Political theory and public law job market: 2010-11 Junior Theory Jobs Post #4

2/22/2011

2010-11 Junior Theory Jobs Post #4

For: Discussion of all junior political theory jobs advertised in 2010-11.

Restrictions: Per house rules, please do not mention names in junior searches until an offer is made.

Want to confirm or correct something you see here? Want me to post a job ad to the thread? Email me at poltheorist@gmail.com. Your anonymity is assured.

667 Comments:

Anonymous said...: Don't take this the wrong way, moderator, but you may want to bring in a helping hand to try to keep control of this blog.; 3:58 PM, February 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: Why are a number of political theorists clamoring for restrictions on otherwise free speech?

Sure, it's caustic at times, but I thought that we *liked* free speech.; 5:32 PM, February 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: Chicago Harper Fellows has started contacting for flyouts.; 7:08 PM, February 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: It's weird that the people leaving comments, anyway, generally don't seem to want job-related advice from those who actually have jobs. I have one, and I thought that the various things that the senior scholar said - including his/her expression of horror at the general tone of this board - were worth taking seriously. The norm seems to be to respond to suggestions and thoughts posted by people with jobs with derision. Seems a shame, and maybe not such a good use of resources.; 5:06 AM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ it's a good idea when you're dealing with an anonymous message board to be suspicious of any effort to claim authority by claiming credentials, since there's obviously no way to tell whether the claim is genuine. In fact, the more explicitly a person does this, the more suspicious I am. The "senior scholar" from the "top institution" is either new to the internet, and therefore capable of being shocked that people can be intemperate in an anonymous forum, or else s/he was trolling.

It's usually not that hard to figure out who's offering reasonable advice here by the content of the advice itself, the tone in which it's offered, etc. And it's really not that hard to skim past the people who are being jerks. If you ignore them they generally go away.; 8:40 AM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: it may also have to do with location. i don't come to this thread for advice. if i want advice, i ask someone i know.

i come here for information that no one i know has.

besides, you come off as preachy. yes, i mean YOU.; 2:23 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: congrats to jerome foss!

man, baylor is doing well past couple years.

(kudos to that program for giving their students the opportunity to teach in their field.); 3:02 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: news on westfield state?; 4:21 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: where did jerome foss get a job?; 4:36 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^St. Vincent College.; 5:00 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: 3:02: Who else from Baylor has landed a job over the last couple of years?; 5:02 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: http://www.baylor.edu/political_science/index.php?id=73493; 5:11 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: Thats actually a great list - and look, the Nicholses (both) are wonderful scholars and teachers (some of us tried to push her to Larry Summers et. al. after Pangle said no, sadly unsuccessfully). Now I am sure some people on here would find the jobs that Baylor graduates get terrible, but they all expect to teach at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc. - that is, even teaching at Pomona is beneath them.; 5:23 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: You win. No advice from me, that's for sure!; 6:46 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: "man, baylor is doing well past couple years."

Clearly, you must be a disinterested observer. ;); 8:13 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: i am 3:02, and i can assure you i have no affiliation with baylor.

i am, however, interested in the sense that they are vastly outperforming my more highly regarded program.; 8:46 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: bummer, 6:46.

i'm sure i'll never know the depths of my loss.; 8:48 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: I can't think of any way to respond to this Baylor discussion that wouldn't be interpreted as some sort of petty dig (even though that wouldn't be my intention)...so I'm gonna shut my mouth, and say congrats to Foss.; 9:47 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: nice work, 9:47. you did it, anyway.

word verif: chess; 10:06 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: Everybody's become so over-sensitive here. I miss the days of free form gladiatorial combat.; 10:22 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: "I can't think of any way to respond to this Baylor discussion that wouldn't be interpreted as some sort of petty dig (even though that wouldn't be my intention)...so I'm gonna shut my mouth, and say congrats to Foss."

Can I ask:
- Fo you have a job?
- How many call outs have you had recently?
- And how many schools ranked in top 20 of US news colleges or universities were they at?; 10:55 PM, February 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: I hear that Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi (LSE PhD, 2008) is going to be a market star this year. His work on global civil society is top notch.; 5:13 AM, February 24, 2011
Anonymous said...: @ 10:55:

No. You really can't. But whatever, I'll bite.

Got a job in an area that I like, in a department that I like (and had to turn down other offers to boot). Had enough flyouts to get me that job, which is all that really matters at the end of the day. And no...of course it wasn't in US News and World Report Top 20 (Exactly how many of those jobs were there this year? And who got them?).

But my point is this: Sure. Baylor's placing its graduates. And that's great. Congrats to all of them that have found TT jobs in this market.

But these schools do not really boggle the mind. Baylor, a quality institution with a Christian affiliation, is placing its students at quality LACs with that same Christian affiliation, by and large. So there's a niche and they're filling it. Good on them and good on their students.

That's all I'm saying here. But the tone of those discussions last night was a little euphoric and I didn't 100% get it. (And it's not as if their students are going to Top-20 schools, if that's what your post is meant to imply.)

