Yeah, let's bring in non-pedos .... isn't that the least we can ask? So many profs still are in contact with these jack (g)-offs! Seriously not okay. You rape little kids online, you don't get tenured profs looking after you in jail. There are no excuses. Shame on all of them for continuing the lines of communication. These are kids. Women.
A merit-based approach is the perfect way to MCGA. It SOUNDS good and honorable, but is an implicit way to exclude all but those with the easiest access to merit-building activities, those bland, white men from Ivies and par-Ivies (hopefully non-Cincinnati, amiright?). No one can catch us.
Looking at the last few names to appear on the wiki, I can't help but feel annoyance. Some have no publications, or if they do, they are nothing substantial (of course they list several articles as "under review" on their public CVs--but that in itself is unethical and breaks the principle of blind review). If these same people had applied for equivalent positions in the UK or anywhere else that considers *past* research output as evidence of what *future* research output will be, then they wouldn't stand a chance. Good luck to those institutions that took a blind gamble--hope it works out for y'all.
@9:09. The system is such that it will work out for them. It will be easier for them to publish given their institutional affiliations. Beyond the money and resources they will be given, an important factor is that they will be less suspected apriori, and often journals want the prestige of people from high profile places. Conversely, those affiliated with no institution or an unknown school will be suspected of mediocrity from the get go, and journals with backlogs will probably toss your essay before the submission of someone from an R1.
@10:36, you have it wrong way round. Steady readers of the Chronicle of Higher Ed will know that such people turn up in all sorts of departments. Classics has no special claim to fame. Not sure if that's a good thing (it's not just us) or a bad thing (more molesters than you'd think).
RE Columbia: I have friends there trying to pick up the pieces. Let's not paint everyone with the same brush. The entire Faculty were not complicit, though many seem to have known. Actually, some had brought complaints against him over the decades. The admin dismissed these and so he kept on offending. He was not well liked by most faculty; mainly feared or loathed.
@12:22. boo hoo. the only victims in this situation are those that harris harassed. your friends and the faculty at columbia who are now "picking up the pieces" do not deserve any sympathy. Those in powerful positions in the department, in classics or history, didn't try hard enough or care enough if the complaints they registered "over decades" didn't make a difference. If they really wanted him out they certainly had the collective power to do something about it, or to shame him in ways that might have rectified the situation.
Clearly tenure is good for LOUDLY opposing the admin and the MAGA agenda, but delicately avoiding asking a harasser to stop harassing. Or to get the hell out. Shame on everyone who enabled by his or her silence or innuendo.
Southern Schools (and to a lesser extent all non-coastal regional schools) are always worried about keeping non southerners in those positions, especially if they are in states that are hot, muggy, conservative, MAGA, anti-LGBT, etc. etc. So Southern schools like to recruit from Southern flagships like UT Austin, UNC and UVA: they know that if a person spent seven years getting a PhD in the south that they can put up with it on the TT.
1:17. Good point. I never really considered that, but it's true... having never lived in the south, the idea of teaching there for 7+ years does not sound appealing and I would take any chance given to jump ship.
Regarding this Columbia business, if the repeated complaints, both written and oral, of senior and junior faculty concerning full professors who were engaging in multiple forms of abuse aimed at colleagues and students over a series of years was something all university administrations took seriously then the University of Arizona would have dismissed two of its tenured classicists nearly a decade ago. But UA did not -- are some of you going to blame the other faculty members for the administrative failure?
I have no inside knowledge of what went on at Columbia, but it seems rather arrogant and ignorant to malign a large group of people en masse over what went on there, given the known behavior patterns of administrators.
The 4-4 at Tennessee again in the inbox, a reminder of the pitiful salaries of underemployed junior faculty...$36,000. Atrocious. This leads me to a topic that is not discussed enough among peers (out of embarrassment?): salary. How much to "junior" faculty make, on average? What's an average postdoc salary? An average VAP salary? An average T-T salary? What are we even working towards? Glamorized poverty?
What is the average take-away per course in lecturer/VAP positions? Adjuncting?
Here the pay/course is 4.5k. Is that what adjuncting at Knoxville, or peer institutions, would look like, minus health care? Not sure if there would be any retirement plan to speak of.
If you were in grad school at, say, Harvard and made 30k, 36k in Knoxville is a raise. Speaking as someone who may have to live on less next year, I can say it's doable in a non-'nice' place if you don't have debts or a family.
So we continue to restrict the field to people who don't have debt or are carers. Great. The way this field continues to only support or create opportunity for the same type of people is astounding.
A 4x teaching load increase + lack of retirement benefits (I presume) + no relocation expenses (I presume) + no job security + no opportunity for advancement + etc. doesn't sound like much of a raise.
Oh hey Tulane, thanks for giving us a whole three days notice to apply for your job before the deadline. We all have nothing to do and really appreciate you dropping this into the middle of our week.
I'm glad that FV is anonymous, because I can provide information on this without outing myself or placing my career in jeopardy.
The reason why the posting has such a narrow window is because the incoming VAP is already known and has already been unofficially granted the position. The quick timeline for the search is to A.) minimize the 'bloat' of the applicant pool, and to B.) not unfairly get too many candidates' hopes up.
The incoming VAP is very close with the professor whom they are going to replace, and it's just a matter of crossing a few 't's and dotting a few 'i's.
...At least Tulane is doing this quickly, and it should be rather clear given the timeline that such is the case, so as to minimize its impact on the job market.
On the plus side, the scholar for whom this VAP is covering will be retired soon, and we will have a T-T line out for the 2018/19 cycle.
I don't know about average, but the 3-3 VAP I had paid about 50k in an area that's relatively affordable. I get the impression that's on the higher end.
I had a 3-3 VAP in a very expensive city (though not NYC or LA). It paid 48K with rather a crappy benefits package. Barely made ends meet (mostly because of high cost of childcare in the area). Most faculty in my grad department were impressed with the amount. Where I'm at now is SLAC (3-4) in a more affordable but still expensive city. They pay 54K with full benefits at the same price as the tenured faculty. It would be interesting to have an online compendium of VAP salaries and adjunct salaries.
I was living off 24K in boston and it was absolutely fine. I don't know what everyone is complaining about unless my standard of living is just much lower than everyone else's. I was able to buy books, eat out, do fun things, travel quite a bit... I wasn't saving any money to be sure, but I did not feel like I was living "poor."
I had a postdoc that paid 24k in a high COL area, a 3-3- VAP that paid 65k+relocation in a low COL area, and now a TT that pays 70k+small relocation in a moderate-to-high COL area.
Pro-tip to the young: go to public school for undergrad and private for grad. Your wallet will thank you.
Uhm, people, just saying what your salary is without a context is pretty useless. Are you at a giant state university with chronic budget problems, an elite school with an endowment in the billions, a top SLAC, etc.? Teaching load is actually less of an issue than the type of school and, secondarily, what the cost of living there is like.
I myself am teaching at a state university and getting around $40K; last year I got about that amount at a SLAC with a large (though not giant) endowment. Both schools are in cheap places to live.
Re: Tulane. I think you are only partly correct, @3:11. One scholar may be retiring eventually, but I don't think that's who this VAP is replacing. I think this is just a regular sabbatical and there won't be a TT line next year.
So umm, this is a hard question, but given the state of the job market:
How do you know if your research "matters", or if you're actually not doing anything useful/should teach high school/leave the field and try something else? My advisors seem supportive but I'm looking around and not sure anyone else cares..
I'm about to graduate and don't have anything yet for fall, and I'm increasingly pessimistic about future opportunities.
Some people who do Fake News do research that 'matters,' and some people who do Real News do research that doesn't 'matters.' Your mileage may vary. So I would say that you should set yourself a maximum number of years to keep trudging on, and develop an attractive plan B. Then ask around for advice about the kind of research that you you should be doing, the niche that you should be attempting to fill, and the kinds of jobs that you should be able to present yourself as a plausible, even TOP candidate for.
5:03: I'm in the exact same boat as you. I know the Spring Market isn't over, but it's getting harder to keep up hope that I'll get even a temp job. I think now is a good time for us to start looking into other options.
5:09 here, in response to 5:18. This is not just a Classics problem. My friends in many other departments and disciplines are also having trouble finding even temp teaching jobs. This is one of the biggest problems of the modern university and academia. I wish that Classics would take the lead in addressing these issues, but we're a tiny discipline even in the humanities. It completely sucks to not find work and the state of the job market is incredibly demoralizing for those of us who want to pursue this as our careers. But I also knew what I was getting into when I signed up for a PhD, even if I didn't expect it to be this bad.
5:09: If you haven't gotten any offers, or interviews for them, that is not a good sign. Are there people who don't get any nibbles their first year and then land a job a second or third year? It seems that the usual is to get a postdoc/VAP and then transition into a TT...
@5:36 Yes I am such a person. I had zero interviews while ABD. I had one interview this year and got the job. I am not by any means claiming that this is common, but it can be done.
$24K/year in Boston as a grad student may be fine if you don't have debt, health issues and high(er) insurance costs, dependents, etc., and if you aren't concerned about savings, retirement, kids' college funds, etc. But you can't generalize your personal experience to everyone's. If a lot of people around you are complaining about the livability of a stipend, and you think it's fine, it's more likely that your experience is the unusual one. You don't know others' lives.
Even if you're not an archaeologist, look at the description for the job at Monmouth. That is absolute nonsense. I know a couple of people who could teach all those things, but what exploitative BS.
Since somebody asked...I'm a junior T-T at a public R1 in a flyover state and I make $60k (negotiated up from $55k) with about $1k for conference travel annually. In my first job, I was in a 1-year position and taught a 4-4 at a public R1 and made $36k (not Tennessee).
Salary bands at public institutions are, in many states, public information available relatively easily through simple web searches and (less easily) govt. databases. Private institutions are a bit more difficult to track, but talking with friends and colleagues who are friendly can be very useful in this regard.
A SLAC in a relatively low-cost metro area in the South offers around $70K/year to all incoming assistant profs. They don't negotiate salaries, which is a relatively new thing among some SLACs, to prevent gender discrimination (if men are better at negotiating, and they end up making 8-10% more than their female counterparts at the start, and raises are percentages based on that starting salary, at the end of the line, the men end up making *way* more than their female colleagues), so they picked a salary at the higher end of the range for the position and just give it to everyone.
Since others are sharing and I support this kind of transparency, I'll stop lurking for once.
My SLAC in a large New England city--that isn't Boston--started me as an assistant prof at about 65k earlier this decade, but is pretty good about giving CoL raises every year or so (usually 1-3K annually). Between hiring and tenure I made it to 74k. Tenure and promotion to associate gave me another 7k. They give all profs an annual 1k book budget and 1k travel budget, and 1.5k annually to help with childcare for TT/tenured profs with children under 12. I found out much later that I could have negotiated for a better starting salary, but honestly I was so thrilled to get a job that I didn't push as much as I should have.
At UNC, almost all of the tenured profs make north of $135,000. If you’re in the Medical School here, starting salary for T-T faculty is $505,000.
Being a public, everyone’s salary from the janitorial staff, TAs, to the dean are all on public record. You can search for anyone’s name. It’s hard to find, but the data is out there for every single public university.
@5:03, if you don’t think your own research matters, stop doing it. You’re wasting your time and the time of journal editors, your peers, etc. Having support from others (e.g. advisors) is good, but if even you don’t have faith in your research, save yourself and the rest of the field by not continuing with it.
Here's a fairly low-stakes anecdote about negotiating: When I (a woman) accepted my first post-graduation job, which was a great 'fancy' postdoc, I didn't even -think- to ask about things like relocation costs, and no one suggested that I should. After I arrived, I found that two fellow postdocs (both men) had asked, and had been give relocation supplements of some substance (maybe 1,000 or 1,500? I remember that it was enough that it would have helped). I'm not sure I'm any good at negotiating now, but I have not made that mistake again.
At UNC many of the FULL professors make north of $135k, though several are far short of that. The (tenured) associate professors are in the mid-80's.
I happened to be looking some of these numbers up recently. Michigan (if for technical reasons you don't count Bruce Frier) and Virginia are roughly comparable, and Texas is generally a bit lower.
Women should just pull a Yentl and pretend to be men then they wouldn't have to worry about being undercompensated. Problem solved! Make Classics Great Again!
@ 11:34 PM: What awful advice. I'm not saying that this person should continue doing research or this career path if that's not what they want to do. But we all have doubts about the importance of our research, as we should, because we're in Classics. It's particularly common to have doubts in the last year of your PhD, when you're trying to finish everything up but can't see the bigger picture yet. You have no idea what the person's research is, so have a little empathy.
I'm a woman and I accepted both offers I received (one VAP, one T-T) without trying to negotiate. I can see needing to negotiate a job for one's spouse or other special circumstances but I don't think salary and benefits should be up for debate. Most of us don't have more than one offer to consider, so what leverage are we supposed to use anyway?
I am also a women who has accepted two offers (one VAP, one TT), but tried to negotiate both times. I wasn't successful with the VAP, and only mildly successful with the TT. I backed down almost immediately. I know some might say that the problem is that I didn't stick with it, but I firmly believe that the negative opinion women receive of not being a "team player" is much much harsher than what a man receives for the same negotiating. I knew they were already annoyed with me for asking for more, and the last thing I want to do is jeopardize my relationships at a small institution before I get there. The stigma against "aggressive" women is real.
