Political theory and public law job market: General Discussion 11/10--?

7/29/2011

General Discussion 11/10--?

For: Discussion of topics other than the job market

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Previous General Discussion thread

387 Comments:

Kennan Ferguson said...: Greetings, all.

Though I am not Ms./Mr. Moderator, I appreciate the job she or he is doing, and would not wish it on my worst enemy.

I am, however, the new Chair for APSA’s Foundations of Political Theory. As such, I am in regular contact with the official members of the section, but not so much with those who don’t go to APSA or who merely aspire to go to APSA. I hope to build better connections with the other important theory organizations, and I invite any of you interested in presenting at conferences to check out the regional organizations (I regularly attend WPSA, for example), APT, Law and Society, etc. I have been in contact with the IPSA, which also has a couple of theoretically-minded sections, but those sections seem less active than much of the rest of IPSA. I think this blog is a particularly useful and civil one, so I will occasionally post here to get out messages for the field as a whole.

There’s little reason to join APSA or Foundations if you don’t go to the annual meeting, but I do hope you’ll consider joining if you do attend.

I’ll suggest that people post about their various conference experiences here as well – I specifically remember how, as a graduate student, it was very difficult to know which conferences were interesting, how they skewed (e.g. toward liberal theory), how many and which people attended, how to get roommates for hotel rooms, and similar issues. Journal discussions are useful, too; not about rankings, but concerning acceptance rates, editing experiences, and general outlooks.

I also want to let people know of two ongoing questions that came up at the APSA. The first concerned U of Toronto’s proposed closing of their Centre for Ethics. Foundations sent a letter expressing our regret as to that decision and recognizing the Centre’s excellence. For the second, we discussed issues regarding the planned boycott of the 2012 APSA by many political theorists. While Foundations has not taken a position on the boycott (in fact, according to APSA’s rules, we cannot), we do think it is important to make sure that the panel distribution for theory is not harmed in the attendance count for that year. We remain hopeful that will be the case.

I am not the APSAprogram chair, so I don’t decide which papers are accepted, which are rejected, and who is accepted to give poster sessions at APSA. But if you have general questions about Foundations or just want to ask something about the field, please don’t hesitate to email me. If you want to sound off about Straussians or postmodernists or liberals, though, maybe I’m not the ideal person to contact.

Hope to see many of you soon.

Yours,

Kennan Ferguson; 5:29 PM, November 11, 2010
Anonymous said...: Here's a general (two-part) question:

1. At what point is it appropriate (if it is appropriate) to email an editor to ask about the status of a submission?

2. Is there any use in doing so?; 10:22 AM, November 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: 1. Let it go until you reach the date that they list as their normal review period, then give it another 30 days.

2. No.; 9:35 PM, November 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: In response to ^^, I respectfully disagree with ^. I always email the editor to check right after the normal review period has expired. I've never had an editor be anything but kind about it (but admittedly I can't hear what they murmur under their breath). And the use of it is this: they have scores of manuscripts to keep track of; a follow-up email from an author may get them to prod a lax reviewer. Furthermore, I once submitted a manuscript, received a confirmation of receipt from the editorial assistant, and then when I followed up at the end of the review period, learned from the editor that the manuscript had been sitting under a pile of papers and had not yet gone out for review. He then got on top of it as fast as he could. The paper eventually got accepted. But if I hadn't followed up, it would have been many more months before the error was discovered.; 12:40 AM, November 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Strauss anyone?; 1:00 PM, November 23, 2010
Anonymous said...: Richard or Johann?; 7:49 PM, November 23, 2010
Anonymous said...: David, actually.; 7:41 AM, November 24, 2010
Anonymous said...: Speaking as a journal editor, I don't think it's a problem at all if an author follows up *after* the normal review period (as defined by whatever journal you are submitting to) has expired. In my case, I'd appreciate the extra 30 days, since once we reach a certain time period I am already doing every thing I can to cajole a review out of the last reviewer. Following up isn't useful if by useful you mean "somehow getting the reviewer to move more quickly" but if something has fallen through the cracks, your message might help the editor or assistant editor to spot it.

If we go past our own deadline for completing reviews, I usually try to email authors myself with an explanation (which is always the same - we couldn't get the reviews) and a request for patience.; 3:14 PM, December 01, 2010
Anonymous said...: Speaking as a journal editor, I don't think it's a problem at all if an author follows up *after* the normal review period (as defined by whatever journal you are submitting to) has expired. In my case, I'd appreciate the extra 30 days, since once we reach a certain time period I am already doing every thing I can to cajole a review out of the last reviewer. Following up isn't useful if by useful you mean "somehow getting the reviewer to move more quickly" but if something has fallen through the cracks, your message might help the editor or assistant editor to spot it.

If we go past our own deadline for completing reviews, I usually try to email authors myself with an explanation (which is always the same - we couldn't get the reviews) and a request for patience.; 3:15 PM, December 01, 2010
Anonymous said...: You are going up for tenure at a very good research oriented university. How do you rank order your preferences in terms of the top journals you'd like to have publications in. So, for example, I'd say something like:

1. APSR
2. Philosophy & Public Affairs
3. Ethics
4. JOP
5. AJPS
6. JPP
7. Political Theory
8. Perspectives
9. Polity
10. PPE

I wonder what others think.; 4:00 PM, December 05, 2010
Anonymous said...: For analytic-type work, I'd say Ethics is higher than P&PA. And Political Theory should be higher on your list if you are putting your tenure case in front of a political science dept.; 7:03 AM, December 06, 2010
Anonymous said...: Although I'm not necessarily one of them, I suspect a lot of people would place Review of Politics above Perspectives and PPE, and possibly Polity.

At some top departments, though, these fine distinctions about journal quality aren't anywhere near as important as the referees (and T & P committees) assessment of the quality of the article itself. This is actually the case at some less traditional (non R1) but still serious about research departments as well.

The obsession about journal ranking is most likely to come into play at good but not top-ranked R1s who are dying to move up in the rankings. Those confident in their rankings, or indifferent to rankings, tend to look more at quality.; 8:33 AM, December 06, 2010
Anonymous said...: JPP and PT should rank above JOP and AJPS. And Ethics should rank above PPA.; 1:13 PM, December 06, 2010
Anonymous said...: Because political theorists are not making the call:

APSR, AJPS, JOP, Polity.; 5:34 PM, December 06, 2010
Anonymous said...: But if this is a serious research department then they care about whether the candidate publishes in the top political theory journals. So AJPS, JOP, etc. (but not APSR) should go below Ethics, JPP, PT, etc.; 7:28 PM, December 06, 2010
Anonymous said...: HPT should be on the list.; 10:22 PM, December 06, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ Agreed; 12:25 PM, December 07, 2010
Anonymous said...: I wrote the original list and agree that this is a mistake. So, maybe:

1. APSR
2. Ethics
3. Philosophy & Public Affairs
4. JPP/PT
5. JOP
6. AJPS

Next tier: HPT, Perspectives, Polity, Review of Politics

Next tier: PPE, CPT, etc.; 2:49 PM, December 07, 2010
Anonymous said...: on what basis (other than wishful thinking or number of mewling pleas by editors for more citations) is PT that high?; 3:01 PM, December 07, 2010
Anonymous said...: I posted the list. I agree that PT shouldn't be that high on any merit-based judgment, but I was trying (in an obviously flawed way) to get a sense of whether or not that judgment is widely shared. So, I think that many see it as a top outlet, even though I agree with you that they shouldn't so see it. I would be happy to find out that our view about its quality is widely shared, though.; 3:46 PM, December 07, 2010
Anonymous said...: Your list strongly favors analytical journals. From where I sit, HPT is definitely top tier.; 10:51 AM, December 08, 2010
Anonymous said...: And my department considers PT to be on par with JOP and above Ethics and Philosophy and Public Affairs.; 7:41 PM, December 08, 2010
Anonymous said...: When you say that your department has this view, what exactly does that mean? Do they tell you precisely where they would like for you to publish?; 7:52 PM, December 08, 2010
Anonymous said...: I affirm the previous observation: any list that places Ethics and PPA above HPT is clearly biased by approach. Those are fine journals, but I'd place HPT on the same level both because one has to be fair to different major sub-fields, and also because it's an excellent journal; 10:41 PM, December 08, 2010
Anonymous said...: The list is obviously a list for purely normative political theory and definitely not for political theory in general. HPT and JHI are equivalent to Ethics, PPA and JPP for those who do work on the history of political thought.; 7:46 AM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: So, for the historically inclined, do you also think of HPT as preferable to PT?

Would a list that looks like this seem reasonable:

1. APSR
2. HPT, Ethics, PPA, JPP
3. PT, JOP, AJPS
4. JHI, Perspectives, Polity, Review of Politics
5. PPE, CPT, Constellations, etc.; 10:47 AM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: "1. APSR
2. HPT, Ethics, PPA, JPP
3. PT, JOP, AJPS
4. JHI, Perspectives, Polity, Review of Politics
5. PPE, CPT, Constellations, etc."

What's amazing is that in this market someone can have published in these journals 5+ times and still not get an interview.; 12:13 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: is that actually true?

are all the publications in categories 4 and 5?; 12:25 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: "is that actually true?

are all the publications in categories 4 and 5?"

True, and none of the cited publications are in category 5. (And several above category 4.)