So really...I'm not some bitter, jobless jerk out to sling mud due to my own feelings of failure and inadequacy. I apologize if that's the way my comments seemed. I'm happy for any theorist, with any institutional affiliation, that lands a job in this challenging market.; 9:43 AM, February 24, 2011
Anonymous said...: ˆˆ It looks like LSE is scrambling to limit damage to its reputation as a result of its close ties to the Libyan regime. See David Held's statement: http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/; 10:32 AM, February 24, 2011
Anonymous said...: 9:43 seems a classy guy or gal, so cut him a break.

The reactions to another Baylor PhD getting a TT job are probably more positive--"euphoric"-- than is strictly warranted because the relative success of that program in placing its students seems to work against the notion--popular on this forum and others like it--that one will be forever doomed to unemployment should one pursue a PhD outside of a highly ranked department. Baylor has often been named, often alongside the University of Dallas, as an example of a department you might want to avoid for just that reason.

So everyone likes an underdog who actually succeeds, in other words.

9:43 rightly points out that the Baylor placements aren't at "top" institutions; and indeed, Baylor grads don't even appear to get the top "Straussian" jobs available. The implication is that *if* something like that were to happen, then celebration would indeed be in order.

One takeaway lesson, it seems to me, is that if you want a job at Harvard don't go to Baylor; however, if you want to be a college professor of political theory, and you wouldn't mind--or might actually enjoy--teaching at a less prestigious, possibly religiously-affiliated institution--then you might well add Baylor to the list of schools you apply to because of its strong placement record in a crappy job market.

The other takeaway lesson might be more of an internecine Straussian thing: are you better off sending your students/going to Baylor as opposed to some of the other political theory-oriented boutique departments? The recent success of Baylor PhDs in getting some of these jobs seems to gesture in the direction of an affirmative answer to that question.

Of course, one might still prefer to live in Boston or to study with the Zuckerts, and that's understandable too.; 10:45 AM, February 24, 2011
Anonymous said...: 10:45 AM is right in many respects.

My only point of difference would be with the rankings question... in argument has been that you either have to be at a top program or you have to be at a place with a top faculty member. Mary Nichols in particular falls into the top faculty category among Straussians, so that in part accounts for Baylor's success with hiring.; 1:41 PM, February 24, 2011
Anonymous said...: Thanks for the link to David Held on Libya.; 6:13 PM, February 24, 2011
Anonymous said...: Time to put some life back into this blog...

Someone must know who got the jobs at UC Davis and Dartmouth???; 1:59 PM, February 26, 2011
Anonymous said...: not to mention the super secret hire at dickinson, which was done, when, 3 months ago?; 3:08 PM, February 26, 2011
Anonymous said...: Look, it doesn't need to be a mystery. Lots of people don't read this website--maybe the people who got these jobs and their friends and associates don't frequent this site. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy to deprive you of information; 7:17 PM, February 26, 2011
Anonymous said...: hmm.

it may not be be a conspiracy, but it is pretty clearly a mystery. maybe just not one you would pay to read.

or is my thesaurus broke?; 7:41 PM, February 26, 2011
Anonymous said...: 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
administrator said...: 4:32, we have a General Discussion thread for such topics. I have copied and pasted your post over there (http://politicaltheoryrumormill.blogspot.com/2010/08/general-discussion-1110.html).

Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask that you please follow the link to the GD thread. I will copy and paste any further discussion of journals over to the GD thread and delete the posts here.; 4:36 PM, February 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: Admin, the general discussion thread might get more posts if it weren't buried below several antiquated junior threads. Might you consider re-arranging the threads so that active discussions were placed higher on the page than dead ones?; 10:02 PM, February 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: Arizona State Social Justice search (anyone else?) canceled for funding.; 10:24 PM, March 01, 2011
Anonymous said...: Offer out for the Assumption College political theory job. Stay tuned.; 9:29 AM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: anything on the late ones: Williams VAP, College of Wooster VAP, Westfield State TT?; 9:32 AM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: This is my second year on the market and my last year as a TA in my department. I have no clue of what to do next year if I don't get a job (and I am beginning to suspect that I won't get one). For those out there who didn't get jobs in the last few years, but are still hanging on, what did you do?; 11:52 AM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: First, talk to your dept. chair about a lecture position for next year. Offer to teach some sections of American Gov't.

If that isn't a possibility, search out some community college part-time jobs.

Finally, there will probably a few more one year posts. Good luck. This isn't fair to any of you.; 1:32 PM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: What to do this year is the easy part. When to cut bait entirely is the big question. Good luck to you.; 4:40 PM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: "This isn't fair to any of you."