On the flip side, I know a man who recently negotiated for a permanent contract by saying he was worried about his "girlfriend and her child" finding (non academic) work in the school's location. His institution caved and gave him substantially more money to cover the cost of his economic anxiety. He doesn't have a girlfriend and there is no child. I can't imagine a woman would ever dare to be so brazen to lie, or even to ask if it were true.
I'm 8.28 again. I negotiated for my next job after the postdoc, a TT position. My negotiations went similarly to 10.14's, and I also felt very strongly that I was being judged for it although I was partially successful. Also, like 10.14, this was at a small institution, which is probably an important variable.
I have a close friend who is at an large R1, and who really played hardball. I was vaguely worried for her while the negotiations were going on (and also horrified to realize that I was projecting this stigma of 'aggressive woman' on her). But, several years later, she says that that she doesn't feel it had any negative ramifications for her reputation in the department. So, who knows? But, the lying about the girlfriend story -- just wow.
There are some good searchable databases out there for faculty salary data. Usually it only gives you the average by rank, so that average Assistant Prof. salary will be higher than starting salaries. Try this one: https://data.chronicle.com/
On negotiating: It's true that women can't just "play hardball" and get the same results as men. Research shows that women who push for better compensation are penalized for it. BUT, the same research shows that women are rewarded for fighting for other people. So, we women learn to adjust our phrasing: "An extra $3000 a year would allow me to do X for the department, which will be a real asset to the school." I am sure that people of color must play similar games so as to not be perceived negatively.
Things to consider in negotiations:
Who are you negotiating with? Are you negotiating with an administrator outside of the department? or with the department? If the former, then you can ask the department for tips about what is fair game to negotiate, and you can even ask the department to go to bat for you (see above: it's easier for a department to ask for more money for their new female hire than for the female hire to ask for it directly).
Is negotiation normal at this school? Find someone you feel comfortable asking whether the institution negotiates at all, and what they do negotiate. Some schools have a "no negotiation" policy on salary, in an effort to be more equitable (these same schools are, I hope, offering all new hires the same amount). But they might negotiate other things...
What can be negotiated? Maybe salary, maybe not. Other things that the school might offer, and might be negotiable, include: relocation expenses, start-up funds, conference travel funds, office/lab space, teaching load, spousal hiring (this one is tough, because most schools don't have the money to do anything), etc. A good dean will tell you how all of these things work in your interview, but if he/she doesn't, you are fully justified in asking.
I'm publishing this non-anonymously, because I'm starting to believe that nothing good ever comes from anonymous postings on the internet.
Hi Anne - thanks as well; this is really helpful. We need more of these discussions, and we need them to not be so anonymous (as I post this anonymously...).
Thanks, Anne (VAP here). We now know that Cincinnati is also eating our lunch by producing smart, helpful Classicists rather than people who snipe at each other anonymously.
1. Think big 2. Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself 3. Maximize your options 4. Know your market 5. Use your leverage 6. Enhance your location 7. Get the word out 8. Fight back 9. Deliver the goods 10. Contain the costs 11. Have fun
My question is how to pronounce the MCGA! acronym. The C and G together make it difficult. Is it Macca, like Paul McCartney, or Mac-Guh, pronounced with the intonation of Buh-gawk, the exaggerated sound of a cartoon chicken in distress or alarm?
I wonder if it's well-established enough to have separate branches for the US and Europe? I think the addition of the geographic designation - boiling the acronym down to MACGA or MECGA - would solve the above ambiguity. But I wouldn't want to be exclusionary.
Karen Kelsky (The Professor is In) has a lot of useful info about negotiating. I found this article, with its links to some other stuff about negotiating, really helpful in thinking about the process of negotiating:
And if you don't have an offer and think you have nothing to leverage, you're wrong. You're leveraging yourself. Their goal in the process is to hire you and keep you: if you're unhappy with the position because of pay or benefits or research funds, you'll likely try to leave as soon as you can, and then the department could lose the line, will have to go through the hiring process again, etc. They want you to thrive in the position and to give you what you need to do that, their goal is just to give you the minimum that can keep you in the position, and your goal is to get the maximum.
A big part of this is recognizing your value, that you have it, and that it's worth more than just acknowledgment.
The application for the Gustavus Adolphus VAP requires you to put your desired salary. I assume that's there for every position, but, what the heck do I put?
But seriously, I kid. Probably realistic to aim somewhere 50-60 range. I'd definitely put a range in there if possible. GA is a great school and in a pretty livable place. Good luck with the application!
Public R1 in a medium COL city in the Midwest. Starting salary (which my advisor suggested I not negotiate) was 55. I’m now at 62 still pre-tenure due to merit raises. I assumed at the time that every new Asst Prof at my school would be started at a similar salary (or at least those in comparable fields). Absolutely untrue, as I found out later. Not negotiating that first salary more was a big mistake that I now make sure no one else I know makes. You have a lot of leverage when you have the offer and little after you accept. Also up for grabs: startup funds, research and conference support, junior leave, teaching releases, relocation expenses, etc. Not all will be possible at every institution, but it is always worth asking and seeking advice for how to ask.
A question for post-PhDs: how often do you still keep in touch with your advisor/dissertation committee? Does contact wane after your PhD is finished or have they stayed close collaborators even years later? Do the colleagues at the institution where you are now postdoc/VAP/TT essentially take over the intellectual role of your committee and become the base of your new scholarly networks?
I'm several years post PhD and I still occasionally have email exchanges with my committee members, often on a personal rather than professional note. The people I was at Cincinnati (!) with and the people in my "new" department are very much the base of my professional (collegial?) network. I don't work directly with any of them, but they're my go-to for bouncing new or undercooked ideas around. Probably not very helpful, but maybe better than nothing.
I'm tenured (late 30s) and my interactions are much the same as those of 7:41. I update my diss adviser on how my life is going about twice a year, keep in contact with lots of other profs from my grad department on Facebook, and I contributed something to a volume edited by a member of my diss committee, but that's pretty much it. I do still send my adviser offprints of my work though. My colleagues in my own department are my real intellectual base, as well as a few friends I've met through the years. I did a 1 year VAP with some good folks who really helped me land my TT job, but we don't have any similar interests, so they remain just casual acquaintances.
This seems to be the case for several of my friends , though some still work very closely with their old mentors and others had such sour relationships with their advisers/committees that they really don't correspond at all.
Rather hear about a promoted VAP post.facto than waste my time applying and interviewing for a fake search that goes to the VAP.
Its been said before, but we can't insist that VAPs be promoted internally without fake searches, and then complain when they are promoted internally without fake searches.
The UCLA hire had not just one but two other TT offers that helped leverage a job to keep her. Also I believe she is part of an underrepresented group. Kudos to UCLA for for recognizing how valuable she is to their department AND not wasting time on a search!
What, specifically, made the UCLA hire so valuable to her department that warranted their creating a position for her and not advertising the job publicly?
@9:00, in addition to excellent research in canonical Latin literature, she is also doing some groundbreaking and interdisciplinary reception studies work on Spanish and Portuguese literature. IMHO, she's a badass.
So, the big three hires this year (Princeton, Vanderbilt, and Stanford) all went to ABDs who are female and minorities (2 Asian, 1 Black).
I'm very happy to see that we are expanding our diversity in Classics, but are we getting a bit too close to seeing one's being of a particular gender and/or race as a major incentive for hiring?
This is *NOT* meant to be disparaging or negative in any way. Instead, I'm asking an honest question about how we move from the old-world view of favoring white men to being color/gender blind in our hiring practices. Is there a better way to supplant the old racist and misogynistic system rather than exchanging the favoring of one combination of gender/race for another combination of gender/race.
(Please, keep responses to this respectful and civil. This is intended to start an honest and beneficial discussion of this issue. Thank you.)
There will always have to be a 'training wheels' phase in moving from the old pro-white men system to a gender/colorblind one.
The essential argument goes like this:
Just like Affirmative Action, there needs to be a deliberate and conscious altering of things at the outset. Then, after a generation or so, people will be so accustomed to seeing diversity that they won't even think about any more, and we can remove the 'training wheels' and begin to have people be judged for their character, contributions, promise, and ability only.
The problem is that it is nearly impossible to ever reach that later state. So, what ends up happening is we get used to the 'training wheels' and most people are too afraid to take them off, fearing that outright old-world racism/misogynism will instantly return.
In short, it seems as if we can never be truly 'post-racial' so the better of the two possibilities may be to maintain a policy of women and minorities first. It does replace one form of racism for another, but we need to be pragmatic about things and ask which is the lesser of the two evils.
There is no such thing as being "color/gender blind" and even if there were, it should not be the goal. People who think they are color blind or try to operate that way end up favoring white people anyway. The goal should be to recognize and appreciate difference, not ignore it.
People who face an uphill battle throughout their lives and in the course of earning their degrees end up being more impressive candidates at the end of it all. It's wrong to assume that the SCs showed any kind of preference for these candidates based on their race and/or gender. An awful lot of white men (especially those who grew up with economic advantages) are just mediocre because they have never really had to work as hard as other people.
If (for example) a Black man is successful in his professional field in spite of the really tremendous consequences of racism, he is probably really, really good at what he does.
How can there be an "honest and beneficial" discussion of the merits of these hires when it is entirely based on (your perception of) their gender and ethnicity rather than any actual assessment of the quality of their work. If you want a "blind" approach to the field, don't create a narrative of why they were hired based only on information you've derived from their name and a photo of them. Go out and treat them as scholars, and then decide if the field is becoming too "diverse."
I tend to disagree that it would be a bad thing to be color/gender blind. For instance, to have race and gender matter as much as one's hair color, height, or weight would be a wonderful thing. No SC would ever say or think that they prefer someone because they're over 6' tall, and that we need more 6'+ people in our department. It would be just as good if we could get to the state were we don't care about one's race/gender to that level. Yes, you still can *see* that someone is female, black, etc.. but just like you can also see who is 6'+ it should never factor into your hiring decision for an asst professorship.
Also, I find it to be horribly racist to think that the color of someone's skin means anything at all regarding their potential for contribution. Some *may* have had different experiences in life on account of their skin color, but to think that a conference table of perfectly mixed folks is more intellectually diverse purely because of race is horrible. Not all black people are the same. Not all Asian people are the same. Not all white people are the same. To think that having an equal distribution of skin tones equates to "diversity" in anything other than skin tones is ignorant.
A bunch of wealthy, ivy-trained, folks of various racial backgrounds offers zero diversity. Zero. People are divided far more by economic background than by skin color. A black female from an affluent family with a PhD in Classics has nothing in common with a black female from East St. Louis who dropped out of High School. To think that just because they are both black women they share life experience is shamefully racist. Yes, they may have had ~5% of certain life experiences be similar, but don't we all share at least some things with literally everybody else?
If people really want to have "diversity" in Academia, ignore folks from the Ivies for a generation; ignore folks whose background is wealthy. Then you'll see a real change in ideas and approaches.
Having a garage filled with Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches of varying color doesn't make your garage diverse. A red Ferrari and a blue Lamborghini may *look* different, but they are all still the same thing in essence: exotic sports cars.
Bring in some Chevy pickups, a motorcycle, or a Prius...that's diversity in the garage.
@10:58, this seems like a helpful and timely contribution about the limits of class as an explanatory mechanism: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html
Well... looking at the Wiki, a lot of the Ivies were ignored this year. There's been a good number of non-privileged folk who don't wear sweaters tied around their neck and aren't named Preston or Tad.
@10:58 let me tell you, as a very socially and economically privileged POC who attended top schools from kindergarten to graduate school: I have been treated as "marked" (whether in a good or bad sense) by people in and outside of the academy on a daily basis. Yes, economic background matters, but my experience tells me that the quality of my day to day life, not to mention my interactions in academia, has a lot to do with the perception of other people of my skin color. And based on anecdotes from friends and colleagues of color, across economic spectrum, this is endemic.
Even if you support affirmative action (as 10:32 appears to), it is profoundly insulting to assume that the race/gender of these scholars played any role whatsoever in the decision to hire them.
And also, 10:32: showing preference to minorities (in the cases where that does happen) is NOT "[another] form of racism." Racism is tied to historical/systemic problems. You can be prejudiced against white people but giving others an advantage over them is not racist.
@10:58: I get what you're going for with your metaphors, but...comparing race and gender to height, and comparing skin color to the color of cars is overly simplistic and kind of insulting. Also, if you're not a black woman (I don't know if you are), you definitely should not be speaking to their experiences.
@11:08. You mean to say that people from underrepresented groups (economic/racial/ ethnic) who also have PhDs from the Ivies didn't land jobs? This may well be, I am just confused about the point that you are making.
I was just commenting on what 10:58 was saying about "ignoring the Ivies." The lion's share of jobs went to folks who don't have an Ivy pedigree. I used "privileged" not as a racial construct but as a socio-economic one.
I'm in a SLAC department that houses Classics as well as another, larger lit-based discipline. One of the more recent searches we ran was for a non-Classics position (so no one on here is involved). I'm not commenting directly on the UCLA position, or even the points above, but I wanted to note a few things that may be relevant. Some might also be curious about the politics that go on on this side of the hiring table, so here goes.