It's a horrible market.; 2:09 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ Nonsense. You're counting book reviews or something.; 5:04 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: "^ Nonsense. You're counting book reviews or something."

No book reviews. Legitimate political theory articles in the cited journals.

Feel free not to believe it. Or ask people on search committees if they don't pass on such candidates. You'll obviously be surprised.; 6:12 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ That person must not be applying broadly, b/c I was on a SC last year and I didn't see a file that met those specifications. Granted, we're not a prestigious job, but we're a job. Maybe this person is being more picky than they can afford to be in a down market.; 8:22 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: (1) If you've published in those journals 5+ times then you've got to be several years past degree, which introduces a lot of other variables into the mix, e.g. (if you're on the tt) whether you're thought to be affordable, moveable, or tenurable on a short clock; or (if you're not) whether you're seen as being stale or tainted by your years on the postdoc/VAP circuit and thus likely to be passed over for someone fresher. The latter scenario obviously isn't fair if you're actually publishing in top venues, but it definitely happens.

(2) As has been said here many times before, publishing isn't a matter of checking off boxes or putting notches in your belt. Believe it or not, hiring committees actually read what you write, and if they don't like it, or like someone else's stuff better, then it doesn't matter where or how many times it's been published.

Anyway, I'm about ready to call bullshit. There have got to be only a handful of junior scholars out there with that kind of record. I won't ask that someone post the name of the alleged candidate, but I will that someone post the name of ANYONE junior who has that kind of record. There can't be many.; 10:11 PM, December 09, 2010
Anonymous said...: first time posting on this topic: I chaired a search two years ago at a pretty good job, and there was a candidate who had at least three pubs in the list at level 4 or higher. It's easy to conceive that he now has 5. I know he is hasnt gotten a TT.

We instead hired another good candidate, who also at the time had three or more at level 4 or higher, who was a better match and came from a more established program.

Again, you need to publish, and you need to be lucky.; 9:13 AM, December 10, 2010
Anonymous said...: This is absurd. I don't actually care what your personal opinion is on the top ten list. Matt Moore did a survey of the most important journals, which was published in a peer-reviewed journal. My colleagues will use that to judge the top ten, not anonymous blogger ideas as to whether historical or analytical journals are better.; 1:31 PM, December 12, 2010
Anonymous said...: That same survey ranked liberal arts colleges as amongst the leading PhD programs in the field and theory and event above philosophy and public affairs.; 5:41 PM, December 12, 2010
Anonymous said...: Yeah. The survey was dodgy and not definitive.; 8:13 PM, December 12, 2010
Anonymous said...: 1:31 here.

I don't agree with it either. It's partial, parochial, and wrong. But who cares? The list is now dogma, until a better survey comes along, and one is not forthcoming from anonymous posts, no matter how forcefully argued they are.; 12:15 PM, December 13, 2010
Anonymous said...: "I don't agree with it either. It's partial, parochial, and wrong. But who cares? The list is now dogma, until a better survey comes along, and one is not forthcoming from anonymous posts, no matter how forcefully argued they are."

If I recall correctly, the list had Catholic University and Baylor ranked ahead of Cambridge for PhD programs in political theory.; 12:31 PM, December 13, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^^ "The list is now dogma..."

In what universe? My department is using the same list that it's used for years. Moore's survey gets at best a derisive snort. Saying it's so don't make it so.; 1:14 PM, December 13, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ For the fun of it, I asked my department what they thought of that survey. None of them, including the other TT theorist, had read it or heard of it.

The notion that it's some kind of "dogma" strikes me as ludicrous. About 98% of PS issues go straight in the bin, anyway.; 1:49 PM, December 13, 2010
Anonymous said...: How I'd rank in reading a file (which is different from how I'd expect a poli sci department to rank come tenure time)--

Top ten:
1) APSR, Ethics, PPA
2) PT, JPP,
3) HPT, ROP, Perspectives, JOP, Political Studies

4) Close behind the top 10: PPE, EJPT, Polity, JHI

Not so close behind, though respectable:
5) Constellations, Theory & Event, Social Research, Social Philosophy & Policy, Critical Review, Social Theory & Practice

Irrelevant: AJPS. The median and modal issue has zero political theory articles. If they're not going to pretend to be a full-discipline journal, I'm not going to pretend they matter for the whole discipline.; 5:56 PM, December 13, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ Just out of curiousity, where would you place PRQ? Below the group 5 or just overlooked?; 6:03 PM, December 13, 2010
Anonymous said...: I think of PRQ like AJPS. Highly respected in other fields but irrelevant to us. And that means I wouldn't give any special weight to PRQ. A journal like that doesn't have a deep bench of theory referees and doesn't have editors with much experience with theory manuscripts. So the very rare piece that makes it through isn't necessarily particularly good- and the self-reinforcing cycle means that normally very good manuscripts aren't sent there.

I recognize that it sometimes makes sense to try to publish there, as with AJPS, in order to impress political scientists who can't read but can count impact factors. But in terms of what impresses *me* when I read a file, no.; 8:54 AM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: "Top ten:
1) APSR, Ethics, PPA
2) PT, JPP,
3) HPT, ROP, Perspectives, JOP, Political Studies

4) Close behind the top 10: PPE, EJPT, Polity, JHI

Not so close behind, though respectable:
5) Constellations, Theory & Event, Social Research, Social Philosophy & Policy, Critical Review, Social Theory & Practice"

Like previous attempts to rank here, this list is clearly biased in favor of analytic approaches, with the three top analytic journals being in the top two categories, and journals like HPT and JHI relegated to the lower. Further, AJPS and JOP tend to publish history pieces when they do theory. As such, they remain highly valuable places for history folks to publish. So this also reflects an analytic bias.; 9:41 AM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ That would be a mistake. I haven't read enough of them to speak to the quality, but over the last few years PRQ has poblished the same volume of political theory articles as JOP.; 10:05 AM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ sb ^^ in previous post; 10:09 AM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: I'm the most recent journal-ranker. I'm historical, not analytic, and have never even tried publishing in Ethics or PPA. But I think any given article in one of them is more likely to have an influence than any given article in HPT (which is more like my "favorite" journal).

plus I award points for the difficulty of the maneuver. it's hard for theorists to get published in those journals, both because of their tiny acceptance rates and because they need to pass review from philosophers.; 11:48 AM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: "plus I award points for the difficulty of the maneuver. it's hard for theorists to get published in those journals, both because of their tiny acceptance rates and because they need to pass review from philosophers."

Well, the problem with this is still that three of the top five journals ranked are unavailable for two-thirds of the field to publish in. At the very least, the above rankings, by its announced standards (difficult and philosophy-oriented), would have to include JHP, which accepts 2-5% of submissions.

We should also add by the suggested standards above ("it's hard for theorists to get published in those journals") that JOP and AJPS are likewise incredibly difficult to publish in. So they go back to the top of the hierarchy, or near to it.

Of course, it's really difficult to make such lists. In reading files, however, I think most of us know the difference between scholars with an impressive record and those not yet there. The most basic criterion is that someone has to be publishing regularly in outlets both generally known and respected. Everything else (whether one is publishing in JPP or HPT, for example) is a marginal variable and more about taste than quality.; 1:33 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: These lists are silly. Whatever the list might like to you and your sub-field compatriots, if what you're interested in is how journals can impact hiring and promotion then what you care about is the journals which will mean the most to the whole discipline, which is APSR, AJPS, JOP (in that order). Publishing in Ethics or HPT is great, but the people who you need to impress with your publication history probably won't have heard of them. So if I'm advising a student where to shoot for, the first three choices are obvious. Default to sub-field journals only if you think you stand no chance getting into one of the big three (and of course some great work will always be too specialized for those journals, but you want them whenever you can get them).; 6:01 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^The rest of the discipline isn't as monolithic as some of us sometimes think. Neither IR nor comparative people worship at the altar of the Big 3, and they're all perfectly capable of understanding when we tell them that theory doesn't either.; 9:19 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ I really suspect like the "big 3" worship is a lot more limited than some online suggestions would suggest. All the schools I've had experience with--two R1s ranked probably in the 25-40 range and a well regarded, somewhat research heavy private liberal arts college--there wasn't much emphasis placed on them. At all places, people were rewarded for what their impact, and for publishing in arenas that garnered respect and attention in thier subfield. The relative respect one would get for a "big three" publication relative to a top subfield journal was negligible. I don't think this view is really all that unusual.; 9:45 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: Big 3 matters, not because of "worship", but because, besides the fact that they are where most of the rest of the discipline is aiming, the rest of the discipline know not a whole lot about theory. An IR person at least knows what the top comparative journals are. Theory? They usually have no idea, so "top theory journal" is meaningless to them, and since many of them are suspiscious about whether theory even belongs in the discipline in the first place, even they accept that you've published in a top theory journal that will impress them much less than if an IR person publishes in their top sub-field journal. The big three are important for departments not just because of name recognition, but because they provide a common ground and a better sense that theorists work might belong in the discipline. Whether or not all this is fair is a separate question. But it is the reality.; 10:25 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ Give me a break. I work in a not-particularly-theory-knowledgeable dept and they all know what the top theory journals are, partly because I've told them, and partly because they know how to use the Google.; 10:36 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^^ Yeah, see that's just not what it's like at any of the schools I've studied or worked at. Some of my friends from grad school are now in schools that get excited about the big 3, but many others are in schools that pretty indifferent to them. The idea that "most" of the discipline prefers them or aims for them over top subfield journals is frequently asserted, but it's not been demonstrated.; 11:35 PM, December 14, 2010
Anonymous said...: I've recently read tenure letters in theory and one of the other non-American fields. In both cases at least letter-writer helpfully said, in effect: "These are the top X journals in our subfield, and this person has published in N of them." Neither AJPS nor JOP was on either list. When I'm writing theory tenure letters I do something similar-- I discuss the journals the person has published in and their place in the subfield or in the candidate's specialty.

