Political theory and public law job market: 2011-12 Senior Theory Jobs Post #1

7/31/2011

2011-12 Senior Theory Jobs Post #1

For: Discussion of all senior political theory jobs advertised in 2011-12.

Restrictions: No formal restrictions, but I will delete uncivil posts and personal attacks.

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.

284 Comments:

Anonymous said...: Steven Johnston will be the next holder of the Neal A. Maxwell Presidential Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service at the University of Utah (PhD Johns Hopkins University, 1983).; 10:50 AM, August 01, 2011
Anonymous said...: Never heard of him, and judging from citation counts, I'm not alone. Looks like he does some interesting work, though; 4:42 PM, August 01, 2011
Anonymous said...: Never heard of him either.; 8:00 AM, August 02, 2011
Anonymous said...: Do you bother to read political theory books published by Cornell or Duke? And the "never heard of him" response is hardly a verdict on his talent.; 12:46 PM, August 02, 2011
Anonymous said...: 4:42 here. I freely admit that I read few books from Cornell and Duke, and I did not intend "never heard of him" as a judgment of his scholarship. I had hoped that "looks like he does some interesting work" might make that clear.

After I went and googled him, I printed out some of the articles for later reading and made a note to check out one of the books. "Never heard of him" just means "never heard of him."; 4:19 PM, August 02, 2011
Anonymous said...: Did the University of Utah advertise that job? I don't remember having seen it.
Is this how the senior job market works? Do you have to have a job offered personally?

I can't stand my college, my colleagues, and my town anymore. If I don't get out of here I will soon hate my family and my life as well. I need a new job!

My problem is that I have not been networking since I was in the assistant job market more than ten years ago. I don't know how to do this. Suggestions on how to begin?; 12:38 PM, August 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: The job's been advertised for years. Which is not to say that senior hiring mainly happens through applications sent in the mail in response to posted ads.

Networking isn't primary; whta's primary is your publication rec ord and whether you're one of the names people think of when they ask "who's doing important work/ who's going to make a difference in the next couple of decades/ who can we build a program around?" But networking matters at the edges. So why the heck haven't you been doing it?

I don't think of networking as some add-on. A researcher wants his or her research to be read and known. That requires investing the time to get the work out there in front of people.; 5:45 PM, August 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: 12:38 here.

I have published some-- a few articles before tenure, and the book came a year later. The book got a couple decent reviews. Then I had kids, and I been mainly worrying about diapers since (I have not been to APSA for three years now).

I am not kidding myself. This is probably not going to be my year in the market, but I have to begin somewhere.

I am not hoping for Presidential Chairs, but then again, Johnston is not that well-known, is he?; 8:38 AM, August 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: "whta's primary is your publication rec ord and whether you're one of the names people think of when they ask "who's doing important work/ who's going to make a difference in the next couple of decades/ who can we build a program around?""

Ok, what are the names of some young profs. who meet these conditions?; 10:42 AM, August 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: What age range interests you?; 1:17 PM, August 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: 30s, early 40s.; 1:30 PM, August 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: For the record, the position at the University of Utah (previously held by Chandran Kukathas, now of LSE) was searched for in 2008-2009 but no hire was made due to budget constraints. The job search re-opened in 2010-2011 and concluded w/ the hire of Steven Johnston. Both searches were well-publicized (APSA, Chronicle, etc.).; 1:40 PM, August 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Not many people make full prof in before their late 30s. Most senior positions go to people in their 40s or early 50s. Steven Johnston is a case in point.; 1:54 PM, August 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: "Ok, what are the names of some young profs. who meet these conditions?"

Right, because our experience on this blog suggests that that conversation would go very well.; 10:53 AM, August 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: If we accept as loose criteria that people should be in a political science department, under 50, and with 2 published books, candidates include: Eric Nelson, Jan Werner-Mueller, Melissa Lane, Mark Bevir, Lisa Disch, Mika Lavaque-Monty, Bernard Harcourt, John McCormick, Anna Marie Smith, Sharon Krause, and Corey Brettschneider.; 5:22 PM, August 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: And if I were conducting the kind of search we're talking about, 4 of those names would be on my wish list, along with several under-45 associates with one book and a good trajectory.; 6:12 PM, August 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: "along with several under-45 associates with one book and a good trajectory."
For example?; 8:53 PM, August 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: I vote for not having this conversation.; 9:28 PM, August 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: If we accept as loose criteria that people should be in a political science department, under 50, and with 2 published books, candidates include:

............

well, i can think of more than 5 straussians who clear this rather low bar, but of course they dont count.; 9:40 PM, August 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^^^ agreed, not a conversation we should probably have, since people won't play nice. But it's worth pointing out that the people mentioned are all already at top 5-10 places (Ivies, Chicago, Berkeley, Michigan), which means they aren't likely to move except possibly to one of a small handful of similar places. So the real question for most depts is, "who can we build a program around that's actually movable?" And that's a much harder question to answer.; 12:20 AM, August 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Brettschenider doesn't have two books in the normal sense. He's got one book and a minor teaching text. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not the same thing.

Eric MacGilvray has two books. So does Elisabeth Ellis.; 6:37 AM, August 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^I thought the same thing, but I checked and I see he has as PUP coming out in 2012.; 7:42 AM, August 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: I would also broaden the focus, and consider also assoc. profs. who are not in the US, or who are in other departments (e.g. Philosophy), or who have strong records of publication of papers in journals.; 10:27 AM, August 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: The bar is too low if you want to consider who really is the best among the under-50 crowd.

The standard should be either 3 books or at least 2 books combined with articles in top journals.; 8:49 AM, August 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, I'm pretty sure that all of the people mentioned so far meet the latter test. But the real test, as always, is quality rather than quantity.; 11:01 AM, August 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: Right: and very very few meet the first. Plus I doubt that an arbitrary 3 book bar would really be a meaningful measure of quality. Fast workers aren't always good workers.; 11:33 AM, August 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: "Well, I'm pretty sure that all of the people mentioned so far meet the latter test."

Not really. I'm talking about more articles than the one perfunctory APSR and/or PolThy "get me tenure" piece.; 3:36 PM, August 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: Ah yes, that perfunctory APSR "get me tenure" piece. Dashed it off during a slow week at office hours. And I thought this was a semi-serious discussion!; 9:34 PM, August 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: cite counts, as best as I could quickly figure them out (possible errors in h-index).

People well under 50:

Nelson: top cite is 63, H-index is 5
Mueller: 77, 10
Brettschneider: 34, 4
Krause: 36, 6
Ellis: 33, 3
MacGilvray: 27, 3
Lavaque-Manty: 15, 4
Lane: 39, 6

People who I think are about 50:

Disch: 153, 11 (but is she actually under 50?)
Bevir: 215, 20
McCormick: 125, 11
Smith: 261, 11
Harcourt: 368, 15

for comparison:
Johnston, 12, 3; 9:06 AM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: stupid conversation.

none of this matters. all that matters is:

1) who can be convinced to apply,
2) who can then be convicned to move, and
3) if there is anyone in that list, do you want them, and
4) can you offer them enough to make it happen?

all this other crap is meaningless.; 4:06 PM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: Indeed. And Utah had to make 3 offers before they could persuade someone to take the job.; 6:20 PM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: Can one factor-out all of Bevir's self-citations?; 7:02 PM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: That citation count list would look different if it was summed across all publications, which makes more sense: I suspect that there would be a reshuffling among the 40-ish group and that the 50-ish group would pull way ahead.

