Bob the Colleague - Stevie Makin

Bob Stern and I were colleagues in the Philosophy Department of University of Sheffield for 29 years. Bob was appointed in 1989. I had been appointed five years earlier in 1984. I retired in 2018. Bob retired in 2023. We were colleagues for over a quarter of a century, nearly three decades. There has been no-one else in the world with whom I had as long a collegial relation. Bob was at the enduring core of the department. And the department was the most consistent thing in my own very happy life. So I am forever grateful to Bob for what he has done for me. 

And I value very deeply knowing that Bob felt the same. In a note accompanying a gift he gave me he wrote “I think we may have had the best of academic lives together”. I completely agree. And I think that shows something very significant about being-an-academic-colleague, which Bob completely embodied. Merely accidental differences of philosophical taste (Aristotle vs Hegel), or of philosophical approach (superficial acrobatics vs deeply engaged thought), or philosophical temperament, simply don’t matter when it comes to being colleagues over decades. That’s a truly valuable thing, it’s what makes a community, over and above just co-habiting a building. As a logician might put it: the community of Sheffield philosophy was at the core of my happy life; Bob Stern was at the core of the community of Sheffield philosophy; the conclusion is obvious!