Rate My Professor Susan Haack

Susan Haack was Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law at the University of Miami, where she joined the faculty in 1990. She earned a B.A. with first-class honors (congratulatory) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1966; a B.Phil. with distinction in Philosophy from Oxford in 1968; an M.A. from Oxford and Cambridge in 1969; and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge in 1972. Her early career included serving as Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1968-1971), and advancing at the University of Warwick from Lecturer in Philosophy (1971-1976) and Reader (1976-1982) to Professor of Philosophy (1982-1990). At the University of Miami, she held additional appointments as Visiting Professor, School of Law (1997-1998), Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences (1998-present), Professor of Law (2000-present), and Distinguished Professor in the Humanities (2006-present). Haack also held numerous visiting positions worldwide, including at Princeton University as Harkness Fellow (1975-1976), the Australian National University (1981-1982), and various universities in Spain, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Poland, the UK, Colombia, Brazil, and China.

Haack's research interests spanned philosophy of logic and language, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, pragmatism—both philosophical and legal—and legal epistemology, with emphasis on the role of scientific testimony and evidence in law. She authored a dozen books, including Deviant Logic (Cambridge University Press, 1974), Philosophy of Logics (1978), Evidence and Inquiry: A Pragmatist Reconstruction of Epistemology (Blackwell, 1993; expanded edition, Prometheus Books, 2009), Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (University of Chicago Press, 1998), Defending Science—Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism (Prometheus Books, 2003), Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture (Prometheus Books, 2008), and Evidence Matters: Science, Proof, and Truth in the Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Her work appeared in eighteen languages across thirty-six countries and inspired four volumes of essays: Susan Haack: A Lady of Distinctions (2007), Susan Haack: Reintegrating Philosophy (2016), a special issue of Estudios filosóficos (2018), and Philosophy, the World, Life and the Law (2020). Among her honors were the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin (2016), Premio Internacional de Cultura Jurídica from the University of Girona (2020), the American Philosophical Association Award for Excellence in Teaching (1995), and inclusion as a 'historymaker' in the University of Miami College of Arts & Sciences centennial magazine (2025). She delivered over 700 lectures globally, including the Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Lectures (1997-1998) and Dewey Lectures at Fudan University (2023).