But right, this is kind of a stupid exercise. The question of who's the "best" among 30- and 40-something political theorists isn't really a well-formed question, and answering it by counting books, articles, or citations isn't a promising strategy. We'll know a lot more in ten years, and we can only speculate (hopefully not hurtfully) in the meantime.

And if you're asking (as I think we originally were) who among the current young associates one might think about building a program around, then 12:20 am 8/12 and 4:06 pm 8/14 have it exactly right.; 7:40 PM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: "That citation count list would look different if it was summed across all publications,"

The h-index captures some of that.; 8:08 PM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^ I started to do that. It was easy but boring.

The most obvious thing I found was that Bevir's top cite is 310 not 215.

I then went through subtracting his self-cites.

The list is:
310 (cites) 291 (minus self-cites)
219 186
195 194
113 101
92 81
66 56
61 60
55 55
53 47
51 51
47 44
44 43

I'm not sure what the numbers prove as I have no comparative data, but I have some thoughts.

(i) The total number of self-cites is about 7.5% of all cites.
(ii) That rate of self-ctation would probably have little impact on his H-index given that he has a lot of cites around the 20 mark.
(iii) Anyone's total number of self-cites is in part a reflection of the amount they publish. The more they publish, the more they are likely to cite themselves.
(iv) What I found most interesting was the items Bevir self-cites most. The rate is highest for The Logic of the History of Ideas and articles on 'Objectivity in History' and 'Foucault, Power, and Institutions'. It is possible that Bevir cites them most because they provide the theoretical foundations of his other work.; 11:00 PM, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...: Bevir's rating demonstrates the futility of trying to measure real scholarly influence quantitatively. He's certainly productive but thoroughly uninfluential no matter what the citations say.

Nobody had heard of him before he conspired with Sage to take Political Theory away from Mary Dietz a few years back.; 12:59 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: He's uninfluential in North American APSA-type political theory. If you look through the citations, you won't see a lot from people like that, which is why a lot of people like that hadn't heard of him or had barely heard of him.

But those cite counts do actually reflect something. He's influential in the methods debates in intellectual history, and in public admin, and among British politics people.

Would have made him a bizarre fit for PT; doesn't mean that he's uninfluential.; 7:38 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Disch is 46 years old.
Bevir is 51
McCormick is 45
Smith is 45
Harcourt is 45; 8:13 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Um, Disch's vita lists her BA (Kenyon) as '83, and her Ph.D. (Rutgers) as '88. So I doubt she's 46.; 8:52 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Harcourt's BA is '84 (Princeton); JD '89 (Chicago), so 45 sounds a little young for him too.; 9:32 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ...and Smith has an '84 BA (Toronto) as well.

OK, back to work.; 9:36 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: 7:38 is right about Bevir.

If you work on Arendt or Rawls, freedom or obligation, etc., you are not going to come across him much. But if you work on philosophical questions to do with interpretation or methods debates in poli sci, or on some big topics in the history of political thought (e.g history of socialism), or British politics, or theories of governance, he is pretty influential.

An H-index of 20 is *much* higher than the vast majority of theorists - and it means that people are reading and referencing the work, whether you like it or not. It is barely impacted by self-citing.; 10:34 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: So how does one calculate h-factor, or is there a google scholar-like tool that does so?; 11:04 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: download 'Publish or Perish' ( a free program). It does it for you. You can also remove self-citations if you can be bothered.; 11:15 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Publish and perish is very useful, but I find it faster to go through the scholar.google output directly.

h-index is the largest number N such that one has N works with at least N citations each. Since scholar.google gives stuff in descending order of cites but with a few blips. If everything's working smoothly, you just count down the number of works until the number you're counting is the same as the number of cites, and if it's not you can just skip one in your count ("that one's not by the same person, it's a different person with a similar name") or jump ahead ("for some reason that work with 10 cites is a few below this one with 8, so...") I find it easier to make those judgment calls on google than in P&P, where you have to uncheck works based on less information.; 11:49 AM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: I calculate Bevir's h-index as 23 irrespective of whether or not self-citations are included.; 1:34 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: That is very high, especially for somebody who has a foot in political theory. The idea that he has little or no influence is clearly foolish - it just depends which topic you work on.; 2:01 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: So the h-index should rise over time in a normal career, right? What would be a high h-index for someone who's 40ish, or someone who's 35ish and coming up for tenure?; 2:17 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Not sure what the norms are (if any), but it can be revealing to pick out people whose work you might admire, or your advisor, and check those out. Most theorists have pretty low scores (>10).

In the sciences, it is quite common to list your h-index on your CV, and departments often take them into account when hiring and making tenure decisions. Economists too. I imagine that this wll become increasingly common in the other social sciences in the next few years. Which is a big problem, as it isn't necessarily a guide to quality (for example, if you work in a fairly obscure area, you may do brilliant work, but it will not get many cites).

If you do want to use an h-index, the best thing is to compare yours to people at a similar career stage, and working in a similar area. Otherwise there are too many other variables to make the comparison useful.; 2:24 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well if the figures quoted above are correct then the range among the people mentioned (Brettschneider, Ellis, Krause, Lane, Lavaque-Manty, MacGilvray, and Nelson), all of whom were tenured fairly recently in top or at least very good depts, was 3-6. Mueller is an outlier at 10. That's hardly a comprehensive or representative list, but if anything it probably skews high, no?

In any case I doubt that depts are making much use of stats like this for promotions to associate; probably more so for promotions to full.; 2:30 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Several of those people, and many if not most theorists, are "book people," which if I understand the method properly tends to drive down the h-factor. E.g. three books with 100 cites each would score much lower (3) than six articles with six cites each (6), even though the books took more effort and had more impact. Right?; 2:36 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: As far as I can tell, those are all pretty high scores for mid-career theorists. Bevir on 20+ is very high.
(But check out, e.g., Jeremy Waldron or Quentin Skinner or Martha Nussbaum or Habermas, if you want to see the kinds of score the big beasts get).

The danger is that the non-theorists in poli sci departments, following the norms of their gods in economics, begin to use this kind of metric. It will be very bad news for political theory if we go down that route.

In Britain in the last few years, there has been a fierce debate about whether citation metrics should be used by the government to judge research quality, and thus distribute funding.; 2:41 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: I doubt any of the people listed above have anywhere near 100 cites for a book or an article - very few theorists do.

