Professor Siderits’s path to an expert in non-Western philosophy started when he was a high school student with an interest in Zen Buddhism. “I think what I found most intriguing about it is that it seemed to offer answers to the ‘big questions’ that religions are supposed to address, but without much of the dogmatism that I had come to associate with religion.” Siderits’s interest in learning Buddhism and other Asian philosophical systems motivated his transferring as an undergraduate to the University of Hawai’i, which at the time was the only department of philosophy that offered coursework in non-Western philosophical traditions. “I soon learned that it wasn’t Buddhist philosophy, or other forms of Asian philosophy, but philosophy as such that interested me. And so I kept going and never looked back.” Siderits earned his B.A. from the University of Hawai’i and his Ph.D. from Yale University.   

The award of the Numata Fellowship is just the latest honor and travel opportunity for Professor Siderits. During his career, he has been the recipient of such awards as a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. Siderits was named Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hawai’i and, most recently, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool. In addition to teaching as a visiting lecturer across the globe at universities such as Jadavpur University in Calcutta, India and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, much of Siderits’s scholarly work includes logging many frequent flier miles: “The community of scholars working on Sanskrit philosophical texts is fairly small and spread out across the globe, so we have to work diligently at creating opportunities to meet and discuss our common concerns. The upshot is that we travel a lot.” Even though his work and skills takes him to places far from Illinois State’s campus in Normal, Siderits states that he enjoys learning “through my interactions with my colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Illinois State.” In his few spare moments, Siderits enjoys preparing and eating Indian food but as the rational philosopher that he is, he realizes his human limitations: “I love Indian good, but at my age and with my family history I ought to avoid ghee. I’m not exactly great at Indian cooking, but at least I can make stuff without all the butterfat.