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Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
Aaron Hanlon
@AaronRHanlon
generalist #COYS https://t.co/j2VcG2e392
Jun 18 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1) I mean this as a friendly and hopefully generative provocation: it still seems to me that philosophy as a discipline is self-defeatingly naive about the concept of genre. ... 2) To give a concrete example, the subfields of philosophy of fiction and philosophy of literature are incredibly rich and generative, as are the epistemological questions they raise, e.g. about 'truth in fiction' and phil. lang. and so on. ...
Mar 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I still think the part of 'colleges are indoctrinating your children' thing we don't address enough is the underlying premise that college students are perpetual children and the indefinite property of their parents, so must never be exposed to other views or change their minds. It's a weird blank-slateism mentality (ironically believed by people who see themselves as philosophically naturalistic types) where it's the parents' prerogative to stamp a values impression on their children, and that's meant to be the default ...
Nov 15, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
1) Faculty talk a lot about 'the corporate university' and its impact on us, but perhaps not enough about its impact on students. ... 2) Every professor I've spoken with at Colby and elsewhere has noted a decline in student motivation and energy, difficulty with meeting deadlines, etc., at higher levels than before. It's easy to reach for Covid as an explanation, and I'm sure that explains a fair amount...
Nov 15, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The obsession with street parking drives me mad. Library accessibility for the elderly & for children should absolutely be a priority, but you achieve that by making the streets safe to cross! Street parking obscures views and makes things more dangerous. centralmaine.com/2022/11/14/wat… Image If you don't know the area, there's a massive parking lot behind the library, and traffic studies have shown that it rarely reaches above 80% capacity, let alone full. There's a way to cross 'busy streets': it's called A FUNCTIONING CROSSWALK.
Nov 14, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
"And what is called the 'crisis of the universities' should be interpreted not as a loss of power but, on the contrary, as a multiplication and reinforcement of their power effects as centers in a polymorphous ensemble of intellectuals who virtually all pass through ... ... and relate themselves to the academic system. The whole relentless theorization of writing we saw in the sixties was doubtless only a swan song. Through it, the writer was fighting for the preservation of his political privilege." --Foucault, 1971.
Nov 14, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1) OK, with a few more days left during which you can download a free PDF of _Empirical Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century Novel_, a quick thread on it. A less diplomatic subtitle might have been: AGAINST REALISM ... 2) But that might have been misleading, because most 'against realism' accounts in literary studies are coming from a place of wanting to argue that the realist novel was a failure because it failed to uniquely and reliably represent the real. ...
Nov 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is a fun game so I will share a few as well: … (1) When I said it’s wrong from a workers rights standpoint to charge employees for parking in a limited public transportation situation and it angered Marxist literary Twitter
Jul 31, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1) Back when the Sokal2 hoaxers were hoaxing, I got something right that not a lot of people at the time were getting right, but in so doing I also made a mistake... 2) What I got right was recognizing that what they were doing was actually harming science, and not simply by seeding bad faith, but bc their epistemic principles were totally confused and would leave science vulnerable to credibility attacks. ...
Apr 29, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Canceling student loans is an imperfect mechanism to retroactively fund a decade of deep cuts to public higher ed funding, the burden of which was pushed onto the biggest and most diverse generations of college students ever at a price much higher than previous generations paid. I really don’t care about your degree from the 1980s, before Reaganism cut higher ed spending by a billion dollars.
Apr 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Many things wrong with Gov. Mills' understanding here, but foremost: 'input' is not a vote, it's not power, it's not shared governance. It's dust that can be brushed aside even when it's wise, correct, moral, etc. 'Input' is not an institutional governance standard. Image Don't start from the position that of course a Board of Trustees should have absolute power over a university. Start from the position that the people doing the core work of the university--faculty--should have a voting stake in how it's run.
Feb 8, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
1) I've now lived in New England long enough to have formed license plate stereotypes (my impression of a general driver based on their plate state), so here's a thread of them: ... 2) Connecticut: Driver believes they're entitled to right of way by ancestry and where conflictual by primogeniture. Avoid.
