丁香园AV

A wide-ranging interview with the recently retired Martin Hahn by current Department Chair Endre Begby. 

by Endre Begby

Hi Martin! For starters, why don鈥檛 you tell us a bit about who you are, where you are from, and how you ended up here?

I鈥檓 Martin Hahn, and I was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, a few years ago. (I just turned 70, so you can calculate it if you would like.) I came to Canada in 1968, after the Russian invasion of my birth country. I had a relatively comfortable emigration: my father was an academic who got 18 job offers when we left, and Canada was the first choice.

You had a rather dramatic exit out of the country, though?

Yeah, after the tanks came, my father鈥檚 colleagues said, 鈥済et out of here, your children will never go to university and you will lose your job.鈥� He was involved in the liberalization and the Prague Spring, and it was pretty clear that he needed to leave. (This was his fourth emigration: he was born in Berlin but moved to Prague in 1931 and then to Britain in 1938, always a step ahead of Hitler. But then much to his family鈥檚 surprise he decided to move back to Prague after the war where he met my mother, and eventually we came here.)

Anyway, he was a scientist and everyone was trying to help refugees, so we ended up in Canada, in Vancouver, since my brother and I were not keen on going to Vietnam which made the offers from the US less attractive. I did the usual stuff: finished high school, went to 丁香园AV for my undergraduate degree (starting in 1972, I think). I got interested in philosophy quite early on. In my first year. I wrote a paper on a problem that I couldn鈥檛 solve: so I argued both sides, and said 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what the right answer is.鈥� I got an A+: so I decided that鈥檚 the discipline for me!

Who were your teachers at the time?

At the time, the Department consisted of Larry Resnick (who was chair), Ray Bradley, Norman Schwartz, Steven Davis, Ray Jennings, John Tietz, Don Todd, David Finn, and Peter Herbst. Phil Hanson, David Copp, David Zimmerman and Sue Wendell (who was the lone woman in the Department) arrived soon after I graduated.

In my third year, I decided I wanted to learn something about ancient philosophy, but there wasn鈥檛 really much of that here. So I went to UBC and spent a year there. I took a course with Jonathan Bennett (who had recently moved to UBC from 丁香园AV). He was teaching his Linguistic Behavior book, which was just about to come out. This was a graduate seminar: I phoned him (there was no email at the time) and asked if I could come to the class.

Then I came back to 丁香园AV and finished my degree, and was trying to decide between film school and philosophy.

Film school??

Yeah, I鈥檝e always been interested in film. When I was an undergraduate here, I ran the Simon Fraser film society along with Steve Davis and some other people. This was before videos and before VCR: if you were going to screen a movie, you had to get 16mm prints and find a room and so on. We wanted a history of film series, so we did huge amounts of research and got Cabiria, which is the first full length feature film ever made, and Birth of a Nation, and probably 25 films through history of cinema.

So you鈥檙e choosing between film school and philosophy 鈥�

I decided to apply to UBC just because I already knew and liked Jonathan Bennett: I got into their MA program and did my MA with him. Jonathan Bennett was well connected, and many people came to UBC as visitors: Among them, David Kaplan (from UCLA) came up every two weeks to give a seminar in the philosophy of language. I took Kaplan鈥檚 seminar, and wrote some papers that he liked. I then went off traveling around the world: six months traveling through Asia starting in January coming back in August.

And then on to PhD?

Yeah, but I still was not sure whether academic philosophy should be my aim.  At the time you could still kind of name the top 10 philosophy departments pretty easily. Jonathan said, 鈥渨ell, apply to the top six departments, and if you get in, go into philosophy, and if you don't, go into film.鈥�

I got accepted into Berkeley and UCLA. David Kaplan was at UCLA, and since taking his and Bennett鈥檚 courses at UBC, I had become very interested in philosophy of language. Kaplan was a fantastic teacher and an incredibly inspiring kind of person to work with. So I went to UCLA.

But you wrote your dissertation with Tyler Burge: when did he come into the picture?

My first year at UCLA, 1978, I was considering which courses to take and someone said, you gotta take this course from this new guy, Tyler Burge, recently hired from Princeton. I took his course: it was on 鈥淚ndividualism and the Mental,鈥� which was just about to be published.

