He wouldn’t send me his contract but eventually Kevin Reed’s Public Records Office complied with the law and provided it: 2024-PRR-471
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He wouldn’t send me his contract but eventually Kevin Reed’s Public Records Office complied with the law and provided it: 2024-PRR-471
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An annual $130,000 research budget.
UO philosophy profs are living well!!
Indeed, the figure is absurd. Philosophy professors require no laboratories, they do no empirical studies, etc. etc. At most, they might hire a research assistant to help them with bibliographies, footnotes, etc. I have no idea what research “start-up” could mean for a philosophy professor; the whole idea is that your research on – – what, Plato?–“stops’ when you leave one university and “starts up” again when you get to another.
He’s going to a hire a postdoc to do stuff (write papers) for him.
So let’s get this straight. Karl thinks his new Provost is worth market wages, but the faculty who actually perform the academic, research and educational mission of the university aren’t?
Another data point for a faculty strike.
You might think it ridiculous that a philosopher is getting $130,000 / year in research funding, but that’s because you aren’t keeping up with the field. Back in the day all Plato had to do was find a cave and shove some people into it; times have changed, though. It takes a lot of money to build a Chinese room [1] — have you looked at GPU prices recently? Given that rail construction can cost about $2 billion per kilometer these days [2, 3], working on trolley problems [4] takes some serious cash. Of course, Wittgenstein famously refused to accept any of his family’s huge fortune, but he also encouraged his students to pursue manual labor instead of academic philosophy [5]. If you’re going to go the academic route, lavish research funds are a must.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Chinese_room_thought_experiment
[2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2
[3] https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/
[4] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/#TrolProb
[5] Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius – Ray Monk (1990).
Alcohol ain’t cheap! Recall this recent news story: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/i-screwed-up-david-brooks-addresses-airport-tweet-that-got-him-roasted-into-oblivion/
It’s the first rule of leadership – get yours first. Good luck with Long.