I think this is a good habit, not only to educate the AJPS-worshiping Americanists, but also for the benefit of Deans and higher-level tenure committees that don't know anything about poli sci, theory or otherwise. I've seen tenure discussions at two universities, and I've see lists like that relied on in discussion at both of them.

When there are tenured theorists in-house their views on journals (and quality) should be consulted first. But it's valuable to have arms-length evaluations, too.

And, by the way, that makes it not a waste of time for us to occasionally think about a list of top journals. We spend a lot of our lives writing a lot of letters for tenure or promotion. We need to know what's fair and responsible to say about journals. It'd be dumb for us to just rely on the big-three shorthand because we think it's what some of our readers already think. It's be dumb for us to rely on the Moore study with its obvious problems. Impact factor can help but it overvalues analytic philosophy journals, and lots of our most important journals aren't in the database at all.

So I keep a list of my own, and I appreciate sometimes hearing what other people's lists look like, so I can learn and re-evaluate from time to time.

Anyone have thoughts on Contemporary Political Theory, Journal of Applied Philosophy, or CRISPP?; 8:00 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Top three matters for the same reason to theorists that it does for other fields, which is that they're harder to get into. Some of what's published in theory journals is better, but a lot is not and that's because they're easier to get into.; 8:44 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ I would guess that all of the journals that we're talking about have acceptance rates below 10%. So you're slicing it pretty thin if you want to argue that a 5% vs. an 8% acceptance rate makes a big difference in quality, especially when you consider that the APSR -- like, say Harvard College -- attracts a lot of random submissions/applications based on the brand name.

Anyway, the key to promotion at the better depts isn't journal selectivity but impact of the work. I'm much more likely to read & cite an article in, say, the JPP than the AJPS because I read the former and not the latter. So if you want to get ahead in the field then that's the better bet.; 9:19 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ with theorists that is generally true, but theorists are usually a discrete and insular minority in political science departments. So if you're telling students to rely on theorists for hiring/promotion, then I would say that you're putting them at a disadvantage.

(Another problem with saying "well, we can tell the non-theorists that candidate X has published in a top theory journal" is that the innumerable "ranking" threads on sites like this go to show that we ourselves don't exactly agree on what the top journals are, and that the sub-divisions break down even further, e.g., history of political thought versus analytic, etc.); 9:31 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Ethics and PPA both have acceptance rates lower than JOP.; 9:34 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Neither IR nor comparative people worship at the altar of the Big 3,

---------

false, at least for comparative in dpeartments that have moved beyond region studies.; 10:04 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: If magical fairy granted me three wishes with regard to journal placement, it would be:

1. APSR
2. APSR
3. APSR

Anyone else who says differently needs to rethink their professional affiliation.; 10:10 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: 9:31: to the extent that depts look at citation counts and the kind of intangible networking benefits that come from having one's work widely read, then I respectfully disagree. And as someone has pointed out already, non-theorists are going to rely more heavily on outside letters for tenure decisions, and those are going to reflect the preferences of theorists.

As for the "problem" that we can't agree on a ranking of journals, I frankly don't see the problem. If someone asked each of us what to make of a placement in PT, HPT, JPP, Ethics, ROP or Constellations, I doubt that we would disagree much. The fact that we can't say which of those is, say, the #3 journal in theory overall is irrelevant.; 10:32 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: @10:32: I don't disagree with you about theorists. I just disagree about how much theorists count in the hiring/promotion process.

But as for PT or ROP or Constellations, etc., I agree that those are good, often excellent, journals. But I think if I told a student that they'd be just as well off there as in APSR I'd be screwing them over. Yes, one of those journals could help more with getting their name out to other people doing their specific kind of work (which varies from one of those journals to the next), and that can be very valuable (and can also lead to citations in some cases). But for the profession as a whole, I disagree. references are great. But a lot of the profession doesn't really believe that theory even belongs in political science, which is why an APSR can trump a reference that says "well, Constellations is a top journal in this sub-division of the theory sub-field".; 10:50 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: I agree that the APSR is a prestige publication and that in many cases that would be the ideal placement for a political theory article. My counterfactual was the AJPS, not the APSR. But I would point out that the same people who think that theorists don't belong in the discipline also think that the APSR only publishes theory as a sop to political correctness or some such thing. So you're not going to convince them that you belong by publishing there.; 11:06 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: ^ Yes, this. The issue under dispute isn't the APSR. It's AJPS and JOP vs subfield journals. Everyone who has made a list has put APSR at the top or tied for top.

Part of the issue is that there are very different kinds of departments. A junior theorist who is the only theorist in an research-intensive, overwhelmingly Americanist/ formal/ quant department has some reason to fetishize the big 3 (though in the weird case where they only published in the AJPS over and over, they'd have trouble getting good tenure letters because no theorist ever would have heard of them). The same is true for an IR person or comparativist in such a department. And *some* big research public universities-- which overlaps with but isn't the same as "research-intensive, overwhelmingly Americanist/ formal/ quant"-- have some strict quantitative measures by disciplinary ranking or impact factors. For those people, AJPS > PT.

For the rest of us, no.; 11:58 AM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: I have an entirely different reason for preferring AJPS, JOP, and APSR to PT: they're more forgiving of more extended arguments. PT has an 8,000 word-count limit. The "big-three" allow for longer papers without specific word counts. For this reason alone, I almost never submit to PT. You could argue I should learn to write more succinctly. That's fine. But it's also the case that I write in an area with many competing interpretations that demand more attention than I can typically give in 8,000 words in addition to my substantive argument.

As an aside, I check out the APSR, JOP, and AJPS every quarter for their theory articles, and would think myself irresponsible if I didn't. I doubt I'm the only one who does this.; 1:18 PM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: ... zzzzzzzzzzzz ...

whah? huh?

... zzzzzzzzzzzz ...; 1:51 PM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Perhaps a little change of discussion is in order to liven this place up a bit.

How important is it for someone on the market to have some kind of "online presence", i.e., an easily searchable and publicly accessible CV or perhaps even a personal website devoted to outlining academic achievements? Are there websites that are devoted to this sort of service for academics? How often do search committees do general google searches just to find any references to an applicant?

Thanks in advance!; 2:48 PM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Websites r much more boring/much less impt than journals; 4:22 PM, December 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: Um, sorry, what?; 11:12 AM, December 16, 2010
Anonymous said...: obvsly, s/he mnt ls "impotent"; 12:04 PM, December 16, 2010
Anonymous said...: I can't seem to post this on the proper thread for some reason, so I'll just put it here:

The Law/Theory post-doc at UC Boulder has been filled by David Leitch (UCSD PhD).; 7:04 PM, January 02, 2011
Amit Ron said...: The call for papers for the 2011 Annual Conference of the Association for Political Theory (APT) is now posted on its website:
http://apt.coloradocollege.edu/6b_1_Call_for_Papers_2011.pdf

Proposals are due by February 15, 2011.

Please make sure to read the information about the new working group panel initiative at the bottom part of the CFP.; 3:22 PM, January 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: (also can't seem to post in the jobs thread, so I'm posting here).

There's a "Philosophy of Rights, Justice and Social Change" position at the Heller school at Brandeis. Job ad here:
http://heller.brandeis.edu/about/miscellaneous/faculty-positions.html
Could be something the right political theorist could reasonably hope to be competitive for.; 10:28 PM, January 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: Did those ****ers at Barnard really cancel their search without hiring?; 3:27 PM, January 06, 2011
Kennan Ferguson said...: Hi, again. Following Amit, I add another call for papers I recently sent out to Foundations members. Both organizations are excellent, and both provide opportunities for young scholars to get involved.; 3:44 PM, January 06, 2011
Kennan Ferguson said...: Call for Papers
Articulations of Justice, Part. 2: Justice and Equality

IPSA RC31 (Research Committee on Political Philosophy)
Second Conference
July 13-17, 2011, Sydney, Australia

The modern era is notable for its emphasis on justice as the idée-clef of political philosophy. Justice has always been the primary virtue of social institutions. Over the last forty years, under the prompting of John Rawls, it has become more pervasive than ever.

Does the moral pluralism of modern societies of itself impose a thin, formal conception of the good society? Does modern pluralism directly preclude some more substantive normative basis for politics? Can political philosophy do no more than identify fair terms of cooperation that accommodate each individual’s pursuit of his or her specific conception of the good life? Is such a formal conception of the good society adequate? Can it motivate moral behavior? Is it too elusive to guide actual decisions?

This broad, modern debate touches on the central problem of articulating justice so as to (a) embrace the fact of modern plurality, without (b) falling into an abstract idealism far removed from the concrete, practical contexts in which justice must apply.

