Academia

Thursday afternoon I belatedly fulfilled a promise to post a book to Wilcannia. The school day was just finishing and as I left the Post Office I overheard a child around eight years old:

Dad, I was so good today I got FIVE stickers.

Dad was a little distracted, navigating cars and pavements and no doubt the shopping list for tonight’s dinner.

Dad, I was so good at music today I got FIVE STICKERS!

I noticed Dad respond, but I did not hear how. For my part, I wondered what exactly one must do in music to earn FIVE stickers. Were there five different songs? Five instruments? Or was her performance five times the expected quality of a young woman attending Primary School? What unit of account does one sticker represent, that FIVE of them is such a windfall?

Regardless, five stickers was clearly a treasure indeed. A hoardable treasure, surely, for to my knowledge stickers can be traded for neither goods nor services. A store of some sort of value, perhaps, but not one ultimately realised by interest or made liquid via sale of accrued assets. Sure, Tom Sawyer likely would have traded stickers for an old doorknob, a dead rat and a used band-aid (and then for the tokens that in due course would make him CEO of Westpac) but this is 2025.

Even so, it reminded me of Silas Marner, hoarding gold under a brick in the floor of his cottage as a manifestation of the Protestant Ethic:

Spoiler alert – Silas Marner. TBF the book is 164 years old, not just out in cinemas.

George Eliot’s Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe was published in 1861 – six years before Marx’s Das Kapital, which includes a study of money that has some striking parallels to Eliot’s. Obv I’m not accusing anyone of 150+ yo plagiarism. Ideas about money were in the air, which were central to the politics then emerging.

Silas Marner was a weaver. He had a loom, on which he wove cloth. By hand. This was close work that he did for very long hours, so his eyes were not great. By the time Eliot’s story really begins, Silas is a master weaver, known in his small town of Raveloe as Master Marner.

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Please consider donating to this fundraising effort (here) to support Helen de Cruz’s family.

There is no greater joy for a teacher than to see a student develop and grow; and no more satisfaction to a mentor than to be overshadowed professionally by one’s mentee. I have followed Helen’s intellectual development and blossoming professional career with curiosity, pride, admiration, and (of course) wonder. It’s a cruel, unnatural fate to have to write about Helen in the past tense.

My heart goes out to Johan and their kids, Aliénor and Gabriel. Helen was the main breadwinner in the family. And before they were admitted to hospice, Helen asked me to help signal-boost the fund-raising to support them organized by Marcus Arvan. [Please donate here.]

Back in 2010, I started corresponding with Helen de Cruz because they posted a question about the relationship between the PSR and causation on a listserv. I had just moved to my position in Ghent, and I mistakenly thought Helen was a Leibniz scholar at Leuven. I was hoping we could team up to strengthen early modern philosophy in the Low Countries.

A few weeks later, at a philosophy of science conference, I saw Helen give a brilliant, somewhat unusual paper in which they combined Bayesianism with philosophy of archeology. (This was part of a project organized by Igor Douven.) In between Helen received a postdoc from, I think, the Flemish research council. At the conference, we talked, and I got my first glimpse of one the rawest and purest philosophical talents I have ever encountered. Helen was ambitious with a big, magnanimous and musical heart.

After the workshop we met at, Helen and I teamed up to organize a workshop on ‘empirically informed philosophy of social science.’ And thus started a nearly constant fifteen-year conversation mostly mediated by social media, while they was raising a family, dealing with sexism in the academy (looking especially at you Leuven; here’s how they put it once, “They were not a woman-friendly department”), moving jobs to Amsterdam (where we saw each other most frequently in person), the Oxford Brookes University in Oxford (where they hosted me for a talk at Blackwells), and, eventually, as Danforth Chair in St. Louis. In between there were happy stints at Oxford University thanks to postdoctoral fellowships of the British Academy and Templeton residential fellowships. Helen’s website also mentions a FWO postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leeds.

In these English years, they bonded with my wife over their joint anti-Brexit activism. In particular, Helen was a key member of the team that helped create a collection, In Limbo – Our Brexit Testimonies edited by Elena Remigi.

