Yes, the creepy thing about this guy was his bon homme persona, in evidence everywhere, in his listing prizes at the local fair on his CV, and in the general style of his scholarly writing. Sure he writes about sadism, but a guy who enters bread recipes to the county fair can't be all that bad! His prose style looks like a more jocular Jon Henderson. Turns out this was all the mask on the monster.
Apparently this pervert is also married to one of the archaeologists in the department. I can't imagine what it must be like not only to find out that one's spouse and colleague is a sicko but also to still have to go to work everyday and face down other colleagues who also know.
Speaking of Ohio classics departments but not in a pedophile way: weird to see Xavier searching for a VAP. Normally they just recruit a grad student from across town without the fuss of a search.
An application is likely a waste of time, though. The department has a long track record of hiring insiders, so unless you are an alum, already working there, BFFs with the faculty, or all three, you are unlikely to receive serious consideration.
Based on their website and the comment from 1:17 pm, I'm going to go ahead and say at least 6 people. That is, the five who work there now and at least one more who is bitter about not working there. If these numbers work anything like Nielsen ratings, and let's assume they do, because why not, then that means that at least 6000 people want that job. And in this market...sure, why not.
Yeah, I am no fan of inside hires -- there's a reason they have to be disguised: not because HR thinks it is a fun game, but because they are bad practice bordering on unethical in the first place--, but if you're going to do it, this is how one should be done.
My best guess re: Florida Latin ad: it's part of the process to support a permanent residency application by an existing faculty member. If this is true, the minimal advertising is designed to reduce the number of (wasted) applications. But I could be wrong; I have no inside knowledge and this is just a surmise based on a couple of previous experiences. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how you could verify this in order to save yourself time/effort/expense/false hope. Blame the government...?
You'd have to ask an immigration lawyer for a proper answer. I think the ad shows that the applicant (for residency) has secured a job for which there was reasonable public advertisement (Chronicle suffices - you don't need to go the full SCS + listservs etc.). The problem is that the ad has to appear relatively close in time to the application for residency (so not two years prior, for example). So even though t-t searches are typically well advertised at the time the person was hired, sometimes there has to be a ghost ad published a couple of years later. Again, I'm not a lawyer. And I don't know that this explanation obtains in this particular case. I'm just offering one plausible explanation, which could be completely wrong. So please don't base your decision to apply or not on my posts (nor rely on me for green card advice...).
The fundamental objection to an "inside" hire seems to be that the inside candidate has an unfair advantage in that (through the fulfillment of his/her professional duties) s/he has had an opportunity to influence the committee by providing them with extra information about him/herself that the other candidates have not had an opportunity to provide.
If you object to an inside hire, would you then also object to a search committee hiring for a generalist position someone whose publications they are especially familiar with because they work in overlapping areas? After all, that person has influenced the search committee (through the fulfillment of his/her professional duties) in a way that other candidates, sticking to the application requests, could not.
What about someone whom the search committee knows from serving on professional committees (SCS, CAMWS, CANE, etc.) with?
Would you argue that search committees should also rule out anyone whom they have previously met, since most candidates will not have had that opportunity at providing "inside" information?
If you are you against hiring insiders but think any one of my other scenarios is okay, then your position is incoherent. If you oppose all of my scenarios, then your position is untenable.
It seems to me the biggest objection is not the fact of the inside hire, but rather the charade of the national search. All of us spend inordinate amounts of time on job applications, to the detriment of our research, our families, our health, or just about anything else we could be doing other than tailoring a cover letter and teaching statement to fit a particular job. An hour or so wasted here or there on a bogus search may be trivial, but it adds up over several years on the job market.
Reasons for nationally advertising a search with an inside candidate:
(1) HR requires it. Theirs is the iron law that cannot be broken. (2) Inside candidate may take a job somewhere else. (3) Search Committee may change its mind when it sees the applications. (4) Many other individually particular circumstances.
A national search resulting in an inside hire is a perfectly ethical and reasonable process. It is *not* a done deal from the get-go, no matter what your bitter approximation of 20/20 hindsight may make you feel. (Note that I wrote "feel," not "think" or "know" or any other word associated with cognition or certainty.)
If they're such honorable and fair things, does anyone have an explanation for why they are explicitly forbidden by basically every university in the country??
What you probably mean to say is that posting a job ad after the hire has been decided (between the SC and the insider) is "explicitly forbidden" (whatever that means). Of course. That's collusion. But, by all means, collapse categories and show a dearth of intellectual interpretive faculties.
Oh, bee-tee-dubs, it doesn't escape notice that you didn't respond to any of the very clear, cogent, and reasonable points above. Well, to be fair, maybe it escaped your notice.
I haven't read every comment on this blog, but my impression has been that most people object not to inside hires per se but to inside hires advertised as broadly as possible, thereby wasting the time of large swathes of people.
In general, I think we would all appreciate it if job ads were a little more thoughtfully written. If an SC really, in their heart of hearts, wants a Greek poetry person, they should not ask for "generalists with research interests in any aspect of ancient literature or history" so that Roman historiographers (e.g.) don't waste their time. Some people have heavy teaching loads, family responsibilities, or are finishing dissertations and this process is a huge time suck.
The first one, that broadly advertised "inside hires" waste the time of large swathes of people, has already been dealt with and dealt with very well. You don't have to be happy about the situation, but if you can't answer the very clear and reasonable motivations for advertising the position, then your complaint can't be taken seriously.
The second point, that job ads should be honest, is not one anyone would debate. A case like you describe is bad acting on the part of the search committee. At the same time, we have to remember that search committees are not a single entity but a number of individuals who may not all agree on what kind of person they want to hire. And we have to remember that HR has a hand in things, sometimes down to rewriting ads. I can easily imagine a situation where the search committee could not express any preference for any subfield in the ad without being forced to throw out all applications that did not perfectly match that subfield, even if they were willing to consider other applicants.
The third point, that people are busy, is an appeal to pathos, not an argument. It gives motivation for why search committees should be as considerate as their circumstances allow, but it does not speak to any of the actual arguments raised above.
Teaching undergrads rhetoric is one thing, people, but please don't also point them at FV.
March 22, 2016 at 9:57 PM
I agree. It's super embarrassing after being demolished by an interlocutor to then imagine and project that same interlocutor as someone of a lower social, educational, and/or chronological caste. Terrible, absolutely terrible.
The goal here is obviously not to engage in "fruitful dialectic," but rather to win, to "demolish" your opponents with your dazzling argumentation. Fine. But, as your dismissal of "mere pathos" underlines, you have badly misread the genre in which you are composing. This is not the place for forensic rhetoric, but for epideictic. This is all about feelings.
There are perfectly rational explanations for an inside hire being made after a national search. That doesn't change the fact that some hires are not made for these reasons. Collusion happens. Corruption happens. And the way the system is set up, those who give evidence against such corruption suffer far greater consequences than those who carry it out, finding themselves labeled as unprofessional or un-collegial. It is just one more rankling injustice in a field and profession with no shortage of rankling injustices.
So we come to places like this and we complain. We blow off steam. And grinding our teeth over injustice feels pretty good. Certainly it feels much better than the creeping helplessness that is the alternative.
When we see on the wiki that an insider has been hired, we have no way of knowing whether it was honest or corrupt. But the thought that it was corrupt is a comforting one. In my own experience, I lose a lot less sleep over the job I wasn't offered where I know the deck was stacked than the one where an ethical search committee with the best intentions decided someone else would do the job better.
These feelings are not beside the point. They are the point. So...why do you find it necessary to come here and attack them? Is the job market Big Brother now? Not content to have subjugated us in body, it must subjugate us in mind and heart as well? All complaints dismissed or "demolished" until we all acknowledge that search committees are just, and our lot is no more or less than we deserve?
I'm here because I found the Wiki helpful when I was on the market. I liked thinking through the complexities of the market and the hiring process, and I liked hearing about aspects of that process I didn't know about. I still like that. Understanding a problem as accurately as possible is healthy.
You, on the other hand, just admitted that you prefer lying to yourself (and by extension, to others, since you're publicly asserting your admitted self-lies). That's not only unhelpful, it's unhealthy. If you want to contribute to poisoning yourself, have the decency to do so quietly.
I'm not going to go as far as the guy a few days ago who suggested that TT people who use FV must be mostly pervs, but this has been a weird year generationally here. My experience is that in real life, the older generation has, as of this year, completed the move from "oh well, there have been hard years before but it'll straighten out in a few cycles" to "I can't understand how we're not placing students X and Y!" to "this is a disaster for the field and I feel so bad for your generation." People have been really nice. We've seen this shift in rejection letters, too. But at the same time, we have at least one but it seems like a large handful of people who at least claim to be TT and come to FV just to beat people up.
People don't like things that look corrupt. Desperate people especially. People really don't like the idea that the old boys' network is still full in swing or that SCs are just hiring their buddies or their coworkers' buddies. When that is the actual end result of a large proportion of searches, it is pretty hard to argue that they were actually all perfectly just. Ok, searches are often pretty random anyway and a leg up from being someone's buddy, although it probably makes a lot more difference in scale, is not a totally different phenomenon than other types of legs up (see above: "but then shouldn't people be allowed to network at all???"). Do people still get to resent it? Yes.
If you're some warped TT person who gets off on slamming people who are here partly to point out real institutionalized problems and partly to blow off steam (THE POINT OF FV!!), please think about why you have such a need to do this, and take up a different hobby.
I'll own the misquotation. That's my fault for not double checking.
I hope you will seriously consider what I and others have said as well. You are coming here and attacking crushed and desperate people for your own pleasure.
And I will not accept the accusation that I am lying to myself or others. I was defending the legitimacy of complaints about inside hires in general. I am not usually one of those who makes such accusations. And if you read what I wrote carefully (and not just to see if I have quoted you correctly) you will see that I said I feel better about the job I was rejected from where I KNOW the hire was corrupt than the one where I KNOW it was honest.
I am happy for well-meaning senior people to come here and offer advice. I know that they can be naive, but I also know that years on a horrible job market can make one paranoid, and it is good to get the balance of an outside perspective.
But in this case, whoever you are, you say you're interested in "the complexities of the market and the hiring process" but then seem to admit very few such complexities. You seem to think that it is a perfect system, those who get jobs deserve them and those who don't, don't, and it doesn't sound like it matters to you whether this is a wonderful market or a melt-down like we are experiencing now. And you seem to just want to hit desperate, scared people -- who are nonetheless acting with much more restraint than you do! -- with that idea over and over. This is not a healthy place for you.
Personally, I'm not convinced that our troll is really a senior person. More likely s/he is an embittered drop-out from the field, who is motivated by conflicting senses both of self-loathing for not succeeding and of superiority for leaving and comes here to mock and insult those who are still trying to hack it. I just can't fathom what would motivate a tenured professor to continue trolling this board in hopes of making the lives of job-seekers more miserable. Not all seniors are nice people, but this kind of behavior is beneath them.
Except you wrote: When we see on the wiki that an insider has been hired, we have no way of knowing whether it was honest or corrupt. But the thought that it was corrupt is a comforting one.
That you felt the need to insist repeatedly within the same post and with capitals that you were not lying is proof enough that you are fully aware of the willful mischaracterizations you choose to post.
Personally, I used to be very sympathetic for candidates. I wanted to help them. The posts on FV this year have turned me Darwinist. You should think how about how your very public whinging influences the people who don't post here. Like it or not, you're the public face of your generation. (Say what you will about me being the face of "my" generation. You--the general "you"--have already expressed enough contempt and hatred for search committees and anyone else with a job that there's nothing I could do to make that worse.)
I saw very little contempt, groundless complaining, or general bad behavior this year, and quite a lot of people behaving very well, from all sides. I saw people taking the time to write compassionate rejections, and people grateful for compassionate rejections. I saw people being very clear that they think inside hires are unethical but have no animosity toward the individual hired. And even objections to inside hires tended to be whether or not they were conducted in a respectful and sensitive way, not the fact of the hire. I know people who won big and been kind to equally-good friends who didn't, and senior people who have put their heart and soul into helping their students get jobs, and not turning on them when it doesn't happen.
Except you. You've been ugly. You may be seeing what's in the mirror.
.... That was my attempt to write "whoosh!".... I can't even use FV correctly! No one from the US says "whinge": is it just posturing, or are the English out to get us?
But if there are other newbies out there, note that FV and the classics wiki are two different things. The classics wiki is job updates, almost no discussion.
Yes, interesting article. I hadn't even considered how we would talk about Cruel Daddy in a class where his work was assigned, much less the advisability of trigger warnings about it...
That's an excellent article. It covers the problems really well without asserting easy answers. Thanks for pointing to it, 3:29.
