Kripke's intensional fallacy

Beliefs are things which Believers have. What they are and whether they have any rhyme or reason to them, or can be given a propositional form, is an ideographic matter dependent on the Believer in question. No 'puzzles', logical or philosophical, can arise in connection with beliefs unless we believe they can- which is our problem, not a problem for Logic or Metaphysics.

Kripke, famously took a different view-  

Suppose Pierre is a normal French speaker who lives in France

in which case I believe he leaps around on the banks of the Seine attempting to bite the hindlegs of frogs. This is actually a more reasonable belief to have than that Pierre, or any one else, has beliefs which can be stated as propositions- i.e. statements which are either true or false. If a Belief has this quality then it is always 'informative' because we know that if that Belief exists there are exactly two possible states of the world. One in which the belief is true and one in which it isn't. The problem is that beliefs, like preferences, are 'epistemic'- i.e. they change as the knowledge base changes. Leibniz's law (identity of indiscernibles) does not apply to them. Thus even if everything true about one belief is true about another belief, they are not the same belief. Thus, if two followers of Mahatma Gandhi- one Hindu, the other Christian- have exactly the same beliefs, they belong to different Faiths. In Sanskrit we would say, their 'Vigyan' is the same but their 'Matam' (dogma) is different. Modus tollens can't be applied in this case. I can't say 'Kumarappa has the same beliefs as Gandhi. Gandhi is Hindu. Kumarappa must be Hindu.' Why? It is a fact that Kumarappa was Christian. I have committed the 'masked man' or 'intensional' fallacy.

This is what Kripke proceeds to do in his notorious 'puzzle about belief'.  

(Pierre) speaks not a word of English or of any other language except French. Of course he has heard of that famous distant city, London (which he of course calls 'Londres') though he himself has never left France. On the basis of what he has heard of London, he is inclined to think that it is pretty. So he says, in French, "Londres est jolie." On the basis of his sincere French utterance, we will conclude:

that he bites the legs off frogs. After all, sincere French utterances only emanate from the mouths of people who are masticating the legs of amphibians. Such at any rate is my firm and settled belief.  

(4) Pierre believes that London is pretty.

Nonsense! French people are incapable of believing anything because they are too busy devouring the legs of frogs. Even if this were not the case, no belief has a propositional form. Believing London is pretty does not preclude believing it is ugly or fat or has a quality of fugitive umami like unto the more nimble type of frog. 

I am supposing that Pierre satisfies all criteria for being a normal French speaker, in particular, that he satisfies whatever criteria we usually use to judge that a Frenchman (correctly) uses 'est jolie' to attribute pulchritude and uses 'Londres'-standardly-as a name of London.

Rubbish! Everyone knows- or should know- that 'normal French speakers' have no thoughts or beliefs though they may make French type noises from time to time in between biting the legs of frogs.  

Later, Pierre, through fortunate or unfortunate vicissitudes, moves to England, in fact to London itself, though to an unattractive part of the city with fairly uneducated inhabitants. He, like most of his neighbors, rarely ever leaves this part of the city. None of his neighbors know any French, so he must learn English by 'direct method', without using any translation of English into French: by talking and mixing with the people he eventually begins to pick up English.

Impossible! No self-respecting Londoner would have anything to do with a dirty furriner who devours snails when no frogs are available. 'Wogs begin at Calais' is a sound English principle.  

In particular, everyone speaks of the city, 'London', where they all live. Let us suppose for the moment- though we will see below that this is not crucial- that the local population are so uneducated that they know few of the facts that Pierre heard about London in France. Pierre learns from them everything they know about London, but there is little overlap with what he heard before. He learns, of course speaking English

in which case he must have given up his disgusting foreign diet. He is becoming almost human.  

- to call the city he lives in 'London'. Pierre's surroundings are, as I said, unattractive, and he is unimpressed with most of the rest of what he happens to see. So he is inclined to assent to the English sentence: (5) London is not pretty. He has no inclination to assent to: (6) London is pretty. Of course he does not for a moment withdraw his assent from the French sentence, "Londres est jolie";

Only in the sense that nobody withdraws their assent from the sentence 'I am five years old' even after they turn six. It is simply the case that what was said then is no longer true. 

he merely takes it for granted that the ugly city in which he is now stuck is distinct from the enchanting city he heard about in France.

Which is like what happened when the enchanting frog whose legs he tried to devour turned out to be Toulouse-Lautrec

But he has no inclination to change his mind for a moment about the city he stills calls 'Londres'. This, then, is the puzzle. If we consider Pierre's past background as a French speaker, his entire linguistic behavior, on the same basis as we would draw such a conclusion about many of his countrymen, supports the conclusion (4) above that he believes that London is pretty. On the other hand, after Pierre lived in London for some time, he did not differ from his neighbors-his French background aside-either in his knowledge of English or in his command of the relevant facts of local geography. His English vocabulary differs little from that of his neighbors. He, like them, rarely ventures from the dismal quarter of the city in which they all live. He, like them, knows that the city he lives in is called 'London' and knows a few other facts. Now Pierre's neighbors would surely be said to use 'London' as a name for London and to speak English. Since, as an English speaker,  he does not differ at all from them, we should , say the same of him. But then, on the basis of his sincere assent to (5), we should conclude: (7) Pierre believes that London is not pretty. How can we describe this situation?

Easily. At one time he leapt about biting the legs off frogs by the banks of the Seine. At that time he thought London was pretty and had lots of lovely frogs. One day he accidentally bit the legs of Toulouse-Lautrec and was chased across the Channel by furious can-can dancers from the Moulin Rouge. Living in London, he gradually became almost human and stopped thinking London was pretty. Indeed, beauty of every sort had dimmed from his eyes. He became a Methodist and got a job with the Gas Board.  

It seems undeniable that Pierre once believed that London is pretty-at least before he learned English. For at that time, he differed not at all from countless numbers of his countrymen, and we would have exactly the same grounds to say of him as of any of them that he believes that London is pretty: if any Frenchman who was both ignorant of English and never visited London believed that London is pretty, Pierre did. Nor does it have any plausibility to suppose, because of his later situation after he learns English, that Pierre should retroactively be judged never to have believed that London is pretty. To allow such ex post facto legislation would, as long as the future is uncertain, endanger our attributions of belief to all monolingual Frenchmen.

There is no 'ex post facto legislation' or 'withdrawing of assent'. As for our 'attributions of belief', they are dictated by our own stupidity or prejudice or inability to reason. Who gives a fuck if they are 'endangered'? Must the Secretary General of the United Nations intervene if my own fond beliefs about French people who accidentally bit the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec are threatened in some way? 

We would be forced to say that Marie, a monolingual who firmly and sincerely asserts, "Londres est jolie," may or may not believe that London is pretty depending on the later vicissitudes of her career (if later she learns English and . . . , . . .).

No we wouldn't. What we would be forced to say is- 'Marie bit off the legs of Toulouse-Lautrec and then meanly shifted the blame onto Pierre.' Moreover, the person who would be doing the forcing would bear an uncanny resemblance to Asterix the Gaul. 

No: Pierre, like Marie, believed that London is pretty when he was monolingual.

Kripke may believe so. I don't. This is because I firmly and sincerely believe French people leap around their beautiful land, biting the legs off frogs. True, sometimes they end up biting the legs off Toulouse-Lautrec, but that's probably the fault of Joan of Arc. 

Should we say that Pierre, now that he lives in London and speaks English, no longer believes that London is pretty? Well, unquestionably Pierre once believed that London is pretty. So we would be forced to say that Pierre has changed his mind, has given up his previous belief. But has he really done so? Pierre is very set in his ways. He reiterates, with vigor, every assertion he has ever made in French. He says he has not changed his mind about anything, has not given up any belief. Can we say he is wrong about this?

We can say anything we like.  

If we did not have the story of his living in London and his English utterances, on the basis of his normal command of French we would be forced to conclude that he still believes that London is pretty.

No. We would say 'Pierre had heard London was pretty. Then he moved to London and found it wasn't pretty at all. He got it into his head that 'Londres' wasn't London and that it must be pretty because people he knew had said so. Still, if we beat him sufficiently, he might come to acknowledge that Londres is just the French word for London in the same way that 'Sodom-on-the-Seine' is the English term for Paris.  

And it does seem that this is correct. Pierre has neither changed his mind nor given up any belief he had in France. Similar difficulties beset any attempt to deny him his new belief.

On the basis of our beliefs. But we can change our beliefs so they are less stupid.  

His French past aside, he is just like his friends in London. Anyone else, growing up in London with the same knowledge and beliefs that he expresses in England, we would undoubtedly judge to believe that London is not pretty. Can Pierre's French past nullify such a judgment? Can we say that Pierre, because of his French past, does not believe that (S)? Suppose an electric shock wiped out all his memories of the French language, what he learned in France, and his French past. He would then be exactly like his neighbors in London. He would have the same knowledge, beliefs, and linguistic capacities. We then presumably would be forced to say that Pierre believes that London is ugly if we say it of his neighbors. But surely no shock that destroys part of Pierre's memories and knowledge can give him a new belief.