The Research Committee on Political Philosophy (RC31) of The International Political Science Association (IPSA) seeks to contend with this difficulty by relating justice to the main ideas underpinning modern society: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity - in the language of 1789. ‘Fraternity’ is today more commonly formulated as ‘solidarity’ or ‘community’, and earlier, among the Ancients, as ‘friendship’ (philia, amicitia, agape, caritas, eros, etc.).

IPSA RC31 is sponsoring a cycle of three conferences:
The First (2010) was held in Jena, Germany on the relation of justice to liberty.

The Second (2011) is being held in Sydney, Australia on Justice and Equality (13-17 July). The Sydney conference is hosted by Macquarie University and jointly sponsored by Macquarie and Sydney Universities. It is also backed by CRISPP (Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy) and The Journal of Political Philosophy.

The Third (2012) conference will attend to questions of Justice and Fraternity.

Proposals are now invited for the SYDNEY conference. All papers should attend to the relation of justice to equality, whether the approach is normative or empirical, analytical or historical.

Please send a preliminary abstract of no more than one page, and no later than 10 January, 2010 to Prof. Preston King pking@morehouse.edu, Chair of RC31, and to the local organizer, Prof. Stephanie Lawson Stephanie.lawson@mq.edu.au.; 3:45 PM, January 06, 2011
Kennan Ferguson said...: Call for Papers
Articulations of Justice, Part. 2: Justice and Equality

IPSA RC31 (Research Committee on Political Philosophy)
Second Conference
July 13-17, 2011, Sydney, Australia

The modern era is notable for its emphasis on justice as the idée-clef of political philosophy. Justice has always been the primary virtue of social institutions. Over the last forty years, under the prompting of John Rawls, it has become more pervasive than ever.

Does the moral pluralism of modern societies of itself impose a thin, formal conception of the good society? Does modern pluralism directly preclude some more substantive normative basis for politics? Can political philosophy do no more than identify fair terms of cooperation that accommodate each individual’s pursuit of his or her specific conception of the good life? Is such a formal conception of the good society adequate? Can it motivate moral behavior? Is it too elusive to guide actual decisions?

This broad, modern debate touches on the central problem of articulating justice so as to (a) embrace the fact of modern plurality, without (b) falling into an abstract idealism far removed from the concrete, practical contexts in which justice must apply.; 3:45 PM, January 06, 2011
Kennan Ferguson said...: The Research Committee on Political Philosophy (RC31) of The International Political Science Association (IPSA) seeks to contend with this difficulty by relating justice to the main ideas underpinning modern society: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity - in the language of 1789. ‘Fraternity’ is today more commonly formulated as ‘solidarity’ or ‘community’, and earlier, among the Ancients, as ‘friendship’ (philia, amicitia, agape, caritas, eros, etc.).

IPSA RC31 is sponsoring a cycle of three conferences:
The First (2010) was held in Jena, Germany on the relation of justice to liberty.

The Second (2011) is being held in Sydney, Australia on Justice and Equality (13-17 July). The Sydney conference is hosted by Macquarie University and jointly sponsored by Macquarie and Sydney Universities. It is also backed by CRISPP (Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy) and The Journal of Political Philosophy.

The Third (2012) conference will attend to questions of Justice and Fraternity.

Proposals are now invited for the SYDNEY conference. All papers should attend to the relation of justice to equality, whether the approach is normative or empirical, analytical or historical.

Please send a preliminary abstract of no more than one page, and no later than 10 January, 2010 to Prof. Preston King pking@morehouse.edu, Chair of RC31, and to the local organizer, Prof. Stephanie Lawson Stephanie.lawson@mq.edu.au.; 3:46 PM, January 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: What happened at barnard?; 2:22 PM, January 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: other blog reports that Wisconsin hired own PhD (now at UgA) with tenure for assistant search.

Is this plausible?; 9:42 PM, January 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: It's been up on the wiki for several days, plenty of time for someone to take it down if it wasn't so.

Dan's a smart guy with a very good publication record, so I'm not surprised that he's done well. Yes, it's a little odd for UW to hire its own Ph.D., and it's not necessarily the kind of hire I would have expected them to make, especially at the tenured level. But there you go.; 11:08 PM, January 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: Just demonstrates that this practice is perfectly apt and noncontroversial for Straussian (Boston College) and non-Straussian (UW Madison) programs alike.; 8:02 AM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Gee, one track mind much?; 10:25 AM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Congratulations to Daniel Kapust. I don't know him at all, but judging by his record he looks like a strong hire and strong tenure case. It looks like Madison is building a coterie of up-and-comers with an eye to the future. With the strength of his record, and the way he complements the interests of those already there, it doesn't seem like there's anything untoward about the fact that he's a Madison Ph.D. Seems like a great hire no matter where he got his Ph.D.; 11:39 AM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Not a tenured hire^.; 11:55 AM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Unlike BC, this search was not advertised as open or tenured. So hiring at tenured would be unconventional and possibly suspect-- I know lots of tenured people who would have applied, including myself.

That they hired their recent own (2005) in such an unconventional way --assuming it was with tenure-- says much about the place.; 12:23 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: 12.23 here again. I say this not knowing Kapust or his work. Congratulations to him!; 12:24 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: To reiterate ^^ - not with tenure. This was an assistant level search, and assistant level hire. It might be possible that the PSJR board is, on occasion, incorrect.; 12:25 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: As someone with knowledge of the search, I can attest that it was untenured, and the moderators at the other blog have been contacted to correct the false rumor.; 12:53 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Dan Kapust is a great guy, an impressive scholar, and a hell of a good teacher. (And no, I'm not him.)

UW-Madison doesn't make a practice of hiring its own Ph.Ds and as a grad student there in the 1990s, my impression was that having gotten your degree from the department was likely to be a burden to overcome rather than an advantage.; 1:18 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: will uga be hiring now?; 1:29 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: It's also worth pointing out that Dan's advisors -- Yack and Riley, I believe -- have long since left Madison, so the usual concerns about self-replication don't apply in this case.; 2:09 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^^ Well I hope they gave him a short clock. With a Cambridge book forthcoming he certainly has a tenurable record.; 2:13 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ good point; 4:31 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: true, but a tenurable record is much different than a record that is worth hiring at associate or near associate at a place like UW.

He will likely need more.; 5:00 PM, January 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Hard to think of many better places for a student to do ancient thought now (with Zumbrunnen, Avramenko, and Kapust). Good for UW.; 11:55 AM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: Harvard? Princeton? Chicago? Duke?; 2:15 PM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: The worst of enemies - those who praise.

Anyway, new topic? Any other moves or movement?; 2:22 PM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: 2:15, no one does ancient at any of those programs, except for Euben, who is retiring.; 3:47 PM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: Any inside info on whether the Barnard SC will return to the pool or simply redo the search next year?; 4:24 PM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: Hard to think of many better places for a student to do ancient thought now (with Zumbrunnen, Avramenko, and Kapust). Good for UW.

Are you kidding me?; 6:08 PM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Barnard may not try again for a while. There's no particular reason to think the dynamic that sunk this search won't be repeated again next year, and the year after, etc.; 6:48 PM, January 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: "2:15, no one does ancient at any of those programs, except for Euben, who is retiring."

Maybe *in political science departments* but who says that is the best way to study classical thought. The best way is to go to a solid program sympathetic to HPT and go hard core on doubling up through the classics department. Same applies for doing anything outside of modern European HPT. (Islamic, medieval Euro, etc.); 8:39 AM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ I think you have kind of a skewed view of what goes on in most Classics departments.

Can you name any political theorists who did what you suggest? the only one I can think of is Ober, and he's had a very unconventional (though wildly successful) career path.; 9:15 AM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^I think 8:39 means that to specialize in ancient PT, it's wise to get a degree in poli sci but take a number of classics classes while in grad school. This is likely to help with your language skills and the breadth and depth of your knowledge of Greek or Latin texts.

The Ober case doesn't match that recommendation. He took the highly unusual path of getting a classics degree and gradually morphing himself into a political theorist. In fact, until his move to Stanford he held a position in classics at Princeton.

On the other hand, I know a number of folks who have specialized in ancient PT who have taken a few classics courses. I'm sure they would say that they wouldn't be as competent with ancient texts if they hadn't worked with classicists.; 9:32 AM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Fair enough. But then the advice to go to a PT program with 0-1 people working on ancient PT with the thought that you can rely on Classics to make up the difference doesn't make sense. I'm sure that Wisconsin (to use the example at hand) has a Classics dept. that's more than good enough to teach you Latin & Greek and give you a broad background in the literature.; 10:26 AM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Dan Kapust is an outstanding scholar and genial individual. It's hard to imagine Wisconsin finding a better colleague that simultaneously raises their profile and makes it a viable place to study political theory once again. Well done. It's nice to see someone hired on the basis of accomplishments rather than simply promise. One or two more hires like this for Wisconsin and they're back in the top ten.; 10:47 AM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: 6:48 - "the dynamic that sunk this search" - do you know what the actual dynamic was or should we just assume one of the usual search-sinking dynamics in political science must have been at work?; 3:55 PM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Anyone have any info on the Texas Pan American search?; 4:05 PM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yes. I will post it when the mod gets home.; 4:34 PM, January 11, 2011
administrator said...: The Junior Jobs discussion is open again--I really appreciate your patience.; 6:21 PM, January 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: There are also other departments besides ps or classics that do ancient(such as philosophy departments or UChi social thought).; 1:25 PM, January 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Fascinating.; 5:59 PM, January 22, 2011
Arash Abizadeh said...: The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP) is pleased to announce the results of its 2011 book manuscript competition. The Annual Montreal Political Theory Manuscript Workshop Award has been awarded to James Ingram, Assistant Professor of Political Science at McMaster University, for his manuscript titled "Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism."; 2:51 PM, January 31, 2011
Anonymous said...: Job application question:

I finished my diss a year ago and have not yet published any part of it. I am almost finished with a draft of an article that I want to send out soon to a journal.