First, it is illegal in my state (not sure about US law) to ask applicants about their gender or race. It's usually, but certainly not always, fairly easy to guess an applicant's gender based on their name, but of course this can be misleading. One of my colleagues has a traditionally very masculine name, and some were pretty surprised when we first met her. It is generally impossible to guess someone's race or ethnicity based upon their name. Another of my colleagues has a very "ethnic" last name regularly associated with a certain minority ethnicity in the US, but he's a white dude from the suburbs of Connecticut. Unless a LoR writer comments directly on an applicant's ethnicity, we as SC members have no firm idea about this. Generally speaking, if you get into the initial interview room, you have done so on the merits of your application. Although all our ads include boilerplate about welcoming apps from women and minorities, in the initial stages this honestly does not (and CANNOT) matter to us. I suppose we could google candidates and perhaps get clued in this way, but frankly we're too busy.
Next, preferential hiring based upon ethnicity or gender can happen, at least here. For one of our more recent searches for a job about "XYZ in transcultural/global sorts of studies", we brought three very different applicants to campus. The first was an Ivy ABD woman from an under-represented ethnic group, the second was a white male (currently VAPing elsewhere) from a non-European foreign country rarely represented in North American academia, the third was a white woman with a strong publication record. Candidate 3 bombed in spectacular fashion (e.g., she repeatedly insulted our president's religion in her meeting with him, despite knowing he belonged to that religion). Candidate 1 did OK, though she was shaky throughout and her teaching demo revealed her profound lack of experience in the classroom. Candidate 2 was solid in every aspect.
At the department meeting, 3 was cut immediately, and debate about 1 and 2 continued for some time. The debate was almost entirely about ethnicity and gender, with some favoring hiring 1 simply because of her "more" minority status. We ended up overwhelmingly voting for candidate 2, as our SLAC prioritizes teaching over everything else. We immediately came under fire from the president, provost, dean, diversity officer, you name it. Without consulting the department, our chair changed his mind and offered the position to candidate 1. Uproar ensued and the debate raged. Do we value greater demonstrated competence for the job over better representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? How much should the desires of admin force a department's hand? And so on.
In the end, we were saved when candidate 1 took a research gig in the UK, leaving us free to hire the candidate whom the department had overwhelmingly favored.
Again, I say all this not to comment on the UCLA hire in any way, but rather to offer a glimpse of what factors can possibly influence hiring practices, at least at my own institution.
@11:10. Serious question, esp. if you are a member of an underrepresented group. I think a gross formulation like "They got hired because they are (XYZ group)" is quite insulting, but I think this is OK as a facet of someone's profile "they may be able to reach out to undergraduates of color / women on campus / LGBT communities" or "students from x group may relate to a professor that comes from a similar background." I think this is especially true if they have demonstrated experience working with such students. What do you think? I think that maybe the conversations just need to change. Not "I am a white man and she is a black woman, so of course I didn't get the job," but "I can see how the department would value someone who can speak to undergraduates of color, especially women of color, and I do not have that experience"
NOTE: I am not trying to say that people from underrepresented groups should be the departmental diversity liasons. That's a problem that increases faculty workload unfairly, but should be part of a different discussion.
Giving something to someone *because* of their race or denying something to someone *because* of their race most surely IS racist. I 100% understand that doing an A-A type of thing has good intentions and is not a decision made out of malice, but that does not change the fact that it is still racist. Racism doesn't always have to be a guy in a rusty pick-up truck, mullet, sleeveless shirt, who freely uses the N-word. It can be more hidden, subdued, and indirect.
If you ever take someone's race into account when you make a decision about them, you are being racist. period. this may be uncomfortable for many people to accept, since they see themselves as progressive champions, but race/gender should ALWAYS remain out of your mind as much as you can help it.
Thanks for that very informative account. I've heard similar stories from colleagues at UPenn and UNC, so it, too, occurs even at large R1s and the Ivies.
Racism is a process of subjugation and subordination, a power structure, and you can't be racist against white people in the United States. You can have prejudice against someone because they're white, but it's not the same thing as racism. That being said, you also can't *not* hire someone just because they're white, just the same as you can't *not* hire someone just because they're B/black. Choosing to hire someone is different from choosing *not* to hire someone.
An earlier poster had a great point, about conversations and perspectives needing to change: Not "I am a white man and she is a black woman, so of course I didn't get the job," but "I can see how the department would value someone who can speak to undergraduates of color, especially women of color, and I do not have that experience".
Representation DOES matter, and I second an even earlier poster's discussion about this process as "training wheels," where you need to be active and conscious in increasing representation until, in an ideal world, the best candidate wins regardless of identity factors because there's enough diversity on hiring committees that no one identity category "wins out" in terms of influence.
11:54 makes compelling points, but if you agree with 11:54, you can't also in good faith agree with 11:10. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to accommodate both these views simultaneously:
11:54: "Representation DOES matter, and I second an even earlier poster's discussion about this process as "training wheels," where you need to be active and conscious in increasing representation until, in an ideal world, the best candidate wins regardless of identity factors because there's enough diversity on hiring committees that no one identity category "wins out" in terms of influence."
11:10: "Even if you support affirmative action (as 10:32 appears to), it is profoundly insulting to assume that the race/gender of these scholars played any role whatsoever in the decision to hire them."
I don't think it's universally insulting to think that race/gender play a role, it's just a question of WHAT role you think it plays. If you didn't get a job and think you lost out to someone JUST because of that person's race/gender, that's insulting because you discount any value that that person might have as a contender.
Hi, I'm 11:10. I do agree with 11:54 (and also, by the way, 11:26), and this requires no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. I never said that *we shouldn't* take race/gender into account in hiring decisions, and I agree with the reasons that 11:26 and 11:54 mentioned for doing so. What I meant to express is that it is wrong to assume, when talking about any specific job candidates in retrospect, that the fact that the candidate is a woman and/or a POC outweighed the scholarship and other qualifications of the other candidates. I'm fine if it did play a role, I just don't think that we should assume that to be the case.
People from under-represented groups have enough to deal with along the way to earn our degrees and land a job, and then on top of it all we hear "you got that job because you're not a white man." Even well-meaning, pro-affirmative action folks sometimes voice a similar sentiment (that seemed to me to be an undercurrent in 10:32's comment, for example).
12:33: "If you didn't get a job and think you lost out to someone JUST because of that person's race/gender, that's insulting because you discount any value that that person might have as a contender."
Long-winded 11:24 here. This is an important point. In the search I described above, our candidate 2, had he not eventually gotten the job, could have legitimately said that he didn't get the job because of issues of race and gender. HOWEVER, I must note that all our finalists got to that stage because of what they professionally offered, not their race or gender. They all gave great conference interviews and had compelling apps in terms of their interests and scholarship etc. Both candidates 1 and 2 deserved, in as much as one can deserve, the campus invite. I suspect both would have been excellent colleagues, even though 2 was more professionally developed. Race and gender etc. only came into play in the very last stage of the game, and in my experience one can't make it to that stage without having "the goods" in terms of pure academic and professional merit or potential. No one gets a job ONLY because of their ethnicity, gender, etc.
11:54, that's nothing but sophistry, to define "racism" in such a way that white people can never be victims of it. "Racism" should be much more broadly defined: to me, it is judging negatively or (worse) treating negatively someone because of their race. Doesn't matter what race the judge or judgee are. And while it often involves power structures, it doesn't have to.
And yes, I'm white. But that doesn't mean that a single word I wrote there is without logic. I simply prefer to have a broader conception of racism than you.
2:28 here again. I just realized I should have pointed out that if racism only pertained to power structures then we would not have the concept of "structural racism." The fact that this adjectival modifier was thought necessary shows that not all racism is structural.
It's not racism if in one situation, one time, you feel disadvantaged and you ascribe it to your race because the other person who got the job isn't white. Racism is something that informs all of one's experiences and relationships with society, and it's manifested in different ways for different people in different contexts, depending on a lot of intersectional factors on all sides. Racism is not individual, though it can manifest on the individual level.
There is also a specific term for "judging negatively or (worse) treating negatively someone because of their race" that applies whether the person on the receiving end is white or a POC: racial prejudice.
Structural/institutional racism refers to the ways in which the larger systems and institutions in a society reflect/perpetuate racism. An individual person can hold racist views towards POC but they can't be "structurally racist" against them. Hence the need for two different terms.
A POC can be racist. Being a racist is not confined to one race. The fact that the reverberations of old-world racism can still be felt (which is what I consider ‘ststemic’ and ‘structural’ racism to be a part of) does not and should not mean to imply that only a person of race ‘x’ can hate or hold negative views of race ‘y.’
Just because white people have done horriblet things on account of racist views and having power does not mean that ‘being racist’ is confined to white people. The Germans aren’t the only ones who can be genocidal just because it was Germans who enacted one of the most significant genocides in history.
It’s horribly ignorant to think that ugly aspects of humankind can only appear in a particular setting under certain circumstances.
@3:24, no one said that POC can't hold negative views of white people. I literally just said that there is a term for this: racial prejudice. It's also not all about "reverberations" of past wrongs. These are present issues.
I'm going to serve on a SC in a year or two and now I'm pretty worried about accidentally hiring someone who isn't up to date on these issues. Hmm.
Yeah, I'd like to ask: what are the stakes of the "PoCs can be racist, too" conversation? The earlier discussion about academic hiring was actually surprisingly interesting and nuanced, and I don't quite understand whether the this defining racism thing is meant as a derail? But perhaps I just don't understand why the point is so important to 3:24 (I'm asking this question genuinely)?
Anyone know what's going on with Dickinson's VAPs? Review of applications was supposed to start two weeks ago, but are they waiting until the deadline to schedule interviews?
^^ and while we're talking about it, what is going on with Conn College ??
First it was a T-T; demoted to VAP; applications due over a month ago for the revised VAP. It's almost April. SCs are about to leave campus in the next few weeks
This got started when someone wondered if three of the ABDs who got hired this year were only hired as ABDs because they're not white. No need to question how the three white men got their jobs (one t-t, two VAPs), because they clearly earned it.
@ 4.15-- No, I understood that part, and I agree with your point about who gets questioned.
I just didn't (and still don't) understand why the definition of 'racism' is so important to 2.28 and 3.24, in the context of this specific conversation. This point about how we define the term 'racism' has been argued (and will continue to be argued, I presume) in both academic and popular contexts-- this is clearly not the first articulation of confusion/ disagreement about "racism =/=? structural racism =/=? racial prejudice" on the internet.
@ 4:15 Yes. It is far too common that the people whose merit is consistently questioned by the FV community for T-T jobs (every.single.year) are younger women. For the past four years, this happens without fail. The better the placement, the worse the (shameless, anonymous) FV attacks.
On the race stuff. I have been on 8+ hiring committees for multiple departments in multiple years. I am male and white. If, most things being equal, a woman, PoC or basically anyone but a white cis-male is a viable candidate with qualifications roughly commensurate with the plethora of white male candidates, I am choosing the former. Why? (1) I know from observation and experience that this candidate has had to work harder and put up with more shit to make it to this point and (2) I want someone with this resilience as a colleague and (3) I want to support the expansion of our field and (4) students need diverse faculty.
4:28, it's a typical right-wing talking point (I see it all the time in arguments with Breitbart-reading friends on Facebook), just like "what about black-on-black crime?!," that is meant to shift the terrain of the conversation. It's important to people because of our pervasive, decades-long consensus "racism is bad." Once that's been accepted, the definition of racism becomes obviously crucial. And the attitude you query is a natural result of the way we often frame why racism is bad and teach the history of racism as basically one of being mean to each other instead of distributive justice and recognition. It's not just a bad faith argumentative tactic, but a real lack of understanding of society and historical sociology, and it's not just coming out of the rhetoric on the right. If racism is bad because judging someone based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character etc. is bad, it's not immediately clear why being biased against white people would have a different status (ethically) than being biased against POCs. So the stakes lie in changing the conversation from "why are POCs so underrepresented in Classics and what can we reasonably do about it?" to "why are you judging candidates on their skin color instead of their merit?" -- which is a much more favorable framing if you are white and concerned about being disadvantaged in the final stages of searches than is thinking about it in terms of representation. That's, I think, why these issues are so important to folks like 3:24 or whatever.
@4:28, I think that the definition of racism came into play when people were wondering whether it was fair that these non-white women were preferred over their white (male) counterparts, a preference that was ascribed specifically to their race/gender. Some seemed to think that it was a kind of racism to give the jobs to people of color instead of to white people (implicit: white people who deserve it more based on unspecified qualifications). I think that's why it came up?
A lot of people on here seem to think that you can have good candidates, or you can have diverse candidates, but you can't have both.
I am a true believer in feminist standpoint theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standpoint_theory).
Diverse candidates are not just good candidates. They are potentially better candidates.
Now, before this is slammed with the 'reverse racism' nonsense, one who is 'white' could achieve the same potential 'advantage were one an outsider because of ability, class, etc. But experience has shown me at least that the theory above is often true.
This entire discussion, going back to 10:22, is motivated by nothing but a false, pernicious, and, yes, bigoted claim about why certain people got the jobs they did. As someone who has been personally attacked in these pages (without being named — but with unambiguous references) for getting a job according to a narrative that has nothing to do with what actually happened, I am less concerned about what others in the field might think of the legitimacy of my position than I am about their basic abillity to make inferences based on evidence. If you're willing to initiate or enter into a debate about a false rumor based on a racist/misogynist premise, I can't imagine the level of rigor you apply to your scholarship. Please, do your research, learn how job searches actually work and how the specific one you're talking about actually went down before you jump to such dark conclusions about the inability of women of color to succeed on their own merit.