I have another request. Can we as a group stop referring to HP as "Cruel Daddy"? It sounds flippant. This is a crime that transcends FV's usual flippancy. The name also lets him set the terms for discussion of him. It's just awful.
I thought the Eidolon article was tone-deaf, and a missed opportunity.
The victimization of children that is driven by the perpetrator’s acts is a real problem, one that unfortunately came right to the shores of our once blissful and isolated academic community. The colleagues and family of the perpetrator are no doubt in shock, and still trying to piece it all together. The academic community's response? To wring its hands over whether to use "teratogenic grid" in their classrooms and scholarship; moreover, to use the horrible crime that occurred as a vehicle for reviving the now comfortably well-worn discussion on why we continue to read and study the literature and culture of an imperialist, misogynistic, slave-holding society. And other tangentially-related issues, like the connection between sin and scholarship.
Now, to take on a child-porn scandal that rocked the insulated, circumscribed world of Classics world was probably too hard to resist for an on-line mag that fancies itself a sexy, cutting edge venue for Classics scholarship. The essay could have risen to the challenge, addressing the real problem head on, but rather indulged in a rather narrow kind of self-regarding discussion on whether and how to use the relevant work in our own professional lives. In short, the essay, which I regard as the Classics community’s response to what has happened, did nothing to dispel the stereotype of academics as rather more concerned with circumscribed debates, irrelevant to the rest of the world, than about what I believe really matters here: the problem of child pornography and the real pain that people directly affected by the event have to suffer. Here is what I feel a proper response would have been.
First, out of respect for those individuals directly affected by the perpetrator’s crimes, I would have liked to see the discussion kept out of public fora like Eidolon, or any other such, for at least a couple of months. Let me be clear. I’m not against the discussion we’ve had as such. But for everything, there is a time and a place. And I say that, ultimately, the decision whether to cite 'teratogenic grid' or anything else is a personal one. By all means, have the discussion with those you trust, make your decision, and then move on. And, by the way, the field of gender and ancient culture has been booming now for two decades. One can quite easily find work that raises the same issues and debates, and in doing so skirt altogether the question whether to use the now-imprisoned scholar's material at all.
Second, why couldn't we address this social harm — dissemination of child pornography — from our own unique vantage-point as Classicists? And something else needs to be addressed, too, and that is the perception of the Classics, which I feel has taken a dive as a result of this story. For the author of the Eidolon article made plain that the perpetrator was drawing on ancient attitudes to support his own personal predilections. “The Romans didn’t care whom you penetrated, so long as you weren’t the one being penetrated.” We can imagine the author’s self-justification for what he did, implicit in these lines: “See? There’s nothing *inherently* wrong with what I’m doing.” We, as Classicists, fail if we cannot defend our discipline against such blatant misuse and misapplication of the texts. At stake is nothing less and nothing more than the public’s perception of what Classics is, and what we study. Here is an opportunity to remind lay-people, when they probably very badly need to be reminded, of the *good* that comes from a study of the Classics.
Your post is the epitome of the "2nd Reviewer" phenomenon. You're upset that the article isn't the one you would have written. You're upset that a venue oriented toward Classicists discussed an issue involving a Classicist from the perspective of how it intersects with other Classicists.
You're clearly deeply invested, so why don't YOU write that article that you wished had been written and send it to Eidolon yourself? You have decided what needs to be done, so why not go ahead and do it?
From what I have seen online, I think your opinion is a minority one. Obviously you have strong feelings about the situation. The Eidolon article did an excellent job of addressing the range of responses one might have to this awful news, including allowing for your own. The point was not to insist on an answer, but to clarify what is at stake for the field of Classics as a result of these alleged crimes. In that respect, it may be the most important essay written in the field all year. Judging from what others are saying, I'm not alone in thinking this.
I don't think the Eidolon article is so flawed, but I agree that one thing that has not been addressed here or elsewhere is the misuse of the classical tradition (implicitly) to justify unspeakable crimes, something that has been done before and will be done again. 11:17, I second 12:26: you've obviously got thoughts on this, so wait your month(s) and then write what you have to say as a real article!
11:17pm here. Re: the second reviewer criticism: point taken. And I appreciate the feedback and FV for the opportunity to air what I suspected was very much a minority view.
I don't really see why there's any real question about citing this pervert's scholarship. It was never worthy of the lavish praise it received in some circles.
11:17, it seems like you didn't read the eidolon piece very carefully. The author spends a fair amount of time drawing connections between this situation and classicists who were/are known anti-Semites or racists. That was one of the most valuable points in her article. Think about how deeply sexism still informs most scholarship produced today: most classicists don't.
Rather than write a manifesto, the author tried to start a conversation about the complications that personal failings might have on one's professional productions. You seem mad that this situation is more difficult to navigate than you would like. Unfortunately, smart people often are bad people. Does that mean that we have to disregard the smart things they do because of their moral turpitude? It seems like your answer is "yes" and that that is the only response to this situation that you deem appropriate. I envy the clarity you have concerning such ambiguities. For my part, I am so grateful for the eidolon piece because it does *not* insist on any one response as the only appropriate one.
Yes, it has always seemed to me almost wholly derivative; useful to assign, perhaps, because it brings together many ideas in an accessible way, but it doesn't contain many ideas that aren't available elsewhere. I'm mainly familiar only with his more general theoretical articles, though, so perhaps some of the stuff that engages in more close reading isn't so derivative. In any case, though I've assigned his work before, for my purposes it will be trivially easy to avoid doing so in the future, and I can't see that anything will be lost.
For what it's worth, I think your final paragraph is really important. You're clearly passionate about this, and I was serious that you should follow it up with an article of your own. We would all benefit from it. If you're worried about the point in your penultimate paragraph, that discussion should be kept out of the public for a time, I'd counter by asking, isn't silence, even respectful silence, too easily interpreted as a kind of complicity? (Think of every act of terrorism after which one hears "why aren't members of x group standing up to denounce the act done in x's name?) This isn't the same on so many levels because what this man did was not in the name of Classics, but that hasn't stopped some from linking the two.
I guess what I'm getting at is that your response is a valuable and important one, and it's one that a broader readership than FV needs to hear. I personally think that you can strengthen your response and do even more good if you drop or moderate the criticism of other people's responses. But, really, expand that last paragraph. Send it in to the Chronicle or to Eidolon, or to Slate. (Well, maybe not Slate, but you get the idea.)
I agree that 11:17 should write his response, but s/he should of course be aware that a public forum is going to invite ugly questions. People are going to ask how it is that so many Classicists seem to have interests that overlap so uncomfortably with that of a pedophile, whose predilections clearly influenced his scholarship. Why was this guy rewarded so greatly for working on stuff later revealed to be expressions of the vilest type of sickness? Because Classicists are really interested or because we all thought kinky sex would sell, and make us cool again? And which answer is worse? Liberals will say that this case shows white male upper-class privilege (how many times have you seen "Yale" in those news articles?) gone wild in a white male upper-class discipline, while conservatives will say we have surrendered a time-honored discipline to pervs who get handed a glorious living for writing pervy stuff. Anyone writing publicly will get hit by these questions and probably worse. I'm not trying to say it shouldn't be done, and indeed these are probably questions we should be at least considering, but it may be better to do it at least anonymously.
2:25 raises some issues that may or may not have to be addressed. I think the complaints about "pervs" (vel sim.) are dramatically overstated and the complainants in the minority. We are not Victorians nor should we be neo-Victorians. Just because a particular area may attract people with specific disgusting vices does not mean that the area itself is vile or that the vast majority of people who work in it are vile. For examples, it's easy to see that most priests are not pedophiles and that most doctors/surgeons do not take pleasure in causing physical pain. Only the embittered or the extremists make that claim, so let's not go that route.
I'll leave this here, for anyone who is interested. Kenneth J. Reckford, "Shameless Interests: The Decent Scholarship of Indecency," American Journal of Philology 117.2 (Summer 1996).
In this case, I don't think you need to be a "conservative" to wonder why exactly this pervert was given so much praise (the awards from the WCC are especially embarrassing). Was it simply because he published on SEX? I suspect so.
That sounds too much like projection. Seriously, anyone who wants to generalize from an individual to a field needs to take a long, hard look at themselves. That's a clear-cut case of "Not Helping".
2:25 here, I am not saying that all these are valid critiques. And I'm obviously not casting myself as simultaneously agreeing with anti-academics on both the liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum. Personally, I do think that some of these critiques have some validity, but that's beside the point: anyone who is contemplating or being encouraged to tackle this issue publicly, as the Eidolon piece very bravely did, and kudos to them, is risking a public backlash that could be highly unpleasant from a lot of quarters. And those are just a few critiques I can come up with in two minutes, god forbid someone unleash one of the crazier political movements upon themselves, as they will be much more creative than I am.
Cowardly I accept, but could I get a better animal? I would say that the ostrich would be the animal who refuses to think about the implications getting involved in such a scandal or how the general public might see it?
If ancient memory holds, Aristotle says that there are a variety of types of bravery, and that of an insane man or a child does not count because they do not understand the risk they are taking. Cowardly I may be, but I don't want someone boldly riding off to do battle for the honor of Classics against the forces of the wider internet, which are much scarier and less sympathetic than anything here.
You've invented straw/bogeymen to argue that engaging publicly in a rational way with a real scandal that is already public would somehow forever stain both the individual doing the engaging and the discipline, even if that engagement is to condemn criminal acts.
"engaging publicly in a rational way with a real scandal that is already public would somehow forever stain both the individual doing the engaging and the discipline, even if that engagement is to condemn criminal acts."
I believe that's a direct quote from University Management for Dummies.
So is there any real evidence out there that there is some sort of ongoing threat to the discipline's reputation among the general public because of this arrest? A quick Google search doesn't turn up articles from the past week. And one thing about this country is that today's crime quickly fades as the next one(s) make the news. So is this REALLY a p.r. problem for classics, as multiple posters claim or imply, or an imagined one? (I shouldn't have to add, but know this group well enough to know that there is need to or else there will be criticism, that OF COURSE the p.r. issue isn't the most important one, which is the crime itself. But others are expressing concern over the p.r. angle, and I'm skeptical. Personally, I'd think the 'Eidolon' piece -- which was okay, but 25% too long -- should be the last public statement online, not the first of many.)
Also, a bit of a reality check seems in order: he might be a classicist, but a good number of us do not work in the area of ancient sexuality or some/any of the others in which he made his mark. (At this point in my career, between book and articles I've footnoted several hundred works, and don't cite him once, and wasn't likely to be doing so anytime soon.) A few people without perspective seem to think that this is a problem for our whole discipline of classical studies, but in my own case, and undoubtedly that of many others here, his areas of scholarly interest are quite alien from our own research, so much so that he might as well have a PhD in Semitic Languages and Literature or Medieval Studies.
@1:26: From what we've seen, especially in December/January, the Abominable Trollmonster is a disturbed and malicious person. 12:31 does not deviate from accepted standards here, and I am certain is not the same individual.
Seconding that the CD phenomenon is irrelevant to most of us, and public wailing will not be helpful.
"moreover, to use the horrible crime that occurred as a vehicle for reviving the now comfortably well-worn discussion on why we continue to read and study the literature and culture of an imperialist, misogynistic, slave-holding society."
This is one of your criticisms of the Eidolon piece. You are really showing both your (undoubtedly white, male, hetero-) privilege and your disconnection from the issues that animate college campuses these days. The discussion would only appear well-worn to a dinosaur with no skin in the ever-raging battle over social power. I don't think "tone-deaf" means what you think it means...
The same people who cry "privilege" so easily are the ones who enabled the pervert in question to be viewed as a trendy, upstanding, honored member of the Classics community, solely because he worked on questions of who was sadistic to whom in Rome and who penetrated whom.
8:33 here: I don't think you understand what privilege is and the specialized way that word is used in social justice circles. But you probably have a lot of it, so that, unfortunately, is not surprising.
Your interlocutor knows exactly what he is doing. He is willfully playing dumb as if that amounted to some sort of intellectual or moral protest. That's easier than looking in a mirror. It's the same thing the posters are doing who want to use the HP scandal as an excuse to discredit scholarship and scholars of sexuality. Maybe they're even the same posters.
What should discredit a pretty decent number of scholars of ancient sexuality is 1) that the Warren Cup now turns out to be a fake, and 2) they probably still don't even know that. That is a far greater embarrassment than failing to have omniscience regarding the secret lives of their colleagues.
Coming late to this discussion, but are people really arguing that we should stop citing this person's scholarly work because of his (horrific) private life? I'm pretty sure that the tenants of ethical and responsible scholarship require that we cite any work we are aware of that has contributed to our own, no matter how appalling its author.
