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Professor Victor R. Basili
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742

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Dear Professor Basili:

I have no hesitation in recommending the promotion of Donald Perlis to
Associate Professor with tenure and would expect to be able recommend his
further promotion in the near future.

The biggest part of Perlis's research falls under a single plan.  I think
this plan is well motivated, has made considerable contributions to the
theory of artificial intelligence and is capable of making much larger
contributions.  This plan involves increased reification of intentional
concepts and first order theories of their properties.  His set-theoretic
version of circumscription (his reference 1) is an important step in
this direction.  His work on introspection is another important example.

Besides the work involving reification he has important results (mostly
with Minker) in the computational aspects of non-monotonic reasoning
(his references 8,9,17,18).

I respect but have not much followed his work on situated reasoning.

I hope this is helpful.

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Sincerely,       

John McCarthy    
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