Brian Leiter's Ranking of Graduate Programs in Philosophy in the English-Speaking World

E-mail Archive

Date Received	First Line of Posted Item
10 November 2006	The new PGR for 2006-08 is now on-line here: www.philosophicalgourmet.com
18 August 2006	The final opportunity to update or correct the faculty lists for the fall 2006 PGR surveys is now at hand. The lists are available here:
22 May 2006	The May 22 draft of the faculty lists for the fall 2006 PGR surveys is now available here:
11 May 2006	Draft faculty lists for the fall 2006 PGR surveys are now available. You may view them here,
13 March 2006	Sorry for the long period of silence since the last Update. There were technical problems, and, in the interim, I have taken to posting all udpates at my blog site. You can find all the updates here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/index.html
03 September 2005	Regarding today's terrorist attacks in London: I am collecting information on the safety and welfare of philosophers in and around London here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/07/london_friends_.html
06 June 2005	(1) The American Philosophical Society, the nation's oldest learned society, has elected new members. Philosophers elected are Stanley Cavell (emeritus, Harvard), Allan Gibbard (Michigan), and Richard Rorty (emeritus, Stanford).
31 March 2005	With decision time on U.S. PhD programs at hand, there's lots of news involving Christoher Hill, Colin McGinn, Bob Batterman, and others. It's all collected here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/
08 March 2005	I have opened a thread on my blog site where information about new tenure-track hires in philosophy can be posted. The thread and posting guidelines are here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/tenuretrack_hir.html
02 March 2005	Lots of news on philosophy offers made and accepted (Bob Hale, Delia Graff, Louise Antony, Joseph Levine, others); rather than repost it all here, you can find it all at my blog under the "Philosophy Updates" category here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/
06 January 2005	Happy New Year to all!
22 November 2004	During the day on Monday, November 22, we will be adding a revised set of rankings to the "Overall Rankings" section of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, to address a statistical problem identified by a member of the Advisory Board (whose department, it should perhaps be added, was unaffected either way by this problem).
19 November 2004	The Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2004-06 will be released on Friday, November 19, 2004, at about noon in Britain. The new Report will be available at the site of the 2002-04 Report: www.philosophicalgourmet.com
19 November 2004	The new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2004-06 is now on-line at www.philosophicalgourmet.com
15 November 2004	IN MEMORIAM
11 November 2004	Apologies for the long delay since the last Update. I have tended to post items more regularly in the "Philosophy Updates" section of my blog, which is now here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/index.html and then aggregate those postings for purposes of the e-mail Update service. However, there isn't that much new since August 20; for additional details on some of these items, see the blog site.
20 August 2004	PLEASE NOTE: There is a final opportunity to review the draft faculty lists for the upcoming reputational survey, that will begin by September 15. You can find the list here:
10 July 2004	(1) Australian Federation Fellowships, Australia's most lucrative chairs, have been offered to David Chalmers at University of Arizona (to be based at the Australian National University); Paul Griffiths at the University of Pittsburgh (to be based at the University of Queensland--note that Griffiths had recently accepted an offer at Exeter in the UK); and Philip Pettit at Princeton University (to be based at the University of Sydney).
15 June 2004	IN MEMORIAM
15 June 2004	Here is the correct link for the Hampshire obituary (suitably condensed): http://tinyurl.com/3hxrc
07 June 2004	IMPORTANT NOTICE: The draft list of faculties for the 2004-06 PGR has been updated here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001343.html . Please pay particular attention to the lists of "affiliated faculty." Faculty eligible for addition to these lists must be (1) full or part-time at the same university; (2) not retired/emeritus or adjunct; and (3) faculty who work with PhD students in philosophy and who are eligible to sit on dissertation committees for philosophy PhD students. Send notice of additions and corrections to bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu
26 May 2004	IMPORTANT NOTICE: In preparation for the 2004-06 PGR, and with the approval of the Advisory Board, we are making available a draft set of faculty lists for the programs to be evaluated. You can download it by going here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001343.html Please notify bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu of additions or corrections. Many thanks for your assistance.
18 May 2004	As a subscriber to the Update Service, you will have just received an Update originally sent on May 7. Due to problems with the service--now fixed, we believe--you may also not have received Updates from April 21 and 13. You can find those Updates in the archives here: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/updates/archlist2.asp
18 May 2004	(1) Charles Siewert (philosophy of mind) at the University of Miami has accepted a senior offer from the University of California at Riverside.
07 May 2004	(1) Charles Siewert (philosophy of mind) at the University of Miami has accepted a senior offer from the University of California at Riverside.
21 April 2004	(1) Brie Gertler (philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison has accepted an offer from the University of Virginia.
13 April 2004	(1) Derek Parfit, one of the world's leading moral philosophers, has accepted a part-time appointment at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. Details of the appointment are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001039.html#001039.
30 March 2004	IN MEMORIAM
30 March 2004	(1) Bill Brewer (philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics, epistemology) at Oxford University has accepted a professorial chair at the University of Warwick.
30 March 2004	This is sufficiently notable (especially for students considering Columbia) that it warrants a second posting in the same day: Christopher Peacocke (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and mind) at New York University has accepted an offer uptown, from Columbia University.
19 March 2004	(1) Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has accepted the offer from Rutgers University at New Brunswick. More details and editorial comments are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000971.html
18 March 2004	Correction: the right link for more details on some of these recent appointments is:
18 March 2004	(1) Thomas Kelly (epistemology, ethics), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame, has accepted a tenure-track offer from Princeton University.
10 March 2004	(1) Christopher Shields (ancient philosophy) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted an offer from Oxford University.
03 March 2004	(1) Ishitaque Haji (ethics, metaphysics, action theory) at the University of Minnesota, Morris has accepted a senior offer from the University of Calgary. Last year, Calgary also appointed Noa Latham (philosophy of mind, metaphysics), who had taught previously at Barnard College. (This latter appointment had been missed in previous updates; apologies.)
26 February 2004	(1) Scott Soames (philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy) at Princeton University has accepted the senior offer from the University of Southern California. More on the significance of this move is here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000861.html
18 February 2004	(1) Julia Annas (ancient, ethics) and David Owen (early modern), both at the University of Arizona, have declined the offers from the University of Notre Dame.
13 February 2004	(1) Sylvia Berryman (ancient philosophy), currently on tenure-track at Ohio State University, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of British Columbia, her undergraduate alma mater.
06 February 2004	(1) Quassim Cassam (metaphysics, epistemology, Kant), currently at Oxford University, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at University College London, to begin January 1, 2005. More details here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000786.html
29 January 2004	(1) John Hawthorne (philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, Leibniz) and Ted Sider (metaphysics, philosophy of language), both at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, and Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at Michigan, have turned down the Yale offers. Bad break for Yale. Stanley still has an offer from Rutgers in hand.
27 January 2004	IN MEMORIAM
24 January 2004	(1) Stewart Shapiro (philosophy of logic and math) at Ohio State University has turned down the senior offer from the University of Notre Dame. That's a big victory for OSU.
22 January 2004	(1) The distinguished philosopher of science and biology Elliott Sober, who is currently Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University while on leave from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has decided to return full-time to the Wisconsin faculty, effective fall 2004. That's a significant development; do alert your students considering either Stanford or Wisconsin (especially those interested in philosophy of biology) to this development.
16 January 2004	IN MEMORIAM
15 January 2004	(1) Ned Block (philosophy of mind) at New York University has turned down the offer from Harvard University.
10 January 2004	(1) Adam Morton (epistemology, philosophy of mind), currently half-time at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, has accepted a Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta.
19 December 2003	Because most applications for graduate programs are due in January, it seemed advisable to alert prospective students to some major offers that have at least been voted out of departments, and in some cases are "official" offers in the hands of recipients. Updates on these possible faculty moves will be posted in the future:
16 December 2003	Luc Bovens (epistemology, decision theory, philospohy of science, ethics/political) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted a senior post at the London School of Economics, where he is currently visiting. He does still have a counter-offer outstanding from Colorado until next fall, and so there is some prospect he might return to Boulder.
08 December 2003	Michael Jubien (metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language) at the University of California at Davis has accepted a senior offer from the University of Florida at Gainesville, to start next fall. Last year, Florida made another significant senior appointment of David Copp (ethics, metaethics) from Bowling Green State University (Copp was, prior to that, a colleague of Jubien's at Davis). Adding these two distinguished senior philosophers to a large number of good, productive younger philosophers already at Florida (Murat Aydede, Kirk Ludwig, John Palmer, Greg Ray, among others) makes it rather likely, I think, that the Florida Ph.D. program will crack the top 50.
01 December 2003	Dan Brock, one of the most talented philosophers working in medical ethics, will be leaving the National Institute of Health at the end of March 2004 to take up a new Chair at the Harvard Medical School, where he will direct the Division of Medical Ethics and participate in a new university-wide program in ethics and health. Other units at Harvard have in the last year or two added other first-rate philosophers working in and around medical ethics, including Norman Daniels, Frances Myrna Kamm, and Daniel Wikler. (Only Kamm, so far, has an official appointment in the Philosophy Department proper.) This latest addition certainly makes Harvard the place to be for medical ethics.
18 November 2003	(1) A slightly belated notice (apologies): Michael Rosenthal (early modern, moral/political), previously at Grinnell College, has started as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington at Seattle for 2003-04.
05 November 2003	IN MEMORIAM
04 November 2003	IN MEMORIAM
23 October 2003	(1) Michael Dickson (philosophy of physics), currently in the HPS Program at Indiana University at Bloomington, has accepted a senior offer from the University of South Carolina, to start next fall. That's a big coup for South Carolina, where the faculty already includes another well-known philosopher of physics, R.I.G. Hughes.
19 October 2003	I have made some corrections and additions to the Summary of Hiring for 2002-03 posted here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000234.html#000234. Among the affected departments, for which there is either additional or corrected information, are Harvard, Pittsburgh, NYU, and Columbia, among others.
23 September 2003	(1) The Philosopher's Annual has announced its choices for the top ten articles in philosophy for 2002. Congratulations to those whose articles were selected: Nomy Arpaly (Brown), Ned Block (NYU), Michael Friedman (Stanford), Hans Halvorson (Princeton) and Rob Clifton (late of Pittsburgh), John Hawthorne (Rutgers), Richard Heck (Harvard), Karen Jones (Melbourne), Marc Lange (North Carolina), Derk Pereboom (Vermont), and Christopher Zurn (Kentucky). For more information, including the press release, visit http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000291.html.
12 September 2003	Memorial notices for James Rachels
09 September 2003	(1) Michael Smith (ethics, metaethics) at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University has accepted the offer from Princeton, to begin in fall 2004.
09 September 2003	IN MEMORIAM
09 September 2003	The following summary of faculty moves and hirings at ranked PhD-granting programs that transpired since the last edition of the Report (from fall 2002) is intended to allow prospective students make effective use of the 2002-04 Report as they choose graduate programs this coming academic year. (The next comprehensive survey will be undertaken in summer 2004, for the 2004-06 edition of the Report.) Note that in some cases, senior hires were announced prior to the last PGR, even though the actual move did not occur till this year. Thus, where hires are already reflected in the fall 2002 PGR, they are not noted here. In addition, since faculty age is a factor evaluators are invited, but not required, to consider, faculty who are turning 70 soon are noted. Remember, however, that there is no mandatory retirement age, and while many faculty still retire before or around 70, many others continue teaching. Check with individual departments for more information.
09 September 2003	IN MEMORIAM
03 September 2003	(1) Robert Stainton (philosophy of language and mind), who currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science at Carleton University, has accepted an offer from the University of Western Ontario, to begin July 1, 2004. This is the third appointment in these areas for Western Ontario in the last year or so (the other appointments were of tenure-track faculty, Chris Viger from McGill and Erin Eaker from UCLA).
31 August 2003	IN MEMORIAM
08 August 2003	(1) The August 7 update about Dorothy Edgington's appointment as Waynflete Professor failed to note that the Waynflete Professor is at Oxford! That appointment, to repeat, is effective come October; Edgington is moving to Oxford from Birkbeck College, University of London.
07 August 2003	(1) Dorothy Edgington (philosophical logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language), currently at Birkbeck College, University of London, has accepted appointment as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics beginning this October.
06 August 2003	(1) Harvard has extended a senior offer to Ned Block (philosophy of mind) at New York University.
04 August 2003	Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, Continental Philosophy), currently at Princeton, has accepted the senior offer from New York University. This concludes a quite remarkable year for NYU, in which the Department, already preeminent in many contemporary areas of philosophy, dramatically broadened and deepended its strength in the history of philosophy, with the appointments of Don Garrett (early modern philosophy) from North Carolina and now Longuenesse. Together with longtime NYU faculty member John Richardson (author of important books on Heidegger and Nietzsche), the addition of Longuenesse makes NYU a highly competitive choice for students interested in Continental philosophy as well.
23 July 2003	(1) Alva Noe (philosophy of mind, cognitive science), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has accepted the tenured offer from the University of California at Berkeley.
16 July 2003	(1) Pennsylvania State University has hired two philosophers from the University of Colorado at Denver: Mitchell Aboulafia (Continental philosophy, American pragmatism) will be Professor and Head of Department at Penn State, while Catherine Kemp (18th century philosophy, philosophy of law) will be an Assistant Professor.
13 July 2003	(1) Three more tenured appointments for the University of Toronto, which has once again had an active hiring season: Philip Kremer (logic) comes to Toronto from McMaster University; Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic) comes to Toronto from a tenure-track position at MIT; and Brian Cantwell Smith (philosophy of mind, cognitive science) comes to Toronto from a chair at Duke University. Smith will also serve as Dean of the Faculty of Information Sciences, in addition to being a Professor of Philosophy. This is all in addition to the hiring of Kwong-Loi Shun (Chinese philosophy) from the University of California at Berkeley, an appointment announced earlier on the Update Sevice.
24 June 2003	IN MEMORIAM
13 June 2003	(1) Kenneth Baynes (political philosophy, Critical Theory, German philosophy), currently at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has accepted a senior offer from Syracuse University. This concludes a strong year of appointment in moral and political philosophy for Syracuse, which also added Edward McClennen from the London School of Economics and, at the junior level, the moral philosopher Benjmain Bradley.
12 June 2003	(1) Paul Lodge (PhD, Rutgers), currently tenure-track at Tulane University, will be University Lecturer at Oxford University and Fellow of Mansfield College effective July 1. He will have responsibility for teaching early modern philosophy within the university.
12 June 2003	IN MEMORIAM
02 June 2003	(1) Marilyn Adams (philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy), currently at Yale University, has accepted appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, to begin some time in 2004. Robert Adams (metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, early modern philosophy) will retire from Yale at the end of the 2003-04 academic year. He is likely to do some teaching at Oxford as well. R. Adams was, of course, the Chair that rebuilt the Yale Department in to a top twenty department after it imploded in the early 1990s.
02 June 2003	IN MEMORIAM
19 May 2003	(1) Saul Kripke (emeritus, Princeton) has accepted a full-time appointment as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center (he is currently quarter-time at CUNY). His seminal contributions to modern philosophy include the books Naming and Necessity (Harvard University Press, 1980) and Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Harvard University Press, 1982).
08 May 2003	Here is the final update on placement in to tenure-track jobs at PhD and terminal MA programs for the 2002-03 hiring season. Thanks to all those who supplied the information.
08 May 2003	Although almost all the U.S. departments now post rather detailed information on job placement on their web pages, the same is not the case in the U.K., as a correspondent has recently pointed out. I quote, with permission, the letter here (though I have removed the names of particular departments). I hope it shall inspire UK departments to be more forthcoming.
06 May 2003	(1) John Stuhr (American pragmatism, social philosphy), currently at Pennsylvania State University has accepted the W. Alton Jones Chair at Vanderbilt University, commencing this fall.
05 May 2003	The American Academy of Arts & Sciences announced today that the following philosophers had been elected Fellows: Fred Dretske (emeritus, Stanford; part-time, Duke); Hartry Field (NYU); Thomas E. Hill, Jr. (North Carolina), Anthony Kenney (Oxford); Mary Mothersill (emerita, Barnard); Philip L. Quinn (Notre Dame).
05 May 2003	(1) The moral philosopher John Deigh, editor of the journal Ethics and well-known for his seminal articles on issues in moral psychology and on Freud, has accepted a joint appointment in the Philosophy Department and Law School at the University of Texas at Austin. Deigh is the latest faculty member to abandon Northwestern University in recent years--others include Arthur Fine, who moved to the University of Washington at Seattle, Mathias Frisch, who moved to the University of Maryland at College Park, and Meredith and Michael Williams, who moved to Johns Hopkins University. Note, however, that Northwestern did add Thomas Ricketts (history of analytic philosophy) from the University of Pennsylvania this year, and has another senior offer outstanding and likely to be accepted.
29 April 2003	(1) The eminent philosopher of science Adolf Grunbaum has resigned his appointment in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, but
24 April 2003	(1) A correction to the recent posting on job placement: Paul Livingston (PhD, UC Irvine) was hired by Villanova University, not Northern Illinois University.
22 April 2003	(1) Don Garrett, one of the leading historians of early modern philosophy in the English-speaking world, has accepted the senior offer from New York University; he is currently at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. NYU, and Harvard, are also reported to be trying to recruit Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, 19th-century German philosophy), currently at Princeton.
15 April 2003	(1) With decision day at hand for prospective graduate students, some may want to be aware that NYU has now made a senior offer to the distinguished
14 April 2003	(1) Jose Bermudez (philosophy of mind), currently at the University of Stirling, has accepted a senior appointment at Washington University, St. Louis, commencing this July. He will also serve as Director of the Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology. In addition, Dennis Des Chene (early modern philosophy), currently at Emory University, has also accepted a tenured appointment at Washington University.
09 April 2003	(1) James Lenman (ethics and metaethics), currently at the University of Glasgow, will join the faculty at the University of Sheffield in the fall.
31 March 2003	Here is a first report on tenure-track hirings by PhD and terminal MA programs, based on information submitted over the last month. Those with additional information, please e-mail: bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu.
27 March 2003	(1) Michael Bishop (philosophy of science, epistemology), currently the Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, has
25 March 2003	(1) Thomas Hofweber (philosophy of language, logic), currently on tenure-track at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has accepted a tenure-track
24 March 2003	(1) Thomas Christiano (political philosophy) at the University of Arizona has declined the Chair at McGill University.
19 March 2003	(1) Tamar Szabo Gendler (epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of psychology), currently at Syracuse University,
11 March 2003	(1) Marc Lange (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) at the University of Washington, Seattle has accepted a tenured offer from the University
07 March 2003	(1) The distinguished philosopher of science and biology, Elliott Sober, has accepted the offer from Stanford University. He is currently visiting at Stanford, and
12 February 2003	(1) Tamar Szabo Gendler (epistemology, philosophy of psychology, metaphysics) at Syracuse has a tenured offer from Cornell University, that would
04 February 2003	(1) The distinguished scholar of Chinese philosophy, P.J. Ivanhoe, who resigned last summer from the University of Michigan, will serve as the Findlay
25 January 2003	(1) The legal philosopher Andrei Marmor has accepted a half-time appointment in the law school at the University of Southern California (the rest
21 January 2003	Frances Mryna Kamm (ethics), currently at NYU, has accepted an appointment in the Kennedy School of Government and Department of Philosophy
13 January 2003	IN MEMORIAM
13 January 2003	Difficulties with the Update Service may mean that some of you have already received this Update from January 7th. If so, apologies for the repetition.
07 January 2003	(1) A strong set of appointments for the University of Sheffield: three youngish philosophers, all working in and
29 December 2002	Stephen R. Perry, the distinguished legal philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania, has accepted an offer from New York University School of Law,
19 December 2002	(1) The Chronicle of Higher Education today reports that the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Research Fellowships to the following
16 December 2002	(1) Marc Lange (philosophy of science) has declined the offer from the University of Texas at Austin, and will remain at the University of Washington
04 December 2002	The following message is for students interested in Continental philosophy:
26 November 2002	A number of memorial notices for John Rawls are now available. The Harvard Gazette notice is available at,
25 November 2002	IN MEMORIAM
23 November 2002	(1) The Mellon Foundation has announced its second set of five Distinguished Achievement Awards in the Humanities. The only philosopher among
19 November 2002	This is a message for prospective students, i.e., those applying to graduate school this year, though some of the content will obviously be of interest to others.
18 November 2002	More on academic freedom at Stanford Law School--those uninterested, please delete this message, there's no philosophy news in this posting. (That's coming
15 November 2002	A brief addendum about the prior message regarding academic freedom at Stanford Law School. The material I forwarded was sent to me by
14 November 2002	The following is a political message, pertaining to another violation of academic freedom, and contributing to the climate of political repression in the
13 November 2002	I regret that yesterday's memorial notice for Professor Jeffrey was lumped together with other news. It had been
12 November 2002	(1) Correction to yesterday's announcement about Jeffrey Pelletier: he has not yet accepted the Chair at Simon Fraser, and the Chair offer must still
11 November 2002	F. Jeffrey Pelletier, currently at the University of Alberta, will be taking up a Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University. Pelletier, who has
29 October 2002	(1) The new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2002-04 is now available (28 October 2002) on-line at the following addresses:
10 October 2002	(1) David McNaughton (ethics) at Keele University
01 October 2002	(1) The new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2002-04
03 September 2002	IN MEMORIAM
23 August 2002	(1) Frederick Neuhouser (19th-century German
07 August 2002	(1) Simon Blackburn (Cambridge) was elected a
25 July 2002	(1) Alastair Norcross, currently Easterwood
03 July 2002	IN MEMORIAM
03 July 2002	(1) The Centre for Philosophy of Social Sciences,
19 June 2002	(1) Alex Miller (philosophy of language, metaethics),
18 June 2002	(1) Hilary Kornblith, well-known for his work
14 June 2002	A technical problem at Blackwell's site resulted
14 June 2002	IN MEMORIAM
03 June 2002	Jim Pryor (epistemology, metaphysics), currently
28 May 2002	(1) Bas van Fraassen (philosophy of science and
23 May 2002	(1) Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language) at
21 May 2002	(1) Rachel Barney (ancient philosophy), currently
14 May 2002	(1) Daniel Garber (early modern philosophy, philosophy
06 May 2002	(1) Alex Byrne (philosophy of mind, metaphysics)
02 May 2002	(1) Duke has made a significant senior appointment:
29 April 2002	The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has
23 April 2002	(1) The University of Illinois at Chicago has
18 April 2002	(1) Stewart Shapiro has declined the offer from
16 April 2002	(1) The University of Southern California has
16 April 2002	(1) Harry Frankfurt is moving to emeritus status
15 April 2002	Apologies for the multiple Updates today!
15 April 2002	(1) Syracuse University has made a tenured offer
15 April 2002	Junior Job Placement in Tenure-Track Jobs at
12 April 2002	I wanted to share, especially with faculty readers
11 April 2002	(1) Mark Colyvan (metaphysics, philosophy of
09 April 2002	(1) Peter Godfrey-Smith (philosophy of biology,
05 April 2002	(1) Peter Ludlow (philosophy of language and linguistics)
02 April 2002	(1) The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St.
22 March 2002	The University of Rochester, in fact, has detailed
21 March 2002	Problems with the Update Service appear to be
21 March 2002	IN MEMORIAM
20 March 2002	IN MEMORIAM
18 March 2002	IN MEMORIAM
13 March 2002	Since the time of year is upon us when students
12 March 2002	(1) Ralph Wedgwood (ethics, metaethics, epistemology),
11 March 2002	(1) Jesse Prinz (philosophy of mind and cognitive
28 February 2002	(1) Robert Stalnaker will not be moving to Princeton,
27 February 2002	(1) James Griffin, the White's Professor of Moral
18 February 2002	IN MEMORIAM
18 February 2002	IN MEMORIAM
11 February 2002	(1) Michael Tye, the distinguished philosopher
06 February 2002	Peter King, the distinguished scholar of medieval
31 January 2002	Anthony Appiah at Harvard University has accepted
24 January 2002	IN MEMORIAM
21 January 2002	(1) Prospective graduate students may want to
17 January 2002	(1) The University of Texas at Austin has made
09 January 2002	(1) An interesting analysis and discussion of
02 January 2002	I am delighted to close the year by reporting

10 November 2006	The new PGR for 2006-08 is now on-line here: www.philosophicalgourmet.com [ To Top ]

18 August 2006	The final opportunity to update or correct the faculty lists for the fall 2006 PGR surveys is now at hand. The lists are available here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/draft_faculty_l.html You may post corrections or additions at that site. Thanks for your assistance. [ To Top ]

22 May 2006	The May 22 draft of the faculty lists for the fall 2006 PGR surveys is now available here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/draft_faculty_l_1.html Corrections and additions may be submitted there. Thanks to all who have already contributed to improving the accuracy of these lists. [ To Top ]

11 May 2006	Draft faculty lists for the fall 2006 PGR surveys are now available. You may view them here, http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/draft_faculty_l_2.html and also post corrections. Thanks for your help. [ To Top ]

13 March 2006	Sorry for the long period of silence since the last Update. There were technical problems, and, in the interim, I have taken to posting all udpates at my blog site. You can find all the updates here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/index.html I will occasionally use the Update service for particularly time-sensitive items, but from now on most updates will be posted only at the above link. Please note that there is currently an opportunity (at the above link, again) to post information about new tenure-track hires made this academic year. [ To Top ]

03 September 2005	Regarding today's terrorist attacks in London: I am collecting information on the safety and welfare of philosophers in and around London here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/07/london_friends_.html As some of you know, one of the attacks was very close to UCL, though reports so far are that no one in the philosophical community there was a victim. On my blog site, there is a thread for members of the philosophical communities affected by the hurricane to post any relevant information. Already many folks from Tulane (all reported safe, so far) have postings. The location is here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/09/philosophy_facu.html This will remain the top item on the blog site for the week. [ To Top ]

