Class: 1964
Major: Philosophy
Residence: Ithaca, NY
Deceased: August 24, 2020
Alumni survivors: Ms. Joanne S. Sturgeon ’63 P91 P94 W64 (Widow/Widower), Mr. Christopher D. Sturgeon ’91 (Child), Ms. Erika S. Drezner ’94 (Child)
Nick was born in Santa Maria, California and came to Carleton from Scarsdale High School, New York. He was one of only two persons in our class to graduate summa cum laude. Nick absorbed all his courses at Carleton, whatever subject. His bluebooks were always interesting and insightful. Even his penmanship was elegant. Nick was meant to be a scholar.
And to that end, he earned his Doctorate in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1972.
To begin his career, he joined Cornell University’s faculty in 1967 as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. And his career at Cornell was ever upward from that time. He became a full professor in 1983.
He also was a visiting professor at various times throughout his career, including the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Los Angeles.
He was a professor in Cornell’s Department of Philosophy until his retirement in 2013. His service to Cornell was 46 years.
Nick focused on metaethics, the study of the nature, scope and meaning of moral judgement. Nick was the joint creator of a position known worldwide as “Cornell realism,” which holds that true moral judgements reflect facts about the natural world.
Nick’s awards and recognitions were many. He was legendary. Phrases of descriptions of him were—incredibly welcoming; he continued to support me; embodied everything I liked so much then; in addition to being a lovely person, he was and is one of my favorite philosophers; his work is a model for our undergrads; I continue to teach his work; his course on the empiricists was a classic; I can still see him, sitting on a desk and lecturing, noteless, armed only with an impossibly battered copy of John Locke’s ‘an essay concerning human understanding.’
One cannot say too much about Nick. He was a Carl. He married one, and both his children are Carls. During the 1985-1986 academic year, Nick was arrested at Day Hall on Cornell campus as part of a civil disobedience campaign to divest Cornell investments from South Africa’s apartheid regime. Just like a true Carl.
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