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Hi CT readers, I’m publishing this open letter here so there’s a public record of the letter I’ve co-written and signed about what looks, walks and talks like a good old-fashioned Brussels stitch-up aimed at weakening the EU organisation that oversees data protection in EU institutions. Thank you, Maria (Comments welcome, as with any other post.)

19 June 2025, by e-mail
 
From: Dr. Maria Farrell, Prof. Douwe Korff and Prof. Ian Brown.
To: President Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission.
cc: Commissioner Michael McGrath, European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection;
Ms. Sirpa Rautio, Director, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights;
Don Javier Zarzalejos, Chair, LIBE committee, European Parliament.
 
Dear President von der Leyen and esteemed colleagues:

We are writing to inform you of procedural irregularities and what appears to be a strongly biased and motivated selection process regarding the appointment of the next European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), a key institution protecting the fundamental rights of EU citizens.

The EDPS plays a crucial role in ensuring people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, and in particular their right to data protection, are respected by European Union institutions and bodies.[1] However, the manner and potential outcome of the current selection process for the role of the next head of the EDPS appears to be a clear case of maladminstration and political cronyism.

We raise these issues as EU citizens (MF, DK) and resident (IB) with long-standing interests and backgrounds in privacy and technology policy.

The selection process for the next EDPS has been procedurally aberrant, untransparent, and  appears biased and motivated in its selection methods. It is extremely concerning there have been multiple allegations that an element of gender discrimination has swayed the process. It is equally concerning that we have heard repeated allegations that an element of disability discrimination is involved. [click to continue…]

Pro-natalism (the idea that people, or rather, women, should have more babies than they choose to do at present) has become an established orthodoxy,[1]. The central claim is that, unless something changes soon, human populations both global and national, are going to decline rapidly, with a lot of negative consequences. This is simply not true, on any plausible assumptions about fertility[2]

There’s no need for me to do any calculations here. For many decades he Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has been producing population projections for the world, and individual countries, under a variety of scenarios. One finding is unambiguous. Short of a drastic decline in fertility, far beyond what we are now seeing there will be more people on Earth at the end of this century than there were at the beginning

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“When diversity, equity and inclusion become ‘threats’ to the order of society,” Judith Butler wrote recently, “progressive politics in general is held responsible for every social ill.” Authoritarians are empowered to oppress vulnerable people in the name of “the nation, the natural order, the family, society or civilization itself”.

The links between sacrificing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and upholding patriarchal white supremacy are clear. This has prompted many to fight harder to preserve DEI.

If only existing DEI wasn’t so crap.

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A few days ago, I experienced a strange auditive mix-up. My favorite German radio program, Deutschlandfunk, sent a documentary about “platform workers”. Uber, Deliveroo, etc., you might think, but no. This was about workers on oil platforms in Norway: about the oil boom in the North Sea, about the hard work on the oil rigs and as diver, about the many long-term health issues that arouse, and about the long battle for recognition and compensation. The Norwegian parliament has recently set up a compensation scheme for the families of the victims of a particularly egregious neglect of safety standards, which led to the capsizing of a whole platform in 1980, with 123 deaths.

Today, we think of “platform workers” as individuals contracting with online platforms for executing online or offline services, often at lousy pay.

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A generation ago, General Electric’s CEO, Jack Welch (1935 – 2020) was the most admired business manager in the world. And General Electric purportedly the most admired corporation. Among his well-known attributes, Welch “would fire the bottom 10% of his managers, regardless of absolute performance.” And this, alongside his more general fondness for downsizing, was one of the reasons why Welch was known as ‘Neutron Jack.’ (The buildings would remain standing, but empty of workers.)

