History of the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College
Stillings: History of CS 1 3-5-21 A history of the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College Neil Stillings Spring 2021 Preface I started teaching at Hampshire in the fall of 1971, the second year the college was open. I retired in June 2018, 47 years later. I write as a nearly founding faculty member of the college, as a founding faculty member of the School of Cognitive Science (CS), and as the School’s longest-serving member. In the fall of 2018, shortly after I retired, I began writing this history in the hope that it might inform or inspire future faculty and students as Cognitive Science approached its 50th anniversary at Hampshire. As I began writing, a series of events unfolded that threatened the survival of the college.1 In the aftermath about half of the college’s faculty left, either permanently or for indefinite “leave.” In particular all but two of 17 faculty members in Cognitive Science left the college, leaving the program with no faculty in its core areas of psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, and computer science.2 As of Spring 2021, in the current national environment of higher education, it is extremely unlikely that Hampshire, at the moment with less than half of its former student body, could rebuild Quickly enough to re-establish Cognitive Science. Further, the faculty who remain on campus have chosen to redesign the educational program in a way that suggests that they will no longer be organized into Schools. Thus, this document has become a history of the School of Cognitive Science from its beginning to its probable end, and, I hope, a source for anyone who does research on Hampshire’s history in the future.3 What were Hampshire’s Schools? Hampshire was founded to foster students’ intellectual curiosity, independence, and initiative, to demand their active engagement with ideas, and to de-emphasize the passive memorization of textbook material and the unQuestioning acQuiescence to external expectations in the Quest for grades.
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