The exception is Bevir, who (from what I can work out) has one co-writtn book with 250+, and a single author one with 150+, and a co-written article at 200+. Note, though, that the co-written pieces are in an empircial field (British politics), which means they are non-comparable with standard theory articles/books, given the size of the relevant population. His book, though, is a theory piece, but is also probably cited by philosophers and historians, given the subject. If you can reach other fields, your count goes up.; 2:50 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Some people in that age brakcet:

Alan Patten, 11
Brooke Ackerly, 10
Roxanne Euben, 8
Patchen Markell, 7
Andrew Rehfeld, 5
Arash Abizadeh, 9
Clarissa Hayward, 8
Jacob Levy, 9
Margaret Kohn, 8
Bryan Garsten, 3
Melissa Schwartzberg, 4
Lawrie Balfour, 5
Jill Frank, 5
Frank Lovett, 5

As far as the 100 threshold mentioned by ^ goes, Patten, Markell, Levy, Kohn, Ackerly, Euben all have at least one hit at 100+ , so it's not that rare.; 3:02 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ the example was constructed to be extreme, but it would still work if the citations per book was 30 (which is roughly what most of the people named are getting).; 3:03 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ right, so mixing those numbers with the ones already mentioned it's hard to see any relationship between the h-index and prestige of tenuring institution or my own (admittedly imperfect) subjective impressions of prominence, influence, etc.

The more I think about it the more I think that this is a bad measure for people who are mostly in the business of writing books. Bound by Recognition was a huge book (189 cites on GS) and Markell should (I think) therefore be regarded as one of the leading/most promising theorists in his age cohort, The fact that he doesn't happen to have ten other publications with nearly that level of impact doesn't change that.; 3:16 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Do you think that just the top-line figure (cites for the most-cited work, usually a book) is more useful?; 3:23 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: I don't know what any of this is *useful* for, but I find it interesting. There are people being named (besides Bevir) who I haven't heard of or have only barely heard of, but who are clearly doing a lot of work and being read by a lot of people. Insofar as 3:16 is appealing to just using the truths everyone already knows, I guess I think it's interesting to get information that *isn't* what everyone already knows, or at least isn't what I already know.

And since the original conversation was about promising people who might be mobile, that's a particularly good reason to look for new sources of information. "Patchen Makrell is great" isn't very useful advice for a non-top-10 department trying to find a program-building senior hire.; 3:39 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well what I *really* think is that reading the work is more useful. I think Bound By Recognition is a great book not because it got 189 cites, but because I read it and thought it was great. And sometimes I have a hard time understanding why a book has a high or low count. One way to get a high cite count is to be provocative but wrong; one way to get a low cite count is to do something careful and narrow, or to do something new where the connections to existing literatures and debates isn't immediately clear. Sometimes you catch a trend at just the right time, sometimes you catch it a little too late. Etc. That isn't to say that there isn't a correlation between citation count and quality -- there is -- but it's a pretty noisy one.

If you insist on quantifying, I guess I would say that for theorists/book people summing across citations would be better than just looking at the top line or the h index. But I'm not sure about that, and it varies a lot case by case, so it helps to know what kind of case you're looking at.; 3:48 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ was for 3:23, obv; 3:50 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yuck. Here comes the inevitable grad student promotion of their advisor's books....; 5:18 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: Wow, way to be pre-emptively disgusted!; 5:30 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: 5.18 isn't just pre-emptive. It is also a comment on what the author obviously thought was the adolescent gushing of 3.16 / 3.48; 6:16 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^See, the commenter even timed the post so we'd associate Markell's book with gospel!; 6:29 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: You people aren't thinking big enough. It's pretty clear, I think, that this entire website was an elaborate ruse from the beginning, fiendishly devised by Patchen Markell, so as to anonymously promote his book seven years after it was published, and after he received tenure. It's so obvious, how could we all have missed it?; 6:56 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: I once attended a panel at the Western where Markell made fun of this board. Now I see it's obvious that he was trying to throw us off the scent.; 7:03 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: "I once attended a panel at the Western where Markell made fun of this board."

Maybe Bevir's not the only one promoting himself here.....; 7:21 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: What a great discussion ... really helpful.; 11:41 PM, August 15, 2011
Anonymous said...: You actually think Bevir is promoting himself here? The levels of paranoia and conspiracy on this board are funny but stupid. It is possible that people might actually say something positive or simply informative about someone (markell, bevir, whoever), without (a) being that person, (b) kissing their ass. It's a strange world, I know.

Markell or Bevir hardly need to do much self-promoting to a bunch of gossipy grad students.; 3:28 AM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Why is that people teaching at liberal arts colleges don't rate mention on this list? eg. Paul Franco, Paul Stern, Rob Devigne ...; 8:00 AM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: gossipy grad students, vain academics, whatever.; 8:08 AM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, if you're going to count citations(and other such ridiculousness) you might open up the door to some of the first-rate political theorists at liberal arts colleges.; 9:03 AM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, if you want to post about somebody go ahead, don't complain about what other people are posting.

Having said that, (a) the people you mentioned are all full professors, and this discussion has mostly been about young associates; and (b) the people you mentioned are all Straussians or fellow travelers, and for better or worse that tends to be a different/parallel network to the one that's being discussed here (as you presumably know very well).

I take it that there aren't a lot of R1 programs that are likely to build around a Straussian these days, and the LACs that do tend to hire Straussians aren't typically in the business of building programs in the research/graduate training sense. I'm not defending or criticizing that set of practices, just pointing out that it's the reality.; 9:41 AM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: This board can be deeply parochial. Believe it or not, there are lots of decent theorists outside of North America - many, of course, with higher H-indexes than those listed above (fwiw). After all, Kukuthas was hired from Australia for the Utah job.

Arguably, political theory is in a much more secure institutional position in British, Australian, and New Zealand poli sci departments than it is in the US. It's a different story again in continental European countries.; 11:57 AM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: First of all, there are several people mentioned above who are either not American, not teaching at American universities, or who were educated and/or previously taught at non-American universities (e.g. Bevir, Mueller, Nelson, Abizadeh, Levy, probably a couple of others that I'm missing).

Second of all, if the position of political theory is so much more secure in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, then why are so many of the best British, Aussie and Kiwi theorists teaching in the US?

Third of all, if there are theorists outside the US that you would like to bring to our attention, then stop whining and do it!; 12:10 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Fourthatively, what is the theory of kiwi?; 12:16 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: 11.57 said there are 'lots of decent theorists outside of North America'. How does listing a group of theorists all of whom work in Noth American universities (and all but two of whom are North American citizens) in any way challenge that?

The list of leading British and Australian theorists teaching in the US is very small (which probably says as much about the different styles of political theory that dominate poli sci departments in each country as anything else). But then there are also top Canadians and Aussies teaching in Britain (Kukuthas, Goodin, and Waldron, for starters). so not sure how the cheer-leading for the US is supposed to work in this case...; 12:18 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Bird, fruit, or people?; 12:21 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: I bet I'm not alone in hoping for less talk of candidates and more talk of openings.

Do we know of any actual positions at associate or full likely to open up this year?; 12:22 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: That was a conversation stopper.; 1:07 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^ Of course there are many good people working outside of North America. My point was that it would be a lot more constructive to name them than to whine about the supposed parochial attitudes of people on this board. Most of the jobs discussed here are at US institutions, most will go to US candidates, and most of the posters are from or at least teaching in the US. So it's not surprising that most of the posts have that slant. But by all means, offer a corrective if you want.

Having said that, the notion that political theory is more secure in the UK than in the US seems suspect to me. On the one hand, as noted above Britain has gone much further down the road toward mechanically using citations and impact as a yardstick for distributing resources, and this is likely to have dire consequences for the humanities-oriented areas of the discipline.