That depends on the Believer. As a matter of fact, if I suffer amnesia as a result of a brain injury, I am likely to 'confabulate' new beliefs. What they are might be of interest to a depth psychologist or a neurologist. I imagine myself waking up in a hospital bed. The Doctor asks me my name. I can't remember it. I instinctively clutch at my genitals and discover I have a tiny todger. Who could I be? The answer is obvious. I am Donald Trump. Then I look in the mirror. Clearly Vivek Ramaswamy has dyed my skin to match his own complexion. Fuck you Vivek! Fuck you very much!

If Pierre believes (5) after the shock, he believed it before, despite his French language and background. If we would deny Pierre, in his bilingual stage, his belief that London is pretty and his belief that London is not pretty, we combine the difficulties of both previous options.

But by changing our beliefs we can overcome such difficulties. The fact is French isn't really a language. All human beings can speak English if you shout at them loudly enough. True, some sadistic school teachers try to pretend there is a language called French which has a grammar and a vocabulary all of its own. This is clearly a conspiracy funded by George Soros. 

We still would be forced to judge that Pierre once believed that London is pretty but does no longer, in spite of Pierre's own sincere denial that he has lost any belief.

We are meant to believe that Pierre is as thick as shit. Why? Because Kripke makes an absurd stipulation. Two can play at that game. I can equally arbitrarily claim that the moment Toulouse-Lautrec's legs were bitten off by sweet little Jean-Marie La Pen, all Belief became dialethic because it were dyslexic and that was the closest it could come to being diabetic.  

We also must worry whether Pierre would gain the belief that London is not pretty if he totally forgot his French past. The option does not seem very satisfactory. So now it seems that we must respect both Pierre's French utterances and their English counterparts.

Because Kripke says so? But it is my firm belief that Kripke could never say anything because he was the shadow of a cat which sought to emigrate to Uranus in 1984.  

So we must say that Pierre has contradictory beliefs, that he believes that London is pretty and he believes that London is not pretty. But there seem to be insuperable difficulties with this alternative as well. We may suppose that Pierre, in spite of the unfortunate situation in which he now finds himself, is a leading philosopher and logician.

He is certainly stupid enough. 

He would never let contradictory beliefs pass. And surely anyone, leading logician or no, is in principle in a position to notice and correct contradictory beliefs if he has them.

Kripke believes he knows his own beliefs. We don't. The shadow of a cat can't know its own beliefs.  

Precisely for this reason, we regard individuals who contradict themselves as subject to greater censure than those who merely have false beliefs.

No we don't. I don't care if you contradict yourself. I care if you fart in my face. 

But it is clear that Pierre, as long as he is unaware that the cities he calls 'London' and 'Londres' are one and the same, is in no position to see, by logic alone, that at least one of his beliefs must be false.

Logic tells him that his beliefs about a place he has never seen may be wrong. Indeed, he has no compelling reason to give a toss about the beauty or ugliness of a distant city. 

He lacks information, not logical acumen.

He lacks a motive to gain information. But logical acumen can yield no information whatsoever.  

He cannot be convicted of inconsistency: to do so is incorrect.

He can be convicted of rape or murder. He would do well to avoid both. Inconsistency, however, is no big deal.  

We can shed more light on this if we change the case. Suppose that, in France, Pierre, instead of affirming "Londres est jolie," had affirmed, more cautiously, "Si New York est jolie, Londres est jolie aussi," so that he believed that if New York is pretty, so is London.

Kripke has an absurd belief about Pierre's beliefs. We are welcome to believe this is because Kripke is the shadow of a cat which sought to emigrate to Uranus.  

Later Pierre moves to London, learns English as before, and says (in English) "London is not pretty." So he now believes, further, that London is not pretty.

He may do. He may not do. I am welcome to believe that by moving to London, the fellow has become partially human and thus affirms that 'London is not pretty (it's fucking gorgeous, mate!)' with the latter interjection being left unstated as is best practice amongst us chirpy Cockney sparrows. 

Now from the two premises, both of which appear to

but may not be 

be among his beliefs (a) If New York is pretty, London is, and (b) London is not pretty, Pierre should be able to deduce by modus tollens

he can't because what Kripke calls beliefs aren't necessarily 'propositions'. This is just begging the question.  

that New York is not pretty.

I suppose, if a person can find beauty in New York, they might learn to find beauty in London. The reverse may not be the case. There is always going to be a problem where a proposition- or something taken as a proposition- contains an epistemic or impredicative term. What we find pretty changes as our knowledge base changes. Intensions have no well defined extensions. Leibniz's law of identity has no purchase. What we have here is a cascade of intensional fallacies masquerading as a puzzle about names and beliefs. 

But no matter how great Pierre's logical acumen may be, he cannot in fact make any such deduction, as long as he supposes that 'Londres' and 'London' may name two different cities.

Who is to say they don't? A Parisian may find a beauty in London to which us Cockneys are blind. A rose may smell sweeter under some other name. 

If he did draw such a conclusion, he would be guilty of a fallacy.

No. The intensional fallacy arises when it is wrongly assumed that there is an immediate identity between a subject's knowledge of an object with the object itself. This is still the case if we substitute the word 'belief' for knowledge or 'sincerely assert' for 'belief' or indulge in any other such linguistic sleight of hand. 

 Consider the following. Mum walks into the room as we are watching Batman on TV. She asks 'who is that masked man?' We reply 'that is millionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne, who fights crime in Gotham by night costumed as the Batman.' Unfortunately, this is the episode where Alfred the Butler has put on the Batman costume so as to throw the Joker off the scent. Anyway, what Mum really wants to know whether the masked man is George Clooney- for whom she has the hots- or Michael Keaton whom she finds a boner killer. In this case, the proper 'extension' for 'masked man' is the name of the film star appearing in the title role. But in other cases, a different extension is called for.

Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?

We don't know. We may have beliefs about Pierre or beliefs about Pierre's beliefs. But beliefs may not be propositions- i.e. they may not be either true or false. One might say 'I only want to talk about beliefs which are also propositions.' The trouble here is that there is no way of being sure that any given proposition corresponds to a belief or vice versa. Why? Because Beliefs don't present themselves nakedly to us. Things spoken or written may do so. But there is no way to be sure they represent a belief. True we can say we have beliefs about other people's beliefs which we believe meet some criteria of our own. But, in that case, we are already halfway to affirming that French people spend their time hopping about trying to bite the legs of frogs.

I know of no answer to this question that seems satisfactory.

I have supplied it. Beliefs and Preferences are epistemic but not propositional. They don't obey Leibniz's law. Modus tollens has no purchase on them. No information can be extracted from them such that we can be sure there are only two states of the world. It's like 'Chinatown', where Faye Dunaway's sister is also her daughter and may become her mother-in-law.  

It is no answer to protest that, in some other terminology, one can state 'all the relevant facts'.

Because facts which are inaccessible, perhaps incompossible, aren't facts.  

To reiterate, this is the puzzle: Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty?

He may at some moment or for some consideration but not at other times. In either case, we can never be sure. Still, one may look at his 'revealed preference'. If he is an artist and relocated to London and spends a lot of time painting pretty pictures of its more scenic spots, we might say 'his behaviour reveals that he thinks London is beautiful.'  

It is clear that our normal criteria for the attribution of belief lead, when applied to this question, to paradoxes and contradictions.

It is clear that if you commit the intensional fallacy, you have an algorithmic way of generating nonsense. Ex falso quodlibet.  

 As in the case of the logical paradoxes, the present puzzle presents us with a problem for customarily accepted principles and a challenge to formulate an acceptable set of principles that does not lead to paradox, is intuitively sound, and supports the inferences we usually make. Such a challenge cannot be met simply by a description of Pierre's situation that evades the question whether he believes that London is pretty. One aspect of the presentation may misleadingly suggest the applicability of FregeRussellian ideas that each speaker associates his own description or properties to each name. For as I just set up the case Pierre learned one set of facts about the so-called 'Londres' when he was in France, and another set of facts about 'London' in England. Thus it may appear that 'what's really going on' is that Pierre believes that the city satisfying one set of properties is pretty, while he believes that the city satisfying another set of properties is not pretty.

It is likely that 'Londres' is an evocation of an imaginary, highly picturesque, city depicted in French literature which does not coincide with the London accessible to its poorer immigrants.  

As we just emphasized, the phrase 'what's really going on' is a danger signal in discussions of the present paradox. The conditions stated may-let us concede for the moment- describe 'what's really going on'. But they do not resolve the problem with which we began, that of the behavior of names in belief contexts: Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London (not the city satisfying such-and-such description, but London) is pretty?

By Kripke's stipulation- no. Pierre finds the place ugly.  

No answer has yet been given. Nevertheless, these considerations may appear to indicate that descriptions, or associated properties, are highly relevant somehow to an ultimate solution, since at this stage it appears that the entire puzzle arises from the fact that Pierre originally associated different identifying properties with 'London' and 'Londres'.

