I want to explain something, for the sake of the profession of philosophy, the field of academia, and the health of workplace gender relations more broadly:
Conflating potential abuses of power with actual abuses of power benefits no one.
Recently a profile of me described how 12 yrs ago my husband Arnold, then a first year graduate student taking one of my courses, told me he was in love with me.
I said I felt the same, we decided nothing could happen between us, and the next day I got on a plane for New York...
(I am going to leave out the parts of the story connected to my divorce, you can read about them in the profile, this thread is focused on the power issue)
From NY, I called a number of colleagues and looked into the university's rules. I learned that there was a protocol:
(a) we needed to announce the relationship to the department chair
(b) I needed to immediately remove myself from any advisory role in relation to Arnold
(c) Arnold needed to meet weekly with a counselor who would check in with him to make sure he was not being mistreated
We did (a) & (b), and we did them BEFORE beginning a romantic relationship. First thing when I came back from NY, Arnold & I met w/department chair & Arnold additionally had a meeting with the DGS & the department chair. A colleague agreed to grade Arnold's paper for the class.
From then on I'd exit faculty meetings whenever he was discussed. (I do the same in relation to my ex-husband, Ben, & same is true for other married couples in the dept.)
Arnold met with the counselor as required.
Eventually we married, had a kid, & lived happily ever after.
All of this is causing outrage, 12 years after the fact, among people, some of whom have have long known about it & did not seem disturbed until now. Which is probably just a result of people being worked up by the profile and looking for an angle on which I come out a villain.
In general, such "takes" are worth ignoring, but here I am worried that the prominence of this case, and the reaction to it in philosophy, could lead to a bad cultural shift, encouraging and exacerbating the abuse of power in the context of workplace romantic relationships.
So let me say what should've been obvious to all:
This is what a GOOD case looks like.
This is what it looks like when a situation that COULD lead to an abuse of power DOESN'T lead to an abuse of power.
Being open & honest & following rules can work out well for everyone: yay!
I am writing this thread because I fear that having a whole bunch of people (many of whom have some prominence in the profession) equate my case with the worst forms of abuse will drive people towards a culture of secrecy.
A blanket policy of stigmatizing even rule-abiding behavior induces secrecy and shame, which is precisely what serial abusers rely on.
(By announcing the relationship, a record is created; this is important for allowing the university to intervene when it sees a bad pattern.)
Abusive romantic relations between faculty and students are a genuine problem, it is irresponsible to willfully exacerbate this problem because you want an outlet for some negative energy towards me.
The End
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(TLDR: Socrates' appearance--ugly, snub-nosed, satyr-like--was a later construction by Plato, Xenophon & others seeking to rehabilitate him, & philosophy, in the decades after his trial.) 2/11
After Socrates was put to death by the Athenians, the community was split: some supporting the verdict against him, others (mainly philosophers) opposing it. 3/11
I liked this book by @mrianleslie so I am going to tell you why in this 🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵
Helpful distinction between high and low context
Why are we so much more moralistic online?
A genuinely interesting question I will continue to ponder.
🧵on rationality:
I've been thinking about a convo w/ @TheZvi about whether rationality is a skill or a virtue.
Starting to think it depends on one's "position" in relation to the question.
Imagine 2 positions you might occupy at a criminal trial:
1 juror
2 defendant's mother
Supposing the juror starts with few assumptions about the case, they will find their mental states (roughly) tracking the evidence. For the mother, rationality is more expensive, bc it comes at the cost of psychological pain (acknowledging the possible guilt of her child).
The juror may come to an irrational decision due to failures in cognitive processing--these would be signs of a lack of rationality as skill--but (unless there is some way that the case is personal for him) rationality as virtue is not so much on the table for him.
This got me thinking about how tech optimism feels performative to me--performatively upbeat ("what will Friday bring?!") & performatively naive (see @paulg on "earnestness" linked below)--and then I thought about "virtue-signaling" and...1/X paulgraham.com/earnest.html
...maybe the performative aspect of emotion *is just emotion*...?
The conceit, in dismissing some expression of emotion as "signaling" or "performance", is that the person isn't really feeling it--that they are *not* experiencing the relevant emotion privately, it's "fake." 2/X
But what's the contrast case supposed to be? Private emotion? Is there such a thing? Emotion "wants out," it needs expression, and that's because it doesn't even fully get to be the emotion that it is until it is expressed. 3/X
The first real Greek class I took was on Plato’s Apology, with the eminent classicist Arthur Adkins. We translated the Apology, line by line. When we stumbled over a construction—many of were beginners—Adkins would gently correct us. That was the whole class, that was it. 1/4
Adkins was dying, in a wheelchair, there was a guy in the class to remind him to take certain pills every 20 mins. He died a month or so after the class ended, but he made it through. I wish I could convey the atmosphere of that class: the hushed silence, the fierce attention.
Somehow, without ever saying it, Adkins telegraphed: Socrates knows he is going to die, but he has to give this speech first. I know I'm going to die, but I have to teach this last class. We are all dying, all the time, but there are some things we have to do before that happens.
This is a long personal thread about my own reading practices, and a revelation I recently had about the pluses and minuses of reading at different speeds.
It might not be of interest to you.
(Photo below depicts the inhabitants of my "book" shelf)
I was just reading an academic paper at my top reading speed, it was 40 pages and I got through it in about 5 minutes. (I can go even faster for non-academic writing, though my max speed is much slower for foreign languages). But I usually don’t read that fast...
The vast majority of my reading is at slower speeds—in effect, I am constantly choosing to read more slowly than I could. Why? You might think the answer is that I absorb information better if I read slow. In fact, I believe the opposite is true...