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Saying you want to work with faculty members with joint appointments in grad applications?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread a reader asks:

I'm planning to apply to PhD programs next year, and my interests are somewhat interdisciplinary across philosophy and law (though not in analytic jurisprudence). I'd happily work with many faculty members who joint appointments between philosophy and law. (Eg, Shiffrin at UCLA, Hershovitz at Michigan, Keating at USC.) I've seen some general advice about the propriety of saying you'd like to work with specific faculty. I wonder how this changes when the faculty have less connection with the philosophy department, but still more than a mere courtesy appointment. Might it be a bad look to list these professors, since it may give the impression that I'm less interested in doing "pure" philosophy? Thank you!

I have no clear idea on this in general, but if we're talking about the kind of people with the sort of stature the OP lists (Shiffrin, etc.), then I see no obvious problem. Then again, I suppose a lot may depend on the department culture, specifically on whether people in the department (and admissions committee in particular) prefer students to work with "core faculty."

What do readers think?

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2 responses to “Saying you want to work with faculty members with joint appointments in grad applications?”

  1. R1 Fac

    I don’t this can hurt, except perhaps if you list only people who are (as it turns out) not closely connected to the department. The difficulty is that it is hard to tell from the outside who has a ‘mere courtesy’ appointment and who is really involved in the Philosophy Ph.D. One proxy might be whether you can identify philosophers who have trained with the person in question, or whether they appear to teach Philosophy Ph.D. students. That said these issues can, in many cases, be avoided, if you also indicate interest in potential advisers that are clearly centrally appointed in Philosophy.

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  2. Kapto

    I write (pseudonymously) with extremely close connection to the OP’s question, though I am not one of those named.
    From personal experience and what I’ve observed, I’d say it’s in principle fine to name such interdisciplinary folks as potential collaborators and supervisors, but far safer when the named interdisciplinary scholar has done significant work in philosophy besides in the mixed field. For example, Shiffrin’s work on lying, wrongful life, and harm in general is an important contribution in core ethics, apart from legal philosophy.
    Far better to name people about whom the same is very obviously true. If everything they do is at the intersection of philosophy and law, it’s a little less safe, I think.

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