Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Philosophy of mathematics in the new PGR, and a word about evaluators

For many years, the PGR was a beneficiary of the generous IT support I have enjoyed teaching in law schools.  But since I am (blessedly) no longer responsible for producing the PGR, the survey platform changed with the help of the IT support at Western Illinois University available to Professor Pynes.  The new format had a number of advantages, but one (possible) disadvantage:  namely, that all evaluators saw all specialty areas.  Evaluators were advised that their names would appear with any area they evaluated (one disincentive, it was hoped, to evaluating fields where the evaluator lacked competence), but Professors Brogaard and Pynes, with help from me, went through the raw data and removed evaluators who, it seemed, had over-estimated their competence.  That was a bit time-consuming, but essential for the soundness of the results.

It is predictable that the appearance of new rankings will produce the usual round of ill-informed gripes and complaints, so perhaps in this, and subsequent posts, I can preempt some of them.  Below the fold are the rankings for Philosophy of Mathematics:

Evaluators for the specialty rankings

As of this morning, there now appears a list of names of evaluators under each specialty (unfortunately, they are not labelled as the evaluators, but that's who they are).

Much (but not all) of the Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2017-18 is now live

So the notice about breach of contract I sent Wiley-Blackwell last night had a salutary effect (I sent it after posting this, since I was annoyed about the delay which violated the terms of the contract), namely, that much of the material that Berit Brogaard and Christopher Pynes sent to them in January is now live!  (I assume Sally Haslanger and David Velleman, or others who publish private e-mails, will post this one before long!)   Revisions will be occurring over the next week--for example, the evaluators in each specialty area are not listed yet (though the full list of evaluators is available). The default setting, currently, on the specialty rankings is just for the first four programs listed; that will change, but readers should choose "50" to make sure they see the full array of programs, ranked by rounded mean (not ordinally).

In any case, thanks to the good efforts and hard work of Professors Brogaard and Pynes, as well as the contributions of hundreds of philosophers, the key evaluative data is now available for students (and faculty).  I'll post more about the results over the coming weeks.

PGR, again

I've now had an update from Christopher Pynes about the new PGR, which, in fact, is done, and been in the hands of Wiley-Blackwell for five weeks (or more, in the case of some parts of the PGR).    Despite representations, it probably will not be live tomorrow.  If it is not live Monday, then we will begin publishing more portions here, unless my lawyers say we can't.  I apologize to all the students waiting for the results, but the fault lies not with the editors, but with Wiley-Blackwell.

The QS--i.e., "the Quirky Silliness"--rankings are back...

...for 2018.  QS is a shady operation, as I've discussed at CHE (or see this earlier discussion), and the rankings incorporate a lot of noise/nonsense that is irrelevant for those choosing PhD programs (e.g., "employer reputation," which just reinforces the halo effect of their method of surveying academic reputation).  The real difficulty is that they do not disclose the georaphic distribution of the philosophy evaluators or even their identities, but the former surely explains all the oddities.  Pittsburgh's strong showing, together with the implausibly strong showing of several German departments that do not really compete with the very top North American and U.K. programs suggests that a disproportionately large number of respondents are German academics (Pittsburgh has a very high profile in Germany).  They also don't disclose the faculty lists on which they based, e.g., the citation studies; I strongly suspect they are not doing a very good job discriminating between active and retired faculty, or philosophy versus non-philosophy faculty.

New PGR for 2017-18 should be out next week

That's the jist of a short note I got from Professor Pynes, after he finally heard back from Wiley-Blackwell.  Apparently the redesign of the site has delayed things, but it looks like it should be live some time next week (i.e., during the week of March 5).

Uninformative PGR update

I know that PGR co-editor Christopher Pynes recently asked Wiley-Blackwell about the production schedule; under the terms of the contract, as I understood it, it really should have been on-line by now.  I hope it will be on-line imminently.  I've asked Professor Pynes to post an update when he has more concrete information.

Stroud from McGill to North Carolina

Sarah Stroud (ethics), Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill beginning in the 2018-19 academic year.

Philosophical Gourmet Report, 2017-18, forthcoming

I know Christopher and Brit have sent most of the materials to Wiley-Blackwell, which is now readying them for the web--so probably by the end of this month, most of the new Report will be live--plus Wiley-Blackwell has proposed a snazzy redesign of the site, which I suspect readers will like.  After the new Report goes live, I'll have more to say about some of the results, especially in the specialty areas.

Top Metaphysics Programs 2017-18 PGR

The full results for the 2017-18 Philosophical Gourmet Report, will appear online soon. Here is a preview of the top eight programs for Metaphysics. For additional PGR related updates, click the PGR Update link.

