is it really that weird if a philosophy department located in say, belgium, emphasizes belgian philosophers and philosophers from surrounding areas (like france

is it really that weird if a philosophy department located in say, belgium, emphasizes belgian philosophers and philosophers from surrounding areas (like france and germany). philosophy is not really a science and is subjective. thus, a comparison to math (or physics) does not make sense. given the tribal nature of humanity, it just makes sense that departments emphasize those famous philosophers from their tribes. if you look at russian and chinese institutions, no doubt one would see a different picture. The whole argument of 'evaluation on merit' is not a good argument because 'merit' is subjective. it would be roughly equivalent to 'what the people in the department like'. the argument against their idea of renaming to a 'philosophy of america and europe department' would be that a certain amount of (regional)bias is implicit in the discipline of philosophy. we could consider anyone who denies this to be 'dumb' and hence it does not need naming to make it explicit. on the contrary, this kind of 'self naming & shaming' could damage the brand of 'philosophy' as a whole.