Pierre is welcome to wax poetical about the difference between the Londres of which he had heard and an English city with a similar name. In Londres, Queen Guinevere rides naked through the streets while Sherlock Holmes and Oliver Twist look on appreciatively. In London, the porcine Boris Johnson bicycles around the place sweating profusely.   

Such a reaction may have some force even in the face of the now fairly well known arguments against 'identifying descriptions' as in any way 'defining', or even 'fixing the reference' of names.

They may do so well enough for some practical purpose. But that purpose is to reduce confusion rather than gas on about 'puzzles' which arise out of a simple, deeply silly, logical fallacy.  

But in fact the special features of the case, as I set it out, are misleading. The puzzle can arise even if Pierre associates exactly the same identifying properties with both names.

No puzzle arises if I associate anything and everything which has a French sounding name with the practice of leaping into the air seeking to bite the hindlegs of frogs.  Anyone can make absurd stipulations or hold crazy beliefs. 

First, the considerations mentioned above in connection with 'Cicero' and 'Tully' establish this fact. For example, Pierre may well learn, in France, 'Platon' as the name of a major Greek philosopher, and later, in England, learns 'Plato' with the same identification. Then the same puzzle can arise: Pierre may have believed, when he was in France and was monolingual in French, that Plato was bald (he would have said, "Platon ttait chauve"), and later conjecture, in English, "Plato was not bald," thus indicating that he believes or suspects that Plato was not bald.

We are welcome to believe in incompossible entities. Indeed, that is what Kripke does when he believes beliefs are propositional or, less absurdly, it is what I do when I fondly picture the banks of the Seine populated entirely by leaping Pierres and Macrons who eagerly bite off the hindlegs of frogs though, tragically, sometimes it is Toulouse-Lautrec who is their victim. Much of recent French history can only be understood in this context. 

He need only suppose that, in spite of the similarity of their names, the man he calls 'Platon' and the man he calls 'Plato' were two distinct major Greek philosophers.

He is welcome to say that English Platonism is different from French Platonism. Plato is a different Meinongian object from Platon who, in turn, is different from Aflatoon- who is something of a zany in Islamic literature. 

The point is not, of course, that codesignative proper names are interchangeable in belief contexts salva veritate,

Nothing is interchangeable, save for some rough and ready purpose, in the context of beliefs or preferences or anything which is epistemic, impredicative (which is the case if consistency is a desiderata) or otherwise subjective. Where there is no truth, truth can't be saved. 

or that they are interchangeable in simple contexts even salvas ignificatione.

They may be for some particular purpose in rough and ready fashion. 

The point is that the absurdities that disquotation

The disquotational principle is a philosophical principle which holds that a rational speaker will accept "p" (a statement, not a proposition)  if and only if they believe p. It is similar to a protocol bound juristic process where evidence you give must accord with what you sincerely believe is the case. The problem here is impredicativity. If there is such a principle or protocol in operation, it is in the speaker's interests to apply strategic considerations to what he or she will claim to believe.  In other words, Leibniz's law and modus pollens are defeated in advance. The safer course would be to say you only believe in the official ideology and any other information you may possess is stuff you are agnostic about. 

plus substitutivity would generate are exactly paralleled by absurdities generated by disquotation plus translation, or even 'disquotation alone' (or: disquotation plus homophonic translation).

No. There is the added problem of 'managing the news' such that you only have 'safe' beliefs and are agnostic about everything else. This is like 'taking the Fifth' or saying 'no comment' when interviewed by the police about an offense you have committed. 

Still, for some rough and ready purpose, we are welcome to do a bit of 'disquotation' and 'substitutivity'. But there may be a miscarriage of justice or scope for the ex falso quodlibet explosion of nonsense which arises from cascading intensional fallacies.  

Names are used to solve coordination and discoordination games. That is a matter of pragmatics, or economia- not logic or akreibia. Kripke's conclusion is foolish.

There is even less warrant at the present time, in the absence of a better understanding of the paradoxes of this paper,

there are none. A logical fallacy can't give rise to a paradox once the fallacy is named and shamed.  

for the use of alleged failures of substitutivity in belief contexts

they may be useful for some specific, rough and ready, purpose.  

to draw any significant theoretical conclusion about proper names.

Because such names solve coordination/discoordination problems. The relevant theory has to do with what may or may not be Schelling focal solutions at different times or for different people. This is a matter for Sociolinguistics.  

Hard cases make bad 1aw.

That which is not justiciable can't be a 'hard case' nor can it contribute to 'bad law'. True, a particular Bench may draw the borders of justiciability in a foolish manner. But that is bad jurisprudence just as what Kripke et al. have been doing is bad logic. Names are sociolinguistic. Beliefs and Preferences are epistemic and don't obey Leibniz's law. True, you can seize upon an intensional fallacy and use it to algorithmically write a nonsensical paper but why bother? Why not say that the French proclivity for leaping around devouring the hindlegs of frogs has seriously endangered the survival of rare breeds of Toulouse-Lautrecs? The true puzzle is why anyone might believe otherwise. 

Agnes Callard's nonsense about neutrality

In 1960, only 7.7 percent of the US population had a College degree. By 1970, 14 percent of school leavers went to College. Now the proportion of the US population above the age of 25 with a four year degree is about 36 percent. 

This has meant a great change in the epistemic status of the University. Sixty years ago, it was where you had to go to find smart people and to become smart yourself. Now it is a place where people who weren't smart enough to do well in the real world earn a little money as glorified child minders. More and more learning and skills acquisition will be done 'on-line' with generative AI. 

It is no longer the case that Campus protests can signal a shift in the public mood or a change in the world view of smart people. On the contrary, the thing is seen as puerile. 

Agnes Callard takes a different view. She writes in Point magazine- 

Beyond Neutrality

Higher Education is meant to have utility. It should not be neutral between stupid nonsense and what is useful and raises productivity.  

The university’s responsibility to lead

It has no such responsibility. To teach is not to lead. Aristotle taught Alexander. But only Alexander was a King and leader of men. 

Last year, two university presidents lost their jobs because, when testifying before Congress, they failed to project authority and moral seriousness to the general public; a third resigned this summer.

That was Baroness Minouche Shafik, who is Egyptian by birth.  She bravely stood up to the anti-Semitic bullies on her campus. She sent in the police to arrest 100 'activists' occupying a University building. 

This tells us something about what a university president is today.

It tells us that Baroness Shafik is a good leader. Her job was to ensure her students profited from their very expensive education at Columbia.  

Being judged a leader by those whom you are not employed to lead is, apparently, part of the job description

Obviously! If you led your team to defeat, everybody is welcome to judge you an abject failure.  

—especially at universities such as Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.

all of which receive federal funds. If they were wholly self-financing, they could do what they liked.  

Six months later, Lawrence D. Bobo, dean of Harvard’s Division of Social Science, called for the faculty to stop publicly criticizing the university—or else face sanction.

He was just as evil and tyrannical as my former boss- Ketan Patel- who requested that I stop telling the diners at the restaurant where I worked that all the dishes we served had been lovingly prepared. according in traditional Indian recipes, from fresh dog turds. Believe it or not, Ketan threatened to sack me! Fortunately, his father chanced to drop by and he pointed out that I had never been hired in the first place. He kicked me repeatedly till I left the premises.   

Harvard faculty recoiled at the prospect of having their freedom of expression curtailed, but Bobo’s demand for a united front—or at least the appearance of one—testifies to the political significance that Harvard has, and aims to continue to have

Nonsense! Harvard alumni may have 'political significance' iff they become as rich as fuck. Otherwise, we laugh at them.  

Campus protests, such as those that erupted across the country this year following Israel’s invasion of Gaza,

You can't invade your own sovereign territory. What America did in Iraq was an invasion.  

threaten the university’s desired self-presentation.

Nope. Harvard has a lot of money and the Law School and the Business School and Scientific Laboratories still attract the best and the brightest.  

When protesters bait the university into using violence against them, they are trying to expose it to the world as the opposite of the noble leader it purports to be: an ignorant, selfish brute.

Colleges teach. They don't lead. On the other hand it is true that if only Baroness Shafiq, back when she was running the LSE, had changed my degree certificate to affirm that rather than being 'lower second class',  I am, actually very smart and rich and handsome, then my life wouldn't suck ass big time.  

Even if the conflict is resolved without violence, the university is unlikely to come off well.

Who cares? All that matters is the quality of education it imparts and whether or not this raises the productivity and life chances of the students or, equally, if the Government gets a good return, in terms of higher tax receipts, from providing funds to Colleges.  

The president must either bow to the protesters’ demands, or refuse.

Or move on to greener pastures- as I imagine Baroness Shafik will do. It is noteworthy that big tech companies are cracking down on wokeness. Vivek Ramaswamy seems to have done well by focusing on its dangers. Under Trump, DEI is likely to die out. 

From an onlooker’s vantage point, the difference between a conciliatory act of restoring peace and a resolute act of enforcing discipline is small: either way, the president is tending to the people who are screaming, not the people they are screaming about.

