1 May 2010

Dear Professors Driscoll, Ahmad, House and Esche,

Your disastrous and misguided decision to close the Middlesex Department of Philosophy terrible news.  You have decided to close the primary academic unit at your university with an internationally recognized reputation for excellence, somehow justifying this with reference to your commitment to academic excellence.

I remember my visit to the department for a 2007 symposium as an exciting and productive trip to what was obviously an incredibly vibrant intellectual community operating at a level of intensity rarely encountered in academia.  This semester alone, here at the Duquesne, articles, books, and translations published by Middlesex researchers have played an important role in at least two doctoral courses and have therefore been read by and influenced the development of a large group of our graduate students.  The same will surely be true in future seminars, and I have no doubt that it is a story repeated throughout the academic community interested in modern European thought.

In closing the philosophy program, the Middlesex administration has done a disservice not just to their own faculty, students, and the intellectual reputation of their university as a whole, but to the broader world of rigorous, critical, and creative humanistic inquiry.  Surely no informed person in the academic world will take Middlesex seriously as an institution until this decision is reversed.

Sincerely
Dr. Daniel Selcer

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Dr. Daniel Selcer
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Duquesne University
600 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA  15282  USA
412-396-6503, selcerd@duq.edu