@8:02, 11:46 -- word is that they were fighting for the same candidate, but then the candidate's partner got counter offers from two other institutions with the added bonus of a spousal hire for the Chicago/Columbia candidate. My guess is that Chicago and Columbia couldn't beat these other offers or couldn't offer the spousal hire. Some places have strict rules about spousal hires. Just goes to show how complicated the market can be behind the scenes. In the end, it's good news for the job seekers: one more job opened up (unless the Chicago and Columbia hires fail).
Am I missing something though; aren’t the Chicago and Columbia jobs two different positions, one for a Historian the other for a philologist ?
Yea, I know that historians have to know the language and that those who know the language may also have a grasp of history, but how often would we see an academic offered a T-T job as a historian of Napoleonic France by one school and a T-T job as a French instructor at another ? ...this is the proper with Classics: we’re still imagining ourselves as classicists as being too many things at once; we’re really the only branch of academia still functioning on an 18th century model. Should we really be surprised that our field is dying or that admin views us all as remnants of a distant age that refuse to be relevant in any way possible or even adjust our own self-identify or organization ?
@10:58 - thanks for that info (11:46 here). I'd heard that a spousal hire was somehow in the equation but hadn't known that counter-offers had been made.
This is part of a wider problem that involves other disciplines / departments. At some institutions, the history department is openly uninterested in (or even openly hostile to) ancient history, and so the burden of ancient history teaching falls on the classics department. History is so huge and broad that it's easy for departments to go to war with themselves (this often happens in English, too). I acknowledge that this is not the case at Columbia or Chicago. But this is not a "problem with Classics" the fact that many of us could throw together a history, art and archaeology (not methods) , or mythology class, in addition to teaching one or two languages, is a huge advantage that ultimately serves the students at a time when all ancient studies are being squeezed.
Does this mean that Chicago and Columbia are moving to make offers to their #2 choices? Here is an instance where FV can be a helpful thing! In the absence of information from the SC, a campus finalist wonders whether to hold on to hope? Sad that updates and news come from FV rather than the committee.
I am also surprised that Columbia has decided to pursue a historian, but only because I thought their historian hire would take shape as a separate, later search.
@1:06 -- @1:13 is correct. WVH's appointment was in History, not Classics, and the History Dept. will apparently soon be doing a search for a Roman historian, perhaps as early as next year.
I have it from a good source that NYU successfully hired one of the UCLA finalists, but I haven't posted the name to the wiki because it's not clear to me which NYU job the hire was for.
So I have some practical questions regarding potentially uncomfortable situations involving one's personal life. I'm an ABD grad student at a top program. I am also gay and while I am not closeted per se, I'm not somebody who thinks that what anybody does in their personal life is really relevant to their professional life. So, I've never discussed it with any of my professors or peers. This has not been a problem thus far because until recently I've been unattached and nobody has been eager to pry, but I've begun a relationship and it seems to be turning serious. I don't just want to show up to a departmental event or some social event outside of the department and go, "surprise! I have a boyfriend."
Now, my cohort and professors are, as far as I can tell open-minded people and I don't think they'd care. But I'm wondering, what sort of experiences others have had being out while still completing the PhD?
Also, since I will be going on the job market in the not-too-distance future, what are thoughts on dealing with this issue at that stage? Again, in theory it's nobody's business but we've seen plenty of stories here at FV about prying search committee members who are either oblivious about what is appropriate to ask or just don't care.
4:46, this is just my experience (and I'm not LGBTQ). My grad department hosted a number of gay and lesbian professors, so I know that the LGBTQ grad students never felt (or at least never let on that they felt) any anxiety. What was interesting to me happened my first year on the market as an ABD. The grad adviser pulled myself and two gay grad students (also on the market for the first time) aside for a talk. We were puzzled, because she didn't invite the straight single woman and married straight man who were also going on the market. The gist of her talk was that, until we had an offer on paper, we should not let on about personal details that might cause some institutions to pause. In the case of the other two, it was that they were gay. In my case, it was that I was married and had a baby. We were all pretty shocked, and the two guys and I still share a laugh that somehow being gay was potentially as limiting on the market as having a baby is. (NOTE: I firmly believe that neither should be limiting, but the world is not ideal).