Metaphysics

Group 1 (1-2) (rounded mean of 5.0) (median, mode)
New York University (5, 5)
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (5, 5)

2017-18 PGR Australasia Top 5

Professor Brogaard and I released the U.S. Top 50 results of the PRG survey, the top 25 programs in the Anglophone word, and the top 15 programs in the U.K.  Below the fold we offer the top 5 programs in Australasia. Like before, the overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals, along with the full results, will be provided on the new Philosophical Gourmet Report site hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

Professor Brogaard and I released the U.S. Top 50 results of the PRG survey, the top 25 programs in the Anglophone word, and the top 15 programs in the U.K.  Below the fold we offer the top 5 programs in Australasia. Like before, the overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals, along with the full results, will be provided on the new Philosophical Gourmet Report site hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

Top Metaethics and Moral Psychology Programs 2017-18 PGR

The full results for the 2017-18 Philosophical Gourmet Report, will appear online soon. Here is a preview of the top eight programs for Metaethics and Moral Psychology.

Metaethics and Moral Psychology

Group 1 (1-3) (rounded mean of 4.5) (median, mode)

Princeton University (4.5, 4.5 & 5)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4.5, 4.5)
University of Southern California (4.5, 5)

2017-18 PGR Canadian Top 5

Professor Brogaard and I released the U.S. Top 50 results of the PRG survey, the top 25 programs in the Anglophone word, and the top 15 programs in the U.K.  Below the fold we offer the top 5 programs in Canada. Like before, the overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals, along with the full results, will be provided on the new Philosophical Gourmet Report site hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

Professor Brogaard and I released the U.S. Top 50 results of the PRG survey, the top 25 programs in the Anglophone word, and the top 15 programs in the U.K.  Below the fold we offer the top 5 programs in Canada. Like before, the overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals, along with the full results, will be provided on the new Philosophical Gourmet Report site hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

Top Ancient Philosophy Programs 2017-18 PGR

The full results for the 2017-18 Philosophical Gourmet Report, will appear online soon. Here is a preview of the “top ten” for Ancient Philosophy.

Ancient Philosophy

Group 1 (1-4) (rounded mean of 4.5) (median, mode)

Oxford University (4.75, 5)
Princeton University (4.5, 4)
University of Toronto (4.5, 5)
Yale University (4.5, 5)

Summer seminar in philosophy at U of Colorado/Boulder...

...for undergraduates thinking about graduate school is now accepting applications.

2017-18 PGR U.K. Top 15

Professor Brogaard and I released the U.S. Top 50 results of the PRG survey and the top 25 programs in the Anglophone word.  Below the fold we offer the top 15 programs in the U.K. Like before, the overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals, along with the full results, will be provided on the new Philosophical Gourmet Report site hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

Top Philosophy of Physics Programs 2017-18 PGR

The full results for the 2017-18 Philosophical Gourmet Report, will appear online soon. Here is a preview of the “top ten” for Philosophy of Physics.

Philosophy of Physics

Group 1 (1-2) (rounded mean of 5.0) (median, mode)

Oxford University (5, 5)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (5, 5)

Group 2 (3-6) (rounded mean of 4.5) (median, mode)

New York University (4.5, 4.5)
University of California, Irvine (5, 5)
University of California, San Diego (4.5, 4.5)
University of Southern California (4, 4)

PGR Overall Rankings: from 2006 to 2017 (REVISED AND CORRECTED)

The (revised) chart belows shows the movement in the overall rankings over the last decade (from the 2006 Report), to the new 2017 results that Christopher Pynes revised yesterday last week.

2017-18 PGR U.S. Top 50 Results

Moving to the front from December 7th with an update and corrections due to a transcription error.

Professor Brogaard and I are in the process of cleaning and calculating the results of the PGR survey, the final results of which will be appear at a redesigned PGR site hosted, as before, by Wiley-Blackwell. Since application season is at hand in the U.S., however, we thought it would be useful to share some initial results here: the top 50 programs overall in the U.S. The overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals will be provided on the new PGR site. Additional glimpses of the results will be shared here while Wiley-Blackwell produces the full results. Finally, thank you to the 300 philosophers who participated in this year’s survey.

2017-18 PGR Top 25 Programs in the Anglophone World

Moving to the front from December 14th with an update and correction due to a transcription error.

Professor Brogaard and I released the U.S. Top 50 results of the PRG survey last week. The top 25 programs in the Anglophone word are listed below the fold. Like before the overall mean is listed while the median, mode, and confidence intervals, along with the full results, will be provided on the new PGR site hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

Blast from the past: Brian Bruya makes things up

Two years ago, I predicted that Bruya's fraudulent and confused criticisms of the PGR and the whole Bruyahaha spectacle (and here) would have no influence on the new PGR, and it didn't.   Meanwhile, Metaphilosophy stands discredited by its handling of the matter, but we did learn a few useful lessons.

