Some of you may have known Donald Heath from his days as Director of Operations for David Kelley’s Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS). As you probably know by now, Donald passed away this past Friday of a heart attack; he was 56. I didn’t know Don very well, and hadn’t interacted with him since my last interactions with IOS in the mid 1990s, but he was one of my favorite people at IOS, and I have fond memories of him. This obituary by David Kelley gets it right.
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
From West Philly to Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Back
I was in Philadelphia this weekend, visiting with my friends Sinan and Amy. Sinan was my ‘handler’ at Al Quds University this past summer and the time before; he handles the logistics there that I can’t. Amy is a nice Midwestern gal from Texas (go figure). They met a few years ago in Bethlehem, Sinan’s home town, recently emigrated to Philadelphia, got an apartment, got married, and settled in. They cooked me (well, really Sinan cooked us) a sumptuous dinner of maqluba followed by Palestinian coffee and pastries. We had dessert on a couch in front of a window that looks west and frames West Philadelphia. The window lets out onto a big ledge with just enough room for the two of them to sip wine and watch the sunset.
The Joys of Teaching, The Joys of Learning
An indication of what I have to put up with on a daily basis. And don’t think that the Brussels attack made the material “relevant” to anyone. Brussels? What’s “Brussels”? Anything to do with brussels sprouts? (Well, yes, as it turns out.)
It reminds me of the time we were studying Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow one semester in the same course. I stood in front of 35 blank faces, dragging them through the material. Finally, seventy-five minutes later, another frustrating class had come to its doleful end. The class filed out in relief, except for one irritated student, who walked up to me with an odd look on her face. Finally, the dam broke, and she burst out with: “Professor, what the fuck is ‘Jim Crow’? And why does this lady not like white people?” I’m happy to report that I was able to answer one of those questions to her satisfaction.
Best Voice Mail Ever
Hi Mr. Khawaja, this is Lieutenant Spatola from the Detective Bureau at Bloomfield Police Department. We wanted to advise you that we did make an arrest on the package theft you recently reported. The individual in question has confessed to about eight other thefts in the neighborhood. If you need any documentation or reports, you can just stop in at our headquarters. Thank you.
I initially thought it was an exercise in futility to report the theft, on the grounds that I couldn’t imagine their ever catching the thief. But I did the citizenly thing and reported it anyway. I’m glad I did. After thinking about it a bit, I eventually figured out how they caught the guy, but since I don’t want to reveal sources and methods, my lips are sealed, except to say: Elementary, my dear Watson.
Tibor Machan, RIP
I got word late last night that Tibor Machan has passed away. He was 77. Here’s a link to his Wikipedia entry.
Sexual Slavery in the Islamic World (Updated)
Probably one of the best letters to the editor of The New York Times that I’ve seen in a long time, on the subject of sexual slavery in the Islamic world. It’s a response to a March 13 article, “ISIS’ System of Rape Relies on Birth Control“: Continue reading
Tenth Annual Felician Institute Conference: Tentative Program
Just a quick note to say that I’ve worked up a tentative version of the program for the Tenth Annual Felician Institute Conference. As usual, we got more papers than we had spots to fill, so we couldn’t include all of them. But the ones on the program are really good, and I’d like to think that the sessions might well end up being more than the sum of their parts. There’s a nice blend of meta-ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, and political philosophy this time (though not very much in the way of history). I was particularly gratified to get two hard-hitting pieces for our dedicated session on the ethics, politics, and economics of adjuncting–one by Michelle Ciurria (Washington University at St. Louis), and one by Derek Bowman (Providence College).
Roderick Long (and others) on Hilary Putnam
Here’s a nice brief memorial to Hilary Putnam by Roderick Long, with a bonus link to Roderick’s review of Putnam’s Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, from Reason Papers 28 (2006). Roderick has a real gift for writing these RIP notices, emphasizing the deceased’s achievements but not ignoring what might legitimately be criticized.
Here’s Martha Nussbaum in The Huffington Post.
Jane O’Grady in London’s Guardian.
The official notice from Harvard, with a link that goes to Putnam’s blog, Sardonic Comment.
Though it’s not online, I’ve always found the interview of Putnam in Giovanna Borradori’s The American Philosopher candid and interesting.
Feel free to add any particularly good ones in the combox.
For Those About to Walk, We Salute You
Yes, even I’ve come to think that the time has come for AC/DC to end things.
Speak up sonny–what explosion?
When one singer dies of alcohol poisoning, the drummer is convicted of threatening murder, the rhythm guitarist has dementia, and the second singer is about to go entirely deaf, your band has kind of run out of the “nine lives” you’ve been singing about for the last couple of decades. Yes, you’ve been “abusin every one of them and runnin’ wild,” but after a career like AC/DC’s, there’s no shame in getting off the rock and roll train…
ht: Carlos Manalansan (thanks for waking me up at 6:30 this morning with the breaking news, bro)
Trigger Warning
A wonderful development, from Texas: concealed carry weapons now are permitted in the university classroom, with the predictable ass-covering maneuvers by university administrators, hoping in advance both to pre-empt the student who goes berserk when you “trigger” him by saying the wrong thing, and to cover the university’s ass in case the worst case scenario actually materializes (“we told you someone would go berserk and shoot you if you taught that controversial material”).
Policy of Truth 