11:17 here. Waiting in line at the DMV so I figure this is a good time to post. The situation demanded that we go bigger and we went small. No objections to the issues the Eidolon piece raised, but their timing.
11:17, again, posting from the DMV. I think I know now what the throng of shades must feel as they wait on the banks of the Styx. Have a good day out there.
One of the shittier things about being a Classicist is having to go to the DMV every year instead of once a decade (because of constantly switching states). Also, dual state income tax, every year forever! #VAPlife
A few weeks ago, before we all got distracted, someone mentioned transitioning into healthcare. Is that someone still lurking, and if so, want to give details/some form of contact info? As I sit looking at shitty March weather, piles of grading, and no interviews, escape from academe is sounding pretty good.
If my speculations on the reasons for the Florida ad were the basis of the current jeer on the Wiki, I regret posting them at all. Given the level of contribution on here these days, I probably ought not to be surprised. I'm going to delete the jeer once, but I'm not entering an editing war with a crazy person. If they or anyone else undeletes it, go ahead. But you're an idiot, and an offensive one. (Btw, the whole cheers and jeers thing on the Wiki - a terrible idea that just entails scrolling through more rubbish. Leave that for FV.)
6:39, yes, I do. He finished a PhD in a well-respected program and then switched immediately to medicine, where he completed a standard MD degree and where he still practices. I don't know what led him to the switch, which happened some years ago.
For most of us, med school would mean a post-bac first to get up to speed on science, wouldn't it? Then many years in med school, residency etc..... we'd still be over 40 and deeply in debt by the time we found a job.
Go Ohio State!!! Does anyone have an idea what they are doing so right? I'm counting one or two placements apiece for the typical ivy job market winners, and FOUR placements for Ohio.
They have put more people in jobs this year alone than my supposedly higher ranked program has in the last six years, at least. My entire graduate school cohort, starting from about two years above me and continuing down to the new PhDs, has either quit or roams the country from VAP to VAP.
The biggest part of getting a job is who you know and who who-you-know knows. Faculty at OSU are obviously good at advocating for their students. Many at the Ivies think that opportunity will be handed to them. People at other institutions understand that you have to go out and make opportunities.
None of the interviews I landed this year came as a result of my faculty members knowing someone in the hiring department. Going into this process I was worried about how much 'who you know' would matter; as it turns out, it didn't matter at all. I'm sure some people do still land jobs in part because their adviser has an in, but I'm saying this as a ray of hope for those who don't have the most well-connected committee members: it is possible to get a job based on the strength of your application alone.
3 of the 4 OSU folks did their penance as VAPs before getting these jobs (and one is of course an inside hire). I don't see that as a particularly great recommendation for the school "putting people in jobs."
Wait! Wait! Let me guess: you are a grad student without job market experience, were on the market in such a different era that you have no idea what you're talking about, or are bitter that the underdogs are knocking your program's socks off?
11:34, Those might not be good examples for schools putting people in jobs, but those are great examples for people putting people in jobs. Doing VAPs stinks in terms of feeling unstable, moving, etc. But they are great for getting to know people outside of your graduate institution.
11:02, Congratulations on getting interviews! That is uplifting news. And I assume, since you are offering a ray of hope, that you landed a job from one of them. I had the same experience, but I count myself as one of a very, very lucky few. I stand by my point that person-to-person communication often helps. Faculty at small schools often prefer a candidate whom they think will stay at the institution for some time, not someone looking for a resume-builder position. In the cohort above mine, two T-T jobs were landed because a faculty member picked up a phone after the interview. No one else in that cohort landed a T-T position. I myself helped to secure a T-T position for someone else because I picked up a phone after the interview.
I'm not saying it can't happen that you get a job without you or your faculty members knowing someone on the search committee personally. But if there are any people lurking on this site who are considering going to graduate school, I strongly urge them to consider a program whose faculty are willing and able to go to bat for them.
Seems like there are a bunch of current VAPs (or former VAPs) getting 'promoted' to TT at the same institution these days (Bard, NYU, Nebraska, BC, anybody know anything about Hamilton or Trinity?). This, is from my understanding, closer to how the sciences have typically handled successful post-docs.
Is anyone else disheartened by the seemingly large (at least 3-4) TT jobs that have gone to people who have yet to receive their PhDs and have little to no publications (thank you Academia.edu)?
It may seem as if I am just a sore loser (check!) but I also find it a bit bleak as I am someone who got their PhD in 2013, has been a VAP since, multiple articles, a book coming out, great reviews, but from a non-prestigious university.
What 3:07 said applies to at least three people I know who didn't get TT jobs this year. It does seem unfair that not everyone has to "put in the time" at VAPs and can just sail straight into TT with no publications and way less teaching experience (let's face it: teaching at multiple institutions over several years gives you way more teaching muscle). I'm not begrudging these lucky few, but I do wish that the institutions who hired them knew how multi-year-VAPs feel about this, especially given the state of the discipline and the job market. SCs aren't charities, but I'd rest better knowing they at least felt a little bad about it, even while acting in what they think is their best interest.
3:07 pm: There is an old and worn out thought that has floated around since at least 2008: search committees prefer the newly minted to the (perceived) haggard ones who have been slogging away in the adjunct and VAP mines, who might be tired, cynical, angry, or in some other way not a fresh-faced colleague who can inspire hope in their undergraduates and prop up an ailing department. I don't know that this thought has any validity to it. I repeat it only to tell you that the idea has been floating around for many years.
Yours is a different spin from how I've always thought about it.
If the average tenured classicist is a 5 (out of 10), then I think most inexperienced search committees (which would be almost all of them) would prefer a newly minted PhD whom they can imagine will turn out to be a 10 than a seasoned VAP who has proven to be an 8. It doesn't matter that the 8 is several degrees better than they are. What matters is what they imagine the other guy will be.
Or, put another way, promise trumps proven. Anecdotally, I've seen it happen more than once, so it's a motive I impute to committees who should -- but don't -- know better.
6:33 is very much correct here (speaking as someone tenured but not involved in a search this year, but with some experience in the process). There are many SCs (and not just inexperienced ones) that look at "potential" much more than any kind of track record. They think they have discovered a promising talent who will be the next big thing and then can pat themselves on the back for discovering this person and giving them their chance, bringing further glory to their department as well.
Interestingly, it's a bit more common up the scale than down the scale of institutional prestige. Probably because those at lower-ranked institutions know they need someone who can hit the ground running and manage their teaching and researching without any hand-holding. Higher up, if the Wonder Child flames out…"Well, we'll hire a new Bright Young Thing in four to six years" (depends if the boot comes at mid-TT review or at tenure decision time) and everyone will quickly forget the one who couldn't walk on water (Note: doesn't mean the former halo wearer is driven out of the field in every case. Some do manage to get some pubs out and land on their feet elsewhere, usually a tier or two below).
But I have full sympathy for those out there on VAPs who see ABDs move straight into TT jobs and get a bit irked. As we all know and keep repeating, there's nothing "fair" about this process.
So anyone know what happened with Williams? Did it really take less than 24 hours to decide the rest of us weren't good enough, or was there an inside // otherwise well-connected candidate from the beginning?
Not to dispute 7:04, but to supply an addendum: Many more institutions "up the scale" will run an open-rank TT search than those "down the scale" especially if "down the scale" includes institutions without graduate programs. In recent years (one example I know of this year notwithstanding), open-rank searches have gone to Associate-level hires, not Assistant-level hires. I wonder if this indicates a shift in thinking. Perhaps even "up the scale" institutions are not so willing to bank on the Hope-The-Bright-Young-Thing-Is-A-10 hire when they can get the Already-Got-Tenure-Won't-Cost-Us-A-TT-Line-If/When-They-Don't-Get-Tenure hire.
I am being a sore loser too, but it is just so depressing to spend years working very hard and sacrificing so much to do the things that everyone always told you to do, and then even if you are successful at publishing and teaching, the jobs still go to people who have done none of the alleged keys to success. I know I know, suck it up and nobody ever said life is fair.
About Williams, I am not sure it's an "inside hire" exactly, but the SC does seem to have had a pre-determined favorite, possibly someone who had an "in" of some kind. We've seen this before--if that person doesn't completely bomb the interview, it doesn't really matter how everyone else does. There clearly wasn't time for serious discussion of candidates, bringing it to the department, dean, etc.
So I feel your pain, @10:02pm. There is nothing quite like spending days prepping for an interview only to find that it was all in vain and the SC wasn't seriously considering you from the beginning.
This latest arrest, unlike the UC arrest, is being covered by national media outlets. Seems like a statement from relevant professional associations is warranted now.
This case is different from the other one in a crucial way: it can't be linked to his area of study. (Unless someone wants to claim that the Byzantines are somehow naturally associated with perversion....)
If the SCS and AIA link the two cases, then the common link will be Classics. To the extent that it reaches the general public, all classicists will be tainted, not, as some above gleefully anticipated, just the ones who study sexuality.
Right. Because whenever people in other professions are busted for child porn, the first thing their professional societies do is issue a statement. You sound like administrators.
Clearly, OSU is doing something right. As for SCs hiring freshly minted PhDs over people who have held several temporary positions, I think the message there is clear: the fact that you have held multiple temporary positions means you have failed, on multiple occasions, to secure a TT job: what else can a SC assume from that record than that there is something about your profile that suggests you're not a perfect candidate? Were all the SCs for prior TT jobs wrong in not choosing you...? In this field, once you hold more than one temporary position, you're more than likely screwed...
For the Williams questions--I just saw the jeers on the wiki. If there's nothing more to the story than that Williams sent out rejections immediately after the ad closed, then that isn't indicative of anything.
SCs can often look at applications before the ad closes. In fact, you should assume that they begin looking as soon as the job ad appears. They may not be allowed to send rejections, however, until after the ad closes. That's because all applications received within the window need to have the appearance of equal consideration. As soon as the window closes, however, they're free to send the rejections to the apps that went into the automatic "no" pile.
That doesn't mean that they have decided on a "yes" yet. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. But for whatever reason, they'd already decided against your applications. It's not a personal judgment. It could even come down to as little as thinking they might want to offer x class in the Spring and only considering candidates who have taught that class before. There's just no way to know.
Of course, if you have more information, then I'd revise my comments.
@11:56, I am not personally involved but based on what's been said I believe the issue is that they sent out rejections immediately after _interviews_ (less than 24 hours after interviews, based on the jeer). The ad closed months ago.
I personally wouldn't necessarily read anything into that fact either, that just seems to be what some people are offended by.
Those who are not shiny ABDs may in fact take some hope from this year's job market. Many of the winners in this year market have held one or more VAP (including several of the OSU crop). Some TT hires this year have in fact held 4 or more VAPs, which of course implies a lengthy losing streak. While ABDs are still getting jobs, it seems the "damaged goods" bias for multiple VAPs may be fading.
Ah, I see. Thanks--I didn't read the jeers carefully enough.
I still agree with you and with myself.
For anyone keeping track at home: Before the interview, the SC probably has a ranked list, either formally as a group or each member informally. After each interview that list will get rejiggered accordingly. Once the interviews are over, all that's left is to discuss the candidates as a committee and hammer things out. In an ideal world that would happen immediately after the last interview since, presumably, the whole committee is around. And then, in an even more ideal world, the search committee chair would notify candidates as soon as possible. Certainly the automatic "no" pile.
The lag that almost every job experiences between interview and rejection isn't because the SC is burning gray ballots trying to come to a decision. It's bureaucratic -- can't get everyone together, can't get the dean to sign off, can't get HR to approve the next step. Or it's emotional -- can't bear to write/send a rejection email.
It sounds like Williams was being a good actor in this respect. Even if there IS an inside or pre-determined hire, they STILL could have lingered over the rejections. If the outcome is the same either way, better to know sooner.
I counted 2 OSU T-T placements in 2013-2014, the same as certain ivies that year. In 2014-2015, when OSU had 3, some of those same ivies still had no T-T placements....
1) Its a department is really on the make, and perhaps should be seen as a top 5 or at least top 10 PhD program.
2) Statistical anomaly, as in this terrible job market the sample size is still so small that Ohio getting two and say, Cornell getting none isn't statistically significant.
3) Some SCs at mid-tier schools may in fact be leery of hiring an Ivy/Stanford person. Because these folks believe they are the best and belong at the best R1s, or better yet at Ivy/Stanford institution. They see their TT job at Mid-level U not as a career, but as a stepping stone to the next level. But for Mid-level U department, having faculty poached can be a disaster. They might not be able to fill a slot for two more years at best; worse the Provost might take the Tenure Line away altogether. So they might in fact prefer a solid candidate from a solid program over Ivy League/Stanford hot-shot. And most jobs are at mid-level places, not the dream jobs of HYP/S products.