Some observations regarding the new PGR "overall" ranking results

The main thing that strikes me in looking at the new U.S. overall "top 50" posted yesterday by Professor Pynes is how almost all the changes from the 2014 Report reflect actual changes in the interim.  For example (and starting near the top and working down):

MIT's move from 13th to 7th:  that's a bit stronger than I would have predicted, but MIT did make two lateral hires in the interim (Tamar Schapiro from Stanford, Miriam Schoenfeld from Texas), as well as junior hires, and two faculty were tenured and/or promoted (Casper Hare, Brad Skow).

USC's move from 8th (tied with Stanford) to 7th (tied with MIT):  I had predicted this awhile ago, based on the senior hire of David Wallace, the philosopher of physics, from Oxford.

Harvard's drop from 6th to 9th:  Christine Korsgaard went on phased retirement, Frances Kamm left for Rutgers, and Matt Boyle left for Chicago.  (Chicago's position was unchanged, as in the interim, Josef Stern retired, and James Conant went to a half-time position while taking up a post at Leipzig).

CUNY's move from 16th to 14th (joining Arizona and North Carolina):  CUNY added Miranda Fricker from Sheffield and Charles Mills from Northwestern in the interim.

UCSD's move from 23rd to 20th (but, more significantly, leaping ahead of Chicago and Wisconsin):  UCSD made several tenured and junior hires in the interim, including the Kant scholar Lucy Allais and the philosopher of action Manuel Vargas (as well as retaining Clinton Tolley [Kant, phenomenology, history of analytic] in the face of a senior offer from Chicago).

What really happened three years ago (fall 2014), a recap

The 2014 campaign to take down the Philosophical Gourmet Report (hereafter "the Report") was, as I've had occasion to note before, a fraud, but with a new Report about to appear, perhaps it's worth recapping yet again what actually happened before a new round of misrepresentations begin:

1. Noelle McAfee, a professor at Emory with a long history of attacking the Report and me personally, was caught vandalizing the Wikipedia entry about me in February 2014. I sent her several sharply worded private e-mails demanding that she cease and desist her campaign of misinformation and defamation; at the same time, the Wikipedia editors stopped her vandalism.
2. In July 2014, in the course of a raging dispute in philosophy-related social media about my criticisms of some misleading and inaccurate data about academic job placement, Carrie Jenkins, a professor at British Columbia, took to social media to denounce my criticisms as “unethical” and threatened not to treat me as a "normal or representative member[] of" the profession. Jenkins had a history with me on social media of such sanctimonious outbursts, and on this occasion, I sent her, privately, a single derisive e-mail wondering what precisely she was going to do to make good on her threat.
3. Throughout 2014, I repeatedly disagreed in public fora with feminist activist and philosopher Sally Haslanger of MIT about issues related to the profession, freedom of expression and due process. Haslanger has also been a longtime opponent of the Report.
4. In September 2014, just a few days before surveys for the philosophy Report were set to begin (that fact was public), Haslanger and David Velleman of NYU, another longtime opponent of the Report, released portions of the private e-mails from February and July, without asking me for permission or about any of the relevant context, which they omitted.  They did so in order to mobilize opposition to me and to the Report. 
5. Haslanger coordinated the selective release of the e-mails with a petition organized by Jenkins and her appalling colleague Alan Richardson calling on philosophers to “boycott” the surveys for the Report unless I stepped down as editor. The petition alleged--falsely we now know--that the single e-mail from me to Jenkins had caused serious harm to her “health” and her ability to contribute to the profession.   In fact, Jenkins gave multiple professional talks to departments in Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand in the months immediately following the e-mail.  Even half her own colleagues would not sign the petition.  When my Canadian counsel challenged the petition statements as defamatory, Jenkins’s lawyer, tellingly, did not defend them as true, but said they were nonetheless lawful.   Under Canadian law, it was obvious why he had to frame the "defense" this way:  defending false statements as "true" would have aggravated my damages against Jenkins.
6. The boycott petition was sent to somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 philosophers throughout the English-speaking world, of whom about 600 signed. Ironically, 90% of the signatories were not even nominated evaluators for the Report’s surveys (they were “boycotting” an event to which they were not invited); of the 550 nominated evaluators, only about 10% signed the petition.
7. I did not step down as editor of the 2014 philosophy Report.  I had told friends and colleagues for some time that 2014—the 25^th anniversary edition of the Report—would be the last I was going to produce, and since I had been preparing for three years for the 2014 Report and did not want that work to go to waste due to a fake controversy, I agreed to turn over the work for subsequent rankings to the co-editor of the 2014 ranking and another co-editor that we would agree upon as suitable (that became Christopher Pynes).

PGR surveys end Sunday at midnight CST

As Christopher Pynes announced last week, the time was extended for the survey until this Sunday.  I think that was wise, since we had never before pulled off a two-week window for the PGR surveys (rather than three weeks), certainly not at this time of year.  So for those sitting on your invitations, the time is at hand!  And for those pressed for time, just rate programs in your specialties.

