A philosopher from Britain writes:
Just wondering whether we might be in a period of 'reverse brain drain'....With Travis coming to Kings, the appointment at Essex you reported and Alan Carter, Luc Bovens and Eli Mason all leaving Colorado for the UK there could be a small trend here. What explains it? Horrible politics in US; the freeing up of academic salaries in the UK because of the RAE; and the exchange rate means that salaries are now competitive at the top end and at the same time the streets are not full of right-wing lunatics here.
Let's review the facts for the past two academic years (very roughly), which have (in my experience) been unusual. Leaving the U.S. for Britain have been: Charles Travis from Northwestern to King's College, London; Luc Bovens from Colorado to LSE; Alan Carter from Colorado to Glasgow; Wayne Martin from UC San Diego to Essex; Elinor Mason from Colorado to Edinburgh; Knud Haakonssen from BU to Sussex; Larry Moss from Notre Dame to Exeter; Andy Clark from Indiana to Edinburgh; and Christopher Shields from Colorado to Oxford. In addition, Mike Martin (UCL), Michael Otsuka (UCL), Michael Potter (Cambridge), and Hannes Leitgeb (Bristol) have all turned down U.S. offers recently.
Travis made it explicit that the political situation in the U.S. was a factor.
Leaving the U.S. for Canada have been: Bob Batterman from Ohio State to Western Ontario; John Beatty from Minnesota to British Columbia; Sylvia Berryman from Ohio State to British Columbia; Adam Morton from Oklahoma to Alberta; Benjamin Hellie from Cornell to Toronto; Diana Raffman from Ohio State to Toronto; Byeong Yi from Minnesota to Toronto; Jessica Wilson from Michigan to Toronto; Jennifer Whiting from Cornell to Toronto (and she recently turned down Stanford as well).
On the other hand, several faculty have recently moved from Canada to the U.S. (Catherine Wilson from UBC to CUNY; William Demopoulos from Western Ontario to UC Irvine), and several have made the move from Britain (Richard Holton & Rae Langton from Edinburgh to MIT; John Campbell from Oxford to Berkeley; Mark Sainsbury from King's College to Texas). Bear in mind that the U.K. still has mandatory retirement, an incentive, of course, for some philosophers to move to the U.S.
What do philosophers think? Is this a trend? What explains it? Comments are open; no anonymous postings, of course.
