Recently Published Book SpotlightRecently Published Book Spotlight: Navigating Academic Life

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Navigating Academic Life

Steven M. Cahn is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he served for nearly a decade as provost and vice president for academic affairs, then as acting president. He spoke with Heidi Schmidt about his new book, Navigating Academic Life: How the System Works.

Navigating Academic Life

What is Navigating Academic Life about?

This collection of recent essays reveals how a professorial career involves not only pursuit of a scholarly discipline but also such unwelcome features as the tribulations of graduate school, the trials of teaching, and the tensions that develop from membership in a department.

What topics do you discuss in the work?

Among the topics discussed are preparing graduate students to teach, how teachers succeed, testing and grading, evaluating teaching, faculty appointments, affirmative action, interviewing candidates, tenure and academic freedom, and gratitude to colleagues.

What writing tips do you have?

As I discuss in Polishing Your Prose: How to Turn First Drafts into Finished Work, a book I wrote with my brother, Victor L. Cahn, a playwright and professor emeritus of English at Skidmore College, a major fault to avoid in writing is verbosity. Fewer words elucidate meaning. Also avoid jargon, redundancy, and useless modifiers, and make sure that every pronoun has a clear antecedent.

How has your teaching influenced your work?

My teaching has led to my editing anthologies intended to provide students with a balanced selection of accessible historical and contemporary readings. These works include The World of Philosophynow in its second edition, including not only standard analytic materials and Western historical texts but also writings reflecting Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabic, African, South American, Chicano, and Native American sources; Political Philosophy: The Essential Texts, soon to appear in its fourth edition; Exploring Ethicsnow in its fifth edition; and Exploring Philosophynow in its seventh edition. One of my oldest anthologies, first published in 1977, is Classics of Western Philosophynow in its eighth edition.

What’s next for you?

My next project is to complete the third volume of a trilogy of my shorter writings. First came The Road Traveled and Other Essays (2019), whose final article is a detailed account of my career as a faculty member, foundation executive, and university administrator. That book was followed by A Philosopher’s Journey: Essays from Six Decades (2020), which includes favorite essays from the 1960s to the present. The final volume, Philosophical Debates, will appear this year and includes not only my own work but also material to which I am responding. 

Steven M. Cahn

Steven M. Cahn is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The most recent books he has authored are Religion Within Reason (Columbia University Press, 2017); Teaching Philosophy: A Guide (Routledge, 2018); Inside Academia: Professors, Politics, and Policies (Rutgers University Press, 2019); The Road Traveled and Other Essays (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019); Philosophical Adventures (Broadview Press, 2019); A Philosopher’s Journey: Essays from Six Decades (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2020), and Navigating Academic Life (Routledge, 2021).

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