@ 12:48 (re Williams): I was one of those interviewed. Based on the rejection email from the chair, it seems someone was indeed offered the position immediately and has already accepted. I have to agree with others that it seems a bit fishy. No campus visits, for example, and no time to present their choice to a dean and get approval, perhaps indicating that they had already chosen their candidate and gotten approval BEFORE interviews.
But in any case, I do appreciate the quick notification. I guess all this chatter just goes to show that we will always find something to sulk about, whether the notification is TOO soon or not soon enough. I think what is most galling is the idea that, after all the time spent prepping for the interview, thinking up a cool-sounding course, picking out your best tie, etc., you do not rate even 24 hours worth of consideration.
4) The market has been bad for just over a full tenure cycle now. The mid-tier schools and LACs have had a chance to hire an Ivy/Stanford/etc. person, had that person jump ship, be poached, or just prove to be a terrible, terrible fit. There really is a difference between someone (a) who still believes they're supposed to be the next Wilamowitz and is stuck because of a bad market, (b) who still wishes they were in a research track but has accepted the inevitability of the LAC job, and (c) someone who went to a LAC as an undergrad, loves teaching, and believes in the mission.
Lower tier places had their shots at a lot more of people in the (a) and (b) categories than they used to. Now it's been long enough to see the consequences and learn from them. The "lower" tiers are not included subsets of the "upper tiers" but at lower/easier qualities. They're actually different animals.
At least you were notified... I interviewed with Vassar, but they never contacted me afterwards, not even after the position was filled. I know this is how some schools say "no", but it is an incredibly disrespectful and rude way to deal with people... I agree with you that the whole Williams thing seems fishy...
Two colleagues of mine are still waiting on post-interview rejections. One interview happened 10+ years ago. The other, 5-ish years ago. Faculty at the latter, at least, have the decency to look sheepish when they run into my colleague at the annual meeting.
Bottom line: 1:43 is correct. There is always "something to sulk about, whether the notification is TOO soon or not soon enough."
Oh, sorry about the superfluous post. I did scroll back to see if someone had already posted on this, but not far enough: I didn't realize that CNN's freshly posted story was actually a day old already.
Well this case is getting more coverage (also said by Anon. March 31, 7:26 PM), presumably because desk editors are more aware of stories coming out of Villanova. That could be because of rankings, geography, alumni, etc. It has little to do with the individual. If something like this were to come out of Yalevard, news outlets would be all over it.
I served on a search committee last year for a VAP, and there were maybe 60 applications total, of which I think at least 8, maybe more, were from OSU PhDs. Whatever the number was, it was a lot. I actually remember one of the other SC members saying, what is the deal with so many OSU apps? Obviously, if the applicants aren't good, the number of them doesn't explain how they are getting jobs, but if they are on par with applicants from other places, sheer numbers overall may also be a small part of the explanation for the relatively high number of successful OSU job seekers.
I will say also, though, that a number of the OSU applicants looked quite good and especially were doing work that stood out as a little different and therefore, to me, more interesting. One of the things that has been interesting for me serving now on a SC twice is to realize that there can be clusters of applicants who all seem to be doing extremely similar work, and so, perhaps unfairly, those candidates just don't stand out as much.
make that at least 5: Hamilton, Nebraska, Bard, NYU, and Williams all seem to have been pre-determined hires... we all know that departments need to pretend to conduct an open/honest search, but at least give a hint that it's a gross waste of time to apply...
On the one hand I can understand a search committee's reaction to receiving 150+ applications would be to retreat to the person they already know and like, but on the other hand, the fact that I have to imagine that scenario shows how fucked the field is.
^^ I think it is not just a case of being overwhelmed and "going with the person they already know/like." After all, these committees all managed to find ~10 people to interview, and I doubt they just picked those names out of a hat.
The inside hire thread is a long one. I have seen many posts to the extent that "the problem is not promoting the VAP, its wasting everyone's time with a national search. Having wasted my time (not to mention my recommenders) on a number of bogus searches season and last, I concur. I also understand that the gremlins in HR often require a national search even if the VAP is an accomplished and well-vetted candidate for conversion.
I wonder sometimes if SCs also feel guilty. VAPs do not have it easy (as well we know); they have worked hard for the department, usually for poor pay and few benefits. Many TT faculty who aren't total assholes must realize that the department VAP is in fact improving their professional life, making it possible to teach less and research more. So I can see some non-asshole SCs thinking that promoting a VAP who has slaved away for a department for several years and exhibited grace under pressure is in fact the moral thing to so, rather than being some king of corrupt and insidious plot.
That said, I would hope that Universities would institute reasonable procedures for promoting internally. I don't have a problem rewarding a trusty and loyal VAP/lecturer adjunct with a proven track record. But when there were only 55 TT jobs this cycle, losing 5 or 7 of them to inside hires does feel infuriating for those of us not on the inside. Better there be only 50 jobs and no one gets their hopes up.
Moral absolutes certainly make the self-determined "victims" feel better. That's all I'll say here since those who should learn better willfully won't.
The Loyola Marymount job also appears to have been an inside hire. I've also noticed that many of the TT jobs went to those who had gotten their PhDs in the region. Perhaps another indication of SC members knowing the candidate previously?
Maybe these people you revile here on this blog are simply the better classicist and are better suited to these jobs? Once you've been around academia for awhile you learn that success is a combination of skill and luck. It is not a system easily gamed and is inherently unpredictable.
It's amazing how search committees invest months of effort and thousands of their institutions' dollars to systematically eliminate the "better classicists" in favor of ones they just happen to have met before....
Or, you know, their estimation of "better" isn't the same as yours. Could it be that...no! Better not to go down that road. You must be right. They must be choosing worse candidates as part of an over-arching conspiracy by the Illuminati to deny you personally your rightful job.
I don't work there, nor have I ever, but even though Boston College hired their internal candidate, I have trouble believing that conducted their search in anything but an honest and rigorous fashion. I was a finalist for a job there a couple years ago (which I didn't get, obvs), and the clarity of communication and and general humanity of the department was incredibly impressive. Even though they hired their internal, I'm sure that hire was not a foregone conclusion.
I should like to remind everyone here that this blog is a place for people to let off steam and complain, and therefore, when disgruntled or otherwise unhappy candidates do so, to please refrain from judgement. If you cannot handle people's complaints, please move to another forum/blog. There are plenty of *very* good reasons to complain about the state of the market, about the procedures followed by certain places, by predetermined/inside hires and excessively broad job descriptions, by disrespectful methods of communication on the part of SCs, and so forth. A complaint about these things, which every classicist (whether successful on the market or not) will recognize, does not make someone a loser, whiner, or otherwise bad person. This is the place to complain, to let off steam, and to empathize. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine, but please go somewhere else. Thanks.
About Boston College, I think one reason they hired their internal candidate may be that their process was delayed and they did campus visits rather late. I know of two people for sure who had already accepted other offers by the time BC finished campus visits. Not that their internal candidate wasn't worthy, but they may have had limited options.
By the way, I am sick and tired of certain commenters mischaracterizing others' feelings about inside hires. It seems that most people writing on this blog have a perfectly reasonable attitude towards inside hires, i.e. that it is actually quite a good thing for departments to promote a person who has worked hard for them over a period of years, but that it is frustrating that large numbers of others' time and resources have been wasted in the process. It gets worse and worse the further you get: I personally had two interviews this year for searches that wound up selecting the internal candidate this year, and I have a close friend who had two CAMPUS VISITS at schools that hired their internal candidates. Once you have sunk not only the time of applying but also preparing for an interview and campus visit, travel to SCS and campus visit, getting someone to cover classes, possibly buying a new suit, and on and on, not to mention the EMOTIONAL cost of hoping and thinking you have a good shot, only to discover that you were fighting an uphill battle from the beginning--at that point it is perfectly understandable to be frustrated and even angry. This does not mean that the internal candidate was unworthy and I haven't seen anyone "reviling" those candidates. In fact, they are surely all good scholars and collegial department members. I for one am very happy for the internal candidates that got the jobs I interviewed for and I hope that, if I am even in a similar position, I will be so lucky. But I think we can all agree with 8:32pm that universities need to institute a better process for converting VAPS. It is not just a waste of all the candidate's resources, but a waste of university time and money when SC's go through the long process of a search, paying to bring candidates to campus, etc. only to wind up hiring the person they always knew they wanted to hire anyway.
If that is what you think, then you are invited to f- off and find some forum that wants your presence, since you didn't get the gentle hint from 1:00.
If that is what you think, then you are invited to f- off and find some forum that wants your presence, since you didn't get the gentle hint from 1:00.
What is, something an entitled twit would say who doesn't get that s/he isn't the arbiter of who gets to post on this forum, Alex?
Servii, could we next year get rid of this from the main page: "Let us hope that this year's market continues the slight improvement we saw last year." This hasn't been the case in forever, but it keeps getting put up there year after year, and it is really depressing to read it. To me at least.
Yes, the Classics job market has stopped falling only in the way that a crashed airplane has stopped falling. There is little to do but survey the wreckage and collect the bodies.
1,319 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 801 – 1000 of 1319 Newer› Newest»Yes, the creepy thing about this guy was his bon homme persona, in evidence everywhere, in his listing prizes at the local fair on his CV, and in the general style of his scholarly writing. Sure he writes about sadism, but a guy who enters bread recipes to the county fair can't be all that bad! His prose style looks like a more jocular Jon Henderson. Turns out this was all the mask on the monster.
*John
Well, his linguistics articles are uniformly terrible.
Apparently this pervert is also married to one of the archaeologists in the department. I can't imagine what it must be like not only to find out that one's spouse and colleague is a sicko but also to still have to go to work everyday and face down other colleagues who also know.
Speaking of Ohio classics departments but not in a pedophile way: weird to see Xavier searching for a VAP. Normally they just recruit a grad student from across town without the fuss of a search.
An application is likely a waste of time, though. The department has a long track record of hiring insiders, so unless you are an alum, already working there, BFFs with the faculty, or all three, you are unlikely to receive serious consideration.
Who would want to apply anyway to work at that place?
@4:46 pm
Based on their website and the comment from 1:17 pm, I'm going to go ahead and say at least 6 people. That is, the five who work there now and at least one more who is bitter about not working there. If these numbers work anything like Nielsen ratings, and let's assume they do, because why not, then that means that at least 6000 people want that job. And in this market...sure, why not.
How about that TT Latin job at the University of Florida only advertised at the Chronicle?
Is it the first Latin TT job of the season?
Florida should prepare to be bum rushed.
No deadline, send only a resume by mail? Looks fishy.
Is there a plausible inside candidate? Limited advertising and mail-in applications do suggest an inside hire.
Yeah, I am no fan of inside hires -- there's a reason they have to be disguised: not because HR thinks it is a fun game, but because they are bad practice bordering on unethical in the first place--, but if you're going to do it, this is how one should be done.
And yet no plausible candidates on the department website: the lecturers there seem to do Greek stuff, unless I missed someone.
Huh. Well then, good luck to everybody! If it is a real search, the lucky winner will be able to say he/she got the only Latin job this year!
My best guess re: Florida Latin ad: it's part of the process to support a permanent residency application by an existing faculty member. If this is true, the minimal advertising is designed to reduce the number of (wasted) applications. But I could be wrong; I have no inside knowledge and this is just a surmise based on a couple of previous experiences. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how you could verify this in order to save yourself time/effort/expense/false hope. Blame the government...?
What would be the purpose of the ad as part of a residency application?
You'd have to ask an immigration lawyer for a proper answer. I think the ad shows that the applicant (for residency) has secured a job for which there was reasonable public advertisement (Chronicle suffices - you don't need to go the full SCS + listservs etc.). The problem is that the ad has to appear relatively close in time to the application for residency (so not two years prior, for example). So even though t-t searches are typically well advertised at the time the person was hired, sometimes there has to be a ghost ad published a couple of years later. Again, I'm not a lawyer. And I don't know that this explanation obtains in this particular case. I'm just offering one plausible explanation, which could be completely wrong. So please don't base your decision to apply or not on my posts (nor rely on me for green card advice...).
It's yet another fake search.
Here's a question for the whinging crowd.
The fundamental objection to an "inside" hire seems to be that the inside candidate has an unfair advantage in that (through the fulfillment of his/her professional duties) s/he has had an opportunity to influence the committee by providing them with extra information about him/herself that the other candidates have not had an opportunity to provide.
If you object to an inside hire, would you then also object to a search committee hiring for a generalist position someone whose publications they are especially familiar with because they work in overlapping areas? After all, that person has influenced the search committee (through the fulfillment of his/her professional duties) in a way that other candidates, sticking to the application requests, could not.
What about someone whom the search committee knows from serving on professional committees (SCS, CAMWS, CANE, etc.) with?
