Robert Cummins, the distinguished philosopher of mind and cognitive science, at the University of California at Davis has accepted a senior offer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  That’s a big catch for Illinois, which, as we recently noted, has suffered a number of losses lately.  Hiring Cummins is very likely to put the overall program back in to the U.S. top 50.

Meanwhile, Cummins marks the third loss for the small UC Davis Department this year (Connie Rosati [ethics] has accepted an offer from the University of Arizona, and George Wilson [philosophy of language, action, and film] has accepted an offer from the University of Southern California, as Jeff King [philosophy of language] did last year).  On the other hand, Davis still has senior offers outstanding to Alan Nelson [early modern] at UC Irvine and Jonathan Vogel [epistemology] at Amherst.