Reprt Says Harvard Philosophy Falls Short

Online Report: Harvard Don't Know Much About Philosophy

By DAN ROSENHECK

Crimson Staff Writer

For a University accustomed to being on top, even Harvard's tie for second overall in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report's annual college rankings, could be seen as a slap in the face.

But according to a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin, when it comes to philosophy, Harvard is not second-ranked but second-rate.

According to The Philosophical Gourmet Report, a nationwide ranking of academic philosophy departments published on the Internet by UT-Austin's Francis Professor in Law Brian R. Leiter, the keys to philosophical enlightenment no longer correspond with the keys to Harvard Yard.

Harvard has placed an awkward sixth in the country for three straight years, falling short of a three-way tie for third held by the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, the University of Pittsburgh, and Rutgers University, and practically out of sight of the philosophical "Group One" of Princeton University and New York University. And in last year's report, Harvard was the department most often cited as "in decline."

"Group two" is terra incognita for the same institution whose philosophy building is named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, Class of 1821. Leiter agrees, despite pointing out that recent hires and promotions have solidified the department.

"In prior years, there was the sense that things were a little shaky," Leiter said. "I have not talked to anyone who thinks I'm underselling [Harvard]."

Harvard philosophy professors are united in criticizing the methodology of Leiter's report. But while they have universal disregard for the survey, some agreed with Leiter both that the department had declined from its mid-20th-century prime and that it may be on the verge of a renaissance.

Not a Philosopher's Gourmet

Leiter began publishing the report in 1989 as an aid for undergraduates at the University of Michigan interested in applying to graduate programs in philosophy. He first posted it on the Internet four years ago after which, according to the website, "the use and influence of the report has exploded: last year, the Report recorded an average of 5,000 hits per month."

Leiter produces his rankings by sending out surveys to philosophy professors around the country asking them to rate a long list of departments from one (lowest) to five (highest), taking the average score for each department, and adding 0.2 to the scores of smaller departments which by virtue of their size are less likely to have faculty that colleagues at other schools may recognize. The current report is based on survey data from 63 respondents.

Leiter's website concedes that the report has "attracted its share of critics."

"It's gained a certain authority which some of us think is completely unjustified," said Porter Professor of Philosophy Christine M. Korsgaard, Harvard's department chair. "He does some survey work, but it hardly meets social scientific standards. One shouldn't treat the Philosophical Gourmet as anything other than the opinions of a very small number of people."

Professors at other universities hold the report in similar esteem.

"I don't put any stock in Harvard being ranked number six by Leiter," echoed Frederick W. Neuhouser, a former Harvard junior faculty member who was denied tenure by the University in 1995 and now holds a tenured position in Cornell's philosophy department. "Harvard is clearly in the top five American philosophy departments."

A Real Dip

But if Harvard's philosophy professors frown on Leiter's methodology and conclusions, they do not dispute that the department does not hold the position of primacy it has in the past and that Leiter's assessment that the department is "now more stable" is valid.

"We all have our own theories about what led to Harvard's dip, which was real," said Professor of Philosophy Richard G. Heck, whose recent tenure was the department's first internal promotion in two decades.

The most obvious obstacle recently confronted by the department is the retirement of two of its patriarchs-former Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value Stanley Cavell and former Cogan University Professor Hilary W. Putnam. Cavell, who retired in 1997, and Putnam, who followed suit in 2000, defined the department's discourse in the latter 20th century, according to Visiting Professor of philosophy Edwin W. McCann.

But both Leiter and professors within the Harvard philosophy department contend that whatever woes it has suffered began well before the millennium.

Leiter attributes the "dip" to an intellectual stubbornness that prevailed in the department during the 1960s, `70s, and `80s.

Harvard was home to Willard Van Orman Quine, one of the most influential post-World War II philosophers, who died last year. During the three decades after the war, Leiter said, Quine's prominence was essential to Harvard's dominance of the field.

But, he said, starting in the 1960s, new strains of thought emerged from Princeton (which Leiter now ranks No. 1) that ran counter to Quine's views, and after Harvard failed to entice Princeton's leading theorists to come to Cambridge, it did not hire other faculty who supported these theories.

Instead, Leiter says, the University retreated further and further into a dogmatic Quinian stance, solidified by the presence of Burton S. Dreben, a former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, who advocated Quine's views.

