U News

Famous college professors   Famous college professors and Heroes of Higher Education . Today is National Teachers Day, and shiny apples and thank-you cards will grace the desks of primary school teachers across the land. But let's not forget all those higher-education heroes — real and fictional — who've also made the grade. Randy Pausch  The inspirational former computer science professor was given a terminal medical diagnosis in 2007. What was his illness? Before his death the following year, he delivered some stirring final words to students. Henry Louis Gates Jr  Gates  has been a staple in the world of Massachusetts academia since 1991. He is the award-winning  director of the school's African-American research program. Américo Paredes  Paredes was devoted to the study of corridos. This Texas native taught creative writing and made a campus breakthrough. Which program did he help launch? John F. Nash Jr...

  Steve Pyke for a quarter century makes portraits of philosophers and gives them the same question: Derek Parfait "What interests me is the metaphysical questions, the answers to which affect our emotions. Why is there a universe? That allows each of us consider ourselves to the same person throughout life? Do we have free will? Illusory if over time? "   Alfred Ayer "To say that authority - whether secular or religious - can in no way justify the morality is not to deny the obvious fact that he somehow determines our choice."   John McDowell "I am interested in the effects of the metaphysical position, which we so easily slips, it can be called scientism or naturalism. I am sure that it distorts our ideas about the place of consciousness in the world. The task of philosophy, as I see it - to correct this distortion..   Noam Chomsky "The main questions of philosophy can, I think, productively reformulated overridden from the standpoint of ...