Would you argue that search committees should also rule out anyone whom they have previously met, since most candidates will not have had that opportunity at providing "inside" information?
If you are you against hiring insiders but think any one of my other scenarios is okay, then your position is incoherent. If you oppose all of my scenarios, then your position is untenable.
It seems to me the biggest objection is not the fact of the inside hire, but rather the charade of the national search. All of us spend inordinate amounts of time on job applications, to the detriment of our research, our families, our health, or just about anything else we could be doing other than tailoring a cover letter and teaching statement to fit a particular job. An hour or so wasted here or there on a bogus search may be trivial, but it adds up over several years on the job market.
We've been over this before. A lot.
Reasons for nationally advertising a search with an inside candidate:
(1) HR requires it. Theirs is the iron law that cannot be broken.
(2) Inside candidate may take a job somewhere else.
(3) Search Committee may change its mind when it sees the applications.
(4) Many other individually particular circumstances.
A national search resulting in an inside hire is a perfectly ethical and reasonable process. It is *not* a done deal from the get-go, no matter what your bitter approximation of 20/20 hindsight may make you feel. (Note that I wrote "feel," not "think" or "know" or any other word associated with cognition or certainty.)
If they're such honorable and fair things, does anyone have an explanation for why they are explicitly forbidden by basically every university in the country??
^
[wikipedia, citation needed]
What you probably mean to say is that posting a job ad after the hire has been decided (between the SC and the insider) is "explicitly forbidden" (whatever that means). Of course. That's collusion. But, by all means, collapse categories and show a dearth of intellectual interpretive faculties.
Oh, bee-tee-dubs, it doesn't escape notice that you didn't respond to any of the very clear, cogent, and reasonable points above. Well, to be fair, maybe it escaped your notice.
I haven't read every comment on this blog, but my impression has been that most people object not to inside hires per se but to inside hires advertised as broadly as possible, thereby wasting the time of large swathes of people.
In general, I think we would all appreciate it if job ads were a little more thoughtfully written. If an SC really, in their heart of hearts, wants a Greek poetry person, they should not ask for "generalists with research interests in any aspect of ancient literature or history" so that Roman historiographers (e.g.) don't waste their time. Some people have heavy teaching loads, family responsibilities, or are finishing dissertations and this process is a huge time suck.
@10:39
Your three comments are quite separate things.
The first one, that broadly advertised "inside hires" waste the time of large swathes of people, has already been dealt with and dealt with very well. You don't have to be happy about the situation, but if you can't answer the very clear and reasonable motivations for advertising the position, then your complaint can't be taken seriously.
The second point, that job ads should be honest, is not one anyone would debate. A case like you describe is bad acting on the part of the search committee. At the same time, we have to remember that search committees are not a single entity but a number of individuals who may not all agree on what kind of person they want to hire. And we have to remember that HR has a hand in things, sometimes down to rewriting ads. I can easily imagine a situation where the search committee could not express any preference for any subfield in the ad without being forced to throw out all applications that did not perfectly match that subfield, even if they were willing to consider other applicants.
The third point, that people are busy, is an appeal to pathos, not an argument. It gives motivation for why search committees should be as considerate as their circumstances allow, but it does not speak to any of the actual arguments raised above.
Don't even bother, 10:39, there is no point.
Yeah, 11:29. Sulking abstention is the best method for fruitful dialectic.
Teaching undergrads rhetoric is one thing, people, but please don't also point them at FV.
Teaching undergrads rhetoric is one thing, people, but please don't also point them at FV.
March 22, 2016 at 9:57 PM
I agree. It's super embarrassing after being demolished by an interlocutor to then imagine and project that same interlocutor as someone of a lower social, educational, and/or chronological caste. Terrible, absolutely terrible.
OK, sure, I'll take a crack.
The goal here is obviously not to engage in "fruitful dialectic," but rather to win, to "demolish" your opponents with your dazzling argumentation. Fine. But, as your dismissal of "mere pathos" underlines, you have badly misread the genre in which you are composing. This is not the place for forensic rhetoric, but for epideictic. This is all about feelings.
There are perfectly rational explanations for an inside hire being made after a national search. That doesn't change the fact that some hires are not made for these reasons. Collusion happens. Corruption happens. And the way the system is set up, those who give evidence against such corruption suffer far greater consequences than those who carry it out, finding themselves labeled as unprofessional or un-collegial. It is just one more rankling injustice in a field and profession with no shortage of rankling injustices.
So we come to places like this and we complain. We blow off steam. And grinding our teeth over injustice feels pretty good. Certainly it feels much better than the creeping helplessness that is the alternative.
When we see on the wiki that an insider has been hired, we have no way of knowing whether it was honest or corrupt. But the thought that it was corrupt is a comforting one. In my own experience, I lose a lot less sleep over the job I wasn't offered where I know the deck was stacked than the one where an ethical search committee with the best intentions decided someone else would do the job better.
These feelings are not beside the point. They are the point. So...why do you find it necessary to come here and attack them? Is the job market Big Brother now? Not content to have subjugated us in body, it must subjugate us in mind and heart as well? All complaints dismissed or "demolished" until we all acknowledge that search committees are just, and our lot is no more or less than we deserve?
Why are you here?
I'm here because I found the Wiki helpful when I was on the market. I liked thinking through the complexities of the market and the hiring process, and I liked hearing about aspects of that process I didn't know about. I still like that. Understanding a problem as accurately as possible is healthy.
You, on the other hand, just admitted that you prefer lying to yourself (and by extension, to others, since you're publicly asserting your admitted self-lies). That's not only unhelpful, it's unhealthy. If you want to contribute to poisoning yourself, have the decency to do so quietly.
I'm not going to go as far as the guy a few days ago who suggested that TT people who use FV must be mostly pervs, but this has been a weird year generationally here. My experience is that in real life, the older generation has, as of this year, completed the move from "oh well, there have been hard years before but it'll straighten out in a few cycles" to "I can't understand how we're not placing students X and Y!" to "this is a disaster for the field and I feel so bad for your generation." People have been really nice. We've seen this shift in rejection letters, too. But at the same time, we have at least one but it seems like a large handful of people who at least claim to be TT and come to FV just to beat people up.
People don't like things that look corrupt. Desperate people especially. People really don't like the idea that the old boys' network is still full in swing or that SCs are just hiring their buddies or their coworkers' buddies. When that is the actual end result of a large proportion of searches, it is pretty hard to argue that they were actually all perfectly just. Ok, searches are often pretty random anyway and a leg up from being someone's buddy, although it probably makes a lot more difference in scale, is not a totally different phenomenon than other types of legs up (see above: "but then shouldn't people be allowed to network at all???"). Do people still get to resent it? Yes.
If you're some warped TT person who gets off on slamming people who are here partly to point out real institutionalized problems and partly to blow off steam (THE POINT OF FV!!), please think about why you have such a need to do this, and take up a different hobby.
Do people still get to resent it? Yes.
No. Not once you've acknowledged that it's "not a totally different phenomenon..".
blow off steam (THE POINT OF FV!!)
Yup. I'm blowing off steam about you. You're intentionally making your life and others' worse. I think that's bad.
@11:27 pm "mere pathos"
If you're going to quote, quote correctly. You're not helping yourself.
I'll own the misquotation. That's my fault for not double checking.
I hope you will seriously consider what I and others have said as well. You are coming here and attacking crushed and desperate people for your own pleasure.
And I will not accept the accusation that I am lying to myself or others. I was defending the legitimacy of complaints about inside hires in general. I am not usually one of those who makes such accusations. And if you read what I wrote carefully (and not just to see if I have quoted you correctly) you will see that I said I feel better about the job I was rejected from where I KNOW the hire was corrupt than the one where I KNOW it was honest.
I am not lying to myself or anyone else.
I am happy for well-meaning senior people to come here and offer advice. I know that they can be naive, but I also know that years on a horrible job market can make one paranoid, and it is good to get the balance of an outside perspective.
But in this case, whoever you are, you say you're interested in "the complexities of the market and the hiring process" but then seem to admit very few such complexities. You seem to think that it is a perfect system, those who get jobs deserve them and those who don't, don't, and it doesn't sound like it matters to you whether this is a wonderful market or a melt-down like we are experiencing now. And you seem to just want to hit desperate, scared people -- who are nonetheless acting with much more restraint than you do! -- with that idea over and over. This is not a healthy place for you.
^ The market is what the market is. Only you can choose how you (re)act.
Personally, I'm not convinced that our troll is really a senior person. More likely s/he is an embittered drop-out from the field, who is motivated by conflicting senses both of self-loathing for not succeeding and of superiority for leaving and comes here to mock and insult those who are still trying to hack it. I just can't fathom what would motivate a tenured professor to continue trolling this board in hopes of making the lives of job-seekers more miserable. Not all seniors are nice people, but this kind of behavior is beneath them.
@9:21 am
Except you wrote:
When we see on the wiki that an insider has been hired, we have no way of knowing whether it was honest or corrupt. But the thought that it was corrupt is a comforting one.
That you felt the need to insist repeatedly within the same post and with capitals that you were not lying is proof enough that you are fully aware of the willful mischaracterizations you choose to post.
Personally, I used to be very sympathetic for candidates. I wanted to help them. The posts on FV this year have turned me Darwinist. You should think how about how your very public whinging influences the people who don't post here. Like it or not, you're the public face of your generation. (Say what you will about me being the face of "my" generation. You--the general "you"--have already expressed enough contempt and hatred for search committees and anyone else with a job that there's nothing I could do to make that worse.)
I saw very little contempt, groundless complaining, or general bad behavior this year, and quite a lot of people behaving very well, from all sides. I saw people taking the time to write compassionate rejections, and people grateful for compassionate rejections. I saw people being very clear that they think inside hires are unethical but have no animosity toward the individual hired. And even objections to inside hires tended to be whether or not they were conducted in a respectful and sensitive way, not the fact of the hire. I know people who won big and been kind to equally-good friends who didn't, and senior people who have put their heart and soul into helping their students get jobs, and not turning on them when it doesn't happen.
Except you. You've been ugly. You may be seeing what's in the mirror.
Cognitive dissonance ftw.
Everybody duck! With all of this "very public whinging," someone's going to get hit in the head soon.
.... That was my attempt to write "whoosh!".... I can't even use FV correctly! No one from the US says "whinge": is it just posturing, or are the English out to get us?
... whoosh! ...
No one from the US says "whinge": is it just posturing, or are the English out to get us?
Says the guy who knows everyone in the US. Or maybe it is the Redcoats out to school the Provincials.
Miriam Webster says:
Full Definition of whinge
whingedwhing·ing or whinge·ing
British
intransitive verb
The troll must be a loyalist in disguise.
Or he secretly wishes he were British, much like every American Classicist ever.
I vote insecure American.
I think the troll is from the planet Omicron Persei VIII.
Did you see that FV's discussion of Mr. Cruel Daddy made the news in Eidolon?
Cool! These are things we should discuss.
But if there are other newbies out there, note that FV and the classics wiki are two different things. The classics wiki is job updates, almost no discussion.
Yes, interesting article. I hadn't even considered how we would talk about Cruel Daddy in a class where his work was assigned, much less the advisability of trigger warnings about it...
That's an excellent article. It covers the problems really well without asserting easy answers. Thanks for pointing to it, 3:29.
I have another request. Can we as a group stop referring to HP as "Cruel Daddy"? It sounds flippant. This is a crime that transcends FV's usual flippancy. The name also lets him set the terms for discussion of him. It's just awful.
I think people are doing that because one of the rules here is not to use names -- I don't know if initials are anonymized enough, but maybe they are.
Isn't not using names something we do to protect people's careers? That doesn't seem to apply in this case.
There might also be legal reasons?
Either way, we all owe the author of that article a debt of gratitude for starting a conversation about the scholar in question. Thank you!
Absolutely! And she's given us all a great companion piece to assign to students to read with any of his research on sexuality
That is a very good point. I hadn't thought of using the article that way.
I thought the Eidolon article was tone-deaf, and a missed opportunity.
The victimization of children that is driven by the perpetrator’s acts is a real problem, one that unfortunately came right to the shores of our once blissful and isolated academic community. The colleagues and family of the perpetrator are no doubt in shock, and still trying to piece it all together. The academic community's response? To wring its hands over whether to use "teratogenic grid" in their classrooms and scholarship; moreover, to use the horrible crime that occurred as a vehicle for reviving the now comfortably well-worn discussion on why we continue to read and study the literature and culture of an imperialist, misogynistic, slave-holding society. And other tangentially-related issues, like the connection between sin and scholarship.