I tried to follow her advice and got a VAP. Later, when searching for at TT, I was at an on campus and got a call from my husband that my toddler had fallen and was getting stitches. I had to take the call in front of others, so my "dirty little secret" was out. Got the TT offer anyway. One of the two guys who were initially warned never let on he was gay and is still adjuncting. The other refused to downplay his sexuality--he's published on LGBTQ related matters and kept them on his cv . He got a TT at a place with a specific religious affiliation. I guess the moral is it might matter, it might not, and it's tough to judge when it does? (Seriously, I'm not sure if there is a moral to this.)
@4:46, congratulations on your new relationship. I wish you and your partner luck and happiness.
Regarding internal departmental events, I've found an "Oh, I didn't tell you I have a new partner? I do! It's great" approach to be very effective. Don't be afraid to surprise people-they'll deal. It's not like you're stealing their jobs and/or lunch.
On the job market, until you have a legitimate offer, pretend like you're a monk. This goes for all genders/sexual orientations. I had a great meeting with a dean this year who basically told me (in a completely kind, looking-out-for-you way) to stay silent and not react as she detailed things like spousal hiring programs, child-care and maternity leave policies, etc. I thought it was a good approach: I got relevant information, she got no indication of my personal/family situation.
@5.13: Your advice is great, thanks (from another gay job-seeking classicist). The trouble with pretending like you're a monk, though, is that when you've got research interests that pretty clearly out you (like @5:09's friend), you can't do that. I've been going back and forth about including a few gender/sexuality- related items on my CV, or drawing attention to them in cover letters. It would be a shame to lose them, because they're really great 'public engagement' things rather than just more scholarly papers, but I'm worried about outing myself on the job market, too.
5:35, Have you really not read ANY of the countless posts on FV about not naming people? (Does your graduate program not require reading skills for admission? Perhaps you just work on Bronze Age pottery sherds...) I don't believe in the history of FV anyone has ever named someone who did not accept an offered position, and we certainly should not start now. Not one of us here NEEDS to know, even if some of us are curious.
If someone accepts a position then about three weeks later it is okay to update the wiki with his/her name (after both the new hire and the department have had enough time to notify those who need to know), but otherwise we do NOT name people to whom offers are made.
Thanks all for the advice and kind words/congratulations.
I'd been considering bringing my partner to some of the upcoming end-of-year events that my department hosts. People are encouraged to bring friends or spouses/significant others and the atmosphere is fairly casual, so this seems like as good a time as any.
I'm more concerned about the looming job market this fall than my department, so the advice on that end is much appreciated. My research does not reveal anything about my personal life, so that isn't something I have to be conscious of. That said, having to consider how any number of aspects of one's personal life (orientation, marital status, children) might impact their chances on the market just makes an already nerve-racking process even worse.
@ 5:54. About two years ago I turned down a VAP for another VAP and some douche put my name on the wiki as having turned the first job down. Luckily it was only up for a few hours before a friend told me and I took it down. The updater didn't even do me the courtesy of making it look like I was NOT the updater (e.g. by noting it was word of mouth). I looked like a real jerk for that day.
