I've heard from several readers puzzled about the recent annoncement of newly elected Fellows.
As I've mentioned before, most Fellows in philosophy are elected in their 60s or later (exceptions include philosophers like David Chalmers, Miranda Fricker, John MacFarlane, and Martha Nussbaum--all unusual cases I imagine most readers would agree); the average age is even older for those who are philosophers teaching outside the United States. All the new U.S.-resident Fellows in philosophy fit the normal pattern: Cristina Bicchieri, Michele Moody-Adams, Angela Davis, Frederick Neuhouser, Stewart Shapiro, R. Jay Wallace are all in their 60s or 70s. Davis aside, they are all clearly distinguished contributors to different areas of philosophy. Davis is an admirable and courageous person, and although she did a PhD in philosophy under Herbert Marcuse, she has not been a major contributor to philosophy since. It's proof that this is still a free country that she should be recognized, even if this category isn't the obvious one. (John Etchemendy, the Stanford logician who is almost 70, was elected in the category for accomplished academic leaders [he was Provost for many years at Stanford].)
In addition to Davis, some were also surprised by the election of Ruth Chang, a well-regarded moral philosopher who is now Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford. Since 2015, only four other philosophers outside the U.S. have been elected: Lilli Alanen (late 70s at the time of election), John Dupre (late 60s), Enrique Dussell (late 70s), and Jennifer Hornsby (late 60s). Professor Chang is in her late 50s. The only philosopher outside the U.S. elected at such a relatively young age in the last twenty years that I am aware of is Timothy Williamson, the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford--but I assume all readers will agree Williamson is a more important figure in contemporary philosophy.
It's of course well-known that the American Academy is on a major "diversity" push, and so the final selection committees are not bound by the vote of the membership when it comes to "diverse" candidates. Given the Academy's standing problem of electing "friends of friends," this poses a particular danger for candidates who do not even have to meet the requirement of support from the membership. At some point, however, the honor of membership will be diluted beyond repair if "diversity" or "nepotism" too often trumps the "official" criteria of academic achievement and scholarly influence.
In the past, I've expressed views about philosophers who, sometimes surprisingly, had not yet been elected. Happily, most of those folks have now been elected. One way we'll know if the AAAS is recovering its original mission of recognizing academic excellence and scholarly influence without regard to "who is friends with whom" or "diversity" will be if the following folks (all at least in their 60s, some in their 80s!) are (finally) elected: Henry Allison (formerly BU, UCSD and UC Davis), Frederick Beiser (Syracuse), Peter Carruthers (Maryland), Maudemarie Clark (UC Riverside), John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside), Larry Laudan (formerly Pitt, Virginia Tech, Hawaii, and UNAM), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Derk Pereboom (Cornell), Alexander Rosenberg (Duke), A. John Simmons (Virginia), and Paul Woodruff (Texas), among other striking omissions.
(As a curious aside, I'll note that once elected, one has to pay a fee to the AAAS to actually be inducted!)
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