There are some downsides to being, as PGR Advisory Board member Alex Byrne (MIT) put it some years ago, "the most powerful person in philosophy"--including the fact that I'm not, yet bear the costs (as Byrne's joke brings out) of sometimes being perceived as such. Anyone who peruses Cyberspace knows some of the costs: personal attacks, resentment, becoming the object of people's desire to kill the messenger, and so on. When I first produced a simple version of the PGR for the benefit of Michigan undergrads in 1989, I did not anticipate that it would become an institution unto itself a decade later. I have never had any doubt about the value of the PGR to students, which is why I carry on, notwithstanding periodic unpleasantness. A kind undergraduate philosophy major (at a school with a top 50 PhD program) sent me this nice note the other day; since the PGR is very much a collective effort, I wanted to share these sentiments, which are representative of what I hear with frequency from students:
I want to say thanks for all you do to improve the community of currently active academic philosophers. I am in the midst of a final paper and, in citing Nicholas Jolley's introduction to Leibniz, discovered you are the series editor. As a senior currently applying to philosophy graduate schools, I have spent countless hours on the Gourmet report and on the Leiter Reports blog, searching for those perfect-fit institutions to which to send my applications. In both these projects, I really don't know where I would be without access to the fruits of your labor.
My budding life as a philosopher has already been greatly impacted by your efforts in the philosophical community, and I just wanted you to know I appreciate it.
Thanks to everyone who contributes to the PGR and makes it a now far more useful tool than it was in the beginning.
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