Department of Philosophy Award

The Department of Philosophy will award prizes for the best essay on a topic in philosophy submitted by an undergraduate and a graduate student.

Essay topic:
The skills one develops as a philosophy major are universally applicable. Disciplined,
systematic thinking; the ability to interpret texts and assess different viewpoints; facility in
critically analyzing and clearly formulating arguments—these skills are useful not only in
tackling the most abstruse topics in metaphysics or epistemology, but also in confronting
the sorts of everyday, contemporary issues that are important to every citizen in the
modern world.
Using these skills, write a short essay (3 – 5 double-spaced pages = 900-1500 words)
responding to the following prompt:
Recently, many state governments have enacted laws or promulgated policies that
appear to restrict or otherwise subject to heightened scrutiny the subject-matter
taught and discussed in college classrooms. Topics such as gender-identity,
racism, ethnicity, and diversity in general are now subject to various forms of
governmental oversight in these states. Should state governments be able to
determine the content of the curriculum in their public universities in this way, or
should curricular decisions be left to the faculty of those institutions? How should
we balance the prerogative of government officials to oversee publicly funded
institutions, on the one hand, with values like academic freedom on the other?
Submissions will be evaluated using the following four primary criteria:
(1) thoroughness in articulating not only the author’s view on the issue in question, but
also the most compelling version of the opposing viewpoint;
(2) argumentative rigor: attention to the structure of arguments on both sides, with
conclusions, premises, and the relationships among them made explicit; and
(3) clarity of presentation: the essay should be accessible to non-philosophers, nonacademics—any curious, reasonably well-informed person.
(4) the quality and degree of independent, critical and creative thinking displayed in the
paper.