On the other hand, there's a sizable salary gap between UK and North American universities, which (to answer my own rhetorical question) is one reason why there's a much greater flow of academics out of the UK into the US than in the other direction. If you've ever had an offer from a UK institution then you know what I'm talking about.

Pointing to Waldron, who spent most of his career in the US and still divides his time, is the exception that proves the rule, as Oxford had a very hard time filling the Chichele Chair for exactly that reason.; 1:10 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: There are two different issues here: (1) how attractive are posts on the US versus the UK, and (2) is the subject more or less secure in the UK.

On (1), it's true that there is a significant salary gap between the US and UK, and this is especially so at the top end. This means that UK universities find it hard to attract major US-based scholars to apply. Though plenty of US junior people do apply for UK jobs, presumably as a result of the dire market.

But that is a different point from (2). At least for the moment, there is virtually no tension between theorists in UK departments and their empirical colleagues. Theory seems to be thriving in all the major departments, and (just as importantly) in the smaller and more minor ones. There are no Penn State horror stories, no letters sent out in the name of senior figures in the field begging for people to cite Poltical Theory articles more frequently, no articles published on 'Offensive' that are explicity motivated by fears about the future of the field, and none of the anxiety about being marginalsed that is so commonly expressed at every APSA meeting.

So, at the top end, the US reamins a great place to do theory - its nice and secure at Harvard and Princeton, and the top LACs, and so on. But in plenty of places - the majority? - it looks more precarious; or at least many theorists talk as though it is.; 1:32 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: I think that's probably right as a characterization of the comity and degree of integration within departments. I guess my worry is that the new REA/REF guidelines are going to create direct and indirect pressure in the medium term to squeeze out humanities-type research from political science depts. But we'll have to see how that goes.

I do think, fwiw, that prognostications about the dire state of theory in the US are often overblown. It's simply not the case that theory is only healthy at the elite privates and SLACs. There are plenty of public institutions -- most of the UC system, much of the Big 10 (Wisconsin, Indiana, OSU), several of the mid-Atlantic schools (Rutgers, Maryland, Virginia, UNC), the top publics in Texas (UT, TAMU) and a number of others where theory is alive and well, or at least holding its own. People have been predicting the demise of theory since the 60s, and I don't see any evidence that we're any closer to it happening now than we were then. In fact I'd say we've come a long way since then.; 2:38 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: I hope you are right about that.

And on the UK - it is a worry for the future, but it may fizzle out. It's far too early to tell.; 3:19 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Robert Devigne is no Straussian, lest you consider the Barry/Cohen/Johnston trio to be fellow-travelers. I posit that one must do their Ph.D. directly under a Straussian to be one.; 3:31 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ I hope you're right too!; 8:44 PM, August 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: The last few years, ~5% of new positions are in political theory, while ~8-9% of existing political science faculty identify as theorists. So: we may be pretty far from disappearing as a field, but our slice of the pie is clearly shrinking.; 12:28 AM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ it's closer to 7% over the last 8 years per the most recent PS, which sounds like it's within the margin of error if the 8-9% figure is to be believed.; 12:44 AM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: 3:31 PM - do not mean to start a Straussian discussion, but Harvey Mansfield did not do his dissertation under a Straussian, but no one would argue that he is a Straussian. The late Eve Adler did not do her dissertation under a Straussian, and no one would dispute her Straussian identification either. Same can be said about Laurence Lampert.; 5:13 PM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Sorry to be ignorant
but i am a political theorist
how do you calculate h-factor
is there a simple, step-by step method? are the figures on google scholar considered reliable enough to use for this?

Thanks a lot; 7:38 PM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Explained by 11:49 am 8/15. Best to do it manually for the reasons given there.; 8:10 PM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Oh, and no, Google scholar is not a perfect tool for many reasons, but it gives a decent approximation.; 8:11 PM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ and ^^^ scholar.google results are a valid way of reporting, and are increasingly the standard way of reporting. They're less accurate than ISI in some respects (they include working papers and conference papers) and more accurate in others (they include many books and more journals; ISI's coverage of political theory journals is kind of arbitrary).

I don't think there's some "true" h-index for which the scholar.google result is a proxy. There's h-index as measured by ISI and h-index as measured by scholar.google, and they're different though they should be correlated. scholar.google is an entirely accurate measure of cites that are reported on scholar.google.; 11:29 PM, August 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: RIght, the two variables are what counts as a publication and what counts as a citation. Google is arguably too broad on both counts, ISI is too narrow, especially on the latter count. The other problem with Google is that it sometimes gives separate hits/citation counts for the same publication, which can inflate the h-factor.; 9:10 AM, August 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: "The list of leading British and Australian theorists teaching in the US is very small ..."
Not sure what "very small" means, but what about this list (off the top of my head):
Bevir
Geoffrey Brennan
Kukathas
Steven Lukes
Pateman
Pettit
Michael Rosen
Alan Ryan
Tuck
Waldron (half-time)
This isn't to make any claims about the relative strength (or exellence!) of political theory in the U.S. vs. Britain vs. Australia. Bt it's undeniable that the combination of more money, no mandatory retirement age, and simply more universities means that a lot of (generally senior) UK and Commonwealth academics come to the U.S.; 6:44 PM, August 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: The idea that dissertation committee membership is in itself a sure indication of Straussianism is, as a previous poster pointed out, untenable (and seems to rest on the strange notion that one can only be intellectually influenced -- or inducted into the mysteries of the cult -- by one's committee members, which is perhaps something that grad students tend to believe, but is not generally the case). But aside from that, the identification of Devigne's committee members is wrong -- he worked with Allan Silver (in Sociology) and Rogers Smith (from Yale).; 6:48 PM, August 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Who R. Devigne worked with in graduate school is beside the point. If you actually read his work, it's perfectly clear to anyone with any knowledge of political theory that he's a Straussian, and a fairly orthodox one at that. He made his commitment to the Straussian movement as clear as can be in 2009, when be made sure only Straussians and fellow travellers were on the short list for Tuft's junior position.

What's the point in denying it? Devigne's out and proud.; 9:49 PM, August 27, 2011
Anonymous said...: A curio---I didn't know Rogers Smith was working hard at Tocqueville at Harvard ca. early 80s. This invariably meant at least a few "close readings" with Mansfield. Perhaps Anne Norton has exorcised a few of those lessons in the friendly confines of West Philly!; 10:25 AM, August 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ Devigne's methodological preferences aside, none of the three people who interviewed for the Tufts position is a Straussian. What "fellow travellers" is supposed to mean is anybody's guess.; 10:10 AM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ I don't know who else interviewed, but Rasmussen sure seems like a Straussian to me. He was trained by Straussians his entire education, employed at Straussian strongholds (Bowdoin and Houston) before coming to Tufts, and while I haven't made a careful study of all his work, what I have looked at (recent ROP piece) certainly has distinct Straussian overtones.; 10:39 AM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Hmm. I would've thought that the mere mention of Anne Norton would be enough to kill the notion that training under a Straussian makes one a Straussian.; 1:55 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Of course Dennis Rasmussen is a Straussian. To argue otherwise is just to make things up. (Of course, some people on this board think that Gillespie and Ruth Grant are not Straussians, so how could their student be one in that case, but that is just silly talk). And Tufts now employees several Straussians: Vicky Sullivan, Ioannis Evrigenis, and Dennis Rasmussen. What that says about Robert Devigne I do not know - though given that he was chair of the committee that hired Sullivan, member of the committee that hired Evrigenis, and was "Preperator, Promotion of Vickie Sullivan to Associate professor, 1997", he is certainly not anti-Strauss.; 2:40 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Now Evrigenis is a Straussian? As the Norton post points out, the logic is impeccable. The Rasmussen analyst left out the Brown Political Theory Project, which I suppose can be explained by claiming that Tomasi is a Straussian too.; 4:01 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: I love this so much. You all have no idea how much I love this. I haven't looked at this website in a few years, but now I want to check back every day. Thank you, thank you, thank you; you have brought immeasurable joy to my afternoon!; 4:33 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: "Preperator, Promotion of Ioannis Evrigenis to Associate Professor, 2009
Preperator, Promotion of Vickie Sullivan to Full Professor, 2004
Preperator, Promotion of Vickie Sullivan to Associate professor, 1997 "