@ 4:15 and 4:29, if it makes you feel any better, every time a white male ABD with a piddling publication record gets a job a part of me dies inside. It's quite clear they haven't earned it. Trust me, it registers, because it fucking hurts. I won't pretend to wish anyone well who gets a job on the strength of absolutely nothing while the rest of us suckers here bust our asses publishing as much as we possibly can year in and year out without having any prospects of gainful employment to show for ourselves. Of course we only get more bitter, because every year our CVs get longer, while those of the lucky blank slate ABDs that land jobs remain as pathetically short as ever. You can complain about FV attacks and criticisms being "shameless" in as much as they are anonymous, but those of us without jobs can't afford the luxury of claiming that particular moral high ground.
I'm sorry you experienced that, @4:51. I can't imagine how it would feel being the target of some of these very offensive comments about candidates and their merits.
I think it's really easy for posters on here to forget that these are actual people we're talking about, who read these comments, too, who have been working hard to get their degrees, who are struggling on grad student stipends, and who are also dealing with a whole series of additional pressures by the nature of their identities, only to get it heaped on by anonymous posters who could be on search committees for jobs they apply for, who could be their colleagues now or in the future, who could be referees for journals or publishers, etc.
I can understand if people have varying definitions of racism. None of those presented here are entirely wrong, in my opinion.
...BUT, what I cannot understand is how anyone can look at anyone else and say that all else being equal between a white male C.V. and black female C.V. “the minority candidate clearly had to work harder.”
I’m not saying that such is never the case, in fact I’m not even saying that such isn’t the case more than not, but to categorically say that every woman and every minority has to work harder than white men to get the same result is bullshit. Again, I’m not saying that such isn’t the norm, but there’s a massive danger in assuming that all white men have it made and all women and all minorities have constant uphill battles in al areas of their life. Yes, being a male has certain advantages and yes being white does too, but let’s not pretend that having a penis and white skin means that the streets are paved with gold.
I grew up in the Northeast, in a very red part of the state surrounded by one red county after another. The population there was 97%+ white, and many people were poor and struggled to survive. I grew up never once benefiting from whiteness, because everyone was white. I grew up in a home where our vehicles got repossessed and our power was shit off regularly. I grew up going to a shit school with shit teachers, where 80% of those that did graduate HS never went on to college.
I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am today and I had to work and sacrifice for every single line on my CV. So a loud fuck you to anyone that dares say that just because I’m a white male those accomplishments are of lesser value because of it without ever knowing what my life has been, what struggles I’ve had, what uphill battles and opposition I’ve faced along the way.
Stop being so fucking ignorant as to think that you can so quickly judge anyone based on their race alone.
It's not that you don't have it hard, it's that your race and gender aren't liabilities. You can pass as a member of the academic elite (I do it all the time), you're not ever solely reduced to one facet of your identity, you are given the freedom to be more than your race, you're never asked to speak for your race. Your skin doesn't automatically call into question your credibility for some people in some contexts. When you get a job, it's because you earned it, not because you're white. Etc.
I completely agree. Every person has their own struggles in life. While certain trends may exist for POC/women/LGBT, etc.. it is not to say that only they suffer.
Remember, this has been cited as an enormous factor for why Trump won: the Democratic party largely acted as if the problems of the white, low class/working class aren't real because they're white. Yes, there are massive injustices in the country for under-represented peoples, but that does not mean that issues exist for the rest of the population.
@7:29, if you ignore the voice and opinion of 7:15, et al., you're making things worse.
@9:58, As the chair of Classics at Colgate, I have to say that any “inside info” about the possible failure of our ancient history search comes as news to both me and the dean’s office. It is not accurate in any respect, and I’m baffled as to how or where it originated. Administrative approval for our candidate came through with no issues weeks ago, and of course we would never have made an offer without obtaining it beforehand. I'd hate to think that this false information might have cast a shadow on our future colleague, or caused uncertainty among our other excellent applicants.
I wrote two comments above to which angry white man is responding. I am going to respond because I too am white and from a poor background. I have family members who did not get into schools of their choice "because of affirmative action". I can tell you a long sob story about an unemployed, disabled parent; a mentally disabled second parent; credit card debt; foreclosures. I could go on.
But because I have gone through life with my eyes (and heart) open I know that if I had a different skin color, gender, religion, or outward sexual identity, I would have had far fewer open doors and many hundreds fewer hands helping me up.
Because I am not obsessed with my own group identity, I can recognize that I received more loans, better leases for apartments, better part-time jobs, tutoring gigs, reception etc, than someone who did not look like me and did not have my name. Because I have listened to the experiences of others, I have read and refereed scores of papers and had many of my own rejected when my public talks were roundly cheered, I know that the face I show to the public has given me innumerable advantages.
Finally, I recognize the aggregate effects of all these structural advantages on my career while also acknowledging the deleterious impact that NOT having these advantages and not meeting more success and failure can have on one's ability to do work in the first place.
So, as one fucking ignorant white guy to another, get over yourself.
I never quite know how to internalize it when a SC member comes on here to address a statement. On the one hand it's great to have clarity on an issue, but on the other hand I can't help but feel that it's, in an odd way, petty and childish for them to interject. And I know, I know that it's more good than bad, but I think it would be best for them to not get embroiled in discussions here.. remember how bad it was for the Georgetown guy who came on here to squash rumors of a corrupt search a few months back and ended up leaving a horrible impression of himself and the Department in many FV-ers' eyes?
I think that here, it's more good than bad, but perhaps a better way to address it would be to not engage directly but instead state on the Colgate Classics homepage a rather common 'congratulations to XXXX, who will be joining us this fall as the new...'
That squashes rumors in a far more dignified way, imo.
sadly, most departments have very pathetic and out-of-date webpages. If anything, most update new faculty info in the fall. But, yes, I agree that in an ideal scenario depts publicly announce their hire once it's made. It prevents ANY kinds of misinformation.
Apples and oranges. In this case, the rumor itself was that the individual candidate was having trouble being "confirmed" by the administration. This is a shitty rumor to post, first because it's obviously wrong (and oddly phrased); second because it at the very least implies disagreement between the department and the administration at a smallish SLAC, and more insidiously, it implicates the candidate directly rather than speaking in more general terms. This is something one should squash.
Re: Colgate. Not sure I understand the objection. Surely the entire point of this forum is for all of us to learn from one another and become more informed about how the system functions as a whole, as well as about specific developments.
If Colgate, Georgetown, or any of the other departments that have sought to alleviate anguish for everyone (and unfair public humiliation for their candidates) choose to address things openly, honestly, and using their own names, shouldn't that be applauded? Don't we all want to avoid unfairly tarnishing the reputations of candidates and trafficking in misleading gossip?
RE: Colgate. What 8:56 said. I appreciate Colgate interjecting. I am not the happy candidate in question, but I think it speaks well to his or her future department that they quickly and politely interceded.
You're arguing from silence. There is no way you can claim that your being white got you "more loans, better leases for apartments, better part-time jobs, tutoring gigs, reception etc."
1.) Credit score, income, and down payment determines loans, not race. Car salesmen *want* to sell you a car; they don't give a shit what race you are or if you're gay. They'll pull whatever strings they can with whatever lender their dealership works with to get each and every loan through.
2.)Apartment lease rates are fixed and advertised on their respective websites. like car salesmen, rental agents don't (and legally cannot) change the rent for 2-bed/1-bath on a whim. Even if you look for an apt outside of apartment complexes, landlords also advertise in this day and age (craigslist; hotpads; etc) and are held to the same legalities as apartment complexes--they cannot randomly change the rent.
the other aspects you mention (part-time jobs, tutoring gigs, reception) is something that you cannot quantify. You cannot know why you ever did or did not get any of those opportunities. To say that you have your race to thank for that is small-minded and assumes that the level of racism that exists in the country today is akin to 1920s Alabama. Yeah, there's racist dicks out there and, as we can now see thanks to Trump making it ok again, there are far more bigots today than I would have otherwise assumed. But, you tend to be thinking that everyone out there who ever had to make a decision on you was 'that' guy; that racist asshole that preferred you over a POC. Sure, maybe you've benefited that directly from white privilege, but for you to chalk up so much of what has been your life to your 'luck' of being born a white male is distorted, imo.
To play Devil's advocate, I can never know how many times I have profited from my being white. I can never know how many times the police saw me and chose to not pull me over; I can never know how many times I've gone to a restaurant and was giving better service because I was white and not of a stereotypical "bad tipper" race. I also can never know how many more random smiles have come my way from passers-by because they didn't feel 'threatened' by my walking by, I can never know how many times a taxi driver chose to stop for me because I wasn't black, or how many times I got through airport security without being a 'random' search because I do not appear to be of Arabic decent (though I am about 1/8).
Being said, it is poor reasoning to say that a majority, let alone "all" of the positive things that I have in my life were handed to me on account of my race. The world is not as cold and racist as you tend to think. More people are good and decent than not. I can honestly say that of all of the white people I have known in my life only one guy was truly horribly racist, his name was Trevor. I hated being around Trevor and would avoid him at all costs. I can't imagine how poorly the world must seem to you if you see Trevors everywhere you look; if you have Trevors to thank for your loans, apartments, jobs, and any benefit purely because Trevor only wanted to benefit his fellow 'Aryan.'
Many people here need to adjust their worldview: society is not as deplorable and ugly as you tend to think.
"Chicago and Columbia made offers to the same person"
...wow! and here I sit crying at my laptop and its empty inbox. But, I guess if you're good enough for one, it follows that you're good enough for the other.
Whenever white people play "devil's advocate" over race issues from my experience they are doing racist thing so deep and secret they might not even realize it.
4,546 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 2601 – 2800 of 4546 Newer› Newest»Pedophiles are eating our lunch!
We should formulate the MCGA agenda here.
PRINCIPLE 1: No Fake-News Scholarship
Yeah, let's bring in non-pedos .... isn't that the least we can ask? So many profs still are in contact with these jack (g)-offs! Seriously not okay. You rape little kids online, you don't get tenured profs looking after you in jail. There are no excuses. Shame on all of them for continuing the lines of communication. These are kids. Women.
PRINCIPLE 2: No hiring women, minorities, ABDS, or Cincinnati PhDs when there is a perfectly bland white male from an Ivy to whom a job can be given.
There, am I doing it right? Make Classics Great Again!
MCGA!
We want a MERIT-BASED approach.
MCGA'er here: Cincy folks, keep on keeping on. Under a MERIT-BASED system, Cincy will continue to excel.
A merit-based approach is the perfect way to MCGA. It SOUNDS good and honorable, but is an implicit way to exclude all but those with the easiest access to merit-building activities, those bland, white men from Ivies and par-Ivies (hopefully non-Cincinnati, amiright?). No one can catch us.
Looking at the last few names to appear on the wiki, I can't help but feel annoyance. Some have no publications, or if they do, they are nothing substantial (of course they list several articles as "under review" on their public CVs--but that in itself is unethical and breaks the principle of blind review). If these same people had applied for equivalent positions in the UK or anywhere else that considers *past* research output as evidence of what *future* research output will be, then they wouldn't stand a chance. Good luck to those institutions that took a blind gamble--hope it works out for y'all.
^you talking mainly about the ABDs? or in general?
the ABDs, but also a few non-ABDs
Thin CV-ers are eating our lunch!
Can we please stop with the fucking lunch.
Don't stop with lunch! It's my third favorite meal of the day!
@9:09. The system is such that it will work out for them. It will be easier for them to publish given their institutional affiliations. Beyond the money and resources they will be given, an important factor is that they will be less suspected apriori, and often journals want the prestige of people from high profile places. Conversely, those affiliated with no institution or an unknown school will be suspected of mediocrity from the get go, and journals with backlogs will probably toss your essay before the submission of someone from an R1.
@10:36, you have it wrong way round. Steady readers of the Chronicle of Higher Ed will know that such people turn up in all sorts of departments. Classics has no special claim to fame. Not sure if that's a good thing (it's not just us) or a bad thing (more molesters than you'd think).
Yes, let's stop with the fucking lunch and move on to the fucking couch-based drinks and hors d'oeuvres.
RE Columbia: I have friends there trying to pick up the pieces. Let's not paint everyone with the same brush. The entire Faculty were not complicit, though many seem to have known. Actually, some had brought complaints against him over the decades. The admin dismissed these and so he kept on offending. He was not well liked by most faculty; mainly feared or loathed.
@12:22. boo hoo. the only victims in this situation are those that harris harassed. your friends and the faculty at columbia who are now "picking up the pieces" do not deserve any sympathy. Those in powerful positions in the department, in classics or history, didn't try hard enough or care enough if the complaints they registered "over decades" didn't make a difference. If they really wanted him out they certainly had the collective power to do something about it, or to shame him in ways that might have rectified the situation.
All ABD hires do not come from the Ivies, or get hired at top-ten programs. The FSU hire from a few years ago was ABD at UNC.
@12:39: clearly you've never been in that kind of position and clearly don't understand how university hierarchies work.
Clearly tenure is good for LOUDLY opposing the admin and the MAGA agenda, but delicately avoiding asking a harasser to stop harassing. Or to get the hell out. Shame on everyone who enabled by his or her silence or innuendo.
