Guilt by Association fallacies and Academic Ethics

1) Universities accept private money for buildings, professorships, and other uses.

2) Little of this comes without normative implications and either explicit or implicit quid quo pro.

3) This has been the case for centuries, and in fact is the oldest model of academic funding (think Phillip of Macedonia).

I have recently been made aware of the political interest in universities that receive private funding. Considering that university professor's emails are public documents, we have plenty of evidence about what discussions were taking place about accepting money from private donors.

Does anything actually contribute to a substantial claim of ethical violation? No.

However, that truth seems to easy to dismiss in the age were scandal and the whiff of guilt is enough to start political movements.

It makes me very sad that academia stoops so low as to be susceptible to innuendo.

Being both a large oil refiner and a fan of free-markets is ipso facto proof of ethical corruption. I struggle even to care about logic that is so flawed, but yet it fully depresses me.

Standing Still

It is appropriate to acknowledge a long gap in posting.

What is it about standing still that creates a fear of starting out again?

Momentum is the life blood of academics. In thinking about the gap in blogging all I can offer to explain it is the existence of final exams. This has somehow created enough reason to ignore the blog. I know I was more productive when I was blogging each day, but was that because I was less exhausted or does the causality run in some other way? For example, discharging a thought or two as the day began allowed me to refocus on the tasks at hand while preserving my notes about what I woke up thinking about.

Well, I will see if I can get out of this torpor now that the semester is over...