Devigne CV

WTF. I understand what this means, but a) is "preperator" even a word? b) who the hell puts this on a CV? and c) who the hell puts this on a CV *online*?

Am I the only one who finds this tacky as hell? Does anyone else put lines like this on their public CVs?; 4:46 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: I've only ever put them on my private CVs.; 6:06 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: before coming to Tufts

-----------

author must be at Tufts or in the area......; 6:07 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Now Evrigenis is a Straussian?

A pretty orthodox one. Have you read his work? If you had, and you understand what Straussians actually are, you wouldn't have any doubt.

I'm not sure what the existence of Anne Norton is supposed to prove. Generally speaking, Straussians train the next generation of Straussians. But occasionally some of them (including Mansfield, Bloom, and Strauss himself) train non-Straussians, and occasionally people (like Devigne) find their way to the family on their own. Neither is particularly common, but Norton and Devigne demonstrate it occasionally happens.; 8:55 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Nothing gets the posts going quite like a good game of "Name that Straussian."; 9:48 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Bowdoin is a "Straussian Stronghold" ???; 10:42 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yes, bowdoin is Straussian. They have two senior straussians, and whenever they have the chance to hire VAPs/sessionals, they hire straussians (Rasmussen and Jaffe from Toronto, for example). Straussians don't control too many top SLACs, but they have a few.

Is that really so surprising? They own theory at about a dozen R1s.; 11:03 PM, August 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: "Now Evrigenis is a Straussian?"
'A pretty orthodox one. Have you read his work?'

How could there be any question? I suppose someone will say next that Sullivan isn't a Straussian.

TUfts is all Straussian all the time.; 9:40 AM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: "How could there be any question? I suppose someone will say next that Sullivan isn't a Straussian."

On this board, the general assumption is that Straussian = the caricature of it created by Norton and Drury, and if someone does not fall into that caricature (in the mind of whomever is making this argument), they are not a Straussian. Its just silly.; 12:46 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^So enlighten us as to what DOES make someone a Straussian, if the implicit assumptions of the participants are "just silly." I don't think anyone will buy that it's just a matter of your advisors, through some sort of laying on of hands.; 1:15 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: What makes a Straussian?

(i) Straussians always do close readings of canonical texts.

(ii) They almost always favor authors like Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and modern American thought.

(iii) They almost always focus on certain topics, including individual character, religion and public life, rulers and their relations to the ruled.

(iv) They almost always have been taught or influenced by other Straussians.

(v) They often have a small-c conservative view at least in that they are skeptical of modernity, relativism, and social liberalism.; 1:22 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: Shoot, I'm not a Straussian, and I think the first four apply to me.; 2:41 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: I'll take a stab at a revision:

i) Straussians always do close esoteric readings of canonical texts because they believe that philosophy is an elite activity that must be protected from the mass;

ii) They view the philosophical life as the highest human activity; they therefore approach politics with a view to institutions that are most likely to protect the philosophy as a viable way of life;

iii) They are often conservative in that they see a clear distinction between philosophers and the mass public, and are therefore suspicious of relativism and social egalitarianism;

iv) They tend to support liberal democracy as the least bad way to protect intellectual elites from mass politics in modern societies.; 3:47 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well crap. Based on that description I'm definitely a Straussian. But mostly I work on Heidegger and other post-foundational thinkers that Straussians consider beneath contempt, so I must not be one. But I believe in philosophy an liberal democracy!

I'm sooo confused....; 4:33 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: It isn't that confusing. There are a lots of soft Straussians and fellow travellers out there just as there are lots of analytic types who aren't really Rawlsians and lots of critical theorists who aren't poststructuralists.; 5:31 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: "So enlighten us as to what DOES make someone a Straussian."

If you actually care, see

1) http://www.amazon.com/Straussophobia-Defending-Strauss-Straussians-Accusers/dp/0739119524/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

2) http://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Leo-Strauss-Philosophy/dp/0226993337/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314741248&sr=1-9

3) http://www.amazon.com/Strauss-Straussians-Study-American-Regime/dp/0847686914/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314741273&sr=1-1

Or if you do not want to read boos, you can also see

1) http://harpers.org/archive/2009/09/hbc-90005789

2) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/books/review/25alter.html

29; 5:57 PM, August 30, 2011
Anonymous said...: If Straussians "view the philosophical life as the highest human activity" then how come so few of them actually do philosophy? What are recent contributions of such people to theories of mind, epistemology or language? I like reading a lot of Straussian HPT, but to say that this constitutes a living commitment to "philosophical life as the highest human activity" is a bit like saying that playing fantasy baseball constitutes a commitment to physical fitness as the highest human activity.; 10:58 AM, August 31, 2011
Anonymous said...: Yes, best of men, these two have left their barn doors entirely too wide open, by the dog! Harken as I recount the words from a recent hugger-mugger with superlative Straussian savant, Steven Smith.

Quoth Smith: "I do not believe that the term “Straussian” is simply a function of who ones teachers are. The term, as I would apply it, is related to both a certain way of reading texts and a concern with the problems that were central to Strauss’s work. These include the problem of ancients and moderns, the theologico-political problem, and the problem of esotericism/exotericism in particular. It is a focus on these themes, I think, that would make one a Straussian or not."; 1:21 PM, August 31, 2011
Anonymous said...: MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!; 1:50 PM, August 31, 2011
Anonymous said...: YOU DON'T HAVE TO COME HERE!!!!!!!!!!; 3:22 PM, August 31, 2011
Anonymous said...: So according to Smith, Ranciere and Lefort are both Straussians, since they are both interested in ancient/moderns, the theological-political, and write in esoteric ways?

That sort of a meaningless definition.; 4:47 PM, August 31, 2011
Anonymous said...: There is no doubt that there are some senior UK/Aus/NZ theorists in the US, as the list shows. But that is a handful, given the size of the field. And the list itself is a bit misleading. Michael Rosen is American, not British or Australian (though he taught at Oxford). Kukuthas is at the LSE. And Waldron is now back in the UK (though keeping a foot in the door at NYU). Bevir has applied for some senior UK jobs recently. Several of the others listed (Pateman, Lukes, Ryan), are in their 70s, and Lukes spent nearly as much time teaching in Spain and Italy as the US or UK.

