Philosophy Alumni

Philosophy Alumni, we'd love to hear from you!  Please e-mail us and tell us what you've been doing. They'll be featured on our Philosophy website and in the annual Philosophy Department Newsletter, The Agora [pdf].

Alumni Notes

• Douglas Husak '70 is a Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and was a Visiting Professor at the Fordham University Law School in the Fall of 2009.

• David Marshall '79, Phi Beta Kappa, a double major in Psychology and Philosophy, graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1984 and is now an attorney with the IRS, Office of Chief Counsel, Washington, D.C., where he works with tax-exempt organizations.  He is married, has two sons and lives in Bethesda, Maryland.  He can be reached at marshallhistory@msn.com.

• Marjorie Harbaugh Bennett '52 is a folklorist whose bliss is saving and collecting and sharing with the public the incredible memories of western pioneers like the folks in her book Windy Stories: Storytelling Traditions from the Salmon River, Idaho.  She earned a PhD in Folklore with an emphasis on Northwest oral narratives from the University of Washington. She is a retired teacher and has served as a Folklorist in the Schools for the Idaho and Washington State Arts Commissions.  She is an accomplished folksinger and storyteller.

• Jamie Kijowski '99 received his first MSEd in Special Education from the City College of New York. He has since received a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Severe/Multiple Disabilities and Autism from Pace University.  He is currently working as the Autism Coach at a public school in Brooklyn, NY.  He is also an Adjunct Lecturer at Pace University, where he teaches graduate courses for the NYC Fellows Program and post-graduate courses for the Teaching and Research in Autism Program. He was recently awarded the Northeastern Educational Research Association's Teacher as Researcher Award for a research study involving yoga and rhythmic entrainment music therapy as an intervention for children with autism.  He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Jenny, who is working on her PhD in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

• Patrick Hughes '91 is currently working on his PhD in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.  He is at the dissertation-writing stage, and his dissertation is a reception history of Thomas Paine's book The Age of Reason.  Last August he spent four weeks in Philadelphia doing research at the American Philosophical Society Library.

• Thomas E. Skidmore '54 is a Professor Emeritus of History at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Skidmore writes, "As an undergraduate I was attracted to the strong teaching program of Professors Harold Titus and Maylon Hepp. I wrote a senior honors thesis under Professor Titus's supervision, on 'Ethical Dilemmas Facing the Individual' (1954), which wrestled in the Korean War context with the question of pacificism versus military service." After graduating from Denison, Professor Skidmore received a Fulbright Fellowship to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford Unviersity's Magdalen College. Of the four Philosophy topics available for specialization he chose the Philosophy of Kant and Logic.  His two principal tutors were T. D. Weldon [Ethics and Kant] and Oscar Wood [Logic]. During his two years at Oxford he found his interests shifting to history.  Acting on that preference, he applied to study modern European History at Harvard, starting in the fall of 1956. After writing a dissertation on 19th century German constitutional history, Harvard offered him in 1961 a post-doctoral fellowship to change his history specialty to Modern Latin America (Harvard's reaction to the rise of Fidel). Choosing primarily Brazil, he then went on to teach and do research at Harvard, Wisconsin, and Brown. While in retirement, Professor Skidmore has finished two textbook revisions for publication this year: Modern Latin America (with Peter Smith and James Green), 7th edition, Oxford University Press and Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press. "Since my days at Denison," Professor Skidmore writes, "my philosophy education has enriched my professional work in history immeasurably. Thank you, Harold and Maylon."

• James Dunson '02 recently accepted a position teaching philosophy at Xavier University in New Orleans.

• John Fulling Crosby '53 received a B.D. in Theology and Pastoral Psychology from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1956 and a Ph.D. in Family Relations and Child Development from Syracuse University in 1970.  He went on to become a professor in the Department of Family Studies at the University of Kentucky.