Things I've Learned with Richard Bett, professor of philosophy
Professor Bett, who specializes in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, talks about his days at Oxford and the pressure to "publish or perish"
I was there for four years, taught a lot. It was a heavy teaching load compared to here. I started a career, and the job was okay, but when the change came to come here, there was no question that this was the better place to be.
N-L: How did you come to Hopkins?
RB: I published a few papers in my field, and was starting to get noticed by one or two people.
As luck would have it there was an opening here in this department for a person specializing in Ancient Greek philosophy. The person who was retiring knew somebody at Princeton who had just edited a paper of mine, this guy was sort of a mover and shaker in the world of Ancient Greek philosophy, and as I understand he recommended me.
The process took a while because they were looking for senior people, and I was pretty junior at that point. The senior person they were looking at, he eventually decided to not come here. And at that point the dean said, "Well I'm not interested in a senior appointment anymore, you can have a junior appointment or nothing," and so that's how they came to me. And so I've been here since 1991.
N-L: Since you came here, what have you been doing?
RB: Well I teach a whole range of things in Ancient Greek and to some extent Roman philosophy. I do an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy every year. I do, right now, an upper-level class on the later period of Greek philosophy. I do graduate seminars sometimes, I do freshmen seminars sometimes.
In this department we teach the whole range of students, from freshmen to Ph.D students. With us, it's a different kind of tradition. I enjoy teaching intro classes to people who have never taken a philosophy class.
Right now I publish things, I've done several books, some of which are translations of ancient Greek texts. I'm editing a volume of essays.
N-L: What is it like to edit a volume?
RB: It takes some arm twisting to get some people to contribute. They'll agree to contribute, you give them a while to do it, a year to write the paper, and they'll agree up front, "Yeah sure, I can do that." But when the deadline actually comes, then you get very few of them actually submitted. I've got almost half of them now. I haven't edited a volume before, but everyone always tells me that's what it's like. You have to do some harassing.
N-L: How did you come to Hopkins?
RB: I published a few papers in my field, and was starting to get noticed by one or two people.
As luck would have it there was an opening here in this department for a person specializing in Ancient Greek philosophy. The person who was retiring knew somebody at Princeton who had just edited a paper of mine, this guy was sort of a mover and shaker in the world of Ancient Greek philosophy, and as I understand he recommended me.
The process took a while because they were looking for senior people, and I was pretty junior at that point. The senior person they were looking at, he eventually decided to not come here. And at that point the dean said, "Well I'm not interested in a senior appointment anymore, you can have a junior appointment or nothing," and so that's how they came to me. And so I've been here since 1991.
N-L: Since you came here, what have you been doing?
RB: Well I teach a whole range of things in Ancient Greek and to some extent Roman philosophy. I do an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy every year. I do, right now, an upper-level class on the later period of Greek philosophy. I do graduate seminars sometimes, I do freshmen seminars sometimes.
In this department we teach the whole range of students, from freshmen to Ph.D students. With us, it's a different kind of tradition. I enjoy teaching intro classes to people who have never taken a philosophy class.
Right now I publish things, I've done several books, some of which are translations of ancient Greek texts. I'm editing a volume of essays.
N-L: What is it like to edit a volume?
RB: It takes some arm twisting to get some people to contribute. They'll agree to contribute, you give them a while to do it, a year to write the paper, and they'll agree up front, "Yeah sure, I can do that." But when the deadline actually comes, then you get very few of them actually submitted. I've got almost half of them now. I haven't edited a volume before, but everyone always tells me that's what it's like. You have to do some harassing.
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