Shafik should have beaten up Netanyahu.  

A university that is turned inward during a time of crisis will struggle to project leadership to the world outside it.

Nope. It will be judged by the employability of its students. Colleges have never been in the business of leadership. They are glorified child minders who may, at the margin, help some smart people get even smarter by working with other smart people in some utilitarian field. 

Protest exposes a tension between the university’s intellectual mission and its political ambitions.

Very true. Harvard's ambition is to annex Yale and turn it into a disabled toilet.  

I want to explain why this tension exists,

It doesn't. Some silly peeps thought they could get Biden to stop arming Israel. Now they are saddled with Trump who will back the 'settlers' in Israel to the hilt.  

to offer some constructive criticisms

she is incapable of any such thing 

of my own university’s attempts at negotiating it—

there is nothing to 'negotiate'. There was a nuisance but that nuisance will disappear of its own accord.  

both in general, and with respect to the recent protests in particular—and, finally, to make a suggestion as to how universities might rethink their position of leadership.

A particular University may take a leadership role in a particular branch of scientific research and this may have great economic benefits for the surrounding areas. That type of leadership will find local backers and is likely to attract generous funding. Any other type of leadership is useless.  

Universities were born prematurely.

No. They were born when smart peeps had to club together for mutual protection and to ensure that drunken hooligans didn't wipe their arses on the leaves of precious manuscripts.  

Let me explain what I mean by this. A university is a place devoted to the problem of how to make serious use of free time.

That may be true of a gymnasium or an Arts & Crafts studio or a Church Choir. Universities should be devoted to education and research of a useful type.  

This problem only arises once your other problems—of how to stay alive, and support the people around you—have been solved.

No. Universities can exist if that problem is solved by running and hiding and then stowing away on a ship till you get to a place where scholars can keep themselves alive and protect their manuscripts from drunken hooligans.  

In a university, we ask, “What pursuits would we see as worthy of sustained effort in a world of justice, peace and plenty?”;

No we don't. Plato got his students to study math. Aristotle took an interest in biology. Universities said 'if you come to us, you will be expected to pursue a particular course of studies. Kindly don't knife your professor or wipe your arse on the books in the library.' 

Perhaps Callard is thinking of the Church. If this world was perfect, we might want to focus on making sure we'd get to Heaven unless God decides to abolish death. But he shows no sign of doing so any time soon. 

our answers are “math”

which is useful 

and “philosophy”

which is useless but funny because the shitty people who do it don't know how utterly stupid they really are 

and “anthropology”

Fuck off! There may have been a time when the anthropology dept. had the best drugs, but, by the Eighties, it was Finance majors who had quality cocaine.  

and so on. But we do not yet inhabit a world of justice, peace and plenty.

In which case, Callard asked a stupid question.  

Forced to find a place for itself in a world unfriendly to sheltered gardens,

The world is cool with 'sheltered gardens' provided they are self-financing.  

the university employs police, hedge-fund managers, construction companies, a fundraising office and PR teams.

Because they are less shite than Philosophy Professors.  

It is ever selling itself to prospective students and their parents as a vehicle for success, ever competing for status with other universities and other institutions, ever struggling to placate its many constituencies—not only students and faculty but also its board of trustees, its present and future donors, the media, the government.

It may do. But then again it may not. Look at Rockefeller University. There are 22 Nobel laureates associated with it. It doesn't have to 'placate' anybody. Its achievements speak for themselves. At one time, back in the early Seventies, it made the mistake of hiring some philosophers. But they wouldn't talk to each other, let alone anyone else. So it got rid of them and has never looked back.  

Does it tell all these people that it is a leisured garden? No. Does it confess: We’re just selfishly trying to keep our financial heads above water in a competitive world of scarce resources? Also no. The image the university has chosen for itself is that of moral leader.

People only bother with their image when the reality is very different. I only started to wear a blonde wig and push-up bra after I turned sixty. 

It presents itself as a force for positive change, a beacon of useful innovation, a bastion of social responsibility, a bulwark of democracy, a meritocratic temple to equality and freedom and justice.

Why stop there? Why not say 'it presents itself as the son of Kal-El who was born under the Red Sun of Krytpon and who is dedicated to Truth, Justice & the American Way?'  

The homepage of my university advertises both its “community impact” and “global impact,” and claims “we advance ideas and humanity.”

I suppose it could claim that it provides 'care in the community' to Agnes Callard. 

The university could respond to protesters

Why respond? Rockefeller does not admit stupid students who are bound to end up protesting that Biden isn't undergoing gender reassignment surgery even though he promised Kamala he would do so.  

by declaring, “This has nothing to do with us, we’re just an ivory tower.” Or it could put on its worldly hat and admit, “Taking sides does not maximize the value of our investments.”

Universities want to expand their bureaucracies. I suppose they could offer rape counselling to students who have begun to feel unsafe because Biden hasn't chopped off his own dick.  

Instead it reacts in a spirit of self-righteousness, waving some competing moral slogan. The University of Chicago, which has for the past decade been rebranding itself as the free-speech university, waves the flag of academic freedom and institutional neutrality.

But it does so in Chicago. It is only if it moves somewhere decent people live that we'd get upset.   

After forcibly removing the encampment, UChicago’s president, Paul Alivisatos,

a brilliant chemist. 

wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explaining his action: the protesters wanted him to side against Israel, but he believed that doing so would inhibit the freedom of its students and faculty to declare themselves on the opposite side.

This is irrelevant. The test was whether the encampment 'blocked the learning or expression of others or substantially disrupted the functioning or safety of the university'. This is a justiciable matter. Did Alivisatos act intra vires in making that determination? Prima facie, yes. Suppose he decided to urinate on Callard because he believed that not doing so would inhibit the freedom of students and faculty. His action would have been ultra vires. There is no provision in law which permits the President of a University to piss upon professors. Removing an encampment from College property, however, is a legal course of action. 

And yet he did not worry that by declaring the university on the side of institutional neutrality, he would be inhibiting the freedom

My being on one side does not inhibit anybody's freedom to be on another side. It would be foolish to worry that this could be the case.  

of those in the university community who wish to call that principle into question

which they could do without 'blocking the learning or expression of others'.  

—a group that includes, presumably, all of the protesters.

What worried or did not worry him was not germane. Was his action intra vires? Yes. What should be worrying Callard is that she may be inhibiting all and sundry from urinating on her head. 

As my colleague, the philosopher Anton Ford, has noted, UChicago’s rebrand as the free-speech university was a top-down operation,

Chicago University had convened a Committee on Freedom of Expression. The aim was to get rid of 'trigger warnings' and 'cancel culture'. 

not the product of consultation with students or faculty.

More worryingly, it was not the product of everybody pissing on Professor Callard's head. 

The question then is: Why say anything at all?

Because you are stupid and unedumicated peeps like me like laughing at whatever you say.  

If the university believes its public position-taking inhibits my freedom,

It doesn't. It would be a different matter if it publicly pissed on Callard's head.  

why take any positions?

Why not push back against 'trigger warnings' and 'cancel culture'? Look at Vivek Ramaswamy. He has done very well politically out of his 'anti-woke' screed. History is on his side.  

The answer is that the university is not in the business of maximizing my freedom,

It is in the business of strictly limiting your freedom. You can't beat or sodomize your students. Instead you have to pretend to teach them and to grade their worthless papers.  

it is in the position of maximizing my freedom consistent with presenting itself as a moral leader.

No. It really doesn't give a fuck about you. It charges your students a lot of money and pays you a pittance. Even the University President does not turn up at your house to piss on your head.  

It is willing to impose costs on my freedom of expression in order to present itself as something other than a moneymaking leisure garden.

Not the Chemistry Dept. Callard, sadly, only gets to teach retards.  

It is hard to know how many people really accept the university as a moral leader.

None do. Universities may teach well and some may also do good research. What matters is if this adds value of an utilitarian kind.  

Even those who donate on the strength of the free-speech branding might do so for strategic reasons—for instance, because they interpret such support, in the current climate, as a coded way of attacking the far left.

Woke nutters.  

It is the idealistic protesters who reveal themselves as true believers:

in Hitlerism. Why did that lazy fellow not kill off the other half of the Jewish people? Too busy diddling Eva Braun- innit?  

their furious demand to be heard—assembling on campus and protesting in front of the administration building, rather than at the dentist’s office, or at the headquarters of Amazon, or at a government building—is a direct acknowledgment of the administration’s claim to moral and intellectual leadership.

No. It is a direct acknowledgement that some University Departments are shit. Students have no incentive to attend classes which make them stupider and more useless.  

Their behavior telegraphs an accusation: “If you were who you claimed to be, you would listen to us.”

Why would one of the world's leading chemists want to listen to ignorant nutters?

Elite universities have been the site of the largest protests.

If they have useless non-STEM departments or recruit 'diverse' nutters.  

This fact has been levied scornfully against the protesters, as if it proved the illegitimacy of their cause.

They prove their own cowardice and stupidity. What they are engaging in is make-believe too fucking retarded to rise to the level of theatre.  