When I apply to a place like Williams which wants a writing sample, is it preferable to send an old dissertation chapter or an unvetted new article that is only just out for review?; 5:54 PM, February 02, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ It's perfectly permissable to send either. I'd send whichever one you think best represents you. Obviously not having a publication hurts, but it's still wise to put your best foot forward; 12:04 AM, February 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: How many years in a row do I have to have absolutely no interest in the expensive Foundations plenary speaker before it's time to vote with my feet and stop paying dues?

Paying dues to support prizes that go to other people who then move ahead of me in status doesn't seem like that good a deal, either. Even worse is paying dues to support prizes that aren't even awarded, especially if I or my students presented or wrote something that was eligible.

I've tried to be a good citizen for a long time, but I'm pretty close to deciding to say screw it.; 2:59 PM, February 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: Who is the Foundations plenary speaker this year?; 3:56 PM, February 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Yeah, i'm coming around to the view that foundations is controlled by a generation and genre of people with whom I have increasingly little in common. It's outlived its usefulness from my point of view. APT is a much more intellectually vital organization.; 4:49 PM, February 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Another vote for that view. I'm not a member and don't pay dues.; 10:31 PM, February 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: who is the foundations speaker for the seattle conference?; 2:21 PM, February 06, 2011
Amit Ron said...: Reminder: the deadline for the submitting proposals for the 2011 annual meeting of the Association for Political Theory is February 15 (next Tuesday!). The CFP and the proposal form can be found here. Please also notice the new working-group panel initiative (details here).; 12:17 PM, February 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: to the foundations discontents above, count me as among your ranks.

some grist for your mill: us theorists have 3 or more "sections" at APSA, only one of which is organized.

what is the potential to "organize" one of the others, and make it more representative of the field as a whole (or the parts of it currently under-represented)? is there interest/would you join?

white further fragmentin the field might be a risk, it seems remote. plus, perhaps this would wake up the "foundations" wallahs.; 11:11 AM, February 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ As another theorist disenchanted with Foundations, I would join a different section, although I like APT, and I don't mind waiting for the self-important clique that run Foundations to retire.; 9:37 PM, February 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Who runs Foundations?; 8:55 PM, February 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: I don't know why people keep talking about retirement. If there is a problem, which I have no view on, it's not a generational one.

Chair:
Kennan Ferguson

Secretary:
Michael Gibbons

Program chair:
Lori Marso

Executive Council:
Danielle Allen
Paul Apostolitis
Jill Frank
Robert Gooding-Williams
Lori J. Marso
Anne Norton; 10:26 AM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Does Foundations really even do anything? Is there anything for it to do? What, really, could be the complaint? It's not like they're handing out jobs, doling out journal space or approving tenure votes.; 10:33 AM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Moving Straussian discussion (gasp!) here from over on the junior thread.

"The irritation comes less from you (^) but from the fact that this topic comes up again, and again, and again, and again, and very time, we hear the same things over, and over, and over..."

Fair enough, but as I recall the previous conversations, insofar as they went awry, were about the supposedly pernicious influence of Straussianism in the profession, the supposedly clubby or conspiratorial of Straussians themselves, etc. I'm trying to get at the content of the position itself, which seems like something we should be able to discuss civilly in this forum.

So when I teach Leviathan I spend a lot of time talking about the Reformation, the wars of religion, the Stuart kings, regicide & civil war, the Commonwealth, Engagement, etc. I also spend a lot of time talking about materialism, determinism, egoism, different ways of thinking about liberty, etc. I take it that I would be teaching the text badly if I didn't do both of those things.

Why? Because I think it's important that students learn not only about philosophical ideas that might or should appear as live options for them, but also that they learn something about where ideas come from, how they catch on, how they can take on different meanings in different contexts, how the structure of a text is shaped by the problems to which it means to respond, etc. The idea of the "lone genius" or "timeless truth" seems to me to be as misleading and pernicious in philosophy as it is in any other sphere of life.

So I have a hard time seeing how someone could see Hobbes as being in no way a product of his time, or think that he should be taught as if he were. Which makes me think that I must be missing something, and I'm happy to be told (civilly!) what that is.; 10:36 AM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yes and no. Foundations is the organized face of political theory within the discipline. The group of people at the top of it represent us to APSA, and supposedly speak for us in cases like the Penn State letter. Given that there's no contested elections, and not really a lot of energy or enthusiasm for volunteering, that always seems strange to me.

But the things Foundations does that affect us in the trenches are paper/ panel allocations and prizes. And those aren't done by the permanent leadership-- they're done by a program chair and prize committees that change every year, selected by the leadership in ways I don't understand.

The original complaint was about the plenary speaker, and about paying dues to support that expensive annual event. I think the plenary speaker is chosen by the program chair, but I'm not sure.; 10:56 AM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: @10:36: as a Straussian, I would say that in your penultimate paragraph Straussians could generally agree with the long sentence in the paragraph, but would disagree with the last sentence. So, although Straussian work can and sometimes does take into account the sorts of issues you allude to in the preceding paragraph, Straussians are less likely to focus those elements in teaching undergraduates, because we see them as less important than the ways in which Hobbes fits into a “timeless” conversation among “lone geniuses”. And this is especially because Straussians generally want to teach the philosophical ideas that might appear as “live options”. All of this means that, up to a point, the difference between your presentation and a Straussian presentation is a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind, and partly for this reason, the sort of acrimony that exists in exchanges about Straussianism seems gratuitous. But as for the differences, in your final paragraph I don’t think the issue is that Hobbes’s writings were in no way a product of their time, which I think that obviously were, but that they also transcend their time, because Hobbes’s thoughts were not bound and determined by his historical situation. That is an important difference, but I don’t think that Straussians are the only people who would make that claim though.; 11:54 AM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: For what it's worth the "moderate" Straussian position here seems very similar to how an analytic or active philosopher would read Hobbes. Rawls's lectures on Hobbes, for example, are about his version of the social contract as a "living possibility" for us. So this can't be what rankles people about the Straussian interpretation.; 12:00 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: i wasn't aware of a "problem" with the hobbes interpretation. tangentially related to hobbes, however, there seem to be two interesting ideas that are more or less unique to straussians (please correct me if i'm misinformed in any aspect of that statement):

* machiavelli, not hobbes, as the original modern, and

* locke as essentially hobbes, jr.; 12:34 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: yes, re: Machiavelli/Hobbes

re: Hobbes/Locke, depends on which Straussian you're asking. They've published debates about this.; 12:39 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: On Rawls and the social contract: I don't know his lectures on the history of political philosophy, although I know they were praised by Michael Zuckert, so maybe they are closer to the Straussian take than one would expect. Rawls's major works, although an exercise in social contract theory, obviously do not take Hobbes's own social contract and the arguments for it very seriously as living position, though.; 12:42 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ There are plenty of other contemporary thinkers who do/did that, however: James Buchanan, Jean Hampton, Gregory Kavka, David Gauthier, etc. Rawls, in his own political philosophy, is working in a Kantian/Rousseauean contract tradition, with occasional nods to the Lockean one. But you're right in saying that he doesn't take the Hobbesian tradition very seriously; his comment that "to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice" would be disputed by Buchanan and perhaps Gauthier.; 1:12 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: 11:54, thanks for the thoughtful reply. This is exactly why I thought this exchange would be worth having, because it sounds like the differences are indeed a matter of degree rather than kind -- and perhaps nothing more than a prudential difference of opinion about how undergraduates should be taught.

12:00, it's not just analytics who can get on board with this approach. For example, can you guess who wrote this:

"The investigation of alien systems of belief provides us with an irreplaceable means of standing back from our own prevailing assumptions and structures of thought, and of situating ourselves in relation to other and very different forms of life."

or this:

"it is only by refusing the vulgar demand for relevance that we can hope to indicate the serious way in which the study of intellectual history is indeed relevant to the assessment of our present beliefs."

?

...none other than Quentin Skinner.

So can't we all just get along?; 1:14 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: 11:54 here again: I wouldn't say that we should "all just get along" really, because serious disagreements are a healthy and inevitable part of intellectual life. But I would say that there is enough overlap that there is more room for productive engagement, and ought to be less of the histrionic nonsense one often sees on this blog and elsewhere (from both Straussians and their critics).; 1:37 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Right, that was meant partly in jest.

But let's come back to that sentence that we disagree about: "The idea of the 'lone genius' or 'timeless truth' seems to me to be as misleading and pernicious in philosophy as it is in any other sphere of life."

(1) I don't like the idea of "lone geniuses" for three reasons.