@12:46
Southern Schools (and to a lesser extent all non-coastal regional schools) are always worried about keeping non southerners in those positions, especially if they are in states that are hot, muggy, conservative, MAGA, anti-LGBT, etc. etc. So Southern schools like to recruit from Southern flagships like UT Austin, UNC and UVA: they know that if a person spent seven years getting a PhD in the south that they can put up with it on the TT.
@12:52. keep on coming up with excuses...i get the impression that you're trying to preserve the reputation of your own department?
Little do they realize that Classics is filled with white nationalists and MAGA folk.
1:17. Good point. I never really considered that, but it's true... having never lived in the south, the idea of teaching there for 7+ years does not sound appealing and I would take any chance given to jump ship.
Regarding this Columbia business, if the repeated complaints, both written and oral, of senior and junior faculty concerning full professors who were engaging in multiple forms of abuse aimed at colleagues and students over a series of years was something all university administrations took seriously then the University of Arizona would have dismissed two of its tenured classicists nearly a decade ago. But UA did not -- are some of you going to blame the other faculty members for the administrative failure?
I have no inside knowledge of what went on at Columbia, but it seems rather arrogant and ignorant to malign a large group of people en masse over what went on there, given the known behavior patterns of administrators.
The 4-4 at Tennessee again in the inbox, a reminder of the pitiful salaries of underemployed junior faculty...$36,000. Atrocious. This leads me to a topic that is not discussed enough among peers (out of embarrassment?): salary. How much to "junior" faculty make, on average? What's an average postdoc salary? An average VAP salary? An average T-T salary? What are we even working towards? Glamorized poverty?
How can anyone afford to live on $36k a year? Even in Tennessee.
Another way of thinking about it:
What is the average take-away per course in lecturer/VAP positions? Adjuncting?
Here the pay/course is 4.5k. Is that what adjuncting at Knoxville, or peer institutions, would look like, minus health care? Not sure if there would be any retirement plan to speak of.
If you were in grad school at, say, Harvard and made 30k, 36k in Knoxville is a raise. Speaking as someone who may have to live on less next year, I can say it's doable in a non-'nice' place if you don't have debts or a family.
So we continue to restrict the field to people who don't have debt or are carers. Great. The way this field continues to only support or create opportunity for the same type of people is astounding.
A 4x teaching load increase + lack of retirement benefits (I presume) + no relocation expenses (I presume) + no job security + no opportunity for advancement + etc. doesn't sound like much of a raise.
It's a shitty job. But it is a raise over grad school stipends, and not in as expensive a place as most grad schools.
Grad school also sucks.
The big easy is out. Person from earlier- do you know who is going on sabbatical?
Oh hey Tulane, thanks for giving us a whole three days notice to apply for your job before the deadline. We all have nothing to do and really appreciate you dropping this into the middle of our week.
RE: Tulane
I'm glad that FV is anonymous, because I can provide information on this without outing myself or placing my career in jeopardy.
The reason why the posting has such a narrow window is because the incoming VAP is already known and has already been unofficially granted the position. The quick timeline for the search is to A.) minimize the 'bloat' of the applicant pool, and to B.) not unfairly get too many candidates' hopes up.
The incoming VAP is very close with the professor whom they are going to replace, and it's just a matter of crossing a few 't's and dotting a few 'i's.
...At least Tulane is doing this quickly, and it should be rather clear given the timeline that such is the case, so as to minimize its impact on the job market.
On the plus side, the scholar for whom this VAP is covering will be retired soon, and we will have a T-T line out for the 2018/19 cycle.
Cheers.
I don't know about average, but the 3-3 VAP I had paid about 50k in an area that's relatively affordable. I get the impression that's on the higher end.
I had a 3-3 VAP in a very expensive city (though not NYC or LA). It paid 48K with rather a crappy benefits package. Barely made ends meet (mostly because of high cost of childcare in the area). Most faculty in my grad department were impressed with the amount. Where I'm at now is SLAC (3-4) in a more affordable but still expensive city. They pay 54K with full benefits at the same price as the tenured faculty.
It would be interesting to have an online compendium of VAP salaries and adjunct salaries.
I think such a compendium would be very helpful. This information should be shared more openly among those of us in the early stages of our careers.
I'm a 2-3 VAP, 62k.
If you don't like the pay, don't apply.
I think many of us chose to avoid the FSU 5:5 job for not too dissimilar reasons.
umm, question: Do Harvard grad students make 30k annually? If true, that's great.
Was not a Harvard grad student but I used to work in Boston and I can assure you 30k will not get you very far there at all.
You really think it's easier in NYC? Grad school in all these places - Berkeley, NYC, Boston - sucks because you are making 30k max and so are poor.
I was living off 24K in boston and it was absolutely fine. I don't know what everyone is complaining about unless my standard of living is just much lower than everyone else's. I was able to buy books, eat out, do fun things, travel quite a bit... I wasn't saving any money to be sure, but I did not feel like I was living "poor."
I had a postdoc that paid 24k in a high COL area, a 3-3- VAP that paid 65k+relocation in a low COL area, and now a TT that pays 70k+small relocation in a moderate-to-high COL area.
Pro-tip to the young: go to public school for undergrad and private for grad. Your wallet will thank you.
@3:11 either you're being super helpful OR you are a job candidate playing brilliant 4-D chess on Famae Volent!!!
Uhm, people, just saying what your salary is without a context is pretty useless. Are you at a giant state university with chronic budget problems, an elite school with an endowment in the billions, a top SLAC, etc.? Teaching load is actually less of an issue than the type of school and, secondarily, what the cost of living there is like.
I myself am teaching at a state university and getting around $40K; last year I got about that amount at a SLAC with a large (though not giant) endowment. Both schools are in cheap places to live.
4-4 at charleston, literally how the f do you have time for research / life?
@4:27: Uhm, of course teaching load is at issue. Getting paid say 45K for a postdoc with no teaching is a lot better than a 3/4 VAP for 50K.
Re: Tulane. I think you are only partly correct, @3:11. One scholar may be retiring eventually, but I don't think that's who this VAP is replacing. I think this is just a regular sabbatical and there won't be a TT line next year.
4:37, 4:27 here. Uhm, post-docs and lecturer/VAP positions are in two separate categories, so it's apples and oranges. If you are
@4:46, maybe you are right. I tend to view them in a similar category vis-a-vis TT. But why do you think they are incomparable?
So umm, this is a hard question, but given the state of the job market:
How do you know if your research "matters", or if you're actually not doing anything useful/should teach high school/leave the field and try something else? My advisors seem supportive but I'm looking around and not sure anyone else cares..
I'm about to graduate and don't have anything yet for fall, and I'm increasingly pessimistic about future opportunities.
Some people who do Fake News do research that 'matters,' and some people who do Real News do research that doesn't 'matters.' Your mileage may vary. So I would say that you should set yourself a maximum number of years to keep trudging on, and develop an attractive plan B. Then ask around for advice about the kind of research that you you should be doing, the niche that you should be attempting to fill, and the kinds of jobs that you should be able to present yourself as a plausible, even TOP candidate for.
5:03: I'm in the exact same boat as you. I know the Spring Market isn't over, but it's getting harder to keep up hope that I'll get even a temp job. I think now is a good time for us to start looking into other options.
This field needs to burn.
5:09 here, in response to 5:18. This is not just a Classics problem. My friends in many other departments and disciplines are also having trouble finding even temp teaching jobs. This is one of the biggest problems of the modern university and academia. I wish that Classics would take the lead in addressing these issues, but we're a tiny discipline even in the humanities. It completely sucks to not find work and the state of the job market is incredibly demoralizing for those of us who want to pursue this as our careers. But I also knew what I was getting into when I signed up for a PhD, even if I didn't expect it to be this bad.
5:09: If you haven't gotten any offers, or interviews for them, that is not a good sign. Are there people who don't get any nibbles their first year and then land a job a second or third year? It seems that the usual is to get a postdoc/VAP and then transition into a TT...
The president said that we knew what we signed up for, but it hurts anyway.
@5:36 Yes I am such a person. I had zero interviews while ABD. I had one interview this year and got the job. I am not by any means claiming that this is common, but it can be done.
$24K/year in Boston as a grad student may be fine if you don't have debt, health issues and high(er) insurance costs, dependents, etc., and if you aren't concerned about savings, retirement, kids' college funds, etc. But you can't generalize your personal experience to everyone's. If a lot of people around you are complaining about the livability of a stipend, and you think it's fine, it's more likely that your experience is the unusual one. You don't know others' lives.
Even if you're not an archaeologist, look at the description for the job at Monmouth. That is absolute nonsense. I know a couple of people who could teach all those things, but what exploitative BS.
@6:06, THANK YOU.
Since somebody asked...I'm a junior T-T at a public R1 in a flyover state and I make $60k (negotiated up from $55k) with about $1k for conference travel annually. In my first job, I was in a 1-year position and taught a 4-4 at a public R1 and made $36k (not Tennessee).
^ i had no idea that some assistant professors made that little. I always thought 70-80 was the norm....
^^ This is why we need to talk about our salaries more often!
Salary bands at public institutions are, in many states, public information available relatively easily through simple web searches and (less easily) govt. databases. Private institutions are a bit more difficult to track, but talking with friends and colleagues who are friendly can be very useful in this regard.
@7:45 70-80K is what the freshly tenured associate profs make at my SLAC in flyover country. Assistant profs make 55-65K.
There is probably more variation at private schools too. Top people at Harvard and Yale prolly make $250k give or take.
A SLAC in a relatively low-cost metro area in the South offers around $70K/year to all incoming assistant profs. They don't negotiate salaries, which is a relatively new thing among some SLACs, to prevent gender discrimination (if men are better at negotiating, and they end up making 8-10% more than their female counterparts at the start, and raises are percentages based on that starting salary, at the end of the line, the men end up making *way* more than their female colleagues), so they picked a salary at the higher end of the range for the position and just give it to everyone.
Since others are sharing and I support this kind of transparency, I'll stop lurking for once.
My SLAC in a large New England city--that isn't Boston--started me as an assistant prof at about 65k earlier this decade, but is pretty good about giving CoL raises every year or so (usually 1-3K annually). Between hiring and tenure I made it to 74k. Tenure and promotion to associate gave me another 7k. They give all profs an annual 1k book budget and 1k travel budget, and 1.5k annually to help with childcare for TT/tenured profs with children under 12. I found out much later that I could have negotiated for a better starting salary, but honestly I was so thrilled to get a job that I didn't push as much as I should have.
^^^^Thanks. I was curious about the typical T&P pay bump.
At UNC, almost all of the tenured profs make north of $135,000. If you’re in the Medical School here, starting salary for T-T faculty is $505,000.
Being a public, everyone’s salary from the janitorial staff, TAs, to the dean are all on public record. You can search for anyone’s name. It’s hard to find, but the data is out there for every single public university.
What's the starting TT salary at an Ivy like Yale or Harvard?
@5:03, if you don’t think your own research matters, stop doing it. You’re wasting your time and the time of journal editors, your peers, etc. Having support from others (e.g. advisors) is good, but if even you don’t have faith in your research, save yourself and the rest of the field by not continuing with it.
@11:16
For the past few years it's been around $70-75k, but some have managed to negotiate anywhere up to between $80-90k
just finished negotiations at a public R1: offered $65k and $7.5k startup funds, ended w/ $70k and $15k startup plus some summer travel money
I'd be interested to know how many of those who have "negotiated" up their starting salaries and benefit packages are women and how many are men.
We need junior professors who have read the Art of the Deal!
Here's a fairly low-stakes anecdote about negotiating: When I (a woman) accepted my first post-graduation job, which was a great 'fancy' postdoc, I didn't even -think- to ask about things like relocation costs, and no one suggested that I should. After I arrived, I found that two fellow postdocs (both men) had asked, and had been give relocation supplements of some substance (maybe 1,000 or 1,500? I remember that it was enough that it would have helped). I'm not sure I'm any good at negotiating now, but I have not made that mistake again.
At UNC many of the FULL professors make north of $135k, though several are far short of that. The (tenured) associate professors are in the mid-80's.
I happened to be looking some of these numbers up recently. Michigan (if for technical reasons you don't count Bruce Frier) and Virginia are roughly comparable, and Texas is generally a bit lower.
8:28 this is so ridiculous. They should either offer relocation costs or not. I'm sure women are disproportionately impacted.
Women should just pull a Yentl and pretend to be men then they wouldn't have to worry about being undercompensated. Problem solved! Make Classics Great Again!
@ 11:34 PM: What awful advice. I'm not saying that this person should continue doing research or this career path if that's not what they want to do. But we all have doubts about the importance of our research, as we should, because we're in Classics. It's particularly common to have doubts in the last year of your PhD, when you're trying to finish everything up but can't see the bigger picture yet. You have no idea what the person's research is, so have a little empathy.
Every dept. should have a Placement Officer (NB =/ DGS). Every Placement Officer should have a copy of the Art of the Deal.
I hope that most people here would agree with at least the 1st claim.
I'm a woman and I accepted both offers I received (one VAP, one T-T) without trying to negotiate. I can see needing to negotiate a job for one's spouse or other special circumstances but I don't think salary and benefits should be up for debate. Most of us don't have more than one offer to consider, so what leverage are we supposed to use anyway?
