The Conferring of Honorary Degrees
Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah

Dr. Kwame Appiah’s first book in philosophy, Assertions and Conditionals, discussed probabilistic semantics and featured issues concerning impossible antecedents, embedded conditionals, and semi-indicatives.

Fortunately for those of us who are not experts in logic and semantics (myself included), Dr. Appiah's extensive body of work also embraces topics of immediate public concern that connect with a less-specialized audience. In addition to interests in the philosophy of mind and language, he has published widely in ethics, political theory, and African and African-American intellectual, literary, and cultural studies. In fact, the periodicals Prospect and Foreign Policy have recently included him among the world’s top public intellectuals of 2008.

True to the title of perhaps his most famous book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Dr. Appiah is indeed a citizen of the world. Born in London to a Ghanian father and British mother, he grew up and was educated in Kumasi, Ghana, and continued his studies in Great Britain, achieving his doctorate in philosophy at Cambridge University. He has taught at many prestigious universities in the United States (he is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton) and has lectured outside the U.S. in France, Germany, Ghana, and South Africa.

In addition to his recent inclusion among the world’s top public intellectuals, Dr. Appiah has received a host of awards and recognitions (he was recently elected to the Academy of Arts and Letters) and has held important executive positions as well (he currently serves as Chair of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies). His book In My Father’s House won the Herskovitz Prize for African Studies in English, and Cosmopolitanism won the Arthur Ross Award of the Council on Foreign Relations. Perhaps most importantly (to us philosophers, anyway), Dr. Appiah is currently the President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, the largest professional philosophical organization in the United States.

As the New York Times noted in a recent article, interest in philosophy is on the rise because the 21st century poses challenges that require both rigorous and imaginative thinking. Biological developments like stem cell research and the human genome project call into question our notions of personal identity while globalizing forces press us to examine our cultural and national allegiances and identifications. As our graduates embark into this unsettling but exciting world to help shape its as-yet-undetermined possibilities, it is fitting that we should hear today from such an august and cosmopolitan philosopher.

Mr. President, I am honored to present to you Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah for the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, upon the recommendation of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, I confer upon you the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, honoris causa, with all the rights, privileges, and distinction thereunto appertaining, in token of which I present you with this diploma and cause you to be invested with the hood of Dickinson College appropriate to the degree.

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