Now, to take on a child-porn scandal that rocked the insulated, circumscribed world of Classics world was probably too hard to resist for an on-line mag that fancies itself a sexy, cutting edge venue for Classics scholarship. The essay could have risen to the challenge, addressing the real problem head on, but rather indulged in a rather narrow kind of self-regarding discussion on whether and how to use the relevant work in our own professional lives. In short, the essay, which I regard as the Classics community’s response to what has happened, did nothing to dispel the stereotype of academics as rather more concerned with circumscribed debates, irrelevant to the rest of the world, than about what I believe really matters here: the problem of child pornography and the real pain that people directly affected by the event have to suffer. Here is what I feel a proper response would have been.
First, out of respect for those individuals directly affected by the perpetrator’s crimes, I would have liked to see the discussion kept out of public fora like Eidolon, or any other such, for at least a couple of months. Let me be clear. I’m not against the discussion we’ve had as such. But for everything, there is a time and a place. And I say that, ultimately, the decision whether to cite 'teratogenic grid' or anything else is a personal one. By all means, have the discussion with those you trust, make your decision, and then move on. And, by the way, the field of gender and ancient culture has been booming now for two decades. One can quite easily find work that raises the same issues and debates, and in doing so skirt altogether the question whether to use the now-imprisoned scholar's material at all.
Second, why couldn't we address this social harm — dissemination of child pornography — from our own unique vantage-point as Classicists? And something else needs to be addressed, too, and that is the perception of the Classics, which I feel has taken a dive as a result of this story. For the author of the Eidolon article made plain that the perpetrator was drawing on ancient attitudes to support his own personal predilections. “The Romans didn’t care whom you penetrated, so long as you weren’t the one being penetrated.” We can imagine the author’s self-justification for what he did, implicit in these lines: “See? There’s nothing *inherently* wrong with what I’m doing.” We, as Classicists, fail if we cannot defend our discipline against such blatant misuse and misapplication of the texts. At stake is nothing less and nothing more than the public’s perception of what Classics is, and what we study. Here is an opportunity to remind lay-people, when they probably very badly need to be reminded, of the *good* that comes from a study of the Classics.
11:17 PM
Your post is the epitome of the "2nd Reviewer" phenomenon. You're upset that the article isn't the one you would have written. You're upset that a venue oriented toward Classicists discussed an issue involving a Classicist from the perspective of how it intersects with other Classicists.
You're clearly deeply invested, so why don't YOU write that article that you wished had been written and send it to Eidolon yourself? You have decided what needs to be done, so why not go ahead and do it?
From what I have seen online, I think your opinion is a minority one. Obviously you have strong feelings about the situation. The Eidolon article did an excellent job of addressing the range of responses one might have to this awful news, including allowing for your own. The point was not to insist on an answer, but to clarify what is at stake for the field of Classics as a result of these alleged crimes. In that respect, it may be the most important essay written in the field all year. Judging from what others are saying, I'm not alone in thinking this.
^^ was in response to 11:17
I don't think the Eidolon article is so flawed, but I agree that one thing that has not been addressed here or elsewhere is the misuse of the classical tradition (implicitly) to justify unspeakable crimes, something that has been done before and will be done again. 11:17, I second 12:26: you've obviously got thoughts on this, so wait your month(s) and then write what you have to say as a real article!
11:17pm here. Re: the second reviewer criticism: point taken. And I appreciate the feedback and FV for the opportunity to air what I suspected was very much a minority view.
I don't really see why there's any real question about citing this pervert's scholarship. It was never worthy of the lavish praise it received in some circles.
11:17, it seems like you didn't read the eidolon piece very carefully. The author spends a fair amount of time drawing connections between this situation and classicists who were/are known anti-Semites or racists. That was one of the most valuable points in her article. Think about how deeply sexism still informs most scholarship produced today: most classicists don't.
Rather than write a manifesto, the author tried to start a conversation about the complications that personal failings might have on one's professional productions. You seem mad that this situation is more difficult to navigate than you would like. Unfortunately, smart people often are bad people. Does that mean that we have to disregard the smart things they do because of their moral turpitude? It seems like your answer is "yes" and that that is the only response to this situation that you deem appropriate. I envy the clarity you have concerning such ambiguities. For my part, I am so grateful for the eidolon piece because it does *not* insist on any one response as the only appropriate one.
Yes, it has always seemed to me almost wholly derivative; useful to assign, perhaps, because it brings together many ideas in an accessible way, but it doesn't contain many ideas that aren't available elsewhere. I'm mainly familiar only with his more general theoretical articles, though, so perhaps some of the stuff that engages in more close reading isn't so derivative. In any case, though I've assigned his work before, for my purposes it will be trivially easy to avoid doing so in the future, and I can't see that anything will be lost.
11:17 again, 12:26 am here.
For what it's worth, I think your final paragraph is really important. You're clearly passionate about this, and I was serious that you should follow it up with an article of your own. We would all benefit from it. If you're worried about the point in your penultimate paragraph, that discussion should be kept out of the public for a time, I'd counter by asking, isn't silence, even respectful silence, too easily interpreted as a kind of complicity? (Think of every act of terrorism after which one hears "why aren't members of x group standing up to denounce the act done in x's name?) This isn't the same on so many levels because what this man did was not in the name of Classics, but that hasn't stopped some from linking the two.
I guess what I'm getting at is that your response is a valuable and important one, and it's one that a broader readership than FV needs to hear. I personally think that you can strengthen your response and do even more good if you drop or moderate the criticism of other people's responses. But, really, expand that last paragraph. Send it in to the Chronicle or to Eidolon, or to Slate. (Well, maybe not Slate, but you get the idea.)
I agree that 11:17 should write his response, but s/he should of course be aware that a public forum is going to invite ugly questions. People are going to ask how it is that so many Classicists seem to have interests that overlap so uncomfortably with that of a pedophile, whose predilections clearly influenced his scholarship. Why was this guy rewarded so greatly for working on stuff later revealed to be expressions of the vilest type of sickness? Because Classicists are really interested or because we all thought kinky sex would sell, and make us cool again? And which answer is worse? Liberals will say that this case shows white male upper-class privilege (how many times have you seen "Yale" in those news articles?) gone wild in a white male upper-class discipline, while conservatives will say we have surrendered a time-honored discipline to pervs who get handed a glorious living for writing pervy stuff. Anyone writing publicly will get hit by these questions and probably worse. I'm not trying to say it shouldn't be done, and indeed these are probably questions we should be at least considering, but it may be better to do it at least anonymously.
@2:25 very, very true and further proof of how brave the eidolon author is for shedding her anonymity
2:25 raises some issues that may or may not have to be addressed. I think the complaints about "pervs" (vel sim.) are dramatically overstated and the complainants in the minority. We are not Victorians nor should we be neo-Victorians. Just because a particular area may attract people with specific disgusting vices does not mean that the area itself is vile or that the vast majority of people who work in it are vile. For examples, it's easy to see that most priests are not pedophiles and that most doctors/surgeons do not take pleasure in causing physical pain. Only the embittered or the extremists make that claim, so let's not go that route.
I'll leave this here, for anyone who is interested.
Kenneth J. Reckford, "Shameless Interests: The Decent Scholarship of Indecency," American Journal of Philology 117.2 (Summer 1996).
In this case, I don't think you need to be a "conservative" to wonder why exactly this pervert was given so much praise (the awards from the WCC are especially embarrassing). Was it simply because he published on SEX? I suspect so.
@2:55 PM
That sounds too much like projection. Seriously, anyone who wants to generalize from an individual to a field needs to take a long, hard look at themselves. That's a clear-cut case of "Not Helping".
2:25 here, I am not saying that all these are valid critiques. And I'm obviously not casting myself as simultaneously agreeing with anti-academics on both the liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum. Personally, I do think that some of these critiques have some validity, but that's beside the point: anyone who is contemplating or being encouraged to tackle this issue publicly, as the Eidolon piece very bravely did, and kudos to them, is risking a public backlash that could be highly unpleasant from a lot of quarters. And those are just a few critiques I can come up with in two minutes, god forbid someone unleash one of the crazier political movements upon themselves, as they will be much more creative than I am.
I hereby dub thee, Sir Cowardly Ostrich!
Cowardly I accept, but could I get a better animal? I would say that the ostrich would be the animal who refuses to think about the implications getting involved in such a scandal or how the general public might see it?
If ancient memory holds, Aristotle says that there are a variety of types of bravery, and that of an insane man or a child does not count because they do not understand the risk they are taking. Cowardly I may be, but I don't want someone boldly riding off to do battle for the honor of Classics against the forces of the wider internet, which are much scarier and less sympathetic than anything here.
^ Ostrich it is.
You've invented straw/bogeymen to argue that engaging publicly in a rational way with a real scandal that is already public would somehow forever stain both the individual doing the engaging and the discipline, even if that engagement is to condemn criminal acts.
"engaging publicly in a rational way with a real scandal that is already public would somehow forever stain both the individual doing the engaging and the discipline, even if that engagement is to condemn criminal acts."
I believe that's a direct quote from University Management for Dummies.
@12:31 AM
Shouldn't you be trolling someone somewhere about "snowflakes"?
So is there any real evidence out there that there is some sort of ongoing threat to the discipline's reputation among the general public because of this arrest? A quick Google search doesn't turn up articles from the past week. And one thing about this country is that today's crime quickly fades as the next one(s) make the news. So is this REALLY a p.r. problem for classics, as multiple posters claim or imply, or an imagined one? (I shouldn't have to add, but know this group well enough to know that there is need to or else there will be criticism, that OF COURSE the p.r. issue isn't the most important one, which is the crime itself. But others are expressing concern over the p.r. angle, and I'm skeptical. Personally, I'd think the 'Eidolon' piece -- which was okay, but 25% too long -- should be the last public statement online, not the first of many.)
Also, a bit of a reality check seems in order: he might be a classicist, but a good number of us do not work in the area of ancient sexuality or some/any of the others in which he made his mark. (At this point in my career, between book and articles I've footnoted several hundred works, and don't cite him once, and wasn't likely to be doing so anytime soon.) A few people without perspective seem to think that this is a problem for our whole discipline of classical studies, but in my own case, and undoubtedly that of many others here, his areas of scholarly interest are quite alien from our own research, so much so that he might as well have a PhD in Semitic Languages and Literature or Medieval Studies.
@1:26: From what we've seen, especially in December/January, the Abominable Trollmonster is a disturbed and malicious person. 12:31 does not deviate from accepted standards here, and I am certain is not the same individual.
Seconding that the CD phenomenon is irrelevant to most of us, and public wailing will not be helpful.
@ 11:17
"moreover, to use the horrible crime that occurred as a vehicle for reviving the now comfortably well-worn discussion on why we continue to read and study the literature and culture of an imperialist, misogynistic, slave-holding society."
This is one of your criticisms of the Eidolon piece. You are really showing both your (undoubtedly white, male, hetero-) privilege and your disconnection from the issues that animate college campuses these days. The discussion would only appear well-worn to a dinosaur with no skin in the ever-raging battle over social power. I don't think "tone-deaf" means what you think it means...
The same people who cry "privilege" so easily are the ones who enabled the pervert in question to be viewed as a trendy, upstanding, honored member of the Classics community, solely because he worked on questions of who was sadistic to whom in Rome and who penetrated whom.
@9:10
8:33 here: I don't think you understand what privilege is and the specialized way that word is used in social justice circles. But you probably have a lot of it, so that, unfortunately, is not surprising.
"Social justice circles?" You mean the circles where the subject is always who is most oppressed today?
Guys, this is just going to piss both of you off and will not go anywhere good.
@9:15AM
Your interlocutor knows exactly what he is doing. He is willfully playing dumb as if that amounted to some sort of intellectual or moral protest. That's easier than looking in a mirror. It's the same thing the posters are doing who want to use the HP scandal as an excuse to discredit scholarship and scholars of sexuality. Maybe they're even the same posters.
What should discredit a pretty decent number of scholars of ancient sexuality is 1) that the Warren Cup now turns out to be a fake, and 2) they probably still don't even know that. That is a far greater embarrassment than failing to have omniscience regarding the secret lives of their colleagues.
Only those whose work is specifically based on and requires the authenticity of the Warren Cup.
Coming late to this discussion, but are people really arguing that we should stop citing this person's scholarly work because of his (horrific) private life? I'm pretty sure that the tenants of ethical and responsible scholarship require that we cite any work we are aware of that has contributed to our own, no matter how appalling its author.
11:17 here. Waiting in line at the DMV so I figure this is a good time to post. The situation demanded that we go bigger and we went small. No objections to the issues the Eidolon piece raised, but their timing.
11:17, again, posting from the DMV. I think I know now what the throng of shades must feel as they wait on the banks of the Styx. Have a good day out there.