@11:38AM I lost out on a job this year--among other reasons--because of my imprudent expression of enthusiasm about teaching an ancient history course that has traditionally been taught by the history department and not Classics. TRADITION
I am a tenured straight white lady with kids, so you might take my advice with a grain of salt, but I think you should just be yourself... within boundaries. Don't offer to show the search committee some awesome gay porn, but also don't be petrified that if they ask you or find out about your personal life, it's all over. Most departments will give you a sense pretty quickly of what their personal values are--for example if they talk about their own partners, kids, etc. If they try to make you feel comfortable, then that is a good place to be. If they don't seem interested in making you feel comfortable/assume you are straight/assume you are like them when you are not/try to pry too much into your personal life (since it sounds like you are worried about that), consider that you may just not want to work there. I recognize that the job market is beyond terrible, and most will not have any kind of choice about where they end out, but I know people who have been in very toxic work situations, and I would say (and again I recognize that this is easy for me to say from my position) that there are actually jobs that are worse for your well-being than not finding a job in Classics. Before you go on the market, consider where your line is. For instance, would you be willing to work in a place that is clearly homophobic? Or, it sounds like privacy is really important to you, would you be willing to work in a place that is very social and gossipy? If you think about it in advance and know where your line is, what lines you would or wouldn't cross, and recognize that there probably are actually some job offers that you would walk away from-- in other words, that you do actually have some (admittedly small) control of the process-- that can help you relax (as much as that is possible in these circumstances) and navigate personal issues on the job market in a way that works for you. I'll also add that, in my experience across several institutions (though again I am straight so take this with a grain of salt), most people, especially in the Humanities, at institutions that have Classics programs are not going to bat an eye one way or another at the news that a candidate is gay.
^I don't know. Even an environment where people talk about their spouses and kids is not necessarily super welcoming. In some cases, it's fine to talk about your heterosexual partners, but all the sudden it's "unprofessional" and "oversharing" when it's a homosexual partner. See the kindergarten art teacher in Texas who just got suspended because she mentioned her wife: parents reacted that she had "come out" to her class and trying to push her sexuality on students, but if she had mentioned engaging in a regular weekend activity her husband, it would have been fine.
6:17, 5:54 here. I vaguely remember that being done to you (though I don't recall who you are). It is for situations like that that for years now the policy has been to give people three weeks before "outing" them. (A different sort of outing from the sort relevant to the other ongoing conversation here.) Three weeks is enough for any new hire to tell friends and colleagues the great news, and gives departments time to notify those who did not get the job -- and so it was agreed upon that only the person getting the job should ever post his/her own name before a three-week embargo period had ended.
Since I have every year posted and explained this rule here, normally more than once, I know that there is absolutely no excuse for someone to do what was done to you. (Disclaimer: I am not Servius, and have no clue who Servius is, but was around when this rule was agreed upon, and am functioning as self-appointed institutional memory. Which is quite sad, when one realizes that the institution is FV. At least "Servius" appears to have been a series of people, à la Dread Pirate Roberts, and sometimes a team of people.
@6:46: thank you for the advice. It's good to have some insight from someone who's already on the other side of the job market. You raise a lot of questions that I'll have to seriously consider and that I will eventually have to bring up with my advisor and other professors when I start preparing for applications for the upcoming cycle.
@6:55: I looked up a couple articles about the Texas art teacher, the way that she was treated is ridiculous.
What if you’re a gay married man and you get a T-T job, your husband is also in academia. Let’s say you’re both legally married in a state that recognizes gay marriage (NY) and the job you’re offered is in one that doesn’t recognize gay marriage (KY). Would a ‘spousal’ hire be applicable ? ..surely this would differ a between private/public schools to some extent (a very liberal private school in Mississippi may allown it while a very conservative private school in a liberal state may still forbid it), but I’m just wondering how this all shakes down.
Realistically, if you're a junior scholar, you don't need to worry about spousal hires because they're not on the table, regardless of the politics of the place or the gender of the spouse.
@12:20 -- that entirely depends on what it is that your spouse does.. always ask!! better to be told no, than to never ask at all. [sure, a TT spousal hire requires a bunch of administrative hoops that are quite hard to jump through -- but if your spouse has a good CV and is fine to start with adjunct / lecturer work, that's considerably easier for an SC to accomplish.. all depends what you're asking for / how you present it!]