 As a result, I got very interested in theories of intentionality, and started drifting toward working with Burge. I started reading some Brentano and the Brentano-school and seeing how it fits together. I was also interested in externalism and the question of how Burgean externalism was a very different beast from what at the time was called externalism about reference (i.e., Putnam, Kripke, but also Kaplan and Donnellan).

But eventually you ended up back in Vancouver 鈥�

Back then, the average time to graduation at UCLA was 16 years! After 8 years in LA, I returned to Vancouver to stay with my girlfriend and work on my dissertation. I got a call from some people at Capilano College (now Capilano University), saying that one of their temporary instructors just got a job somewhere else and that they needed someone to teach in a month. So that鈥檚 how I got my first job in philosophy, around 1987 or 1988.

 I taught at Capilano College for two years and started picking up sessional teaching here at 丁香园AV. And then in 1991 I got hired here and into a tenure track job.

And by then, my dissertation was done (finally!)

Alright. So we鈥檙e in 1991: you鈥檝e defended your dissertation, you get an offer to come to 丁香园AV as an Assistant Professor. Obviously, you already had history with the Department 鈥�.

Yes, I 鈥渃ame home.鈥� It was also the best job offer I got, and my parents still lived in Vancouver.

The Department wasn鈥檛 hugely changed since my undergraduate days. And of course, I鈥檇 been in touch the whole time: I had friends in the Department and when I was teaching at Capilano, I would visit quite often.

The Department was kind of in a 鈥渟teady state鈥� when I arrived. In some ways, it was a thriving place. But it was a much less harmonious place than it is now. Equity was just starting to become an issue: Sue Wendell was the only woman in the Department, and she was half time in Gender Studies.

So in that way, the Department was quite conservative and traditional. But it functioned reasonably well.

At the time, we were in the Library building, top floor: West Mall centre didn鈥檛 exist yet 鈥� we moved here a couple of years after I arrived. We had a lot of space, because the Department was much smaller then: fewer TAs, fewer faculty members.

The course catalogue was somewhat similar, and the undergraduate program was excellent. (One of the things I fully understood only when I came to UCLA is that our undergraduate program is outstanding! My cohort there consisted of people who got their degrees from top universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States: I was better educated than almost every one in my class.)

By contrast, the Master鈥檚 program at 丁香园AV wasn鈥檛 the happiest of places at the time. It really served no purpose except as a place where people who wanted to do a bit more philosophy could hang out. It was embarrassing when in joint seminars the undergraduates ran circles around the MA students.

But that started changing at some point. You served as Chair of the Graduate Program for many years 鈥�

I became Graduate Chair shortly after I was hired, around 1993. One of my first tasks was actually to set up a PhD program. This was in response to a request from UBC: after Jonathan Bennett left, the UBC department went into a tailspin, having lost not only a huge chunk of its prestige but also its energy: Bennett was an extremely energetic guy who kept the department intellectually alive.

By the time they approached us they were down to 8 people, from 15 a few years earlier. The Dean of Graduate Studies at UBC thought, well, we have this PhD program but the Department can鈥檛 really run into. There鈥檚 a Department across town that鈥檚 both slightly bigger, more active, and vastly healthier. So they asked us, would we like to run a joint program with them? We hemmed and hawed for a while, then said, well, why not?

Administratively, it turned out we couldn鈥檛 have a 鈥渏oint program鈥� unless we already had our own program. So I spent more than a year putting together a PhD program here, and then a long time negotiating with UBC, about joint courses, joint supervision, joint admission, etc.

One of the questions was, what would happen to the application fees? We agreed to split them. But by then, there was a new Dean of Graduate Studies at UBC: I got an irate note from this Dean saying, 鈥測ou cannot take our application fees!鈥� The application fee was 20 dollars, and there were very few applicants. My first thought was, 鈥渃an I just write them a check for 250 dollars?鈥�

But basically, that was it: it was clear that if we couldn鈥檛 agree about how to split a few hundred dollars worth of application fees, we really shouldn鈥檛 be running a PhD program together. So we ended up with our own PhD program, since it had already gone through all the stages of approval here at 丁香园AV. And there we were: the program graduated perhaps a sum total of 5 students over the years. It was pretty clear, this was not going to work: we didn鈥檛 have the critical mass to run a PhD program on our own. Some remnants of the UBC cooperation survived: a joint seminar, and the possibility of having supervisory committees composed of faculty members from both Departments.

