Departmental Newsletter: May 2026
Congrats, Grads!
Adrienne Duke, Tayfun Gur, Shih-Han (Sally) Huang, and Botian Liu received doctorates in philosophy this month. The university's hooding ceremony took place on May 9.
The department's undergraduate graduation ceremony also took place on May 9. The ceremony honored 15 undergraduate philosophy students, including Maya Xie, whose honors thesis was titled, "Epistemological and Methodological Foundations of 'Emerging Markets': A Case Study into Measurement of Ballung Concepts in the Social Sciences." Xie's project was advised by Jennifer Jhun.
Congratulations to all!
Wenjin Liu’s paper, “The Virtue of Living Together in a City: Civic Moderation in Plato’s Republic,” has been published online in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. If you are curious about what Plato has to say about civic moderation, civic unity, and friendship, please check it out.
Rich Eva published "Politicizing: A Conceptual Analysis" in Public Affairs Quarterly. This was an effort to clarify the concept referenced in allegations like "Kaepernick is politicizing football," "Trump is politicizing the CDC," and "Uncle Bob is politicizing Thanksgiving dinner." What are these claims getting at? Is there a single coherent concept behind them?
Project Vox just published its first-ever lesson plans for high school classrooms! These lessons enable high school teachers to incorporate philosophical inquiry featuring Project Vox's figures and topics into their existing social studies and English curricula.
The lessons were designed by Project Vox's education team — Lindsay Huth, Mary Purcell, and Audrey Ledbetter — with the generous help of local teachers.
Check out the lesson plans here!
Victor Crespo Santiago co-authored an article, "Pricing Suffering in Animals," with Natalie Jacewicz (USD) and Bob Fischer (TXST) that has been accepted by the Maryland Law Review.
Michael Bergdolt presented a talk at the Society for Exact Philosophy at UBC in Vancouver titled "Abundant Actual Causation: Why Popular Intuition Gets Us Nowhere."
Ben Eva gave a talk titled "Subset Conditionalisation" at the closing conference of the Epistemic Utility and Imprecise Probability ERC project at the University of Bristol. In the Q&A after the talk, Teddy Seidenfeld told him, "You promised heresy, and you delivered!". Joselu Cabrera, Ayana Shirai and Michael Bergdolt also all attended the conference, as well as a one day summer school before hand.
Yuan Dong presented her paper “Epistemic Accessibility in Social Knowledge” at Notre Dame/Northwestern Graduate Epistemology Conference on May 1.
SSNAP just wrapped up its tenth anniversary sessions! Above, Juno takes a closer look.
Maya Kronfeld gave a keynote address entitled "Time Signatures" for the Stanford-Hopkins Philosophy & Literature Grad Conference. You can hear her lecture here.
In other news, Maya has been awarded an External Faculty Fellowship with the Stanford Humanities Center, where she will spend the Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 semesters on leave, finishing her book.
Rachel Gilbert and her husband Charlie give Botian, Tayfun, Victor and Nina a cultural immersion course in baseball. (If they understood the game right, Duke lost quite badly — both times they went to see them).
Wa, Tayfun, Botian, Ava, Kexuan and Nina (not pictured) celebrated Tayfun's birthday, days before he moves away from Durham. The department jester will be very missed!
Ask Tayfun, Or Don’t: The (Unsolicited™) Advice Column
This month I no longer have any advice. This is thanks in large part, of course, to our successful campaign over the years against all the problems people did not know they had, though regardless, like any natural resource the wellsprings of wisdom also need their rest and fallow periods. With time, new questions and moral dilemmas will no doubt arise, and I trust that other busybodies and know-it-alls will rise to meet the challenge, whether you welcome their meddling or not. Since many of the troublesome things in life come unsolicited, it only seems right that the solutions follow a similar pattern—such, at least, has been the philosophy driving this advice column. So in lieu of sagacious suggestions, I leave you all instead with a song, to be read to the tune (appropriately) of the timeless ABBA classic “Thank You for the Music”:
I write nothing special, in fact it’s a bit of a chore
If I tell a joke, you won’t want to hear any more
But I have a talent, or perhaps it’s a vice
'Cause everyone listens when I give advice
Lend your ear, don’t be afraid
All I want is to offer my aid
If I tell a joke, you won’t want to hear any more
But I have a talent, or perhaps it’s a vice
'Cause everyone listens when I give advice
Lend your ear, don’t be afraid
All I want is to offer my aid
So I say
Thank you for the questions, my glory to bask in
You’ll get replies even if you ain’t askin'
How will y’all live without it, as moral progress is stalled?
Confused and appalled?
Without a fez on your heads you’ll feel bald
Still I say thank you for the questions
For sending them to me
Mother says I had the answers before I could walk
She says I began to advise long before I could talk
And I’ve often wondered, was it Plato or Sartre?
Who found out that nothing solves problems of heart
Like philosophy can?
I’ve just continued what they began
So I say
Thanks for sending questions, and if you don’t bother
You’ll get advice on something or other
Who can eat that nonsense, they sell at the grocery shop?
Instead of stovetop?
Without a pot and some oil, will it pop?
So I say thank you for the kernels
For eating them with me
Thanks for sending questions, and if you don’t bother
You’ll get advice on something or other
Who can eat that nonsense, they sell at the grocery shop?
Instead of stovetop?
Without a pot and some oil, will it pop?
So I say thank you for the kernels
For eating them with me
I’ve been so lucky, I was the Queen with a crown of corns
A sultan of feztive, oppressive, Turkic delight
What a ploy, what a plight, what divine right!
A sultan of feztive, oppressive, Turkic delight
What a ploy, what a plight, what divine right!
Thank you for soliciting—or not, it doesn’t matter
Either way I’ve got wisdom to scatter
Won’t someone take it over, I ask with false modesty
Who shall it be?
Without a column won’t woes grow weighty?
Still I say thank you all for listening
To all my advice-giving
Either way I’ve got wisdom to scatter
Won’t someone take it over, I ask with false modesty
Who shall it be?
Without a column won’t woes grow weighty?
Still I say thank you all for listening
To all my advice-giving
Yes I say thank you all for listening
No need for soliciting
If you have a question for Tayfun for the next newsletter, alas and alack, you can no longer send it to tayfun.gur@duke.edu... But despair not! Odds are, whatever your problem is, someone has encountered it before somewhere, so if you just hit those books I’m sure you’ll find the answers eventually. As Mencius once observed: “Sandals are all more or less alike because all feet in the world are similar.” (6A.7) That being said, let me reiterate that if anyone would like to take over the column in some form or another, you most certainly have my blessing, and I’m sure our editor will agree.