PGR Survey Update & Extension

Brit and I want to thank all those who have already completed the survey. More people than you realize appreciate the time and effort you put into this work.

Many people have emailed asking about extending the survey time given personal commitments over the Thanksgiving holiday. I was also traveling during the last week and didn’t have email access to answer questions of survey takers. I will have most of those emails answered by Sunday afternoon. Also, the PGR has traditionally given a three-week window to take the survey.

Thus, given the holiday, my email blackout, and the traditional three-week evaluation period, we have decided to extend the survey a week allowing a three-week evaluation period.  The new deadline is Sunday, December 3^rd at 11:59 p.m. central standard time.

We also want to let evaluators know that they can choose to only rate in specialty areas, and they can choose only to evaluate programs they feel they know enough about, whether overall or in specialty areas.

Two minor comments folks have asked about while taking the survey.

• How to remove a stray rating? There is a blank above 0 in the drop down menus that isn’t obvious. You can reset any rating by selecting the blank as the rating.
• What do * and # indicate? * indicates over 70 and # indicates over 75 in 2018.

Survey takers can email either of the editors if they have questions: Brit Brogaard, brogaardb-at-gmail-dot-com or Christopher Pynes, cpynes-at-gmail-dot-com.

A reminder for PGR evaluators

According to Professors Brogaard and Pynes, the surveys are set to end this Sunday, November 26.  So American evaluators can use their Thanksgiving break to turn in their scores, and all others:  take note and get to work!  As noted, I did mine already.  I found the new suvey format really focussed one's attention on the make-up of the faculties, and I gather from Professor Pynes that each evaluator gets the faculty lists in a different order, thus fully eliminating all potential for ordering biases, which is a welcome improvement.

On taking the PGR without doing all the work to make it possible

This past weekend, I filled out my PGR surveys, which was great fun, since I had done almost no work to make it happen.  I had occasionally answered questions or offered advice, but the bottom line is that two professional philosophers, Brit Brogaard and Christopher Pynes, had put in dozens of hours to work to make this happen.  (That includes dozens of hours devoted to finalizing faculty lists, checking with departments, and answering questions from them, as well as compiling the evaluator lists on spread sheets, updating e-mail addresses, double-checking affiliation and PhD information etc.)   I realize that the pissers-and-moaners (you know who you are!) are aggreived that they are being evaluated again, but perhaps pause, for just a moment, to recognize that two individuals have given a huge amount of time to provide this service to students.

The 2014 PGR was the 25th edition for me, and I am so happy that Brit and Christopher are carrying it on for the benefit of students.  Perhaps folks might take a moment to thank those who are doing the work!

PGR Survey Invitation Information

The 2017-18 Philosophical Gourmet Report survey is going to begin in the next few days. So Brit and I want to explain what those who have been invited to participate in the survey can expect.

(1) The survey is being run by the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Research (CITR) at Western Illinois University. CITR uses Qualtrics for all surveys.

(2) All invitations to the survey will come from a Qualtrics “no reply” email with the following name and address: PGR Editors, Pynes and Brogaard <noreply@qemailserver.com>, with the following subject line: “PGR: Philosophical Gourmet Report Invite.”

(3) Invited participants will NOT have a user name and password like past versions of the survey. Each invitation will have a unique web link that allows the user to access the survey. Progress made in the survey is saved automatically. If you close out of the browser, your work will already be saved (but not submitted until the end of the survey). If you use the link again, the survey will pick up where you left off. This feature makes it easy to take the survey in multiple sessions.

(4) Additionally, we want to remind everyone of the following PRG policies:

• A list of all persons completing the survey will be made public.
• Individual survey responses will remain confidential.
• Individuals should NOT rate their Ph.D. granting institution or graduate programs that employs them. The editors will remove any such stray ratings from the calculations.
• Participants should rate areas of specialization for which they are competent. If you rate in a specialty area, your name will be listed publically as an evaluator in that area.
• PGR editors, in consultation when necessary with the Advisory Board, will drop the scores of evaluators not qualified to rate a particular specialty area.

(5) The survey will run for about two weeks. Those who haven’t completed the survey will receive emails, from the same Qualtics email address and name, reminding them to compete the survey and provide deadline information. The survey deadline cannot be extended as in the past. So please be mindful of the emails and the stated deadline.

Thank you to everyone for donating your valuable time participating in the survey.

The "personal statement" for PhD applications

A lot of this advice seems sensible, but not all.  The point of the personal statement for PhD programs is to make clear your current interests and, in the process, make clear why you are a good fit for the program you are applying to.  You *must* "do your homework" about the departments you're applying to, it's not an optional part of the exercise in my view.  You needn't mention particular faculty by name (though you can), but you must know that your areas of interest fit the program you are applying to.  See this earlier thread on the subject from a decade ago.  Additional comments welcome from those who have recently served on admissions committees.

