Thursday, December 17, 2009

Big news

Brian Leiter reports that Jeremy Waldron has accepted the Chichele Chair in Social and Political Theory at Oxford University on a half-time basis.

Waldron (the first non-Montrealer to hold the chair in more than thirty years!) was widely thought to be the correct and even obvious choice for the preeminent position in the field. Several years worth of puzzlement about how to proceed with a Plan B followed when (or so it is said; all my knowledge here is of the "everyone knows" variety) it seemed that he was not movable from New York. This compromise is an outcome to be welcomed all around-- good for political theory at Oxford, good for the field, and (I hope and trust) good for Waldron.

1 comment:

Matt said...

I was hoping they'd stick with the "youngish guy who worked with one of the former chair holders, especially if he wrote about Marx" tradition and go w/ Jo Wolff. Obviously, Waldron is an easy choice, but I think Wolff would have been great, too.