MAX WROTE:
Derek - I know this does not address your concern with conferences and journals and departments being myopic, but (to follow Phillip's most recent post) one has to decide whether to play the game and compromise one's philosophical ideals or hope that one can carve one's own path and get by whether inside or outside of Academe.

One of the most disgusting things that I ever witnessed was a graduate student in a top 25 newly-"Analytic" American University, who wrote a paper for a course in Plato defending the thesis that Socrates was not an academic philosopher, with the implication that anyone practicing philosophy in the Socratic mode (Philosophy with a capital "P" on my count) does not belong in the academy.  That is, anyone doing Philosophy does not deserve a job in philosophy.

He got an "A."  And, he got a job.

Makes me shudder to this day.