Elisabeth Camp (philosophy of mind and language, aesthetics), Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, has accepted a tenured offer from the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, an appointment which can only further solidify Rutgers's leading position in those areas.
Penn has had a tough year, with Paul Guyer (Kant) moving to Brown, Charles Kahn (ancient philosophy) phasing into full retirement this year, and now Camp departing. Penn did retain my friend and occasional co-author Michael Weisberg, one of the leading philosophers of biology and science of his generation, in the face of outside offers, and a bit before that, Penn also retained the distinguished political philosopher Samuel Freeman in the face of offers as well. I expect Penn will be doing some rebuilding in the next couple of years. Given that Penn is a university with top ten English and History departments, to name two important humanities fields, it really ought to have at least a top twenty philosophy department once again. It is an unusually small department, relative to the size of the university, something which handicapped Yale for a number of years as well.
Recent Comments