Background[edit]

The "Gourmet" Report ranking was created in response to the Gourman Report, and is based on a survey of philosophers who are nominated as evaluators by the report's advisory board. Its purpose is to provide guidance to prospective PhD students, particularly those students who intend to pursue a professional career in academic philosophy.^[3] The report first appeared on the web in 1996; it is currently published and distributed by Blackwell.


In 1989, while he was a graduate student, Leiter made a subjective list of what he believed to be the top 25 graduate philosophy programs in the United States, which came to be the PGR.^[4] The PGR was described by David L. Kirp in a 2003 New York Times op-ed as "the bible for prospective [philosophy] graduate students."^[5] Carlin Romano, in America the Philosophical (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013), referred to the PGR rankings as "often-criticized" and "biased towards mainstream analytic departments".^[6]


In 2002, 175 philosophers signed an open letter calling on Leiter to stop producing the PGR.^[7] In fall 2014, over 600 philosophers signed a petition to boycott the PGR. The petition was organized by some philosophers at the University of British Columbia to protest what they called a "derogatory and intimidating" e-mail sent by Leiter to one of their colleagues. Leiter claimed the recipient had threatened him.^[4] Twenty-four of the 56 members of the advisory board of the PGR recommended he relinquish control over the report's management.^[4] In response, Leiter appointed Berit Brogaard, a philosophy professor at the University of Miami, as co-editor for the 2014 report and agreed to step down as editor of subsequent editions.^[8] Leiter subsequently appointed Christopher Pynes of Western Illinois University as co-editor of future editions.