No, it isn't. But anybody who thinks this business has anything to do with "fair" is delusional.

word verif: persism, as in, I am currently suffering from a terrible case of persism.; 11:30 PM, March 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: Has any anyone heard from the Emory Political Theory and the Georgetown Jack-Miller postdocs?; 8:38 AM, March 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: Did Barnard's search in fact fail???; 5:04 PM, March 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: no, barnard's search did not fail. that nonsense on the blog/wiki/etc. was just yet another example why these sites are good for bullshitting, but not for actual job information.; 1:23 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: New hire at Barnard is listed on webpage:

http://polisci.barnard.edu/faculty-directory; 2:18 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: Wasn't she *just* in Florida? What happened?; 2:36 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: Um, she took a better job? It happens...; 2:55 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: Go Cornell. Between the Stanford job and Barnard job, they kind of win.; 3:41 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: Any insight as to whether Florida will conduct a search to fill her line? Or; 3:45 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 4:58 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 5:23 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^All right, what was that link about?; 6:27 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: Indeed Cornell is the place to go...if you like crazy.; 7:20 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 7:42 PM, March 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 1:46 AM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: No.; 5:00 AM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Email from Westfield State...search canceled due to lack of funding.; 9:13 AM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Too bad; they were going to hire me. I could feel it.; 9:29 AM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Do we know if Hartford is in the same boat? Those phone interviews were a long time ago.; 9:35 AM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: BUMMER

Thank you for applying for the full time, tenure track assistant professor position in political theory in the Department of Political Science at Westfield State University.

We appreciate your patience during this process. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints, our department has been informed that we will not be able to continue with our faculty search or hiring procedure this year.

On behalf of the search committee and the University, I again thank you for your application and I wish you continued success in the future.

David Smailes, Chair

Search Committee; 9:58 AM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 12:42 PM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 2:54 PM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Congrats to Michelle for landing the Barnard gig!!; 3:45 PM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: works for me, 9:29. my file wasn't really where it needed to be yet.

so, we'll see who gets it when/if they re-post. if that day ever comes, it's ON!

word verif: hamsgd.

yes it is. yes. it. is.; 4:30 PM, March 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Huh. I never received that email from Westfield State even though I'm pretty sure they received my application.

Oh well.; 3:13 AM, March 08, 2011
rmajor said...: Post-Doc at Illinois Springfield in Liberal Arts and Liberty Studies

http://www.jackmillercenter.org/2011/03/post-doctoral-opportunity-illinois-springfield/; 11:20 AM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: "Liberty Studies"? Good lord...; 12:24 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: And whats wrong with liberty studies?; 12:31 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: It implies that there is more than one kind of liberty. Shouldn't it be "Liberty Study"?; 1:53 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: From what I've garnered, of the three Theory positions in Canada this year (McMaster, Waterloo, and U of T Scarborough), they all went to theorists trained at American Universities.

I haven't been able to determine if any of these three (Roff, Lee, and "Columbia PhD") are Canadian citizens. Anyone know?

Also, I'd be interested in hearing if any Canadian-trained theorists made the short lists at these schools.

Thanks in advance!; 2:20 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: 2:20 PM: I am a Canadian/Canadian-trained theorist who was interviewed for the theory position at Mac (and I know that at least one other Canadian-trained theorist was interviewed for that position, as well as for the UTSC position).; 2:33 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well that's good to hear. Thanks for posting 2:33. My question was designed to get a sense of our (Canadian-trained theorists) competitiveness in Canada. Hopefully the Canadian short-listers weren't just tokens to satisfy the Canadian content rule.; 2:41 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: Why does it matter what the citizenship status of these people is? Good is good. Congrats to them.; 3:29 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: I posted the original question about the candidates. Just to be clear, I have no opinion on the quality of the hires, indeed, congrats to them. I'm just trying to determine if there's a pattern of hires forming that privileges American-trained theorists. The reason why citizenship matters is that Canadian universities are all supposed to give special preference to Canadian applicants. I'm just trying to form an overall picture of what's happening, and whether I, as a Canadian-trained PhD, have cause for concern.; 5:38 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: i should think you do. but then, so do most american-trained phd's.; 5:43 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^

But hasn't everyone pretty much known for a long time that the whole "preference for Canadians" thing is an elaborate farce?; 5:45 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^
Well, as far as anonymous anecdotal evidence is helpful, I've heard a range of things on that, and the people I talked to all seemed to think that it mattered a bit (but nobody could exactly mention why).

One person (not in political science, a sister department), mentioned that their search seemed to value citizenship in the event of a tie (ie. the subfield could choose to forward and rank a bunch of people, but if they really wanted to snag an American, it was best to indicate that the others weren't even close).

But, again, anonymous messy anecdotes aren't worth a whole lot, so who knows; 8:54 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: I've heard that "tiebreaker" explanation also, and it makes sense and is most likely true.

However, the real question is what criteria determines a tie.

If candidate A and B have a roughly equivalent publication record, gave equally good job talks, etc., but candidate A is a Canadian who received their degree from, say, University of Calgary, and B received their degree from, say, Cornell, is that a tie?

Or does the fact that B comes from Cornell rank him or her higher in the eyes of the hiring committee? For it to be a "tie", does the Calgary PhD need a superior publication record or other achievements?