@12:51 Don't marry someone in the same field as you!!! (Unless, of course, you have no intention of living together for the first decade or so, assuming everything works out -- for better odds, find someone in science or music, maybe!!)
Those private, religiously-affiliated schools that wouldn't recognize a legal (gay) marriage probably don't offer spousal hires for anyone. As I understand it, small schools with current or former religious affiliations (the kinds of places that're most likely to object to hiring homosexual faculty) are the ones where there's the least amount of room for negotiation on things like that.
This is 6:46 PM from yesterday; thanks for your comment 6:55 PM, which gives me an opportunity to clarify. I should have said "if and *how* they talk about their own partners, kids, etc." I didn't really mean that if they all talk about their partners then everything should be fine, so much as if they do talk about their personal lives, you can then get a sense of what their personal values are and how you might fit in there. (If they don't talk at all about their personal lives, that too will tell you something.) I do recognize that it's still tricky, just as you point out: what's okay for straight couples may not get the same reaction regarding gays couples. I'll add that the same thing is true for mothers: just because the department chair says he has three kids doesn't mean that a junior female candidate should volunteer, "I have three kids too!" My point is really that you should think in advance about what is important to *you* in personal terms, how much you want to share (both at the job interview and longer term), and what is not acceptable to you; then when you start to get a sense of the department regarding these issues, you'll be ready to respond appropriately. The OP sounded rather stressed about it, and I think that one way a candidate can trip up in this regard is to let him/herself feel paralyzed by concern about this issue so that the candidate comes across as weird or defensive or extremely distant. Think it through, decide in advance where your lines are, and then be yourself within those lines.
4:46/6:11, to judge from the way you graciously handled both my comment and 6:55's comment, which were ostensibly at odds, you are already on your way to being someone who is seen as a good colleague. To me and I think many other search committee members, that is more important in a potential colleague than whether or not you are gay.
@9:46 AM, I think you're mostly right. As a person on the job market, it can be very overwhelming to balance judging all these social cues with trying to handle all of the other aspects of an on-campus visit. I do well with black-and-white rules, so my strategy was to never admit anything about myself that wasn't essentially neutral information ("My family lives in X."). But, in order to not totally deny my human side, I happily discussed another neutral-to-popular topic: my pets. I found this less stressful than trying to decide whether people were going to be okay with my partner or some other aspect of my private life.
My opposite-sex partner and I were apart for five years post-docking/vaping, and I accepted an first-year assistant prof (TT) job offer on the condition of spousal hire (in the same department). So it can be done even for the most junior faculty, but granted we are both urban metropolitans and now work at a VERY rural (but flagship) state university in flyover country.
The iron law of negotiating is that whoever wants it more always loses. It was my only TT offer (ever) but the partner and I were so committed to being together that we agreed it was spousal hire or no go. And, in the end, it came to that: They said no to the spousal hire, I said no to the offer, they came back a few days later with the spousal hire after we'd all but given up. This institution, though, at that point (six or seven years ago) had money to do it and a policy of faculty retention. Rural schools or schools in less desirable locations are often more open to spousal accommodation because they know that they can't get -- or keep -- junior scholars otherwise. The average stay-time of faculty couples at the university is between 15-20 years; the average stay-time for junior faculty who don't get faculty accommodations is 2-3 (in my experience at this place).
I've seen many people not get the spousal hire because the institutions simply can't or won't, but I've also seen cases where the partners were only 99% committed to doing whatever it takes to get it, and (as in every other aspect of academic life) the university will squeeze you on that 1% of fear-induced weakness until you are #bonedry. "We'll get it done next year," they say, or "we'll give them a VAP/lectureship" they say, "I want to but [bureaucrat higher up] is delaying" they say. They'll say whatever they can to keep dragging you along. The only way to get a spousal accommodation is if you are 100% willing right then and there to walk away from that university and academia entirely. The risk there, of course, is that oftentimes they'll let you do just that, and you have to be prepared for that.
