The distinguished philosophers Tamar Szabo-Gendler and Zoltan Gendler-Szabo, at Cornell University, have just received offers from the Department of Philosophy at Yale University (some portion of Tamar's position will be in Cognitive Science). Obviously, recruiting Tamar and Zoltan would be a huge coup for Yale, and losing them would be a heavy blow for Cornell.
I have lots of mixed emotions about this one. The Cornell department has for a century been one of America's great philosophy departments (it was, after all, Wittgenstein's American home). It also has exhibited (in my somewhat biased view) excellent judgment in recent years, hiring a series of outstanding young philosophers (in addition to Tamar and Zoltan, Graff, Fara, Hellie, Weatherson, and Eklund). They should be rewarded for making such intelligent decisions, rather than having their young faculty constantly fleeing the relative isolation of Ithaca. Furthermore, the field has an interest in ensuring that the Cornell department always has a number of energetic philosophers well-acquainted with the most recent literature, because their in-house journal, The Philosophical Review, is one of the most important journals in philosophy (the same consideration applies to Columbia). The Philosophical Review simply has become a much better journal for M&E since Zoltan, Tamar, and Brian became tenured faculty at Cornell (and Zoltan did an outstanding job as chief editor). On the other hand, having Zoltan and Tamar near the New York area would be wonderful for New York area philosophy.
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