(a) It's false to how great ideas and works actually get produced. Genius, even in those like Hobbes who are self-consciously avant garde, always grows in a cultural soil from which it's inextricable, and is usually if not always the product of intensive dialogue and collaboration. To teach young people, or any people, that real geniuses must or should stand apart from their time and place seems to me both to cut the seeds of genius off at the root and to rob genius of its social and historical benefits.

(b) It causes us to read texts badly. If we view, say, Hobbes as a "lone genius" then we miss all the places where he's alluding to, parroting or parodying things that were said by others, not just the great minds of the past but his ordinary or not-quite-great contemporaries. In other words to read him as an author apart from his time is to in effect make him a part of our time (this is more or less what Skinner is suggesting in the first quote above).

(c) It tends to give rise to a kind of hero worship which is unhealthy in any domain, and especially in politics. These were men, after all.

(2) As for timeless truths, I think that the effort to label a proposition or a principle a "timeless truth" is almost always in reality an effort to shut down or pre-empt a conversation about whether it's a truth at all. In the history of morality and politics there are enough morally dubious claims that once passed as timeless truths (you can think of examples as easily as I can) to suggest that this is an idea (or piece of ideology) that we would be better off to do without.; 2:04 PM, February 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Well put.

This is why Straussian approaches, moderate or not, are so wrong-headed.; 4:27 AM, February 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: 11:54/1:37 here again (sorry, it’s going to take me a while to keep up with any exchanges here): I’d just say the following about your point –

(a) I’m not sure that this is such a big sticking point. I tend to think that many Straussians would deny this point, but I also think that they/we could admit that genius “grows in a cultural soil from which it’s inextricable” without upsetting our whole approach, so long as it was admitted that genius can grow apart and away from that soil. However, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want to teach young people that it’s wrong to believe that “real geniuses must or should stand apart from their time and place”: why would you object to the idea of a thinker who consciously challenges the mores and assumptions of their time?

(b) Again, I don’t disagree with this point, and I think that the best Straussian scholarship can and does take this into account. We tend not to teach undergraduates in this way because we think these issues are secondary, but in a graduate seminar or our own scholarship I think these things are definitely important. So once more I think this is a question of emphasis: does you take these kinds of points as the heart of the text, or do you take them as secondary.

(c) I think this is a danger of the approach, but I think it’s a necessary danger, and preferable to what I see as the danger of your approach which I suggest above, namely, that it seems to me like you’re presenting “genius” as subordinate and subservient to the orders which happened to prevailed in their time, which does not seem like a healthy model to emulate. But stated like this, these are extreme positions, and it’s not really a matter of what you or I would like, but of what was in fact the case.

(2) I disagree that discussing “timeless truth” is “in reality an effort to shut down or pre-empt a conservation about whether it’s truth at all”. The reason I disagree is that “geniuses” have not always agreed with each other: thus, as Strauss once put it (near the end of his essay “What is Liberal Education?”), as teachers “we must transform their [the philosophers’] monologues into a dialogue”; and, “since the greatest minds contradict each other regarding the most important matters, they compel us to judge of their monologues; we cannot take on trust what any of them says”. Another way of putting this would be to say that the “timeless truths” are, in a way, timeless questions. But at the same time, Strauss and people like myself who follow his example see that in order to make it a “live” dialogue we have to take seriously the claims to truth advanced by each participant in the dialogue, and we have to take seriously the possibility that one or the other or some combination of them might have truths to tell us as well. No doubt you would still object, but my point here is only that I think you are over-stating the danger. So, again, this seems to me like, up to a point, a difference of degree – although, again, we shouldn’t overlook or under-emphasize those places where the differences cease to be of degree and become more fundamental.; 9:34 AM, February 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: Thanks to both (all?) of you for this recent, respectful exchange of views.; 3:56 PM, February 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Yes, thanks again for taking the time to respond so carefully and thoughtfully. This is really helpful. Let me try to clarify my position so we can see what it is that we disagree about in the end.

(1) Wrt genius. Of course I agree with you that geniuses challenge or "go beyond" their time in all kinds of ways, and indeed that this is what makes them geniuses. But I think of this, if you'll allow the jargon, in dialectical terms. Plato, I take it, was soaked in the philosophical and political currents of his time. Bach was soaked in the musical currents of his time. Cézanne was soaked in the artistic currents of his time. Einstein was soaked in the scientific currents of his time. Etc. In each case what made their achievement possible was precisely that they had absorbed and mastered the relevant cultural heritage and then used that raw material, that vocabulary, to do something new and great. It remains the case, I think, that Plato is unmistakably a 4th-century Greek thinker, just as Bach is unmistakably a 18th-century German composer, Cézanne unmistakably a 19th-century French painter, etc. (science is a harder case). That's what gives their work its flavor. And that's perfectly compatible, it seems to me, with the claim that their work, unlike that of their lesser contemporaries, can speak to us directly -- although even that's an exaggeration, since the ability to appreciate great philosophy, great music, and great painting only really comes once we've mastered the relevant vocabulary ourselves.

So while I agree that there's a sense in which geniuses stand apart (or out) from their time, and challenge it, and us, in all sorts of ways, I think that it's misleading, and bad advice for potential geniuses - not that they necessarily need or would listen to our advice - to start with that claim. You have to master your time before you can transcend it -- and I think it's reasonable to draw the corollary that one has to "master" the time of a genius, in whatever field, before one can fully appreciate their genius.

(2) Wrt truth. As you might expect I'm much more comfortable with the idea of timeless questions -- timeless truth claims? -- than of timeless truths. But then I'm not sure that the word truth is really doing much work. If what you're saying is that the great thinkers of the past (and we may disagree about which those are) raised questions and made claims that are worth thinking about seriously today, then of course I agree. Even Skinner, once you get past a couple of his youthful essays, says as much. I'm more suspicious of the claim that these thinkers are in some sense all asking and responding to the *same* questions -- a claim that many Straussians make -- because again I think that this makes us bad readers of texts. Many questions appear as urgent to Plato and Aristotle that don't appear urgent to Hobbes and Locke, and vice versa. In fact I would argue that this is true even of the two pairs of contemporaries. One of the exciting things about doing intellectual history is to try to see how it becomes possible for new questions to arise and old questions to lose (and then sometimes to recover) their urgency. To start with the claim that that there are certain questions that all great thinkers are responding to, and a certain menu of answers that they're bound to choose from, and that we know what these are in both cases, again seems to me to be a reductive and time-bound way of going about things.; 7:51 AM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: Again, this is spot on. And no self-respecting Straussian can accept the second argument without giving up many of the key claims of Straussian reading practice.; 11:05 AM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: Thanks for this really interesting exchange.

I was trained outside of the US, in a context in which none of the US political theory "schools" or their attendant intellectual identities mattered at all; I feel pretty sure that I am not committed in this regard. I find that my own teaching is closer to what is being described here as the Straussian approach -- who knew?! I'm a Straussian!

What's striking to me is that in talking about some of the issues as we are at present, we see differences of emphasis - important ones, at that - but what we don't see is the added step, or layer, which, in my view, causes trouble -- viz., the establishment of comprehensive, systemic interpretive rubrics. It's those rubrics that, in my view, preclude sensitive, dialectical (forgive me; I mean something like "allowing for tension and contradictions within the object") readings of serious thinkers/works/positions. It's that extra move that mucks everything up.

I don't mean to suggest that one can read via an entirely transparent interpretive lens, or with no intellectual priorities or commitments at all, only that there is a danger of reading dogmatically, I think, as soon as one gets too "trained up," in a sense, in any one school.

Analytics, for example, especially those with a philosophy rather than political theory background, can sometimes be oblivious to the ways in which Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau are just completely different, despite all deploying a social contract trope. Not just historically different, or politically different: I mean different philosophically, with totally different cross-cutting categories, etc., etc. etc. In the case of analytic philosophers, I suspect that it's a matter of intellectual technique alone, without the added level of sharply delineated intellectual/methodological identity, but still -- just an instance of meta-level assumptions occluding the text(s).

It would be good, I think, if no one felt the need to be a this-ean or a that-ean, beyond the kind of general predispositions that we've been discussing.; 2:02 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: One last note: I am aware that my post may make it sound as though I am advocating a kind of wishy-washy methodological pluralism. It's not that. If anything, it's an Aristotelian thought that the object comes first, preceding the mode of thinking about it, combined with a sympathy for Adorno's analysis of what he calls "system."; 2:10 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^/^^

I have no idea what you're talking about--what you've written here veers wildly between 'impenetrable' and 'meaningless'.

But I suspect if you didn't know you're a Straussian, you're not a Straussian. There's a lot more to membership in that particular club than has been discussed here, and outside of the US and Toronto, there are no Straussians.; 4:00 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 4:43 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 4:55 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 5:02 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 5:51 PM, February 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: Oops...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-r-barber/libya-gadhafi-future_b_826718.html?ref=fb&src=sp; 4:03 PM, February 24, 2011
administrator said...: From the Junior Jobs thread:

"On a different note entirely. What are general thoughts on a) European Journal of PT, or b) Contemporary PT?

I mean, I know they aren't in the top tier of journals (with, say, PT or APSR, or Ethics, etc.). But are they second-tier? Third? And which, between them, seems more desirable as a target?

And yes, I'd be happy to post this on a journal thread. There just doesn't seem to be one.