You also have to be prepared for a trade-off. Unless you're a real superstar, you're probably not going to get spousal hire and get to be at a great university in a great location. But if the partner is the priority, you are orders of magnitude more likely to get the spousal the further you go down the US New Rankings. Surely we'd both rather be in London, but we've made a pretty good life here, and we're together and active research professors in our field, which were the two goals we had when we met as first-year grad students.
@9:46, @6:55 here. I didn't mean to be totally at odds, I just think sometimes what seems like it would be acceptable and professional to a straight, white, female, tenured prof may not be universally generalizable, so it's important to keep that in mind.
I found 9:46's insights to be valuable, and I think they made it clear that they were aware that they were speaking from a relative position of privilege and so their own experiences will not necessarily mesh entirely with what others might encounter. I appreciate their candor.
I think that the example you provided, 6:55, illustrates that although we might like to think that something like one's sexuality isn't a big deal anymore and that everyone is open-minded and accepting, that is clearly not true all the time. It's that uncertainty, I think, that gives me pause as a gay man soon to be on the job market. Who knows, though, maybe the stress of what's coming is making me overthink things.
Does anyone know if a non-Canadian ever stands a shot for a 1-yr VAP there ?
There’s the gig at Concordia, but my gut tells me that they wouldn’t really ever go through the red tape to take on an American just to fill a VAP slot.
@1:16, I applied for that job last year (they seem to advertise it every year). I got a reply five minutes after I sent in my materials asking about my citizenship status. After I told them I was American, I never heard back.
@1:16 it depends on the school. For VAPs/lecturer positions, schools with more money and immigration lawyers, like University of Toronto, UBC, and McGill, will be willing and able to hire non-Canadians. Schools like Concordia usually don't have the resources to sponsor a visa for a one year job. It's a different story for tenure-track jobs.
Question about the Gustavus Adolphus VAP. The job ad says: "The annual teaching assignment will be five or six courses (5/7 or 6/7 appointment)." The first part makes it seem like it will be a 2/3 or 3/3 job. The bracket makes it seem like you'll be teaching five to seven courses a semester. Am I misreading something here?
what this means is presumably that 3-4 is the normal courseload so your salary will be 5/7 or 6/7 (fraction) of that of faculty who teach 4-3/3-4 courseloads.
Not always. I won’t name names but there a LOT of lackluster scholars (esp. for ancient history) at Harvard and Cornell and even a few at Penn (my alma mater). A lot. Many barely publish and when they do it’s pointless self-indulgent garbage or straight-to-a-Barnes-and-Noble near you kind of shit scholarship.
But, I agree that most of the time the Ivies do a good job, but let’s not think that all hires at top schools are wise choices.
^^Add to the soon retirements of Historian greats, Richard J.A. Talbert at UNC (History Dept.) and David Potter at Michigan (1/2 Classics/History Dept.)
RT is on phase retirement now, and it's VERY likely that a Asst. Prof in Roman History will open up at UNC-Chapel Hill for the 2019/20 year.
DP will be out in the next year or so, and rumor has it that a T-T line (unclear if it will be senior hire or not) for the 2019/20 year as well.
I'm confused as to what was so bad about 9:08's interpretation. I'm an archeologist, so I can't really comment on what schools are waxing/waning at the moment for history, but I don't really see an issue with what was said.
There's nothing wrong with being cognizant of strengths/weaknesses in the field and for particular departments. In fact, it's rather wise to be self-critical of the field, not to just think that everyone at an Ivy walks on water.
I had heard through the grapevine that RT was in retirement phasing (sad news) and that DP was on his way out, but it's great to hear to that UNC and Michigan expect to fill their positions as soon as 19/20.
