A bunch of us had a contentious discussion the other day about institutional neutrality, apropos of my then-upcoming talk about it at the Heterodox Academy conference. One topic that came up was how institutional neutrality relates to curricular decisions. Is there an institutionally neutral way of deciding, say, whether a given topic or discipline merits inclusion within the curriculum of a given institution of higher education? Or a neutral way of deciding whether a program, department, division, school, or university itself ought to set aside the resources to make something a formal subject of study? Since not everything can be studied, decisions have to be made about what gets included and what doesn’t. Can those decisions be made “neutrally”? Continue reading
Tag Archives: philosophy
A(nother) Reductio for Institutional Neutrality
And a challenge to its defenders
Imagine a university whose administration passes what it takes to be a procedurally neutral rule–a “time, manner, place” restriction–prohibiting all protests on campus that take place either on grass or on thoroughfares. Protests inside university buildings are prohibited as well. Protests on grass, admin says, damage the grass, and protests on thoroughfares are a traffic hazard. Obviously, protests inside university buildings are too disruptive of university business to be permitted. All neutral considerations.
Now suppose that 99% of campus consists either of grass, thoroughfares, or buildings. It follows that large scale protests will be made impossible on such a campus.
Continue reading“The Iran War Is Unfathomably Depraved”
Notes on War and Complicity
There are many valuable criticisms and critiques of the Iran War out there, and at some point I hope to mention as many of them here as I can, but if you want one-stop shopping, the thing to read is Nathan Robinson’s “The Iran War Is Unfathomably Depraved” in the March 2026 issue of Current Affairs. I agree with literally everything in Robinson’s article except this one sentence:
We are all complicit.
No, we’re not. Continue reading
Institutional Neutrality Meets Viewpoint Diversity
“Viewpoint diversity” is the view that institutions of higher education ought to cultivate a wide range of perspectives on campus to ensure that inquiry on campus proceeds in an open and lively way. It may sound to some like a truism, but it’s meant as more than a truism. If taken in the latter way, it is by definition and intention a controversial doctrine. Continue reading
Does Heterodox Academy Practice Institutional Neutrality?
The doctrine of institutional neutrality asserts that an institution ought not to make public pronouncements on matters of public controversy. It’s promoted most vigorously nowadays by organizations like Heterodox Academy, and by the 150 or so universities that have signed on to Heterodox Academy’s campaign. This gives rise to an oddly neglected question: does institutional neutrality apply to Heterodox Academy itself? Is Heterodox Academy itself bound by the doctrine of institutional neutrality? It’s not clear how to answer this question, or whether it can coherently be answered at all. Continue reading
Erotetics Lost
Dialectical relevance and defects of omission
Band: “We are The Answer!”
Crowd: “What’s the question?”
Philosophers have a robust lexicon of technical terms for the evaluation of arguments, so many that one hesitates to call attention to a lacuna. But there are some important lacunae out there, places where we see recurrent defects in arguments but have no name for them. Lacking a name, we sometimes miss the thing. Nullem nomen, nullem nominandum may be a fallacy, but it’s also a very strong and hard-to-avoid temptation. So it helps to have a name. Continue reading
Kalven’s Complicit Executioners
I’ve previously mentioned that I’ll be giving a presentation on institutional neutrality at the Heterodox Academy Conference in Brooklyn a couple of weeks from now, Tuesday, June 24th. I have yet to write the paper up, but here’s the abstract, below. I’d be interested in/grateful for any comments, questions, objections, etc. I’ll probably be posting on material related to the paper over the next few weeks. Continue reading
Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)
My mentor Alasdair MacIntyre died this past Wednesday, at the age of 96. The last time I spoke to him in person was 2008, on the occasion of my dissertation defense. It had taken me seventeen years, from matriculation to defense, to finish the degree, and even at the defense itself, it was very far from clear whether I would actually finish. A minor civil war broke out within the defense over the merits of my work, but after tense negotiations, I passed. MacIntyre, amused by the fracas, described my having completed the degree as the best of the arguments for the existence of God: only a God, he said, could have ensured that Khawaja crossed the finish line. I laughed at first, but was then given pause. And that, in microcosm, describes my relationship with Alasdair MacIntyre. Continue reading
Karl Ameriks, RIP
I wanted to note the passing of Karl Ameriks (1947-2025), the Emeritus McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame. He died yesterday in South Bend, Indiana at the age of 77.
I didn’t know Ameriks particularly well. My first memory was a conversation I had with him in 1991 about what little I knew about Kant’s first Critique. I’d taken an undergraduate course on Kant with Wolfgang Carl, the eminent Kant scholar, and was flattered to learn that Ameriks was interested in my lecture notes. He read them, thanked me for them, but never commented on them. I think he found them more amusing than anything else. Continue reading
Stirring the POT (1)
February 2025
Here’s a bunch of announcements I’ve been meaning to post for awhile. Going forward, I’m going to try to post a collection of these each month, ideally toward the beginning of the month. Yet another New Year’s Resolution for 2025–let’s see how long it lasts. I’ve already missed January! Continue reading
Policy of Truth 