"Harvard's [inability] to hire [anti-Quinians] is a crucial explanation for Harvard's slippage," Leiter said. "There was this term 'to get Drebenized'-Dreben would beat into the students and faculty this deflationary view of philosophy."

But Professor of Ancient Philosophy Gisela Striker dismisses these attacks.

"The idea that it was still Quine's department is ridiculous," she says.

"I don't think a lot of our junior faculty became converted to Quine and Dreben's thought," Korsgaard says. "People who were here went on to be distinguished philosophers elsewhere."

The Free Agent Market

On the latter point, Leiter concurs-his second critique of Harvard involved its policy towards its junior faculty. He cites Harvard's traditionally draconian tenure procedures, in which promising doctoral students and junior faculty are encouraged to make their reputations elsewhere and then return to the University and receive tenure, as a complementary reason for the department's loss of stature.

Until about ten years ago, the Philosophy Department did not offer traditional junior faculty positions, which come up for tenure review after eight years, but instead offered three-year appointments known as "folding chairs."

"The University was being so difficult, they decided it was unfair to make [junior faculty] think they had a chance," Heck said.

Even after this system was phased out, the two candidates whom the department recommended for tenure in the 1990s were rejected by the University.

Most philosophy faculty agree that Harvard's tenure policies have cost the department.

"If you were to make a list of Harvard's offers that were turned down, if half had come, we'd be in the top tier," said McCann, who held a folding chair from 1975 to 1978. "If you look at the roster of people at Princeton, most were graduate students in [Harvard's] department...If Harvard can reverse its past and see the value in keeping its very talented but not-yet-eminent faculty, they'll have a better future."

Heck also attributes the "dip" to an outdated approach to hiring faculty.

"The only way to go as a department is to find good junior people," he said. "You can have a great farm system, or you can hire a bunch of free agents. The general sense was that they were going to play the free agent market, and that doesn't work."

But ironically, department members say that the greatest obstacle confronted by the department has been Leiter himself.

"People looking to apply to graduate school don't know [the methodology of the report], and it looks very official, so we do care about it," Heck says.

And according to Striker, the department attracted fewer graduate students last year in part due to the report being "undeservedly influential."

Bouncing Back

Leiter and Harvard faculty agree that many of Harvard's problems are now being addressed more effectively than ever before.

Leiter points to Heck's tenure as a sign both that Quine's legacy may be waning and that the attitudes towards promotion that hurt the department may be changing.

Heck got his Ph.D. just 10 years ago and works in so-called "core areas" of philosophy-philosophy of language, mind, and epistemology-as opposed to ethics, which Leiter says remains a Harvard forte.

The department recently added three new non-tenured positions, doubling the size of its junior faculty, and its hires have come from a wider cross-section of fields within philosophy.

"What's really significant about these hires is how diverse they've been," Heck said. "I'm from MIT, [Professor of Philosophy] Richard Moran is from Cornell and Princeton. The legacy of [departmental] doctrine doesn't happen anymore. We mostly look like a good department, not so fussy about being Harvard."

Leiter concurs that the department is moving towards the mainstream.

"They've had doctoral students unlike any Harvard has had in 25 years," he said. "Now they're doing what everyone else is doing."

In addition, Heck's promotion may signify that these new faculty may have a brighter future at the University than their predecessors. Although Heck is a single case, department faculty say that each professor makes a substantial difference in a department as small as Philosophy.

"What's going to happen with the administration is anybody's guess," Heck said of the tenure process. "But the sense is that if you do what you're supposed to do, the department will recommend you. That's a big change."

In addition to representing new policies towards promotion and different strains of thought, Striker said, Heck has also made a more concrete contribution to the department's rise from what Leiter deems its comparative ashes.

Heck coordinated the department's comprehensive new website, including a summary of the department's interests aimed squarely at combating the Gourmet Report, described on the Website as a "snapshot...of the Department's intellectual soul."

"The report's influence was counterbalanced by our elaborate Web site," Striker said. "It's still not so easy to get up-to-date information about departments, and college students will sometimes have very outdated ideas."

-Staff writer Daniel K. Rosenheck can be reached at rosenhec@fas.harvard.edu.