This, I think is the real question I'd like to see answered.; 10:12 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: The answer is that Canadian universities can hire whomever they want--just like anybody else. The only catch is that they can only make offers to non-Canadians *if* they will say that there was no Canadian candidate who could fit the bill. And if they *do* say that, they are *forbidden* from offering the job to a Canadian should the non-Canadian turn down the offer. Which, of course, is some incentive to make first offers to Canadians.; 11:42 PM, March 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: Right, which should be a recipe for failed searches, but surely there's many examples of Canadians getting offers after Americans have turned them down?; 12:13 AM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Canadians, at least in top programs, are not likely to care if someone is from Cornell rather than from Calgary. (In the case of Harvard, though, there might be a marginal prejudice against the American, esp. if the candidate has a totally predictable dissertation topic. Sorry. I was once in an interview in which a very bright, chipper young analytic thing from Harvard was asked - nicely, mind you - if there was any chance at all that she would ever move on to think about more interesting things ...)

At least in the recent period, the citizenship rule has mattered on a scale from "Decisive" to "Not at all," depending on school, department and sub-field.

First-hand knowledge.; 12:35 AM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: CSB/SJU has cut their list down.; 11:56 AM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Source?; 1:31 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: "but surely there's many examples of Canadians getting offers after Americans have turned them down?"

11:42 here--for precisely the reason I suggested, I don't think there are.
Word verif: "Subst", as in: Canadian hiring practices are subst-andard.; 2:10 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: 11:56 here.

I got an email from them telling me I didn't make their first big cut.; 5:28 PM, March 09, 2011
Timothy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6:03 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Campus interviews for the Villanova teaching post-doc have been scheduled.; 8:30 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: DePaul offer out.; 10:52 PM, March 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: Someone has updated the wiki to indicate that College of Wooster has a shortlist for their VAP position. Has the shortlist been contacted yet?; 8:30 AM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^I got a call from them last week asking if I was still interested. I was told that there is a short list of 6 and that I am on it.; 11:35 AM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: Could we indulge our curiosity a little and share our progress on the market this year? I'm interested in whether some people got tons of interviews or many people just got one or two.

I'll start:

I had one campus interview; no offer.

PhD in hand.; 11:55 AM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: I, too, had one campus interview, no offer.

I know of another who had two campus interviews (one for the position for which I was interviewed), no offer.; 12:34 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: One interview; one offer.; 12:41 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: zero calls, zero interviews (for theory jobs).

did worse than last year.

still ABD.; 1:26 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: You might want to think about defending your dissertation.; 1:36 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: I had one interview, and I got an offer.; 1:40 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: How in the world does this discussion tell you (or us) anything relevant? What real value is there to anonymous posts sharing how many calls/fly-outs/offers a person got--even if they include his or her doctoral status?; 2:49 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ exactly. the only way for this discussion to be useful (or interesting) is for people to share way more information than is consistent with anonymity.; 3:28 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: I don't know. I think it's interesting in addition to being idle. If you don't, don't let it bother you. It hurts no one.; 3:46 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: one on campus interview, one phone interview, no offers. (also: a few short lists or being an alternate for a fellowship, but nothing's come of it.); 4:28 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^: Was your phone interview for the same school as the on-campus interview, or did you do two phone interviews, only one of which converted into an on-campus interview? (Or did the on-campus interviewing school skip the phone interview stage?); 6:37 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: One phone interview (search canceled).
Two campus interviews - two offers, accepted one.

Ph.D. in hand.; 7:51 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Nice work. Congrats.; 8:25 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: I had one phone interview and one campus interview (with different places). Alas, no offers.

I'm a few years into a TT job and was/am looking for an upgrade.

Hang in there, all.; 10:22 PM, March 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: Assumption College hired Greg Weiner (Georgetown PhD/Brown Post-Doc) for their American/Theory position. Congrats Greg.; 1:45 AM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: zero interviews, zero offers.

Ph.D. in hand; 8:06 AM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ABD (with about half left to write). One flyout for a TT which I didn't get. Nothing else. Hoping for better luck next time with more of the diss written. Otherwise despair.; 8:10 AM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ABD, two interviews, both for postdocs, one offer; 8:25 AM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ABD in one year VAP. No interviews, no offers.; 9:29 AM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: You might want to think about defending your dissertation.; 11:14 AM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: you might want to think about varying your word choice from post to post.; 12:46 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: trying to gear up for next year's market... what are the known likely openings. anyone have any info on opportunities we can expect?

Barnard, it appears, can now be crossed off the list.

I heard a rumor that Berkeley may get a line. Can anyone verify?; 12:47 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: there likely will be an opening at at least one possibly two top LACs in New England.; 1:30 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Also, I suspect Emory will finally move to fill its available position.; 1:31 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ABD, three short lists, one fly out, one offer.; 1:45 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: I'm a grad student at Berkeley.

I think it's rather unlikely that there'll be a position advertised in fall 2011 for fall 2012, for a few reasons.

1) It's still not that long since the appointments of Song and Hoekstra. Well, okay, they arrived in 2007, so it is actually quite a while. But not by departmental standards. (Bevir was the previous hire, in 2000).

