260 philosophers participated in the "overall" survey of faculty quality just completed. A number of faculties had noticeable improvements in their overall rank, in each case connected to tangible changes in faculty membership. (You can get a reasonably good snapshot of changes in faculty composition since the 2006 surveys here, though there are some important developments that post-date that summary.)
One of the most dramatic improvements was for the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, which went from 16th in 2006 to 8th in the 2009 surveys. Given the apparently widespread mistaken impression that to improve in the rankings, a department must hire in the M&E areas, it is surely worth noting that this dramatic leap forward resulted from three senior appointments (one in ethics, one in political philosophy, and one in the history of early modern philosophy), one junior appointment (in ancient philosophy), and a cognate appointment in the Law School (in legal philosophy). To be sure, Yale has a strong cluster of mid-career philosophers in areas like epistemology and philosophy of language (as well as ancient and early modern) whose rising profiles no doubt also helped. (And this move into the 'top ten' did not reflect the recent appointment of Joshua Knobe from North Carolina.)
The mistaken impression mentioned above arose, I think, from a misreading of the study of PGR results conducted by the sociologist Kieran Healy a couple of years ago. Healy did find that, all else being equal, one got more mileage, generally, from appointing in, e.g., philosophy of mind than history of philosophy, but he clearly did not find that appointing in other areas does not affect a department's overall ranking. And when, of course, the historian or ethicist is far more distinguished than an available philosopher of mind, it is unsurprising that hiring the former has more of an effect on the outcome than hiring the latter.
Part of what I believe is also going on in the case of Yale is that, like NYU, it has pursued a strategy of breadth--developing strength in the M&E areas broadly construed, but also in the history of philosophy (especially ancient and early modern) and in value theory--which results in strong scores from a wide range of philosophers with diverse areas of specialization.
Yale is, in any case, now in its strongest position in about fifty years!
Here are some of the other big upward movements since 2006 in the overall results:
University of California, Berkeley: from 12th to 9th
City University of New York Graduate Center: from 23rd to 15th
Indiana University, Bloomington: from 27th to 23rd
University of Colorado, Boulder: from 32nd to 26th
Washington University, St. Louis: from 39th to 30th
Northwestern University: from 53rd to 41st
University of Connecticut, Storrs: from 48th to 43rd
University of Utah: the last time ranked, several years ago, Utah was not in the top 50; this year it came in at 48th.
Among the senior hires that moved these faculties forward were philosophers working in moral and political philosophy (several), Kant, 19th-Century German philosophy, aesthetics, and medieval philosophy. Indiana (which added Allen Wood [Kant, 19th-century German philosophy] and Rega Wood [medieval philosophy] may be particularly notable, since they also lost to retirement the distinguished logician J. Michael Dunn during this same time interval.
Other faculties saw an improved rank, though less dramatically than those noted, above.
Outside the U.S., the biggest upward movement was in the U.K., where the University of Warwick, ranked 14th in 2006, placed 9th this year.
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