Has the politics of the trans movement damaged academia?
Description
Daniel Kodsi, USA
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Kodsi received his doctorate in philosophy from Trinity College, Oxford, in 2024 and spent the 2024–25 academic year as a lecturer in philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he taught logic, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of mathematics. He is currently editor-in-chief of The Philosophers’ Magazine, which since its founding in 1997 has been one of the leading general-audience magazines in philosophy. One of the chapters of his thesis – on a topic in philosophical logic – has been published in Mind, the most prestigious journal in analytic philosophy in the UK, and others are under review at top journals.
As an undergraduate and subsequently graduate student at Oxford, Kodsi was editor-in-chief of the Cherwell, Oxford’s oldest student newspaper, was a founding editor of the Oxford Review of Books, a literary magazine that remains in print nearly a decade later, and was editor-in-chief of the Oxonian Review, Oxford’s leading graduate magazine. As well as writing approximately 200 stories, interviews, reviews and essays for the newspapers and magazines he has edited, and commissioning essays from leading academics at Oxford, MIT and other universities, Kodsi has written for The Critic and Quillette on controversies concerning sex, gender, free speech and academic freedom.
PS: a note from Daniel
This week, @bindelj interviewed me on themes related to my essay 'Philosophical Malpractice' with @johnmaier. Just to pick up on one thread, I describe the trajectory that took me from sending a 'Thank you' email to @Docstockk, which requested confidentiality as to its very existence to the full-blooded intervention of the recent essay. Intermediate stops included reviews of books by @aytchellesse and @byrne; so good that I just had to write about them. Although I didn't review it, "Trans" by @HJoyceGender was such a clear and perspicuous intervention that it was no surprise at all to learn that Helen was a trained mathematician. At around the same time, in reading @elizamondegreen , I would often think "How could anyone read such sensitive, liberal, humane, nuanced and empathetic writing, and impute bigotry to its author?". It also helped that close friends like John, my family and the philosophers I most admired seemed to see things the same way. For me as for so many others, the fearlessness and humour displayed by @jk_rowling (I would write "a personal idol", except that I am so far from alone in the sentiment) helped as well, to reinforce the feeling of having my head on straight.
@wesyang writes elegantly and incisively about the harms enacted by the ascendancy of trans-activism. One harm that deserves to be emphasised is the psychological wear and tear on the thousands of ordinary, intelligent women who recognised very early that something was rotten here and who were made, by smug and complacent self-identified progressives assured of their own moral and intellectual superiority, to doubt their sense of reality. To change the Shakespeare play: "Who is so gross that cannot see this palpable device, yet who so bold but says he sees it not? Bad is the world and all will come to naught, when such ill dealing must be seen in thought."
Philosophical Malpractice, by Daniel Kodsi and John Maier, published in the Philosophers’ Magazine: Read it here.
Julie Bindel's writing and podcasts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
United States
