Boston University

Elie Wiesel has held the position of Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Boston University since 1976, though his schedule appears to demand very little of him. We suspect he has attained this position by virtue of his identity as a legendary Holocaust survivor.

Course Descriptions Fall 2010 show no courses being taught by Elie Wiesel in the Department of Philosophy. He is, however, teaching two courses for the Religion Dept.—Literature of Memory I and II, for four hours credit each. These courses examine Wiesel’s own fiction and non-fiction books.

Current News reveals no academic news for Elie Wiesel.


Information gleaned from Wikipedia:

Boston University, with more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, is historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church, but describes itself now as nonsectarian. It long ago gave up its Methodist Christian identity.

The Hillel organization is probably the most active student social group at the University.

The recently opened Florence and Chafetz Hillel House on Bay State Road is the Hillel facility for the university. With four floors and a basement, the facility includes lounges, study rooms and a kosher dining hall, open during the academic year (including Passover) to students and walk-ins from the community. The first floor also includes the Granby St. Cafe as well as TV’s and ping-pong, pool and foosball tables. The Hillel serves as a focal point for BU’s large and active Jewish community. It hosts approximately 30 student groups, including social, cultural and religious groups and BU Students for Israel (BUSI), Holocaust Education and the Center for Jewish Learning and Experience. It hosts a plethora of programs and speakers as well as Friday and Saturday shabbat services and meals

Wikipedia references the following information to Hillel.org and Reform Judaism Magazine.

The incoming freshman class for 1034 (?!) was 68% white, 15% Asian, 7% international students, 7% Hispanic, and 2% black. Boston University also has the second highest number of Jews of any private school (after New York University) in the country with between 3,000 and 4,000, or roughly 15% identifying as Jewish.

Under “Notable alumni and faculty” (in case you want to write to any of them):

There are 285,000 Boston University alumni, representing almost every country in the world. […] Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ph.D. ’55) is one of BU’s most notable alumni. Other well-known alumni include actors Julianne Moore and Geena Davis, former Defense Secretary William Cohen and current Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, current Senator Judd Gregg, radio personality Howard Stern, sports writer Bill Simmons, television personality Bill O’Reilly, and former Second Lady Tipper Gore.

Current and former faculty of BU include Elie Wiesel, Howard Zinn, Isaac Asimov, Derek Walcott, Robert Pinsky, Bob Zelnick, and Andrew Bacevich.


Project: Write and/or call the following individuals to express your concerns, and your reasons for those concerns, about Elie Wiesel. Wiesel’s professorship is founded in large part on his identity as presented in his own writings, and this identity has come under a cloud. It’s a dark cloud, one that needs to be addressed. Is it not the responsibility of the BU Department of Philosophy to verify that Elie Wiesel is who he says he is? That the “facts” of his personal history are what he claims they are? If you do not receive an answer, continue to write and/or call. Perseverance is essential.

Boston University

Department of Philosophy

745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 516
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Phone: 617.353.2571 | Fax: 617.353.6805
Department e-mail: [email protected]

Department Chair: Professor Daniel Dahlstrom
Phone: 617.353.4583 | E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/dahlstrom.html

Associate Chair: Professor Aaron Garrett
Phone: 617.358.3617 | E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/garrett.html

Director of Undergraduate Studies: Professor Walter Hopp
Phone: 617.358.4228 | E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/hopp.html

Director of Graduate Studies: Professor David Roochnik
Phone: 617.353.4579 | E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/roochnik.html

Director of Graduate Admissions: Professor Allen Speight
Phone: 617.353.3067 | E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/speight.html

Administrator: Matthew Roselli
Phone: 617.353.2572 | E-mail: [email protected]

Senior Program Coordinator: Lesley Moreau
Phone: 617.353.2571 | E-mail: [email protected]

Full Time Faculty

Hugh Baxter

Professor of Law and Philosophy
Office: STH 540
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D.,Yale University; JD, Stanford University
Interests: Legal and Social Theory, Constitutional Law, Political Philosophy, Election Law

Alisa Bokulich

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 511A
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
Interests: Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Physics; Science, Technology and Values; History of Science

Peter Bokulich

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 534
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
Interests: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Physics; Associate Director, Center for Philosophy and History of Science

Klaus Brinkmann

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 533
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Tübingen
Interests: Ancient Philosophy, German Idealism, Metaphysics, Ontology

David Bronstein

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 536A
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Toronto
Interests: Ancient Philosophy

Tian Yu Cao

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 515
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Cambridge
Interests: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, History of Science and Methodology of Historiography of Science, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Social and Political Philosophy (with special interests in philosophical issues related to modernity and globalization)

Daniel O. Dahlstrom

Chair, Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 518
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., St. Louis University
Interests: Phenomenology, German Idealism, Aesthetics

Juliet Floyd

Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 503
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Harvard University
Click here for a copy of her c.v.

