With sorrow the department announces that Emeritus Professor Jerome A. Shaffer, age 87, died on November 17, 2016. There was a memorial in the Storrs area on December 3.

Jerry majored in philosophy at Cornell, earning a B.A. in 1950. He completed a PhD at Princeton in 1952 in just two years. In 1953 he was a Fulbright scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, then went into the Army. After teaching at Swarthmore College starting in 1955, Jerry was hired at UConn in 1967. He became Department Head in 1976, serving until 1994 when he retired. After that he earned a degree in Marital and Family Therapy and started a therapy practice which he continued until just before his death.

Jerry built our reputation as a serious research department and his avuncular manner helped set our collegial atmosphere. Everyone in the profession knew his 1968 book with Prentice-Hall, The Philosophy of Mind, which was followed by his 1971 Reality, Knowledge, and Value.

Video of Jerry reading Descartes: https://youtu.be/VRYCzLRlYKU​

New PhD Michael Robillard has been selected for a four year Research Fellowship in Philosophy at Oxford University in the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. The project is the ERC Advanced Grant Research Project Global Terrorism and Collective Moral Responsibility: Redesigning Military, Police and Intelligence Institutions in Liberal Democracies.