PhD programs (including in philosophy) where one can study Indian philosophy

Here's a listing, that looks right as far as the philosophy side of things goes.  Alberta, British Columbia, Buffalo, UT Austin, and New Mexico would seem to be the best overall philosophy programs where one can pursue Indian philosophy these days, though I only know about one of the specialists, Stephen Phillips at UT Austin, who is a leading scholar in the area.

The PGR in the real world of students, part 391

A student writes:

I studied history in addition to philosophy in undergrad and still have only a vague sense of where the top departments are for that subject. Since the first time I saw the PGR in high school, the same was never the case for philosophy. What you did in creating the PGR has been a great gift to those of us who didn't grow up on the coasts and don't originally come from backgrounds of prestige. I hope you know that there are still some of us out there (even in the younger generation!) who see past this drivel on Daily Nous and are grateful.

Folks can and will discuss the PGR on social media, though I fear they may be deluding themselves if they think their comments on another blog are going to be read by the two decision-makers.  (I should add that while I know many readers have concerns about the behavior of Justin Weinberg, the editor of the DN blog--his petty vindictiveness, his cheerleading for the abuse of Title IX, and bullying of junior faculty--I do not think that thread is the place to discuss them!)

Placement in PhD-granting programs in the new academic job placement report

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 3

I've started to look a bit more at the data from the new placement analysis (commissioned and paid for by the APA no less), and there were plainly some peculiar choices made in how to frame the data.  As David Chalmers points out, post-docs are lumped in with fixed term appointments, adjuncting, and VAPs, i.e., as simply "not permanent appointments."  That's extraordinary, given that some who take them postpone tenure-track jobs to do so, and many use them to launch into highly competitive tenure-track positions.  Even more curious was the decision to create a "placement ranking" based on "permanent placement" without regard to school quality.  Three of the schools in this "top ten" for permament placement--University of Virginia, University of Florida, and University of Tennessee--also have 0% of their graduates placed into PhD-granting programs.  (I'll have more to say about their permanent placements, below.)  By contrast, taking the report's data at face value (I can not represent that this is safe to do, but let's assume it is), here's how a ranking of U.S. programs by placement of graduates into PhD-granting programs (i.e., research universities and departments) would look (for schools with  at least 20% placement into PhD programs):

1.  University of California, Berkeley (59%)                               

2.  University of Pittsburgh (HPS) (43%)                                    

3.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (36%)          

3.  Princeton University (36%)

5.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (35%)

6.  Carnegie-Mellon University (33%)

7.  Harvard University (31%)

7.  New York University (31%)                                                          

7.  University of California, Irvine (Logic & Philosophy of Science) (31%)

10. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (26%)

11. University of Pennsylvania (25%)

12. University of Chicago (24%)

12. Yale University (24%)

14. Columbia University (23%)

15. Stanford University (21%)

15. University of Arizona (21%)

17. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (20%)

17. University of Southern California (20%)

Of course, this list looks a lot more like the PGR, especially when you factor in the specialty rankings which capture the niches of excellence at places like Irvine's LPS and Carnegie-Mellon. 

Placement and Funding Information for Prospective Graduate Students

As you may know, Christopher Pynes and I are currently in the process of preparing the 2017-2018 edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report. There are some unintended delays in the process, owing to the transfer of technology, the learning curve, negotiating a new contract with Wiley-Blackwell, etc.

However, one thing that came up in our discussion was funding. Ph.D. and terminal-M.A. granting institutions have been encouraged by Brian years ago to make placement information available for prospective graduate students on their departmental websites. We hope that you will all make this information available this year if you have not done so already. This also applies to terminal M.A. programs. If you have a terminal M.A. program, the relevant placement information will be the Ph.D. programs (or law/medical schools, etc) that past students completing your program ended up going to.

Another request we would like to make is that Ph.D. and terminal-M.A. granting institutions provide a link on their departmental website that states what prospective students can expect in terms of funding. Here are some examples of questions we hope that you will be able to provide the answer to on your websites: Do admitted students receive a tuition and fee waiver? Do they receive a partial waiver? How much is the standard stipend provided for covering living expenses? What is the publicly announced cost of living for the city or town? 

I know that some graduate programs use additional funding as an incentive for people to accept an offer at their program. But most Ph.D. and terminal-M.A. granting institutions should be able to provide a minimum amount of funding provided (or a mean or median amount), and perhaps other details.

While we think prospective graduate students should go to the M.A. program or the Ph.D. program that is the best fit for them (and that offers them a tuition waiver and some kind of stipend), we also know that this is not always realistic, even when students do get accepted into their preferred M.A. or Ph.D. program. Cost of living varies greatly from country to country and from city to city, and so do the private lives of prospective students. Some have families and children that they need to support. Some are single parents. Some are required to pay child support. Some have disabilities or other personal conditions that require expensive professional intervention, etc. Accordingly, making information about funding available to prospective graduate students is likely to be very helpful to them.

