Heather Muraviov: Excellence for Diversity and Inclusivity in a Syllabus

Posted on by

The Philosophy Department’s Climate Committee is pleased to announce that our inaugural Prize for Excellence for Diversity and Inclusivity in a Syllabus is awarded to Heather Muraviov’s syllabus for PHIL 1101, which demonstrated excellence in all three of these dimensions of diversity and inclusivity. Congratulations Heather! Thank you for designing an excellent syllabus.

The committee also recognizes the following syllabi for their merit in diversity and inclusivity: Eric Berg’s, and Jenelle Salisbury’s 1104 syllabus

Heather Battaly and Casey Johnson: Character, Vices, and Authority

Posted on by

Tune into Character, Vices, and Authority with UConn Professor of Philosophy Heather Battaly and UConn alumna Casey Johnson (now Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho) on Thursday, May 13th, at 2:00 PM!

When trying to make sense of the world, we rely on other people – for information, ideas, alternative perspectives, criticisms, and objections. We therefore need to be able to recognise authoritative people, ones worthy of the trust we put in them when we ask for intellectual help. But how do we identify authoritative people?

One answer: we assess their intellectual virtues and vices. We ask if someone is reflective and open-minded, or dogmatic and closed-minded. This conversation will explore the intellectual vices, what they are, where they come from, and how we should try and deal with intellectually vicious people.

Alumna Emma Bjorngard-Basayne: From a Doctoral Student in Philosophy to a Higher Ed Professional

Posted on by

UConn alumna Dr. Emma Bjorngard-Basayne’18 Ph.D. Philosophy is currently an Academic Advisor at the Office of Undergraduate Advising, UConn School of Business. She is also an Adjunct Professor in Philosophy at the Stamford Campus, UConn. Her career journey suggests that in addition to the academic skills and training gained from one’s degree program, doctoral students should step outside of their department and take a test drive in the field of their interest through internships or career-related experiences that might help expand their career choices and may eventually lead them to their future career.

Read the full profile here.

Stewart Shapiro: American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Posted on by
Stewart Shapiro

Distinguished Visiting Professor Stewart Shapiro has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges. Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”

Lewis Gordon: “How the Court of Law Needs to Change for Racial Justice in America”

Posted on by

Listen to Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon's recent interview on Let's Go There with Shira & Ryan, "Racial Justice in America: Police Officers Need to be Subject to the Law and Not Above the Law."

**Episode Description**

"Minnesota is in a state of crisis. During the high profile trial of Derek Chauvin trial for the death of George Floyd, another black man, Daunte Wright, was shot over the weekend in Brooklyn. We talk to Dr. Lewis R. Gordon, Professor and Head of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs, about what America needs to ask about seeking racial justice in a court of law."

Lewis Gordon: “Derek Chauvin Trial”

Posted on by

Read Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon's recent article, "Derek Chauvin Trial: 3 Questions America Needs to Ask About Seeking Racial Justice in a Court of Law."

**Excerpt from the article**

There are three questions I find important to consider as the trial unfolds. These questions address the legal, moral and political legitimacy of any verdict in the trial. I offer them from my perspective as an Afro-Jewish philosopher and political thinker who studies oppression, justice and freedom. They also speak to the divergence between how a trial is conducted, what rules govern it – and the larger issue of racial justice raised by George Floyd’s death after Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. They are questions that need to be asked.

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Jane Gordon: “Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg”

Posted on by

Check out “Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg” edited by Affiliate Professor Jane Gordon and Drucilla Cornell (Rutgers).

Rosa Luxemburg is unquestionably the most important historical European woman Marxist theorist. Significantly, for the purpose of creolizing the canon, she considered her continent and the globe from an Eastern Europe that was in constant flux and turmoil. From this relatively peripheral location, she was far less parochial than many of her more centrally located interlocutors and peers. Indeed, Luxemburg’s work touched on all the burning issues of her time and ours, from analysis of concrete revolutionary struggles, such as those in Poland and Russia, to showing through her analysis of primitive accumulation that anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles had to be intertwined, to considerations of state sovereignty, democracy, feminism, and racism. She thereby offered reflections that can usefully be taken up and reworked by writers facing continuous and new challenges to undo relations of exploitation through radical economic and social transformation Luxemburg touches on all aspects of what constitutes revolution in her work; the authors of this volume show us that, by creolizing Luxemburg, we can open up new paths of understanding the complexities of revolution.

Drew Johnson: “Disjunctive Luminosity”

Posted on by

Read graduate student Drew Johnson's recent article in Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, "Disjunctive Luminosity."

*Abstract*

Williamson's influential anti‐luminosity argument aims to show that our own mental states are not “luminous,” and that we are thus “cognitively homeless.” Among other things, this argument represents a significant challenge to the idea that we enjoy basic self‐knowledge of our own occurrent mental states. In this paper, I summarize Williamson's anti‐luminosity argument, and discuss the role that the notion of “epistemic basis” plays in it. I argue that the anti‐luminosity argument relies upon a particular version of the basis‐relative safety condition on knowledge. This commitment is significant because basic self‐knowledge seemingly lacks any kind of distinct epistemic basis, such as inference, observation, testimony, etc., despite representing a genuine kind of knowledge of contingent matters of fact. I consider a disjunctivist account (due to Bar‐On and Johnson), according to which true basic self‐beliefs indeed lack an epistemic basis in any kind of epistemic method (such as inference), yet are still epistemically grounded in the mental states they concern. I argue that this account of self‐knowledge is compatible with standard understandings of the basis relative safety condition on knowledge, but rejects the particular version required by the anti‐luminosity argument.

 

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab