The Rutgers Philosophy Department is one of the top philosophy departments in the world. In the 2021-2022 rankings of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, a ranking of philosophy departments in the United States based on the judgments of over three hundred professional philosophers, the Department of Philosophy was ranked second overall, behind only New York University. Furthermore, it was ranked first or second in the areas of applied ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, normative ethics, philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of language, philosophy of law, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of race, and received high rankings in other areas as well. Three faculty members have delivered the John Locke lectures at Oxford University, three have been President of the American Philosophical Association, four have been named as members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and numerous department members have won Guggenheim awards.
Rutgers is a first-rate place to learn. Rutgers graduate students have received tenured or tenure-track offers from many leading universities, including (to mention just a few) Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Cornell, Yale, Michigan, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, MIT, Arizona, Berkeley, and Brown. The Department takes particular pride in its large and active undergraduate philosophy community. It places undergraduate teaching at the very center of its mission, and takes pride in their many successful careers. Sometimes those careers are in philosophy itself: Rutgers regularly places its students in leading graduate programs, and former Rutgers Philosophy undergraduate majors who are now professional philosophers include Joseph Keim Campbell (Professor, Washington State, Rutgers ‘83), Sanford Goldberg (Professor, Northwestern University, Rutgers ‘89), Robin Jeshion (Professor, University of Southern California, Rutgers ‘86), Sarah-Jane Leslie (Professor and Dean of the Graduate School, Princeton, Rutgers ‘02), Shen-yi Liao, Associate Professor, University of Puget Sound, Rutgers '05), Casey O’Callaghan (Professor, Washington University, St. Louis, Rutgers ’97), Zee Perry (visiting scholar, Center for the Study of Origins, University of Colorado, Rutgers '09), Paul Pietroski (Professor, Rutgers University, Rutgers ‘86), and Carole Rovane (Professor, Columbia University, Rutgers ‘76).