PGR Faculty Lists for Fall 2017 Survey the October Draft UPDATE

MOVING TO THE FRONT with updated file -- Originally posted on 4 September 2017.

Thank you to all of you who have commented or sent emails with corrections.  This most recent draft list of faculties for the 2017 PRG survey is included below.

Download PGR Faculty Lists 2017-18 all (19 October 2017)

The benchmark for the faculty list is fall 2018, so, e.g., faculty who will be retired by fall 2018 are not included on the list, or faculty who have already committed to be elsewhere, are listed with the department they will be with (assuming it is part of the survey).

Cognate Faculty Questions: If you have concerns or questions about the cognate faculty category, please see this post about PGR cognate faculty.

Please post comments and corrections here.  Email me, Christopher Pynes, at cpynes-at-gmail-dot-com if matters are sensitive.  Issues other than corrections to this list should be sent to me and Professor Brogaard, brogaardb-at-gmail-dot-com. 

Only faculty at the department in question should post corrections.  Signed comments only.

Huemer's polemic against letters of recommendation

David Boonin (Colorado) kindly calls to my attention his colleague Michael Huemer's case against soliciting letters of recommendation.  Prof. Huemer is always pleasingly contrarian, though it seems to me his case is stronger in this instance when it comes to letters of recommendation for senior candidates rather than rookies.  With regard to rookies (1) no appointments committee has time to review in detail the submitted work of all applicants; (2) pedigree (the applicant was trained at a program with which one has had good experiences) is both under- and over-inclusive for narrowing the applicant pool down; (3) the same goes for publications; and (4) letters can be quite helpful, as long as one knows how to read them.  If one does appointments enough, one gets better at deciphering the codes in which they are written, and you learn who is reliable and who isn't (in the late 1980s and 1990s, Hilary Putnam wrote one too many time in letters of recommendation that "now I know what it was like to have Wittgenstein in class" that it became a joke in the profession--none of those young philosophers, to the best of my recollection, turned out to be major figures in philosophy). 

This year's amazing job market for post-Kantian Continental philosophy: the new hot area?

I confess I've never seen anything like it in 25+ years of watching these things.  There are jobs expressing serious interest in post-Kantian Continental philosophy at Berkeley, Notre Dame, Rice, Boston College, Harvard, Durham, William & Mary, Haverford, among other places!  The old "core analytic" is dying, but the much-neglected post-Kantian Continental seems to be enjoying a new "market demand."

Perhaps Anglophone departments have figured out that (1) post-Kantian Continental philosophy is a magnet for enrollments, given how interesting and influential across disciplines figures like Marx and Nietzsche and Foucault are, and (2) the quality of the candidates teaching in this area is now as high as in any other specialty?

One big advantage of having turned over the PGR burden to others is that I can now speak much more freely about what I think about trends in academic philosophy.   My prediction is that the most successful departments going forward will be those that offer serious coverage of post-Kantian philosophers on the European Continent.

Bias and neglect of non-Western philosophy in Anglphone departments is very real, but hardly surprising, given the remoteness of language and culture; much more surprising has always been the neglect of European philosophy of the last two centuries:  translations of these figures are widely available; the ideas of the great 19th-century thinkers in particular permeate the entire curriculum in Western universities; and, perhaps most importantly, there are now a large number of serious young scholars--in terms of basic scholarly discipline and philosophical competence--working on these issues.  For a long time, there was clearly an issue about finding young philosophers interested in the post-Kantian traditions who were not muddleheads.  That time is now past.   The best young scholars working on the post-Kantian Continental traditions are as good as the best scholars of early modern or ancient philosophy, not to mention the latest expert on the metaphysics of grounding!

The idea that any good department, whether at the PhD level or the undergraduate level, would not have a specialist in the rich European traditions post-Kant will soon, I am hopeful, become a relic of the past.  

ADDENDUM:  When I talk about post-Kantian Continental philosophy, I mean the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Foucault--I do not mean charlatans like Zizek or the latest silliness out of Paris.  It's the former figures who now regularly attract excellent and philosophically informed scholarship, and it is these figures that the recent job ads are targetting.

The growing mismatch between jobs for philosophers and what the leading PhD programs emphasize, or, the so-called "core" is dying

PhilJobs is starting to fill up with ads, though not as many ads as one would like to see (at least not yet).  But what is striking is the pattern in areas of interest:  lots of value theory and history of philosophy (esp. early modern, but also a fair bit of 19th-century), some currently "trendy" areas like philosophy of race and gender, but very little "core analytic" (as the Stanford ad puts it), i.e., very little philosophy of language and mind, metaphyscis & epistemology, the latter being the historical "prestige" trackers in the profession for the last half-century.  But as I've remarked before, what is prestigious and central at the top PhD programs may no longer bear much relationship to most of the jobs that exist.  That seems increasingly true (we've seen other signs of it).