4:32 PM, February 27, 2011"; 4:34 PM, February 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: they're both good, respectable outlets, below the top tier in prestige but good.

What more is there to say, really?; 11:02 PM, February 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: I agree with 11:02 on the overall quality of these journals, but with an important caveat. If you are building your CV to go on the job market, as are most readers of this blog, I would go for a general interest journal before either of these. Aside from a few R1 places, most search committees will be made up of non-theorists. I would think that those people will see a publication in Perspectives, Polity, or AJPS as a more recognizable accomplishment than a publication in EJPT or Contemp PT.

If you already have a job and you are looking to get your stuff read by other theorists, then EJPT and Contemp PT are certainly viable outlets.; 9:10 AM, February 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: 9:10, would you say the same thing about Political Theory or HPT or Ethics?

I'm a new phd with an almost-finished hpt article to send out. Would I really be better sending it to AJPS than to PT? (I don't think I've ever even read anything from AJPS...) Do they actually publish historically inclined political theory?; 2:21 PM, February 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: Or even Polity. Would Polity be viewed more highly by search committees than a well-respected political theory journal like PT or HPT?; 2:31 PM, February 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: Start high, and work your way down. Begin with APSR. You should hear back fairly quickly, and if it lands, you're set; if not, you send it somewhere else.; 2:47 PM, February 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: The top tier of theory journals would be better than top general interest journals (with the possible exception of APSR). Everyone on tenure or hiring panels knows these and recognises their distinction.; 6:02 PM, February 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: "9:10, would you say the same thing about Political Theory or HPT or Ethics?"

9:10am here. I think PT and Ethics are well known enough in the other subfields that you should not hesitate to try to place an article in these journals. My assumption from the way the question was asked was that you have already exhausted the clear "top tier" (APSR and PT, plus Ethics if you do analytical work).

I have the impression that AJPS publishes about an article per issue, with a strong tendency toward Staussian or historical work. I recall Kevin Cherry published a decent article on Aristotle in AJPS and landed a great job at U. of Richmond.; 8:24 PM, February 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: Has anyone heard about their paper / panel proposals for APSA?; 11:13 PM, March 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: Princeton's University Center for Human Values announced the new Laurance Rockefeller Visiting Fellows:

http://uchv.princeton.edu/news/news_item.php?id=75; 12:53 PM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: APSA, anyone?; 2:15 PM, March 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: No thanks.; 2:50 PM, March 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: Has anyone heard from Foundations, whether their panels/paper proposals have been accepted?; 4:28 PM, March 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Announcements from APSA regarding conference proposals will come out simultaneously this year, and it will probably not be until next week.; 12:03 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: APSA acceptances are out. I have no idea if this means that _all_ have now been notified (per ^). But, at least some have.; 5:28 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: APSA panel accepted for division 1 (Political Thought and Philosophy); 10:51 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Which would you prefer to publish in: Polity or Perspectives?; 3:53 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: That's easy, Perspectives. Everyone gets it.; 4:22 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: Should I feel insulted if my APSA proposal wasn't accepted?; 8:04 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: No, it is notoriously difficult to get papers accepted for APSA. I have heard that the committees prefer to accept panels rather than individual papers because it is less work for them.; 4:03 PM, March 11, 2011
administrator said...: Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not only did Tamsin Shaw write a good book, but post-Princeton she moved into a tenured, associate-level position at NYU, split between philosophy and european studies. Pretty sweet gig if you ask me.

10:14 AM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

^ NYU Abu Dhabi, right?

11:20 AM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

No. Shaw's appointment is a regular one on the NYC campus. But she is also involved with the Abu-Dhabi initiative and has taught there, or is currently there now (I'm not sure which). NYU-AD has a mixture of directly appointed faculty and people on short-term loan from main campus. She is the latter (as is, for example, Craig Calhoun).

11:46 AM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Only somene stupidly ignorant would write this about Tamsin Shaw - as noted, she wrote an excellent PUP book on Nietzsche."

Excuse me?

Senior scholar here, know my Nietzsche better than most, but I have absolutely no clue who Shaw is, and don't really care, and I am neither "stupid" nor "ignorant". Stop being rude folks.

And no, being appointed in philosophy at NUY is probably not a "pretty sweet gig" if you want to be a political scientist. But a job is a job, sure.

2:17 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

i would be happy to be in the philosophy department at NYU, even though there is not much interest in political philosophy/social thought/nietzsche there. its a job at a prominent university in new york city! yes please...

2:20 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

"And no, being appointed in philosophy at NUY [sic] is probably not a "pretty sweet gig" if you want to be a political scientist. But a job is a job, sure."

Are you kidding? NYU has one of the best philosophy departments in the US in one of the most intellectually stimulating cities in the world. It is not just a pretty sweet gig. It's a fucking amazing gig.

And why would a political theorist care about being a "political scientist"? I'm not trying to start a flame war about the distinction between political theory and political philosophy, or the subject's relationship to political science more generally. I just don't think most of us would care whether we work in a politics department or a philosophy department, as long as we get to do the work that we want to do.

2:32 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

I, for one, would rather be in a political science department because philosophy is dominated by analytic types and analytic philosophy is stupid and boring.

Word verif: Sessh. As in, It's looking like many of us will be doing lots of sessh-onal teaching.

2:37 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you think analytic philosophy is boring and stupid, can I assume you do some sort of critical or continental theory, or maybe HPT?

If so, what makes you think that your average polisci department, frequently quantoid-dominated, is going to be any more amenable to your work than an analytic philosophy department?

If anything, being in a philosophy department (of any stripe) is liberating precisely because people over there tend to think that philosophical or humanistic inquiry is important for its own sake, whereas our polisci colleagues are always demanding that we prove our "relevance."

4:49 PM, March 13, 2011
Delete; 6:16 PM, March 14, 2011
administrator said...: Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If anything, being in a philosophy department (of any stripe) is liberating precisely because people over there tend to think that philosophical or humanistic inquiry is important for its own sake."

Obviously you've never seen a fight between an analytic type and a continental type. It's kinda like quants and theorists, except even pettier

4:52 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

How can a Nietzsche specialist miss a book on the topic published by one of the main university presses, from a faculty member at a leading university?

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8577.html

I don't get it. This is hardly an obscure contribution. The rudeness came from the poster who insisted on the irrelevance of the author...

7:33 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

agreed that being in a philosophy department, particularly at NYU (one of Leiter's favorites), might not be much fun unless you really like a rather dry, analytic approach to justice, etc. still, a great job though.

8:25 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

4:52 here--yes, for sure a great job! Just probably not a very "liberating" one.

8:46 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gotta say: even I've heard of Tamsin Shaw, and I know nothing about Nietzsche. Also, I'd kill to be in a philosophy department.

9:22 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whoa...Are the Nagel and Scheffler in NYU Philosophy THAT Nagel and THAT Scheffler? Wowzers!

9:41 PM, March 13, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

NYU has been a top 3 or so Philosophy department for a while now.

6:38 AM, March 14, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

^what do you mean by that? do you mean that brian leiter has considered it to be a top 3 department for awhile or so?

if so, then yes, you are right. but you should realize that that ranking represents a very particular take on philosophy and philosophy departments in the u.s. to take it as authoritative is seriously ignorant.

11:17 AM, March 14, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am sure Tamsin is simply devastated to be in a philosophy department that is "analytic," especially with that obnoxious link to the European Studies center and doubly with being allowed to teach Nietzsche, Weber and other continentals. Can someone please make sure she is aware of this discussion so she knows how screwed she is? Because otherwise she is probably thrilled that she didn't end up in Geneva, NY or Madison, WI or with Jean Cohen as a colleague, so let's just make sure she knows the reality of the situation.

12:29 PM, March 14, 2011
Delete; 6:19 PM, March 14, 2011
administrator said...: Anonymous Anonymous said...

That NYU philosophy is an elite department is very widely accepted even among people with no particular use for Leiter. I think it was top-5 in the NRC.

Leiter's an obnoxious jerk, and I have no use for his own bigoted prejudices about philosophy, but he's eventually turned his ranking system into one of the best discipline-specific ranking systems around, with very wide buy-in from across the field-- albeit with strong continued dissent from a couple of well-defined minorities. It's not "ignorant" to take it as "authoritative;" it
s almost universal among professional philosophers to treat it as the authoritative ranking.

1:34 PM, March 14, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think Leiter's conception of the appropriate boundaries of serious philosophical inquiry is entirely too narrow and intellectually indefensible, but for the life of me I can't see how it's bigoted. The vast majority of sociologists these days see very little value in employing Parsonian structural functionalism, does that mean they're all "bigoted" against structural functionalists?

He's not bigoted, he's just wrong.

1:51 PM, March 14, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's not "ignorant" to take it as "authoritative;" it
s almost universal among professional philosophers to treat it as the authoritative ranking

Balderdash. it is almost universal among philosophers ranked highly by Leiter to treat it as the authoritative ranking.

3:40 PM, March 14, 2011
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4:15 PM, March 14, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

^^ exactly. and there are many philosophers at schools ranked high on that list who also wish leiter would disappear.

4:43 PM, March 14, 2011
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Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was considering Philosophy as well as political science departments for grad school five years ago, and my advisors in Phil all pretty much directed me to use Leiter's rankings as a main tool in looking for programs. And they weren't from a school that was on Leiter's radar at all.