I am also a women who has accepted two offers (one VAP, one TT), but tried to negotiate both times. I wasn't successful with the VAP, and only mildly successful with the TT. I backed down almost immediately. I know some might say that the problem is that I didn't stick with it, but I firmly believe that the negative opinion women receive of not being a "team player" is much much harsher than what a man receives for the same negotiating. I knew they were already annoyed with me for asking for more, and the last thing I want to do is jeopardize my relationships at a small institution before I get there. The stigma against "aggressive" women is real.
On the flip side, I know a man who recently negotiated for a permanent contract by saying he was worried about his "girlfriend and her child" finding (non academic) work in the school's location. His institution caved and gave him substantially more money to cover the cost of his economic anxiety. He doesn't have a girlfriend and there is no child. I can't imagine a woman would ever dare to be so brazen to lie, or even to ask if it were true.
I'm 8.28 again. I negotiated for my next job after the postdoc, a TT position. My negotiations went similarly to 10.14's, and I also felt very strongly that I was being judged for it although I was partially successful. Also, like 10.14, this was at a small institution, which is probably an important variable.
I have a close friend who is at an large R1, and who really played hardball. I was vaguely worried for her while the negotiations were going on (and also horrified to realize that I was projecting this stigma of 'aggressive woman' on her). But, several years later, she says that that she doesn't feel it had any negative ramifications for her reputation in the department. So, who knows? But, the lying about the girlfriend story -- just wow.
There are some good searchable databases out there for faculty salary data. Usually it only gives you the average by rank, so that average Assistant Prof. salary will be higher than starting salaries. Try this one: https://data.chronicle.com/
On negotiating: It's true that women can't just "play hardball" and get the same results as men. Research shows that women who push for better compensation are penalized for it. BUT, the same research shows that women are rewarded for fighting for other people. So, we women learn to adjust our phrasing: "An extra $3000 a year would allow me to do X for the department, which will be a real asset to the school." I am sure that people of color must play similar games so as to not be perceived negatively.
Things to consider in negotiations:
Who are you negotiating with? Are you negotiating with an administrator outside of the department? or with the department? If the former, then you can ask the department for tips about what is fair game to negotiate, and you can even ask the department to go to bat for you (see above: it's easier for a department to ask for more money for their new female hire than for the female hire to ask for it directly).
Is negotiation normal at this school? Find someone you feel comfortable asking whether the institution negotiates at all, and what they do negotiate. Some schools have a "no negotiation" policy on salary, in an effort to be more equitable (these same schools are, I hope, offering all new hires the same amount). But they might negotiate other things...
What can be negotiated? Maybe salary, maybe not. Other things that the school might offer, and might be negotiable, include: relocation expenses, start-up funds, conference travel funds, office/lab space, teaching load, spousal hiring (this one is tough, because most schools don't have the money to do anything), etc. A good dean will tell you how all of these things work in your interview, but if he/she doesn't, you are fully justified in asking.
I'm publishing this non-anonymously, because I'm starting to believe that nothing good ever comes from anonymous postings on the internet.
Hi Anne-- this is fascinating and really helpful in thinking about practical ways to frame negotiations. Thanks so much (from a postdoc).
Hi Anne - thanks as well; this is really helpful. We need more of these discussions, and we need them to not be so anonymous (as I post this anonymously...).
Thanks, Anne (VAP here). We now know that Cincinnati is also eating our lunch by producing smart, helpful Classicists rather than people who snipe at each other anonymously.
Clearly the field needs less people from Cincinnati and more bootstrapping mavericks who've read the Art of the Deal. Make Classics Great Again!
MCGA!
1. Think big
2. Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself
3. Maximize your options
4. Know your market
5. Use your leverage
6. Enhance your location
7. Get the word out
8. Fight back
9. Deliver the goods
10. Contain the costs
11. Have fun
Is that a Devo parody?
My question is how to pronounce the MCGA! acronym. The C and G together make it difficult. Is it Macca, like Paul McCartney, or Mac-Guh, pronounced with the intonation of Buh-gawk, the exaggerated sound of a cartoon chicken in distress or alarm?
I wonder if it's well-established enough to have separate branches for the US and Europe? I think the addition of the geographic designation - boiling the acronym down to MACGA or MECGA - would solve the above ambiguity. But I wouldn't want to be exclusionary.
I vote "Mac-Guh, pronounced with the intonation of Buh-gawk, the exaggerated sound of a cartoon chicken in distress or alarm."
Karen Kelsky (The Professor is In) has a lot of useful info about negotiating. I found this article, with its links to some other stuff about negotiating, really helpful in thinking about the process of negotiating:
http://theprofessorisin.com/2018/03/16/negotiating-as-therapy/
And if you don't have an offer and think you have nothing to leverage, you're wrong. You're leveraging yourself. Their goal in the process is to hire you and keep you: if you're unhappy with the position because of pay or benefits or research funds, you'll likely try to leave as soon as you can, and then the department could lose the line, will have to go through the hiring process again, etc. They want you to thrive in the position and to give you what you need to do that, their goal is just to give you the minimum that can keep you in the position, and your goal is to get the maximum.
A big part of this is recognizing your value, that you have it, and that it's worth more than just acknowledgment.
Don't have another* offer, sorry.
The application for the Gustavus Adolphus VAP requires you to put your desired salary. I assume that's there for every position, but, what the heck do I put?
one million dollars, that's what I always put.
But seriously, I kid. Probably realistic to aim somewhere 50-60 range. I'd definitely put a range in there if possible. GA is a great school and in a pretty livable place. Good luck with the application!
Any news on Chicago?
Public R1 in a medium COL city in the Midwest. Starting salary (which my advisor suggested I not negotiate) was 55. I’m now at 62 still pre-tenure due to merit raises. I assumed at the time that every new Asst Prof at my school would be started at a similar salary (or at least those in comparable fields). Absolutely untrue, as I found out later. Not negotiating that first salary more was a big mistake that I now make sure no one else I know makes. You have a lot of leverage when you have the offer and little after you accept. Also up for grabs: startup funds, research and conference support, junior leave, teaching releases, relocation expenses, etc. Not all will be possible at every institution, but it is always worth asking and seeking advice for how to ask.
A question for post-PhDs: how often do you still keep in touch with your advisor/dissertation committee? Does contact wane after your PhD is finished or have they stayed close collaborators even years later? Do the colleagues at the institution where you are now postdoc/VAP/TT essentially take over the intellectual role of your committee and become the base of your new scholarly networks?
@7:03, awesome question. More senior people, thoughts?
I'm several years post PhD and I still occasionally have email exchanges with my committee members, often on a personal rather than professional note. The people I was at Cincinnati (!) with and the people in my "new" department are very much the base of my professional (collegial?) network. I don't work directly with any of them, but they're my go-to for bouncing new or undercooked ideas around. Probably not very helpful, but maybe better than nothing.
I'm tenured (late 30s) and my interactions are much the same as those of 7:41. I update my diss adviser on how my life is going about twice a year, keep in contact with lots of other profs from my grad department on Facebook, and I contributed something to a volume edited by a member of my diss committee, but that's pretty much it. I do still send my adviser offprints of my work though. My colleagues in my own department are my real intellectual base, as well as a few friends I've met through the years. I did a 1 year VAP with some good folks who really helped me land my TT job, but we don't have any similar interests, so they remain just casual acquaintances.
This seems to be the case for several of my friends , though some still work very closely with their old mentors and others had such sour relationships with their advisers/committees that they really don't correspond at all.
@5:25 -- fama is that they are competing with another school for their first choice.
What the fuck is up with the unadvertised position listed on the Wiki for UCLA ??
@10:50 - word is a temp position that turned into a permanent line.
Rather hear about a promoted VAP post.facto than waste my time applying and interviewing for a fake search that goes to the VAP.
Its been said before, but we can't insist that VAPs be promoted internally without fake searches, and then complain when they are promoted internally without fake searches.
The temp position at UCLA for this year also wasn't advertised, I don't think. Weird.
The UCLA hire had not just one but two other TT offers that helped leverage a job to keep her. Also I believe she is part of an underrepresented group. Kudos to UCLA for for recognizing how valuable she is to their department AND not wasting time on a search!
@2:12, it was-you can still see the expired ad on their HR website. The candidate just didn't update her name on the wiki.
Yes, UCLA should be praised for recognizing talent and creating a job that otherwise would not have existed at all. This is a good thing.
^ agreed.
^^ agreed!
@ 2:15 et al.,
What, specifically, made the UCLA hire so valuable to her department that warranted their creating a position for her and not advertising the job publicly?
Honest question, this is not meant to be snarky.
She's a woman. Women are eating our lunch!
Inside info on the Colgate hire: The individual initially offered the job is facing a difficult time in being confirmed by Admin.
There is a possibility of this becoming a failed search.
^^^ there remains a fairly good chance that the Department of Classics at Colgate will be posting a VAP in Roman History job very soon.
@9:00, in addition to excellent research in canonical Latin literature, she is also doing some groundbreaking and interdisciplinary reception studies work on Spanish and Portuguese literature. IMHO, she's a badass.
So, the big three hires this year (Princeton, Vanderbilt, and Stanford) all went to ABDs who are female and minorities (2 Asian, 1 Black).
I'm very happy to see that we are expanding our diversity in Classics, but are we getting a bit too close to seeing one's being of a particular gender and/or race as a major incentive for hiring?
This is *NOT* meant to be disparaging or negative in any way. Instead, I'm asking an honest question about how we move from the old-world view of favoring white men to being color/gender blind in our hiring practices. Is there a better way to supplant the old racist and misogynistic system rather than exchanging the favoring of one combination of gender/race for another combination of gender/race.
(Please, keep responses to this respectful and civil. This is intended to start an honest and beneficial discussion of this issue. Thank you.)
@ 10:22,
There will always have to be a 'training wheels' phase in moving from the old pro-white men system to a gender/colorblind one.
The essential argument goes like this:
Just like Affirmative Action, there needs to be a deliberate and conscious altering of things at the outset. Then, after a generation or so, people will be so accustomed to seeing diversity that they won't even think about any more, and we can remove the 'training wheels' and begin to have people be judged for their character, contributions, promise, and ability only.
The problem is that it is nearly impossible to ever reach that later state. So, what ends up happening is we get used to the 'training wheels' and most people are too afraid to take them off, fearing that outright old-world racism/misogynism will instantly return.
In short, it seems as if we can never be truly 'post-racial' so the better of the two possibilities may be to maintain a policy of women and minorities first. It does replace one form of racism for another, but we need to be pragmatic about things and ask which is the lesser of the two evils.
There is no such thing as being "color/gender blind" and even if there were, it should not be the goal. People who think they are color blind or try to operate that way end up favoring white people anyway. The goal should be to recognize and appreciate difference, not ignore it.
People who face an uphill battle throughout their lives and in the course of earning their degrees end up being more impressive candidates at the end of it all. It's wrong to assume that the SCs showed any kind of preference for these candidates based on their race and/or gender. An awful lot of white men (especially those who grew up with economic advantages) are just mediocre because they have never really had to work as hard as other people.
If (for example) a Black man is successful in his professional field in spite of the really tremendous consequences of racism, he is probably really, really good at what he does.
^ or, exactly what the person before me said.
How can there be an "honest and beneficial" discussion of the merits of these hires when it is entirely based on (your perception of) their gender and ethnicity rather than any actual assessment of the quality of their work. If you want a "blind" approach to the field, don't create a narrative of why they were hired based only on information you've derived from their name and a photo of them. Go out and treat them as scholars, and then decide if the field is becoming too "diverse."
@ 10:35,
I tend to disagree that it would be a bad thing to be color/gender blind. For instance, to have race and gender matter as much as one's hair color, height, or weight would be a wonderful thing. No SC would ever say or think that they prefer someone because they're over 6' tall, and that we need more 6'+ people in our department. It would be just as good if we could get to the state were we don't care about one's race/gender to that level. Yes, you still can *see* that someone is female, black, etc.. but just like you can also see who is 6'+ it should never factor into your hiring decision for an asst professorship.
Also, I find it to be horribly racist to think that the color of someone's skin means anything at all regarding their potential for contribution. Some *may* have had different experiences in life on account of their skin color, but to think that a conference table of perfectly mixed folks is more intellectually diverse purely because of race is horrible. Not all black people are the same. Not all Asian people are the same. Not all white people are the same. To think that having an equal distribution of skin tones equates to "diversity" in anything other than skin tones is ignorant.
A bunch of wealthy, ivy-trained, folks of various racial backgrounds offers zero diversity. Zero. People are divided far more by economic background than by skin color. A black female from an affluent family with a PhD in Classics has nothing in common with a black female from East St. Louis who dropped out of High School. To think that just because they are both black women they share life experience is shamefully racist. Yes, they may have had ~5% of certain life experiences be similar, but don't we all share at least some things with literally everybody else?
If people really want to have "diversity" in Academia, ignore folks from the Ivies for a generation; ignore folks whose background is wealthy. Then you'll see a real change in ideas and approaches.
Having a garage filled with Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches of varying color doesn't make your garage diverse. A red Ferrari and a blue Lamborghini may *look* different, but they are all still the same thing in essence: exotic sports cars.
Bring in some Chevy pickups, a motorcycle, or a Prius...that's diversity in the garage.
