I’m very happy to announce that the Sage School at Cornell has hired three new faculty. They are:
* “Derk Pereboom”:http://www.uvm.edu/~phildept/?Page=pereboom.html
* “Michelle Kosch”:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mkosch/home.html, and
* “Nicholas Silins”:http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/object/nicholassilins
Michelle and Nico will be starting in Fall this year, while Derk will be starting in Fall 07.
We’re obviously very happy with the new hires!
I’ve already mentioned Nico’s hiring, so let me say something about Michelle and Derk.
Michelle specialises in post-Kantian philosophy, and you can get a very good idea of her interests from looking at her “forthcoming book”:http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/History/Modern/?view=usa&ci=9780199289110 on Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. I obviously don’t have any standing to say how good her scholarship is, though I trust the optinion of the many who speak very highly of her work. I will say that I’ve never heard anyone talk on early 19th Century philosophy who has done as good a job at making clear what those philosophers’ philosophical interests were, and how this relates to contemporary philosophical concern.
Derk’s role in the department will be to make it the case that I’m not the most general of the generalists. Well, that and cover philosophy of mind, free will and action theory, philosophy of religion, early modern philosophy, and whatever other interests take his fancy. There aren’t many philosophers around who are (justly) held in as high esteem as Derk is across such a wide range of fields, and at (relatively) small departments like Cornell, such generalists are worth their weight in gold. Derk was also a great colleague to have while I was at ANU last year, so I’m looking forward to getting back together with him at Cornell.
Obviously it’s been a tough couple of years for Cornell with a few very talented colleagues (and close friends) departing for greener (or at least other) pastures. But adding people like Derk, Michelle and Nico adds a lot back to the department.