Matthew Kramer, originally from Massachusetts, is a Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy and fellow at Churchill College. Reading his CV on the Faculty of Law page, you learn that he attended Cornell, Harvard Law School, and (to top it off) Cambridge. However, anyone who has ever met Professor Kramer knows there is more to him than his achievements.

You may have heard about his diet (which solely consists of fruits and vegetables), or his unique comments in Varsity. What people might not know though, is how this all relates to Kramer’s singular focus on academia. “There isn’t a clear distinction between my life and what I do as a philosopher,” he notes.

“‘There isn’t a clear distinction between my life and what I do as a philosopher,’ Kramer notes”

For him, there is no separation between the personal, academic nor political. Growing up, his mother had studied philosophy as an undergraduate and as a young boy he would read his mother’s collection of philosophical writings. The debates didn’t stop there: “one time, I was engaging my mother in a discussion of the nature of time,” he recalls, quite a heavy topic for the dinner table.

Further, Kramer’s postgraduate law degree has been invaluable to his work as a legal and political philosopher. Regardless of his legal training, he says he “never intended to practice law”. On his final day at Cornell, one of his professors, Richard Miller, said to him, “so you’re going off to Harvard to make a lot of money”. Kramer looked at him somewhat quizzically, responding that “I’m going to law school there because I want to understand political philosophy better”. Richard Miller looked at him as if he was “in need of psychological treatment,” as he describes.

The philosophy professor has always been laser-focused on academia. He previously stated in a Varsity article that he attends “no feasts and very few formal dinners” because “my life is centred on my scholarly work”. He has always been “disenamoured with the fancy dining and the party going”.

However, Kramer can see why socialisation can be valuable. While at Harvard Law School, he came to know individuals like now US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan quite well. Nonetheless, he “didn’t go to Harvard for the purpose of hobnobbing with the rich and famous”. On the topic of drinking, he adds that “somewhat oddly, I don’t drink anything at all”. Apart from sipping upon water when he’s teaching, he doesn’t drink water nor anything else. The reason may surprise you.

“He has always been ‘disenamoured with the fancy dining and the party going’”

”When I’m not teaching, I go for months at a time, literally drinking nothing, and the reason for that is academic in a way.” Kramer adheres to a highly restrictive dietary regimen. His diet for the past 50 years has consisted of nearly all fresh fruits (except for bananas, which he detest), vegetables and nothing else. However, he was not swayed by – though does see the value of – the typical arguments of veganism.

Instead, his decision was guided by an attraction to Hellenistic Stoicism: the idea of attaining self-mastery through strict self-discipline. It is a way to take control so that “one’s life will be determined primarily by one’s own sets of choices” rather than “being at the mercy of fluctuating circumstances”. Kramer acknowledges his diet is “intolerably dull”, but he that “thrive (s) on dullness”. By dullness, he means “strict self-discipline and the position of order on my own mind”. In this way, his extreme diet is connected to his identity as a scholar.

Clearly, Kramer has had a set of very consistent beliefs throughout his life. However, it’s not the case that he has never had an ideologically transformative moment. At the age of eight, one of his Hebrew school teachers recounted her experience as a Holocaust survivor in a Nazi concentration camp. This led him to read the “entire encyclopaedia on Nazi Germany” and becoming “an atheist within several hours of reading it”. However, despite being an atheist, Professor Kramer devotes his time to reading the Bible, studying it for 2-3 hours everyday at one point. The point of this, he argues, is to enhance his understanding of the Western philosophical tradition.

Professor Kramer is now in his 31st year as a faculty member, but first came to Cambridge in 1985 as a PhD student. At 65 years old, Professor Kramer is 4 years away from the Employment Justified Retirement Age (EJRA) set by the university, 69. Emphasising the injustice of the EJRA, Professor Kramer is currently “working with some other academics to litigate” against this. He argues that the reason the university wishes to impose the EJRA is because there are “no adequate procedures at present” to remove academics who are “unfit”. He agrees there should be, whilst also recounting how he has barely encountered such people, only “two in the past 31 years”, in fact.

With the shift toward a career-oriented education in universities, Professor Kramer’s academic zeal is almost unfathomable, but certainly applaudable. Not every student needs to be as dedicated as him, but his love of academia reminds us of what makes Cambridge, Cambridge.

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