One of the shittier things about being a Classicist is having to go to the DMV every year instead of once a decade (because of constantly switching states). Also, dual state income tax, every year forever! #VAPlife
This too shall pass, 11:17.
A few weeks ago, before we all got distracted, someone mentioned transitioning into healthcare. Is that someone still lurking, and if so, want to give details/some form of contact info? As I sit looking at shitty March weather, piles of grading, and no interviews, escape from academe is sounding pretty good.
I think that is spam of some sort. I swear I've seen exactly that post somewhere before, and I can't imagine Servius deleting legit career advice.
If my speculations on the reasons for the Florida ad were the basis of the current jeer on the Wiki, I regret posting them at all. Given the level of contribution on here these days, I probably ought not to be surprised. I'm going to delete the jeer once, but I'm not entering an editing war with a crazy person. If they or anyone else undeletes it, go ahead. But you're an idiot, and an offensive one. (Btw, the whole cheers and jeers thing on the Wiki - a terrible idea that just entails scrolling through more rubbish. Leave that for FV.)
Know anyone who opted for med school after failing to make inroads in Classics?
I know a guy. I imagine he's still in med school.
6:39, yes, I do. He finished a PhD in a well-respected program and then switched immediately to medicine, where he completed a standard MD degree and where he still practices. I don't know what led him to the switch, which happened some years ago.
For most of us, med school would mean a post-bac first to get up to speed on science, wouldn't it? Then many years in med school, residency etc..... we'd still be over 40 and deeply in debt by the time we found a job.
In other news: yet another job gone to an Ohio State grad. Is this the beginning of the end of Princeford? I hope so!
Go Ohio State!!! Does anyone have an idea what they are doing so right? I'm counting one or two placements apiece for the typical ivy job market winners, and FOUR placements for Ohio.
It's called a statistical anomaly. The program still sucks.
They have put more people in jobs this year alone than my supposedly higher ranked program has in the last six years, at least. My entire graduate school cohort, starting from about two years above me and continuing down to the new PhDs, has either quit or roams the country from VAP to VAP.
The biggest part of getting a job is who you know and who who-you-know knows. Faculty at OSU are obviously good at advocating for their students. Many at the Ivies think that opportunity will be handed to them. People at other institutions understand that you have to go out and make opportunities.
9:31, +1
Re: 10:16AM
None of the interviews I landed this year came as a result of my faculty members knowing someone in the hiring department. Going into this process I was worried about how much 'who you know' would matter; as it turns out, it didn't matter at all. I'm sure some people do still land jobs in part because their adviser has an in, but I'm saying this as a ray of hope for those who don't have the most well-connected committee members: it is possible to get a job based on the strength of your application alone.
+2 for 9:31 (assuming we don't secretly know each other)
Good year to be a Buckeye -- Ohio State is killing it with classics job placements.
3 of the 4 OSU folks did their penance as VAPs before getting these jobs (and one is of course an inside hire). I don't see that as a particularly great recommendation for the school "putting people in jobs."
Wait! Wait! Let me guess: you are a grad student without job market experience, were on the market in such a different era that you have no idea what you're talking about, or are bitter that the underdogs are knocking your program's socks off?
As opposed to all those people who go straight into TT jobs without doing VAPs first
*falls out of chair laughing*
11:34, Those might not be good examples for schools putting people in jobs, but those are great examples for people putting people in jobs. Doing VAPs stinks in terms of feeling unstable, moving, etc. But they are great for getting to know people outside of your graduate institution.
11:02, Congratulations on getting interviews! That is uplifting news. And I assume, since you are offering a ray of hope, that you landed a job from one of them. I had the same experience, but I count myself as one of a very, very lucky few. I stand by my point that person-to-person communication often helps. Faculty at small schools often prefer a candidate whom they think will stay at the institution for some time, not someone looking for a resume-builder position. In the cohort above mine, two T-T jobs were landed because a faculty member picked up a phone after the interview. No one else in that cohort landed a T-T position. I myself helped to secure a T-T position for someone else because I picked up a phone after the interview.
I'm not saying it can't happen that you get a job without you or your faculty members knowing someone on the search committee personally. But if there are any people lurking on this site who are considering going to graduate school, I strongly urge them to consider a program whose faculty are willing and able to go to bat for them.
Seems like there are a bunch of current VAPs (or former VAPs) getting 'promoted' to TT at the same institution these days (Bard, NYU, Nebraska, BC, anybody know anything about Hamilton or Trinity?). This, is from my understanding, closer to how the sciences have typically handled successful post-docs.
Is anyone else disheartened by the seemingly large (at least 3-4) TT jobs that have gone to people who have yet to receive their PhDs and have little to no publications (thank you Academia.edu)?
It may seem as if I am just a sore loser (check!) but I also find it a bit bleak as I am someone who got their PhD in 2013, has been a VAP since, multiple articles, a book coming out, great reviews, but from a non-prestigious university.
There is not really any justice in academic hiring, so if that is what you seek. consider changing careers as soon as you can.
What 3:07 said applies to at least three people I know who didn't get TT jobs this year. It does seem unfair that not everyone has to "put in the time" at VAPs and can just sail straight into TT with no publications and way less teaching experience (let's face it: teaching at multiple institutions over several years gives you way more teaching muscle). I'm not begrudging these lucky few, but I do wish that the institutions who hired them knew how multi-year-VAPs feel about this, especially given the state of the discipline and the job market. SCs aren't charities, but I'd rest better knowing they at least felt a little bad about it, even while acting in what they think is their best interest.
It applies to me, too. I don't understand what SCs are looking for. If not teaching and highly placed pubs and departmental service, then what?
3:07 pm: There is an old and worn out thought that has floated around since at least 2008: search committees prefer the newly minted to the (perceived) haggard ones who have been slogging away in the adjunct and VAP mines, who might be tired, cynical, angry, or in some other way not a fresh-faced colleague who can inspire hope in their undergraduates and prop up an ailing department.
I don't know that this thought has any validity to it. I repeat it only to tell you that the idea has been floating around for many years.
@4:43PM
Yours is a different spin from how I've always thought about it.
If the average tenured classicist is a 5 (out of 10), then I think most inexperienced search committees (which would be almost all of them) would prefer a newly minted PhD whom they can imagine will turn out to be a 10 than a seasoned VAP who has proven to be an 8. It doesn't matter that the 8 is several degrees better than they are. What matters is what they imagine the other guy will be.
Or, put another way, promise trumps proven. Anecdotally, I've seen it happen more than once, so it's a motive I impute to committees who should -- but don't -- know better.
6:33 is very much correct here (speaking as someone tenured but not involved in a search this year, but with some experience in the process). There are many SCs (and not just inexperienced ones) that look at "potential" much more than any kind of track record. They think they have discovered a promising talent who will be the next big thing and then can pat themselves on the back for discovering this person and giving them their chance, bringing further glory to their department as well.
Interestingly, it's a bit more common up the scale than down the scale of institutional prestige. Probably because those at lower-ranked institutions know they need someone who can hit the ground running and manage their teaching and researching without any hand-holding. Higher up, if the Wonder Child flames out…"Well, we'll hire a new Bright Young Thing in four to six years" (depends if the boot comes at mid-TT review or at tenure decision time) and everyone will quickly forget the one who couldn't walk on water (Note: doesn't mean the former halo wearer is driven out of the field in every case. Some do manage to get some pubs out and land on their feet elsewhere, usually a tier or two below).
But I have full sympathy for those out there on VAPs who see ABDs move straight into TT jobs and get a bit irked. As we all know and keep repeating, there's nothing "fair" about this process.
So anyone know what happened with Williams? Did it really take less than 24 hours to decide the rest of us weren't good enough, or was there an inside // otherwise well-connected candidate from the beginning?
Not to dispute 7:04, but to supply an addendum: Many more institutions "up the scale" will run an open-rank TT search than those "down the scale" especially if "down the scale" includes institutions without graduate programs.
In recent years (one example I know of this year notwithstanding), open-rank searches have gone to Associate-level hires, not Assistant-level hires.
I wonder if this indicates a shift in thinking. Perhaps even "up the scale" institutions are not so willing to bank on the Hope-The-Bright-Young-Thing-Is-A-10 hire when they can get the Already-Got-Tenure-Won't-Cost-Us-A-TT-Line-If/When-They-Don't-Get-Tenure hire.
I am being a sore loser too, but it is just so depressing to spend years working very hard and sacrificing so much to do the things that everyone always told you to do, and then even if you are successful at publishing and teaching, the jobs still go to people who have done none of the alleged keys to success. I know I know, suck it up and nobody ever said life is fair.
About Williams, I am not sure it's an "inside hire" exactly, but the SC does seem to have had a pre-determined favorite, possibly someone who had an "in" of some kind. We've seen this before--if that person doesn't completely bomb the interview, it doesn't really matter how everyone else does. There clearly wasn't time for serious discussion of candidates, bringing it to the department, dean, etc.
So I feel your pain, @10:02pm. There is nothing quite like spending days prepping for an interview only to find that it was all in vain and the SC wasn't seriously considering you from the beginning.
another classics professor busted for child porn:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160401_Villanova_prof_arrested_on_child-porn_charges.html
This guy was investigated four years ago!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/31/villanova-professor-charged-with-child-porn/
Villanova's website moved pretty fast with their damnatio memoriae.
This latest arrest, unlike the UC arrest, is being covered by national media outlets. Seems like a statement from relevant professional associations is warranted now.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/villanova-university-professor-charged-with-child-porn/?linkId=22934410
Agreed. The SCS and AIA should make statements and link to the Eidolon article on their websites.
I disagree with 7:26PM and 7:36PM.
This case is different from the other one in a crucial way: it can't be linked to his area of study. (Unless someone wants to claim that the Byzantines are somehow naturally associated with perversion....)
If the SCS and AIA link the two cases, then the common link will be Classics. To the extent that it reaches the general public, all classicists will be tainted, not, as some above gleefully anticipated, just the ones who study sexuality.
Right. Because whenever people in other professions are busted for child porn, the first thing their professional societies do is issue a statement. You sound like administrators.
"Faculty at OSU are obviously good at advocating for their students."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Agreeing with 7:50 and 7:57.
9:22, care to elaborate?
Presumably faculty at OSU give zero fucks about their grads, just like everywhere else.
Unless the OSU phenomenon happens again next year, I'm gonna chalk it up to "statistical anomaly."
3 OSU TT placements last year, according to the names revealed on the wiki.
Clearly, OSU is doing something right. As for SCs hiring freshly minted PhDs over people who have held several temporary positions, I think the message there is clear: the fact that you have held multiple temporary positions means you have failed, on multiple occasions, to secure a TT job: what else can a SC assume from that record than that there is something about your profile that suggests you're not a perfect candidate? Were all the SCs for prior TT jobs wrong in not choosing you...? In this field, once you hold more than one temporary position, you're more than likely screwed...
11:28
Meh. That's the old reasoning. I think it's going away among most (but not all!) places. See the previous comments.
On OSU: do the past 7 "wins" have anything in common? Same or similar areas? Advisers? Or do they show a broad competency at OSU? Is OSU the new ivy?
For the Williams questions--I just saw the jeers on the wiki. If there's nothing more to the story than that Williams sent out rejections immediately after the ad closed, then that isn't indicative of anything.
SCs can often look at applications before the ad closes. In fact, you should assume that they begin looking as soon as the job ad appears. They may not be allowed to send rejections, however, until after the ad closes. That's because all applications received within the window need to have the appearance of equal consideration. As soon as the window closes, however, they're free to send the rejections to the apps that went into the automatic "no" pile.
That doesn't mean that they have decided on a "yes" yet. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. But for whatever reason, they'd already decided against your applications. It's not a personal judgment. It could even come down to as little as thinking they might want to offer x class in the Spring and only considering candidates who have taught that class before. There's just no way to know.
Of course, if you have more information, then I'd revise my comments.
@11:56, I am not personally involved but based on what's been said I believe the issue is that they sent out rejections immediately after _interviews_ (less than 24 hours after interviews, based on the jeer). The ad closed months ago.
I personally wouldn't necessarily read anything into that fact either, that just seems to be what some people are offended by.
Re 11:28.
Those who are not shiny ABDs may in fact take some hope from this year's job market. Many of the winners in this year market have held one or more VAP (including several of the OSU crop). Some TT hires this year have in fact held 4 or more VAPs, which of course implies a lengthy losing streak. While ABDs are still getting jobs, it seems the "damaged goods" bias for multiple VAPs may be fading.
12:17
Ah, I see. Thanks--I didn't read the jeers carefully enough.
I still agree with you and with myself.