@10:58, this seems like a helpful and timely contribution about the limits of class as an explanatory mechanism: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html
Well... looking at the Wiki, a lot of the Ivies were ignored this year. There's been a good number of non-privileged folk who don't wear sweaters tied around their neck and aren't named Preston or Tad.
@10:58 let me tell you, as a very socially and economically privileged POC who attended top schools from kindergarten to graduate school: I have been treated as "marked" (whether in a good or bad sense) by people in and outside of the academy on a daily basis. Yes, economic background matters, but my experience tells me that the quality of my day to day life, not to mention my interactions in academia, has a lot to do with the perception of other people of my skin color. And based on anecdotes from friends and colleagues of color, across economic spectrum, this is endemic.
Even if you support affirmative action (as 10:32 appears to), it is profoundly insulting to assume that the race/gender of these scholars played any role whatsoever in the decision to hire them.
And also, 10:32: showing preference to minorities (in the cases where that does happen) is NOT "[another] form of racism." Racism is tied to historical/systemic problems. You can be prejudiced against white people but giving others an advantage over them is not racist.
@10:58: I get what you're going for with your metaphors, but...comparing race and gender to height, and comparing skin color to the color of cars is overly simplistic and kind of insulting. Also, if you're not a black woman (I don't know if you are), you definitely should not be speaking to their experiences.
10:58 here,
Thanks so much, 11:06 for the article.
Very interesting that black women were not as affected.
@11:08. You mean to say that people from underrepresented groups (economic/racial/ ethnic) who also have PhDs from the Ivies didn't land jobs? This may well be, I am just confused about the point that you are making.
@ 11:16..
11:08 here,
I was just commenting on what 10:58 was saying about "ignoring the Ivies." The lion's share of jobs went to folks who don't have an Ivy pedigree. I used "privileged" not as a racial construct but as a socio-economic one.
I'm in a SLAC department that houses Classics as well as another, larger lit-based discipline. One of the more recent searches we ran was for a non-Classics position (so no one on here is involved). I'm not commenting directly on the UCLA position, or even the points above, but I wanted to note a few things that may be relevant. Some might also be curious about the politics that go on on this side of the hiring table, so here goes.
First, it is illegal in my state (not sure about US law) to ask applicants about their gender or race. It's usually, but certainly not always, fairly easy to guess an applicant's gender based on their name, but of course this can be misleading. One of my colleagues has a traditionally very masculine name, and some were pretty surprised when we first met her. It is generally impossible to guess someone's race or ethnicity based upon their name. Another of my colleagues has a very "ethnic" last name regularly associated with a certain minority ethnicity in the US, but he's a white dude from the suburbs of Connecticut. Unless a LoR writer comments directly on an applicant's ethnicity, we as SC members have no firm idea about this. Generally speaking, if you get into the initial interview room, you have done so on the merits of your application. Although all our ads include boilerplate about welcoming apps from women and minorities, in the initial stages this honestly does not (and CANNOT) matter to us. I suppose we could google candidates and perhaps get clued in this way, but frankly we're too busy.
Next, preferential hiring based upon ethnicity or gender can happen, at least here. For one of our more recent searches for a job about "XYZ in transcultural/global sorts of studies", we brought three very different applicants to campus. The first was an Ivy ABD woman from an under-represented ethnic group, the second was a white male (currently VAPing elsewhere) from a non-European foreign country rarely represented in North American academia, the third was a white woman with a strong publication record. Candidate 3 bombed in spectacular fashion (e.g., she repeatedly insulted our president's religion in her meeting with him, despite knowing he belonged to that religion). Candidate 1 did OK, though she was shaky throughout and her teaching demo revealed her profound lack of experience in the classroom. Candidate 2 was solid in every aspect.
At the department meeting, 3 was cut immediately, and debate about 1 and 2 continued for some time. The debate was almost entirely about ethnicity and gender, with some favoring hiring 1 simply because of her "more" minority status. We ended up overwhelmingly voting for candidate 2, as our SLAC prioritizes teaching over everything else. We immediately came under fire from the president, provost, dean, diversity officer, you name it. Without consulting the department, our chair changed his mind and offered the position to candidate 1. Uproar ensued and the debate raged. Do we value greater demonstrated competence for the job over better representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? How much should the desires of admin force a department's hand? And so on.
In the end, we were saved when candidate 1 took a research gig in the UK, leaving us free to hire the candidate whom the department had overwhelmingly favored.
Again, I say all this not to comment on the UCLA hire in any way, but rather to offer a glimpse of what factors can possibly influence hiring practices, at least at my own institution.
@11:10. Serious question, esp. if you are a member of an underrepresented group. I think a gross formulation like "They got hired because they are (XYZ group)" is quite insulting, but I think this is OK as a facet of someone's profile "they may be able to reach out to undergraduates of color / women on campus / LGBT communities" or "students from x group may relate to a professor that comes from a similar background." I think this is especially true if they have demonstrated experience working with such students. What do you think? I think that maybe the conversations just need to change. Not "I am a white man and she is a black woman, so of course I didn't get the job," but "I can see how the department would value someone who can speak to undergraduates of color, especially women of color, and I do not have that experience"
NOTE: I am not trying to say that people from underrepresented groups should be the departmental diversity liasons. That's a problem that increases faculty workload unfairly, but should be part of a different discussion.
@ 11:10,
Giving something to someone *because* of their race or denying something to someone *because* of their race most surely IS racist. I 100% understand that doing an A-A type of thing has good intentions and is not a decision made out of malice, but that does not change the fact that it is still racist. Racism doesn't always have to be a guy in a rusty pick-up truck, mullet, sleeveless shirt, who freely uses the N-word. It can be more hidden, subdued, and indirect.
If you ever take someone's race into account when you make a decision about them, you are being racist. period. this may be uncomfortable for many people to accept, since they see themselves as progressive champions, but race/gender should ALWAYS remain out of your mind as much as you can help it.
@ 11:24,
Thanks for that very informative account. I've heard similar stories from colleagues at UPenn and UNC, so it, too, occurs even at large R1s and the Ivies.
Racism is a process of subjugation and subordination, a power structure, and you can't be racist against white people in the United States. You can have prejudice against someone because they're white, but it's not the same thing as racism. That being said, you also can't *not* hire someone just because they're white, just the same as you can't *not* hire someone just because they're B/black. Choosing to hire someone is different from choosing *not* to hire someone.
An earlier poster had a great point, about conversations and perspectives needing to change: Not "I am a white man and she is a black woman, so of course I didn't get the job," but "I can see how the department would value someone who can speak to undergraduates of color, especially women of color, and I do not have that experience".
Representation DOES matter, and I second an even earlier poster's discussion about this process as "training wheels," where you need to be active and conscious in increasing representation until, in an ideal world, the best candidate wins regardless of identity factors because there's enough diversity on hiring committees that no one identity category "wins out" in terms of influence.
11:54 makes compelling points, but if you agree with 11:54, you can't also in good faith agree with 11:10. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to accommodate both these views simultaneously:
11:54: "Representation DOES matter, and I second an even earlier poster's discussion about this process as "training wheels," where you need to be active and conscious in increasing representation until, in an ideal world, the best candidate wins regardless of identity factors because there's enough diversity on hiring committees that no one identity category "wins out" in terms of influence."
11:10: "Even if you support affirmative action (as 10:32 appears to), it is profoundly insulting to assume that the race/gender of these scholars played any role whatsoever in the decision to hire them."
I don't think it's universally insulting to think that race/gender play a role, it's just a question of WHAT role you think it plays. If you didn't get a job and think you lost out to someone JUST because of that person's race/gender, that's insulting because you discount any value that that person might have as a contender.
Hi, I'm 11:10. I do agree with 11:54 (and also, by the way, 11:26), and this requires no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. I never said that *we shouldn't* take race/gender into account in hiring decisions, and I agree with the reasons that 11:26 and 11:54 mentioned for doing so. What I meant to express is that it is wrong to assume, when talking about any specific job candidates in retrospect, that the fact that the candidate is a woman and/or a POC outweighed the scholarship and other qualifications of the other candidates. I'm fine if it did play a role, I just don't think that we should assume that to be the case.
People from under-represented groups have enough to deal with along the way to earn our degrees and land a job, and then on top of it all we hear "you got that job because you're not a white man." Even well-meaning, pro-affirmative action folks sometimes voice a similar sentiment (that seemed to me to be an undercurrent in 10:32's comment, for example).
12:33: "If you didn't get a job and think you lost out to someone JUST because of that person's race/gender, that's insulting because you discount any value that that person might have as a contender."
Long-winded 11:24 here. This is an important point. In the search I described above, our candidate 2, had he not eventually gotten the job, could have legitimately said that he didn't get the job because of issues of race and gender. HOWEVER, I must note that all our finalists got to that stage because of what they professionally offered, not their race or gender. They all gave great conference interviews and had compelling apps in terms of their interests and scholarship etc. Both candidates 1 and 2 deserved, in as much as one can deserve, the campus invite. I suspect both would have been excellent colleagues, even though 2 was more professionally developed. Race and gender etc. only came into play in the very last stage of the game, and in my experience one can't make it to that stage without having "the goods" in terms of pure academic and professional merit or potential. No one gets a job ONLY because of their ethnicity, gender, etc.
Re: Colgate @9:58 AM/9:59 AM
I'd check your source on that.
9:58 here,
@1:04,
The source is Admin at Colgate. That’s as specific as I’d like to be.
11:54, that's nothing but sophistry, to define "racism" in such a way that white people can never be victims of it. "Racism" should be much more broadly defined: to me, it is judging negatively or (worse) treating negatively someone because of their race. Doesn't matter what race the judge or judgee are. And while it often involves power structures, it doesn't have to.
And yes, I'm white. But that doesn't mean that a single word I wrote there is without logic. I simply prefer to have a broader conception of racism than you.
2:28 here again. I just realized I should have pointed out that if racism only pertained to power structures then we would not have the concept of "structural racism." The fact that this adjectival modifier was thought necessary shows that not all racism is structural.
It's not racism if in one situation, one time, you feel disadvantaged and you ascribe it to your race because the other person who got the job isn't white. Racism is something that informs all of one's experiences and relationships with society, and it's manifested in different ways for different people in different contexts, depending on a lot of intersectional factors on all sides. Racism is not individual, though it can manifest on the individual level.
There is also a specific term for "judging negatively or (worse) treating negatively someone because of their race" that applies whether the person on the receiving end is white or a POC: racial prejudice.
Structural/institutional racism refers to the ways in which the larger systems and institutions in a society reflect/perpetuate racism. An individual person can hold racist views towards POC but they can't be "structurally racist" against them. Hence the need for two different terms.
A POC can be racist. Being a racist is not confined to one race. The fact that the reverberations of old-world racism can still be felt (which is what I consider ‘ststemic’ and ‘structural’ racism to be a part of) does not and should not mean to imply that only a person of race ‘x’ can hate or hold negative views of race ‘y.’
Just because white people have done horriblet things on account of racist views and having power does not mean that ‘being racist’ is confined to white people. The Germans aren’t the only ones who can be genocidal just because it was Germans who enacted one of the most significant genocides in history.
It’s horribly ignorant to think that ugly aspects of humankind can only appear in a particular setting under certain circumstances.
3:10 here.
@3:24, no one said that POC can't hold negative views of white people. I literally just said that there is a term for this: racial prejudice. It's also not all about "reverberations" of past wrongs. These are present issues.
I'm going to serve on a SC in a year or two and now I'm pretty worried about accidentally hiring someone who isn't up to date on these issues. Hmm.
Yeah, I'd like to ask: what are the stakes of the "PoCs can be racist, too" conversation? The earlier discussion about academic hiring was actually surprisingly interesting and nuanced, and I don't quite understand whether the this defining racism thing is meant as a derail? But perhaps I just don't understand why the point is so important to 3:24 (I'm asking this question genuinely)?
Anyone know what's going on with Dickinson's VAPs? Review of applications was supposed to start two weeks ago, but are they waiting until the deadline to schedule interviews?
Me again, sorry, PoC not PoCs
No word on Dickinson for me either.. I've heard nothing through the grapevine
^^ and while we're talking about it, what is going on with Conn College ??
First it was a T-T; demoted to VAP; applications due over a month ago for the revised VAP. It's almost April. SCs are about to leave campus in the next few weeks
This got started when someone wondered if three of the ABDs who got hired this year were only hired as ABDs because they're not white. No need to question how the three white men got their jobs (one t-t, two VAPs), because they clearly earned it.
@ 4.15-- No, I understood that part, and I agree with your point about who gets questioned.
I just didn't (and still don't) understand why the definition of 'racism' is so important to 2.28 and 3.24, in the context of this specific conversation. This point about how we define the term 'racism' has been argued (and will continue to be argued, I presume) in both academic and popular contexts-- this is clearly not the first articulation of confusion/ disagreement about "racism =/=? structural racism =/=? racial prejudice" on the internet.
@ 4:15
Yes. It is far too common that the people whose merit is consistently questioned by the FV community for T-T jobs (every.single.year) are younger women. For the past four years, this happens without fail. The better the placement, the worse the (shameless, anonymous) FV attacks.
On the race stuff. I have been on 8+ hiring committees for multiple departments in multiple years. I am male and white. If, most things being equal, a woman, PoC or basically anyone but a white cis-male is a viable candidate with qualifications roughly commensurate with the plethora of white male candidates, I am choosing the former. Why? (1) I know from observation and experience that this candidate has had to work harder and put up with more shit to make it to this point and (2) I want someone with this resilience as a colleague and (3) I want to support the expansion of our field and (4) students need diverse faculty.