But really all it proves is that the leading universities are also the ones that make the greatest claims to lead the world.

No. There is no evidence that 'leading universities' make the 'greatest claims to lead the world.' This is because even my own Institute of Socioproctology claims to lead not just the world but also the Multiverse into a brothel where Being fists Nothingness while having sex with a donkey. No. It isn't a Pakistani donkey. Apparently, the Pakistanis sell all their donkeys to the Chinese.  

The university is far from the only institution with moral pretensions. It has no monopoly on weakly substantiated claims to leadership. There is an intense pressure on anyone with any power—no matter how local—to engage in moralistic foot stomping: when you’re classified among the “elite,” the world demands showy displays of the moral knowledge you don’t have,

Which is what Callard has specialized in. To think, she might have qualified as a CPA and done something useful with her life! 

and when those world elites are divided among themselves, the demand becomes a requirement to pick a side.

No. There is a demand that Universities curb the nuisance posed by woke nutters on Campus. I suppose federal funding will play a role in which side gets picked.  

One strategy for retaining a claim to leadership while holding oneself above the fray is to stomp one’s feet on more abstract ground.

Nonsense! A claim to leadership depends on having followers. No followers means no fucking leadership for you, mate.  

The president of the University of Chicago justifies

getting rid of a nuisance by explaining that he had a legal right to do so 

withdrawing from one war by claiming that he is busy fighting another, namely, the war to “uphold the university’s principles and resist the forces tearing at the fabric of higher education.”

We believe him because even if woke nutters exist in the Chemistry department, their work product still passes muster.  

It is not clear, to me, what forces and principles he is talking about.

Because you are stupid. Everyone else knows he is talking about woke nutters and anti-Semitic gobshites.  

The university’s neutrality, for instance, seems more selective than principled: American universities took far less care to avoid siding with Ukraine against Russia than with the Palestinians against Israel.

Americans spent trillions of dollars killing Muslims. True, we lost the war on Terror and so we wouldn't mind seeing Israel suffer a little. Still, America can't afford to desert Israel. Those fuckers will just start trading with other countries and developing newer, cheaper, more deadly platforms. Some Israelis advocate breaking with America on economic and military grounds.  

When I think about what could possibly ground any university’s claim to moral leadership—

the answer is religion. Many universities started off as theological seminaries. A Catholic Professor of Theology at a Catholic University may be accorded 'moral leadership' by the Prelates of his Church.  

where its supposed moral wisdom might lie—I don’t find the answer in any one of its divisions, departments or programs.

Universities may have a Department of Ethics and Moral Philosophy. Sadly, its denizens are all sociopathic cretins. 

Why would a community of mathematicians and historians and literature professors add up to something morally special, by contrast with a community with fewer Ph.D.s?

They may have done so in the past when only a very small percentage of the population were sufficiently literate to understand much about the world and its place in the Universe.  

Though each of its professors can claim expertise in the discipline she practices, and the people it pays to manage its financial assets or construct its buildings are presumably experts at those things, none of that translates into moral expertise.

Which is why we should defund Departments of Ethics & Moral Philosophy.  

If we are to take pride in the wisdom of the university

Why do so? Universities aren't wise though they may be useful. They may catalyse economic development in a region. In that case we may want to subsidize them.  

as a whole, that can only be because an intellectual community fosters a morally distinctive kind of interaction.

One where you learn to drink like a gentleman. Sadly, that sort of thing can end with everybody bumming each other. 

I propose instead: a university is special to the extent that it is a place where teaching and learning replace fighting and grandstanding.

Every place of employment that I know off bears that description- save perhaps the pro-Wrestling stadium.  

Outside the university, elite moralists are given to insisting that this or that must be done,

They also do so within the university. The problem is that, unless they are as rich as fuck, they aren't elite at all.  

because claims to certainty serve as a signaling device:

No. Credentials are a signalling device. My claim to have attended Pope Skool which is why I have achieved infallibility don't signal shit. I blame my Mum for throwing away my Diploma signed by His Holiness, St. Peter.  

“I know what we should do” means “I deserve to be counted among the leading lights.”

More particularly if your suggestion is that everybody should piss on Callard's head.  

Here at the university, we usually try to use the word “know” more literally.

Callard used it Biblically when it came to one of her students 

Knowledge entails proof,

No. There was some idea that 'knowledge was justified true belief' but it was fallacious. On the other hand, some types of knowledge may be protocol bound in some manner while remaining defeasible and inaccessible to proof or disproof.  

which is to say, being able to demonstrate and teach what you claim to know.

Nonsense! I know English. I can't teach it. Indeed, I can't even demonstrate it when I get very drunk.  

If you are stuck fighting people you disagree with, that shows that neither of you has knowledge

Nonsense! I know that my watch is mine. You disagree and try to snatch it from me. I kick you in the bollocks. You punch me in the nose. The police turn up. I am able to show that I own the watch because I have the receipt. The other guy is arrested and carted off to jail.  

—at least in the context of an intellectual community, where there is no need to fight, because the ignorant are willing to learn, and the knowers are willing to teach.

Callard says 'if you are stuck fighting where there is no need to fight' you lack knowledge. This is not the case. You may like fighting. So may the other guy. This is 'common knowledge' and so you fight each other. 

Sadly, those willing to teach Callard's worthless subjects don't know shit. Still, they can always make ignorant students stupider and more ignorant.  

The protesters believe that they are entitled, by the justice of their cause, to ignore and disrupt the university’s normal pursuit of its mission.

They think they will get away with doing so. Indeed, they may be rewarded. But, their calculations may be wrong.  

The university believes it is entitled, by its own principles, to resist this disruption.

No. It knows the law is on its side.  

Each side uses force to get what it wants, and the details of these disruptions—exactly how much force is permitted, by which party, and when—are hotly disputed by the media as well as on campus.

By useless shitheads. Still, it beats joining Hamas and getting your head blown off by an Israeli soldier.  

And yet the real scandal lies in all the ways in which this disgracefully anti-intellectual debacle gets normalized and gilded.

Guys who make discoveries in Chemistry have an actual intellect. Callard has shit for brains. You can't gild shit.  

When we use force to manage our disagreements,

Which no University President has done. They have used the law which has an immunity for using reasonable force. This is a justiciable matter.  

we are admitting that this place is nowhere special,

just as we admit our bodies are not special if we call the police to stop a rapist from beating and sodomizing us.  

that the ethos of the classroom cannot be the ethos of the university as a whole.

Because what really matters is being done in laboratories or by dudes writing equations.  

There is no deeper insult to an intellectual community than

shitting on each and every one of them. If this is happening to a Professor near you, you can ask him for yourself.  

the suggestion that, when its conversations drift onto a topic that really matters—when, as the saying goes, “push comes to shove”—they have to stop talking and start pushing and shoving.

Also, you have to stop talking when you are being beaten, sodomized and then  everybody takes turns shitting on your tits. I am not saying that's what happened to me when I taught R.E for Common Entrance. Still, my memory of that period in my life is rather hazy because parents kept giving me bottles of Scotch Whiskey under the impression that I could get their kids into Eton. The odd thing was several of the tykes did get into Eton. I was under the impression that I was teaching at a Girls Prep School. 

Alivisatos wrote of his conversation with the protesters, “As the depth of this philosophical difference became clearer, I decided to end the dialogue.”

Which he was entitled to do. The Kalven Report upheld ' the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues'. It didn't say that such discussion should be interminable. Alivisatos ended his participation in the dialogue and took such action as he considered right. This is a justiciable matter. If he acted ultra vires, the proper remedy is legal action against him. 

As a philosopher, I find this statement hard to understand:

because you are stupid.  

if the ethos of the classroom were the ethos of the university, philosophical conversation would be the only way to resolve a philosophical difference.

Not if it was interminable. Anyway, philosophical differences are resolved when currently 'open' questions in STEM subjects get closed by an empirical finding or superior Structural Causal Model. But those same philosophical differences- e.g. between Platonists and Pragmatists- may reappear in a different guise.  

The real dialogue is the one that begins when you reach a deep philosophical difference, and the university is precisely the place for such dialogues.

Only the philosophy department. But it turned to shit because the subject became adversely selective of imbecility.  

What could possibly be so important as to justify cutting one off?

Getting on with useful work- something Alivisatos, not Callard, has devoted his life to.  

I can think of only one candidate: the dialogue itself.

Not anything useful then.  

Sometimes the best way to pursue a disagreement is to postpone it.

At other times the best way to postpone it is to pursue it and piss on its head.  

Even Socrates was prepared to walk away from conversations, if they seemed to be devolving into insults or long speeches—but he made it clear that he was walking away for the sake of conversation itself, so as to find a better way to pursue it in the future.

He talked his way into a death sentence. Go thou and do likewise. 

Alivisatos could have had the same attitude—regretful postponement—

if he taught useless shite 

in relation to his philosophical disagreement with the protesters over the question of institutional neutrality. Instead, he stomped his feet: “there is no way I would ever compromise on institutional neutrality.”