You are right about retirment age, though - US universities are a big draw for older senior scholars.; 10:12 AM, September 01, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Odd the sort of confident assertions one finds on these boards, which are quite wrong: Rosen's as British as they come -- born and educated in the U.K., and a British citizen -- and only spent a year in the U.S. (teaching at Harvard) before moving to Harvard in '06.
(Also, Lukes did teach in Italy for over a decade, but has never held a faculty position in Spain); 11:09 AM, September 02, 2011
Anonymous said...: How many senior Americans in the UK and Australia? I can think of a few - Goodin, Geuss, Carver, and Wenar.; 4:31 PM, September 02, 2011
Anonymous said...: Who cares where different theorists were born?

So, why is the senior job market so atrocious? From a university's standpoint, they save a bit of money on salary by going junior. But, this is peanuts for good universities and eventually they plan on tenuring and giving raises to the people they hire anyway. So the salary savings hardly seems like a persuasive explanation. Why don't more places hire at the associate level, where you have much more certainty about exactly what you are getting (compared to hiring an ABD)?; 11:54 AM, September 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: You underestimate how much the difference between short-term cost and medium-term cost matters in university budgeting.; 2:02 PM, September 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ This is what the elite law schools tend to do.; 8:42 PM, September 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: Dreams, baby. That assistant prof is going to light up the sky like a meteor.; 7:23 PM, September 04, 2011
Anonymous said...: So what's the APSA gossip? Who's leaving? Who's looking? Who fought?; 12:38 AM, September 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, loud shouting matches and a brief fisticuffs at the John Yoo panel.; 12:48 PM, September 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: Not theory. Boring!; 6:01 PM, September 05, 2011
Anonymous said...: John Yoo is political philosopher, hence him speaking on a theory panel.; 10:30 AM, September 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: There were fisticuffs? Who was fisticuffing???; 12:27 PM, September 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: How droll! Did they have seconds?; 12:39 PM, September 06, 2011
Anonymous said...: Rumors abounding at APSA that Wendy Brown is moving back to Berkeley.; 5:07 PM, September 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^I thought she hadn't left yet. Do you mean that she's no longer going to Columbia next year or whenever?; 5:26 PM, September 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: I tried to tell people here the Brown to Columbia thing was never going to happen, and was roundly mocked for it. It hasn't happened yet, and it probably never will.; 6:35 PM, September 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Poli Sci folk at Columbia refused to make her an offer. No offer = not leaving Berkeley.; 10:33 PM, September 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: But didn't she get an offer from Anthro instead?; 10:42 PM, September 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: I believe Columbia's literature department wanted Butler but they struggled to find anyone willing to take Brown.; 11:08 PM, September 12, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well hell. If Wendy Brown can't get a job, I'm screwed.; 12:15 AM, September 13, 2011
Anonymous said...: Who are some advanced Assistant Professors who might get recruited upwards for Associate Prof positions in the next couple of years? We are searching for one promising scholar. Any suggestions?; 6:40 PM, September 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, we would need to know who you are (institution-wise) to know whether it is an upward move or not.; 7:12 PM, September 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: we are a Top 20 R1 program; 8:42 PM, September 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ That's plausible. The world's top research universities frequently crowdsource their tenured hiring decisions on anonymous websites.; 11:45 PM, September 16, 2011
Anonymous said...: Just looking for additional suggestions; 12:09 AM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Here's one:
http://ps.ucdavis.edu/People/faculty/rstaylor/; 9:54 AM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Thanks.
Looks interesting, but he is already associate.
I meant advanced assistant professors who are not yet tenured.
also, he does the typical Kant/Rawls/Mill liberal canon. Not very original. We seek something more cutting edge.; 1:21 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Hi, Simmel! Nice work using capital letters to throw us off the trail!

Now please go away.; 1:22 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: No, my question has to do with what kind of interesting new work is being done by younger assistant profs.
What fields: eg, global justice, Islamic PT?; 1:41 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Paulina Ochoa at Yale is doing great work on popular sovereignty; 1:50 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Alison McQueen at Stanford; 1:52 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Nacol at Vanderbilt: work is very original.; 2:02 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: Any info re: Amherst search? might they be looking for a senior person?; 2:36 PM, September 17, 2011
Anonymous said...: McQueen just arrived at Stanford. Why would should leave? Nacol is good, but if the poster found Kant too mainstream, wouldn't Rousseau be a problem too?

What about George C-M at Drexel? Underplaced and global-justicey. (Although Marx did claim to not have a conception of justice.)

March at Yale does Islamic pt.

Browers at Wake Forest also does Middle East political thought.; 8:48 AM, September 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: Don't feed this troll, people! This is just an attempt to stir up shit-talking and gossip.; 10:23 AM, September 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: thanks for the good suggestions; 10:59 AM, September 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: Might go the route of folks doing work on race and political theory, M. Rogers (UVA politics to Emory Philosophy), M. Smith (Barnard), J. Turner (Washington).; 8:47 PM, September 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: The idea of cutting edge makes no sense in political theory. It assumes a kind of progress that is very hard to buy exists in political theory. Likewise, the idea that your work is not original because you work in 'mainstream' areas is absurd. You have to read the work to see whether it's original (e.g. is Parfit not original because of ties to utilitarianism? is skinner not original because he works on Hobbes?). Those are only two of the things that are stupid about this conversation.; 9:00 PM, September 18, 2011
Anonymous said...: Of course it is possible to defend the idea that there is progress in PT.
That is one argument: that we have moved from basic to more sophisticated perspectives over time. This is what modernization implies. For instance, does anyone defend feudalism now?
There are exceptions, like Straussians who long for the polis, but those are rare. Interesting and valuable, but certainly not proof that progress in PT is not possible.
So, no, not a "stupid" question.; 6:29 PM, September 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^^ Yes, work on race and PT is a good way to go in new, interesting work.; 6:30 PM, September 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^?? I don't think the 9 pm, 9/18 commenter was talking about the idea of social or technological progress, but rather whether the knowledge claims advanced in political theory research can be assessed for progression in the way that, say, developments of a scientific research program arguably can.; 7:19 PM, September 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^Right. Of course, there are changes in social norms. Nobody defends feudalism, although that's mostly because feudalism is irrelevant. The forces of production have moved on, if you will. I don't think that fact shows anything interesting about progress in political theory.

You were suggesting that whole research paradigms/approaches should be ignored/de-emphasized because they weren't cutting edge. I see how you could have progress within a single paradigm (so, Skinner's work on Hobbes can constitute progress both in Hobbes studies and history of political thought interpretation).

What seems much less clear is how one approach might be 'cutting-edge' in a way that gave us reason to prefer it to work of another kind (as was suggested above). Again, I can see how particular authors (most of us, really) could be unoriginal and iterative. But, how entire approaches could be ruled out in the same way is hard to grasp. Notice that things also come back in fashion with creative work (Rawls bringing back the social contract tradition and normative approaches to public policy, for example).; 8:04 PM, September 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ dude, Rawls brought the social contract tradition back into fashion after 200 YEARS.