06 June 2005	(1) The American Philosophical Society, the nation's oldest learned society, has elected new members. Philosophers elected are Stanley Cavell (emeritus, Harvard), Allan Gibbard (Michigan), and Richard Rorty (emeritus, Stanford). (2) The Department of Philosophy at Princeton University has voted out a senior offer to Alex Byrne (philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of language) at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. (3) Political philosopher Michael Otsuka will remain at University College London, rather than moving to the University of California at San Diego as reported earlier. (4) Connie Rosati (ethics, philosophy of law) at the University of California at Davis has accepted a tenured offer from the University of Arizona. (5) James van Cleve (metaphysics, epistemology, Kant, modern philosophy), who has been half-time at Brown University and the University of Southern California the last couple of years, is now moving full-time to USC. (6) Diana Raffman (philosophy of mind, aesthetics) at Ohio State University and Byeong Yi (philosophy of language and logic, metaphysics) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities have both accepted senior offers from the University of Toronto. (7) Don Garrett (early modern philosophy) at New York University has turned down the senior offer from Yale University. (8) Three senior philosophers are leaving Northwestern University: Terry Pinkard (Kant and post-Kantian German philosophy) is returning to Georgetown University; Charles Travis (philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, epistemology) is going to King's College, London, though will visit at Harvard in the fall; and Thomas Ricketts (history of analytic philosophy) has accepted an offer from the University of Pittsburgh. (9) Robert Cummins (philosophy of mind and cognitive science) at the University of California at Davis has accepted a senior offer from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. (10) Illinois/Urbana has lost a second faculty member to Indiana University, Bloomington this year: Gary Ebbs (philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy, epistemology) has accepted an offer (to start in fall 2006). Earlier this year, Kate Abramson (early modern) at Illinois also accepted an offer from Indiana. (11) The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has elected new Fellows; philosophers elected are Robert Fogelin (emeritus, Dartmouth), Gilbert Harman (Princeton), Charles Larmore (Chicago), Keith Lehrer (emeritus, but still teaching, Arizona), and Peter van Inwagen (Notre Dame). (12) Stanford has made offers to Joshua Cohen (political philosophy) at MIT and Brian Skyrms (decision and game theory, philosophy of science, metaphysics & epistemology) at the University of California at Irvine; the appointment of Cohen would be joint between Philosophy, Political Science, and Law. As always, more details and news is available here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/ [ To Top ]

31 March 2005	With decision time on U.S. PhD programs at hand, there's lots of news involving Christoher Hill, Colin McGinn, Bob Batterman, and others. It's all collected here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/ [ To Top ]

08 March 2005	I have opened a thread on my blog site where information about new tenure-track hires in philosophy can be posted. The thread and posting guidelines are here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/tenuretrack_hir.html [ To Top ]

02 March 2005	Lots of news on philosophy offers made and accepted (Bob Hale, Delia Graff, Louise Antony, Joseph Levine, others); rather than repost it all here, you can find it all at my blog under the "Philosophy Updates" category here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/ [ To Top ]

06 January 2005	Happy New Year to all! (1) Jennifer Whiting (ancient philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind) at the University of Toronto has declined the senior offer from Stanford University. (2) Brown University has made a senior offer to Richard Heck (philosophy of language, logic & mathematics; history of analytic philosophy) at Harvard University. (3) The University of Notre Dame now has three tenured offers outstanding: to Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, early modern philosophy, philosophy of religion) at Yale University; to Hans Halvorson (philosophy of physics) at Princeton University; and to Michael Potter (philosophy of math, logic, history of analytic philosophy) at Cambridge University. Professor Halvorson also has an offer from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. More details on several of these developments are, as usual, here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/ [ To Top ]

22 November 2004	During the day on Monday, November 22, we will be adding a revised set of rankings to the "Overall Rankings" section of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, to address a statistical problem identified by a member of the Advisory Board (whose department, it should perhaps be added, was unaffected either way by this problem). In the currently posted ranking, scores were standardized to offset any slight distortions resulting from evaluators awarding different average scores (some gave lots of 4s and 5s, some gave almost none), and from not all evaluators scoring all departments. Standardizing the results puts all the evaluators on the same scale. First, scores are centered by subtracting the mean score for each evaluator from each of that evaluator's scores (each observation); then, each observation was divided by the root-mean-square of that evaluator's scores. After scaling, the distribution of each evaluator's scores has a mean of zero and a variance of one. While scaling corrects for distortions produced by differing use of the scoring scale by evaluators, it also introduces some, once again attributable to not all evaluators scoring all departments; when this selective scoring has a fairly systematic pattern (say, the evaluator mostly scores “top” departments, but scores a few lower ranked departments as well), the scaled score of the lower ranked departments will be artificially depressed relative to the raw mean. Therefore, in addition to the ranking by scaled mean, we will add a re-ranking by raw mean as well. This data is presently available, of course, but it seemed worthwhile to re-rank in line with that data as well to make clear the differences. The major effects are towards the bottom of the U.S. top 50, where presumably uncertainty among evaluators about relative placement may be highest. Note, also, that for purposes of comparison to prior year, and for purposes of comparison across geographic regions, raw means are the appropriate measure. (The scaled means were calculated only over the scores awarded to departments in each geographic region, so are not comparable across those regions.) Many thanks to readers who have pointed out various typographical errors, broken links, and the like; these changes are being made and will be on-line over the next couple of days. [ To Top ]

19 November 2004	The Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2004-06 will be released on Friday, November 19, 2004, at about noon in Britain. The new Report will be available at the site of the 2002-04 Report: www.philosophicalgourmet.com Sincere thanks to all who have contributed to the new edition, and I hope it will be useful to faculty and students alike. [ To Top ]

19 November 2004	The new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2004-06 is now on-line at www.philosophicalgourmet.com A similar message to this effect went out yesterday, but appears not to have gone through. [ To Top ]

15 November 2004	IN MEMORIAM Philip Quinn (1940-2004) The Notre Dame memorial notice is here: http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicid=8100&seltopicid=3427 [ To Top ]

11 November 2004	Apologies for the long delay since the last Update. I have tended to post items more regularly in the "Philosophy Updates" section of my blog, which is now here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/philosophy_updates/index.html and then aggregate those postings for purposes of the e-mail Update service. However, there isn't that much new since August 20; for additional details on some of these items, see the blog site. (1) Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (metaphysics), currently at Oxford, has accepted half-time posts (to start fall 2005) at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. and at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aries. (2) Neil Tennant at Ohio State has taken over from Dale Jacquette as editor of the American Philosophical Quarterly; information on the new editorial office and submissions are here: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/tennant9/apq.html (3) Glenn McGee, currently Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at Penn will, effective March 1, 2005, become Balint Professor of Medical Ethics at the Albany Medical College, which is part of Union University in New York; he will also be Professor of Philosophy at Union College and in Health Law at Albany Law School. (4) Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, early modern philosophy, philosophy of religion) at Yale University has declined the offer from Cornell. (5) Knud Haakonnssen (history of modern philosophy; moral, political, and legal philosophy), currently at Boston University, will take up the Chair in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex in January 2005. (6) Bilkent University in Turkey has recently started a philosophy department, with an "analytic" orientation; the Department's Chair, Professor Varol Akman, reports that they "are always interested in short- or long-term visitors." More information is available here: http://www.phil.bilkent.edu.tr/ (7) Hans Halvorson (philosophy of physics), currently on tenure-track at Princeton, has a tenured offer from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (8) Gabriel Uzquiano (logic, philosophical logic, metaphysics), an assistant professor at the University of Rochester, has accepted a tenured offer from Ohio State University, to start in fall 2005. Finally, the new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2004-06 will be out very soon. We had originally hoped to have it ready by November 15, but it is likely to be later that week and not later than November 22. The new Report will be at the site of the current Report, www.philosophicalgourmet.com [ To Top ]

20 August 2004	PLEASE NOTE: There is a final opportunity to review the draft faculty lists for the upcoming reputational survey, that will begin by September 15. You can find the list here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/001819.html Please e-mail corrections to bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu On to news: (1) Alan Carter (political philosophy, ethics, environmental philosophy) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. (2) Three philosophers have been awarded ACLS Fellowships: Jennifer Church (Vassar), Hannah Ginsborg (Berkeley), and Robert McCauley (Emory). In addition, Robin Jeshion (UC Riverside) has won a Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars. (3) David Velleman (ethics, philosophy of action) at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has accepted the senior offer from New York University, to start in fall 2005. (4) Robert Pasnau (medieval philosophy) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has turned down the offer from the University of California, San Diego. (5) Assistant Professor Michael Blake (political philosophy) at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government has accepted a tenured joint appointment in Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Washington at Seattle, to start in fall 2005. (6) Sarah Sawyer (philosophy of language and mind, epistemology) at the University of Kansas has accepted a tenured offer from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. (7) Alan Hajek (philosophy of science, decision theory, epistemology) at the California Institute of Technology has accepted a senior offer from the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. (8) John Hawthorne (epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, early modern philosophy) at Rutgers University at New Brunswick has turned down the offer from Princeton. (9) David Chalmers (philosophy of mind) and Paul Griffiths (philosophy of biology) have accepted the Australian Federation Fellowships at, respectively, the Australian National University and the University of Queensland. Chalmers will leave the University of Arizona and Griffiths will leave the University of Pittsburgh, though Griffiths will spend about one month each year as a Visiting Professor at the ERSC Center for Genomics in Society at the University of Exeter. (10) Cornell University has made a senior offer to Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion) at Yale University. (11) Christopher Janaway (German philosophy, aesthetics) at Birkbeck College, University of London has accepted a Chair in philosophy at the University of Southampton, to start in January 2005. More details-including links to memorial notices for Sidney Morgenbesser (1921-2004), John Passmore (1914-2004), and John Watling (1923-2004)--are available, as always, here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

10 July 2004	(1) Australian Federation Fellowships, Australia's most lucrative chairs, have been offered to David Chalmers at University of Arizona (to be based at the Australian National University); Paul Griffiths at the University of Pittsburgh (to be based at the University of Queensland--note that Griffiths had recently accepted an offer at Exeter in the UK); and Philip Pettit at Princeton University (to be based at the University of Sydney). (2) The British Academy has elected new Fellows, including philosophers R.A. Duff (University of Stirling) and Peter Simons (University of Leeds) and, as Corresponding Fellows, Sydney Shoemaker (emeritus, Cornell University) and Bob Goodin (Australian National University). (3) The Royal Society of Canada has elected new Fellows, including philosophy Thomas Lennon (University of Western Ontario). (4) William Demopoulos (philosophy of logic and mathematics, philosophy of science and physics, history of analytic philosophy) at the University of Western Ontario has accepted an offer from the Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine, to start in January 2005. (5) Helen Longino (philosophy of science, epistemology, feminist philosophy) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities has accepted an offer from Stanford University, to start in fall 2005. (6) Washington University, St. Louis has made two more tenured hires: John Doris (ethics, moral psychology) from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Clare Palmer (environmental ethics) from Lancaster University in Britain. (7) Two more faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder have external offers: Alan Carter (moral and political philosophy, environmental ethics) from La Trobe University in Australia (where he would also be Chair of the Department), and Robert Pasnau (medieval philosophy) from the University of California at San Diego. (8) Mark Rowlands (philosophy of mind, cognitive science, ethics) at the University of Exeter has accepted the Chair at the University of Hertfordshire, to start in August. As always, more details on some of these appointments are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

15 June 2004	IN MEMORIAM Stuart Hampshire (1914-2004) A memorial notice and intellectual biography from The Telegraph is here: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=VI1YGAMMTOPRNQFIQMGCNAGAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2004/06/15/db1501.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/06/15/ixportal.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=12031 [ To Top ]

15 June 2004	Here is the correct link for the Hampshire obituary (suitably condensed): http://tinyurl.com/3hxrc [ To Top ]

07 June 2004	IMPORTANT NOTICE: The draft list of faculties for the 2004-06 PGR has been updated here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001343.html . Please pay particular attention to the lists of "affiliated faculty." Faculty eligible for addition to these lists must be (1) full or part-time at the same university; (2) not retired/emeritus or adjunct; and (3) faculty who work with PhD students in philosophy and who are eligible to sit on dissertation committees for philosophy PhD students. Send notice of additions and corrections to bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu (1) Jonathan Dancy (ethics, epistemology, early modern) at the University of Reading has accepted a half-time appointment with tenure at the University of Texas at Austin, to begin January 2005. (2) George Bealer (metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted the senior offer from the University of Texas at Austin, to start this fall. (3) Michael Strevens (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) at Stanford University has accepted the tenured offer from New York University. (4) Susanna Siegel (philosophy of mind and language), a tenure-track associate professor at Harvard, has turned down the tenure-track offer from the University of Arizona. (5) Mark Heller (metaphysics, epistemology) at Southern Methodist University has accepted a senior offer from Syracuse University, to start this fall. (6) Colin Allen (philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology) at Texas A&M University has accepted appointment as Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University at Bloomington to start this fall. (7) Paul Roth (philosophy of social science, philosophy and sociology of sicence) at the University of Missouri at St. Louis has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. More details on several of these appointments are available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

26 May 2004	IMPORTANT NOTICE: In preparation for the 2004-06 PGR, and with the approval of the Advisory Board, we are making available a draft set of faculty lists for the programs to be evaluated. You can download it by going here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001343.html Please notify bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu of additions or corrections. Many thanks for your assistance. (1) Roger Ariew (early modern) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department at the University of South Florida. In addition, Hugh LaFollette (applied ethics), previously at East Tennesse State University, has accepted the Cole Chair in Ethics at the St. Petersburg campus of USF, though will be available to graduate students at the main campus. (2) Manfred Kuehn (Kant, modern philosophy) at the University of Marburg (and, before that, Purdue University) has accepted a senior offer from Boston University, to start this fall. (He is replacing, in effect, Henry Allison, who is moving to a part-time post at the University of California at Davis.) (3) Paul Griffiths (philosophy of biology and psychology), currently Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter, where he will join John Dupre and Mark Rowlands, among others. (4) Cristina Bicchieri (rational choice and game theory, political philosophy) at Carnegie-Mellon University has accepted a senior offer from the University of Pennsylvania, where she will also be Director of the Philosophy, Politics & Economics Program. (5) The Philosophy Department at Temple University has made four lateral appointments this year: two scholars working on issues at the intersection of philosophy and race (Lewis Gordon from the Africana Studies Department at Brown University and Paul Taylor, currently an assistant professor at the University of Washington, Seattle); Noel Carroll, the philosopher of art, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison; and Michael Thau (philosophy of mind), who is currently an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. (6) Stephen Gardiner (moral and political philosophy), currently an assistant professor at the University of Utah, has accepted a tenure-track appointment at the University of Washington, Seattle. As usual, more details on some of these appointments is available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

18 May 2004	As a subscriber to the Update Service, you will have just received an Update originally sent on May 7. Due to problems with the service--now fixed, we believe--you may also not have received Updates from April 21 and 13. You can find those Updates in the archives here: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/updates/archlist2.asp IN MEMORIAM Alan Gewirth (1912-2004) An informative memorial notice from the University of Chicago is here: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/040517.gewirth.shtml IN MEMORIAM Alan Gewirth (1912-2004) An informative memorial notice from the University of Chicago is here: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/040517.gewirth.shtml [ To Top ]

18 May 2004	(1) Charles Siewert (philosophy of mind) at the University of Miami has accepted a senior offer from the University of California at Riverside. (2) Medieval philosophy scholar the Rev. John Jenkins at the University of Notre Dame has been named the new President of the university. (3) The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced the election of new fellows, including the following five philosophers: Ned Block (NYU), Alvin Goldman (Rutgers), Tony Martin (UCLA), Peter Railton (Michigan), and Samuel Scheffler (Berkeley). (4) New York University has voted out tenured offers to Paul Horwich (philosophy of language, philosophy of science) at the City University of New York Graduate Center; James Pryor (epistemology) at Princeton University; Michael Strevens (philosophy of science and physics), currently untenured at Stanford University; and David Velleman (ethics, philosophy of action) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. (5) Denis Walsh (philosophy of biology) at the University of Edinburgh has accepted a tenured joint appointment n the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, to begin in July 2005. (6) Washington University, St. Louis has made a tenured offer to John Doris (ethics) at the University of California at Santa Cruz. (7) The University of Texas at Austin has made tenured offers to George Bealer (metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Jonathan Dancy (ethics, epistemology, early modern philosophy) at the University of Reading. Dancy recently declined a Chair in ethics at Johns Hopkins University, while Bealer also has a senior offer from the University of Florida at Gainesville. (8) Princeton University has voted out tenured offers to Delia Graff (philosophy of language, philosophical logic) at Cornell University; and John Hawthorne (epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, early modern philosophy) and Tim Maudlin (philosophy of science and physics, metaphysics) at Rutgers University at New Brunswick; and a tenure-track offer to Michael Fara (philosophy of language) at Cornell. As usual, more details on some of the preceding are available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

07 May 2004	(1) Charles Siewert (philosophy of mind) at the University of Miami has accepted a senior offer from the University of California at Riverside. (2) Medieval philosophy scholar the Rev. John Jenkins at the University of Notre Dame has been named the new President of the university. (3) The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced the election of new fellows, including the following five philosophers: Ned Block (NYU), Alvin Goldman (Rutgers), Tony Martin (UCLA), Peter Railton (Michigan), and Samuel Scheffler (Berkeley). (4) New York University has voted out tenured offers to Paul Horwich (philosophy of language, philosophy of science) at the City University of New York Graduate Center; James Pryor (epistemology) at Princeton University; Michael Strevens (philosophy of science and physics), currently untenured at Stanford University; and David Velleman (ethics, philosophy of action) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. (5) Denis Walsh (philosophy of biology) at the University of Edinburgh has accepted a tenured joint appointment n the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, to begin in July 2005. (6) Washington University, St. Louis has made a tenured offer to John Doris (ethics) at the University of California at Santa Cruz. (7) The University of Texas at Austin has made tenured offers to George Bealer (metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Jonathan Dancy (ethics, epistemology, early modern philosophy) at the University of Reading. Dancy recently declined a Chair in ethics at Johns Hopkins University, while Bealer also has a senior offer from the University of Florida at Gainesville. (8) Princeton University has voted out tenured offers to Delia Graff (philosophy of language, philosophical logic) at Cornell University; and John Hawthorne (epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, early modern philosophy) and Tim Maudlin (philosophy of science and physics, metaphysics) at Rutgers University at New Brunswick; and a tenure-track offer to Michael Fara (philosophy of language) at Cornell. As usual, more details on some of the preceding are available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

21 April 2004	(1) Brie Gertler (philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison has accepted an offer from the University of Virginia. (2) Elinor Mason (ethics), an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has accepted an offer from the University of Edinburgh. (3) Benjamin Hellie (philosophy of mind) and Jessica Wilson (metaphysics, philosophy of science), assistant professors at Cornell and Michigan, respectively, have declined the offers from Ohio State University. Wilson has also declined a tenure-track offer from Syracuse University. (4) Anthony Gillies (epistemology, philosophy of language, decision theory), currently on tenure-track at Harvard University, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (5) The University of Arizona has made a tenure-track offer to Susanna Siegel (philosophy of mind and language), currently on tenure-track at Harvard. (6) Rae Langton (Kant, feminist philosophy, moral and political philosophy, metaphysics), the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and Richard Holton (ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, philosophy of law), also at Edinburgh, have accepted senior offers from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. (7) Paul Franks (Kant and German Idealism, Jewish philosophy, modern philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Notre Dame has accepted an offer from the University of Toronto. (8) Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of math) and Michael Nelson (philosophy of language), currently at Yale University, have accepted offers from the University of California at Riverside: she as a full professor,he as a tenure-track assistant professor. (9) Two assistant professors at the University of Pennsylvania working in moral and political philosophy are leaving: Ulrike Heuer has accepted a post at the University of Leeds, and Rahul Kumar has accepted a (tenured) position at Queen's University (Canada). (10) Thomas Pogge (political philosophy) at Columbia University will be on the faculty of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) at the Australian National University for at least the next two years, perhaps longer. As usual, more details on some of the preceding are available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

13 April 2004	(1) Derek Parfit, one of the world's leading moral philosophers, has accepted a part-time appointment at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. Details of the appointment are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001039.html#001039. (2) Harold Noonan (metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, philosophical logic) at the University of Birmingham has accepted a professorial appointment at the University of Nottingham. (3) John Martin Fischer (philosophy of action, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion) at the University of California at Riverside has declined the offer to be Chair of the Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Memorial notices for Joel Feinberg have been collected by the Arizona Department here: http://w3.arizona.edu/%7Ephil/feinberg.htm [ To Top ]

30 March 2004	IN MEMORIAM Joel Feinberg (1926-2004) Some preliminary information from the Arizona Department is here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001021.html. When other memorial notices are available, links will be posted. [ To Top ]

30 March 2004	(1) Bill Brewer (philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics, epistemology) at Oxford University has accepted a professorial chair at the University of Warwick. (2) Andy Clark (philosophy of mind/cognitive science/artificial intelligent) and Josefa Toribio (philosophy of mind and language) at Indiana University at Bloomington have accepted offers from the University of Edinburgh. Clark will hold the Chair in Logic & Metaphysics there. (3) Timothy O'Connor (philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics, philosophy of religion) at Indiana University at Bloomington has turned down the offer from the University of Colorado at Boulder. (4) Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic, philosophy of language), currently at the University of Toronto, has accepted a tenured offer from the University of California at Davis. (5) Christopher ("Kit") Wellman (political, legal, and moral philosophy) at Georgia State University has accepted a tenured offer from Washington University, St. Louis. (6) John Heil (philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology) at Davidson College has accepted a senior offer from Washington University, St. Louis. (7) Mark Timmons (ethics, metaethics, epistemology) at the University of Memphis has accepted the senior offer from the University of Arizona. (8) Ohio State University has made tenure-track offers to Benjamin Hellie (philosophy of mind) and Jessica Wilson (metaphysics, philosophy of science) who are, respectively, assistant professors at Cornell University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Syracuse University has also made Wilson an offer. Here is a SECOND DRAFT of tenure-track hiring by PhD and MA programs this year. Once again, graduates are listed by the school from which they earned their PhD. TENURE-TRACK HIRES AT Ph.D.-GRANTING AND TERMINAL M.A. PROGRAMS 2003-04 AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Josh Parsons was hired by the University of California, Davis. AOS: Metaphysics, Ethics. He was previously a postdoctoral and then research fellow at the University of St. Andrews. BROWN UNIVERSITY Uriah Kriegel was hired by the University of Arizona. AOS: Philosophy of Mind/Cognitive Science. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Jonathan Gilmore was hired by Yale University. AOS: Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Law, Continental Philosophy. He has previously held several postdoctoral positions, most recently at Princeton. DUKE UNIVERSITY Frederic Bouchard was hired by the University of Montreal. AOS: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Psychology. HARVARD UNIVERSITY Thomas Kelly was hired by Princeton University. AOS: Epistemology, Ethics. He was previously tenure-track at the University of Notre Dame. MASSACHUSSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY James John was hired by the University of Iowa. AOS: Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Metaethics. Jennifer McKitrick was hired by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. AOS: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science. She was previously tenure-track at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Agustin Rayo was hired by the University of California, San Diego. AOS: Philosophical Logic, Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of St. Andrews. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Adam Pautz was hired by the University of Texas, Austin. AOS: Philosophy of Mind. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Steven Weinstein was hired by the University of Waterloo. AOS: Philosophy of Science and Physics. He taught previously (in non-tenure-track positions) at Dartmouth College and Princeton University. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Antony Eagle was hired by Oxford University. AOS: Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Foundations of Probability. Reina Hayaki was hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Metaphysics, Philosophical Logic. She was previously tenure-track at Union College. Gillian Russell was hired by Washington University, St. Louis: AOS: Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Logic, Epistemology. Hanoch Sheinman was hired by Rice University. AOS: Philosophy of Law. Mark Schroeder was hired by the University of Maryland, College Park. AOS: Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology. Kevin Zaragoza was hired by the University of Georgia. AOS: Ethics, Moral Psychology. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEW BRUNSWICK Jill North was hired by Yale University. AOS: Philosophy of Physics. She also has accepted a postdoc at New York University. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON Alex Voorhoeve was hired (in to a permanent post) at the London School of Economics. AOS: Political Philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Patricia Marino was hired by the University of Waterloo. AOS: Philosophy of Language, Ethics, Philosophy of Mathematics. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Matt Kisner was hired by the University of South Carolina. AOS: Early Modern Philosophy. P.D. Magnus was hired by the State University of New York, Albany. AOS: Philosophy of Science and Physics. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Rachana Kamtekar was hired by the University of Arizona. AOS: Ancient Philosophy, Ethics. She was previously tenure-track at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and before that, at Williams College. David Sussman was hired by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. AOS: Ethics, Kant. He was previously tenure-track at Princeton University. (Sussman was a student of Korsgaard, who started with her at Chicago, but then followed Korsgaard to Harvard.) UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSSETTS, AMHERST Dan Kaufman was hired by the University of Colorado, Boulder. AOS: Early Modern Philosophy. He was previously tenure-track at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Kris McDaniel was hired by Syracuse University. AOS: Metaphysics. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Thomas Holden was hired by the University of California, Santa Barbara. AOS: Early Modern Philosophy, Metaphysics. He was previously on tenure-track at Syracuse University. Colleen Murphy was hired by Texas A&M University. AOS: Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law. Dan Ryder was hired by the University of Connecticut, Storrs. AOS: Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, Metaphysics. He was previously on a post-doc at Indiana University, Bloomington. Matthew Smith was hired by Yale University. AOS: Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Derrick Darby was hired by Texas A&M University. AOS: Moral and Political Philosophy. He was previously tenure-track at Northwestern University. Douglas Lavin was hired by Harvard University. AOS: Ethics. Melissa Merritt was hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Kant, Early Modern Philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN Sylvia Berryman was hired by the University of British Columbia. AOS: Ancient Philosophy. She was previously tenure-track at Ohio State University. Matt Evans was hired by New York University. AOS: Ancient Philosophy, Ethics. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Monte Johnson was hired by St. Louis University. AOS: Ancient Philosophy. He was previously on a post-doc at the University of British Columbia. Anthony Skelton was hired by the University of Western Ontario. AOS: Ethics. He will be on a postdoc at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor next academic year. YALE UNIVERSITY Desmond Hogan was hired by Princeton University. AOS: Kant, Early Modern Philosophy. YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO Duff Waring was hired by Atkinson College, York University, Toronto. AOS: Applied Ethics, Bioethics. [ To Top ]