6:03 PM, March 14, 2011
Delete; 6:19 PM, March 14, 2011
administrator said...: Please continue the Leiter, etc. discussion over here.; 6:22 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 12:42 AM, March 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Better yet -- please do NOT continue the Leiter discussion at all. It has, after all, nothing to do with PS and people in PS have little to contribute to it.; 12:47 PM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yes, Brian.; 7:36 AM, March 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: Political Theory's current issue includes information about submissions and publication rate. 292 submissions with 254 rejections over the last year with 17 accepted and the remainder presumably still pending.

The interesting bit, though, is that 80% are rejected without external review. This seems like a remarkable degree of editorial authority to me. I have a hard time believing that this is limited to a simple rejection of uncontroversially unpublishable material.

I appreciate the problem of 'reviewer fatigue' but this seems to go well beyond what is needed to protect against that problem.

It is not good for a journal that claims to represent the whole field to be run in the manner of a cabal or even to have such an appearance.; 9:43 PM, March 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ I agree wholeheartedly. I published with PT once under the more ecumenical White regime but have been unsuccessful since on many attempts--and all of them have been "desk rejections" by the editor.

This might be because all of my work is crap--and I don't rule out that hypothesis. Nevertheless, the evidence does not seem to support it: several of these papers have gone on to be published in the very top general-interest poli-sci and analytic political philosophy journals.

Dietz seems to be looking for a certain style of paper or a certain kind of author, and I and my papers apparently don't fit the bill. I will leave it for others to speculate as to what those styles/kinds are; as my lack of success publishing there indicates, I haven't figured it out myself--although, admittedly, reading the journal occasionally might help....

Still, I look forward to the end of her seemingly interminable editorship. Does anyone know when that blessed day will be upon us?; 12:57 PM, March 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: She was renewed for another full term after the Sage/ Bevir thing. So at most the current editorial regime is a little more than halfway through its tenure.; 4:39 PM, March 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^I have had the same experience as 12:57 and the other 80% of submitters to PT. I'm pretty sure my work is not crap but I can't seem to get it past the editor's desk at PT. I can handle rejection, but don't I at least deserve objective comments from blind reviewers? What makes me sick is the people who thank Dietz for her extensive comments. Yes, she goes above and beyond the typical editor's rejection letter, but only so she can justify rejecting 80% of the submissions without putting them through blind review.

I don't think it is a matter of style. My suspicion is that it has more to do with seniority and pedigree. That's how it looks until they put more papers through blind review.; 10:49 PM, March 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ I agree she should send more papers out for review (I really don't think it's a good sign when desk rejects are much above 50%), but the notion that she's choosing authors based on seniority doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, if you look at who is actually getting published. A number of junior scholars have been published recently.

And overall, whatever problems there are with the process, the product has been pretty solid lately, which at the end of the day is the most important way to judge an editor (myself, I'm 0/2 getting my stuff past Dietz's desk).; 11:07 PM, March 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: I got a lot more ms's to referee from White than I do from Dietz, even though I'm however-many-more years senior now.

I'd prioritize PT refereeing over everything but APSR refereeing, if I were asked, but since I'm mostly not, I do more refereeing for lower-tier journals.; 11:27 PM, March 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: The claim to be a full subfield journal is not credible. I have seen desk rejects that specifically cite the analytic approach as the main reason for rejection, on grounds of fit with the journal.

Instead, it's the go to journal for publishing something that lifts some idea from a previous thinker and then uses that previous thinker as the basis for an appeal to authority in regards to a contemporary debate. It's the middle ground between real history of political thought and real normative political theory.

That's put a bit polemically, but I think it's much closer to true than the journal website, which claims:

'Political Theory (PT), peer-reviewed and published bi-monthly, serves as the leading forum for the development and exchange of political ideas. Broad in scope and international in coverage, PT publishes articles on political philosophy from every philosophical, ideological and methodological perspective.'

It's barely peer-reviewed, it's not leading, and it's broad in a token sense.; 1:30 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^I agree with your analysis, but the problem is that its reputation is as the premier subfield outlet (more in line with the quote from the website). These things don't change quickly, and they matter for tenure and hiring decisions.; 6:09 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: I think this conversation has become a bit polemical. How is the latest issue of PT an example of the previous claim? It is 4 HPT pieces and a smattering of reviews from a variety of distinguished thinkers representing a range of though (from Forst to Honig) on Tully's latest book.

Granted, it is not a hotspot for analytic thought, but mostly HPT, contemporary democratic theory, and continental thought. But I've found the journal to be more diverse than most (what other journals are more diverse? Not Ethics, APSR, ROP, or any of the good 2nd tier outlets, like Constellations), and it still publishes the best pieces in political theory generally.; 7:28 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: Color me suspicious of anonymous internet claims of discrimination and bias against "analytic" political theory. It might be true, but it's not a particularly plausible claim.

For one thing, work that is by any reasonable definition "analytic" is published there. I was just reading Lovett's recent PT piece, which clearly fits in that category.

Secondly, it just sits at a much lower place in the rankings for analytic approaches than all others. For most political theorists, PT is the premier place to publish (setting aside the issue of whether it's more advantageous to publish in the poli sci "Big 3," which is a department-specific matter). But for analytic theorists, it ranks behind (at a minimum), Ethics, PPA, and probably JPP. So it would stand to reason that analytics might not send their best work to PT, while everyone else will.

That seems like a much more sensible explanation, that has the benefit of not relying on elaborate anti-analytic conspiracy theories, the only evidence for which seems to be anonymous claims of bias on the internet...; 7:49 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, that is the only evidence that you have. I don't think that we can expect people to post rejection letters on-line for all to see.

There is nothing elaborate about one person who doesn't have a particular taste for analytic theory unilaterally desk rejecting 80%. It's incredibly simple; I take it that that was the complaint. Using reviewers is a check on that bias, albeit a limited one.

But, I agree that there is probably also some truth to your argument. Still, it doesn't exclude the other.; 8:19 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: "(what other journals are more diverse? Not Ethics, APSR, ROP, or any of the good 2nd tier outlets, like Constellations)"

Contemporary Political Theory?; 8:47 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: When will APT make decisions about the 2011 conference?; 8:49 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: A couple of data points for "color me suspicious": both I and a close colleague have received desk rejections from Dietz suggesting that Ethics and Philosophy and Public Affairs might be better outlets for our papers. I kid you not.

Of course, that raises the question of why we didn't just send them there first; as you note, these journals are higher in the rankings of most analytics, and I personally would much rather see my article in Ethics or P&PA (or JPPhil, for that matter) than PT. The answer is that, as already noted, PT has a certain cachet among non-analytic theorists and political scientists, who unfortunately sit on tenure and promotion committees or act as external reviewers. My goal pre-tenure was to get at least one PT, which I achieved (as I noted above) under the White regime.

Fortunately, publishing in PT matters much less to me now, but I might submit there in the future--once Dietz leaves.; 9:26 PM, March 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: ... yeah, OK, it definitely seems like a problem if she desk-rejects pieces that are on political philosophy (not moral philosophy or metaethics) that she thinks are credible for publication in Ethics or PPA.

In the meantime, Ethics publishes fewer and fewer articles in political philosophy that aren't part of book symposia.; 8:31 AM, March 21, 2011
Anonymous said...: I have also gotten a desk reject that said that the piece fits better at Philosophy and Public Affairs. This makes no sense if the journal is supposed to publish in all areas.

In response to the above, the question is not which journal is most broad. Philosophy and Public Affairs makes no claim to serving the whole political theory community. It explicitly says that it is playing a particular role trying to publish the best work on issues related to the philosophical underpinning of policy issues.

The complaint about PT is that it claims a role that it doesn't play, and the posturing about the bigger role can create problems in terms of a tenure and promotion. If it were true that people are expected to publish there and their attempts were not taken seriously, this is obviously a problem. Nobody expects a continental type to publish in PPA, because PPA admits that that is not what it does.

So, it's not a question of breadth, but a question of the consistency between perception and reality.; 9:27 AM, March 21, 2011
Anonymous said...: It makes perfect sense for Dietz to recommend that authors submit their analytic papers to other more specialized journals if she judges those papers to be too narrowly focused. when she gets a good, widely pitched paper of that flavor like Lovetts, she sends it out for review and publishes it.

i'm sure that she advises authors who submit papers focused on very narrow historical questions to more specialized history or intellectual history journals, while papers of more broad interest, like Hankins' republicanism piece, get vetted.

now, I DO wish that she was as precise in determining what continental (especially po-mo) work is appropriately broad for the journal. In those cases she seems to judge a lot of very specialized work as appropriately broad.

But she is clearly *trying* to be fair to authors and to offer readers papers of wide interest.; 9:41 AM, March 21, 2011
Anonymous said...: I think that Mark is at it again.....; 9:52 AM, March 21, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ oh grow up.; 11:10 AM, March 21, 2011
Anonymous said...: 9:41 seems about right to me. The analytic work that gets published in PT does a good job of speaking to the profession more broadly, which is as it should be. Most of the continental/historical work does that too, I think, but you're more likely to see exceptions in that regard. That's what I'd call a minor flaw with an otherwise strong editor.; 11:17 AM, March 21, 2011

Political theory and public law job market

7/29/2011

General Discussion 11/10--?

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