I had to think of that while reading Vivek Chibber’s (2022) Confronting Capitalism: How the World Works and How to Change it (Verso). I am not the implied audience for it. The book intends to “contribute to the development of the incipient Left.” (p. 2) It understands itself as advancing a “project of renewal” for the “Socialist Left.” (p.4) It does so by using fairly simple language, by being admirably free from jargon, and by keeping scholarly trappings to the bare minimum. There are airport bestsellers aiming to improve leadership that have more endnotes. Chibber is a professor of sociology at NYU, but I bet that the vocabulary of Confronting Capitalism is pitched at high school level. (I mean that as a compliment.)

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Except it’s not happy, of course. The ocean’s ecosystems are going to hell in a hand-cart, while our politicians congratulate themselves for signing up to pledges (like protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030) that they have no realistic plan for achieving. The conclusion that they are simply kicking the can down the road, while basking in a bit of short-term glory, is hard to shake. Meanwhile Trump is trying to jump-start deep sea mining, an industry which companies like BMW and Google have already repudiated, which is wholly unnecessary, and is likely to be immensely destructive to the climate and to marine biodiversity. Meanwhile, in spite of the glaring video evidence provided by Attenborough’s film Ocean, the trawling lobby is still claiming that its activities are not environmentally destructive. So, what should we expect from the UN Ocean conference in Nice this coming week? Anything much, or more hot air?

But perhaps there was no event, which tended farther to the improvement of the age, than one, which has not been much remarked, the accidental finding of a copy of Justinian’s Pandects, about the year 1130, in the town of Amalfi in Italy.—David Hume History of England, 23.34

The modern university is in a grave crisis in today’s imperial core. During a crisis it is instructive to return to one’s foundation and, thereby, reorient oneself. That foundation is Authentica habita, dating from 1155.[1] It was promulgated by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122 – 1190), also known as Frederick I. This document had legal status throughout the Holy Roman Empire (it is known to us because it was included in new editions of the Justinian Code then recently rediscovered in the West.)

Authentica habita document was elicited by learned lawyers at Bologna. When they did so there was as-of-yet no corporate body organized as a university in Bologna, although we have good reason to believe that the town was already known for “the doctors of law and other masters staying there.” (Koeppler 1939: 593) Universities as corporate bodies with guild-like characteristics developed over a century later from them.[2]

Crucially, the practices made possible by Authentica habita shaped the articles of incorporation of these subsequent institutions. I will, thus, use it anachronistically to help conceptualize the framework for the privileges associated with the university ab initio.

Authentica habita is, in fact, a privilege granted not to a particular institution or even particular individuals, but to scholars as such. In particular, to scholars who have to travel from their homeland to a place of study: “we grant this favor of our piety to all scholars who travel for the sake of their studies, and especially to professors of divine and sacred laws, that both they and their messengers may come to the places where the studies of letters are pursued and dwell there in safety.” [“Omnibus qui causa studiorum peregrinantur scolaribus, et maxime divinarum atque sacrarum legum professoribus hoc nostre pietatis beneficium indulgemus, ut ad loca, in quibus literarum exercentur studia, tam ipsi quam eorum nuntii veniant et habitent in eis securi.”]

Anyone familiar with the contemporary practice of granting and revoking visas for students will immediately recognize the significance of Authentica habita. Not to put too fine a point on it: academic freedom is originally founded on this right for scholars to travel to and from their place of study. While legal scholars are singled out in the document, it secured a kind of cosmopolitan right of hospitality to all would-be-academics (including students).

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Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”. Setting aside the absurdity of “restoring” something that never existed, what does that purport to mean?

Gold Standard Science means science conducted in a manner that is:

(i) reproducible;
(ii) transparent;
(iii) communicative of error and uncertainty;
(iv) collaborative and interdisciplinary;
(v) skeptical of its findings and assumptions;
(vi) structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;
(vii) subject to unbiased peer review;
(viii) accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and
(ix) without conflicts of interest.

It seems like someone in the Trump administration has been following the debate about how the “replication crisis” and reading op-eds in Nature about institutionally mandating the rules of sceince.

Somewhat counterintuitively, however, the “Open Science” reform community that had been publically excoriating science for not doing the things now (provisionally) mandated by the government things is outraged.

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