Jul 28, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
*rubs hands* I was born for this moment. Here are several: (1) They are actually not very good at queueing or general bodily awareness and organization in public spaces. See also: no custom for which side of the pavement to walk on. … (2) The food can actually be very good. Even traditional English foods such as pies, Cumberland sausages, etc. are good. Not known for coffee (if I call it a ‘coffee spoon’ people flip) but their coffee options are also very good. Good tomatoes. Better bread than in US. …
Jul 28, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
1) This is a short thread on how and why we're getting the 'culture wars' wrong. You think e.g. Christopher Rufo similar are culture warriors fighting on the battleground of ideas (perhaps so do they). But that's wrong. ... 2) A better analogy for Christopher Rufo & co. is Oreskes and Conway's concept of 'merchants of doubt.' In plain terms, they're not 'culture warriors'; they're like the scientists who were paid to convince the public that cigarettes don't cause cancer. ...
Jul 12, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
1) OK, here’s a drunk thread (as in I’m in a pub and currently drunk) / guide for picking a Premier League club to support if you’re not from the UK. N.B. I’m from the US so no regional ties to any club; Tottenham chose me in 2008. ... 2) Let’s get the obvious out of the way. On the one hand it’s easier to follow a rich superclub (Chelsea, Man U, Man City, Liverpool) because their marketing reach is huge, so if you’re abroad they’re present in a way that, say, Crystal Palace are not. ...
Jul 12, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The anti-Critical Race Theory panic comes in large part from Intelligent Design Theory (IDT)—people who don’t think evolution is true—and has adherents in the anti-vaxx conspiracy movement. These people are against science. nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Jun 28, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1) Here's a short thread combining thoughts on @CT_Bergstrom et al recent warning paper about the potentially catastrophic impact of ad-driven social media, algorithmic search, etc. *and* ... what's going on with 'critical race theory': 2) In particular I'm concerned about the possibility that many if not most adults' intellectual life is strictly in the form of reading and responding to online bullshit on Twitter, FB, etc.
Jun 27, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1) A searching thread on how to advocate for people in less advantaged positions than mine. I.e. I’m asking for *your* thoughts and advice, no matter who you are, not offering mine. The issue that prompted this for me is … 2) I read as approachable in a lot of ways but also as someone with the privilege to stand up to people. [Both are for the most part true.] So I’m a go-to person for a lot of students and contingent colleagues who’ve been ignored by those who are supposed to hep them. …
May 20, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
1) Here are some context notes about the tenure review process for journalists and others commenting on the @nhannahjones case. Observing these might help reduce confusion and misinformation: 2) The substantive academic merit case for tenure is decided by a committee typically called something like 'tenure and promotion' or 'promotion and tenure.' It's widely regarded as the most challenging, arduous committee to be on bc of how extensive and rigorous the process is.
May 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The poll questions are very poorly designed. This is one way to get Frankfurtian bullshit with data, i.e. polling designed without truth as its objective. Touting this poll is straightforwardly irresponsible. 'Inherently' introduces an unnecessary confound: One could agree there's structural white privilege (much closer to the claim of mainstream CRT) and disagree that such privilege is 'inherent.' Those are substantial conceptual differences not registered in the data. Total failure.
May 9, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
1) Some thoughts about faculty governance in higher ed. and being in the position to change things for the better. ... 2) Actually governing and running a college is complicated and a ton of work, much of it the kind of work that too many faculty look down on. I say this based on ...
Apr 6, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
@conor64 I think what would have the greatest impact is reversing the adjunctification trend. Particularly if we take seriously the conjectures about faculty self-censorship. About 75% of the professoriate works off the tenure track, not protected by academic freedom. @conor64 Another, further afield idea would be to incentivize more collaboration between departments and divisions, such that the viewpoint diversity already present isn't concentrated in disciplinary enclaves. At present I think this has some negative externalities, including ...