@4:29
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So much this.
4:28, it's a typical right-wing talking point (I see it all the time in arguments with Breitbart-reading friends on Facebook), just like "what about black-on-black crime?!," that is meant to shift the terrain of the conversation. It's important to people because of our pervasive, decades-long consensus "racism is bad." Once that's been accepted, the definition of racism becomes obviously crucial. And the attitude you query is a natural result of the way we often frame why racism is bad and teach the history of racism as basically one of being mean to each other instead of distributive justice and recognition. It's not just a bad faith argumentative tactic, but a real lack of understanding of society and historical sociology, and it's not just coming out of the rhetoric on the right. If racism is bad because judging someone based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character etc. is bad, it's not immediately clear why being biased against white people would have a different status (ethically) than being biased against POCs. So the stakes lie in changing the conversation from "why are POCs so underrepresented in Classics and what can we reasonably do about it?" to "why are you judging candidates on their skin color instead of their merit?" -- which is a much more favorable framing if you are white and concerned about being disadvantaged in the final stages of searches than is thinking about it in terms of representation. That's, I think, why these issues are so important to folks like 3:24 or whatever.
@4:28, I think that the definition of racism came into play when people were wondering whether it was fair that these non-white women were preferred over their white (male) counterparts, a preference that was ascribed specifically to their race/gender. Some seemed to think that it was a kind of racism to give the jobs to people of color instead of to white people (implicit: white people who deserve it more based on unspecified qualifications). I think that's why it came up?
A lot of people on here seem to think that you can have good candidates, or you can have diverse candidates, but you can't have both.
I am a true believer in feminist standpoint theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standpoint_theory).
Diverse candidates are not just good candidates. They are potentially better candidates.
Now, before this is slammed with the 'reverse racism' nonsense, one who is 'white' could achieve the same potential 'advantage were one an outsider because of ability, class, etc. But experience has shown me at least that the theory above is often true.
This entire discussion, going back to 10:22, is motivated by nothing but a false, pernicious, and, yes, bigoted claim about why certain people got the jobs they did. As someone who has been personally attacked in these pages (without being named — but with unambiguous references) for getting a job according to a narrative that has nothing to do with what actually happened, I am less concerned about what others in the field might think of the legitimacy of my position than I am about their basic abillity to make inferences based on evidence. If you're willing to initiate or enter into a debate about a false rumor based on a racist/misogynist premise, I can't imagine the level of rigor you apply to your scholarship. Please, do your research, learn how job searches actually work and how the specific one you're talking about actually went down before you jump to such dark conclusions about the inability of women of color to succeed on their own merit.
@ 4:15 and 4:29, if it makes you feel any better, every time a white male ABD with a piddling publication record gets a job a part of me dies inside. It's quite clear they haven't earned it. Trust me, it registers, because it fucking hurts. I won't pretend to wish anyone well who gets a job on the strength of absolutely nothing while the rest of us suckers here bust our asses publishing as much as we possibly can year in and year out without having any prospects of gainful employment to show for ourselves. Of course we only get more bitter, because every year our CVs get longer, while those of the lucky blank slate ABDs that land jobs remain as pathetically short as ever. You can complain about FV attacks and criticisms being "shameless" in as much as they are anonymous, but those of us without jobs can't afford the luxury of claiming that particular moral high ground.
I'm sorry you experienced that, @4:51. I can't imagine how it would feel being the target of some of these very offensive comments about candidates and their merits.
I think it's really easy for posters on here to forget that these are actual people we're talking about, who read these comments, too, who have been working hard to get their degrees, who are struggling on grad student stipends, and who are also dealing with a whole series of additional pressures by the nature of their identities, only to get it heaped on by anonymous posters who could be on search committees for jobs they apply for, who could be their colleagues now or in the future, who could be referees for journals or publishers, etc.
4:51, <3 <3 <3
Hey 4:51, as faculty at one of the recently discussed institutions, I've got your back too.
Anyone know what's up with the San Diego post-doc that was turned down?
I can understand if people have varying definitions of racism. None of those presented here are entirely wrong, in my opinion.
...BUT, what I cannot understand is how anyone can look at anyone else and say that all else being equal between a white male C.V. and black female C.V. “the minority candidate clearly had to work harder.”
I’m not saying that such is never the case, in fact I’m not even saying that such isn’t the case more than not, but to categorically say that every woman and every minority has to work harder than white men to get the same result is bullshit. Again, I’m not saying that such isn’t the norm, but there’s a massive danger in assuming that all white men have it made and all women and all minorities have constant uphill battles in al areas of their life. Yes, being a male has certain advantages and yes being white does too, but let’s not pretend that having a penis and white skin means that the streets are paved with gold.
I grew up in the Northeast, in a very red part of the state surrounded by one red county after another. The population there was 97%+ white, and many people were poor and struggled to survive. I grew up never once benefiting from whiteness, because everyone was white. I grew up in a home where our vehicles got repossessed and our power was shit off regularly. I grew up going to a shit school with shit teachers, where 80% of those that did graduate HS never went on to college.
I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am today and I had to work and sacrifice for every single line on my CV. So a loud fuck you to anyone that dares say that just because I’m a white male those accomplishments are of lesser value because of it without ever knowing what my life has been, what struggles I’ve had, what uphill battles and opposition I’ve faced along the way.
Stop being so fucking ignorant as to think that you can so quickly judge anyone based on their race alone.
^ please, nobody respond to this. honestly not worth our time.
^ ...but I just cooked up this big bowl of popcorn! :(
It's not that you don't have it hard, it's that your race and gender aren't liabilities. You can pass as a member of the academic elite (I do it all the time), you're not ever solely reduced to one facet of your identity, you are given the freedom to be more than your race, you're never asked to speak for your race. Your skin doesn't automatically call into question your credibility for some people in some contexts. When you get a job, it's because you earned it, not because you're white. Etc.
@7:15,
I completely agree. Every person has their own struggles in life. While certain trends may exist for POC/women/LGBT, etc.. it is not to say that only they suffer.
Remember, this has been cited as an enormous factor for why Trump won: the Democratic party largely acted as if the problems of the white, low class/working class aren't real because they're white. Yes, there are massive injustices in the country for under-represented peoples, but that does not mean that issues exist for the rest of the population.
@7:29, if you ignore the voice and opinion of 7:15, et al., you're making things worse.
@9:58, As the chair of Classics at Colgate, I have to say that any “inside info” about the possible failure of our ancient history search comes as news to both me and the dean’s office. It is not accurate in any respect, and I’m baffled as to how or where it originated. Administrative approval for our candidate came through with no issues weeks ago, and of course we would never have made an offer without obtaining it beforehand. I'd hate to think that this false information might have cast a shadow on our future colleague, or caused uncertainty among our other excellent applicants.
I wrote two comments above to which angry white man is responding. I am going to respond because I too am white and from a poor background. I have family members who did not get into schools of their choice "because of affirmative action". I can tell you a long sob story about an unemployed, disabled parent; a mentally disabled second parent; credit card debt; foreclosures. I could go on.
But because I have gone through life with my eyes (and heart) open I know that if I had a different skin color, gender, religion, or outward sexual identity, I would have had far fewer open doors and many hundreds fewer hands helping me up.
Because I am not obsessed with my own group identity, I can recognize that I received more loans, better leases for apartments, better part-time jobs, tutoring gigs, reception etc, than someone who did not look like me and did not have my name. Because I have listened to the experiences of others, I have read and refereed scores of papers and had many of my own rejected when my public talks were roundly cheered, I know that the face I show to the public has given me innumerable advantages.
Finally, I recognize the aggregate effects of all these structural advantages on my career while also acknowledging the deleterious impact that NOT having these advantages and not meeting more success and failure can have on one's ability to do work in the first place.
So, as one fucking ignorant white guy to another, get over yourself.
@7:44. Thank you for these words!
@5:35
The candidate they made the offer to took another position.
I never quite know how to internalize it when a SC member comes on here to address a statement. On the one hand it's great to have clarity on an issue, but on the other hand I can't help but feel that it's, in an odd way, petty and childish for them to interject. And I know, I know that it's more good than bad, but I think it would be best for them to not get embroiled in discussions here.. remember how bad it was for the Georgetown guy who came on here to squash rumors of a corrupt search a few months back and ended up leaving a horrible impression of himself and the Department in many FV-ers' eyes?
I think that here, it's more good than bad, but perhaps a better way to address it would be to not engage directly but instead state on the Colgate Classics homepage a rather common 'congratulations to XXXX, who will be joining us this fall as the new...'
That squashes rumors in a far more dignified way, imo.
@ 8:30,
sadly, most departments have very pathetic and out-of-date webpages. If anything, most update new faculty info in the fall. But, yes, I agree that in an ideal scenario depts publicly announce their hire once it's made. It prevents ANY kinds of misinformation.
Apples and oranges. In this case, the rumor itself was that the individual candidate was having trouble being "confirmed" by the administration. This is a shitty rumor to post, first because it's obviously wrong (and oddly phrased); second because it at the very least implies disagreement between the department and the administration at a smallish SLAC, and more insidiously, it implicates the candidate directly rather than speaking in more general terms. This is something one should squash.
@7:44, thank you for this. Am of a similar history and mindset, and wish I knew more people like you.
Re: Colgate. Not sure I understand the objection. Surely the entire point of this forum is for all of us to learn from one another and become more informed about how the system functions as a whole, as well as about specific developments.
If Colgate, Georgetown, or any of the other departments that have sought to alleviate anguish for everyone (and unfair public humiliation for their candidates) choose to address things openly, honestly, and using their own names, shouldn't that be applauded? Don't we all want to avoid unfairly tarnishing the reputations of candidates and trafficking in misleading gossip?
@8:41 and @8:14. This is 7:44. Just trying to figure stuff out, all the time. thanks for the support. Would like to know you too.
I just heard that Chicago and Columbia made offers to the same person, can that really be true?
RE: Colgate. What 8:56 said. I appreciate Colgate interjecting. I am not the happy candidate in question, but I think it speaks well to his or her future department that they quickly and politely interceded.
@ 7:44,
You're arguing from silence. There is no way you can claim that your being white got you "more loans, better leases for apartments, better part-time jobs, tutoring gigs, reception etc."
1.) Credit score, income, and down payment determines loans, not race. Car salesmen *want* to sell you a car; they don't give a shit what race you are or if you're gay. They'll pull whatever strings they can with whatever lender their dealership works with to get each and every loan through.
2.)Apartment lease rates are fixed and advertised on their respective websites. like car salesmen, rental agents don't (and legally cannot) change the rent for 2-bed/1-bath on a whim. Even if you look for an apt outside of apartment complexes, landlords also advertise in this day and age (craigslist; hotpads; etc) and are held to the same legalities as apartment complexes--they cannot randomly change the rent.
the other aspects you mention (part-time jobs, tutoring gigs, reception) is something that you cannot quantify. You cannot know why you ever did or did not get any of those opportunities. To say that you have your race to thank for that is small-minded and assumes that the level of racism that exists in the country today is akin to 1920s Alabama. Yeah, there's racist dicks out there and, as we can now see thanks to Trump making it ok again, there are far more bigots today than I would have otherwise assumed. But, you tend to be thinking that everyone out there who ever had to make a decision on you was 'that' guy; that racist asshole that preferred you over a POC. Sure, maybe you've benefited that directly from white privilege, but for you to chalk up so much of what has been your life to your 'luck' of being born a white male is distorted, imo.
To play Devil's advocate, I can never know how many times I have profited from my being white. I can never know how many times the police saw me and chose to not pull me over; I can never know how many times I've gone to a restaurant and was giving better service because I was white and not of a stereotypical "bad tipper" race. I also can never know how many more random smiles have come my way from passers-by because they didn't feel 'threatened' by my walking by, I can never know how many times a taxi driver chose to stop for me because I wasn't black, or how many times I got through airport security without being a 'random' search because I do not appear to be of Arabic decent (though I am about 1/8).
Being said, it is poor reasoning to say that a majority, let alone "all" of the positive things that I have in my life were handed to me on account of my race. The world is not as cold and racist as you tend to think. More people are good and decent than not. I can honestly say that of all of the white people I have known in my life only one guy was truly horribly racist, his name was Trevor. I hated being around Trevor and would avoid him at all costs. I can't imagine how poorly the world must seem to you if you see Trevors everywhere you look; if you have Trevors to thank for your loans, apartments, jobs, and any benefit purely because Trevor only wanted to benefit his fellow 'Aryan.'
Many people here need to adjust their worldview: society is not as deplorable and ugly as you tend to think.
@9:03,
"Chicago and Columbia made offers to the same person"
...wow! and here I sit crying at my laptop and its empty inbox. But, I guess if you're good enough for one, it follows that you're good enough for the other.
Whenever white people play "devil's advocate" over race issues from my experience they are doing racist thing so deep and secret they might not even realize it.
Sincerely, another white person
did that Late Antique post-doc at FSU ever post anywhere ??
@9:24,
[9:18 here], I'd love to hear how I was being racist. Enlighten me.
...how bad of a move would it be to turn down a T-T offer at a 3rd tier school in exchange for a PostDoc or VAP at an Ivy ?
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