number of specialists. Their approval was a necessary condition for professional advancement.