But in the meantime, the MA program has thrived 鈥�

Yes, around this time, I turned my attention to our MA program instead: from my own experience applying to graduate school, I knew that a Master鈥檚 thesis was not a very good writing sample, and I thought that one of the things a Master鈥檚 degree should provide is a good writing sample. So I restructured our Master鈥檚 program into basically what it is now: at the time, virtually every MA program at the University was a thesis-program, so it required some juggling to get a non-thesis option. The other part of the program I introduced was modelled on our successful major program: a lot of course-requirements structured so that our MA graduates would have a rounded philosophical education.

The current program has basically the same shape now as it did after we reformed it in the 1990s, and has been getting more successful by the year. I don鈥檛 have a lot of feathers in my cap, but that鈥檚 one of them!

The applicant pool at the time, was it as international as it is now?

No, it took years to build an applicant pool. I got the ball rolling, but it didn鈥檛 take off immediately. Over time, new faculty members would come in who were more interested in MA supervision, and as a result our applicant pool would get better and better over the years. As we got better and better students, so the Departmental pride grew. By the early 2000s, it was clear that the new-look MA program really had something going for it. Eventually, the decision was made to stop accepting students into the PhD program.

Over time, the international reputation of the program would grow as well. We started getting more and more applicants from top universities in Iran, and eventually China, India, the United States and elsewhere. Obviously, Vancouver has long been an international city, and it鈥檚 much easier to come here than, say, to competing programs in the United States. It鈥檚 one of those things that slowly grows, as one鈥檚 reputation grows.

You become Department Chair in the year that I started here, 2012 鈥�

I saw myself as an activist Chair, for better for worse.  I certainly was busy. I spent much of my first year working on some faculty and staff personnel issues which, for obvious reasons, I will not go into.  But one of the great outcomes of this was that we were able to hire a new manager, Laura Bologea, who has had huge and positive influence on the Department since.

With Laura鈥檚 able help we worked more seriously on building our undergraduate enrolments, both to get recognition 鈥� and thus further positions 鈥� from the administration, but also to increase the number of TAships so that our growing MA program could thrive.

We ran several searches while I was Chair and were able to make some excellent hires. And we started deploying FIC money to support research, putting it into workshops and our colloquium series, as well as student support.

My biggest goal, which I am not certain was achieved by the time I stepped down, but I think it has been achieved since, was to change the departmental culture to one of openness, mutual support, and friendly relations. Too many academic departments are rife with tensions and our has, historically, not been exempt from this problem.

So overall, then, you鈥檙e pretty optimistic about the state of the Department, even as you鈥檙e about to retire?

Oh, the Department is in fantastic shape, I think. Obviously, I鈥檓 ecstatic about the graduate program. But I鈥檇 like to say that the biggest change has been in the culture of the Department. We鈥檙e now a research Department, and people take pride in each others鈥� achievements. We鈥檙e not afraid to hire people who are likely to be 鈥渂etter鈥� than those of us who are already here. Moreover, we trust our own judgments about who is the right philosopher 鈥渇or us鈥�: we go for people we think have interesting projects and who we think can make a contribution, not simply who are designated the 鈥渉ottest thing鈥� on the job market that year.

We have made massive strides in terms of diversity and equity: for years and years, the faculty essentially only had men, with the number of women growing very slowly. Starting this year, we will be at more than 50% female faculty. We see similar positive developments in the student population. This is always a work in progress, but it鈥檚 night-and-day from where we were only a few years ago.

We鈥檙e now a young Department, whereas for years we were top-heavy and not getting the opportunity to hire new people. In the last few years, we鈥檝e hired many new people, and they are moving through the ranks quickly. The Department is doing better than it has ever been and is recognized in FASS and the University at large as a standout Department. We are hugely efficient in teaching, and Laura Bologea鈥檚 work in recruiting majors and minors to our program has been terrific, and our new undergraduate advisor Jay Leardi is continuing in that spirit.