My colleague John Hawthorne has been offered the Waynflete
Professorship of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford. This culminates a series of high-profile offers in recent years that John has
declined to stay at Rutgers, including Princeton and Yale. John is from England, so we all realize this will be sorely
tempting for him, as will of course the opportunity to join Timothy Williamson
as a colleague.

I’ve known John since 1996, and have followed his work and his career with great interest. I’m certain there are jobs John didn’t get basically because his PhD was from Syracuse. So the arc of John’s career is a big victory for the possibility of advancement on the basis of merit in philosophy (John started out at the University of New South Wales, then went to Arizona State, then back to Syracuse, then was hired at Rutgers as part of the ‘big three’ hiring of Hawthorne, Sider, and Zimmerman, and now I guess is contemplating a step down to Oxford). I wonder if there are similar cases of rapid advancement to the top of the profession from a mid-rank graduate program in (say) economics?
                                                                     -Jason