No one in the real world thinks "Ivies" are the best programs even for the most stuck-up versions of philology. I can't tell you the last time I heard someone outside FV opine that Harvard is a top program. Most people shit on it, especially people who got their PhDs there. When people say "Ivy" here, I think they generally just mean "top program." Otherwise it makes no sense. The top programs in the study of the ancient world have included Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Chicago, Stanford, and more for many decades now, with an impact far outpacing the "Ivies."
9:08 sounds like the person who a few weeks ago (?) left an equally bizarre comment about how there aren't any leading ancient historians at universities A, B, and C, overlooking that each one has prominent historians on faculty. Some people hear weird opinions from their advisers and then repeat them as fact, thinking it makes them sound discerning and sophisticated. In this case, what about Manning at Yale and Hanink at Brown, just to name one per school? If you don't like their work, 9:08, that's fine, but it makes you look clueless to offer such "authoritative" pronouncements that anyone familiar with the field knows are bunk.
@9:56, I'd tend to not think of UCLA as a "top" program, but I would add UNC and Duke. Though, I don't mean to imply that you were attempting to make an actual list, per se.
9:56 here. I am not interested in starting a conversation about ranking specific ancient historians. I don't disagree that Berkeley, Chicago, and Stanford are top programs for ancient history. (After all, my degree is from one of them.) If you think they are THE top programs, more power to you. If you don't think that any of the ancient historians on faculty at Princeton, Penn, Yale, Brown, or what-have-you are also good scholars, you have a blinkered and foolish view of the field.
^Agreed. It was good that 9:08 was called out for ignorance because anyone who actually works in ancient history knows that that "authoritative" comment was just dumb. Additionally, "There's one meh guy at Columbia, but he's very over-rated". Really? Doesn't the whole field of ancient history beg to differ? One wonders what 9:08 has done, aside from anonymous trolling, that gives a platform for undermining historians that really are changing the field.
There's a difference between being a "good scholar" and "producing good scholarship."
To draw a non-academic analogy: George Lucas. He is an amazing director/producer/writer, as witnessed by the original trilogy... but he also made the recent 3, gave us Jar Jar Binks, and made Indiana Jones a complete laughing stock in the abomination that was the Crystal Skull, or whatever it was called.
..Now, nobody would argue that GL is NOT a great director, etc.. but he (arguably) has not produced anything good in a long time... a very, very long time.
9:56 here again one last time. Look, I think we all have opinions about some scholars that diverge from the profession's assessment. To that extent, like I said, if 9:08 does not like the work of these scholars, that's fine. And I understand the thrill of poo-pooing someone that everyone else respects inordinately. To that extent, I don't have a problem with their comment, but I think it would be more interesting actually to poo-poo said scholars (maybe not on FV, however, as it's not really the point) rather than transparently to attempt simply writing them out of existence, which as I said just comes across as cluelessness or a desperate attempt to seem sophisticated.
I assumed RB was Richard Billows, who is a Hellenistic political historian in the more old-fashioned literary mold. Bagnall left several years ago to start ISAW.
I'm an ancient historian, and would probably be known as such to some of you.
There are ancient historians at Brown, Princeton, and Harvard -- three schools whose ancient historians were dissed above -- who haven't been named, and whom I greatly respect. No, I won't name them, because I don't want my post to be deleted, like some of you all's posts will soon be. My point is that some of you have questionable criteria for judging ancient historians.
And, of course, some of you like to make yourselves feel better by putting others down. Which is what we academics do on an almost daily basis, but the proper place for that is in published articles, not anonymous forums.
We've been your Servii -- reading every post on this blog -- for the past two years. We've seen some great things here, especially when people came together to support or advise each other in difficult moments. We still believe in the FV mission: a space in which field-wide conversations can take place with everyone on an equal footing and where difficult topics can be addressed, but where individual scholars are protected.
That said, much of what we have seen here over the past three or four months has been extremely dismaying to us. We can't any longer feel good about this space or its role in the field. Attacks on clearly identified individual scholars, including junior scholars, have been rampant, and generally hateful comments have appeared. We are comfortable neither with shutting down debate by fiat, nor with allowing the types of corrosive arguments that we have been seeing here. We cannot control all of this, or catch the personal attacks before the damage is done.