30 March 2004	This is sufficiently notable (especially for students considering Columbia) that it warrants a second posting in the same day: Christopher Peacocke (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and mind) at New York University has accepted an offer uptown, from Columbia University. [ To Top ]

19 March 2004	(1) Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has accepted the offer from Rutgers University at New Brunswick. More details and editorial comments are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000971.html Here is a FIRST DRAFT of tenure-track hiring by PhD- and MA-granting programs for 2003-04. I'm sure the list is not yet complete, and welcome notifications of additions and corrections at bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu. Remember the list is confined ONLY to hiring by PhD and MA programs, since that may have some bearing on decisions that prospective students will be making in the next few weeks. Newly hired tenure-track faculty are listed by the school from which they earned their Ph.D. TENURE-TRACK HIRES AT Ph.D.-GRANTING AND TERMINAL M.A. PROGRAMS 2003-04 AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Josh Parsons was hired by the University of California, Davis. AOS: Metaphysics, Ethics. He was previously a postdoctoral and then research fellow at the University of St. Andrews. BROWN UNIVERSITY Uriah Kriegel was hired by the University of Arizona. AOS: Philosophy of Mind/Cognitive Science. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Jonathan Gilmore was hired by Yale University. AOS: Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Law, Continental Philosophy. He has previously held several postdoctoral positions, most recently at Princeton. HARVARD UNIVERSITY Thomas Kelly was hired by Princeton University. AOS: Epistemology, Ethics. He was previously tenure-track at the University of Notre Dame. MASSACHUSSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY James John was hired by the University of Iowa. AOS: Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Metaethics. Jennifer McKitrick was hired by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. AOS: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science. She was previously tenure-track at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Agustin Rayo was hired by the University of California, San Diego. AOS: Philosophical Logic, Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of St. Andrews. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Adam Pautz was hired by the University of Texas, Austin. AOS: Philosophy of Mind. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Steven Weinstein was hired by the University of Waterloo. AOS: Philosophy of Science and Physics. He taught previously (in non-tenure-track positions) at Dartmouth College and Princeton University. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Reina Hayaki was hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Metaphysics, Philosophical Logic. Mark Schroeder was hired by the University of Maryland, College Park. AOS: Ethics. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEW BRUNSWICK Jill North was hired by Yale University. AOS: Philosophy of Physics. She also has accepted a postdoc at New York University. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON Alex Voorhoeve was hired (in to a permanent post) at the London School of Economics. AOS: Political Philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Patricia Marino was hired by the University of Waterloo. AOS: Philosophy of Language, Ethics, Philosophy of Mathematics. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Matt Kisner was hired by the University of South Carolina. AOS: Early Modern Philosophy. P.D. Magnus was hired by the State University of New York, Albany. AOS: Philosophy of Science and Physics. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Rachana Kamtekar was hired by the University of Arizona. AOS: Ancient Philosophy, Ethics. She was previously tenure-track at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and before that, at Williams College. David Sussman was hired by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. AOS: Ethics, Kant. He was previously tenure-track at Princeton University. (Sussman was a student of Korsgaard, who started with her at Chicago, but then followed Korsgaard to Harvard.) UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSSETTS, AMHERST Dan Kaufman was hired by the University of Colorado, Boulder. AOS: Early Modern Philosophy. He was previously tenure-track at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Kris McDaniel was hired by Syracuse University. AOS: Metaphysics. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Thomas Holden was hired by the University of California, Santa Barbara. AOS: Early Modern Philosophy, Metaphysics. He was previously on tenure-track at Syracuse University. Dan Ryder was hired by the University of Connecticut, Storrs. AOS: Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, Metaphysics. He was previously on a post-doc at Indiana University, Bloomington. Matthew Smith was hired by Yale University. AOS: Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Douglas Lavin was hired by Harvard University. AOS: Ethics. Melissa Merritt was hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Kant, Early Modern Philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN Sylvia Berryman was hired by the University of British Columbia. AOS: Ancient Philosophy. She was previously tenure-track at Ohio State University. Matt Evans was hired by New York University. AOS: Ancient Philosophy, Ethics. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Monte Johnson was hired by St. Louis University. AOS: Ancient Philosophy. He was previously on a post-doc at the University of British Columbia. Anthony Skelton was hired by the University of Western Ontario. AOS: Ethics. He will be on a postdoc at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor next academic year. YALE UNIVERSITY Desmond Hogan was hired by Princeton University. AOS: Kant, Early Modern Philosophy. [ To Top ]

18 March 2004	Correction: the right link for more details on some of these recent appointments is: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosophy_updates.html [ To Top ]

18 March 2004	(1) Thomas Kelly (epistemology, ethics), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame, has accepted a tenure-track offer from Princeton University. (2) David Sussman (ethics, Kant), currently an Assistant Professor at Princeton University, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (3) Shaun Nichols (philosophy of psychology, cognitive science, ethics), currently an Associate Professor at the College of Charleston, has accepted an offer from the University of Utah. More details on some of these moves are, as usual, here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosphy_updates.html [ To Top ]

10 March 2004	(1) Christopher Shields (ancient philosophy) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted an offer from Oxford University. (2) Fraser MacBride (metaphysics, philosophy of math) at the University of St. Andrews has accepted a Readership at Birkbeck College, University of London. (3) Jeffrey King (philosophy of language) at the University of California at Davis has accepted the offer from the University of Southern California. (4) The University of Colorado at Boulder has made an offer to Timothy O'Connor (metaphysics, philosophy of action, philosophy of religion) at Indiana University at Bloomington. More details about some of the preceding developments are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/cat_philosphy_updates.html. A Committee of the APA stacked with PGR bashers has proposed a new "statement" on rankings; details are here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000915.html. [ To Top ]

03 March 2004	(1) Ishitaque Haji (ethics, metaphysics, action theory) at the University of Minnesota, Morris has accepted a senior offer from the University of Calgary. Last year, Calgary also appointed Noa Latham (philosophy of mind, metaphysics), who had taught previously at Barnard College. (This latter appointment had been missed in previous updates; apologies.) (2) The University of Arizona has made a senior offer to Mark Timmons (ethics, metaethics) at the University of Memphis. (3) John Campbell (philosophy of mind) at Oxford University has accepted the senior offer from the University of California, Berkeley. (4) Thomas Holden (early modern), an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of California at Santa Barbara. [ To Top ]

26 February 2004	(1) Scott Soames (philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy) at Princeton University has accepted the senior offer from the University of Southern California. More on the significance of this move is here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000861.html (2) Oxford University has made an offer to Christopher Shields (ancient philosophy, metaphysics) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. (3) Dan Kaufman (early modern), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of Colorado at Boulder. (4) The University of California at Santa Cruz has made a senior offer to John Martin Fischer (philosophy of action, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion) to be the new Chair of their department. Fischer is currently at the University of California at Riverside. (5) The University of California at Riverside has made tenured offers to Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language, philosophy of math) at Yale University and Gideon Yaffe (philosophy of action, early modern, philosophy of law) at the University of Southern California, and a tenure-track offer to Michael Nelson (philosophy of language), currently an Assistant Professor at Yale University. As in prior years, I will be posting a list of new tenure-track hires at PhD-granting programs in late March. (I have posted some news of lateral tenure-track hires already, but will include those as well in the late March posting.) I welcome notification of such hires by either the candidates hired, the hiring departments, or the placement directors of chairs of the departments from which the candidates received their Ph.Ds. Send notifications to bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu. Thanks. [ To Top ]

18 February 2004	(1) Julia Annas (ancient, ethics) and David Owen (early modern), both at the University of Arizona, have declined the offers from the University of Notre Dame. (2) Rachana Kamtekar (ancient, ethics), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of Arizona. (3) Brian Weatherson (epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of language, among other areas), currently at Brown University, has accepted a tenured offer from Cornell University. (4) The University of California at Davis has made a tenured offer to Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic) at the University of Toronto. (5) Scott Soames (philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy) has declined the offer from the University of Texas at Austin; he still has an offer outstanding from the University of Southern California. [ To Top ]

13 February 2004	(1) Sylvia Berryman (ancient philosophy), currently on tenure-track at Ohio State University, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the University of British Columbia, her undergraduate alma mater. (2) A banner year for philosophers in securing support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Philosophers garnering NEH support are: Julia Driver (Dartmouth), Gail Fine (Cornell), Richard Miller (Cornell), Bryan van Norden (Vassar), Catherine Elgin (Harvard), John Horty (Maryland), David Cunning (Iowa), Gabriel Carone (Colorado), Joel Kupperman (Connecticut), David DeGrazia (George Washington), Barbara Montero (Georgia State), Kit Wellman (Georgia State), Jon McGinnis (Missouri/St. Louis), Trenton Merrick (Virginia), Michael Zimmerman (North Carolina/Greensboro), Bennett Helm (Franklin & Marshall), Robert Rupert (Texas Tech), Peter Vranas (Iowa State), and Emily Grosholz (Penn State). More information is available here: http://www.neh.gov/pdf/fellowships2003.pdf [ To Top ]

06 February 2004	(1) Quassim Cassam (metaphysics, epistemology, Kant), currently at Oxford University, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at University College London, to begin January 1, 2005. More details here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000786.html (2) Michael Lynch (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and mind), currently Chair of the Department at Connecticut College, has accepted a senior offer from the University of Connecticut at Storrs. [ To Top ]

29 January 2004	(1) John Hawthorne (philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, Leibniz) and Ted Sider (metaphysics, philosophy of language), both at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, and Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at Michigan, have turned down the Yale offers. Bad break for Yale. Stanley still has an offer from Rutgers in hand. (2) Stanford has made a senior offer to Helen Longino (philosophy of science, feminist philosophy) at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul. This offer was actually extended awhile ago, and so is unrelated to the recent decision by Elliott Sober to return to Wisconsin. [ To Top ]

27 January 2004	IN MEMORIAM Zeno Vendler (1921-2004) The University of Calgary's informative memorial notice is here: http://www.phil.ucalgary.ca/people/vendler.html. [ To Top ]

24 January 2004	(1) Stewart Shapiro (philosophy of logic and math) at Ohio State University has turned down the senior offer from the University of Notre Dame. That's a big victory for OSU. (2) Princeton has made an offer to Thomas Kelly (epistemology, ethics), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. [ To Top ]

22 January 2004	(1) The distinguished philosopher of science and biology Elliott Sober, who is currently Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University while on leave from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has decided to return full-time to the Wisconsin faculty, effective fall 2004. That's a significant development; do alert your students considering either Stanford or Wisconsin (especially those interested in philosophy of biology) to this development. (2) Fred D'Agostino (philosophy of linguistics, philosophy of social science, political philosophy, philosophy of science) at the University of New England has accepted a senior appointment at the University of Queensland, where he will be Associate Professor in Humanities and Director of Contemporary Studies. This is the third senior appointment for Queensland in the last two years; the others were Mark Colyvan and Phil Dowe, who work in and around metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of logic and math. [ To Top ]

16 January 2004	IN MEMORIAM Noberto Bobbio (1909-2004) There is an informative obituary in The Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1121657,00.html [ To Top ]

15 January 2004	(1) Ned Block (philosophy of mind) at New York University has turned down the offer from Harvard University. (2) Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion) at Yale University has turned down the offer from the University of Arizona. [ To Top ]

10 January 2004	(1) Adam Morton (epistemology, philosophy of mind), currently half-time at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, has accepted a Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta. (2) Robert Brandom at the University of Pittsburgh is the lone philosopher among this year's recipients of the lucrative Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Awards in the Humanities. More information is here: http://www.mellon.org/Announcements-DAA%202003.htm. [ To Top ]

19 December 2003	Because most applications for graduate programs are due in January, it seemed advisable to alert prospective students to some major offers that have at least been voted out of departments, and in some cases are "official" offers in the hands of recipients. Updates on these possible faculty moves will be posted in the future: Rutgers University at New Brunswick has voted an offer to Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. University of Arizona has voted an offer to Keith DeRose (epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion) at Yale University. University of Notre Dame has voted offers to Julia Annas (ancient philosophy, ethics) and David Owen (early modern philosophy) at the University of Arizona. (Notre Dame still has an offer outstanding as well to Stewart Shapiro [philosophy of math and logic] at Ohio State University.) University of Texas at Austin has voted an offer to Scott Soames (philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy) at Princeton University. Cornell University has voted an offer to Brian Weatherson (philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, decision theory) at Brown University. Yale University has voted offers to John Hawthorne (philosophy of language, metaphysics, Leibniz) and Ted Sider (metaphysics, philosophy of language), both at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, and to Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The Government Department at Harvard University has voted an offer to Michael Rosen (political philosophy, Continental philosophy) at Oxford University. Also, if you have not already, be sure to check the Summary of Faculty Moves from last year here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000234.html#000234 Good luck to all students with their applications and best wishes to all for the holidays and the New Year. [ To Top ]

16 December 2003	Luc Bovens (epistemology, decision theory, philospohy of science, ethics/political) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted a senior post at the London School of Economics, where he is currently visiting. He does still have a counter-offer outstanding from Colorado until next fall, and so there is some prospect he might return to Boulder. [ To Top ]

08 December 2003	Michael Jubien (metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language) at the University of California at Davis has accepted a senior offer from the University of Florida at Gainesville, to start next fall. Last year, Florida made another significant senior appointment of David Copp (ethics, metaethics) from Bowling Green State University (Copp was, prior to that, a colleague of Jubien's at Davis). Adding these two distinguished senior philosophers to a large number of good, productive younger philosophers already at Florida (Murat Aydede, Kirk Ludwig, John Palmer, Greg Ray, among others) makes it rather likely, I think, that the Florida Ph.D. program will crack the top 50. [ To Top ]

01 December 2003	Dan Brock, one of the most talented philosophers working in medical ethics, will be leaving the National Institute of Health at the end of March 2004 to take up a new Chair at the Harvard Medical School, where he will direct the Division of Medical Ethics and participate in a new university-wide program in ethics and health. Other units at Harvard have in the last year or two added other first-rate philosophers working in and around medical ethics, including Norman Daniels, Frances Myrna Kamm, and Daniel Wikler. (Only Kamm, so far, has an official appointment in the Philosophy Department proper.) This latest addition certainly makes Harvard the place to be for medical ethics. [ To Top ]

18 November 2003	(1) A slightly belated notice (apologies): Michael Rosenthal (early modern, moral/political), previously at Grinnell College, has started as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington at Seattle for 2003-04. (2) Andrew Williams (political philosophy), previously just on the Politics faculty at the University of Reading, has accepted appointment in Reading's internationally distinguished philosophy department. (3) Max (M.J.) Cresswell (philosophy of language and logic), who is emeritus at Victoria University of Wellington, will continue as an on-going visiting professor at Texas A&M University this Spring, with the expectation that he will be in residence a semester per year for the foreseeable future. Students considering A&M's new PhD program should contact the department for more information. [ To Top ]

05 November 2003	IN MEMORIAM Richard Wollheim (1923-2003) There is a very fine memorial notice by Arthur Danto here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1077695,00.html [ To Top ]

04 November 2003	IN MEMORIAM Richard Taylor (1919-2003) A brief obituary notice appears here: http://miva.pressconnects.com/miva/cgi-bin/miva/ithndetail.mv?ARCID=1249&speak=taylor. I will post links to other memorial notices if, and when, they are available. [ To Top ]

23 October 2003	(1) Michael Dickson (philosophy of physics), currently in the HPS Program at Indiana University at Bloomington, has accepted a senior offer from the University of South Carolina, to start next fall. That's a big coup for South Carolina, where the faculty already includes another well-known philosopher of physics, R.I.G. Hughes. (2) Mark Greenberg (philosophy of mind, philosophy of law), currently on tenure-track at Princeton University, has accepted a joint tenure-track position in philosophy and law at the University of California at Los Angeles, also to start next fall. Greenberg will join several other UCLA faculty working at the intersection of law and philosophy, including David Dolinko (Law), Stephen Munzer (Law), and Seana Shiffrin (Philosophy, Law). [ To Top ]

19 October 2003	I have made some corrections and additions to the Summary of Hiring for 2002-03 posted here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000234.html#000234. Among the affected departments, for which there is either additional or corrected information, are Harvard, Pittsburgh, NYU, and Columbia, among others. [ To Top ]

23 September 2003	(1) The Philosopher's Annual has announced its choices for the top ten articles in philosophy for 2002. Congratulations to those whose articles were selected: Nomy Arpaly (Brown), Ned Block (NYU), Michael Friedman (Stanford), Hans Halvorson (Princeton) and Rob Clifton (late of Pittsburgh), John Hawthorne (Rutgers), Richard Heck (Harvard), Karen Jones (Melbourne), Marc Lange (North Carolina), Derk Pereboom (Vermont), and Christopher Zurn (Kentucky). For more information, including the press release, visit http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000291.html. (2) I am pleased to announce two additional new members of the PGR Advisory Board: Chris Bobonich (Stanford) and Lisa Downing (Illinois/Chicago). [ To Top ]

12 September 2003	Memorial notices for James Rachels The New York Times obituary is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/obituaries/09RACH.html The University of Alabama's page in memory of Professor Rachels is here: http://www.uab.edu/philosophy/ [ To Top ]

09 September 2003	(1) Michael Smith (ethics, metaethics) at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University has accepted the offer from Princeton, to begin in fall 2004. (2) Gordon Belot (philosophy of physics) at New York University has accepted an offer from the University of Pittsburgh. A complete summary of major faculty moves since the last edition of the PGR will be posted to the Update Service later this week, for the benefit of students considering where to apply for next year. IN MEMORIAM James Rachels (1941-2003) Links to memorial notices about his many influential contribution to moral philosophy, theoretical and applied, will be posted as soon as they are available. [ To Top ]

09 September 2003	IN MEMORIAM James Rachels (1941-2003) Links to memorial notices about his many influential contribution to moral philosophy, theoretical and applied, will be posted as soon as they are available. [ To Top ]

09 September 2003	The following summary of faculty moves and hirings at ranked PhD-granting programs that transpired since the last edition of the Report (from fall 2002) is intended to allow prospective students make effective use of the 2002-04 Report as they choose graduate programs this coming academic year. (The next comprehensive survey will be undertaken in summer 2004, for the 2004-06 edition of the Report.) Note that in some cases, senior hires were announced prior to the last PGR, even though the actual move did not occur till this year. Thus, where hires are already reflected in the fall 2002 PGR, they are not noted here. In addition, since faculty age is a factor evaluators are invited, but not required, to consider, faculty who are turning 70 soon are noted. Remember, however, that there is no mandatory retirement age, and while many faculty still retire before or around 70, many others continue teaching. Check with individual departments for more information. It is a reasonable supposition that senior appointments (listed as "hires") will affect the specialty rankings in most of the cases noted below. ("Junior hires" means a tenure-track assistant professor, or equivalent.) If you are interested in Brian Leiter's own editorial comments on these developments, please visit http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000235.html. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Hired Don Garrett (early modern) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, Continental philosophy) from Princeton University. The Law School at NYU hired Stephen Perry (legal and political philosophy) from the University of Pennsylvania; Perry is an "affiliated faculty" member in philosophy (as are Ronald Dworkin and Liam Murphy from the Law School). The School of Education hired Dale Jamieson (environmental ethics) from Carleton College; Jamieson is an "affiliated faculty" member in philosophy as well. Also one junior hire: Elizabeth Harman [PhD, MIT] (ethics). Jerry Fodor (Rutgers) and Sydney Shoemaker (emeritus, Cornell) are teaching one seminar per year at NYU for the next three years. Lost Gordon Belot (philosophy of physics) to the University of Pittsburgh; Frances Myrna Kamm (ethics) to Harvard University; and Cian Dorr (metaphysics), a junior faculty member, to Pittsburgh as well. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Hired Michael Smith (ethics, metaethics) from the Australian National University (starting in 2004). Lost Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, Continental philosophy) to New York University. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEW BRUNSWICK Hired Jefferson McMahan (ethics, applied ethics) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR Lost a junior faculty member, Thomas Hofweber, to North Carolina (see below). UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Hired Gordon Belot (philosophy of physics) from NYU. Also two junior hires: Cian Dorr [PhD, Princeton] (metaphysics) and Jessica Moss [PhD, Princeton] (ancient philosophy); Dorr was previously tenure-track at NYU. Heda Segvic (ancient philosophy) passed away. STANFORD UNIVERSITY Hired Elliott Sober (philosophy of science and biology) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. (Note: Sober technically on leave from Wisconsin, so might still return.) HARVARD UNIVERSITY Hired Frances Myrna Kamm (ethics, applied ethics) (joint with the Kennedy School of Government). Also three junior hires: Anthony Gillies [PhD, Arizona] (epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of language); Peter Koellner [PhD, MIT] (logic); Niko Kolodny [PhD, Berkeley] (ethics). (Gillies was tenure-track at Texas/Austin previously.) Trying to recruit Ned Block (philosophy of mind) from New York University and Michael Martin (philosophy of mind, metaphysics) from University College London. Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant/Continental), formerly at Princeton (now NYU), and Frederick Neuhouser (Continental) at Barnard College/Columbia University, both rebuffed recruitment efforts from Harvard in the last year, so students should stay alert for the possibility of additional offers in these areas. Charles Parsons (b. 1933) (Kant, philosophy of mathematics) is reported to be planning to retire in the very near future. MASSACHUSSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Junior hire: Caspar Hare [PhD, Princeton] (ethics). Lost a junior faculty member, Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic), to the University of Toronto. Judith Jarvis Thomson's phased retirement comes to an end in January 2004 (at which point she retires). UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES Cross-appointed Brian Copenhaver (Renaissance philosophy) from the History Department (Copenhaver also has administrative duties, so students may want to check on his availability for graduate supervision). Two junior hires: Sheldon Smith [PhD, Ohio State] and Christopher Smeenk [PhD, Pittsburgh] (both philosophy of science and physics). Tenure-track offer (joint with Law School) to junior faculty member Mark Greenberg [DPhil, Oxford] (philosophy of mind, philosophy of law) at Princeton. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Hired Marc Lange (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) from the University of Washington, Seattle. Also two tenure-track hires (of faculty who were tenure-track elsewhere): Thomas Hofweber [PhD, Stanford] (philosophy of language and logic) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Ram Neta [PhD, Pittsburgh] (epistemology, philosophy of mind) from the University of Utah. Lost Don Garrett (early modern) to NYU. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Hired Alva Noe (philosophy of mind, cognitive science) from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Also one junior hire: Branden Fitelson [PhD, Wisconsin] (philosophy of science, decision theory); Fitelson was previously tenure-track at San Jose State University. Lost Kwong-Loi Shun (Chinese philosophy) to the University of Toronto (come January), and Richard Wollheim (philosophy of art, philosophy of mind, Freud) to retirement. In addition, Donald Davidson (philosophy of language and mind) and Bernard Williams (ethics), a part-time faculty member, passed away during the summer. Barry Stroud (metaphysics, epistemology) turns 70 in 2005. UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME Hired Robert Audi (epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of religion) (joint with Business School) from Nebraska. Also junior hire: Katherine Brading [DPhil, Oxford] (philosophy of physics). Trying to recruit Stewart Shapiro (philosophy of mathematics, logic) from Ohio State University. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN Hired John Deigh (ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of law) (joint with Law School) from Northwestern University. Also cross-appointed Leslie Green (legal and political philosophy), who had been half-time just in the law school. Lost part-time faculty member Richard Sorabji (ancient), who moved his quarter-time appointment to the CUNY Graduate Center (though he remains as an adjunct at Texas, but is no longer teaching a seminar). Also lost a junior faculty member, Gillies, to Harvard (see above). BROWN UNIVERSITY Junior hire: Nomy Arpaly [PhD, Stanford] (ethics), previously tenure-track at Rice University. James van Cleve (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, Kant, early modern) has an offer from University of Southern California, which might involve being part-time at USC and part-time at Brown. Jaegwon Kim (metaphysics, philosophy of mind) turns 70 in 2004. CORNELL UNIVERSITY Hired Tamar Gendler (epistemology, philosophy of psychology, metaphysics) from Syracuse University. Also junior hire: Andrew Chignell [PhD, Yale] (Kant, early modern). UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Two junior hires, both in ancient philosophy: Jonathan Beere and Gabriel Richardson [both PhD, Princeton]. Richardson was previously an assistant professor at Yale. YALE UNIVERSITY Losing Marilyn Adams (medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion) to the Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford and Robert Adams (metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics, early modern philosophy) will retire at the end of 2003-04. Also lost one junior faculty member, Gabriel Richardson, to the University of Chicago. Another untenured faculty member, Tad Brennan (ancient philosophy), has a tenured offer from Northwestern University. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Clark Glymour (philosophy of science, aritificial intelligence) is no longer part-time at UCSD, but remains full-time at Carnegie-Mellon University (and as an adjunct at Pittsburgh's HPS program). OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY One junior hire: Sukjae Lee [PhD, Yale] (early modern). UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON Appear to have lost Elliott Sober (philosophy of biology, philosophy of science) to Stanford (see above). Two junior hires: Juan Comesana [PhD, Brown] (epistemology) and Carolina Sartorio [PhD, MIT] (metaphysics, ethics). UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS Hired Henry Allison (Kant) to a part-time appointment from Boston University, effective fall 2004. CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK GRADUATE CENTER Three senior hires: Saul Kripke (emeritus, Princeton) will be full-time; Galen Strawson (philosophy of mind and action, Hume), starting fall 2004, will be half-time at CUNY and half-time at the University of Reading in the UK, at least initially (he is technically full-time at CUNY, on leave one semester per year initially); and Richard Sorabji (ancient philosophy) will be quarter-time (moving from Texas). Richard Sorabji turns 70 in 2004. INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON One junior hire: Kevin Toh [PhD, Michigan] (ethics, philosophy of law). UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Lost Stephen Perry (legal and political philosophy) to NYU and Thomas Ricketts (history of analytic philosophy) to Northwestern University. Two junior hires: K-C. Tan [PhD, Toronto] (political philosophy) and Michael Weisberg [PhD, Stanford] (philosophy of science, philosophy of biology). Senior offer still outstanding to Cristina Bicchieri (decision, game and rational choice theory) at Carnegie-Mellon University. DUKE UNIVERSITY Hired Fred Dretske (emeritus, Stanford) (philosophy of mind, epistemology) to a part-time position. Lost Brian Cantwell Smith (philosophy of mind) to the University of Toronto. UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER Lost Stephen Leeds (philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology) to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and James Nickel (political and legal philosophy) to the Arizona State University College of Law. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY Hired Kenneth Baynes (political philosophy, Critical Theory, German philosophy) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Edward McClennen (rational choice theory, political philosophy) from the London School of Economics. Also junior hire: Benjamin Bradley [PhD, U Mass/Amherst] (ethics). Lost Tamar Gendler, as above, to Cornell; and junior faculty member Daniel Nolan (metaphysics) to the University of St. Andrews. Lynne McFall (ethics) has retired (that was not reflected in last year's survey). JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Senior offer still outstanding to Jonathan Dancy (ethics) at the University of Reading. Lost junior faculty member Susan Hahn (Continental) to Kenyon College. Peter Achinstein (philosophy of science) turns 70 in 2005. RICE UNIVERSITY Lost one junior faculty member: Nomy Arpaly (ethics) to Brown University. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, TWIN CITIES Junior hire: Peter Hanks [PhD, Berkeley] (philosophy of language). UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE Lost Marc Lange (philosophy of science) to North Carolina (see above). Two junior hires: Sara Goering [PhD, Colorado] (applied ethics) and Adam Moore [PhD, Ohio State] (moral, political, and legal philosophy) (joint with the Information Sciences School); Goering was previously tenure-track at California State University at Long Beach. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Hired Thomas Ricketts (history of analytic philosophy) from the University of Pennsylvania. Trying to recruit Tad Brennan (ancient philosophy) from Yale University. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA Junior hire: Michael Rescorla [PhD, Harvard] (philosophy of language and mind). CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY Junior hire: Linda Palmer [PhD, UC Irvine] (Kant). UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Hired Loren Lomasky (political philosophy) from Bowling Green State University. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Lost Jefferson McMahan (ethics, applied ethics) to Rutgers University, New Brunswick. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA The Law School at USC hired (part-time) Andrei Marmor (legal and political philosophy), who will also have an appointment in philosophy. Senior offer (full or part-time) still outstanding to James van Cleve (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, Kant, early modern) at Brown University. BOSTON UNIVERSITY P.J. Ivanhoe (Chinese philosophy), formerly at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is the Findlay Visiting Professor at BU for this academic year; students interested in Chinese philosophy should be alert to the possibility this will become a permanent appointment. TULANE UNIVERSITY Lost junior faculty member Paul Lodge (early modern) to Oxford University. FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY Hired David McNaughton (ethics, meteaethics) from the University of Keele in the UK. Two junior hires: Zachary Ernst [PhD, Wisconsin] (philosophy of biology, logic) and John Roberts [PhD, North Carolina] (early modern). UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, GAINESVILLE Hired David Copp (ethics, metaethics) and Marina Oshana (ethics), both from Bowling Green State University. UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Hired David Cunning [PhD, UC Irvine] (early modern) from a tenure-track position at Northern Illinois University. UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA Hired Peter Vallentyne (political philosophy) from Virginia Commonwealth University. Junior hire: Brian Kierland [PhD, Princeton] (ethics, philosophy of mind). WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS Hired Jose Bermudez (philosophy of mind) from the University of Stirling and Dennis Des Chene (early modern) from Emory University. VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY Hired John Stuhr (American pragmatism, social philosophy) from Pennsylvania State University. OUTSIDE THE US (I fear this will be less complete) OXFORD UNIVERSITY Hired Dorothy Edgington (metaphysics, philosophical logic) to the Waynflete Chair from Birkbeck College, University of London. (Note, however, that because of the mandatory retirement rules in the UK, Edgington will only hold the Chair for a few years.) Also hired Paul Lodge [PhD, Rutgers] (early modern) from Tulane University. UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS Hired Daniel Nolan (metaphysics) from Syracuse University. UNIVERSITY OF READING Galen Strawson (philosophy of action and mind, Hume) will be half-time at CUNY (see above). LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS Lost Edward McClennen to Syracuse (see above). UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD Hired John Divers from the University of Leeds; Eric Olson from Cambridge University; and Dominic Gregory. All three work in and around metaphysics. In addition, Sheffield hired James Lenman (ethics, metaethics) from the University of Glasgow. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Four tenured hires: Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic) from a junior position at MIT; Philip Kremer (logic) from McMaster University; Kwong-Loi Shun (Chinese philosophy) from the University of California, Berkeley; and Brian Cantwell Smith (philosophy of mind) from Duke University. Both Shun and Smith will also have administrative appointments and duties. UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Hired John Beatty (history and philosophy of biology) from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Junior hire: Scott Anderson [PhD, Chicago] (moral and political philosophy). UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO Junior hire: Erin Eaker [PhD, UCLA] (philosophy of language). AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Losing Michael Smith (ethics, metaethics) to Princeton University in 2004. UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND Hired Phil Dowe (metaphysics, philosophy of science) from the University of Tasmania. [ To Top ]

