Philosophy! Not only are just about all of us ignorant of the field's meaning, teachings, and history—we're also ignorant of its gossip. That ends today, lucky philosophites! Everyone's talking about Philosophy Department sexual harassment.

By "everybody" we mean mostly philosophers. But Inside Higher Ed has an excellent article today that explains just how pissed off women are with what they say is a pattern of unchecked and unpunished sexual harassment by "well known, famous, serial harassers" in philosophy. (Men.) There's an entire blog called "What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?" (famous philosophical essay reference alert! Thanks, Philosophy of Mind class) where women in philosophy share... what it's like, to be them. Spoiler: it's pretty pervy. For example:

I attended a conference at my friend's department where one of our former teachers, a well-known person, Professor A, someone we both admired and respected, was going to be a featured speaker.

My friend told me that when Professor A arrived, the first thing he said to my friend was "Show me a graduate student I can fuck."

Haha, what a smooth-talking intellectual giant! Now, there's a movement afoot to practice "shunning" of philosophers who everyone basically knows are sexual harassers—"not inviting them to publish, not conversing with them at conferences, advising students to avoid their graduate program, etc." That seems appropriate. Females subject to harassment might also try tossing a drink in the dude's face, and kicking him in the balls. Nietzsche would approve.

[Inside Higher Ed, photo via Shutterstock]