
Tamar Gendler
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences | Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Yale
Tamar Gendler is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Vincent J.Scully Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. A field-shaping scholar, her academic research brings together the techniques of traditional Anglo-American philosophy with empirical work from neuroscience, psychology, and other social sciences. Both in the classroom and onstage, she is renowned for her ability to connect ancient philosophical texts to any modern issue in a way that is both precise and engaging. A champion debater and the daughter of a rabbi, her presentation style is warm, eloquent, and illuminating.
As an academic, Tamar’s research investigates the relation between imagination and belief, the contrast between rational and non-rational persuasion, and the role of habits in shaping behavior and judgment. Many of these issues are explored in her Open Yale course, Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature. Her prize-winning philosophical writings have appeared in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Philosophy, Mind, and The Philosophical Quarterly. She also has long standing interests in education policy and practice, having served in leadership roles at a range of universities and national organizations, and as an education policy analyst at the RAND Corporation.
Through an illustrious career spanning nearly three decades, Professor Gendler has garnered many remarkable achievements. Following a decade teaching at Syracuse and Cornell Universities, she returned to her alma mater, Yale, in 2006 as Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Cognitive Science Program. In 2009-10, supported by the Mellon Foundation’s New Directions program, she spent a year as a full-time student at Yale doing coursework in psychology, neuroscience, and statistics. In 2010, she was appointed Chair of theYale philosophy department, becoming the first woman chair in the department’s two-century history and the first woman graduate of Yale College to serve as the chair of a Yale department. In 2013, she was appointed Deputy Provost for Humanities and Initiatives, a position she held until she assumed her current role in 2014 as Yale’s inaugural Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). As FAS Dean, Gendler has focused on building excellence and collaboration within and across traditional disciplinary boundaries. During her deanship, she has recruited some 400 new faculty to Yale in the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences, and physical sciences.
Tamar has held Fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship Program in the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies/Ryskamp Fellowship Program, the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Mellon New Directions Program. In 2013, she was awarded the Yale College-Sidonie Miskimin Clauss ’75 Prize for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities. She has served on boards or steering committees for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine; the National Science Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Mellon Foundation; the Smithsonian Institution; the Kavli Foundation; the Tata Corporation; and numerous colleges and universities across the United States and internationally.
Tamar Gendler holds a BA summa cum laude with Distinction in Humanities and in Mathematics & Philosophy from Yale University and a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University.
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