“We are frankly stunned to find a focus… on intemperate social media posts, papers that didn’t after all get retracted, and books being published by second-choice publishers.”
The Vanderbilt “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences,” was published this past summer, with a special report about academic philosophy authored by Kit Fine (NYU) and Gideon Rosen (Princeton).
In the following guest post, Talia Bettcher (Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada in Gender-Based Violence and Trans Community Resilience, University of Waterloo) and Jennifer Saul (Canada Research Chair in the Study of Hatred, Misinformation and Communication, University of Waterloo) respond to Fine and Rosen’s report.
Following the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences (Boghossian et al, 2026), Fine and Rosen have released an appendix report on the health of academic philosophy specifically (October 15, 2026). In this report, they single out the philosophy of sex and gender for special concern. We write as philosophers of sex and gender who have long been concerned with the health of both philosophy and our own subdiscipline. Unfortunately we think they very seriously mischaracterize the threats to the health of both.
Source: Daily Nous (philosophy news) — Read the full article on the original site ↗