09 September 2003	IN MEMORIAM James Rachels (1941-2003) Links to memorial notices about his life and career, including his many influential contributions to moral philosophy, theoretical and applied, will be posted as soon as they are available. [ To Top ]

03 September 2003	(1) Robert Stainton (philosophy of language and mind), who currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science at Carleton University, has accepted an offer from the University of Western Ontario, to begin July 1, 2004. This is the third appointment in these areas for Western Ontario in the last year or so (the other appointments were of tenure-track faculty, Chris Viger from McGill and Erin Eaker from UCLA). (2) One tenure-track placement at a ranked PhD program was missed in the updates last spring: Christopher Smeenk (PhD, HPS, University of Pittsburgh) was hired by UCLA. Areas: Philosophy of Physics, History and Philosophy of Science. Some recent blog items that may be of interest: A list of major law school faculty moves for the year past are available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000164.html#000164 If you have children in public schools, you may be want to find out about the textbook wars in Texas, since they affect school textbooks nationwide. Read more here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000146.html#000146 Richard Heck was not happy with my answer to the question "What Happened to the Heckling Campaign?" If you're suffering from insomnia, I recommend his reply and my reply to his reply, available here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000168.html#000168 [ To Top ]

31 August 2003	IN MEMORIAM Donald Davidson (1917-2003) Links to memorial notices will be posted as soon as they are available. For more information and links to other useful information, please visit http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000206.html. [ To Top ]

08 August 2003	(1) The August 7 update about Dorothy Edgington's appointment as Waynflete Professor failed to note that the Waynflete Professor is at Oxford! That appointment, to repeat, is effective come October; Edgington is moving to Oxford from Birkbeck College, University of London. (2) Those subscribers to the Update Service interested in faculty hirings in legal academia can find detailed information here: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/rankings/faculty_moves.html (3) I periodically receive e-mail inquiries asking "whatever happened to the Heckling campaign?" In the hope of saving myself time, I've posted an answer on the new blog site: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/. [ To Top ]

07 August 2003	(1) Dorothy Edgington (philosophical logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language), currently at Birkbeck College, University of London, has accepted appointment as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics beginning this October. (2) Sarah Waterlow Broadie (University of St. Andrews) has been elected to the British Academy. (3) I am pleased to announce that 15 more distinguished philosophers have agreed to joint the Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report. They are: David Brink (UC San Diego), Alex Byrne (MIT), John Carriero (UCLA), Justin D'Arms (Ohio State), Michael Devitt (CUNY Grad Center), Sebastian Gardner (Univ Coll London), Delia Graff (Cornell), Patricia Greenspan (Maryland), Calvin Normore (UCLA), Graham Priest (Melbourne), Jonathan Schaffer (U Mass/Amherst), Brian Skyrms (UC Irvine), Robert Stern (Sheffield), Ted Warfield (Notre Dame), and Julian Young (Auckland). New Board members were invited based not only on their distinguished records of philosophical achievement, but with an eye to increasing the diversity of the Board in terms of seniority, areas of expertise, and departments represented. You may read more about the new Board members here: http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/. Since my home institution has kindly created the aforemention site for my use, please note that all future editorial items (such as philosophy in the news, academic freedom updates, and so forth), as well as expanded comments/details on Update Service items (such as item #3, above), will now be posted on http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/ and NOT on the Update Sevice. Since these editorial and expanded news items are infrequent, notification that new items are available will occasionally be included in the Update Service. The basic news items (such as 1 and 2, above) will, of course, continue to be included in the Updated Service. [ To Top ]

06 August 2003	(1) Harvard has extended a senior offer to Ned Block (philosophy of mind) at New York University. (2) The University of Pennsylvania has extended a senior offer to Cristina Bicchieri (decision, game and rational choice theory) at Carnegie-Mellon University. [ To Top ]

04 August 2003	Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, Continental Philosophy), currently at Princeton, has accepted the senior offer from New York University. This concludes a quite remarkable year for NYU, in which the Department, already preeminent in many contemporary areas of philosophy, dramatically broadened and deepended its strength in the history of philosophy, with the appointments of Don Garrett (early modern philosophy) from North Carolina and now Longuenesse. Together with longtime NYU faculty member John Richardson (author of important books on Heidegger and Nietzsche), the addition of Longuenesse makes NYU a highly competitive choice for students interested in Continental philosophy as well. [ To Top ]

23 July 2003	(1) Alva Noe (philosophy of mind, cognitive science), currently an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has accepted the tenured offer from the University of California at Berkeley. (2) Stanford has made an offer to Michael Smith (ethics and metaethics) at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University; Princeton is also pursuing Smith. PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEWS Professors John Perry and Ken Taylor from Stanford will be hosting a new program on public radio called "Philosophy Talk." For more information, see the announcement at the APA web site: http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/news/index.html [ To Top ]

16 July 2003	(1) Pennsylvania State University has hired two philosophers from the University of Colorado at Denver: Mitchell Aboulafia (Continental philosophy, American pragmatism) will be Professor and Head of Department at Penn State, while Catherine Kemp (18th century philosophy, philosophy of law) will be an Assistant Professor. (2) The philosopher Michael Rea at the University of Notre Dame--author of, among other things, an important recent critique of philosophical naturalism (World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism [OUP, 2002]) has penned a reply to Daniel Dennett's call for naturalists of the world to unite (noted in the last Update). Dennett, in turn, replies to Rea, and Rea replies as well. You can read the whole exchange (plus find a link to Dennett's article that sparked it all) here: http://www.nd.edu/~mrea/Dennett.htm. (Thanks to Michael Bergmann for calling this to my attention.) [ To Top ]

13 July 2003	(1) Three more tenured appointments for the University of Toronto, which has once again had an active hiring season: Philip Kremer (logic) comes to Toronto from McMaster University; Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic) comes to Toronto from a tenure-track position at MIT; and Brian Cantwell Smith (philosophy of mind, cognitive science) comes to Toronto from a chair at Duke University. Smith will also serve as Dean of the Faculty of Information Sciences, in addition to being a Professor of Philosophy. This is all in addition to the hiring of Kwong-Loi Shun (Chinese philosophy) from the University of California at Berkeley, an appointment announced earlier on the Update Sevice. PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEWS It's not that often that a philosopher has a piece on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, let alone one in which the philosopher is trying to jump-start a social movement. But for those who missed it, here is a link to Daniel Dennett's piece calling for "naturalists of the world to unite": http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/opinion/12DENN.html (you may need to register with the Times to access this, but that's free). And for more on the social movement, see http://the-brights.net/. The movement is, in my view, long overdue, though the name strikes me as rather silly. [ To Top ]

24 June 2003	IN MEMORIAM Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003) For information on his distinguished philosophical career, see http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gwright.htm. Information about on-line memorials would be welcome, and will be posted in later updates. [ To Top ]

13 June 2003	(1) Kenneth Baynes (political philosophy, Critical Theory, German philosophy), currently at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has accepted a senior offer from Syracuse University. This concludes a strong year of appointment in moral and political philosophy for Syracuse, which also added Edward McClennen from the London School of Economics and, at the junior level, the moral philosopher Benjmain Bradley. (2) A philosophically informative memorial notice for Bernard Williams appears in the Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,976477,00.html [ To Top ]

12 June 2003	(1) Paul Lodge (PhD, Rutgers), currently tenure-track at Tulane University, will be University Lecturer at Oxford University and Fellow of Mansfield College effective July 1. He will have responsibility for teaching early modern philosophy within the university. (2) Since there will not be a new PGR for 2003-04, the plan is to release, via the Update Service, a single, long summary of all the major faculty moves that have transpired since the last Report, as an aid to students considering graduate school this coming year. The summary of faculty moves will be posted by September. [ To Top ]

12 June 2003	IN MEMORIAM Bernard Williams (1929-2003) Links to memorial notices will be posted as soon as they are available. [ To Top ]

02 June 2003	(1) Marilyn Adams (philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy), currently at Yale University, has accepted appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, to begin some time in 2004. Robert Adams (metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, early modern philosophy) will retire from Yale at the end of the 2003-04 academic year. He is likely to do some teaching at Oxford as well. R. Adams was, of course, the Chair that rebuilt the Yale Department in to a top twenty department after it imploded in the early 1990s. (2) Galen Strawson (philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, Hume, among other areas) at the University of Reading has accepted appointment as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He will be teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center in the fall terms initially, teaching at Reading the remainder of the year. This concludes a dramatic series of appointments for CUNY this year: in addition to Strawson, Saul Kripke has also joined as a Distinguished Professor and Richard Sorabji will be a regular quarter-time visitor. [ To Top ]

02 June 2003	IN MEMORIAM Heda Segvic (1957-2003) A memorial service will be held in conjunction with the annual Princeton Colloqium in Ancient Philosophy, December 6-7, 2003. More details should be available from the Princeton Department in early October. [ To Top ]

19 May 2003	(1) Saul Kripke (emeritus, Princeton) has accepted a full-time appointment as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center (he is currently quarter-time at CUNY). His seminal contributions to modern philosophy include the books Naming and Necessity (Harvard University Press, 1980) and Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Harvard University Press, 1982). (2) The political philosopher Loren Lomasky, currently at Bowling Green State University, has accepted an endowed chair at the University of Virginia (starting this fall), where he will be Director of the new program in Philosophy, Politics and Law, and a member of the Philosophy Department. Among Lomasky's many publications are the books Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (Oxford University Press, 1987) and (with Geoffrey Brennan) Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Lomasky enhances an already strong group in political philosophy at UVA, that includes A. John Simmons in the Philosophy Department, George Klosko in the Government Department, and Jody S. Kraus in the Law School, among others. (3) Kwong-Loi Shun, a leading scholar of Chinese philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, has accepted appointment (effective January 1, 2004) as Vice-President and Principal of the University of Toronto at Scarbough (UTSC), with appointments in the Department of Humanities at UTSC and the graduate Departments of Philosophy and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. (4) Robert Audi, currently at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, has accepted a joint appointment at the University of Notre Dame as holder of the Gallo Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Management, and Professor of Philosophy. Audi's well-known work has ranged widely over many areas of philosophy, including moral and political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of action, and philosophy of religion. (5) Two more bits of tenure-track hiring news: Michael Rescorla (PhD expected, Harvard; AOS: philosophy of langauge) has been hired in to a tenure-track post at the University of California at Santa Barbara; Manyul Im (PhD, Michigan; AOS: Chinese philosophy), currently tenure-track at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, is moving back to a tenure-track post at California State University at Los Angeles, where he previously taught. New journal update: Continuum (in the UK) is bringing out a new journal: The Journal of Moral Philosophy will be a peer reviewed journal of moral, political, and legal philosophy with an international focus. It will publish high quality articles in all areas of normative philosophy, including pure and applied ethics, legal, social and political theory. Articles exploring non-Western traditions are equally welcome. The Journal of Moral Philosophy seeks to promote lively discussions and debates for established academics and the wider community. Therefore, contributors should avoid unnecessary jargon without sacrificing academic rigour. In addition, it encourages contributions from newer members of the philosophical community. Forthcoming issues will contain articles, discussion pieces, review essays and book reviews. The Journal of Moral Philosophy will be published three times per year. The third issue each year will be devoted to a particular theme. The theme for the first special issue of the Journal of Moral Philosophy will be "The Legacy of John Rawls". This issue will appear in November 2004. Theories of punishment will be theme for the second special issue in 2005. If you would like to submit a manuscript to the Journal of Moral Philosophy, please contact the editors. Editor: Thom Brooks, Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom (tbrooks@web.de). Reviews Editor: Fabian Freyenhagen, Department of Philosoophy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom (ffreyenhagen@yahoo.com) Academic freedom update: you may see the AAUP Report condemning the University of South Florida's handling of the case of Professor Sami Al-Arian here: http://www.aaup.org/Com-a/Institutions/USF.htm. Philosophy in the News update: for the denouement on the May 5 posting about Leo Strauss, see http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/moreleostrauss.html [ To Top ]

08 May 2003	Here is the final update on placement in to tenure-track jobs at PhD and terminal MA programs for the 2002-03 hiring season. Thanks to all those who supplied the information. JUNIOR PLACEMENT IN PhD. AND M.A. PROGRAMS (updated as of 5/07/03) Bear in mind, of course, that the students being placed now were choosing graduate programs anywhere from five to ten years ago. Brown University Juan Comesaña: hired by University of Wisconsin, Madison. AOS: Epistemology, metaphysics. Jennifer Lackey: hired by Northern Illinois University. AOS: Epistemology, philosophy of mind. Currently tenure-track at Pomona College. Baron Reed: hired by Northern Illinois University. AOS: Epistemology, metaphysics. Currently teaching at Pomona College. Massachussetts Institute of Technology Elizabeth Harman: hired by New York University. AOS: Ethics. Peter Koellner: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Logic. Carolina Sartorio: hired by University of Wisconsin, Madison. AOS: Metaphysics, Ethics. Also had offers from NYU and UCLA. New School University Pablo Gilabert: hired by Concordia University, Montreal. AOS: Moral and political philosophy, Critical Theory. Ohio State University Sondra Bacharach: hired by Victoria University, Wellington (New Zealand). AOS: Aesthetics. Adam Moore: hired by the University of Washington, Seattle (half in philosophy, half in the Information School; tenure line in philosophy). AOS: Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Sheldon Smith: hired by the University of California, Los Angeles. AOS: Philosophy of physics. Oxford University Katherine Brading: hired by the University of Notre Dame. AOS: Philosophy of physics. Princeton University Jonathan Beere: hired by University of Chicago. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Cian Dorr: hired by University of Pittsburgh. AOS: Metaphysics. Currently tenure-track at New York University. Caspar Hare: hired by Massachussetts Institute of Technology. AOS: Ethics. Brian Kierland: hired by University of Missouri, Columbia. AOS: Ethics, philosophy of mind. Jessica Moss: hired by University of Pittsburgh. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Gabriel Richardson: hired by University of Chicago. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Currently tenure-track (equivalent) at Yale University. Stanford University Nomy Arpaly: hired by Brown University. AOS: Ethics. Currently tenure-track at Rice University. Thomas Hofweber: hired by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. AOS: Philosophy of language and logic. Currently tenure-track at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Michael Weisberg: hired by University of Pennsylvania. AOS: Philosophy of Biology. Syracuse University Neil Manson: hired by the University of Mississippi. AOS: Philosophy of religion, metaphysics. Currently teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University. University of Arizona Anthony Gillies: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of language. Currently-tenure-track at the University of Texas, Austin. University of California, Berkeley Elizabeth Camp: Harvard Society of Fellows (not a tenure-track job, but a very attractive post-doc). AOS: Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind. Peter Hanks: hired by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. AOS: Philosophy of language. Niko Kolodny: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Ethics. Also had offers from Columbia, NYU, and UCLA. University of California, Irvine David Cunning: hired by the University of Iowa. AOS: Early modern. Currently tenure-track at Northern Illinois University. Paul Livingston: hired by Villanova University. AOS: History of 20th-century philosophy (analytic and Continental). Linda Palmer: hired by Carnegie-Mellon University. AOS: Kant. (Worked with Henry Allison [a visitor at UCI, currently at BU, soon moving to UC Davis], as well as UCI faculty William Bristow and David Woodruff Smith.) Andrew Youpa: hired by Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. AOS: Early modern. University of California, Los Angeles Erin Eaker: hired by the University of Western Ontario. AOS: Philosophy of language. University of Chicago Scott Anderson: hired by University of British Columbia. AOS: Moral and political philosophy. University of Colorado, Boulder Sara Goering: hired by the University of Washington, Seattle. AOS: Applied ethics. Currently tenure-track at California State University, Long Beach. Marc Moffett: hired by University of Wyoming. AOS: Philosophy of language, epistemology. University of Massachussetts, Amherst Benjamin Bradley: hired by Syracuse University. AOS: Ethics. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Edward Hinchman: hired by University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. AOS: Moral psychology, philosophy of action. Currently tenure-track at Claremont-McKenna College. Kevin Toh: hired by Indiana University, Bloomington: AOS: Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Andrea Westlund: hired by University of Wisconstin, Milwaukee. AOS: Ethics, Feminist philosophy. Currently tenure-track at the University of Pittsburgh. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill John Roberts: hired by Florida State University. AOS: Early modern. University of Pennsylvania Julian Wuerth: hired by University of Cincinnati. AOS: Kant, early modern. University of Pittsburgh Ram Neta: hired by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. AOS: Epistemology, philosophy of mind. Currently tenure-track at the University of Utah. University of Texas, Austin Timothy O'Keefe: hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Currently tenure-track at the University of Minnesota at Morris. University of Toronto Kok-Chor Tan hired by the University of Pennsylvania. AOS: Political philosophy. University of Washington, Seattle Jason Baehr: hired by Loyola Marymount University. AOS: Epistemology, ethics. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor University. University of Wisconsin, Madison Zachary Ernst: hired by Florida State University. AOS: Philosophy of Biology, Logic. Branden Fitelson: hired by University of California, Berkeley. AOS: Philosophy of Science, Decision Theory. Currently tenure-track at San Jose State University. Washington University, St. Louis Kenneth Shockley: hired by State University of New York, Buffalo. AOS: Social and political philosophy, ethics. Dan Weiskopf: hired by the University of South Florida. AOS: Philosophy of Mind/Cognitive Science. Yale University Todd Buras: hired by Baylor University. AOS: Epistemology, early modern, metaphysics, philosophy of mind. Andrew Chignell: hired by Cornell University. AOS: Kant, early modern. (Worked with, among others, Allen Wood, now at Stanford, and previously at Yale.) Sukjae Lee: hired by Ohio State University (Columbus). AOS: Early modern. Currently tenure-track at Ohio State University at Newark. [ To Top ]

08 May 2003	Although almost all the U.S. departments now post rather detailed information on job placement on their web pages, the same is not the case in the U.K., as a correspondent has recently pointed out. I quote, with permission, the letter here (though I have removed the names of particular departments). I hope it shall inspire UK departments to be more forthcoming. ======================================== I'm an undergraduate in the UK facing the start of postgraduate applications. Your report, which I think a wonderful resource, despite some of the criticism it's unfairly received, emphasises the importance of finding out about a department's placement record. It seems you've had considerable success in bringing US departments up to shape; however, in the UK we're still lagging behind. Whenever I've asked departments for such information, they've often claimed it isn't available (though some have been happy to reply I'm pleased to say). Some are catching up, but still don't provide enough, telling only of their successes, and not how many PhDs were awarded that year, which could potentially be very misleading. For instance, this is [a top ten UK department]: "We are very proud of the success our recent post-graduates have had in finding philosophy jobs. We pay special attention to training our graduate students for prospective philosophy careers, and also to supporting them in their applications for academic jobs. A large majority of our recent PhDs currently hold full-time academic positions." They then list, from 1992, where some have gone, but don't say how many of their students they represent. They don't have any info on the years 2000 or 2002. This raises the possibility that it's misleading (their current prospectus claims to admit 10 PhDs a year but for some years only mention one student; certainly not a majority!). [another top 10 UK department]: "The department takes seriously its responsibility for helping strong candidates find employment within the academic profession and in recent years the department has placed a number of its ablest PhD students in permanent and temporary positions in the UK." [a top 5 UK department]: "Each year, between 10 and 15 students complete their DPhil. A substantial proportion go on to Junior Research Fellowships or other post-doctoral fellowships, or to short-term or tenure-track positions in the profession. In recent years, [name omitted] philosophy graduates have been appointed to positions at many major universities including Berkeley, Brown, Cambridge, Cornell, CUNY, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Oxford, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Princeton, Rutgers and UCLA." Certainly an enviable placement record, but nowhere detailed enough. [a top 5 UK department], which is happy to mention its place in your report, provides no info whatsoever, at least that I've been able to find. I was wondering whether you could send some kind of message round to UK departments mentioning this lack and/or mention it in your updates, as this is a very important matter. Ideally, departments would provide info on all their PhD students, who their supervisor was, the title of their thesis, and their destination (even if only to say they left academia). I don't think it's at all unreasonable to expect this to be available without request (it's very difficult to ask for this info without seeming like we're calling the quality of the department into doubt); indeed I think it's wrong not to provide it, given the investment some of us are making. I'd like to express my thanks for your work; it's been invaluable in helping me think about graduate study. I don't mind your quoting this letter (though I'm afraid it's not well written), but would obviously prefer to remain anonymous. =============end of letter==================== A reasonable request. I hope UK departments will be more forthcoming for the benefit of prospective students. (Based on an informal survey, many programs in Australasia and Canada are now providing this information, though not as comprehensively as most American departments). A final list of tenure-track placement at PhD and terminal MA programs will follow shortly. [ To Top ]