2) Things are likely to still be a little up in the air regarding the future of the faculty in fall 2011, and so they may well want to hold off until fall 2012 and put an advert out then for fall 2013. E.g. it may not be clear whether Brown will leave for Columbia, whether Hoekstra will get tenure (Song already got it), and whether Thomas will retire. Those things should all be decided at some point in the 2011-2012 academic year.

3) The IR/Comparative job search has been so divisive that there may be some reluctance to opening up another position just yet.

All that said, as my post suggests, I think there *will* be a position at Berkeley within the next couple of years, and would expect it to be advertised in 2012.; 1:54 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: hey berkeley grad student, who got the davis job?; 3:28 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: 2 interviews, 1 offer, 1 further requests to interview turned down after accepting the offer.

PhD, 3 years of VAP, multiple publications; 3:58 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Dibs on the Berkeley job.; 3:58 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: you can have it. i'm holding out for merced to hire a theorist.; 4:39 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: I don't know who got the Davis job, but apparently it was someone from the JSP program, which is the second time in two years that a Berkeley political theorist who's not from either Political Science or Philosophy has nabbed a tenure-track theory job in a Political Science department.; 5:08 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: Ph.D. last year. No interviews, so no offers (obvi). Was on the short-list for a post-doc. Did get (just today!) a small fellowship.; 5:22 PM, March 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Their current lecturer (Satkunanandan) got her degree from the JSP Program. If your information is correct, it seems exquisitely unlikely that it could be anyone else.; 1:49 AM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Does Merced not have a theorist, then?; 4:58 AM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Congratulations, 5:22.; 12:53 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: When was the last junior hire at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton?; 5:45 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Harvard hired Frazer and Beerbohm within the past 3-5 years, and Yale hired Landemore one or two years ago. I can't recall any recent junior theory hires at Princeton.; 6:20 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Tamsin Shaw was probably the last junior theory hire at Princeton? About ten years ago?; 6:30 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Who?; 7:12 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Exactly.; 8:14 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: She wrote an excellent book on Nietzsche - first rate.; 11:34 PM, March 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yale: Landemore and March.
Princeton: Annie Stilz.; 12:14 AM, March 13, 2011
Joseph said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12:15 AM, March 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: also Rahul Sagar at Princeton; 12:17 AM, March 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: Paulina Ochoa at Yale right before March, I think.; 1:09 AM, March 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 9:24 AM, March 13, 2011
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
Anonymous said...: ^ NYU Abu Dhabi, right?; 11:20 AM, March 13, 2011
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
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 2:17 PM, March 13, 2011
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Anonymous said...: 4:52 here--yes, for sure a great job! Just probably not a very "liberating" one.; 8:46 PM, March 13, 2011
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
Anonymous said...: Whoa...Are the Nagel and Scheffler in NYU Philosophy THAT Nagel and THAT Scheffler? Wowzers!; 9:41 PM, March 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: NYU has been a top 3 or so Philosophy department for a while now.; 6:38 AM, March 14, 2011
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
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
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
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
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 2:06 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 2:10 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 2:57 PM, March 14, 2011
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
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 4:15 PM, March 14, 2011
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
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
administrator said...: I have copied and pasted the Leiter, etc. discussion over to the GD area. Please follow it over there. Anything else posted here on the subject will be deleted (without being copied over!).; 6:20 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 6:28 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: That might be more information than you want to put up here.; 7:33 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: **sigh**; 8:44 PM, March 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^

I think it's just bad luck and wouldn't take it personally. If you're getting that many calls, you must be doing something right.

Ten years ago, I was trying to get into journalism. I had done several internships at leading newspapers, written extensively for student newspapers, had a budding portfolio covering a range of parts of the newspaper (news, features, opinion, sports, travel), top grades from a good university and a top masters from a top university. So, I got lots of interviews. But nothing came of the first however many (15-20) and I eventually had to take a job in a monthly trade magazine, writing about financial law transactions I knew nothing about and cared even less, for a Dickensian wage. After I'd been there for a while, an interviewer asked me how I had got stuck in such a dead-end job.

Anyway, I changed career plan, went to graduate school, and was on the market this year. On this occasion, I only got one phone interview, but I ended up getting the job. Just good timing on this occasion. Your time will come, I'm sure.; 2:06 AM, March 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: I hate you. So much. Not really. But yeah, kinda.; 2:18 AM, March 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: 2:06, That was very nice of you, and I mean it. People feel very despondent right bow about the job market that a little encouragment goes a long way.; 12:39 PM, March 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: I know who the Arkansas State offer went to, and the person in question told me they plan to accept. Is it appropriate to share this info here?; 11:34 AM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^You could post it on the wiki, assuming you're sure the person who got it is okay with having their name out.

http://newpoliscijob1011.wikia.com/wiki/New_POLISCI_Job_10-11_Wiki#Political_Theory; 11:39 AM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: And, of course, if you're not sure they'd be OK with it, you can be a dick and post it anyhow.; 12:44 PM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Don't do it. If the person wants to share that info, let her post it herself.; 1:45 PM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Have the Williams VAP or Pitt Lecturer searches moved yet, or is it still too early?; 1:49 PM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yeah, some people really don't want their names to be on the wiki. If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know why. Basically everyone gets absolutely ripped to shreds on the grounds that they didn't deserve the position. I've heard several people describe this blog as a great example of ressentiment in action.; 11:45 PM, March 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: On the contrary, it seems to me that the vast majority of people whose names get put up on the wiki are not subjected to any nastiness whatsoever, at least in this forum. There are some who do, sure, but it's hardly "everyone."