Whether the idea of hiring a "cutting edge" political theorist makes sense in principle, in practice what it means is fad-chasing. And chances are that if you think you know what KIND of work is cutting edge (as opposed to being able to recognize good work when you see it), the fad that that you've identified is getting ready to peak.

We're talking about a tenured appointment here, and there are plenty examples of "what were they thinking?" hires where the answer is, "well, x was a really hot topic in 1985."; 10:44 PM, September 19, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Michael Sandel anyone?; 7:00 AM, September 20, 2011
Anonymous said...: Why did the conversation stop?
One of the main vices of disciplinary thinking is that scholars are never willing to tackle new questions. (The discipline encourages and rewards staying within the research program).
Looking for new questions is not always foolish, and I wouldn't dismiss it as a sign of "fad-chasing". People who are looking for new questions acknowledge that not every topic has been explored, (and I'd say they also show some courage and creativity). There is nothing wrong with staying within one tried and true line of research as long as you don't do it out of cowardice and think that it is hubris to say anything that your teacher didn't teach you.; 9:30 AM, September 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: I don't think the problem is "disciplinary thinking" per se, that keeps people from exploring new boundaries. Rather the problem is that the incentive structure for academic success rewards is more reliably realized by modest contributions to existing debates. It is simply a higher risk strategy to take on a new area early in one's career, before tenure. Add to that the fact that tenure decisions often cannot wait to see if a new idea has legs or is just a fad and so are also reluctant to hire or tenure people who do work outside the box.

All of which leads to this (utterly unoriginal) observation: Tenured faculty are overpopulated with those who are risk adverse; and thus the too much of scholarship is unoriginal, derivative, uninventive, and, in a word, boring. I think this is a feature not of any disciplinary thinking but merely a result of institutional design.

What we would need is an institutional fix to incentivize novelty and risk taking that would not put someone at odds for getting tenure. Maybe abolishing tenure would do the trick for it would allow people to choose "what is interesting now" to a primary virtue of scholarship, without the corresponding cost of "turned out to be fad. It would also encourage more risk taking types to pursue academia because it would likely come with higher salaries to offset the cost of job security. Maybe a "novelty score" to add to citation counts. Something.; 12:05 PM, September 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ Boy is this true. But let's notice the key sentence: "tenure decisions often cannot wait to see if a new idea has legs or is just a fad and so are also reluctant to hire or tenure people who do work outside the box."

The word "cannot" here should be "will not." That's where the risk aversion really comes from, and it has to do with the last sustained discussion that we had on this thread. Instead of actually reading work and having the confidence to make an independent judgment about its quality -- to say that this work *will be* (or *should* be) influential -- we've seen an increasing tendency to rely on "objective" and "external" measures of impact, like quantity of publications, supposed quality of publication venues, citation counts, impact factors, h-indices, etc. Those kinds of measures, and the judgments that are based on them, are by their nature post hoc and conservative. It also creates enormous temptations & opportunities for corruption, since the way to get ahead isn't to persuade people that you have good ideas, but to figure out ways to muscle your way into the top presses and journals, inflate your citation counts, publish the same idea multiple times, etc.

It's interesting and a little scary to speculate about how some of the giants of our field today, who owe their gianthood status to the fact that they labored for years, sometimes decades, on a magnum opus, would have fared under the present system. Would we have gotten Rawls's Theory of Justice, Pocock's Machiavellian Moment, or Taylor's Hegel (e.g.)?; 12:34 PM, September 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: 12:05 here: I agree completely with ^.

I would add, though, how struck I have been not merely by the bean counting nature of hiring and promotion, but the sheer sociology of knowledge stuff--who you know, and how well one's people skills are--that seems as important a factor. These are highly correlated no doubt. I met Rawls once and he struck me as an affable fellow; he was certainly a very handsome man. I don't know the others so can't speak about them. This is not to say that these folks were anything but brilliant. Just to say that who you know, depending itself on how well you do with people, is a huge factor in addition to bean counting.

Here's an interesting test: group theorists--junior or senior--merely in terms of social graciousness, affability, ease in social situations, etc. Gross categories: high (outgoing, gregarious, enjoyable to be around); mid (perfectly lovely, a little retiring); and low (socially awkward, very retiring). (No need to get abusive or obnoxious here, just describing sociability.) Then see how productive and well regarded their work is relative to others at their stage.

My guess, all things considered, is that people with high scores are, all things considered, relatively less productive than those with lower scores.

Huge covariate problem of course--high sociability also means you're more likely to be a good teacher, public speaker, drawn into admin roles, etc, etc, all of which pull you from scholarly research and contribute to professional success. And lots of confounding factors too: the fact that you would score "high" means your more likely to get invited to do scholarly things that lead to publications. But I'd still be willing to put money on it.

(As with my last comment, this is an utterly unoriginal observation, but ought to be added as part of what is going on, in addition to the bean counting, non-idea focused decision making that goes on.); 12:58 PM, September 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^I agree generally with your point about social skills, but I would add that sometimes people achieve fame not by being affable but by kind of being assholes. That is, sometimes it pays off to be very confrontational--to try to shake things up and challenge people. I'm not saying this is always or even usually a winning strategy--typically much more risky than networking well, and you have to have a powerful point to make for it to work. But it is an important counterpoint to the "affability" model of academic success.; 1:19 PM, September 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ & ^^ I dunno, I'm not buying it. Rawls stammered and was a terrible public speaker (not only for that reason). Habermas has pretty severe speech impediment. So does Pocock, come to think of it. None of them have/had a lot of personal charisma, to say the least. And I can think of lots of other famous and semi-famous academics who are shy, awkward, off-putting in various ways, etc., so I really don't see much of a correlation between charisma and success. The three people I just mentioned aren't even charismatic on the page!

I think most of us are pretty good at sniffing out shallowness (charm without substance) and pretty used to tolerating personal idiosyncracies. In fact I think that's a big reason why we got into the business in the first place, at least it is for me: so we don't have to put up with glib and shallow people, or be put in a position where glibness is the ticket to success.; 1:59 PM, September 22, 2011
Anonymous said...: I:59 you missed the point.
Those three are awkward, successful, creative and original because they made their careers in a world where you did not have to be miss personality and have 7 boring APSR articles in order to get tenure. You were evaluated on the basis of your work rather than your pals or you points. Then again... they lived in a world where you had a blank check provided that you were already at Harvard, Cambridge or Frankfurt. This system is less aristocratic and allows for mobility, which is what we are discussing here after all.; 11:05 AM, September 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, the observation that you, or 12:58 if that isn't you, started out with is that Rawls was "very handsome" and "affable," so I don't find the distinction there. But I can think of plenty of examples of socially awkward/unattractive people in the 30-50 year old age cohort too. What's true, I guess, is that if you're *so* shy and awkward that you're not out on the conference circuit, or not getting your ideas across in a compelling way when you are, then you're going to be handicapped. But I don't think that's new either.

