Check out these short lectures from Visiting Professor John Carney!
Media
Lewis Gordon: Interview with Tavis Smiley
Tracy Llanera: Symposium on “Richard Rorty”
Lewis Gordon: Best Philosophy Books for Beginners
Check out Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon’s picks for the best philosophy books for beginners!
“Why create a reading list of the best philosophy books for beginners? Well, Bertrand Russell once said that ‘science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know’, and when it comes to philosophy – I don’t know nearly enough. The vastness and occasional intangibility of the subject can make it feel inaccessible for novices. Like trying to find the end of a piece of sellotape, it can be frustrating to know where to start. In situations like this, there is only one thing you can do – ask the experts what they’d recommend as philosophy books for beginners. Luckily for me, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing some of the world’s finest philosophical minds.”
-Phil Treagus Evans, “Philosophy Books for Beginners”
Hady Ba and Thomas Meagher: Blog of the APA
Nelson Maldonado-Torres: Sobre a Colonialidade doSer and El Mostrador
Lewis Gordon: Interview in Newsweek
Check out Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon’s recent interview in Newsweek, “Kanye West Confused About Antisemitism and Racism, Professor Says.”
*Excerpt*
Gordon explained that “the nonracial interpretation of antisemitism doesn’t quite play out in practice, since people who hate Jews use all the logic of race and racism when speaking about Jews, and, internally to Jewish communities, one could be born Jewish (through a Jewish mother) and remain so even when, in some cases, one has converted to other religions.”
“So,” said Gordon, “the short answer is this: Wherever there is antisemitism, there is racism. Wherever there is racism, there is often antisemitism. But bear in mind, antisemitism is a species of racism.”
Lewis Gordon: Kanye West and the Age of the Unmanageable
Check out Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon’s comments on Kanye West in the Financial Times, “Kanye West and the Age of the Unmanageable.”
*Excerpt*
Lewis R Gordon is an American philosopher whose book Fear of Black Consciousness was published earlier this year. In 2018, he was interviewed for an article about Kanye in which he tried to explain the singer’s drift to the right following a controversial interview the musician had done on TMZ about the history of slavery. “It’s pretty clear that his psychological protection against vulnerability is to push himself to the level of a god,” said Gordon. “People who build up an edifice of pleasing falsehoods to protect themselves eventually lose the connection to certain elements of truth.”
Nelson Maldonado-Torres: “Decolonizing Academia”
Check out Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres‘ recent interview in “Decolonizing Academia: Obstacles and Paths Forward,” published in Chinese Social Sciences Today.
*Excerpt*
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, a professor from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut in the US, held a similar view, saying that decolonization refers to particular historical moments when former colonies of European empires struggled for their political and juridical independence, particularly within the disciplines of history and the social sciences.