Aaron Garrett

Associate Chair, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 619
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., New School for Social Research
Interests: Early Modern Philosophy, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, History of Ethics

Charles L. Griswold

Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 624
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Interests: Ancient Philosophy, Moral and Political Philosophy, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, History of Ethics, Philosophy and Literature

Jaakko Hintikka

Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 502
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Helsinki
Interests: Philosophy of Language, Mathematical and Philosophical Logic, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science (including Cognitive Science), Philosophy of Mathematics, History of Philosophy (Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Peirce, Wittgenstein)

Walter Hopp

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 513
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Southern California
Interests: Phenomenology, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind

Paul Katsafanas

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 534
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Harvard University
Interests: Nineteenth-century Philosophy, Ethics, and Philosophy of Action

Victor Kestenbaum

Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 512
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ed.D., Rutgers University
Interests: American Philosophy, Pragmatism and Phenomenology, Philosophy and Literature, Phenomenology and Aesthetics

Manfred Kuehn

Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 517
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: PhD, McGill University
Interests: Kant, Hume, Reid, The French and German Enlightenments, Philosophy of Religion

David Liebesman

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 539
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Cornell University
Interests: Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics

David Lyons

Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Law
Office: STH 540
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Harvard University
Interests: Philosophy of Law, Moral and Political Philosophy

Krzysztof Michalski

Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 536B
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Warsaw
Interests: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Continental Philosophy; Director of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. (Fall semesters)

Robert C. Neville

Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology
Office: STH 112
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Yale University
Interests: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophical Theology, Ethics, Political Theory, American Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy

David Roochnik

Director of Graduate Studies, Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 511
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Interests: Ancient Philosophy, Greek Literature

John Silber

President Emeritus, Boston University; University Professor, Professor of Philosophy and Law
Office: 73 BSR
Phone: 617.353.4300
Education: Ph.D., Yale University
Interests: History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Kant, Ethics. (Not currently teaching in the department.)

C. Allen Speight

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Director of Graduate Admissions

Director, Institute for Philosophy and Religion
Office: STH 523
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Chicago
Interests: Hegel and German Idealism, Ethics, Philosophy of Action, Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, Ancient Philosophy

Susanne Sreedhar

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Director of Graduate Placement
Office: 514
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests: political philosophy, especially the history of political philosophy, early modern philosophy, philosophy of gender

Daniel Star

Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Office: 513A
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: B.Phil., D.Phil. University of Oxford
Interests: Ethical Theory, Metaethics, Epistemology, and History of Ethics

Alfred I. Tauber

Professor of Philosophy; Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine; Affiliate Faculty, Law, Medicine and Ethics Program
Office: STH 506
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: M.D., Tufts Medical School
Interests: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Medicine, History of Science and of Medicine; Director, Center for Philosophy and History of Science

Judson C. Webb

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 538
Phone: 617.353.7320
Education: Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University
Interests: Logic, Foundations of Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind

Elie Wiesel

University Professor, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Religion
Office: 147 BSR
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Litt.D., L.H.D., Nobel Peace Prize
Interests: Philosophy and Literature, Judaica. (Courses periodically cross-listed for Philosophy graduate credit.)

Two Professors Emeritus who give email addresses

Michael Martin

Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., Harvard University
Interests: Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Religion

Stanley Rosen

Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy
Office: STH 640A
E-mail: [email protected]
Education: Ph.D., University of Chicago
Interests: History of Philosophy, Metaphysics, Contemporary Philosophy, Social and Political Thought

You can also contact BU’s student newspaper and student radio station

The Daily Free Press

648 Beacon St. Boston, MA 02215
Tel.: (617)236-4433 Fax.: (617)236-4414

The Daily Free Press welcomes comments and corrections from readers. To write a letter to the editor, send fewer than 500 words to [email protected] . Please include your phone number so that you can be contacted. To submit a correction, call Managing Editor Joshua Cain at (617)236-4433 or send an email to [email protected] with the title of the article in question, the date published and a brief description of any erroneous information.

WTBU

Boston University’s student radio station broadcasting online, is entirely staffed by volunteer students under the supervision of a faculty advisor.

For information on former Auschwitz prisoners from museum archives:

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum

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