<p>What do you think the connection is? </p>
<p>Discuss…</p>
<p>Wait, what?!</p>
<p>Impressive. Daniel Dennett is a professor at Tufts and even has his own wikipedia entry:
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett</a>
Curiously enough, it even tracks his medical history.</p>
<p>
wahahaha!</p>
<p>Man, I thought Dennett was the most famous professor…OOPS, I mean the ONLY famous professor here. Yeah man, dudes been having some medical difficulties lately. Apparently dude really hates religion and yet judging from his caricature of it expressed in “Breaking the Spell” he doesn’t know particularly much about it though.</p>
<p>But seriously though, how much influence do you think Dennett had on Michael “Kramer” Richard’s tirade a few weeks ago? Do you think Dennett was calling the shots? Or do you think this is something Richards did spontaneously on his own?</p>
<p>Famous professor is defined according to the field you’re specializing in, which in your case is philosophy. There are plenty of science/IR profs/psych profs that are quite influential in their respective fields.</p>
<p>I know nothing about the topic you’re proposing. Perhaps you can elaborate?</p>
<p>Yes, please explain how Prof. Dennett is at all connected to Kramer’s racist tirade in an L.A. comedy club?</p>
<p>“There are plenty of science/IR profs/psych profs that are quite influential in their respective fields”</p>
<p>I’m not being facetious but who, at least in the IR and Political Science fields? I really am interested.</p>
<p>Also, this thread was kind of, like, um…a joke. Eh, nevermind.</p>
<p><em>runs out of thread with pants down</em></p>
<p>Martin Sherwin is pretty famous, if only because he won the pultizer for his Oppenheimer book.</p>
<p>Tony Smith is pretty well-known in the poli-sci field; he’s written several well-known books over the years and has been interviewed on NPR and suchlike. Several Fletcher profs are well-known within their fields. </p>
<p>To be honest I’d only first heard of Dennett a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>Tufts doesn’t have any celebrity profs along the lines of Cornel West or Noam Chomsky, but I don’t think that really has a negative impact on educational quality.</p>
<p>Jay Cantor in the English Dept. is considered one of the foremost authors of post-modern literature; his stuff is always published in the same anthologies as Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Charles Bukowski, and the like.</p>
<p>Taliferro is said to be one of the premiere defensive realists out there.</p>
<p>What did Kramer’s racist rant have to do with Daniel Dennett? (I’m cluelesssssss.)</p>
<p>Speaking of Chomsky, there is another reasonably well-known professor in the Philosophy department. Ray Jackendoff is an influential linguist (who also has a wikipedia page). He just came last year, apparently.</p>
<p>Yeah Tufts would have an incredible philosophy department if they could just get rid of some of the knuckleheads in there. I mean, they’re all obviously incredibly smart folks and all very nice but a few of them haven’t a ghost of a clue of how to lecture.</p>
<p>Ayesha Jalal of the History Dept. and of the Fletcher School is a current recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Award, a.k.a. a “genius grant.” She is considered a foremost scholar of South Asian history, and one of the only female Pakistanis in the field.</p>
<p>Robert Gonsalves, professor in the Electrical Engineering dept., and an alum of the department himself, is one of the foremost go-to guys whenever the Hubble Telescope needs updating or fixing.</p>
<p>Hakuri Murakami, one of the most famous modern Japanese novelists, whose books have been bestsellers in Japan and which have had some success in translation in the West, taught at Tufts for a while, though I don’t think he’s here any more. ironically he’s probably the most famous member of the Tufts faculty (ie the one known to the most people), and yet unless you speak Japanese or are familiar with Japanese culture, you’ve probably never heard of him.</p>
<p>“Some success in the West”? Are you kidding? Murakami is revered all over the world, and is the toast of the literatti even in the U.S.! He taught here a little under 10 years ago (fyi: he was brought here by Dean Charles Inouye; they’re very close friends), before leaving to dedicate himself 100% to his writing. Everyone must read the excellent translations of “Kafka on the Shore” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” – magical realism at its very best.</p>
<p>ah ic. I’ve seen his books for sale at area bookstores, but I had no idea he was so well-known over here. I have friends who’ve read Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore and love them, but they’re all very into Japanese culture.</p>