I take your point about the death-grip that the Cambridge-Harvard-Oxford-Princeton axis had on political theory a generation ago. It's been interesting to see those institutions come to terms with their somewhat decentered place in the new universe (which they're still doing, I think). But I don't see what that has to do with the claim about charm, or what either has to do with the norm of steady but boring article production.; 1:20 PM, September 23, 2011
Anonymous said...: In what ways are they coming to grips (or failing to) with the new world order? Or are you just making that up?; 6:36 PM, September 28, 2011
Anonymous said...: Global Justice job, open rank, just posted at UCSD

http://polisci.ucsd.edu/faculty/employment.html; 3:34 AM, September 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^^ http://www.princeton.edu/politics/graduate/job/; 7:44 PM, September 29, 2011
Anonymous said...: Game to 7:44.; 1:35 PM, October 03, 2011
Anonymous said...: Not really. The unemployment rate among theorists is high. Princeton produces a lot of theorists, so a lot are unemployed. That does not mean that Princeton is failing to come to terms with anything. Which Departments are doing better than Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge? It seems to me that the top Departments in particular still recruit theorists almost exclusively from those four institutions.; 3:06 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: "It seems to me that the top Departments in particular still recruit theorists almost exclusively from those four institutions."

Look at the placements from the last several years, it's just not true -- unless by "top departments" you mean those same four institutions, in which case it's true in the sense that they hire each other's students. But that's not prestige, that's incest. And having 16 (count 'em!) theory candidates on the market in one year is INSANE.; 3:52 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Below is a list of current post-holders appointed in the last 10 years at the assistant or associate level:

Harvard: Beerbohm (Princeton); Nelson (Cambridge); Frazer (Princeton).

Princeton: Mueller (Oxford); Sagar (Harvard); Stilz (Harvard).

Yale: Garsten (Harvard); Landemore (Harvard); Mantena (Harvard); March (Oxford); Ochoa (Hopkins).

Berkeley: Bevir (Oxford); Hoekstra (Oxford); Song (Yale).

Chicago: Cooper (Berkeley); Markell (Harvard); Muthu (Harvard); Pitts (Harvard); 7:11 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: So zero elite Princeton or Cambridge placements in the last 10 years except at Harvard? That's pretty amazing.; 9:13 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: ...and if I'm not mistaken all of those non-Princeton Harvard appts have degrees from 8-12 years ago or so, with the exception of Landemore.

Muthu 1998
Markell 1999
Pitts 2000
Garsten 2000 (I think)
Mantena 2004

And again, the claim isn't that these schools don't *ever* place well (though Princeton clearly underperforms pretty badly), but that they've been "decentered," i.e. that they're competing with, and often losing to, schools that never would have been in the running 1-20 years ago.; 9:24 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: 10-20 years, that is.; 9:26 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: What is the evidence for this:
"they're competing with, and often losing to, schools that never would have been in the running 1-20 years ago."

If the above post is correct, the only other programs to have placed at elite schools are Berkeley, Hopkins, and Yale, all at one a piece, and Berkeley and Yale are the other two elite schools. There is no sign of lesser schools making any inroads here.; 11:00 PM, October 07, 2011
Anonymous said...: Well, you've defined "elite" in an absurdly narrow way -- and a self-confirming one too, given the incestuousness of some of the "elite" schools. But OK, Chicago had an appt at Harvard (Tarnopolsky) within the last 10 years, and Rutgers had an appt at Princeton (Deneen). Those are, to my knowledge, the only non-Harvard/Princeton/Cambridge/Oxford appts those schools have made in recent memory.

Broadening the elitist net slightly, Columbia hired a GWU Ph.D. (Schwartzberg), NYU a Rochester Ph.D. (Landa). Rochester also placed someone at Stanford (Stone). Georgetown, Minnesota, Duke and Wisconsin have all placed people in the top 20, if I'm not mistaken. Berkeley and Chicago have each done so multiple times. That's just off the top of my head.

Harvard is still primus inter pares, sure, but the playing field is a lot more level than it used to be. My sense in particular is that the traditional elites are performing much worse than they used to outside the very top tier.; 12:08 AM, October 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ not to encourage the pissing match, but Landa is from Minnesota, not Rochester. I guess the poiint still stands.; 8:38 AM, October 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ as long as we're fixing factual errors, Schwartzberg's Ph.D. is NYU, not GWU.; 11:43 AM, October 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: Virginia placed Pevnick at NYU.

Cornell placed McQueen at Stanford (and Stanford placed Reich at Stanford, I guess).

I think Harvard still places especially well, but after that it's just hard to see any pattern of ranking based on the job market. Princeton's ability to serve as a feeder school to Harvard doesn't make up for its general underperformance.; 2:15 PM, October 08, 2011
Anonymous said...: There is a severe glut of political theorists, so it is no surprise that that Ivy programs are having the same difficulties as anyone else. Looking just at placement at other Ivy's is a ridiculously small sample. To say that a program has had "only" one or a few Ivy placements does not indicate anything negative. Political theory is no more or less "decentered" now than it ever has been, it is just that it is a terrible market for everyone.; 9:00 AM, October 09, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^9:00 AM seems about right to me. Another thing to consider: Harvard and Princeton tend to admit more theorists than other programs -- but whereas Harvard allows its theorists to dawdle through (allowing up to 8 years of enrollment as grad students, and providing a number of teaching opportunities, including teaching post-docs), Princeton has traditionally forced their students through in 5, and not provided much support beyond. This may explain why Princeton has so many more theorists on the market now than does Harvard (or other places), even though recent placements haven't been so dissimilar among top theory programs (Princeton's students have done very well with post-docs recently, even if they haven't fared particularly well with tenure-track jobs).; 10:24 PM, October 10, 2011
Anonymous said...: ^ I think if you think through the math on that you'll find that your explanation doesn't make any sense.; 8:17 AM, October 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: How so, 8:17? (And which point? That Princeton's placement rate hasn't been that off of other programs'? That the larger number of Princeton theorists on the market than theorists from other places reflects both a larger number of theorists admitted, and a more rapid turn-over than at other places? Or did you read the post as making some other claim that I'm missing?); 12:58 PM, October 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: The claim was that Princeton has more students on the market because they have a shorter time to degree. That doesn't follow: if Princeton and Harvard are admitting roughly the same number of students each year, and if roughly the same proportion finish (two big ifs, but you don't question either premise in your post) then they should have roughly the same number of students on the market. Maybe if you were somehow starting from time 0 then there would be a 3-year lag when P had more students out that H, but as I understand it P has had the 5-year policy in place for quite a while.; 2:31 PM, October 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: The Cambridge placement record needs to be viewed more broadly - remember that many of those coming through (including Nelson) are doing their PhDs in History, and thus go into history departments (or others), even though they do political thought. In recent years, that would also include Peter Stacey (UCLA) and Sophus Reinert (Harvard Business School; joining Tuck, Armitage, and Nelson at Harvard). There are probably others.; 5:51 PM, October 11, 2011
Anonymous said...: So NYU's always-failing search failing again raises a question. They have eight theorists listed on their theory page, and it is as always eight men. So here is the question: how many other departments have similar (or larger) theory programs with zero people doing feminist or gender political theory?; 2:12 PM, October 25, 2011
Anonymous said...: Um, having women theorists on the faculty ≠ having "people doing feminist or gender political theory." Nor, strictly speaking, is the converse the case, though I guess it's likely. So which question are you asking?; 2:19 PM, October 25, 2011

Political theory and public law job market

7/31/2011

2011-12 Senior Theory Jobs Post #1

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