06 May 2003	(1) John Stuhr (American pragmatism, social philosphy), currently at Pennsylvania State University has accepted the W. Alton Jones Chair at Vanderbilt University, commencing this fall. (2) The Internet, as savvy students know, is awash in blogspots these days, but there is actually one I've noted that has some interesting philosophical content: http://philosophyweblog.blogspot.com/. This spot is run by Brian Weatherson, a talented young philosopher at Brown University. If you're a blog consumer, and a philosopher, you may enjoy this site. [ To Top ]

05 May 2003	The American Academy of Arts & Sciences announced today that the following philosophers had been elected Fellows: Fred Dretske (emeritus, Stanford; part-time, Duke); Hartry Field (NYU); Thomas E. Hill, Jr. (North Carolina), Anthony Kenney (Oxford); Mary Mothersill (emerita, Barnard); Philip L. Quinn (Notre Dame). [ To Top ]

05 May 2003	(1) The moral philosopher John Deigh, editor of the journal Ethics and well-known for his seminal articles on issues in moral psychology and on Freud, has accepted a joint appointment in the Philosophy Department and Law School at the University of Texas at Austin. Deigh is the latest faculty member to abandon Northwestern University in recent years--others include Arthur Fine, who moved to the University of Washington at Seattle, Mathias Frisch, who moved to the University of Maryland at College Park, and Meredith and Michael Williams, who moved to Johns Hopkins University. Note, however, that Northwestern did add Thomas Ricketts (history of analytic philosophy) from the University of Pennsylvania this year, and has another senior offer outstanding and likely to be accepted. (2) The distinguished scholar of ancient philosophy Richard Sorabji will switch his quarter-time teaching appointment from the University of Texas at Austin to the City University of New York Graduate Center, beginning in 2004. (He will remain as an adjunct at Texas, but only in residence for much briefer periods of time.) He also continues as the British Academy Wolfson Research Professor at Oxford University (and as an emeritus professor at King's College, London). (3) Tad Schmaltz (early modern philosophy) at Duke University will take over as the editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy in August; he succeeds Gerald Press of Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. (4) Lawrence Solum, a legal scholar well-known for his work in constitutional theory and political and legal philosophy, will move from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles to the University of San Diego School of Law next year. San Diego already has one of the top ten faculties in law and philosophy among U.S. law schools (see http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/rankings/philo.html), a stature Solum's appointment will only enhance. With this Update, I am introducing a new, occasional feature, commenting, often critically, on PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEWS, that is, on the way philosophy and philosophers are portrayed in the mainstream media. These features will be prefaced with the heading PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEWS, and always come at the end of the regular news updates. PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEWS The front page of the May 4, 2003 New York Times "Week in Review" section (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/weekinreview/04ATLA.html) continues the mainstream media's long-standing fraudulent portrayal of Leo Strauss, and his acolytes like Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama, and Harry Jaffa, as serious political philosophers and scholars. The Times calls Strauss a "classicist and political philosopher," not noting that he could not have been appointed in any serious classics or philosophy department because of the poor quality of both his scholarship and philosophical argumentation. As Myles Burnyeat (Oxford University) wrote in one of the best-known and most devastating assessments of Strauss's work by a real scholar of classical philosophy, "surrender of the critical intellect is the price of initiation into the world of Leo Strauss's ideas" (New York Review of Books, May 30, 1985). This assessment is, of course, uncontroversial outside the Straussian coterie (as Burnyeat writes: "Straussians know that the considered judgment of the scholarly non-Straussian world is that…Strauss's interpretation of the history of political thought…is a tale full of sound and fury and extraordinary inaccuracies." For further confirmation of the intellectual bankruptcy of Straussianism-as well as for its amusement value--I also recommend the pompous rejoinders to Burnyeat by Straussians like Joseph Cropsey, Harry Jaffa, and Allan Bloom, followed by Burnyeat's demolition of them all, which appeared in the New York Review of October 10, 1985.) Despite all this, the Times quotes, without critical comment, Harvey Mansfield's assertion that, "The open agenda of Straussians is the reading of the Great Books for their own sake, not for a political purpose." In one sense, of course, this is true: the "open" agenda was the reading of the Greak Books, and as Burnyeat and others have demonstrated, the Straussians were fairly incompetent readers (Burnyeat: "Strauss's interpretation of Plato is wrong from beginning to end"; "Jaffa's understanding of Aristotle is abysmal"). But the "closet" agenda was nakedly political, which perhaps makes Straussianism's sole academic home-select political science departments-fitting. Indeed, Straussianism has long been one of the two pathologies of "political philosophy" as practiced in U.S. political science departments (the infection has not spread to the U.K. or Australasia); the other, of course, is "postmodernism." This "odd couple" actually has much in common, notwithstanding the unpostmodern commitment of Straussians to "the immutability of moral and social values" (as the Times put it). Straussians and postmodernists produce relatively little competent scholarship; the quality of argumentation (for or against "the immutability of moral and social values") is very low in both Straussian and postmodernist political theory; the political motivations of Straussians and postmodernists are usually transparent; and, perhaps most strikingly, Straussian and postmodernist political philosophy simply can't be found in major philosophy departments. Surely the Times might note the peculiarity of a "movement" of purported political philosophers that is universally shunned by political philosophers (not to mention scholars of classical philosophy). Philosophers ought to be concerned when their field is misrepresented in the media: why should the public be led to believe that non-philosophers like Strauss and Fukuyama, or failed philosophers like William Bennett, represent our field? (As Burnyeat put it: "There is much talk in Straussian writings about the nature of 'the philosopher' but no sign of any knowledge, from the inside, of what it is to be actively involved in philosophy.") The Times ought to make clear that, whatever the influence of Strauss among intellectual lightweights and political hacks like Paul Wolfowitz and William Bennett, he is viewed by actual scholars as a politically motivated and unreliable scholar, whose philosophical competence is minimal at best. You can e-mail letters to the editor at: letters@nytimes.com. [ To Top ]

29 April 2003	(1) The eminent philosopher of science Adolf Grunbaum has resigned his appointment in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, but remains as the Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University, as well as Research Professor of Psychiatry, and Chairman of Pitt's renowned Center for Philosophy of Science. (2) Anthony Gillies (epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of language), currently tenure-track at the University of Texas at Austin, has accepted the tenure-track offer from Harvard University. Gillies earned his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. [ To Top ]

24 April 2003	(1) A correction to the recent posting on job placement: Paul Livingston (PhD, UC Irvine) was hired by Villanova University, not Northern Illinois University. (2) David Copp, a leading figure in metaethics, and Marina Oshana, who works in ethics and moral psychology, have accepted tenured offers from the University of Florida at Gainesville; Copp and Oshana are currently at Bowling Green State University. These hirings are part of a planned significant expansion of both the faculty and the graduate program at Florida. [ To Top ]

22 April 2003	(1) Don Garrett, one of the leading historians of early modern philosophy in the English-speaking world, has accepted the senior offer from New York University; he is currently at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. NYU, and Harvard, are also reported to be trying to recruit Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, 19th-century German philosophy), currently at Princeton. (2) James Tully (political philosophy, Wittgenstein) is leaving the University of Toronto to go back to the University of Victoria, effective this fall. Here is an updated report on (mostly) tenure-track placement in PhD and terminal MA programs. I am reprinting the earlier list, with the new additions, for ease of reference. Junior placement in PhD and MA programs (updated as of 4/21/03) Bear in mind, of course, that the students being placed now were choosing graduate programs anywhere from five to ten years ago. Graduates are listed by the school which awarded the Ph.D. Brown University Juan Comesaña: hired by University of Wisconsin, Madison. AOS: Epistemology, metaphysics. Massachussetts Institute of Technology Elizabeth Harman: hired by New York University. AOS: Ethics. Peter Koellner: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Logic. Carolina Sartorio: hired by University of Wisconsin, Madison. AOS: Metaphysics, Ethics. Also had offers from NYU and UCLA. New School University Pablo Gilabert: hired by Concordia University, Montreal. AOS: Moral and political philosophy, Critical Theory. Ohio State University Sondra Bacharach: hired by Victoria University, Wellington (New Zealand). AOS: Aesthetics. Adam Moore: hired by the University of Washington, Seattle (half in philosophy, half in the Information School; tenure line in philosophy). AOS: Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Sheldon Smith: hired by the University of California, Los Angeles. AOS: Philosophy of physics. Oxford University Katherine Brading: hired by the University of Notre Dame. AOS: Philosophy of physics. Princeton University Jonathan Beere: hired by University of Chicago. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Cian Dorr: hired by University of Pittsburgh. AOS: Metaphysics. Currently tenure-track at New York University. Caspar Hare: hired by Massachussetts Institute of Technology. AOS: Ethics. Brian Kierland: hired by University of Missouri, Columbia. AOS: Ethics, philosophy of mind. Jessica Moss: hired by University of Pittsburgh. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Gabriel Richardson: hired by University of Chicago. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Currently tenure-track (equivalent) at Yale University. Stanford University Thomas Hofweber: hired by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. AOS: Philosophy of language and logic. Currently tenure-track at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Michael Weisberg: hired by University of Pennsylvania. AOS: Philosophy of Biology. Syracuse University Neil Manson: hired by the University of Mississippi. AOS: Philosophy of religion, metaphysics. Currently teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University. University of Arizona Anthony Gillies: tenure-track offers from Harvard University and the University of California, Irvine. AOS: Epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of language. Currently-tenure-track at the University of Texas, Austin. University of California, Berkeley Elizabeth Camp: Harvard Society of Fellows (not a tenure-track job, but a very attractive post-doc). AOS: Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind. Peter Hanks: hired by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. AOS: Philosophy of language. Niko Kolodny: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Ethics. Also had offers from Columbia, NYU, and UCLA. University of California, Irvine David Cunning: hired by the University of Iowa. AOS: Early modern. Currently tenure-track at Northern Illinois University. Paul Livingston: hired by Northern Illinois University. AOS: History of 20th-century philosophy (analytic and Continental). Linda Palmer: hired by Carnegie-Mellon University. AOS: Kant. (Worked with Henry Allison [a visitor at UCI, currently at BU, soon moving to UC Davis], as well as UCI faculty William Bristow and David Woodruff Smith.) Andrew Youpa: hired by Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. AOS: Early modern. University of California, Los Angeles Erin Eaker: hired by the University of Western Ontario. AOS: Philosophy of language. University of Chicago Scott Anderson: hired by University of British Columbia. AOS: Moral and political philosophy. University of Colorado, Boulder Sara Goering: hired by the University of Washington, Seattle. AOS: Applied ethics. Currently tenure-track at California State University, Long Beach. Marc Moffett: hired by University of Wyoming. AOS: Philosophy of language, epistemology. University of Massachussetts, Amherst Benjamin Bradley: hired by Syracuse University. AOS: Ethics. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Edward Hinchman: hired by University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. AOS: Moral psychology, philosophy of action. Currently tenure-track at Claremont-McKenna College. Kevin Toh: hired by Indiana University, Bloomington: AOS: Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Andrea Westlund: hired by University of Wisconstin, Milwaukee. AOS: Ethics, Feminist philosophy. Currently tenure-track at the University of Pittsburgh. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill John Roberts: hired by Florida State University. AOS: Early modern. University of Pennsylvania Julian Wuerth: hired by University of Cincinnati. AOS: Kant, early modern. University of Texas, Austin Timothy O'Keefe: hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Currently tenure-track at the University of Minnesota at Morris. University of Washington, Seattle Jason Baehr: hired by Loyola Marymount University. AOS: Epistemology, ethics. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor University. University of Wisconsin, Madison Zachary Ernst: hired by Florida State University. AOS: Philosophy of Biology, Logic. Branden Fitelson: hired by University of California, Berkeley. AOS: Philosophy of Science, Decision Theory. Currently tenure-track at San Jose State University. Washington University, St. Louis Kenneth Shockley: hired by State University of New York, Buffalo. AOS: Social and political philosophy, ethics. Dan Weiskopf: hired by the University of South Florida. AOS: Philosophy of Mind/Cognitive Science. Yale University Todd Buras: hired by Baylor University. AOS: Epistemology, early modern, metaphysics, philosophy of mind. Andrew Chignell: hired by Cornell University. AOS: Kant, early modern. (Worked with, among others, Allen Wood, now at Stanford, and previously at Yale.) Sukjae Lee: hired by Ohio State University (Columbus). AOS: Early modern. Currently tenure-track at Ohio State University at Newark. [ To Top ]

15 April 2003	(1) With decision day at hand for prospective graduate students, some may want to be aware that NYU has now made a senior offer to the distinguished historian of early modern philosophy, Don Garrett, currently at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2) The following philosophers have received Guggenheim Fellowships: Arnold Davidson (University of Chicago), John Haugeland (University of Chicago), and Sean Kelly (Princeton University). A big year for Continental-related topics at the Guggenheims this year! [ To Top ]

14 April 2003	(1) Jose Bermudez (philosophy of mind), currently at the University of Stirling, has accepted a senior appointment at Washington University, St. Louis, commencing this July. He will also serve as Director of the Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology. In addition, Dennis Des Chene (early modern philosophy), currently at Emory University, has also accepted a tenured appointment at Washington University. (2) Simon Critchley (20th-century Continental philosophy), currently at the University of Essex, has accepted a senior appointment at New School University in New York City. Critchley will still spend about five weeks per year at Essex for purposes of graduate supervision. [ To Top ]

09 April 2003	(1) James Lenman (ethics and metaethics), currently at the University of Glasgow, will join the faculty at the University of Sheffield in the fall. (2) Phil Dowe (metaphysics, philosophy of science), currently at the University of Tasmania will join the University of Queensland in July. He follows Mark Colyvan (metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics) who made the same move roughly two years ago. (3) Daniel Nolan (metaphysics) at Syracuse University has accepted a permanent lectureship at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, starting in Spring 2004. [ To Top ]

31 March 2003	Here is a first report on tenure-track hirings by PhD and terminal MA programs, based on information submitted over the last month. Those with additional information, please e-mail: bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu. Please also e-mail corrections to this same address. The information is organized by PhD-granting institution. It is limited to PhD and terminal MA programs for logistical reasons and because these hires may be most pertinent to prospective students currently making enrollment decisions. Brown University Juan Comesaña: hired by University of Wisconsin, Madison. AOS: Epistemology, metaphysics. Massachussetts Institute of Technology Elizabeth Harman: hired by New York University. AOS: Ethics. Peter Koellner: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Logic. Carolina Sartorio: hired by University of Wisconsin, Madison. AOS: Metaphysics, Ethics. Also had offers from NYU and UCLA. New School University Pablo Gilabert: hired by Concordia University, Montreal. AOS: Moral and political philosophy, Critical Theory. Ohio State University Sondra Bacharach: hired by Victoria University, Wellington (New Zealand). AOS: Aesthetics. Adam Moore: hired by the University of Washington, Seattle (half in philosophy, half in the Information School; tenure line in philosophy). AOS: Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Sheldon Smith: hired by the University of California, Los Angeles. AOS: Philosophy of physics. Oxford University Katherine Brading: hired by the University of Notre Dame. AOS: Philosophy of physics. Princeton University Jonathan Beere: hired by University of Chicago. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Cian Dorr: hired by University of Pittsburgh. AOS: Metaphysics. Currently tenure-track at New York University. Caspar Hare: hired by Massachussetts Institute of Technology. AOS: Ethics. Jessica Moss: hired by University of Pittsburgh. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Gabriel Richardson: hired by University of Chicago. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Currently tenure-track (equivalent) at Yale University. Stanford University Michael Weisberg: hired by University of Pennsylvania. AOS: Philosophy of Biology. Syracuse University Neil Manson: hired by the University of Mississippi. AOS: Philosophy of religion, metaphysics. Currently teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University. University of Arizona Anthony Gillies: tenure-track offers from Harvard University and the University of California, Irvine. AOS: Epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of language. Currently-tenure-track at the University of Texas, Austin. University of California, Berkeley Niko Kolodny: hired by Harvard University. AOS: Ethics. University of California, Irvine David Cunning: hired by the University of Iowa. AOS: Early modern. Currently tenure-track at Northern Illinois University. University of California, Los Angeles Erin Eaker: hired by the University of Western Ontario. AOS: Philosophy of language. University of Chicago Scott Anderson: hired by University of British Columbia. AOS: Moral and political philosophy. University of Colorado, Boulder Sara Goering: hired by the University of Washington, Seattle. AOS: Applied ethics. Currently tenure-track at California State University, Long Beach. Marc Moffett: hired by University of Wyoming. AOS: Philosophy of language, epistemology. University of Massachussetts, Amherst Benjamin Bradley: hired by Syracuse University. AOS: Ethics. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Edward Hinchman: hired by University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. AOS: Moral psychology, philosophy of action. Currently tenure-track at Claremont-McKenna College. Kevin Toh: hired by Indiana University, Bloomington: AOS: Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Andrea Westlund: hired by University of Wisconstin, Milwaukee. AOS: Ethics, Feminist philosophy. Currently tenure-track at the University of Pittsburgh. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill John Roberts: hired by Florida State University. AOS: Early modern. University of Pennsylvania Julian Wuerth: hired by University of Cincinnati. AOS: Kant, early modern. University of Texas, Austin Timothy O'Keefe: hired by Georgia State University. AOS: Ancient philosophy. Currently tenure-track at the University of Minnesota at Morris. University of Washington, Seattle Jason Baehr: hired by Loyola Marymount University. AOS: Epistemology, ethics. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor University. University of Wisconsin, Madison Zachary Ernst: hired by Florida State University. AOS: Philosophy of Biology, Logic. Branden Fitelson: hired by University of California, Berkeley. AOS: Philosophy of Science, Decision Theory. Yale University Andrew Chignell: hired by Cornell University. AOS: Kant, early modern. (Worked with, among others, Allen Wood, now at Stanford, and previously at Yale and, before that, Cornell.) Sukjae Lee: hired by Ohio State University (Columbus). AOS: Early modern. Currently tenure-track at Ohio State University at Newark. [ To Top ]

27 March 2003	(1) Michael Bishop (philosophy of science, epistemology), currently the Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, has accepted a senior offer from Northern Illinois University, which already has one of the leading terminal MA programs in the country. (2) Ram Neta (epistemology, philosophy of mind), currently on tenure-track at the University of Utah has accepted a tenure-track appointment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (3) Paul Thompson, holder of the Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University, has accepted a joint, senior position in the School of Agriculture and Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University. Those thinking about law schools, may find the results of a PGR-style survey of more than 150 leading legal scholars of interest. The full results are available here: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/rankings/rankings.html [ To Top ]

25 March 2003	(1) Thomas Hofweber (philosophy of language, logic), currently on tenure-track at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2) Nomy Arpaly (ethics), currently on tenure-track at Rice University, has accepted a tenure-track position at Brown University. (3) The distinguished moral philosopher Jefferson McMahan at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has accepted an offer from Rutgers University at New Brunswick. [ To Top ]

24 March 2003	(1) Thomas Christiano (political philosophy) at the University of Arizona has declined the Chair at McGill University. (2) Many have inquired about a deranged e-mail message sent to thousands of philosophy faculty and students. The sender of the message claimed to have used the PGR e-mail list. I would just like to reassure subscribers that this is false: the list of recipients of the deranged e-mail was not the list of subscribers to the PGR Update Service (which now numbers close to 3,000). Blackwell protects the security and privacy of that list quite carefully and in compliance with applicable laws. The deranged e-mailer appears to have simply collected e-mail addresses for faculty and students that are publically available on d many department homepages. [ To Top ]

19 March 2003	(1) Tamar Szabo Gendler (epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of psychology), currently at Syracuse University, has accepted the tenured offer from Cornell, to begin fall 2004. In addition, Zoltan Gendler Szabo at Cornell has turned down the offer from NYU Linguistics and Philosophy. (2) The distinguished rational choice theorist and political philosopher Edward McClennen, who is currently LSE Centennial Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics, has accepted a senior offer from Syracuse University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. (3) The eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison, currently at Boston University, will leave BU to take up a half-time appointment at the University of California at Davis beginning in fall 2004. Allison is also an emeritus professor at the University of California at San Diego. (4) The distinguished political and legal philosopher Leslie J. Green will now be a regular visiting professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, beginning in Spring 2004. (He had already been part-time in the law school at Texas.) The rest of the time Green is at York University, Toronto. (5) Berkeley has made tenured offers to John Campbell, the Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy at Oxford, and Alva Noe (philosophy of mind) at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Noe also has offers from Tufts University and York University, Toronto. In light of the anticipated illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States, I thought it might be appropriate to note, especially for the benefit of non-U.S. subscribers, that the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association adopted by an overwhelming majority a resolution opposing war. See: http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/news/index.html. This may understate the degree of opposition to the U.S. government's behavior among American philosophers, since at least some of those who opposed the resolution appear to have done so because they thought the APA should not take a position on the matter, and not because they disagreed with the merits of the content of the resolution. [ To Top ]

11 March 2003	(1) Marc Lange (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) at the University of Washington, Seattle has accepted a tenured offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill has also extended some other offers; news is expected on those offers soon. (2) A partial correction to the last posting regarding Elliott Sober: he has accepted the offer from Stanford (where he is currently visiting), but will technically be "on leave" from the University of Wisconsin, Madison next year while teaching at Stanford. [ To Top ]

07 March 2003	(1) The distinguished philosopher of science and biology, Elliott Sober, has accepted the offer from Stanford University. He is currently visiting at Stanford, and will resign from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and become a permanent member of the Stanford faculty as of the fall. This is a significant loss for Wisconsin, and an important appointment for Stanford. (Wisconsin has, however, some excellent junior hiring news, that will be reported in a few weeks with other news about junior hiring.) (2) The political philosopher Peter Vallentyne at Virginia Commonwealth University has accepted an endowed chair at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Vallentyne is the latest in a series of notable appointments at Missouri (including Jonathan Kvanvig and Matthew McGrath, both from Texas A&M University) in the last few years. (3) The University of British Columbia has filled its Canada Research Chair in Philosophical Studies of Science and Technology with John Beatty (history and philosophy of biology) from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. This gives UBC a large and distinguished group of scholars working in and around the history and philosophy of the life sciences (including Mohan Matthen, Catherine Wilson, and a younger scholar [student of Sober's, in fact], Christopher Stephens). I would like to now ask for reports of tenure-track hires at departments that grant either the PhD or MA degree. I am limiting the report on junior hiring to these departments for logistical reasons and because information about which junior faculty have been hired in to which graduate programs is likely to be of most immediate use to prospective graduate students. I would appreciate receiving news of such hires from hiring departments; placement directors at PhD programs or the faculty supervisor of a placed candidate; or the candidates themselves. Please send news of such hires to: bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu. A full listing of information received will be posted towards the end of March. [ To Top ]

12 February 2003	(1) Tamar Szabo Gendler (epistemology, philosophy of psychology, metaphysics) at Syracuse has a tenured offer from Cornell University, that would commence in fall 2004. (Note: Cornell still has other searches on-going for positions that would commence this fall (2003).) Other news on offers, senior and junior, from Syracuse is expected soon. (2) Zoltan Gendler Szabo (philosophy of language) at Cornell has a tenured offer from the Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy at NYU (75% in Linguistics, 25% in Philosophy). Other news on offers, senior and junior, by NYU Philosophy is expected soon. (3) A note on tenure-track offers and hires: the policy is the same as last year. I will wait until later in March to give a round-up of placement in tenure-track jobs at PhD-granting programs. A number of programs and candidates have already reported such information (thanks!). I will make a public solicitation for such information in early March, though I invite candidates or programs to report such information sooner if they have it. Note: I will limit the report on tenure-track hiring to those hired in PhD-granting programs, since that has the most potential to be of relevance to prospective students. I'm afraid it's just too burdensome to report more than that; and, happily, most PhD programs now provide detailed information on their placement. (1) Tamar Szabo Gendler (epistemology, philosophy of psychology, metaphysics) at Syracuse has a tenured offer from Cornell University, that would commence in fall 2004. (Note: Cornell still has other searches on-going for positions that would commence this fall (2003).) Other news on offers, senior and junior, from Syracuse is expected soon. (2) Zoltan Gendler Szabo (philosophy of language) at Cornell has a tenured offer from the Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy at NYU (75% in Linguistics, 25% in Philosophy). Other news on offers, senior and junior, by NYU Philosophy is expected soon. (3) A note on tenure-track offers and hires: the policy is the same as last year. I will wait until later in March to give a round-up of placement in tenure-track jobs at PhD-granting programs. A number of programs and candidates have already reported such information (thanks!). I will make a public solicitation for such information in early March, though I invite candidates or programs to report such information sooner if they have it. Note: I will limit the report on tenure-track hiring to those hired in PhD-granting programs, since that has the most potential to be of relevance to prospective students. I'm afraid it's just too burdensome to report more than that; and, happily, most PhD programs now provide detailed information on their placement. [ To Top ]

