1,100 academics from 365 higher education institutions have signed a petition to save Philosophy at Dundee as of the 8th of August.

It has garnered support from across the world, most notably in the United States, where 102 institutions have academics who have signed to save the philosophy course. There has been support from academics at institutions known worldwide such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge.

The Philosophy course was proposed to be cut after the Strategy to Recovery was released, with many proposals set out to cut a range of things from the Botanic Gardens to courses like Philosophy, Mathematics and Languages.

Some of the most notable names include Slavoj Žižek (Birkbeck), Catherine Malabou (Kingston), Philip Pettit (Princeton), Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan), Luciano Floridi (Yale), Michael Rosen (Harvard), Bonnie Honig (Brown), Simon Critchley (The New School), Eric Santner (Chicago), Christoph Menke (Frankfurt), Claire Colebrook (Monash), Shannon Vallor (Edinburgh) and Edward Harcourt (Oxford).

There has also been international support from a number of authorities in the field. Letters of support have been sent by the British Philosophical Association (BPA), the American Philosophical Association (APA), the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, the Society for European Philosophy, the Society for Women in Philosophy UK (SWIP UK) and the International Federation of Philosophical Societies.

The Philosophy course at Dundee is ranked highly nationally. It is 1st in Scotland for student satisfaction in the Complete University Guide 2027. Philosophy is also 1st in Scotland and 2nd in the UK for ‘Value Added’ in the Guardian, which measures the positive impact of a degree on student outcomes.

The positive impact of studying philosophy can be seen in one alumna, Amanda Askell, who now works at Anthropic, a leading company in the AI space. Ms Askell is the primary author of Claude’s constitution, which governs how the AI behaves and the principles it acts on.

Philosophy and AI is a degree that is becoming ever more prominent in the university sector, as questions about the uses of AI and ethical concerns become more apparent.

If you want to learn more about the support for the philosophy course at Dundee, a site has been set up detailing all the support so far at https://savedundeephilosophy.org/