I don’t normally post this kind of report, but as a favour to old friends…

David Estlund reports that “Richard Heck”:http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~heck/ has reconsidered his “earlier decision to reject Brown’s offer”:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/02/philosopher_hec.html and will be moving to Brown. I don’t have dates yet for when the move will happen. This is great news for Brown.

For a while Brown has been a little understrength on what we might broadly call formal philosophy – logic, philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics. With their three hires this year (Heck, “Joshua Schechter”:http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/students/schechter/ and “Douglas Kutach”:http://www.philosophy.ttu.edu/kutach/) these areas have now become something of a strength for Brown.

UPDATE: Since someone using the handle ‘anon’ wanted to use this thread to start spreading anonymous unsubstantiated gossip, I’ve closed comments here. That’s too bad for those wanting to extend well-wishes to Brown, but it seemed all-things-considered-utility-maximising.