I, for one, studied both history and philosophy in undergrad&#x2F;grad school. I find it very illuminating to anchor philosophy in a thorough understanding of its historical context. In fact, I find this informative in other fields, as well—economics, literature, textual analysis, science, etc.<p>That said, philosophy courses in university include a lot of historical survey because there&#x27;s value in historically positioning schools of thoughts and their development across many philosophers who could be separated by culture and time, but nonetheless engage the same topic. Particularly in the Western tradition, it is fairly trivial to chronologically trace ideas through teachers and students, from one pivotal thinker to another, to the current state of Western thought. This at least helps students understand how we arrived to the present day, which I think is valuable.<p>Incorporating non-western philosophy would certainly make for a very positive increased coverage of human ideas, and could offer some interesting and challenging opportunities for philosophy students. There still needs to be a way to situate the information for students to grasp. Without including historical and cultural context, you could invite students to directly engage the texts and ideas alone, absent context, and produce their own comparative analysis of complementary and opposing arguments&#x2F;conclusions. It could be interesting to present texts in a blind fashion, omitting identifying information about a philosopher, and see what students make of the texts without the bias of knowing where it came from historically and culturally.<p>While I agree it is beneficial to approach and study ideas based on their merits, and integrate non-western thought into philosophy courses that are centered on specific ideas, I think there is still value in some amount of segmentation to avoid overwhelming students. A survey of Middle Eastern and Eastern philosophy is just as valuable and informative as a survey of Western. They could all be required of philosophy majors, I think. We already have segmentation by topic, and could more easily integrate non-western thought that way.<p>Somewhat related, my own graduate experience led me to realize that professors and departments are very resistant to teaching, incorporating, or even approving research into anything that is outside their identified areas of expertise. This is, I think, a likely additive reason for why any given topic X doesn&#x27;t make it into an academic department that is ostensibly focused on the field topic X fits into.