And yes, it must be ressentiment, because those who get jobs are clearly übermenschen and are naturally despised by lowly slave-types.; 6:55 AM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: 11:45 That is a massive overstatement. It is simply not true that all named job-getters are "absolutely ripped to shreds." The vast majority are subject to no such thing and usually receive polite congratulations. Don't be so hysterical.; 10:22 AM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I'm with 1145 - the amount of vitriol on this board for people who get jobs, especially if they do not fall into the slaved for years publishing prior to landing a job category is really sick.; 12:48 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I'm no Nietzsche scholar, so would have to defer to Tamsin Shaw on this, but I believe that there're few (if any) references to the ubermensch in the Genealogy and that it's possible to parse ressentiment without reference to the concept of the ubermensch.

The point being that the attitude on the blog expresses itself as outrage at the injustice of someone so unpublished (or so unworthy in some other way) getting a job when there are so many scholars with multiple publications (or other merits) who don't have a job, yet it's blatantly obvious that the outrage is a (very, very thinly) veiled expression of envy.; 2:00 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ how far are you willing to take that logic? There's injustice that exists in the world, including in our profession. Those who point that fact out are disproportionately likely to be those who suffer from the injustice. It's always open to those who benefit from the injustice to cry "envy." Maybe so, but that doesn't speak to the underlying question of whether there's injustice or not, or whether something could/should be done about it.

Fwiw I think that the "criticism" that appears here is quite mild considering that it's an anonymous forum filled with more than its fair share of desperate people; 2:23 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I have yet to see, nor can I imagine, an argument that even approaches coherence that the hiring patterns in political theory constitute an "injustice".

What on earth would that argument even look like? What bizarre conception of justice could you twist to fit with such a claim?; 2:41 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Geez, thou protests too much, methinks.

Injustice = undeserving people get hired/promoted due to cronyism and other kinds of non-merit-based factors. The same thing that injustice wrt hiring/promotion would mean in any other context .

Is that so bizarre?; 3:01 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Regarding the claims about Nietzsche: leaving the übermensch out of the picture, the concept of ressentiment is developed in the context of a discussion of masters and slaves, which is rife with very repugnant claims about natural differences, the entitlement of the masters to the greatness commensurate with their bearing and talents, and the vileness of small, pathetic slave-types who brood vengefully in the shadows. The point being that writing off criticism of those who get jobs as expressions of envy or ressentiment tends to be distastefully self-serving, especially when so much arbitrariness is involved.

And regarding justice, I'm with 3:01. There's a pretty straightforward, intuitive notion of merit and desert at work in claims like that. And merit and desert are pretty central to any recognizable rendering of "justice."; 3:19 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^

Good point. I don't want to suggest that all objections to injustice are motivated by envy or that those that are are hence unreasonable. But it's not the complaint that the system is unfair that I think makes the blog seem like an instance of ressentiment. It's the fact that the immediate beneficiaries of any injustice (i.e. the lucky job-getters, who prior to getting the job were in just the same position as everyone else on here) are always the targets, rather than the perpetrators (i.e. the institutions that favor applicants from elite institutions).

The bizarre thing is that many of the people on this board are (I must guess) Rawlsians. Not all, by any means, but certainly many. As Rawlsians, they ought to be suspicious of meritocracy, at least as it operates in the world in which we live. On that account, I'd have thought that any competitive hiring system would be unavoidably based on "morally arbitrary" factors. And such factors are clearly particularly open to claims of unfairness.; 3:26 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: "Injustice = undeserving people get hired/promoted due to cronyism and other kinds of non-merit-based factors. The same thing that injustice wrt hiring/promotion would mean in any other context"

The thing that I object to on this blog (and that I think many other readers object to) is the undue stress that is given to the 'undeserving' factor. I don't see that it's doing any work in your quotation. Wouldn't injustice be equally well-defined simply as, "people get hired/promoted due to cronyism and other kinds of non-merit-based factors"? The point is that the people getting hired get hired because of who they know not what they've done. They MAY have done enough to deserve it, but that wasn't the criteria that got them the job, and that is indeed unfair.; 3:30 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I've been offered a job this year, and I'll agree quickly with 3:01 and 3:19. There is a very simple and intuitive notion of justice that correlates rewards with achievements.* That's not difficult to understand at all. Anyone paying attention to this field over a period of years will find they've been passed over for others of more modest achievements. Don't deny that. It happens every year.

Just because the "underclass," however that might be construed, is complaining doesn't mean that their complaints are simply ressentiment. Sometimes "injustice" is in fact injustice.