Because I'm a smart guy doing cutting edge research. What do you want? China to overtake us? What happens when the next 'gain of function' virus is released? They will have us over a barrel if they get to the vaccine first.  

Why not? The only argument Alivisatos gives for his position is that “if the university did so [i.e. engaged in advocacy] as an institution, it would no longer be much of a university.”

It would be full of woke nutters who would ban scientific research because Science is totes patriarchal. Did you know many scientists have dicks? Dicks cause RAPE! Ban them immediately.  

I imagine that the protesters might be willing to bite this bullet: Then let the university stop being a university! Let it become something better instead! What is Alivisatos’s next move?

Defund non-STEM Departments or just use them as cash-cows. Keep the smelly woke nutters as far away as possible from the Labs and the Medical School. 

I am happy to defer to Alivisatos’s judgment that his conversation with the protesters had stalled, and that the time had come to enforce the rules of the university;

You are lying. You aren't happy at all.  

I would have been equally ready to defer to the judgment that he ought to try to accommodate some of the protesters’ demands.

By invading Israel and assassinating Netanyahu.  

I am not a university president, and unlike many commentators on the protests, I do not moonlight as one either.

Callard is very bitter at her fate. Everybody else is a university president except me. Is it because I don't have a dick? Alivisatos has a dick. That's why he gets to be Pres. Fuck you Alivisatos! Fuck you very much! 

But I am a philosopher, and when it comes to the “deep philosophical difference” that, by his own description, divides Alivisatos from the protesters, I believe that he was mistaken.

Chemists shouldn't claim to know about 'philosophical differences'. They are taking the food out of our mouths! 

He characterized neutrality as the “foundational value” of the university, but neutrality is not a value at all.

Yes it is. So is partisanship.  

Neutrality may be an improvement over capitulating to the pressure to make moral proclamations in the absence of the corresponding moral knowledge, but that is a low bar.

It is nonsense. A neutral ceases to be neutral the moment it 'capitulates'.  

Neutrality describes how you act when you are ignorant on a matter that you, as a leader, really ought to have knowledge about,

Nope. That is ignorance, not neutrality. Suppose the President of Switzerland had been asked by Churchill whether his country was neutral or whether it supported the Axis. If he answered, 'fuck you on about, Churchy? What is an Axis? Who is this Hitler bloke you keep mentioning. What is 'I-taly'? Is it something you eat?' In this case, Churchill would have been bound to report to the British Parliament that Switzerland was not a neutral power. It was too fucking ignorant and stupid to be anything at all. 

and you acknowledge this rather than pretending otherwise.

Why won't Alivisatos admit that he is stooooopid and that 'Nanomaterials' are a con? All these so called 'Scientists' just make up words like 'quantum gravity' and pretend to be smart.  

Neutrality is not acceptable as a response to injustice, except temporarily.

No. It is perfectly acceptable. The Swiss president was welcome to say 'I think Hitler is a maniac. What he is doing is unjust. But my country will remain neutral.'  

We remain neutral when we do not know what to do,

No. We may be engaged on one side or the other of a War without knowing what to do. Indeed, this was the position of Britain and France during the 'phoney war'. Neither had an offensive military doctrine and France paid the price.   

and while we work out how to become the people who do.

Britain did not not how to fight a total war in 1914 but it soon got the hang of things. What was surprising was that it was less prepared in 1939. Still, this did not prevent the Brits from prevailing in both Wars.  

I would classify neutrality in the way that Aristotle classifies shame: the half-virtue of the learner.

This woman is a stranger to shame. Switzerland has been neutral for many centuries now. Its people need feel no shame. They gave the world the Red Cross. 

It makes no more sense to pride oneself on being neutral than to pride oneself on feeling ashamed.

Unless you are Swiss. Also, one is perfectly entitled to feel shame, as I do, for not having proved the Reimann hypothesis because I was too busy making love to super-models. No. None of those super-models were male. Also they didn't say 'is it in yet?'  

One day, I hope to see a confrontation between a university that understands that its neutrality is meant to be broken,

and that it should declare war on Israel after raping and decapitating all the Jewish students and faculty members 

that it is neutral so that it can listen,

Nonsense! The Swiss don't have to listen to stupid shitheads.  

and protesters who understand that the way forward lies in the education of their opponents,

We should teach Netanyahu about the evils of Patriarchy. He will order all Israeli men to get gender reassignment surgery. Hamas will laugh its collective head off.  

and that no one can be educated by coercion.

Everybody- when young- can be educated pretty well by coercion. Even at my advanced age, I can be taught, by gentle admonition and the use of an electric cattle prod, not to pee in the sink. 

I have focused so many of my criticisms on my own university administration because it seems to me to have a grasp—however twisted and deformed—of the one form of leadership that would not undermine its intellectual mission.

Its President is a first class scientist. In a world ruled by Musk and Ramaswamy, that means more federal funding for Chicago's STEM subject research.  

“Neutrality” is a bad way of getting at a good idea, which is that the university leads by learning.

No. It leads by teaching and researching useful stuff which enables the entire region to move up the value chain.  

If the university must be a leader, let it pioneer inquisitive leadership

Very true. Kittens are very inquisitive. We should put them in charge of Universities.  

Inquisitive leadership is the kind of leadership a teacher practices in a classroom,

if saddled with teaching drooling retards.  

and also the kind of leadership a student practices, in the same classroom, when she raises her voice to ask or answer a question.

a stupid question if it is asked in Callard's class room.  

In that context, you might argue for a side, but you don’t “take a side,” in the sense of “standing up for” your “principles” or avowing any “commitments” or “fighting” any “forces.”

No. A philosopher who talks about 'neutrality' is bound to mention Kuhn's 'no neutral algorithm' or Watanabe's 'ugly duckling' theorem. There will always be some bias. In the case of Chicago, what has been clarified is that 'neutrality' means telling woke nutters and crazy anti-Semites to fuck the fuck off. That's a good outcome. 

All of these modes of speech proclaim some matter settled when there are people out there who disagree.

A mode of speech which isn't a proclamation doesn't proclaim shit. As for proclamations, if they are backed up by sanctions, then 'those who disagree' may find themselves in hot water.  

Inquisitive people are alert to the danger of overclaiming knowledge,

No. Such people may be like kittens. What they are alert to is the danger of being bitten by a dog or suffering some other such hazard.  

and inquisitive contexts are precisely those in which there is no need to do so

No. There is a need to have a hypothesis which may well 'overclaim' knowledge and then to see how that hypothesis stacks up with the evidence or whether it is consistent with other hypotheses we currently find useful. Physicists and Mathematicians are very inquisitive. They are aware that what they currently work with is probably too sweeping. It is an 'over-claim'. It will have to be modified as more becomes known.  

—neither for the teacher, nor for the student. Declaring yourself ready to fight on a given side is how you project leadership outside the classroom,

No. That isn't enough. I declare my willingness to fight the baby. But I have no followers. Everybody just ignores me. That's why I resigned from the Institute of Socioproctology's 'Fight Club'. Also, baby beat me up very badly while chortling with delight. Neither his Mother nor the Secretary General of the United Nations lifted a finger to help me.  

but inside the classroom leadership works differently: we don’t need to fight, because all of us are ready both to teach and learn.

Inside any classroom where useful knowledge or skills are imparted, the teacher takes a leadership role in deciding what is taught, when it is taught and how it is taught. Sometimes if the kids are really bright, you can delegate some of these functions. It's what I used to do when I taught R.E for Common Entrance. Apparently there's this book called 'the Holey Bibble'. I would ask the kids to tell me what it was trying to get at. True, I'd fall asleep quite soon but the kids appreciated the chance to look stuff up in Strong's Concordance.  I suppose that's why so many of them got into Eton and Winchester. 

Even inside a university, one cannot assume that everyone is willing to be inquisitive about every topic all of the time—much less so outside it. But where we are not willing to be inquisitive, we have no right to lead.

Leaders provide Schelling focal solutions to coordination and discoordination games and thus play an important role in promoting better correlated equilibria, more particularly where there are collective action problems. A leader may keep a couple of 'inquisitive' guys around to do 'discovery'. But leadership isn't about being inquisitive or talking and listening to endless bollocks. It is about getting and retaining followers by providing a useful service. Universities can certainly do this and in so doing they can help the communities they are embedded in become more productive and to rise higher in the value chain. The German and the American University- including humble 'land grant' Public Universities- played a great role in raising productivity. True, the German Universities, at a certain period, turned into hotbeds of partisan politics. But the Americans were always more sensible. People of immigrant background- guys like Musk or Ramaswamy- want American Universities to go back to being engines of economic growth. There is no point pretending campus protests today bear any resemblance to the anti-Vietnam War protests of the late Sixties. There is also no point pretending Philosophy didn't turn to shit by about 1970. Even smart dudes like Hilary Putnam and David Lewis lost the plot thereafter. 

What is important for the future of Higher Education is that people like me are screened out by the age of 17 and sent off to some sort of vocational college. Once we start earning money, we will have a sense of self-worth. The urge to shit higher than one's arsehole will disappear. 

