Dear Kantians,

Greetings from Daniel Sutherland and Robert Clewis, the new President-Secretary and Vice President of NAKS.

We are excited to lead this great organization for the next three years. Andrew Chignell and Huaping Lu-Adler – with the help of Anne Margaret Baxley as Treasurer and Eli Benjamin Israel as Tech Consultant, Eric Watkins as President of the Board of Trustees and the members of the Board – have done a tremendous job the previous last three years, and we want to thank them! Not only did they guide us through the pandemic – no small accomplishment – they also significantly improved NAKS activities. They began the vNAKS series in response to Covid, which also expanded its reach. They started the NAKS Women’s Network to connect persons who self-identify as women, which included fostering mentoring relationships between senior and junior women members of NAKS. They sponsored a vNAKS session on teaching Kant on race and gathered material (posted on the NAKS website) for those who might be interested in teaching this topic themselves. To further support those who are earliest in their careers, they made NAKS membership free to students. This helped them increase the NAKS membership to 630 people; at the same time, they were able to increase the overall budget. They made the criteria for the prizes and awards and submissions more transparent and secured co-sponsorship of the Sellars Young Scholars Prize from the Kantian Review. With Eli’s help, they radically transformed the NAKS website, making it far more professional and user-friendly. All this was in addition to the usual activities of NAKS (please see the NAKS June Newsletter for a fuller account). We thank them; it will be hard to fill their shoes!

Fortunately, Andrew and Huaping have not only been helping us with the transition; they have also both agreed to continue their direct involvement with NAKS along with a few other leading Kant scholars. We are pleased to report that Andrew and Katharina Kraus have agreed to serve as NAKS Kant Tercentennial Officers for the remainder of 2023 and for 2024. They will organize the NAKS Kant Tercentennial Conference in Washington, DC, a Virtual Cosmopolitan Kant Conference in 2024 involving Kant societies from around the world, as well as a joint effort with the South Korean Kant Society in 2024, and perhaps a few other activities. We thank them both!

We are also pleased to report that Huaping and Lucy Allais have agreed to serve on a newly formed NAKS Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Committee. We are excited to work together with them in the coming years to further improve NAKS engagement with these issues.

Robert and I have taken the reins for the NAKS Sellars Young Scholars Prize (and other duties. We also have other initiatives we are planning, so look for further announcements (such as calls for proposals for NAKS sessions at future APA meetings). In the meantime, we hope you are enjoying your summer!

With best wishes,

Daniel Sutherland, NAKS President-Secretary

Robert Clewis, NAKS Vice-President