To be sure, I'm not saying it's healthy to obsess over these things. It's only marginally productive to do so, insofar as it might inspire actual achievement. But it seems foolish to deny this as a plausible conception of justice, assuming one believes in anything like justice to begin with.

* Granted, there is another plausible reading of merit/justice that takes into account "promise." The problem with this is that it's more subject to corruption/cronyism, etc., simply because its measures are quite subjective. But I'm not going to fight that debate here, however.; 3:32 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Of course there's injustice, as there is in any hiring process.

But of course there's envy and ressentiment and it manifests itself particularly in attacks on the person who gets a job rather than on the institution that did the hiring.

To use two specific examples:

1) Several people complained that David Leopold got the Oxford job, because he was seen as an insider. But nobody objected that he wasn't a worthy candidate. This, it seems to me, is a perfectly legitimate complaint.

2) Many, many people objected at the appointment of a Harvard grad student as AP at MIT. He was then thoroughly demolished on this board. This seems to me to be simply an expression of ressentiment. If anyone should have been targeted, it was MIT, not the grad student. What purpose does ridiculing his merits serve? It doesn't solve the injustice or even express it.; 3:39 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: "If anyone should have been targeted, it was MIT, not the grad student. What purpose does ridiculing his merits serve? It doesn't solve the injustice or even express it."

No arguments there. We can't beat up on people because they apply for and get jobs. That's just silly.; 3:55 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: And merit and desert are pretty central to any recognizable rendering of "justice."

So, John Rawls does not offer us a 'recognizable rendering of justice'?

What is it that you do for a living again? :)

I suppose a fairly trivial claim could be made about injustice and cronyism when it comes to jobs. It's a big leap to go from there to a claim that insiders getting jobs, like at Oxford and MIT, is an injustice. It could also be a rational diminuition of risk; the good enough known vs. the potentially as good or better but riskier unknown. A hiring committee being risk-averse is hardly an injustice.

But what's really bizarre is the notion that merit and desert are simple, measurable things, which is an implied premise of the whole claim. Merit and desert can be measured in any number of ways, some of which are obvervable at a distance and some aren't. There's nothing unjust about (for example) placing one's own subjective assessment of the quality of work over simply counting publications. Or, a committee placing a good deal of weight on what they see as significant promise as a teacher. Or, tons of other little issues of fit that aren't visible to the outside.

There are many, many plausible ways to evaluate merit and desert. That some committees don't necessarily share your preferred definition can't possibly constitute an injustice, can it?

And mroe generally, unless there's some form of overt, straightforward from of discrimination at work, I have a really hard time seeing how "person trains for job in field with scarce openings, and despite promise fails to secure position" rises anywhere near the level of injustice. I mean, injustice has to mean more than just personally unfortunate, right?; 4:09 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Sure, but then you start to look for patterns, or for especially egregious examples. And there's no way to do that without talking about cases. I don't see how you can draw a distinction between criticizing MIT for making a given hire and tacitly criticizing the person who was hired.

Despite the hyperbolic talk here about people being "demolished" or "ripped to shreds," my recollection is that the comments that have been made about particular hires have been more along the lines of wondering whether that person was really more qualified than other applicants by pointing out objective facts about their record, e.g. number of publications, etc. Granted that's not the only or even necessarily the best way to measure merit, but it's hardly out of bounds in my view.

Fwiw I'm not filled with ressentiment: I've landed probably in the top 5% of this profession all things considered. My attitude is that I have a responsibility to do my best work and to perform at a high level, because in the grand scheme of things I took someone else's spot. So when I see someone get hired or promoted beyond their apparent qualifications -- especially when that person later stalls or flames out -- that's exactly what I think: "they took someone else's spot."; 4:42 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I'll give two specific examples, and I'll do the second one in a separate post since that post will probably be deleted.

(1) There was a conversation some months (years?) ago about the fact that Harvard and Princeton apparently haven't hired anyone in political theory outside of the Harvard-Princeton-Cambridge-Oxford circle in something like 15 or 20 years. The counterargument was made that those might be the most qualified applicants, or, as 4:09 suggests, that that might be a smart strategy to play for a time-pressed and risk-averse hiring committee. I look at that kind of behavior, and those kinds of arguments, the same way I would look at a department that had hired 10 men, or 10 white people, in a row with the same rationale. Maybe, but it sure smells like cronyism.; 4:47 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: (2) Someone pointed out a few days ago that a former Princeton political theorist, now tenured in the excellent NYU philosophy dept, had a very thin publication record. I certainly wouldn't have gotten tenure with a record like that. It was later asserted that the person was a spousal hire at NYU. Could be. (All of this has since been deleted, as this post probably soon will be). But that's another case where I think, "they took someone else's spot."; 4:49 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: my recollection is that the comments that have been made about particular hires have been more along the lines of wondering whether that person was really more qualified than other applicants by pointing out objective facts about their record, e.g. number of publications, etc.

Perhaps that's true. But it makes the practice no less absurd--there's a great deal of reasonable ways to evaluate candidates, many of which are not immediately accessible to outsiders. Some very basic facts may be "objective" in some trivial sense--3 publications is more than 2, etc., but that's one amongst many reasonable and defensible ways of selecting a candidate.