Far too many PhD programs currently operate on what we might call "the MIT model":   little or no history of philosophy or post-Kantian Continental philosophy, certainly no non-Western philosophy, but lots and lots of "core analytic" (sometimes with some philosophy of science thrown in), plus a bit of value theory, though mostly to the extent it is close to the former areas.  The MIT model served MIT well when Robert Stalnaker was active and training tons of students, and before Stephen Yablo was, tragically, taken ill (though Yablo is still teaching happily).   Perhaps the MIT model can survive as a viable model for graduation education, and might do so if MIT were the only purveyor--but the University of Southern California, despite being a much larger faculty, has adopted the MIT Model with a vengeance, and Rutgers has largely migrated in that direction.  Other "MIT model" programs--wholly or heading in that direction--include Michigan, Texas, U Mass/Amherst, Rochester, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, among others. 

A close, but preferable (at least by my lights) relative, is the "Princeton Model," where the investment is heaviest in "core analytic," but there is also a substantial commitment to history of philosophy and sometimes even post-Kantian Continental.  NYU followed the Princeton Model, more successfully than Princeton, which no doubt explains its dominant position in Anglophone philosophy.  "Princeton Model" departments include Pittsburgh, Yale, Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, Brown, and Cornell, among many others.

JD/PhD Programs in the U.S. (and elsewhere): A Comment (revised)

ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 2008; A REVISED VERSION WAS POSTED SEPTEMBER 2011; NOW REPOSTED WITH SUBSTANTIAL REVISIONS IN LIGHT OF CHANGES IN THE INTERIM

I've had some inquiries lately about the section on the study of philosophy in law schools in the PGR like this one:

I am considering enrolling in a joint JD/PhD in philosophy next year, and I was reading through your rankings in philosophy, law, and joint JD/PhD programs. First, let me say thank you so much for the time and energy you've put in to make this information and these rankings available; it has been very helpful for me. My question, however, is if there is any reason why Harvard and Stanford are virtually not mentioned on the "The Study of Philosophy in Law Schools" page on philosophicalgourmet.com. Do their programs for law and philosophy not match up with the other schools mentioned? I ask because they both have very strong respective law and philosophy programs. I know you're extremely busy, so if you don't have time to respond about this, I completely understand. However, if you do get a chance, any comments would be greatly appreciated. Again, thanks so much for the rankings and information you've compiled about law schools and philosophy programs.

Legal academia is more pedigree-sensitive than academic philosophy (and I'm sure many of you think academic philosophy is way too pedigree-sensitive!), so this student's question is quite understandable.  Four law schools dominate the market for new law teachers:  Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford.  On a per capita basis, Yale is way ahead of the other three (primarily a selection effect, together with alumni networks), and these four are ahead of everyone else.  Yet two of these three "feeder" schools for legal academia go unmentioned in the current PGR section.  (For the 2009 PGR section, see here.)

Some blog highlights from the summer

MOVING TO FRONT FOR LAST TIME--ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPTEMBER 1

Regular blogging (i.e., most weekdays) resumes today.  Here's a few highlights from the summer readers might have missed:

JUNE

"Justifying Academic Freedom:  Mill and Marcuse Revisited," revised version

Feminist philosophers vs. scholars of Chinese philosophy 

What we know about the underrepresentation of women in philosophy 

Dozens of Israeli philosophers oppose proposed "Code of Ethics" 

Philosodogs!

Frances Kamm from Harvard to Rutgers

JULY

Philosophy and standardized test scores: causation or correlation?

The former Associate Editors of Hypatia learned nothing from their defamation of Rebecca Tuvel

"Philosophy Time," a new video series with actor James Franco

Why prospective grad students need to know about academic hierarchies, part 211

This study did not include philosophy, but I'm sure the pattern in philosophy is the same:

The data revealed that just a quarter of all universities account for 71 to 86 percent of all tenure-track faculty in the U.S. and Canada in these three fields. Just 18 elite universities produce half of all computer science professors, 16 schools produce half of all business professors, and eight schools account for half of all history professors.

While elite universities, with their deep resources and demanding coursework, surely produce great professors, the data suggest that faculty hiring isn’t a simple meritocracy. The top schools generate far more professors than even just slightly less prestigious schools. For example, in history, the top 10 schools produce three times as many future professors as those ranked 11 through 20.

