I was rather shocked to read this announcement on Brian Leiter’s blog today:

Colorado Philosophy in Transition: Shields Going, O’Connor Being Recruited

Distinguished scholar of ancient philosophy, and valued PGR Advisory Board member, Christopher Shields at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted the offer from Oxford. This move further solidifies Oxford’s status as one of the two or three leading centers for the study of ancient philosophy in the English-speaking world.

Meanwhile, Colorado has made a senior offer to Timothy O’Connor (philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics, philosophy of religion) at Indiana University at Bloomington, who has established himself as perhaps the most important defender of a libertarian (more precisely, agent-causal) theory of free will in his generation of philosophers.

Earlier in this hiring season, Luc Bovens at Colorado accepted an offer from the London School of Economics, while Daniel Kaufman at Florida accepted a tenure-track offer from Colorado.

I’d heard about Luc’s departure a few months ago (also via Leiter), but Shield’s move to Oxford was news to me. (Congratulations to Chris!) Perhaps I’m not in the grad lounge often enough to hear news about impending departures, but there is something a bit disturbing about learning of them as I’m perusing the blogosphere.