04 February 2003	(1) The distinguished scholar of Chinese philosophy, P.J. Ivanhoe, who resigned last summer from the University of Michigan, will serve as the Findlay Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Boston University during the academic year 2003-04. (2) The political philosopher Thomas Christiano, at the University of Arizona, has been offered a Chair at McGill University in Montreal. Students interested in political philosophy, looking at either department, should make inquiries later in the admissions season. (3) Since some law professors are subscribers to the Update Service; since students thinking about law school are also subscribers to this service; and since correspondents sometimes ask about appointments in law schools (beyond the legal philosophy appointments, which I try to report here), I thought I'd include a brief run-down on other hiring at major law schools that has transpired this year so far: Yale has an offer out to Robert Danies (corporate law) at NYU, who is also being courted by Stanford. Yale also has an offer out to the distinguished constitutional law scholar Robert Post at Berkeley. Columbia has hired Merritt Fox (corporate law) from Michigan, and is very likely to make an offer to Thomas Merrill (administrative and environmental law, property) at Northwestern. (Merrill is also likely to get an offer from Texas, and is under consideration at University of Chicago as well. Since Merrill may be Northwestern's most distinguished senior faculty member, this is potentially a big loss for Northwestern, whose law faculty has bled a lot of talent in recent years.) Adding to Michigan's troubles in the business law areas, Texas has hired Ronald J. Mann (commercial law, intellectual property) from Michigan this year as well. In addition, Texas has hired Robert Peroni (tax) from George Washington University. NYU, as noted in an earlier update, has hired the legal philosopher Stephen Perry from the University of Pennsylvania. Duke has made offers to a couple, Stuart Benjamin (teleommunications law) at Texas and Arti Rai (health law, patents) at the University of Pennsylvania. Duke has also made offers to another couple, Erwin Chemerinsky (constitutional law) at University of Southern California, and Catherine Fisk (labor & employment law) at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. USC has also now made Fisk an offer. University of Southern California has hired a couple, Elizabeth Garrett (legislation) from the University of Chicago, and Andrei Marmor (legal philosophy), who will be part-time at USC and part-time in Israel. [ To Top ]

25 January 2003	(1) The legal philosopher Andrei Marmor has accepted a half-time appointment in the law school at the University of Southern California (the rest of the time he is in Israel). This should add USC to the list of top law schools that are viable choices for philosophically-minded students. (2) A vigilent PGR Advisory Board member has pointed out to me, correctly, that Murphy and Nagel (at NYU) both have worked on "applied" topics in value theory--most recently, of course, the philosophical foundations of tax policy. Thus, while Kamm's departure to Harvard is a blow for bioethics at NYU, it was wrong to suggest that there wasn't other high-quality "applied" work still going on at NYU. [ To Top ]

21 January 2003	Frances Mryna Kamm (ethics), currently at NYU, has accepted an appointment in the Kennedy School of Government and Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. This is a significant addition to Harvard's already substantial strengths in value theory, and removes NYU as a strong choice in the applied moral/political philosophy area. (With Liam Murphy, Thomas Nagel, and other part-time faculty, NYU retains a strong presence in moral and political philosophy.) [ To Top ]

13 January 2003	IN MEMORIAM Paul Ziff (1920-2003) For a brief memorial notice about his distinguished philosophical career, see http://www.unc.edu/depts/phildept/phil.htm [ To Top ]

13 January 2003	Difficulties with the Update Service may mean that some of you have already received this Update from January 7th. If so, apologies for the repetition. (1) A strong set of appointments for the University of Sheffield: three youngish philosophers, all working in and around metaphysics, will be joining Sheffield. They are: John Divers, who comes to Sheffield from Leeds; Eric Olson, who comes to Sheffield from Cambridge; and Dominic Gregory. For a bit more information, see http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phil/other/appointment.html. (2) In response to earlier postings about academic freedom, several correspondents have called to my attention the appalling case of the University of South Florida's mistreatment of Professor Sami Al-Arian. For details on this case, see http://w3.usf.edu/~uff/AlArian/index.html. (You may find USF President Judy Genshfat's statement on the Al-Arian case here: http://www.usf.edu/president/archive/2002_alarian_update.html.) This week's Chronicle of Higher Education (January 10, 2003) reports that the USF Board of Trustees has now defined professorial "misconduct" (which is grounds for dismissal) to include any behavior which USF deems "determinal to the best interests of the university." (Job seekers: take note!) By the way, philosopher Roy Weatherford, with the United Faculty of Florida, has taken a leading role in protecting academic freedom at USF. [ To Top ]

07 January 2003	(1) A strong set of appointments for the University of Sheffield: three youngish philosophers, all working in and around metaphysics, will be joining Sheffield. They are: John Divers, who comes to Sheffield from Leeds; Eric Olson, who comes to Sheffield from Cambridge; and Dominic Gregory. For a bit more information, see http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phil/other/appointment.html. (2) In response to earlier postings about academic freedom, several correspondents have called to my attention the appalling case of the University of South Florida's mistreatment of Professor Sami Al-Arian. For details on this case, see http://w3.usf.edu/~uff/AlArian/index.html. (You may find USF President Judy Genshfat's statement on the Al-Arian case here: http://www.usf.edu/president/archive/2002_alarian_update.html.) This week's Chronicle of Higher Education (January 10, 2003) reports that the USF Board of Trustees has now defined professorial "misconduct" (which is grounds for dismissal) to include any behavior which USF deems "determinal to the best interests of the university." (Job seekers: take note!) By the way, philosopher Roy Weatherford, with the United Faculty of Florida, has taken a leading role in protecting academic freedom at USF. [ To Top ]

29 December 2002	Stephen R. Perry, the distinguished legal philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania, has accepted an offer from New York University School of Law, after rebuffing NYU two years earlier. Perry is best-known for his work on jurisprudential methodology and the philosophical foundations of tort law. His departure knocks Penn down to the "also notable" category in philosophy of law, though the faculty still retains a strong presence in philosophy of criminal law in particular. Happy New Year! [ To Top ]

19 December 2002	(1) The Chronicle of Higher Education today reports that the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Research Fellowships to the following philosophers: Barry Stroud (University of California, Berkeley); Mark Balaguer (California State University, Los Angeles); Margaret Gilbert (University of Connecticut); Amie Thomasson (University of Miami); Thomas McCarthy (Northwestern University); Matthew Stuart (Bowdoin College); Stephen Yablo (MIT); Scott MacDonald (Cornell University and PGR Advisory Board member); Anil Gupta (University of Pittsburgh and PGR Advisory Board member); Cynthia Freeland (University of Houston); Mark Gifford (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University). The NEH web site, http://www.neh.fed.us/news/index.html, does not yet appear to have details about the projects being supported, but that information should be available soon. (2) The political and legal philosopher James Nickel (University of Colorado at Boulder) has accepted an appointment (effective January 1, 2003) at Arizona State University's College of Law. ASU College of Law already has a number of philosophers on its faculty, including Jeffrie Murphy and Dean Patricia White. [ To Top ]

16 December 2002	(1) Marc Lange (philosophy of science) has declined the offer from the University of Texas at Austin, and will remain at the University of Washington at Seattle. In recent years, Washington has built up a strong presence in philosophy of science (including physics and chemistry), adding not only Lange, but also Arthur Fine from Northwestern University and, at the junior level, Andrea Woody. (2) Clark Glymour (philosophy of science, artificial intelligence) at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh is no longer part-time at the University of California, San Diego--contrary to the mistaken listing in the "Part-Time Appointments" section of this year's Report. [ To Top ]

04 December 2002	The following message is for students interested in Continental philosophy: I was pleased to discover, recently, that the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy--a group that represents some philosophers interested in Continental philosophy, as well as a rather large number of non-philosophers, especially from literature departments, interested in Continental figures--has withdrawn its rather ill-reasoned statement criticizing the Philosophical Gourmet Report. In its place, as it were, SPEP now offers a document called "Beyond Rankings: How To Choose a Program in Continental Philosophy" (see: http://www.spep.org/Statement%20on%20Ranking.html), which, much to my pleasant surprise, implicitly endorses the approach of the PGR. The new statement notes that, "Students want to know which programs will match their interests and abilities and generic rankings cannot help individual students make decisions tailored to their particular interests." This, of course, is why the PGR provides more than a generic ranking, and also offers detailed specialty rankings for more than two dozen fields, including various sub-fields within Continental philosophy. (However--and I'll return to this, below--generic rankings are a bit more relevant than SPEP allows.) The SPEP statement identifies several pertinent factors for students to consider in choosing programs in Continental philosophy: for example, how many faculty are actually interested in Continental philosophy, what Continental courses are being offered, are their conferences and guest lectures related to Continental philosophy, and so forth? All these are clearly good questions for students interested in Continental philosophy to ask. A few of the considerations mentioned by SPEP seem more idiosyncratic, and more designed to highlight distinctive features of some prominent SPEP programs. Exchange programs with institutions in Europe, for example, are only significant if the European institutions are ones where high-quality work is being done on Continental figures. As in the U.S., not every program that purports to be interested in Continental philosophy is, in fact, producing substantial work or providing high quality training. (In some sub-fields--Nietzsche studies, for example--the English-speaking world is now far ahead of the Continent.) The relevance of a general language requirement is also obscure: why should it matter to a prospective student if a program requires all students-including, e.g., those working on logic or contemporary metaphysics-to read German or French? More worrisome than the few pieces of odd advice, however, are the omissions. For the SPEP statement fails to say anything about two of the most crucial (indeed, overriding) considerations for prospective students: the actual quality of the faculty that purports to work on Continental philosophy and the quality of the philosophical education beyond Continental philosophy. It is utterly mad to choose a program based only on a head count: a department with one exceptional scholar working, e.g., on Post-Kantian Idealism is clearly to be preferred to a department with three mediocrities interested in Idealism. The specialty rankings in the PGR are meant to address precisely the qualitative issue, which the SPEP statement completely omits. (Of course, all things being equal qualitatively, it's generally better to go to a program with several faculty in the area you're interested in: that provides a cushion against loss of faculty, and provides more mentors from whom to receive pertinent training.) Also worrisome is the absence of any mention in the SPEP statement of the importance of the overall quality of the philosophical program (which is precisely what "generic" rankings do tell students something about). As Michael Rosen, a member of the PGR Advisory Board, and I write in our advice to students interested in Continental philosophy in the current PGR: "You should also consider carefully what departments offer outside Continental philosophy. There are institutional reasons for this (departments for the most part require students to complete a general education in philosophy in the initial years of graduate study, and once on the job market, it will behoove you to have "areas of competence" beyond Continental philosophy), but intellectual ones too: certain areas of philosophy--for example, Kant, ancient philosophy, moral and political philosophy, aesthetics, parts of metaphysics and epistemology, among others--are complementary to major themes and currents in Continental philosophy." One worry about many of the SPEP-allied programs, quite apart from qualitative issues, is that they tend to be exceptionally narrow, treating certain movements in, say, 20th-century Continental philosophy extensively, while providing only minimal offerings (if any at all) in all the other major fields of philosophy: ancient philosophy; early modern philosophy; metaphysics; epistemology; philosophy of language; philosophy of mind; philosophy of science; ethics and metaethics; political and legal philosophy; and so on. A well-rounded graduate program in philosophy is a desideratum for almost all students, and certainly for those interested in Continental philosophy. (The only exception might be for students with interests in highly technical, formal parts of philosophy.) The PGR should help students identify the programs that are good philosophy departments and good in Continental philosophy, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively as well. The SPEP statement usefully identifies several other pertinent factors to consider for students interested in Continental philosophy, but it is unfortunate that the statement omits what are arguably the two most important factors, noted above. [ To Top ]

26 November 2002	A number of memorial notices for John Rawls are now available. The Harvard Gazette notice is available at, http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/11.21/99-rawls.html And the New York Times obituary is available at, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Obit-Rawls.html (You have to be registered--it's free--for the NY Times on-line to access the latter notice.) [ To Top ]

25 November 2002	IN MEMORIAM John Rawls (1921-2002) Links to a memorial notice will be posted as soon as it is available. [ To Top ]

23 November 2002	(1) The Mellon Foundation has announced its second set of five Distinguished Achievement Awards in the Humanities. The only philosopher among the winners this year is Susan Wolf, the distinguished moral philosopher, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more on the award, and Professor Wolf, see http://www.mellon.org/MellonAnnouncements.htm. (2) A brief word of clarification regarding the last message about prospective faculty moves: that Harvard or Texas or anywhere else is interested in a candidate, or has made the candidate an offer, should not be taken as any comment on the likelihood that the candidate will actually make the move. The point of the last message was simply to flag significant moves that might transpire, and to which students should remain alert, either through making inquiries with the affected departments, or by staying attuned for future Updates. [ To Top ]

19 November 2002	This is a message for prospective students, i.e., those applying to graduate school this year, though some of the content will obviously be of interest to others. (1) A good number of prospectives have inquired about what happened to the section of last year's Report containing feedback from students on department atmospheres and faculty/student relations. Some will recall that two years ago, I used the Update Service to solicit feedback from students on their departments. The results were very mixed. For the vast majority of departments, I heard from only one student, if that. Some departments plainly encouraged students to write in with glowing reports. For the handful of departments where it seemed I had gotten enough feedback, I did write up what I was told. But as soon as the negative comments appeared in last year's report, I immediately began to hear from other current students who felt the comments were unrepresentative. My conclusion, accordingly, has been that it's not possible to gather such information effectively. I would continue to urge students, as the Report has done for years, to make a point of talking with current students at any program you're considering. The Princeton Review also maintains an on-line site (www,review.com; click on Graduate and then on "join the discussion") at which students can share information about their search for graduate schools. Of course, this site permits anonymous posting, so it too can be no substitute for individualized inquiries with particular departments. But perhaps if enough aspiring philosophers, both applicants and current students, start utilizing the Princeton Review site, some useful information might be exchanged and shared. (2) In addition to the "Major Faculty Moves to Watch for" in the 2002-04 Report, prospectives may also want to keep in mind some other developments/searches that are afoot, that may affect the suitability of particular programs. Briefly: (a) Harvard is looking to make one or two senior appointments in metaphysics and epistemology, broadly construed to include philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, etc. One likely prospect is reported to be Michael Martin, the editor of Mind, who is currently at University College London. Harvard is also reported to be looking at a number of senior candidates in Kant and post-Kantian German philosophy. Charles Parsons, the distinguished philosopher of math and Kant scholar, who is currently at Harvard is reported to be planning on retiring within the next couple of years. (b) University College London has been authorized to fill the Chair vacated by Paul Horwich, who is now at the CUNY Graduate Center. (c) The Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University is looking to fill the post vacated by Philip Pettit, who moved to Princeton. (d) The University of Texas at Austin has extended a senior offer to Marc Lange, the philosopher of science at the University of Washington at Seattle. The Philosophy Department at Texas has also voted out an offer to the moral philosopher John Deigh, the editor of Ethics, currently at Northwestern. The Law School at Texas is expected to do the same shortly, as part of an effort to make a joint appointment. There are a number of other possibly senior searches on-going at various departments--including Yale, North Carolina, and Southern California--which I hope to be able to update by the time prospectives need to be making final decisions about where to attend for next year. [ To Top ]

18 November 2002	More on academic freedom at Stanford Law School--those uninterested, please delete this message, there's no philosophy news in this posting. (That's coming separately!) Thanks to all of those who wrote to Dean Sullivan about Stanford Law School's handling of the Lynne Stewart matter, Dean Sullivan today wrote me and asked that I post the following explanation of Stanford's conduct: This is to respond to inaccurate information you have apparently been given about Stanford Law School and Lynne Stewart. Ms. Stewart did not have her speech limited nor were students denied access to her as you suggest. Rather she spoke to students as scheduled, without the title of "mentor." ================================================ Ms. Stewart was invited to speak at Stanford Law School by students organizing a conference called "Shaking the Foundations." The law school's director of public interest programs invited her to extend her visit to campus in order to speak to students as a "Mills Public Interest Mentor," an honor that is given to a very few attorneys a year whom the school seeks to hold up as role models. During the week before the visit, it came to my attention that Ms. Stewart had stated in 1995, " I believe in directed violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, and sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support," and, more recently in reference to the 9/11 attacks on American civilians, "I have a lot of trouble figuring out why [armed struggle] is wrong, especially when people are sort of placed in a position of having no other way." I made the decision to proceed fully with Ms. Stewart's speaking engagements at the law school but to rescind the title of "Mills Mentor" in connection with her visit. This decision, consistent with ordinary First Amendment distinctions between forums and sponsorship, enabled Ms. Stewart to speak her views, and be heard by our students, while withholding the law school's endorsement or apparent endorsement of her views and methods of practice through conferral of the "Mills Mentor" title. Ms. Stewart completed all of her speaking engagements at the law school and met with students as scheduled without incident. **************************** Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan Stanford Law School 559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305-8610 650.723.4455 tel 650.723.4669 fax ================================================================================= As I wrote to Dean Sullivan, this statement leaves unchanged the basic fact: Ms. Stewart was retained as a mentor based on her extensive experience as a criminal defense attorney, and relieved of her title (and duties?) because of her political views. Dean Sullivan's e-mail address is: sullivan@law.stanford.edu [ To Top ]

15 November 2002	A brief addendum about the prior message regarding academic freedom at Stanford Law School. The material I forwarded was sent to me by an attorney with the AAUP, but was drafted by a faculty member at Stanford, who asked that it be circulated widely. Its account fits the account of these events from the Chronicle of Higher Education. [ To Top ]

14 November 2002	The following is a political message, pertaining to another violation of academic freedom, and contributing to the climate of political repression in the United States. Please stop reading if you are not interested in these issues, but, as in the past, I will assume most subscribers to this service are interested in these kinds of issues. What follows is material prepared by the Association of American University Professors concerning recent actions taken by the Stanford Law School. I should note that the Dean of Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan, is ordinarily an eloquent defender of liberty and freedom of speech. A controversy recently erupted at Stanford Law School, where a diverse coalition of students concerned about civil liberties and academic freedom need your help. Lynne Stewart was invited this spring to serve as the law school's David W. Mills Public Interest Mentor on November 11. Lynne is among the country's most prominent criminal defense attorneys representing politically unpopular clients. Her clients have included anti-apartheid activists, Black Panthers, leftwing radicals, and more recently, accused terrorists. She is also the first lawyer in the country to be indicted by the Ashcroft Department of Justice based on illegal surveillance of confidential attorney-client communications. The week before her visit, several students mobilized a nationwide effort to pressure the law school and university administration to renounce its recognition of Ms. Stewart, seizing upon her unrelated statements in the New York Times appearing to endorse the use of "directed violence...against the institutions of capitalism." Within days, the law school publicly rescinded its prior invitation. While we object to the Stanford administration's decision, we do NOT endorse Ms. Stewart's views about political violence. These views played no role in her invitation, nor was it a planned point of discussion before her visit was thrust into controversy. The law school announced that it revoked Lynne's invitation because she has historically claimed that political violence can be legitimate. However, the University and law school have a history of honoring figures who actively advocate state-sponsored violence. Last fall, the law school honored Warren Christopher, despite his explicit endorsement of political assassination as a legitimate tool of statecraft. Just last month, the law school conferred an award upon FBI Director Robert Mueller, whose agency has been castigated by Human Rights Watch for widespread abuses since September 11th. Moreover, the principle would preclude the university from inviting figures such as Nelson Mandela or Donald Rumsfeld. We have three particular concerns: - The administration's decision appears to publicly reinforce Ashcroft's attack on civil liberties, including the right of assistance to counsel - The lack of transparency in Stanford's decision-making affecting academic discourse - The increasing pressure placed on dissenting political voices We must protect the open discussion of controversial ideas at universities, especially during times of national crisis like our own. Ms. Stewart's indictment stifles the defense of politically vulnerable clients. The law school's decision now compounds that effect, by discrediting her professional role as a defense attorney based on her political perspectives. As a leading academic institution, Stanford Law School enjoys tremendous credibility, which it compromised by acting before soliciting public comments. Stanford Law School set a dangerous precedent in permitting political agendas to trump academic freedom. Worse yet, Ms. Stewart was scrutinized on account of her SPEECH. As during the McCarthy era, this decision reflects a widespread fear of entertaining dissenting voices in an increasingly vitriolic climate. We have today once again sounded the alarm that dissent in America is unwelcome. The media has already restricted the terms of debate. The academy now follows suit. Please help us counter the campaign against unpopular voices by expressing your own alarm over the university's willingness to sacrifice its academic integrity. Call on Dean Sullivan and University President John Hennessy to defend our academic institutions and the right of students to explore all points of view. Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan sullivan@law.stanford.edu (650) 723-4455 Stanford University President John Hennessy hennessy@stanford.edu (650) 723-2481 See below for suggested e-mail text: ------------------------------------------- Dear Stanford Administrators, Your recent decision to rescind Lynne Stewart's invitation to serve as David W. Mills Public Interest Mentor is alarming. Ms. Stewart stands the center of the ongoing controversy over the appropriate balance of security and liberty in America. As such, Stanford's decision to restrict her availability to students raises grave concerns over the academy's vulnerability to reactionary attitudes. In addition, the manner in which Ms. Stewart's invitation was revoked is itself problematic. Public interest programs must be governed by transparent decision-making structures in order to ensure impartiality and freedom from intellectual coercion. Students must also enjoy a correlative right of access to mentors of their choice. I implore you to recognize your roles as guardians of a public trust. As administrators of a prestigious academic institution, you enjoy tremendous influence. The vitality of our national debate demands that you wield it responsibly [ To Top ]

13 November 2002	I regret that yesterday's memorial notice for Professor Jeffrey was lumped together with other news. It had been posted separately, but once again technical problems undermined the intention. Texas A&M University recently established a new Ph.D. program, in addition to their M.A. program, which has long been one of the strongest in the country. The design and plan of the new Ph.D. program is somewhat different from existing programs. Students thinking about Ph.D. programs may find the following description, provided by the A&M Department, of use in considering where to apply: Our Ph.D. program is built on the premise that research in philosophy is frequently enhanced by a strongly interdisciplinary education. Accordingly, our program requires that students complete an MA or MS in a supporting field simultaneously with their doctoral program (a student who already holds such a degree may petition to have it count as the supporting degree). The student's degree plan and dissertation project should be structured to reflect the supporting field, and the student's thesis committee will include a member from the supporting field. Our rationale for this program is twofold: (1) philosophical research is often greatly strengthened by a serious background in a different field (consider not only the philosophy of science, where such a background is now mandatory, but also the role of such things as statistics--Bayesian theory--in epistemology or neuroscience in the philosophy of mind); (2) there are many academic institutions at which a philosopher with a master's level credential in another field would be more employable (many regional institutions in Texas are good examples). Our program is designed to be small in scope, admitting two or three students per year, and to operate in tandem with our existing terminal MA program: indeed, we count on having the MA as support for the Ph.D. through providing a critical mass of good students. It is our intention to continue providing assistantships to MA as well as to Ph.D. students. [ To Top ]

12 November 2002	(1) Correction to yesterday's announcement about Jeffrey Pelletier: he has not yet accepted the Chair at Simon Fraser, and the Chair offer must still clear some remaining administrative hurdles. The source of yesterday's erroneous news was a member of the Simon Fraser Department, who had reported it as a done deal. I am grateful for all the information philosophers send, but please, where there is uncertainty, do let me know! (2) Thomas Ricketts at the University of Pennsylvania has accepted a tenured offer from Northwestern University, to begin in fall 2003. Ricketts, a distinguished specialist in the history of analytic philosophy, is a significant catch for Northwestern, and a major loss for Penn. With the addition of Ricketts, the city of Chicago secures its position as a leading, perhaps the leading, center for work on the history of analytic philosophy, including Ricketts and Charles Travis at Northwestern; W.D. Hart and Peter Hylton at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and James Conant and Michael Kremer at the University of Chicago, among others. IN MEMORIAM Richard C. Jeffrey (1926-2002) For more information on his distinguished philosophical career, please see http://www.princeton.edu/Siteware/WebAnnounce.Princeton_Headlines.shtml#2 [ To Top ]

11 November 2002	F. Jeffrey Pelletier, currently at the University of Alberta, will be taking up a Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University. Pelletier, who has done significant work in a number of fields (including ancient philosophy, formal semantics, and logic), is a major loss for Alberta, and a significant addition for Simon Fraser and for the philosophical scene in Vancouver, which, after Toronto, may well now be the most lively site for philosophy in Canada. [ To Top ]

29 October 2002	(1) The new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2002-04 is now available (28 October 2002) on-line at the following addresses: http://www.philosophicalgourmetreport.com http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com http://www.gourmetreport.com. Unfortunately, problems with the Update Service made it impossible to post this notice sooner. Some time later today, links to the old site will be automatically forwarded to the new site. (2) Those who have been following the Hoekema/Leiter/Wilshire debate about analytic and Continental philosophy on Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews can read the latest installment at, http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/hoekemawilshire.html And those who don't yet know about Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews should consider subscribing to this valuable service, which provides extremely timely reviews of a wide array of publications in philosophy. For more information, see http://ndpr.icaap.org/ [ To Top ]

10 October 2002	(1) David McNaughton (ethics) at Keele University in the UK has accepted a tenured offer, to begin in fall 2003, at Florida State University. This is the latest in a series of notable tenured and tenure-track hires by FSU in the last couple of years. (2) James Griesemer (philosophy of biology) at UC Davis has declined the offer from the HPS Program at Indiana University, Bloomington. [ To Top ]

01 October 2002	(1) The new Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2002-04 should be on-line during the week of October 21st. A precise date will be announced closer to the time. Sincere thanks to the nearly 180 philosophers (a 50% increase from last year) who completed the reputational surveys this year. (2) The distinguished philosopher of science and biology Elliott Sober, who is currently slated to be a visiting professor at Stanford in the Spring, now has a permanent offer from Stanford as well. Students thinking about Stanford or Wisconsin, especially those interested in philosophy of science, would do well to stay alert for future updates on this offer. [ To Top ]