We therefore, sadly, have talked with the Ur-Servius, and all have concluded that FV has outlived its purpose, and will be shutting down.
We hope that the field-- or more specifically, users of this space-- will come up with a better platform for discussion, perhaps with logins and more comprehensive moderation. FV is, after all, ten years old, and there are new possibilities out there. The impending closure of FV is an opportunity for us as a discipline to have a discussion of what a better online landscape might look like, and then to make it happen. We will keep FV running through June partly in order to facilitate this discussion. We will continue to run the Wiki next season.
I'm sure others will have much to say about this development and I don't have time to write at length right now, but obviously I find this decision to be extremely wrongheaded, to say the least. I find it ironic that the Servii want "the discipline" to come up with a better online environment. It is the abdication of the discipline in addressing the issues related to the job market and its collapse, it seems to me, that FV was created to address in the first place. The "discipline" has failed on multiple levels--at the level of the professional organization, at the level of individual departments, and at the level of individual tenured professors. The discipline has had a decade to do something.
I do wonder, though, if the decision was in part brought on by some of those aforementioned tenured professors. Several times this cycle professors have come here and identified themselves by name to express their displeasure at FV, whether in relation to comments about particular job searches or the environment in general. I wonder if pearl-clutching and tut-tutting had anything to do with this. Or perhaps a certain Eidolon editor, who has expressed their displeasure at FV in the past, got their knickers in a twist about some of the recent comments and decided to use their considerable power to apply the screw.
Whatever the specifics, I find this decision to be a disappointment and a shameful capitulation.
Honestly I doubt the Servii's decision was due to sinister conniving on the part of senior academics (or the aforementioned editor). I'm an unemployed ABD postgrad, who comes here sporadically to keep an eye on the job market, and I find the conversation here physically sickening. I feel sorry for everyone who gets a job (NOT my usual reaction, believe me!), given the sour/ vicious scrutiny they come under here; I dread to think of who among my classicist acquaintances thinks it's funny to keep going 'MCGA!', or speculating about anti-white discrimination, or wilfully misreading even the best-intentioned post. I'd have shut down FV months, if not years, ago.
Why not just leave FV up but wash your hands of it and just let it be a public bulletin board. Leave it up, let people share input and feedback but no longer maintain an over-seeing role. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water, as the expression goes. FV has a nasty side, but it also has a far greater role for us all.
My opinion is to leave it up but eliminate any Servii.
As a possible new location: Grad Cafe. We all would need to have some form of public profile, but no need to have anything too identifying, but there certainly would be space for FV there.
Looks like I touched a nerve for you, 9:47...or are you Donna Zuckerberg come to grace us deplorables with your presence? Those knickers really are in a twist.
The problem with taking FV to some new platform is that it really would be a free-for-all, which it has not been here, in my estimation. I think the instances where junior scholars were mentioned by name have been relatively few in comparison to the number of comments here. As for the perceived nastiness? I don't know. Deal with it? I honestly don't think it has been that bad.
Donna Zuckerberg has a PhD in Classics from Princeton and runs the website Eidolon, which takes a very progressive approach to Classics. She is also the sister of Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. She is also occasionally the object of the ire of some here at FV.
^^She also struggled with the Classics job market, and confronted academic job struggles similar to many here. Perhaps the FV community should give her a break.
It’s likely a rather fair statement that a direct relationship exists between the shittiness of the job market and the nastiness of posts here. People are angry and frustrated, and while it’s unfortunate that FV attacks 90% of job-getters that’s the world, folks. To shut down FV because a few people get out of hand is beyond childish of the Servii.
What the fuck do you think the job of a moderator is ?
