Professor Peter Hare Gives Gifts Totalling $1 Million To Benefit UB Department Of Philosophy

Gifts establish endowed professorship, Peter and Daphne Hare Fund

Release Date: October 13, 1999 This content is archived.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A University at Buffalo philosophy professor is sharing more than his teaching excellence with UB's College of Arts and Sciences. Peter H. Hare, Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Philosophy, has given two gifts totaling $1 million to support activities of the department.

A cash gift of $500,000 has established an endowed professorship named for American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, while a $500,000 bequest will support the Peter and Daphne Hare Fund to help the department meet its ongoing needs.

"I have been teaching at UB since 1962 and I strongly identify with this university and with this department, which has been very good to me," said Hare, noting that the gifts complement one another.

UB President William R. Greiner said that since his arrival at the university nearly four decades ago, Peter Hare "has steadily enriched UB through his intellectual curiosity, his dynamic teaching, his commitment to extending academic horizons and his philanthropy.

"His generous bequest to create the Peter and Daphne Hare Fund and his endowment of the Charles S. Peirce Chair in the philosophy department," Greiner added, "will ensure the department's ongoing status as a leading force in the field -- a position that he played an integral role in establishing. We are very grateful to him for all that he has done for UB."

Added Kerry S. Grant, dean of UB's College of Arts and Sciences: "These gifts from such a distinguished professor say volumes about the sense of commitment Peter

Hare feels and we are deeply grateful. With these gifts, he extends his important personal commitment into the future for the benefit of generations of students to come."

Hare established the Peter and Daphne Hare Fund to provide money for a variety of ongoing needs in the philosophy department, including unforeseen future needs. However, he also specified that the fund be used in "neglected areas, such as benefits for visiting professors from foreign countries, awards for service by department staff, awards for excellence in teaching by graduate students and support for undergraduates."

Hare included his late wife's name on the fund because he said they were a team for many years, beginning in 1959. Daphne Hare, M.D., former UB faculty member and director of the Medical/Dental Division of the Veterans Administration Central Office in Washington, D.C., died in 1995.

Daphne Hare won national recognition for her work with the VA and international recognition for her editorial and research work in the biophysics of membrane transport. In addition, she had held leadership roles with the Buffalo Chapter of the National Organization for Women and the Western New York Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

With his other gift, Hare established an endowed professorship named for American philosopher Charles S. Peirce.

"Founder of American pragmatism, Peirce was a mathematician, a scientist and generally considered the best philosopher this country has produced," Hare said. "What better way to promote the rich tradition of diversity in UB's philosophy department than to establish the Charles S. Peirce Professorship in American Philosophy."

Randall Dipert, a leading Peirce scholar who taught at the State University College at Fredonia from 1977-95 and is now on the faculty of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, has been named the first Peirce Professor.

"I could scarcely believe how happy and flattered I felt when Peter Hare told me that he was both creating a professorship in American philosophy at Buffalo and that he was nominating me to be its first occupant," recalled Dipert, who holds a doctoral degree in philosophy from Indiana University.

Dipert added: "One might even speak of a 'Buffalo School' in philosophy, one that addresses contemporary philosophical problems -- in logic, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics -- in a way that is also intensely historical. There is no graduate school in the U.S. that has such a strong program in contemporary metaphysics and logic, understood historically."

Dipert described Hare's gifts as an inspiring model of active philanthropy. "If we as faculty members believe something is worth doing, small or large, and other funding sources have been exhausted, we should think more often about donating or raising the money ourselves," he added.

Dipert has published widely on Peirce and is perhaps best known for his "Peirce's Place in the History of Logic," presented at the C.S. Peirce Sesquicentennial Congress at Harvard University in 1989 and for his articles on logic in "Encyclopedia Britannica."

Dipert speaks fluent German and has taught a variety of courses ranging from computer science to musical therapy to German, as well as the full range of courses in philosophy. Although Dipert won't begin teaching at UB until Fall 2000, he already is organizing a philosophy conference that UB will host this November.

Hare is equally well-recognized by Peirce scholars and philosophers. Educated at Yale and Columbia, he has taught philosophy at UB since 1962. In 1996, he won the Herbert W. Schneider Award for lifetime contributions to the understanding and development of American philosophy, given by the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. Hare is past president of the New York State Philosophical Association, on the board of the American Philosophical Association and a member of UB's Center for Cognitive Science.

Since 1974, he has edited The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy. Hare said he expects that Dipert will follow him as editor.

For information about how you can help support the University at Buffalo, go to http://www.buffalo.edu/giving.