It's dumb, it's irrelevent, and it can't be done without indirectly attacking the reputation of the person who did get the job.; 4:51 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^You're not wrong that merit and worth are hard to assess, and that there are many reasonable ways of weighing factors to determine merit. But it doesn't follow from that fact that any particular search committee weighed factors in a reasonable way. Granted, none of us have access to their reasoning. But the claim being made when people criticize a hire is that they can't discern how the committee's decision was defensible. It may be difficult to weigh factors, but if a particular weighting is reasonable, then an argument can be made for it. Critics of a search committee (and I think it's right to say that these criticisms can't avoid implicit judgments about a candidate) are saying that they can't figure out what argument might support the decision.; 5:15 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I certainly agree with your second paragraph, in fact I said exactly the same thing in the next sentence after the one that you quoted.

As for the third paragraph, it might be dumb & irrelevant, we'd have to judge that case by case, and it makes sense to defer prima facie to the judgment of the search committee. But we're all grown ups here, more or less, and I think we're capable of making those kinds of distinctions.

I'll draw a distinction here that's been drawn in this forum before. If I say, "I saw so-and-so present at a conference, and s/he is an idiot," or "I read so-and-so's paper on Locke, and it's a piece of crap," then that's attacking their reputation. I don't think there's a place for that in this forum, even though we obviously do that kind of thing in our everyday professional lives all the time. But I fail to see how pointing out objective facts about someone's record is attacking their reputation. I mean, I guess my CV is my reputation, in a sense, but it is what it is, right?; 5:22 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ meant for 4:51, obv.; 5:24 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Here is the problem that I have with this discussion.

There is an underlying assumption here that somehow the quality of a college professor - and ultimately, 99 out of 100 people who get a Ph.D. and get a teaching job end up being just that, college professors, not Harvey Mansfields, Samuel Huntingtons, and Stanley Hoffmans - is judged by what you see on their public CV (specifically, whether they went to a "top" school and how many publications they have). To put this mildly - thats bull shit.

I have written here before that I hold three degrees from two of the world's top schools - most would agree top in both of the major English speaking countries. And I have plenty of publications. So I am not speaking about myself. But, one of my best professors as an undergraduate, many years ago, had virtually no publications in his career that stretched many decades. Yet I hardly have anywhere near as much knowledge as he does, I am hardly as good at communicating this knowledge as he was, and I am hardly as good of a teacher as he is. Indeed, the best I can hope for is to look at him as my inspiration and try to emulate him as much as I can.

Why does this matter? Most people here have never been on a search committee, for obvious reasons. So you really do not know how this all works. But these decisions are made not made by # of publications. A candidate may have three pieces in what you regard as "top" journals, and yet they may be complete shit. On the other hand, another candidate may have zero publications, but his writing sample is so amazing, you know he has a brilliant mind. You have no idea what is in the candidates letters, which also matter a great deal. And you have no idea how well or badly a candidate did in his campus visit.

I won't argue that going to Harvard does not matter - it does, I've said so before. But it is plainly rude to claim that someone is unqualified because you think that their CV is too thin. This is about a lot more than a CV. And reducing it to the discussion of a CV, instead of focusing on everything else, does make it sound rude and irresponsible. Now the rejoinder to this is that publications are the one thing thats "factual" - though not really. Yet this is not about facts thoughts, its much more complex than that.; 9:16 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: I'm making a T-shirt that says "This is not about facts...its [sic] much more complex than that"; 9:53 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: 9:15 is clearly a long-winded, pretentious blowhard, but on this subject he's clearly not wrong.; 10:29 PM, March 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^ you're arguing against a straw man. Here's what 4:42 actually said:

"the comments that have been made about particular hires have been more along the lines of wondering whether [a] person was really more qualified than other applicants by pointing out objective facts about their record, e.g. number of publications, etc. Granted that's not the only or even necessarily the best way to measure merit, but it's hardly out of bounds in my view."

Of course there are intangibles and/or invisible (from the outside) factors that inevitably and appropriately influence hiring decisions. And of course committees are often inappropriately influenced, consciously or not, by all kinds of factors that lead to "unjust" outcomes, and even in the aggregate to systematic forms of injustice against people who, through no fault or demerit of their own, don't have degrees from the right schools, letters from the right people, the right person as a spouse, or whatever. Sometimes it's fairly obvious which is the case, often, probably usually, it's not, at least in the short run.

To be clear, blindly counting publications or citations could be equally "unjust" depending on the circumstances. As we all know there are plenty of tools out there who publish a high quantity of low quality stuff.

The bottom line is that all of us could be more alert than we are to the fact that talent often lies in unexpected places, and those of us who are relatively successful could be more humble about the fact that we don't necessarily deserve the advantages that we enjoy -- and that as 4:42 also said, "we took somebody's spot."; 10:52 PM, March 17, 2011

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Political theory and public law job market

2/22/2011

2010-11 Junior Theory Jobs Post #4

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