03 September 2002	IN MEMORIAM Robert Clifton (1964-2002) For more on the career of this distinguished young philosopher of physics, see the memorial notice from the University of Pittsburgh paper: http://www.pitt.edu/utimes/issues/35/020829/03.html [ To Top ]

23 August 2002	(1) Frederick Neuhouser (19th-century German philosophy) at Cornell has accepted a tenured offer from Columbia University. (2) For those who've been inquiring: the new Philosophical Gourmet Report should be out before the end of October. The only major change is that the Report will return to bi-annual publication. I tried this once before (in 1998), but student demand was so great, that I ended up releasing a mini-Report for 1999-2000 anyway. However, that was before the existence of the Update Service. The plan this year is to issue the Report for the period 2002-04, and use the Update Service to alert prospective students to significant developments for 2003-04. [ To Top ]

07 August 2002	(1) Simon Blackburn (Cambridge) was elected a Fellow of the British Academy last month. (2) Huw Price (philosophy of science, metaphysics), who will be taking up a Personal Chair at the University of Sydney, will also continue to be part-time at the University of Edinburgh, where he will be involved in graduate teaching and supervision. (3) Mark Greenberg (philosophy of mind) at Princeton has declined the offer from Berkeley. [ To Top ]

25 July 2002	(1) Alastair Norcross, currently Easterwood Professor of Philosophy at Southern Methodist University, has accepted the senior offer from Rice University, and will begin there this fall (2002). Norcross adds to a strong ethics group at Rice that includes Nomy Arpaly, Baruch Brody, and George Sher, among others. (2) Julian Savulescu has accepted appointment as the first Uehiro Professor of Applied Ethics at Oxford University. Savulescu was previously Director of the Ethics Unit at Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne and Director of the Bioethics Programme at the Center for the Study of Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. [ To Top ]

03 July 2002	IN MEMORIAM Gordon Baker (1938-2002) For more on his distinguished philosophical career, including his well-known work on Wittgenstein, see http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/story.jsp?story=311457 [ To Top ]

03 July 2002	(1) The Centre for Philosophy of Social Sciences, part of the Sociology Department at the University of Exeter, has made a senior appointment of Mark Rowlands (philosophy of mind and psychology, applied ethics) from University College, Cork, Ireland. (2) Dan Brock has resigned his post at Brown University to take up an appointment in the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. (3) Daniel Wikler, another medical ethicist, is leaving the University of Wisconsin, Madison to become professor of ethics and population health in the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. (4) Junior placement: David Hershenov, a PhD student at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has accepted a tenure-track position at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He works in metaphysics, bioethics, normative ethics, and philosophy of law. (5) Gideon Rosen (metaphysics, philosophy of math) at Princeton University has declined the offer from MIT. The reputational surveys for the 2002-03 Philosophical Gourmet Report will be conducted in last August and early September. A new Report should be released by the end of October. [ To Top ]

19 June 2002	(1) Alex Miller (philosophy of language, metaethics), currently at Cardiff University (Wales) has accepted appointment as Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University beginning in January 2003. (2) Russ Shafer-Landau (ethics, philosophy of law) at the University of Kansas has accepted the senior offer from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. [ To Top ]

18 June 2002	(1) Hilary Kornblith, well-known for his work on naturalized epistemology (among other topics), will leave the University of Vermont for a tenured post at the University of Massachussetts at Amherst beginning in 2003-04. (2) Hugh Baxter, a recently tenured law professor at Boston University, has become an "affiliated faculty" member as well in the Philosophy Department at BU. Baxter works on issues at the intersection of legal theory and recent Continental philosophy. (3) Readers of the Update Service not already familiar with Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (on-line at http://ndpr.icaap.org/index.htm) will certainly want to pay a visit. This new service provides remarkably timely reviews of a wide range of new books in philosophy. The publication is edited by Gary Gutting at Notre Dame. [ To Top ]

14 June 2002	A technical problem at Blackwell's site resulted in several updates being sent out together in one e-mail. I especially regret that the memorial notice for Rogers Albritton, which was to have been a separate update, was lumped in with the other items. On to news: (1) Jennifer Whiting (ancient philosophy, philosophy of mind) has accepted a tenured offer from the University of Toronto, to commence in July, 2003. Toronto, it will be recalled, also added Rachel Barney in ancient philosophy from the University of Chicago this year. This will now give Toronto one of the strongest contingents of scholars working in ancient philosophy in North America. (2) George Graham (philosophy of mind, cognitive science) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has accepted the Reid Chair at Wake Forest University. [ To Top ]

14 June 2002	IN MEMORIAM Rogers Albritton (1924-2002) For more on his distinguished career, see http://www.uclanews.ucla.edu/Docs/3241.htm (1) Christopher Hill (philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has accepted the tenured offer from Brown University. (2) Andre Gallois (metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action), currently at Keele University, has accepted the tenured offer from Syracuse University. Syracuse has also appointed Eric Hiddleston (PhD, Cornell), who works in philosophy of science and metaphysics, to the Sutton Distinguished Faculty Fellowship. (3) Mark Colyvan (metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophical logic), currently at the University of Tasmania (Hobart), has accepted the Chair at the University of Queensland. He is likely also to continue on a part-time basis at Cal Tech. (4) Barbara von Eckardt (philosophy of mind, cognitive science) at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln has accepted the post of Dean of Liberal Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. News on senior offers by Macquarie University and the University of Massachussetts at Amherst is expected soon. (1) Nick Zangwill (ethics, aesthetics) at the University of Glasgow has resigned from the faculty there. (2) Sean Kelly (philosophy of mind, phenomenology), an assistant professor at Princeton, has declined an offer from the University of Pittsburgh, and will remain at Princeton. For your amusement: A colleague has called my attention to an on-line "poll" about the Philosophical Gourmet Report hosted by www.ephilosopher.org. Considering that such on-line sites are typically forums for the aggrieved, the results are quite striking: about 70% of the 188 respondents deem the Report "Accurate" (43%) or "Somewhat Accurate" (27%), while only 7% deem it "inaccurate." Allowing for the high-response rate from the aggrieved in such voluntary polls, this result actually does seem consistent with the fact that only 2% of professional philosophers signed on to the Heckling campaign. Of course, an additional 22% of those voting in the on-line poll profess holding the peculiar view that rankings are "meaningless." Assuming these aren't all closet verificationists, I suppose it is heartening to know that there are so many philosophical egalitarians out there, though one may wonder what advice these people give to prospective students! [ To Top ]

03 June 2002	Jim Pryor (epistemology, metaphysics), currently at Harvard, has accepted the offer from Princeton. This brings to a conclusion a tough year for Harvard, which also lost Anthony Appiah to Princeton, Michael Blake to the Kennedy School at Harvard, and witnessed the untimely death of Robert Nozick. The Harvard Department did add, on a part-time basis, Peter Godfrey Smith (philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology), who will split the appointment with the Australian National University; and granted tenure to a distinguished young historian of modern philosophy, Alison Simmons. In addition to adding Appiah and Pryor, Princeton also added Daniel Garber from Chicago and retained Bas van Fraassen in the face of the Oxford offer. Philip Pettit, from the Australian National University, also begins his joint appointment in Politics and Philosophy at Princeton this year. Two Princeton faculty are still being pursued elsewhere: Mark Greenberg (philosophy of mind), by UCLA and Berkeley; and Gideon Rosen (metaphysics) by MIT. [ To Top ]

28 May 2002	(1) Bas van Fraassen (philosophy of science and physics) at Princeton University has declined the offer from Oxford. (2) Norman Daniels (moral and political philosophy, medical ethics) at Tufts University has accepted a chair in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School. (3) Stephen Leeds (philosophy of language, metaphysics) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted the senior offer from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. This appointment is certainly sufficient to propel Wisconsin/Milwaukee back in to its traditional perch among the top 2-3 terminal MA programs in the US (along with at least Tufts and Virginia Tech). In addition, Milwaukee has made a tenure-track appointment of Richard Tierney (PhD, Columbia) in ancient philosophy. (4) The remainder of this Update concerns the issue of academic freedom at Haifa University, mentioned in an earlier update. Those not interested in this issue may stop reading now. A philosopher at Haifa University has kindly called to my attention the fact that the Presiding Officer of the Academic Disciplinary Court at Haifa has dismissed the initial complaint against Dr. Ilan Pappe filed by the Dean of Humanities at Haifa, Yossi Ben-Artzi. However, as the text of the letter, below, makes clear, there is a real prospect that disciplinary proceedings may be reopened. Indeed, the tone of materials about the Pappe case forwarded to me by Dean Ben-Artzi suggests that this matter may not be at an end. Therefore, those who continue to be concerned about academic freedom may still wish to consider signing the petition. Here is the main text of the letter by the Presiding Officer of the Academic Disciplinary Court to the Rector of Haifa: "Following a thorough review of the letter of complaint submitted by Prof. Yossi Ben-Artzi against Dr. Ilan Pappe that you transmitted to me by way of the Academic Secretary, Mr. Baruch Marzan (his letter of 5.5.02 and your letter of 7.5.02), and by virtue of the authority granted me in accordance with paragraph 5.1 of the regulations concerning the obligations of an academic employee, I have arrived at the conclusion that I do not find it warranted to convene the court in order to discuss the matter in the manner that was submitted, for the following reasons: A. Several of the complaints raised in the letter of complaint (paragraph B, most of C, part of D, E, F) include charges such as slander, impugning the good name, and libel, and these have to be discussed in the framework of a civil suit or by lodging a complaint with the police, not with the disciplinary court, which has not the means of examining such accusations. B. The rest of the complaints (paragraph A, part of C, part of D), on non-collegiality or deviation from ethics, such as appealing to organizations abroad, insulting colleagues, and damaging their academic integrity, do on the face of it permit the submission of a complaint and a discussion in the court. Accordingly, should Professor Ben-Artzi wish to reword the letter of complaint in accordance with the foregoing, I shall reconsider opening the disciplinary discussion. Since the letter of complaint was sent to the defendant prior to my decision whether or not to conduct a discussion, it seems to me desirable, then, to convey this letter of mine to both parties. Yours truly, Prof. Yaacov Barnai Presiding Officer of the Academic Disciplinary Court" ========================== One final note: Two correspondents have written as follows: "What about academic freedom in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Iran? Why is it necessary to single out Israel?" First, Israel was not singled out; a distinguished philosopher, who is also an Israeli, called the petition to my attention. A threat to academic freedom was singled out, not a country. Second, since the Update Service was started, no comparable petition from anywhere else has been called to my attention. Indeed, to my knowledge, the only comparable recent incident-at the University of Toronto last year-was resolved without a petition, and the threatened professor's rights were vindicated. Third, it is my surmise that the other countries mentioned do not have much if any academic freedom, just as they have restricted political freedoms quite generally. By contrast, in countries like Israel and Canada, among many others, countries with established traditions of academic freedom, vigilant protection of that freedom is especially important and meaningful. As the petition itself aptly put the point: "Especially in these days, when freedom in Israel is under attack, the university should be a stronghold of freedom." [ To Top ]

23 May 2002	(1) Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language) at University of Southern California has accepted the tenured offer from Yale. In addition, Michael Nelson (philosophy of language), a recent PhD from Princeton, has accepted a tenure-track offer at Yale. (2) I won't make a habit of political messages, but I assume most subscribers to this service are keenly interested in matters of academic freedom. Therefore, I encourage you to review the petition, below, concerning a gross violation of academic freedom in Israel. Many distinguished philosophers--including Peter Railton, Joseph Raz, and T.M. Scanlon--have already signed. The site is: http://www.petitiononline.com/pappe/ [ To Top ]

21 May 2002	(1) Rachel Barney (ancient philosophy), currently at the University of Chicago, has accepted a tenured appointment at the University of Toronto to begin January 1, 2003. (2) The University of Miami has now posted up-to-date and informative job placement information. (3) Bowling Green State University has made two notable tenure-track appointments of young scholars with established records of scholarship: Daniel Jacobson (value theory), currently at Franklin & Marshall College; and Steven Wall (political philosophy) at Kansas State University. (4) Julian Young, the distinguished scholar of 19th- and 20th-century German philosophy, has returned to active teaching in the Department at the University of Auckland, where he will teach one semester per year. (5) The 2001-02 Edition of the Real Guide to Grad School, published by the now-defunct magazine Lingua Franca, recently arrived. As with the earlier edition, the Philosophy chapter basically tracks the recommendations in the Report, though two years out of date. This chapter is, thus, largely superseded by the most recent Report. Members of the Syracuse Department will be surprised to see their department described as "heavily orineted toward Continental philosophy" (like Penn State and Stony Brook), but there are relatively few egregious howlers like this in the chapter. Because Lingua Franca always identified closely with the Lit Crit/Pomo crowds, the chapter devotes nearly two pages to hemming and hawing about the Report before concluding that, "The majority of professors the Real Guide contacted said that they believe the Gourmet Report is substantially accurate and valuable." [ To Top ]

14 May 2002	(1) Daniel Garber (early modern philosophy, philosophy of science), currently at the University of Chicago, has accepted the offer from Princeton University, and will begin there in September. This is a major loss for Chicago, and a significant addition for Princeton. (2) Alan Goldman (value theory, epistemology) at the University of Miami has accepted the Kenan Chair at the College of William & Mary. (3) Sun-Joo Shin (logic, philosophy of language) at the University of Notre Dame has accepted a tenured position at Yale. (4) One other piece of tenure-track placement news: Andrew Janiak (PhD, Indiana) has accepted a tenure-track post at Duke University; Janiak works on Kant and philosophy of science. [ To Top ]

06 May 2002	(1) Alex Byrne (philosophy of mind, metaphysics) has been granted tenured at MIT. MIT also still has a senior offer out to Gideon Rosen (metaphysics, philosophy of math) at Princeton. (2) The University of Toronto has hired Marleen Rozemond (early modern philosophy) and Philip Clark (ethics), both from Kansas State University. (3) The distinguished philosopher of science and biology, Elliott Sober at the Univeristy of Wisconsin at Madison, will be a Visiting Professor in Winter and Spring 2003 at Stanford University. Next year students considering Stanford and Wisconsin should stay alert for the possibility that Sober may move permanently to Stanford. (4) Yet more on the RAE, this time from a different British philosopher, whose department also fared well: "It is indeed true that it is possible to play the numbers game in the way described; but it should perhaps also be pointed out that the RAE does also classify departments according to what proportion of the staff are submitted (so A signifies 90% or more submitted, B 80-89% and so on). Departments whose rating is 4 , 5 or 5* and which also are indicated as A in the category of staff submitted may be reckoned to have eschewed the numbers game. The classification is indicated at the RAE results website along with the scores." [ To Top ]

02 May 2002	(1) Duke has made a significant senior appointment: Allen Buchanan (political philosophy, applied ethics) at the University of Arizona has accepted Duke's offer. Arizona will still remain highly competitive in political philosophy, thanks to Thomas Christiano and David Schmidtz, who remain. (2) A distinguished British philosopher--whose department fared very well in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise--has sent the following analysis of the RAE methodology, which should be of interest to many readers: Ratings gained in the U.K. Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) should not be cited unless their meaning is made clear. Among Departments that gain 4, 5 or 5, the rating depends chiefly upon the proportion of 'Research Active Staff' SUBMITTED IN THE EXERCISE who are judged to do work of excellence by international standards. A Department chooses whom it submits, and it makes the choice in ignorance both of the (inevitably slightly unpredictable) judgments of quality that will be made on those submitted, and of the relative funding levels for the different ratings. Example: Consider a Department with 10 members, 4 of whose members' research might well be judged to be of international standing and very nearly all of whose would likely be judged of (at least) national standing. If this Department included 7 members in its submission (leaving out the 3 that it thought least likely to contribute to a high rating), and 4 of those indeed proved to be judged as of international standing, then it would gain a 5. If this Department were to include all 10 members in the submission, and 2 of those proved to be of international standing and 1 not (even) of national standing, then it would gain a 4 (two ranks lower, that is). Some Departments submit all their members because there are no obvious candidates to be left out from the submission (but anyone picked to be left out could seem to be research inactive or a failure). Other Departments leave people out of their submission, hoping that a higher rating will be achieved by doing so. How one plays the RAE game depends upon whether one cares about fame (i.e. getting a high rating simply) or about fortune (i.e. accruing as much research funding as possible). Any Department which cares only about fame, and has at least one member definitely of international standing could play the same so as to gain a 5. The game in any case is a risky one, since the annual research funding accruing to the Departments institution in consequence of its rating depends upon the number of people submitted as well as upon the rating. At the time of its submission, a Department cant put a financial value on the risk even if it has settled for fortune.[Example of this: it is unknown which of the following will bring most, which least, funding: a 5-rated submission of 7 staff, a 5-rated submission of 9 staff, a 4-rated submission of 11 staff.] The bottom line is that a U.K. Departments RAE rating is not a measure of the overall quality of its Faculty members research (even assuming that judgements of quality made in the Exercise can be perfectly accurate and are made perfectly accurately). [ To Top ]

29 April 2002	The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced its newly elected members today, including the following philosophers: Joshua Cohen (MIT); Philip Kitcher (Columbia); John Perry (Stanford); William Tait (emeritus, Chicago); and Allen Wood (Stanford). [ To Top ]

23 April 2002	(1) The University of Illinois at Chicago has hired Sally Sedgwick (Kant, German Idealism) from Dartmouth College to a tenured position, to begin in fall 2003. In addition, UIC has hired Abraham Roth (philosophy of action and mind) to a tenure- track position, to begin this fall; Roth is currently an Assistant Professor at UCLA. Finally, Lisa Downing (early modern) at UIC has declined an offer from the University of California, Irvine. (2) Janice Dowell (PhD, Pittsburgh) has accepted a tenure-track post at Bowling Green State University. She works in philosophy of language. (3) Jim Pryor (epistemology) at Harvard University has been granted tenure. He still has an offer from Princeton University. [ To Top ]

18 April 2002	(1) Stewart Shapiro has declined the offer from the University of Southern California and will remain at Ohio State. (2) James van Cleve has declined the offer from NYU. As reported previously, he will be a visting professor at USC next academic year. (3) Other visiting faculty news for 2002-03: Allan Gotthelf (ancient philosophy) at the College of New Jersey will be a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin in fall 2002. (4) Additional tenure-track appointments in research universities, listed by the PhD-granting department: CORNELL UNIVERSITY Steven Gardiner: University of Utah: Areas: Ethics, ancient philosophy. Currently a lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Deborah Tollefsen: University of Memphis. Area: Metaphysics. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORIA, LOS ANGELES Ben Caplan: University of Manitoba. Areas: Philosophy of language, metaphysics, history of analytic philosophy. [ To Top ]

16 April 2002	(1) The University of Southern California has made tenured offers to Bill Brewer (philosophy of mind) at Oxford, Stewart Shapiro (philosophy of math, logic) at Ohio State University, and James van Cleve (Kant, metaphysics, epistemology) at Brown University. Van Cleve also has an outstanding offer from NYU. Van Cleve will be a Visiting Professor at USC during 2002-03. (2) More tenure-track appointments at research universities, listed, as before, by the PhD- granting institution: MASSACHUSSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Ishani Maitra: Syracuse University. Areas: Philosophy of language, feminist philosophy. Also had an offer from Wisconsin/Milwaukee. UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER Shelley Wilcox: Temple University. Area: Ethics. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Stephen Finlay: University of Southern California. Area: Ethics. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Karyn Freedman: University of Guelph. Area: Philosophy of science. Violetta Igneski: McMaster University. Area: Ethics. Sarah Marquardt: had an offer from Guelph, but took a Harpur Schmidt (Postdoc) Fellowship at the University of Chicago. Area: Early modern. Jon Miller: Queen's University. Areas: Ancient and early modern philosophy. Joshua Mozersky: Queen's University. Area: Metaphysics. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Colgate. Scott Woodcock: University of Victoria. Area: Ethics. [ To Top ]

16 April 2002	(1) Harry Frankfurt is moving to emeritus status at Princeton University. (2) More tenure-track jobs at research universities, listed by the PhD-granting program: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES Paul Hovda: Reed College. Area: Metaphysics. Also had offer from UC Santa Barbara. Philip Nickel: University of California, Irvine. Area: Ethics. CORNELL UNIVERSITY Aaron Zimmerman: University of California, Santa Barbara. Areas: Philosophy of mind, epistemology. UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA Tim Bayne: Macquarie University (Australia). Area: Philosophy of mind. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Roger Sansom: Texas A&M University. Area: Philosophy of biology. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Kelly Becker: University of New Mexico. Areas: Philosophy of language and mind. [ To Top ]

15 April 2002	Apologies for the multiple Updates today! The list of tenure-track placement at research universities was based on the information received to date; it appears some people missed the earlier call for such data. As a result, a supplementary list of placement will be forth- coming shortly. One other piece of news: Rice University has voted out a tenured offer to Alastair Norcross (ethics) at Southern Methodist University. [ To Top ]

15 April 2002	(1) Syracuse University has made a tenured offer to Andre Gallois (philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics, epistemology) at Keele University in the U.K. Syracuse has also made two tenure- track offers. (2) Matthias Risse (political philosophy, decision theory, Nietzsche), currently an Assistant Professor at Yale, has accepted a tenure-track appointment in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. This follows the appointment by the Kennedy School of Michael Blake (political philosophy), currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. Add to that senior Kennedy School faculty like Frederick Schauer and Richard Zeckhauser, and the Kennedy School is now really the first professional program outside of a Law School to offer exceptional opportunities for philosophically minded students who do not want to pursue the PhD (or JD). [ To Top ]

15 April 2002	Junior Job Placement in Tenure-Track Jobs at Research Universities Listed by the PhD-granting program. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Anja Jauernig: University of Notre Dame. Areas: Kant, Philosophy of Science. She also had offers from Yale, Columbia, and elsewhere. Simon Keller: Boston University: Areas: Ethics, Metaphysics, Ancient. Michael Nelson: Yale University. Area: Philosophy of language. (Offer extended, but not yet accepted.) Matthias Risse: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Areas: Political philosophy, decision theory, Nietzsche. Currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEW BRUNSWICK Troy Cross: Yale University. Area: Metaphysics. Raffaella De Rosa: University of South Carolina. Area: Modern philosophy. Daniel Haybron: Saint Louis University. Area: Ethics. Mark Moyer: University of Vermont. Area: Metaphysics. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Maura Tumulty: Johns Hopkins University. Areas: Philosophy of language and mind, Wittgenstein. HARVARD UNIVERSITY Brent Kalar: University of New Mexico. Areas: Kant, aesthetics. Thomas Kelly: University of Notre Dame (for fall 2003). Areas: Epistemology, Ethics. Kelly is currently at Harvard's Society of Fellows. Ori Simchen: University of British Columbia. Area: Philosophy of language. Simchen is currently a Lecturer at Yale. Sharon Street: New York University. Area: Ethics. STANFORD UNIVERSITY Michael Blake: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Area: Political philosophy. Blake is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES Simon Evnine: University of Miami. Areas: Philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophical logic, epistemology. CORNELL UNIVERSITY Susan Brower-Toland: Saint Louis University. Area: Medieval philosophy. Pekka Vayrynen: University of California, Davis. Area: Ethics. MASSACHUSSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Matti Eklund: University of Colorado, Boulder. Area: Metaphysics. Also had an offer from Yale. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Chris Pincock: Purdue University. Areas: Philosophy of math, history of analytic philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Michael Gill: University of Arizona. Areas: Ethics, History of Ethics. Currently an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston. Karen Stohr: Georgetown University. Areas: Ethics. Currently an Assistant Professor at Mount St. Mary's College. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN Mary Beth Mader: University of Memphis. Area: Continental philosophy. Kirk Sanders: Rutgers University, New Brunswick (Classics). Area: Ancient philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Dean Moyar: Johns Hopkins University. Areas: Hegel, political philosophy. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY Joseph Salerno: Saint Louis University. Areas: Epistemology, logic. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON Christopher Stephens: University of British Columbia. Area: Philosophy of biology. Stephens is currently in a tenure-track position at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER Michelle Montague: University of California, Irvine. Area: Metaphysics. BOSTON UNIVERSITY James Dodd: New School University. Area: Continental philosophy. AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Daniel Nolan: Syracuse University. Area: Metaphysics. Nolan is currently on a post-doc at Syracuse. DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY Carolyn McLeod: University of Western Ontario. Areas: Feminist ethics, medical ethics. GUELPH UNIVERSITY Karen Houle: University of Alberta. Areas: Feminist philosophy, Continental philosophy. MCGILL UNIVERSITY Christopher Viger: University of Western Ontario. Areas: Philosophy of mind/cognitive science. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS Otavio Bueno: University of South Carolina. Areas: Philosophy of science, mathematics, and logic. Bueno is currently an Assistant Professor at California State University at Fresno. [ To Top ]

12 April 2002	I wanted to share, especially with faculty readers of the Update Service, the following letter received from a student currently applying to graduate programs. The requests and concerns eloquently expressed here seem reasonable and demand the attention of every department: ================================ Dr. Leiter, I am very concerned about the process of graduate admissions. Students spend hundreds of dollars to apply to MA and PhD programs. I spent over 900 dollars this round of applications, and some people spend much more. At this cost, one would think that departments would be a little more professional and prompt in making their decisions and in sending out rejection or admission letters. Here it is, nearly April 15th--THE DEADLINE, and I still have not heard from one of the schools to which I applied. Receiving a timely rejection letter is important--it can help the student narrow down her choices (which can be very hard in some cases) and dispels false hope (which is its own hell, perhaps). This problem is not unique to philosophy departments; it goes on all over the place. I realize the following: 1. some departments get nearly 300 applicants, 2. the materials in the application are numerous and dense 3. professors have other things to do 4. Not every department fails to be prompt. Fair enough. When a lot of application deadlines are in January, one would still think that departments can send out notifications a little sooner. It is my humble opinion that every applicant ought to get at least two weeks to make their decisions; this time frame allows for visits (which cost more money) and conversations. Once again, most departments probably fulfill their responsibility. But NO department should fail to be prompt in this endeavor. I have emailed you because you probably have the greatest audience for this matter (and I couldn't think of anyone more appropriate to contact). I figured if you could wake up people about their placement records (or the failure to have them), you could make them aware of this problem, as well. Thanks, [name omitted] [ To Top ]

