Alumni

Keya Maitra (Ph.D. 2000): University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

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Please join us in congratulating Keya Maitra (Ph.D. 2000), who has accepted an offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as a Professor in Classical Indian Philosophy and the Lenney Distinguished Chair. 

Department History

Established in 1936 under the leadership of Charles A. Moore and Wing-tsit Chan, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa dedicated itself to an ambitious but historically necessary project: the bringing together of Western and Eastern philosophers in a community of critical discourse. In the early stages, emphasis was placed on introducing Western philosophers to the major ideas and distinctive ways of thinking offered by Asian cultures.

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Unique among departments of philosophy in American universities, ours possesses the resources to support doctoral work in Indian, Buddhist, Chinese, and Japanese as well as Western philosophy.  During the 1960s, emphasis was placed on the development of language skills. Students were expected to attain a high level of competence in one or two languages (European or Asian) relevant to their area of research. At the present time the faculty is conversant in Greek, Latin, Arabic, German, French, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Japanese. Graduate students from countries such as Thailand, China, India, Pakistan, Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka have considerably enriched the diverse cultural and linguistic life of the Department.

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Being at once highly productive and extraordinarily diverse, the members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa share in their commitment to the highest standards of intellectual integrity and together celebrate their rich tradition.

(excerpted from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa website)

Kristin Waters (Ph.D. ’81): Frantz Fanon Award

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Please join us in congratulating alumna Kristin Waters (Ph.D. '81), who is one of the recipients of the 2025 Frantz Fanon Award for her book Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought. The Frantz Fanon Prize is awarded annually in recognition of up to three works in or of special interest to Caribbean thought.

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Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833, Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879) told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill: “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.” She exhorted her audience to embrace the idea that the founding principles of the nation must extend to people of color. Otherwise, those truths are merely the hypocritical expression of an ungodly white power, a travesty of original democratic ideals. Like her mentor, David Walker, Stewart illustrated the practical inconsistencies of classical liberalism as enacted in the US and delivered a call to action for ending racism and addressing gender discrimination.

Between 1831 and 1833, Stewart’s intellectual productions, as she called them, ranged across topics from true emancipation for African Americans, the Black convention movement, the hypocrisy of white Christianity, Black liberation theology, and gender inequity. Along with Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, her body of work constitutes a significant foundation for a moral and political theory that is finding new resonance today—insurrectionist ethics.

In this work of recovery, author Kristin Waters examines the roots of Black political activism in the petition movement; Prince Hall and the creation of the first Black masonic lodges; the Black Baptist movement spearheaded by the brothers Thomas, Benjamin, and Nathaniel Paul; writings; sermons; and the practices of festival days, through the story of this remarkable but largely unheralded woman and pioneering public intellectual.

Thomas Meagher: On the Notion of Philosophy

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UConn Philosophy Alum Tom Meagher’s (’18) new article, “On the Notion of Black Issues in Philosophy,” was published on the APA blog, Black Issues in Philosophy, last Friday. Among some names mentioned is our very own department head: Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon. Check out an excerpt from the article below:

In taking on Black issues, philosophy manifests its care for the maturation of knowledge by realizing philosophy’s significance to those who confront black issues not only as intellectual exercises but as impositions that imbue existence with tragic responsibilities that knowledge alone is insufficient to transcend. In short, black/Black issues are among those where the philosopher’s effort to deal with them may, in turn, make the philosopher’s work and labor more genuinely philosophical.

You can read the full article on the APA’s blog.

Congratulations, Tom!

Thomas Meagher: Myisha Cherry’s Failures of Forgiveness Review

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Check out Thomas Meagher’s (PhD 2018) newest review essay: “Forgiveness, Obligation, and Cultures of Domination: A Review of Myisha Cherry’s Failures of Forgiveness”.

Below is an excerpt of the article, which you can read in full on the Blog of the APA here.

This diagnosis Cherry relates largely in the form of a discussion of the commonplace or “narrow” view of forgiveness. Cherry characterizes the common view as one in which forgiveness is, at heart, a means of letting go of anger. On such a view, the purpose or telos of forgiving must be to unburden the forgiver of emotions directed toward wrongdoers. Cherry shows, though, that this is an overly narrow conception of the emotional correlates of those contexts in which forgiveness is an option. 

Congrats, Thomas!