For anyone keeping track at home:
Before the interview, the SC probably has a ranked list, either formally as a group or each member informally. After each interview that list will get rejiggered accordingly. Once the interviews are over, all that's left is to discuss the candidates as a committee and hammer things out. In an ideal world that would happen immediately after the last interview since, presumably, the whole committee is around. And then, in an even more ideal world, the search committee chair would notify candidates as soon as possible. Certainly the automatic "no" pile.
The lag that almost every job experiences between interview and rejection isn't because the SC is burning gray ballots trying to come to a decision. It's bureaucratic -- can't get everyone together, can't get the dean to sign off, can't get HR to approve the next step. Or it's emotional -- can't bear to write/send a rejection email.
It sounds like Williams was being a good actor in this respect. Even if there IS an inside or pre-determined hire, they STILL could have lingered over the rejections. If the outcome is the same either way, better to know sooner.
I counted 2 OSU T-T placements in 2013-2014, the same as certain ivies that year. In 2014-2015, when OSU had 3, some of those same ivies still had no T-T placements....
hmmmmmmm
I want to turn back time and enroll at OSU......
A few possibilities on OSU:
1) Its a department is really on the make, and perhaps should be seen as a top 5 or at least top 10 PhD program.
2) Statistical anomaly, as in this terrible job market the sample size is still so small that Ohio getting two and say, Cornell getting none isn't statistically significant.
3) Some SCs at mid-tier schools may in fact be leery of hiring an Ivy/Stanford person. Because these folks believe they are the best and belong at the best R1s, or better yet at Ivy/Stanford institution. They see their TT job at Mid-level U not as a career, but as a stepping stone to the next level. But for Mid-level U department, having faculty poached can be a disaster. They might not be able to fill a slot for two more years at best; worse the Provost might take the Tenure Line away altogether. So they might in fact prefer a solid candidate from a solid program over Ivy League/Stanford hot-shot. And most jobs are at mid-level places, not the dream jobs of HYP/S products.
@ 12:48 (re Williams): I was one of those interviewed. Based on the rejection email from the chair, it seems someone was indeed offered the position immediately and has already accepted. I have to agree with others that it seems a bit fishy. No campus visits, for example, and no time to present their choice to a dean and get approval, perhaps indicating that they had already chosen their candidate and gotten approval BEFORE interviews.
But in any case, I do appreciate the quick notification. I guess all this chatter just goes to show that we will always find something to sulk about, whether the notification is TOO soon or not soon enough. I think what is most galling is the idea that, after all the time spent prepping for the interview, thinking up a cool-sounding course, picking out your best tie, etc., you do not rate even 24 hours worth of consideration.
To piggyback on 1:26,
4) The market has been bad for just over a full tenure cycle now. The mid-tier schools and LACs have had a chance to hire an Ivy/Stanford/etc. person, had that person jump ship, be poached, or just prove to be a terrible, terrible fit. There really is a difference between someone (a) who still believes they're supposed to be the next Wilamowitz and is stuck because of a bad market, (b) who still wishes they were in a research track but has accepted the inevitability of the LAC job, and (c) someone who went to a LAC as an undergrad, loves teaching, and believes in the mission.
Lower tier places had their shots at a lot more of people in the (a) and (b) categories than they used to. Now it's been long enough to see the consequences and learn from them. The "lower" tiers are not included subsets of the "upper tiers" but at lower/easier qualities. They're actually different animals.
@ 01:43
At least you were notified... I interviewed with Vassar, but they never contacted me afterwards, not even after the position was filled. I know this is how some schools say "no", but it is an incredibly disrespectful and rude way to deal with people... I agree with you that the whole Williams thing seems fishy...
Some TT hires this year have in fact held 4 or more VAPs, which of course implies a lengthy losing streak.
Really? You read this as a "losing streak"?
Two colleagues of mine are still waiting on post-interview rejections. One interview happened 10+ years ago. The other, 5-ish years ago. Faculty at the latter, at least, have the decency to look sheepish when they run into my colleague at the annual meeting.
Bottom line: 1:43 is correct. There is always "something to sulk about, whether the notification is TOO soon or not soon enough."
Well, it never rains but it pours:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/01/us/villanova-professor-child-pornography/index.html
(And this individual seems not to have worked on ancient sexuality at all. Go figure.)
Welcome to March 31, 2016 at 3:28 PM.
Oh, sorry about the superfluous post. I did scroll back to see if someone had already posted on this, but not far enough: I didn't realize that CNN's freshly posted story was actually a day old already.
Well this case is getting more coverage (also said by Anon. March 31, 7:26 PM), presumably because desk editors are more aware of stories coming out of Villanova. That could be because of rankings, geography, alumni, etc. It has little to do with the individual. If something like this were to come out of Yalevard, news outlets would be all over it.
What about Stanceton or Berkecago?
What other portmanteaus can we create?
Michiford?
UVCLa?
What about among the SLACs?
Colbate?
Dartmith?
A few thoughts on OSU:
I served on a search committee last year for a VAP, and there were maybe 60 applications total, of which I think at least 8, maybe more, were from OSU PhDs. Whatever the number was, it was a lot. I actually remember one of the other SC members saying, what is the deal with so many OSU apps? Obviously, if the applicants aren't good, the number of them doesn't explain how they are getting jobs, but if they are on par with applicants from other places, sheer numbers overall may also be a small part of the explanation for the relatively high number of successful OSU job seekers.
I will say also, though, that a number of the OSU applicants looked quite good and especially were doing work that stood out as a little different and therefore, to me, more interesting. One of the things that has been interesting for me serving now on a SC twice is to realize that there can be clusters of applicants who all seem to be doing extremely similar work, and so, perhaps unfairly, those candidates just don't stand out as much.
Has anyone heard about the Latin post-doc at Florida State?
Nothing. Last year, however, they made an offer for the Late Antiquity post-doc the Friday of the week they conducted Skype interviews.
Given the news from Villanova last week, I hope everyone's rooting for UNC tonight. Go Heels!!
Very disappointing for UNC fans, but still what a great game last night! As someone not invested in either team, I just really enjoyed the spectacle.
Does anyone know who got the Hamilton job (and would care to update the Wiki to that effect)?
The person who got the Hamilton job is the person everyone expected to get the Hamilton job.
Who did everyone expect to get the Hamilton job?
In other news, the Placement Service site now works in Chrome. My life was just made a little easier.
@1:01
The internal candidate.
There were two "internal candidates", so that's not very informative.
Not 1:01 here, but those of you who know should just update the wiki and we can all feel in the know. :)
By my count FV is 3/3 for pre-determined searches this year?? And given the number of jobs advertised, that is a huge proportion.
Three fucking, soulless institutions
Amen.
make that at least 5: Hamilton, Nebraska, Bard, NYU, and Williams all seem to have been pre-determined hires... we all know that departments need to pretend to conduct an open/honest search, but at least give a hint that it's a gross waste of time to apply...
Don't forget Boston College. Trinity also looked a little fishy, so it could be 7/7.
On the one hand I can understand a search committee's reaction to receiving 150+ applications would be to retreat to the person they already know and like, but on the other hand, the fact that I have to imagine that scenario shows how fucked the field is.
^^ I think it is not just a case of being overwhelmed and "going with the person they already know/like." After all, these committees all managed to find ~10 people to interview, and I doubt they just picked those names out of a hat.
The inside hire thread is a long one. I have seen many posts to the extent that "the problem is not promoting the VAP, its wasting everyone's time with a national search. Having wasted my time (not to mention my recommenders) on a number of bogus searches season and last, I concur. I also understand that the gremlins in HR often require a national search even if the VAP is an accomplished and well-vetted candidate for conversion.
I wonder sometimes if SCs also feel guilty. VAPs do not have it easy (as well we know); they have worked hard for the department, usually for poor pay and few benefits. Many TT faculty who aren't total assholes must realize that the department VAP is in fact improving their professional life, making it possible to teach less and research more. So I can see some non-asshole SCs thinking that promoting a VAP who has slaved away for a department for several years and exhibited grace under pressure is in fact the moral thing to so, rather than being some king of corrupt and insidious plot.
That said, I would hope that Universities would institute reasonable procedures for promoting internally. I don't have a problem rewarding a trusty and loyal VAP/lecturer adjunct with a proven track record. But when there were only 55 TT jobs this cycle, losing 5 or 7 of them to inside hires does feel infuriating for those of us not on the inside. Better there be only 50 jobs and no one gets their hopes up.
Exactly....
Moral absolutes certainly make the self-determined "victims" feel better. That's all I'll say here since those who should learn better willfully won't.
The Loyola Marymount job also appears to have been an inside hire. I've also noticed that many of the TT jobs went to those who had gotten their PhDs in the region. Perhaps another indication of SC members knowing the candidate previously?
Maybe these people you revile here on this blog are simply the better classicist and are better suited to these jobs? Once you've been around academia for awhile you learn that success is a combination of skill and luck. It is not a system easily gamed and is inherently unpredictable.
Some of the people who post here are the biggest whiners.
5:39 & 9:04
It's amazing how search committees invest months of effort and thousands of their institutions' dollars to systematically eliminate the "better classicists" in favor of ones they just happen to have met before....
Or, you know, their estimation of "better" isn't the same as yours. Could it be that...no! Better not to go down that road. You must be right. They must be choosing worse candidates as part of an over-arching conspiracy by the Illuminati to deny you personally your rightful job.
Snowman?
I don't work there, nor have I ever, but even though Boston College hired their internal candidate, I have trouble believing that conducted their search in anything but an honest and rigorous fashion. I was a finalist for a job there a couple years ago (which I didn't get, obvs), and the clarity of communication and and general humanity of the department was incredibly impressive. Even though they hired their internal, I'm sure that hire was not a foregone conclusion.
I should like to remind everyone here that this blog is a place for people to let off steam and complain, and therefore, when disgruntled or otherwise unhappy candidates do so, to please refrain from judgement. If you cannot handle people's complaints, please move to another forum/blog. There are plenty of *very* good reasons to complain about the state of the market, about the procedures followed by certain places, by predetermined/inside hires and excessively broad job descriptions, by disrespectful methods of communication on the part of SCs, and so forth. A complaint about these things, which every classicist (whether successful on the market or not) will recognize, does not make someone a loser, whiner, or otherwise bad person. This is the place to complain, to let off steam, and to empathize. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine, but please go somewhere else. Thanks.
^^ Amen.
About Boston College, I think one reason they hired their internal candidate may be that their process was delayed and they did campus visits rather late. I know of two people for sure who had already accepted other offers by the time BC finished campus visits. Not that their internal candidate wasn't worthy, but they may have had limited options.
By the way, I am sick and tired of certain commenters mischaracterizing others' feelings about inside hires. It seems that most people writing on this blog have a perfectly reasonable attitude towards inside hires, i.e. that it is actually quite a good thing for departments to promote a person who has worked hard for them over a period of years, but that it is frustrating that large numbers of others' time and resources have been wasted in the process. It gets worse and worse the further you get: I personally had two interviews this year for searches that wound up selecting the internal candidate this year, and I have a close friend who had two CAMPUS VISITS at schools that hired their internal candidates. Once you have sunk not only the time of applying but also preparing for an interview and campus visit, travel to SCS and campus visit, getting someone to cover classes, possibly buying a new suit, and on and on, not to mention the EMOTIONAL cost of hoping and thinking you have a good shot, only to discover that you were fighting an uphill battle from the beginning--at that point it is perfectly understandable to be frustrated and even angry. This does not mean that the internal candidate was unworthy and I haven't seen anyone "reviling" those candidates. In fact, they are surely all good scholars and collegial department members. I for one am very happy for the internal candidates that got the jobs I interviewed for and I hope that, if I am even in a similar position, I will be so lucky. But I think we can all agree with 8:32pm that universities need to institute a better process for converting VAPS. It is not just a waste of all the candidate's resources, but a waste of university time and money when SC's go through the long process of a search, paying to bring candidates to campus, etc. only to wind up hiring the person they always knew they wanted to hire anyway.
Sounds like it's time to institute trigger warnings for the oversensitive! You'll find a safe space one day!
What about when that steam is stupid?
If that is what you think, then you are invited to f- off and find some forum that wants your presence, since you didn't get the gentle hint from 1:00.
If that is what you think, then you are invited to f- off and find some forum that wants your presence, since you didn't get the gentle hint from 1:00.
What is, something an entitled twit would say who doesn't get that s/he isn't the arbiter of who gets to post on this forum, Alex?
Stupid steams as stupid does.
1000 !
1,001!!
Servii, could we next year get rid of this from the main page: "Let us hope that this year's market continues the slight improvement we saw last year." This hasn't been the case in forever, but it keeps getting put up there year after year, and it is really depressing to read it. To me at least.
Yes, the Classics job market has stopped falling only in the way that a crashed airplane has stopped falling. There is little to do but survey the wreckage and collect the bodies.
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