Where untenured tenure-track faculty at the "top 20" U.S. PhD programs got their PhD 2017-18 edition (UPDATED AND CORRECTED)

MOVING TO FRONT AGAIN--REVISED AGAIN

The following universities have the most PhD graduates in "top 20" philosophy programs for 2017-18 ("top 20" is construed loosely to include some on the cusp given the last PGR).  For some schools PhD graduates of cognate programs (like HPS at Pittsburgh, and Logic & the Methodology of Science) are also counted, given their close ties to philosophy.  The number of graduates of each school currently in untenured tenure-track positions appears in parentheses after the name of the PhD-granting university. 

1.  Princeton University (8)

2.  New York University (7)

2.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (7)

4.  University of California, Berkeley (6)

5.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (5)

6.  Columbia University (4)

6.  Harvard University (4)

6.  Oxford University (4)

6.  Yale University (4)

10.  Cambridge University (3)

11. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2)

11. University of Pittsburgh (2, both HPS)

The following schools have one PhD graduate each in an untenured tenure-track position in the "top 20" currently:  Stanford University; Cornell University; University of Chicago; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of York; University of California, Los Angeles; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of California, Irvine; University of Western Ontario; University of Texas, Austin; University of Arizona; University of Leeds; University of California, San Diego; University of Paris I-Pantheon/Sorbonne; University of Toronto; University of Potsdam.  Below the fold is a listing of the PhDs at each "top 20" school; please e-mail me with corrections.

PGR Draft Faculty Lists for Fall 2017 Survey

MOVING TO FRONT--ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 22

The draft list of faculties for the 2017 PRG survey is ready for review and correction.

Download PGR Faculty Lists 2017-18 draft

The benchmark for the faculty list is fall 2018, so, e.g., faculty who will be retired by fall 2018 are not included on the list, or faculty who have already committed to be elsewhere, are listed with the department they will be with (assuming it is part of the survey).

Cognate Faculty Questions: If you have concerns or questions about the cognate faculty category, please see this post about PGR cognate faculty.

Please post comments and corrections here.  Email me, Christopher Pynes, at cpynes-at-gmail-dot-com if matters are sensitive.

Only faculty at the department in question should post corrections.  Signed comments only.

Top 10 Anglophone PhD programs for 19th-century Continental philosophy according to an Internet Condorcet poll

Not quite 110 votes on this more specialized survey, results are again not crazy, though it's clear strength in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, for example, counts for less than strength in Hegel and German Idealism typically (which, of course, stands the reality of respective insight on its head!).  I've listed the relevant faculty in parentheses at each school:

Top ten Anglophone PhD programs in 19th-century Continental philosophy

Continuing with our Condorcet fun this summer, let's try the top ten programs for 19th-century Continental philosophy.  The choices include all programs ranked in the 2014 PGR surveys, plus two of the programs added for consideration by the Advisory Board in 2014.  Go at it (but only if you know something about scholarship in the area!).

Top 5 Canadian PhD programs, per Condorcet

As with the U.S. and U.K. polls, plausible results, though Canada is a bit easier given the smaller number of programs and the fairly clear differences between most of them.  As before, I note the vote gaps between each school and have inserted inserted lines to reflect the more significant gaps in the votes.  In some cases where the vote gap was very small, I treated the results as a tie.

1.  University of Toronto

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2.  University of British Columbia (loses to Toronto by 243 votes)

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3.  University of Western Ontario (loses to UBC by 51 votes)

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4.  McGill University (loses to Western by 69 votes)

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5.  University of Alberta (loses to McGill by 138 votes)

University of Calgary was the runner-up for the top five, losing to Alberta by just 19 votes.

Top 15 Anglophone epistemology programs?

With the help of our friend Condorcet and the well-informed readership, we've gotten pretty plausible results in "overall" rankings, but what about a specialty area, like epistemology?  I've included all those that ranked in 2014.  Have fun!

The top 10 U.K. PhD programs in philosophy according to the readers here who participated in a Condorcet poll

Over 400 votes (!), and again fairly plausible results (below the fold),  noting the vote gaps between each school.  I've also inserted lines to reflect the more significant gaps in the votes.  In some cases where the vote gap was very small, I treated the results as a tie.

Top 5 PhD programs in philosophy in Canada...

...based on yet another internet (Condorcet) poll.  Only vote if you know something about Canadian philosophy programs!

So here's the top 25 American PhD programs in philosophy according to an Internet condorcet poll

The results (with nearly 500 votes) were actually not unreasonable (thanks to the well-informed readership of this blog), though there were a few slightly odd ones that I expect we won't see replicated in the PGR surveys conducted this fall; more on the odd results, below.  I list the top 25 below the fold, noting the vote gaps between each school.  I've also inserted lines to reflect the more significant gaps in the votes.  In some cases where the vote gap was very small, I treated the results as a tie.

Rank the top 10 U.K. philosophy programs

So the results for the U.S. poll were, with a couple of exceptions, quite sensible for the top 25, so let's give the U.K. a shot.  Obviously the readership here is well-informed!  Have fun!