Imagine that a philosophy professor is invited onto a podcast. The hosts ask him to describe a thought experiment he finds interesting or provoking. He decides to pick a scenario in which an adult male has sex with a “willing” …
The student mental-health crisis is a myth
It’s easy to fall off the radar at university. Exactly 20 years ago — 17 years old, awkward and terribly uncertain of myself — I did just that. Too young to drink legally (and apparently too ill-connected to procure a …
Affirmative action’s fatal flaw
Say what you like about progressives in America and their nebulous calls for “racial equity”, but they got one thing right: college admissions have always been a zero-sum game. With limited places at the prestigious universities and tens of millions …
Race is a status game
Growing up the son of a Nigerian father and Polish mother in Lagos, I often wondered what the real root of racial inequality was. Watching movies about the US civil rights movement with my father it was clear to me …
Why philosophers are so weird
Not for the first time, an academic philosopher has been causing mirth on Twitter. No, not Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University — this time it’s the turn of Professor Agnes Callard of the University …
Why have scientists stopped taking risks?
A casual consumer of scientific journalism could be forgiven for thinking that we are living in a golden age of research. Systematic evidence, however, suggests otherwise. Breakthroughs comparable to the discovery of DNA — only 70 years ago — have …
In defence of Lee Anderson
There are moments in politics when the elite pull back the curtain and let you know what they really think. The astonishing reaction this week to Lee Anderson is one such moment. After being appointed by Rishi Sunak as the …
How universities entered Cloud Cuckoo Land
What explains the recent, alarmingly broad and rapid capture of cultural, political, and economic institutions by neo-Marxist identity politics and liberation ideologies? Writing in Tablet, Russell Jacoby argues that the end of the rapid expansion of universities in the late …
How sacrifice lost its significance
Education, writes Roberto Calasso in The Ruin of Kasch, comes with a paradox: “it consists above all of things that cannot be learned — or of things that represent what cannot be learned.” Calasso drops the remark almost in passing, …
University needs to hurt
Reality comes in degrees, but the law must draw clear lines. English law permits the abortion of healthy foetuses up to 24 weeks after conception — but no later. It also lets you drive on your 17th birthday — but …
How to save sex
“Is it okay if I touch you?” Half an hour after I’d started chatting with this guy on Grindr he was in my bedroom, beginning a series of questions meant to lead from touching to any number of other acts. …
The British weapons expert cosying up to China
His audience hung on his every word. Here was one of Britain’s foremost weapons experts chairing a prestigious, two-day conference devoted to exploring new ways of making arms more deadly. But the packed conference hall, its walls lined with oak …
How philosophy sacrificed the truth
Back when I was a graduate student in the Nineties, first at St Andrews University and then at Leeds, philosophy departments were terrifying places. Seminar rooms often felt like amphitheatres.
Every week, the same ritual would unfold in the senior …
Raquel Rosario Sánchez won’t be silenced
Raquel Rosario Sánchez should be graduating this month with a PhD from one of the UK’s most prestigious universities. Instead, she will be in court, suing the University of Bristol for allegedly failing to protect her from bullying and harassment.…