Mukul Kesavan on Narendra Mussolini

A few months after the BJP lost its majority in the Central Parliament, with the result that Modi now heads an ideologically and regionally diverse coalition, the always idiotic Mukul Kesavan wrote in the Guardian. 

India is witnessing the slow-motion rise of fascism

Sonia Gandhi's father was a member of Mussolini's Fascist party. Is he slowly rising from the dead to take over India as its Il Duce?  

Whenever mainstream politicians

like Nehru who presided over so extensive an ethnic cleansing of Muslims that their share of the population plummeted from one third to just five percent. Nehru also passed a law preventing Muslims who had fled across the border in panic from returning to claim their property. 

It is a sad, but ineluctable truth, that the British Raj was good at protecting 'minorities'. Indeed, the Brits were the tiniest minority of all in India. Nationalism, in India and elsewhere, created 'majoritarianism' from which some minorities had to flee. This was true whether the new Nationalist regime was left-wing or right-wing or a Dictatorship or a Democracy. 

begin to mutter about infiltrators,

Nehru was wrong to send troops to Kashmir Valley to defend it from Pakistani infiltrators. Lal Bahadur Shastri too was a Fascist of this description. On the other hand, Eisenhower, who presided over 'operation wetback' which expelled supposed Mexicans, wasn't a Fascist at all. 

fifth columnists

In a speech to the House of Commons , in June, 1940, Winston Churchill reassured MPs that "Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand." This proves he was a Fascist. Kesavan, is an Indian historian- i.e. as ignorant as shit. He doesn't get that 'fifth column' meant 'Nazi sympathizers' or potential collaborators within a country- e.g. Vichy France or Quisling in Norway. 

and failed assimilation,

assimilation is bad. Muslims in Britain must have their own Sharia law.  

that smell of sulphur is fascism in the air

Biden is a Fascist. 40,000 'illegal migrants' are currently detained in the US.  

The problem with “fascism” as a description of any modern political tendency is that

only crazy people use the word.  

the term is a weapon of mass destruction that flattens the landscapes that it wants to describe.

Words used by Kesavan and his ilk matter less than a fart. It is not the case that the Earth shakes every time Kesavan breaks wind. 

Fascism is so freighted with historically specific meaning that using it for other times and places can seem sloppy and excessive.

Kesavan is as sloppy as shit.  

And yet, juxtaposing the politics of contemporary south Asia with fascism, in its Nazi variant, serves a double purpose:

it shows you are stupid and that you have shit for brains. 

it connects modern Indian majoritarianism with one of its ideological ancestors

Modern Indian majoritarianism dates back to the foundation of the Indian National Congress. Hindus opposed the partition of Bengal because they thought they could rule the roost over the entire province. Gandhi's consistent demand was that the Brits hand over all power, most particularly control of the Army, to the INC which he himself said was a Hindu party. Fascism only arose on the Continent because there was a clear and present Communist threat. Nothing of the sort existed in India- save in West Bengal where, ultimately, Mamta triumphed. Her goons beat the shit out of the Commies and chased them out of the political arena. But that doesn't make Mamta a Fascist. It just makes her a courageous Bengalis woman who won't let herself be intimidated by anyone.  She only broke with the INC when the latter allied with the CPM. 

and it helps us name and identify the ideological kernel of fascism

which is a one party State devoted to 'Corporatism' rather than representative democracy. No such thing can exist in India because the country is too diverse and the Army is too narrowly recruited. You can't have Fascism without the backing of the military. Sheikh Hasina had to flee Bangladesh when her Army Chief told her the soldiers would not shoot her opponents.  

that survived to fight another day.

Fascist parties were welcome to change their names and fight elections in post-War Europe. Meloni could be said to lead a party descended from that of Mussolini. 

India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is the political arm of a Hindu militia,

Militias have guns. The RSS may have sticks. It does not have guns.  

the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925,

by Dr. Hegdewar who had helped his old College Pal, Dr. Hardikar, set up the Congress Seva Dal in 1923/24. Nehru was its first president. The Raj banned this organization. The RSS was an 'overground' proxy- but a weak and provincial sister- for the Seva Dal. It was supposed to be non-political. But it soon came into conflict with the Hindu Mahasabha and thus chose to support Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee when he broke with the latter. This was after Independence. The new party was the 'Jan Sangh' which joined forces in the Sixties with popular Socialist leaders like Lohia and J.P. Narayan. Thanks to the excesses committed during Indira Gandhi's Emergency. The 'Janata Morcha' was able to come to power in 1977. Sadly, it was useless and fell apart on the 'dual membership' issue (i.e. RSS membership). But the Jan Sangh turned out to be the least useless of the components of the Janata coalition and, by the end of the Nineties, was able to lead a governing coalition which didn't do too badly. Still, the hope was that young Rahul's return to India would mean new blood and new ideas to enable India to rise rapidly. Sadly, Rahul was a gun-shy cretin and so, in 2014, there was a choice between Modi and Nobody. In 2019, the choice was between Modi and a moon-calf. However, once Congress appointed Kharge as its President, it could do a deal with other parties and prevent Modi getting a majority. It remains to be seen whether Modi completes his term. My guess is that the BJP will want elections by 2027- assuming the Census is delayed and seat redistribution is completed by then. 

around the time Adolf Hitler began to find his political bearings in a routed, angry Germany.

Mussolini was firmly in the saddle by then. He took an interest in India and charmed the pants of people like Tagore, Gandhi and Iqbal. However, the RSS- though influenced by the Bengali Jugantar- was rooted in Maharashtrian history. It neither knew nor greatly cared about Italy or Germany. By contrast it was the Congress Premier of U.P,  who described Gandhi as the 'Fuhrer and Il Duce of India'.  

The RSS is a nationalist militia

Nope. It is a voluntary organization similar to the Boy Scouts. Militias have guns.  

that defines India as a Hindu nation; only Hindus can be members.

Nope. It defines India as historically Hindu just as Britain is historically British. People who live in Britain need to respect its culture, traditions, and institutions. But this is to their own advantage. Rishi Sunak didn't get into Number 10 by singing Punjabi kirtans. Still, I have no doubt, that he kept some nice poppadoms in his pocket which he would feed to greedy BoJo.  

While there are many similarities between the RSS and the fascist paramilitary organisations of the prewar decades,

There are none. The RSS was a weak and provincial sister of the Seva dal. It was the latter which conducted pogroms- e.g. the anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi in 1984. The problem with the Seva Dal is that its members were seen as corrupt sociopaths. RSS cadres were considered a bit provincial and lower middle class, but they were decent, trustworthy, folk. If you said 'my son is a member of the Youth Congress'- the assumption was that he was a rapist and a pimp. If you said 'my son goes to the RSS shaka'- the chap was a boring fellow who, however, managed a saree shop to which you could safely send your wife or daughter.  

from uniformed drills

The Seva Dal had drills. At one time, under Sanjay Gandhi, it was a ticket to the top table. But it was corrupt and self-serving. Also the Sikhs might kill you if you were associated with people like Jagdish Tytler. Rahul did try to revive the Seva Dal. Perhaps, something came of it. The problem is the Dynasty is suspicious of alternative power centres. 

and distinctive salutes to a persistent anxiety about masculinity,

Rahul keeps growing out his beard. What is he so anxious about?  

at the core of both is a feral ethnic nationalism

Hindus are feral. Mukul's parents must be so proud!  

that aims to mobilise a racial or religious majority against an allegedly encroaching minority.

Muslims were once a minority in Pakistan and Bangladesh.  

We have become familiar with violence and discrimination directed at minority religious groups in India, particularly Muslims, through this last decade of majoritarian rule.

No. Our parents became familiar with it when Chacha Nehru ruled the roost. The Custodian of Evacuee (later 'Enemy') property harassed plenty of Muslims till they ran away across the border. 

Lynchings connected to the cattle trade,

in States where Congress brought in draconian anti-beef laws 

riots,

Nehru presided over the biggest riots though Rajiv did try to compete with his grandfather in that respect.  

the bulldozing of Muslim homes,

The allegation is that they are disproportionately affected. But so are the houses of Hindu gangsters- e.g. Vikas Dubey. Nobody sheds a tear for those who prey upon their own.  

the criminalisation of love between Hindu women and Muslim men via the bogey of “love jihad”,

As opposed to the complete ban, enforceable by law, on Muslim women marrying non-Muslims in Islamic states where Sharia law prevails.  

Kesavan, being South Indian, must know it was Kerala's Catholic Bishops who first raised this issue in 2009. 

have been features of Narendra Modi’s tenure as prime minister.

Modi runs the central government. State governments are responsible for such things as cow-protection, bulldozing illegal constructions or those that belong to notorious gangsters. The Home Ministry of each state decides whether or not cases should be registered against people who enter marriages of any type- inter-faith or otherwise- where the parents allege improper influence or abduction etc.  

But the German inspiration for the BJP’s short way with minorities goes back to the 1930s.

