This site is in beta release as we seek a qualified web designer. If you'd like to volunteer, please click the button to the right.
The Case for an Independent Philosophy Institute
We see philosophy threatened by budget cuts, faculty layoffs, closed departments, dropped majors, narrowed curricula, and declining enrollments. In response, we’re exploring the possibility of a nonprofit Independent Philosophy Institute existing outside conventional colleges and universities, and not subject to their budgets, curricula, staffing levels, or enrollment expectations. Here’s what we think it could do for philosophers and the field.
Benefits for Existing Colleges and Universities
To offer philosophy courses not in their own curricula. This would appeal to (1) institutions with small departments, (2) large departments that don’t offer one or more of our specialized seminars, and (3) any departments temporarily down a prof or course due to illness, retirement, parental leave, hiring freeze, or other cause.
To extend the flexibility that institutions already give students to take courses elsewhere and transfer back the credits.
Benefits for Students
To take courses not in the curriculum of their home institution or from teachers not employed by their home institution. To pick from a wider and more diverse range of courses than may be offered by their home institution.
To take philosophy in small seminars when that format is rare or missing at their home institution.
To take credit-bearing courses when not enrolled in any institution.
To be able to take a semester off, or drop a conventional course that isn’t working well for them, and still earn credits toward graduation.
To pay less per credit — assuming that our institute succeeds in charging less per credit.
To study remotely when in-person study would be a hardship.
Benefits for Professors
To teach courses that their home departments don’t or won’t offer. To give them freedom or flexibility they don’t enjoy in their current jobs, for example, to teach remotely, to teach a small seminar, or to teach a specialized course that wouldn’t attract a sufficiently large enrollment at their home institutions.
To teach and earn income when otherwise unemployed.
To take advantage of the seminar discussion format, when that’s not the default format in their other teaching.
To teach remotely when in-person teaching would be a hardship.
To continue teaching in retirement.
To supplement a part-time, adjunct, or contingent position.
To allow faculty to quit exploitive or unfulfilling jobs — assuming that our institute would pay enough to make the shift worthwhile. To create competition that nudges conventional institutions to make their jobs less exploitive and unfulfilling.
To pursue philosophy without any kind of “publish or perish” requirement, though in a way that is entirely compatible with research and writing.
To gather a set of philosophy teachers and open courseware as a long-term cultural resource.
To help save the discipline of philosophy from budget cuts, faculty layoffs, and declining enrollments in traditional institutions.