Brian Leiter

Born to a Jewish family,[9] Leiter earned his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Princeton University (1984), and his J.D. (1987) and Ph.D. (in philosophy; 1995) from the University of Michigan, where his dissertation was supervised by Peter Railton.[10]

Leiter taught for two years at the University of San Diego School of Law, and was a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego,[10] before joining the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law in 1995, where he taught until 2008.[10] At Texas, Leiter was founder and Director of the Law and Philosophy Program. In 2008, Leiter moved to the University of Chicago, where he is now Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, and founder of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values.[10]

Leiter has been a visiting professor of law or philosophy at Yale Law School, University College London, University of Chicago Law School, University of Paris X-Nanterre, University of California, San Diego, and Oxford University.[10] He edited the journal Legal Theory from 2000 to 2008, and is editor of the Routledge Philosophers, a series of introductions to major philosophers, and (with Leslie Green) of Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law.[10]

Author Walter K. Olson described Leiter as "left-leaning" in his book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (Encounter Books, 2011).[11] and Leiter himself has professed sympathy for Marx, stating in an interview that, "On two central issues, Marx was far more right than any of his critics: first, that the long-term tendency of capitalist societies is towards immiseration of the majority (the post-WWII illusion of upward mobility for the "middle classes" will soon be revealed for the anomaly it was); and second, that capitalist societies produce moral and political ideologies that serve to justify the dominance of the capitalist class."[12]

Leiter's scholarly writings have been in two main areas—legal philosophy and Continental philosophy—although he has also written about metaethics, religious liberty, and other topics. Philosophical naturalism has been a major theme in both contexts.[12]

In 1989, while he was a graduate student Leiter made a list of what he believed to be the top 25 graduate philosophy programs in the United States.[1] Called the Philosophical Gourmet Report, this list came to be known as "the Leiter Report" and has been internationally recognized.[26] It is now published by Wiley-Blackwell,[27] and while being controversial,[28] it is the foremost ranking of graduate programs in philosophy in the English-speaking world.[29]

The PGR was described by David L. Kirp in a 2003 New York Times op-ed as "the bible for prospective [philosophy] graduate students."[30] George Yancy, in Reframing the Practice of Philosophy: Bodies of Color, Bodies of Knowledge (SUNY Press, 2012), opined that Philosophical Gourmet Report ranking: "is, of course, very controversial. However, as is often pointed out, there is no real alternative."[28] Carlin Romano, in America the Philosophical (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013), referred to the PGR rankings as "often-criticized" and "biased towards mainstream analytic departments" although it covers Continental philosophy as well.[31]

In 2002, nearly 300 philosophers signed an open letter calling on Leiter to stop producing the PGR.[32] In fall 2014, over 600 philosophers signed a petition to boycott the PGR organized by some philosophers at University of British Columbia to protest what they called a "derogatory and intimidating" e-mail sent by Leiter to one of their colleagues.[33] A majority of the Advisory Board of the PGR (30 of the 54 members) thought it best that he relinquish control over the Report's management.[33]

In response, Leiter appointed a co-editor for the 2014 report Berit Brogaard, a philosophy professor at the University of Miami and agreed to step down as editor after its publication.[34] Leiter dismissed the criticisms as coming from people whose organizations had received a poor ranking, or from feminists he characterized as upset with his stance in favor of due process for men accused of sexual harassment.[33] He subsequently retained a lawyer to sue the organizers of the 2014 protest for defamation.[35]

The Australian reported that

Professor Leiter ... said there had never been any impropriety in his administration of the report but "if someone feels editing the PGR means forfeiting certain expressive rights, then I accept that they have a reason not to participate while I remain as one of the editors. And since I value my expressive rights (including my right to express myself in ways some others may find offensive), that gives me an additional reason to dissociate from the PGR so that those philosophers will, I hope, participate in the future."[36]

Leiter has also edited a ranking of U.S. law schools, which The Washington Post describes as "well-known,"[37] and was hired by Maclean's magazine in Canada to produce a ranking of Canadian law schools.[38]

Leiter is a prolific blogger, running three blogs, one on philosophy (and political commentary), one on law, and one on Nietzsche. Leiter's philosophy blog includes both professional news and polemics, for example, critiques of proponents of intelligent design,[39] and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.[40] He has also written critiques of journalists and philosophers, including Romano,[41] Thomas Nagel,[42] Leon Wieseltier,[43] and Paul Campos.[44] He is known for his "combative tactics on his blogs and social media."[45]

Leiter has been an outspoken defender of academic freedom. He has spoken in support of Steven Salaita, both on-line and on television,[46] and Rebecca Tuvel, the philosopher criticized during the Hypatia transracialism controversy.[47] He also wrote in The New York Times in defense of John Yoo against calls for Berkeley to investigate him.[48]

• Objectivity in Law and Morals (editor) (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
• Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge, 2002; 2nd edition, 2015)
• The Future for Philosophy (editor) (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Naturalizing Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Nietzsche and Morality (co-edited with Sinhababu) Oxford University Press, 2007)
• The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (co-edited with Rosen) (Oxford, 2007)
• Why Tolerate Religion? (Princeton University Press, 2013)
• Moral Psychology with Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, 2019)

• List of American philosophers

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