But the Germans were inspired by Jim Crow America. Kesavan is a kretin. He doesn't get that it was Western Europe, not Central Europe, which did genocide against indigenous people in America, Australia etc. The French thought they could do something similar in Algeria.  

In March 1939, the RSS’s principal ideologue, MS Golwalkar published We, Or Our Nationhood Defined, laying out his organisation’s blueprint for a Hindu nation. This is the relevant passage: “German national pride has now become the topic of the day.

Just the previous year, Govind Vallabh Pant had called Gandhi the 'Fuhrer and Il Duce' of India.  

To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”

But it was under Nehru that this lesson was taught to Muslims in non-Muslim majority areas. As I said, the RSS was merely a weak, provincial, sister of the mighty Congress and its Seva Dal. When Nehru amended the constitution, against Shyama Prasad's protests, Frank Moraes gave tongue to the mood of the house. If India has to have a dictator, let it be Nehru. What no one then foresaw was that this would entail dynastic rule.  

The BJP has taken this lesson to heart. Its local leaders and cadres refer to Muslims obliquely and directly as termites,

while Kesavan and his ilk rave about Nazis. Did you know Angela Merkel said to Modi 'boo to you! You are a big meanieQ' and he replied ' Frau Merkel, die Sittlichkeit der Gellassenheit des Neoliberalismus macht mich sehr gemein.' She said, 'OMG! You aren't a Hindu at all. Just you are putting some boot-polish on your face. You are actually Martin Heidegger! I will tell Obama. He will scold you like anything.' 

the status of medieval mosques is called into question,

before courts of law. That is how property disputes are usually resolved.  

and the BJP has made a concerted attempt to marginalize Muslims and make them politically irrelevant:

Nehru accomplished this long ago.  

among the hundreds of elected BJP legislators in state assemblies and parliament, there are no Muslims.

More worryingly, none of them are cats. Chairman Miaow is very upset about this.  

The assault on Muslim livelihood through restrictions on the cattle trade,

Cow protection is a directive principle in Nehru's constitution. Congress administrations imposed draconian laws in this respect in some States.  

the official stigmatization of the hijab in public institutions,

Worse yet, GoI is not permitting Talibanis to come and put a bullet in the brains of Muslim girls who are so lost to shame that they attend Schools or Colleges.  

and the attempt to smuggle in a religious test for citizenship through the back door of the Citizenship Amendment Act,

That religious test was brought in by Nehru. Muslim, who had fled, weren't allowed back. Non-Muslims who fled were given a route to citizenship though, in many cases, this remained a dead letter.

What Kesavan is not saying is that where India gave asylum to Muslims accused of apostacy, Indian Muslims responded by putting a price on their heads.  

represent a systematic attempt to unsettle Muslims and destabilize their status as equal citizens.

They were deprived of this by Nehru and Ambedkar. Did you know Dalit Muslims got affirmative action under the 1935 Act but this was stripped from them. Indeed, even Sikh and Buddhist Dalits only got this at a later time. I may mention, it was the Brits who decided Dalit Christians should not get any affirmative action. The result is that they have risen up.  

Nazism … is majoritarianism speeded up.

Nope. Nazis were happy to conquer land and expel or enslave the majority population.  

Alternately, contemporary majoritarianism in south Asia, is fascism in slow motion

And it was Gandhi & Nehru & Jinnah who set the ball rolling. If only the Brits hadn't slyly fucked off! Did you know the founder of the INC was a Scotsman named A.O Hume? But for him, King Charles would still be Emperor of India. Whatever you might think of the Windsor dynasty- at least it isn't as stupid as the Nehru dynasty. 

The lesson that modern majoritarians learned from nazism was

don't start wars you are bound to lose. But this is a lesson any type of regime should learn.  

that the concerted demonisation of a minority was the quickest way of turning a nominal majority into a politically aggrieved behemoth.

African Americans were demonized. The decimated First Nations only got full citizenship in 1924. Plenty of Americans are 'politically aggrieved'. Indeed, they unleashed their fury on the Muslim world- killing 1.3 million and displacing tens of millions. That doesn't change the fact that everybody wants a Green Card. 

The success of Hitler in turning the most assimilated minority in Europe into an expendable underclass in less than 20 years is the ultimate majoritarian precedent.

Vichy did the same more quickly. But plenty of Arab countries were quick enough to get rid of their Jews. 

Still, what is remarkable here is that Kesavan doesn't get that Whites were once a minority in the US and in Australia. How does he think they became a majority? That was the precedent for Hitlerism. As he observed in 'Mein Kampf', there was nowhere in Africa or Asia to which Germany could send its people. It would have to conquer land from its Eastern neighbours. Keynes had said the same thing. Either Germany took land from Poland, Ukraine etc. or else it would starve. Keynes was so shitty an economist that he thought the US had turned into a net food importer! 

As Golwalkar wrote just before the second world war, “non-Hindu” people could either totally assimilate themselves into Hindu culture or “… stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights”.

Nehru made this dream come true. That is why his Dynasty dominated India politics.  

Nazism seems sui generis for two reasons. One, the speed of Germany’s transformation from vanquished nation to genocidal Reich

Russia too was vanquished. It did genocide better than the Reich.  

and two, the industrial processes that powered the Holocaust.

Which Indians scoffed at. Genocide can be done more cheaply using just agricultural implements. Also, be sure to rape the girls before bashing in their skulls. Also why send 'cattle trucks' to extermination camps?  Just stop the train and slaughter all the passengers.  

But if we focus, not on the breakneck speed of this political project, but its consistent goal – majoritarian supremacy through the subordination of dehumanised minorities – naming its lineal descendants becomes easier.

America. Australia, Argentina. These are the lineal descendants of genocidal regimes which turned small minorities into majorities.  

Nazism, in this view, is majoritarianism speeded up.

No. Nazism was about getting bar-room brawlers to beat the shit out of the Commies.  

Alternately, contemporary majoritarianism in south Asia, is fascism in slow motion.

Why? Because the Brits slyly fucked off. Who does 'minority protection' best? The answer is Emperors. Nationalism is about linguistic, or religious, majorities taking power over territory. It may not be expansionary though there is likely to be some 'irredentism'. Still, no one thought that the Irish Republic would want to conquer Wales though Ireland did have a 'Fascist' blue-shirt' movement in the Thirties. But then, there was a British Union of Fascists. Oswald Moseley did try to relaunch this by seizing on the issue of coloured immigration. I think his mistake was to wail about how his 'black-shirts' had been mercilessly beaten up by little Jewish tailors from the East End. 

To look for a Weimar-like collapse in modern India is silly;

To look for anything sensible in what Kesavan writes is silly.  

India is a subcontinental republic with a flawed but embedded democratic system; reconstituting it into a supremacist Hindu nation will be a drawn-out affair.

Nope. It happened once and for all in 1947/48. Nehru also beat the shit out of the Commies till they played nice.  

The last general election is a sign that it might never come to pass. This is not to say that contemporary majoritarianism is a necessarily gradual business. Buddhist majoritarianism in Myanmar climaxed in the genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine province.

It looks like the Arakan Army will prevail. Incidentally, the Muslim Rohingya first killed Hindu Rohingya before setting their sights on Buddhists. That didn't end well for them. Still, it appears the junta is losing ground there.  

The Sri Lankan state decimated its Tamil minority in a savage war to consolidate Sinhala Buddhist supremacy.

To be fair, Sri Lankan Tamil politics took a disastrous turn. But there was also the crazy JVM coup. Let us see how the young Dissanayake does. Sri Lankans are plenty smart. Their economy should soon take off.  

Whether it’s slow or quick, the AfD or the BJP, majoritarian parties share with nazism a steadfast, sinister, obsession with minorities.

Mukul is cool with countries where the current majority only became so through genocide of the indigenous people.

The BJP is a professional outfit which recruits technocrats for top jobs- e.g. Jaishankar as Foreign Minister or Nirmala as Finance Minister. The AfD was headed by professors like Bernd Lucke and Meuthen, Petry, but they have quit because the thing is too kray kray. Still, I suppose it represents a 'protest vote'. The problem is that the German economy looks weak. True, they have turned things around in the past, but the global climate appears to be changing for the worse. In India the fear is that the gap between the industrialized States, which have achieved demographic transition, and those which remain involuted agricultural shitholes will continue to widen. Moreover, since Modi does not have a majority, it is likely that seat redistribution (frozen for the last five decades) will go ahead. This means the poorer, more agricultural, Hindi belt will gain at the expense of the South (Gujarat breaks even). Coupled with gender reservation, India is headed into uncharted seas. There is a fear that no party will have a majority in January 2030 and this could mean that Reservations for Scheduled Castes and Tribes won't be renewed. That, by itself, will set the cat amongst the pigeons. The other great danger is that the State will go off a fiscal cliff and there will be entitlement collapse just when Climate Change catastrophes- e.g. the recent rainfall based flooding in Pakistan- hit the sub-continent.

There is plenty of things for Indian people to worry about. But Hitler rising from the grave is not one of them.