Judah Halevi’s Skepticism

A new book in the series Studies and Texts in Scepticism has been published:

Ehud Krinis, Judah Halevi’s Fideistic Scepticism in the Kuzari. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2020.

The whole book is open access and can be found here.

Discrimination and Hypocrisy in Academia

I've been reluctant to write about the topic of this post, but political correctness is not my forte. A couple of months ago, I submitted a paper to an ancient philosophy journal founded in Canada several decades ago. Yesterday, I received a report by a female European scholar who has done some work on ancient skepticism and teaches at a top university in the US. Her strongest criticism was that I discriminate against women inasmuch as I do not cite them or do not cite them enough or do not cite them the way I should. Why? Well, because I cite her as well as three other female authors in several footnotes and not in the body of the text, because I do not cite a female scholar who only published one paper on ancient skepticism five years ago in a volume the referee edited, and because I do not cite one of the referee's monographs (she lists the chapters I was supposed to cite and discuss). I should first note that in the article I cite sixteen papers by ten different female authors, but I suppose that is not enough. Secondly, assuming that the referee didn't figure out who I was (otherwise, she should have said so to the editor), it is surprising that she doesn't say that I don't cite myself, given that I've published five papers in English dealing with different issues concerning the same topic from 2011 to 2019 in such journals as Apeiron, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, and Elenchos. Thirdly, I know that this is a common practice, but not once have I asked the author of a piece I reviewed to cite or discuss any of my papers or edited books (I've reviewed 45 articles as well as several book manuscripts and book proposals). Twice over the past few years I've been implicitly accused of discrimination for not including in the books I've edited enough female authors. I remember someone who reviewed for a top journal a volume I edited a few years ago. They wrote me asking why I did not include any chapter by a woman. I explained to them that I invited four women whose work I liked but that they all declined my invitation. I still had their emails! (I felt like a child being scolded who needed to justify himself.) I have read quite a bit about discrimination and implicit bias, particularly in academia, and I won't deny that it's a real thing -- actually, it's part of the empirical research I mention in a monograph on ancient and contemporary Pyrrhonism I've just finished writing. But what bothers me about the referee report I received yesterday is that the woman in question has never cited me in any of her articles or books on skepticism (I just checked) or invited me to write a paper for one of the volumes on that topic that she's edited or to present a paper at the conferences she's organized. You must be thinking: "Why on earth was she supposed to do that?" By my lights, there is no reason at all. But if I applied her own approach, I could think that she's discriminated against me inasmuch as I've edited or co-edited 6 books on skepticism and published over 30 journal articles and chapters on that topic in English or French (i.e., two languages that civilized North American and European academics can read), and inasmuch as I'm a Latin American working and living in Argentina. Should I play the discrimination card and start complaining every time a volume or a special issue of a journal devoted to skepticism -- particularly on ancient skepticism -- is published but I was not invited to contribute a paper? Just take a look at the volumes and special issues on that topic published in the past 10 or 15 years and count the number of Latin Americans who have contributed a paper. Take your time. Should I start complaining whenever a paper or a book on Sextus Empiricus's Pyrrhonism is published that does not cite any of my papers on that topic published in English in specialist journals in the past 15 years? Should I start complaining when a conference on ancient or contemporary skepticism is organized and no Latin American scholar is invited to participate? Should I start saying that I'm being discriminated when I invite North American or European scholars (both men and women) to contribute a paper to a volume, or to write a book review for the journal I co-edit, and they decline my invitation or don't even have the courtesy to reply? My work would be much easier if I could say: "Because I'm Latin American, I have the right to be cited in your paper/book or to be invited to participate in your book project or your conference. If you don't cite or invite me, I'll accuse you of discrimination." As I told a friend of mine a few years ago when talking about someone who complained about not being cited: "People are not obliged to read or cite you and they're free to think that what you write is garbage." I don't know, perhaps I should stop citing scholars who do not cite me, which would mean that I should not cite the referee in two footnotes in my paper until she starts citing me at least in one footnote in one of her own papers or books. The high level of stupidity, bad faith, and hypocrisy among academics never ceases to amaze me.