11 April 2002	(1) Mark Colyvan (metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics) at the University of Tasmania, Hobart has been offered the chair at the University of Queensland. (2) Matthias Frisch (philosophy of science and physics), currently an assistant professor at Northwestern University, has accepted a tenure- track post at the University of Maryland, College Park, to begin in 2003. (3) David Schmidtz (political philospohy) at the University of Arizona has declined the offer from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Arizona has also made a tenure-track offer to Michael Gill (ethics, history of ethics), a North Carolina PhD currently in a tenure-track post at the College of Charleston. Hiring news from Washington University, St. Louis is expected soon. [ To Top ]

09 April 2002	(1) Peter Godfrey-Smith (philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind), currently at Stanford University, has accepted appointments, beginning 2003, at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University and at Harvard University, where he will visit each Spring semester. In the last year, the ANU also added Kim Sterelny to its faculty, so ANU is now one of the top choices in the world for philosophy of biology, as well as philosophy of mind. (2) The University of Wisconsin, Madison has voted out a tenured offer to Russ Shafer-Landau (ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law) at the University of Kansas. News on senior appointments at Oxford and Stanford is expected soon. [ To Top ]

05 April 2002	(1) Peter Ludlow (philosophy of language and linguistics) has accepted a joint appointment in Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Along with Jason Stanley and Richmond Thomason, among others, Michigan will now be one of the most attractive choices for students working in philosophy of language and linguistics. (2) Cristina Bicchieri (Carnegie-Mellon University) has joined the Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report. For those who have inquired, the main duties of Advisory Board members will be to vet the specialty rankings. Most Advisory Board members performed this service informally in the past, but I am glad to be able to acknowledge their contributions formally and publically. (3) The list of junior hires will be coming shortly. Here is an initial list of senior faculty who will be Visiting Professors in the coming academic year: John Deigh (ethics, philosophy of law) at Northwestern University will be a visiting professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin in Spring 2003. Kathleen Higgins and Robert C. Solomon (both University of Texas at Austin) will be visiting professors at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in May 2002 giving lectures in courses on existentialism (Solomon), Nietzsche (Solomon), feminist philosophy (Higgins), and Buddhism (Higgins). Ludger Honnefelder (medieval philosophy) at the University of Bonn will be the James Collins Visiting Professor at Saint Louis University in Fall 2002. Judith Jarvis Thomson (ethics, political philosophy) at MIT will be a visiting professor at UCLA in the Winter Quarter 2003. [ To Top ]

02 April 2002	(1) The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul does, in fact, have excellent and detailed information on job placement available at the following location: http://www.philosophy.umn.edu/Grad/alumni.htm (2) I'm pleased to announce some additional members of the new Advisory Board of the Report: Arthur Fine (University of Washington, Seattle) John Martin Fischer (University of California, Riverside) Michael Forster (University of Chicago) Patrick Maynard (University of Western Ontario) William Wimsatt (University of Chicago) (3) Alison Simmons (early modern philosophy) has been granted tenure at Harvard University. Michael Blake, currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, has accepted a tenure-track appointment in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. (4) Departments that would like to announce senior visiting faculty for next academic year, 2002-03, should e-mail bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu [ To Top ]

22 March 2002	The University of Rochester, in fact, has detailed placement data at, http://www.rochester.edu/College/PHL/placement.html That information is also now more easily locatable from the departmental homepage (click on "Graduate Program"). A number of people have e-mailed expressing interest in a year-end wrap-up on junior hiring at PhD programs. I'd be grateful if hiring departments, or hired faculty, would e-mail bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu with information. [ To Top ]

21 March 2002	Problems with the Update Service appear to be fixed. You should have received several weeks worth of Updates in the most recent posting. The Update Service, for those who are interested, now has approximately 1500 subscribers. Two corrections: Apologies to Ralph Wedgwood, who is moving from MIT to Oxford, for misspelling his name in the original update. Robin Jeshion's offer at Yale is not yet official, but has been voted out at the departmental level. I am pleased to announce that the following distinguished philosophers have all now also agreed to serve on the Advisory Board of the Report: Julia Driver (Dartmouth College) John Etchemendy (Stanford University) Thomas Hurka (University of Toronto) Shelly Kagan (Yale University) Cheryl J. Misak (University of Toronto) Simon Saunders (Oxford University) A final list of Advisory Board members will be forthcoming shortly. [ To Top ]

21 March 2002	IN MEMORIAM Jerrold J. Katz (1932-2002) Katz was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he had taught since 1975. Prior to that, he served on the faculty at MIT. When on-line information about his career and important contributions to philosophy becomes available, it will be noted in a future update. -------------------------------------------------------------------- IN MEMORIAM R.M. Hare (1919-2002) The New York Times obituary on Professor Hare is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/obituaries/17HARE.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) James Griffin, the White's Professor of Moral Philosophy Emeritus at Oxford, will teach a graduate seminar at Rutgers every other year for the next five years beginning this fall. (2) The Chronicle of Higher Education has now reported the Princeton senior offers noted, but not named, in an earlier update: they are to Daniel Garber at the University of Chicago and Robert Stalnaker at MIT. Garber works primarily in the history of modern philosophy and philosophy of science. Stalnaker works primarily in philosophical logic, philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology. Both would be very major hires for Princeton, and very major losses for their current departments. Students considering Princeton, MIT, and Chicago should inquire about their status before making enrollment decisions. (3) The New York Times obituary reviewing Jerrold Katz's work and career is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/obituaries/26KATZ.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Robert Stalnaker will not be moving to Princeton, and will be staying at MIT. I am very pleased to announce the initial membership of the new Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, whose work will begin with the 2002-03 edition. Many of these philosophers have generously advised me informally, especially about the specialty rankings, for many years, but I am grateful to them for being willing to take on some formal responsibilities for producing the Philosophical Gourmet Report, and glad to be able to acknowledge their contributions appropriately. Some invitations to serve on the Board are still outstanding, and, due to some e-mail problems at the University of Texas during the last week, some invitations and acceptances may have been lost in cyberspace. Thus, a final membership list will follow in a couple of weeks. Institutional affiliations are listed for the 2002-03 academic year: Julia Annas (University of Arizona) Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University) Ned Block (New York University) David Chalmers (University of Arizona) John Deigh (Northwestern University) Keith DeRose (Yale University) Graeme Forbes (Tulane University) Don Garrett (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Alvin I. Goldman (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Anil Gupta (University of Pittsburgh) Gilbert Harman (Princeton University) Philip J. Ivanhoe (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Pierre Keller (University of California, Riverside) Christia Mercer (Columbia University) Stephen Neale (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Philip Pettit (Princeton University and Australian National University) Michael Rosen (Oxford University) Alexander Rosenberg (Duke University) Mark Sainsbury (University of Texas, Austin) Christopher Shields (University of Colorado, Boulder) A. John Simmons (University of Virginia) Ernest Sosa (Brown University and Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Jason Stanley (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Stephen Stich (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Timothy Williamson (Oxford University) Jonathan Wolff (University College London) Allen Wood (Stanford University) Crispin Wright (University of St. Andrew's and New York University) My thanks to all these distinguished philosophers for being willing to assist in providing prospective students with reliable and up-to-date information about graduate study in philosophy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Jesse Prinz (philosophy of mind and cognitive science) at Washington University, St. Louis has accepted a tenured offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2) North Carolina has also made a senior offer to David Schmidtz (political philosophy) at the University of Arizona. Students interested in political philosophy (and cognate areas) should inquire with the affected departments before making a decision. (3) New York University has made a senior offer to James Van Cleve (Kant, metaphysics, epistemology) at Brown University. (4) I am pleased to announce two additional members of the new Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report: John Gardner, the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University, and Scott MacDonald, distinguished medievalist and philosopher of religion at Cornell University. Other invitations are still outstanding; apologies to those who have been affected by the e-mail difficulties here at Texas, which, alas, continued last week. (5) More news on offers by Yale, Oxford, and Queensland is expected shortly. -------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Ralph Wedgwood (ethics, metaethics, epistemology), at MIT has accepted an offer from Oxford University. (2) MIT has made a tenured offer to Gideon Rosen (metaphysics, philosophy of math) at Princeton University. (3) Oxford has made a senior offer to Bas van Fraassen (philosophy of science and physics) at Princeton University. (4) I am happy to announce another new member of the Advisory Board of the Report: Edwin M. Curley, distinguished historian of modern philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (5) Those who saw the January 18 Chronicle of Higher Education article on the Heck-ling campaign may find the following letter to the editor of interest, which the Chronicle declined to publish (some of the figures are updated): To the Editor: May I correct one error and provide two pieces of supplemental information missing from your article about my report on graduate programs in philosophy (January 18, 2002). First, the letters from Peter Klein of Rutgers and Julia Annas of Arizona that you quote--as well as other signed letters of support--appear not on my web site, but on a web site created by Professor Keith DeRose of Yale University at, http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kd47/rankings.html. Second, about 2% of professional philosophers (255) have chosen to sign a letter that has been circulating via e-mail throughout the English- speaking world for almmost three months now. When law school Deans united to produce a letter complaining about the U.S. News rankings of law schools, 90% of law school Deans signed. The rather weak response among philosophers may help explain why the Blackwell editors--who publish the rankings and who have received volumes of feedback on it over the years--wrote (in a letter reprinted on Professor DeRose's site) that, "It is clear from the many notifications of support for the quality and value of the Report that we have received and continue to receive that this campaign does not reflect a majority view of the professional philosophical community in the US." Third, and finally, I did not "dismiss" the signatories of the letter. To the contrary, I devoted nearly ten single-spaced pages to a critical examination of their arguments (at http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/open_letter.html). The reaction of Professor Michael Devitt of the CUNY Graduate Center (also posted on Professor DeRose's site) is typical of those who read my detailed criticisms of the Heck letter: "The arguments [in the letter]...are feeble, as you and others have amply demonstrated. Indeed, they are so feeble that surely many who signed the letter must now be embarrassed." One should hope so. Sincerely yours, Brian Leiter -------------------------------------------------------------------- Since the time of year is upon us when students are making decisions about where to enroll, now seemed the moment to update the situation on how departments are doing in making candid and accurate placement data available. When the Update Service first urged departments to disclose such information in May 2001, only a handful of departments in the top 50--Arizona, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, Princeton, among others--made such information available to prospective students. In the intervening months, there has been a dramatic and most welcome change in candor about job placement. It is now only a minority of departments in the top 50 that still have not posted reasonably detailed and accurate information about placement, and only a handful that have fraudulent information of the variety, "Recent graduates of the Ph.D. program have found... teaching poisitions" at places that no graduate had been hired at in a decade or more. Here is where things stand. The following department promises detailed placement information shortly: University of California, Riverside. The following departments have some information, but not at the level of completeness or precision typical of most other programs: University of Rochester and University of California, Santa Barbara. The following departments still have not made meaningful placement information available: Boston University Carnegie-Mellon University City University of New York Graduate Center Columbia University Indiana University, Bloomington Johns Hopkins University Rice University University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign University of Miami University of Minnesota, Twin Cities University of Southern California University of Washington, Seattle Some of these departments actually have good placement records, some do not. Students considering these programs should, of course, ask for information comparable to what is now the norm among leading graduate programs throughout the U.S.. Of course, keep in mind that a department's placement record gives you backward-looking rather than forward-looking information. Departments that are stronger today than 10 years ago will have better placement records in the future, and vice versa. -------------------------------------------------------------------- IN MEMORIAM Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) For more on his distinguished philosophical career, see http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,187075,00.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- Problems with the Update Service the past several weeks mean that several update which were posted were not sent out. Subscribers may want to visit the Archives site at, http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/gourmet/Updates/DF/archlist1.ASP#Top to see what, if anything, they have missed. (1) In a recent update, I omitted two other departments that have still not posted reliable job placement information: Georgetown University and University of Chicago. (2) Mark Greenberg (philosophy of mind) at Princeton has offers from Berkeley and UCLA. (3) Yale has made a tenured offer to Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language) at University of Southern California. [ To Top ]

20 March 2002	IN MEMORIAM Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) For more on his distinguished philosophical career, see http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,187075,00.html Problems with the Update Service the past several weeks mean that several update which were posted were not sent out. Subscribers may want to visit the Archives site at, http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/gourmet/Updates/DF/archlist1.ASP#Top to see what, if anything, they have missed. (1) In a recent update, I omitted two other departments that have still not posted reliable job placement information: Georgetown University and University of Chicago. (2) Mark Greenberg (philosophy of mind) at Princeton has offers from Berkeley and UCLA. (3) Yale has made a tenured offer to Robin Jeshion (philosophy of language) at University of Southern California. [ To Top ]

18 March 2002	IN MEMORIAM Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) For more on his distinguished philosophical career, see http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,187075,00.html [ To Top ]

13 March 2002	Since the time of year is upon us when students are making decisions about where to enroll, now seemed the moment to update the situation on how departments are doing in making candid and accurate placement data available. When the Update Service first urged departments to disclose such information in May 2001, only a handful of departments in the top 50--Arizona, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, Princeton, among others--made such information available to prospective students. In the intervening months, there has been a dramatic and most welcome change in candor about job placement. It is now only a minority of departments in the top 50 that still have not posted reasonably detailed and accurate information about placement, and only a handful that have fraudulent information of the variety, "Recent graduates of the Ph.D. program have found... teaching poisitions" at places that no graduate had been hired at in a decade or more. Here is where things stand. The following department promises detailed placement information shortly: University of California, Riverside. The following departments have some information, but not at the level of completeness or precision typical of most other programs: University of Rochester and University of California, Santa Barbara. The following departments still have not made meaningful placement information available: Boston University Carnegie-Mellon University City University of New York Graduate Center Columbia University Indiana University, Bloomington Johns Hopkins University Rice University University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign University of Miami University of Minnesota, Twin Cities University of Southern California University of Washington, Seattle Some of these departments actually have good placement records, some do not. Students considering these programs should, of course, ask for information comparable to what is now the norm among leading graduate programs throughout the U.S.. Of course, keep in mind that a department's placement record gives you backward-looking rather than forward-looking information. Departments that are stronger today than 10 years ago will have better placement records in the future, and vice versa. [ To Top ]

12 March 2002	(1) Ralph Wedgwood (ethics, metaethics, epistemology), at MIT has accepted an offer from Oxford University. (2) MIT has made a tenured offer to Gideon Rosen (metaphysics, philosophy of math) at Princeton University. (3) Oxford has made a senior offer to Bas van Fraassen (philosophy of science and physics) at Princeton University. (4) I am happy to announce another new member of the Advisory Board of the Report: Edwin M. Curley, distinguished historian of modern philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (5) Those who saw the January 18 Chronicle of Higher Education article on the Heck-ling campaign may find the following letter to the editor of interest, which the Chronicle declined to publish (some of the figures are updated): To the Editor: May I correct one error and provide two pieces of supplemental information missing from your article about my report on graduate programs in philosophy (January 18, 2002). First, the letters from Peter Klein of Rutgers and Julia Annas of Arizona that you quote--as well as other signed letters of support--appear not on my web site, but on a web site created by Professor Keith DeRose of Yale University at, http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kd47/rankings.html. Second, about 2% of professional philosophers (255) have chosen to sign a letter that has been circulating via e-mail throughout the English- speaking world for almmost three months now. When law school Deans united to produce a letter complaining about the U.S. News rankings of law schools, 90% of law school Deans signed. The rather weak response among philosophers may help explain why the Blackwell editors--who publish the rankings and who have received volumes of feedback on it over the years--wrote (in a letter reprinted on Professor DeRose's site) that, "It is clear from the many notifications of support for the quality and value of the Report that we have received and continue to receive that this campaign does not reflect a majority view of the professional philosophical community in the US." Third, and finally, I did not "dismiss" the signatories of the letter. To the contrary, I devoted nearly ten single-spaced pages to a critical examination of their arguments (at http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/open_letter.html). The reaction of Professor Michael Devitt of the CUNY Graduate Center (also posted on Professor DeRose's site) is typical of those who read my detailed criticisms of the Heck letter: "The arguments [in the letter]...are feeble, as you and others have amply demonstrated. Indeed, they are so feeble that surely many who signed the letter must now be embarrassed." One should hope so. Sincerely yours, Brian Leiter [ To Top ]

11 March 2002	(1) Jesse Prinz (philosophy of mind and cognitive science) at Washington University, St. Louis has accepted a tenured offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2) North Carolina has also made a senior offer to David Schmidtz (political philosophy) at the University of Arizona. Students interested in political philosophy (and cognate areas) should inquire with the affected departments before making a decision. (3) New York University has made a senior offer to James Van Cleve (Kant, metaphysics, epistemology) at Brown University. (4) I am pleased to announce two additional members of the new Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report: John Gardner, the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University, and Scott MacDonald, distinguished medievalist and philosopher of religion at Cornell University. Other invitations are still outstanding; apologies to those who have been affected by the e-mail difficulties here at Texas, which, alas, continued last week. (5) More news on offers by Yale, Oxford, and Queensland is expected shortly. [ To Top ]

28 February 2002	(1) Robert Stalnaker will not be moving to Princeton, and will be staying at MIT. I am very pleased to announce the initial membership of the new Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, whose work will begin with the 2002-03 edition. Many of these philosophers have generously advised me informally, especially about the specialty rankings, for many years, but I am grateful to them for being willing to take on some formal responsibilities for producing the Philosophical Gourmet Report, and glad to be able to acknowledge their contributions appropriately. Some invitations to serve on the Board are still outstanding, and, due to some e-mail problems at the University of Texas during the last week, some invitations and acceptances may have been lost in cyberspace. Thus, a final membership list will follow in a couple of weeks. Institutional affiliations are listed for the 2002-03 academic year: Julia Annas (University of Arizona) Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University) Ned Block (New York University) David Chalmers (University of Arizona) John Deigh (Northwestern University) Keith DeRose (Yale University) Graeme Forbes (Tulane University) Don Garrett (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Alvin I. Goldman (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Anil Gupta (University of Pittsburgh) Gilbert Harman (Princeton University) Philip J. Ivanhoe (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Pierre Keller (University of California, Riverside) Christia Mercer (Columbia University) Stephen Neale (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Philip Pettit (Princeton University and Australian National University) Michael Rosen (Oxford University) Alexander Rosenberg (Duke University) Mark Sainsbury (University of Texas, Austin) Christopher Shields (University of Colorado, Boulder) A. John Simmons (University of Virginia) Ernest Sosa (Brown University and Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Jason Stanley (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Stephen Stich (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) Timothy Williamson (Oxford University) Jonathan Wolff (University College London) Allen Wood (Stanford University) Crispin Wright (University of St. Andrew's and New York University) My thanks to all these distinguished philosophers for being willing to assist in providing prospective students with reliable and up-to-date information about graduate study in philosophy. [ To Top ]

27 February 2002	(1) James Griffin, the White's Professor of Moral Philosophy Emeritus at Oxford, will teach a graduate seminar at Rutgers every other year for the next five years beginning this fall. (2) The Chronicle of Higher Education has now reported the Princeton senior offers noted, but not named, in an earlier update: they are to Daniel Garber at the University of Chicago and Robert Stalnaker at MIT. Garber works primarily in the history of modern philosophy and philosophy of science. Stalnaker works primarily in philosophical logic, philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology. Both would be very major hires for Princeton, and very major losses for their current departments. Students considering Princeton, MIT, and Chicago should inquire about their status before making enrollment decisions. (3) The New York Times obituary reviewing Jerrold Katz's work and career is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/obituaries/26KATZ.html [ To Top ]

18 February 2002	IN MEMORIAM Jerrold J. Katz (1932-2002) Katz was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he had taught since 1975. Prior to that, he served on the faculty at MIT. When on-line information about his career and important contributions to philosophy becomes available, it will be noted in a future update. [ To Top ]

18 February 2002	IN MEMORIAM R.M. Hare (1919-2002) The New York Times obituary on Professor Hare is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/obituaries/17HARE.html [ To Top ]

11 February 2002	(1) Michael Tye, the distinguished philosopher of mind at Temple University, has accepted the senior offer from the University of Texas at Austin, and will be in residence come the fall of 2002. (2) Jaegwon Kim, one of the leading figures in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, will serve as McMahon Hank Visiting Professor of Philosophy for the next four years at the University of Notre Dame, where he will spend a half-semester each year offering a graduate seminar. (He will during this time continue his normal duties at Brown.) (3) Peter King's appointment at the University of Toronto (noted in a previous Update) will not begin until 2003; he will continue to teach at Ohio State during 2002-03. [ To Top ]

06 February 2002	Peter King, the distinguished scholar of medieval philosophy at Ohio State University, has accepted a senior offer from the University of Toronto. His move makes Toronto, once again, one of the "Excellent" choices in medieval philosophy. [ To Top ]

31 January 2002	Anthony Appiah at Harvard University has accepted a senior offer of a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, beginning next fall. Appiah began his philosophical career working primarily in philosophy of language and metaphysics, but as the press release at the Princeton homepage reports, he now "specializes in moral and political philosophy, African and African-American studies, literary theory and criticism, and issues of personal and political identity, multiculturalism and nationalism." The Department of Philosophy at Princeton has also voted out a tenure-track offer to another Harvard philosopher, James Pryor, a top young epistemologist who earned his Ph.D. from Princeton and is currently on tenure-track at Harvard. In addition, the Princeton Department has voted out two very significant senior offers-- replacements, as it were, for David Lewis and Margaret Wilson--but due to the complex senior appointments process at Princeton, it will be awhile before these are "official." Further updates will follow on these offers closer to the time that students need to start making decisions about graduate school. (Of course, The New York Times may "scoop" the Update Service on these appointments too, as they did with Appiah, whose move was reported in the Times of January 26!) [ To Top ]

24 January 2002	IN MEMORIAM Robert Nozick (1938-2002) For a profile of his distinguished career and contributions to philosophy, see the profile from the Harvard Gazette at: http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-nozick.html [ To Top ]

21 January 2002	(1) Prospective graduate students may want to take a look at the results of the National Doctoral Program Survey at, http://survey.nagps.org/index.php The NDPS is based on surveys of graduate students, that appear to be from about five years ago. The response rate to the surveys was not, in most cases, high. As a result, more interesting than the letter grade assigned departments in various areas (e.g., mentoring, program atmosphere, etc.) are the quoted comments from actual respondents, many of which flag issues that prospective students ought to pursue. A lot of the categories on which programs were evaluated reflect the belief of the designers of the NDPS that graduate programs should, for example, do a better job preparing students for careers outside academia. Unsurprisingly, relatively few philosophy PhD programs do that. Of more interest to the typical aspiring PhD student is likely to be the comments under the heading of "Mentoring" for each department. (2) Please note that Cambridge University and New York University are being added to the Specialty Rankings for Philosophy of Law-Analytic Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law-Normative Jurisprudence. They had been wrongly omitted due to lack of information, or incorrect infor- mation, about involvement of non-philosophy faculty in the programs and/or current research and teaching areas of existing faculty. I regret the omissions. [ To Top ]

17 January 2002	(1) The University of Texas at Austin has made an offer to the distinguished philosopher of mind Michael Tye at Temple University. (Tye is also a part-time Visiting Professor at King's College, London.) A number of departments in recent years have made bids to dislodge Tye. Students interested in philosophy of mind considering Temple and Texas should check on his status before making decisions. (2) Those of you who have followed the campaign by Professor Heck of Harvard against the Philosophical Gourmet Report may find the following article from the Harvard Crimson of April 19, 2001 of interest. The article is titled rather inflammatorily, "Report Says Harvard Philosophy Falls Short." (The writers apparently believe that if a department at Harvard is not 1st or 2nd it falls short!) The article reads, in relevant part, as follows: "But ironically, [Harvard philosophy] department members say that the greatest obstacle confronted by the department has been Leiter himself. "'People looking to apply to graduate school don't know [the methodology of the report], and it looks very official, so we do care about it,' Heck says. "And according to [Gisela] Striker, the department attracted fewer graduate students last year in part due to the report being 'undeservedly influential.'" [ To Top ]

09 January 2002	(1) An interesting analysis and discussion of the RAE results in the UK, in comparison with the Philosophical Gourmet Report, is available at, http://www.gla.ac.uk/Acad/Philosophy/RAE-Leiter_comparison.htm Plainly, one difficulty here is that the RAE is backward-looking (crediting departments for faculty who were there during the survey period, but who may now be gone), while the PGR is not. When Andy Clark goes from Sussex to Indiana, he counts, for the PGR, for Indiana, not Sussex. For prospective students, choosing programs, this is probably more pertinent. One may also wonder how useful the RAE will be to prospective students since it does not draw many distinctions. Correspondence from UK philosophers suggest that many think, for example, that there are obvious differences in quality between the 20-or-so programs that all got a score of 5. A similar method, with more fine-grained distinctions, would probably be of greater value to prospective students. (2) Please note that the Department of Sociology at the University of Exeter is being added to the Specialty Rankings in Philosophy of Biology and Philosophy of Social Sciences, where the Department offers very good opportunities for students with these specialized interests. I regret the omission of the Exeter program. [ To Top ]

02 January 2002	I am delighted to close the year by reporting that the Philosophical Gourmet Report has received the "Gem of the Web" award from EpistemeLinks. For more on the award, see, http://www.epistemelinks.com/ (And for those of you who don't know this site, check it out: it is the best, and best-organized, collection of philosophical links on the Web.) Happy New Year to all! [ To Top ]