Did you expect to be a Servii and never have to delete innapropriate posts ? Grow up and do your fucking job. Nobody forced you to take on the task, so your argument that essentially boils down to “we have to do our job 1-2 times a week and we shouldn’t have to” is pathetic.
Since FV already exists, it seems kind of pointless to have to create a new platform to do the same thing. If a new site is created it will take time for traffic to build up and it ultimately might die off. The Servii could just turn over the reins to people who want to do the work of moderating.
@11:13: I don't want to be a mod, but those who elected to be mods knew what the job entails. Shame on them for deleting a forum for us all just because they don't like having to be mods. If they didn't want to be a mod, don't take the damn job.
Well, ok- fair enough. But since it is going to close, perhaps it is a good idea to actually engage in the conversation about what the 'something new' should be? To be honest, this is about the worst format for a long discussion thread that I've encountered on the internet in ... a long time. It would be nice to have a better interface.
Funny how the straw that broke the camel's back was a series of attacks on senior ancient historians and Ivy League departments, rather than the years of casually sexist and/or racist jabs at young scholars who got top T-T jobs (primarily women and minorities).
11:57/12:00, if you look at the timing, I'm pretty sure the decision was made before the ancient historians discussion that began around 9:00 last night. You don't exactly have to go into your "mind palace" to figure that one out.
Putting aside the vitriol, personal attacks made anonymously, and all the other reasons F.V. is dispiriting, I continue to be shocked by how many of my colleagues are deficient in terms of analytical and reading skills, and instead are prone to go with an emotionally satisfying interpretation, as shown by many of today's posts, not to mention countless others. If you can't properly analyze an internet post and think of the different ways in which it was intended as well as the factors leading to its posting, how can you properly get at the heart of a couplet by Martial, let alone Pindar's odes or Thucydides?!?
Are you all crazy? How do you know when Servius decided this? The recent round of Ivy League stuff started at most a day ago. That is pretty fast turn-around. Besides, I thought it was hinted at a few weeks ago in the Servius message during the race discussion.
I putting this here because this school did not use the SCS placement service. It’s for a 1-yr Teaching Assistant Professorship in Classica at Oklahoma State University. They specify that candidates *MUST* have 5 years teaching experience in Latin and Greek. Yikes.
Anyways, I’ve added it to the Wiki along with the link.
When the conversation gets uncomfortable to you, why participate in it? I mean, we should only listen when our perspectives are being validated by what we are hearing, amirite Servii?
So, if you don't like what people are saying, burn the whole conversation to the ground? Sounds like what you are saying is that there's no point in having all your millennial privilege if you're just going to waste it letting people yak on and on about things you don't like.
The issue is not that they don't want to do their job, it's that they think that the users of this forum are no longer capable of maintaining any sense of decorum. We all know that you can't name people on here, or attack anyone, let alone junior scholars, and yet.
If you sign up for something thinking that you're moderating the discussions of a bunch of generally reasonable, well-educated, well-read, critical thinking adults, but then find yourself constantly cleaning up when a bunch of jackass babies are mad that they didn't get a job so they lash out at everyone who did get a job, I can understand not wanting to continue and maybe thinking that this no longer works.
I get that the market is bad, I get that things suck, but you are not *entitled* to anything, not a job, nothing. If you aren't happy with your (lack of) success on the job market, find another path. You have literally ALL of the skills required to identify your strengths and weaknesses, research jobs that you might be well-suited for, tailor yourself for various fields, and argue your case. You don't know how to do that? There's a whole world of the Internet at your disposal, let alone your colleagues, things like the Legion Project or whatever through Paideia, etc. You are responsible for the shutting down of this forum, not the Servii.
I say all of this as a first-time reader of this blog (this year, not just this day), an ABD on the market who has had plenty of interviews but no offers, as someone who's going into the summer without a job or any prospects for one. I can separate my own "misfortune", which comes on the back of my own series of decisions to go to graduate school, from the success that others have had (I'm *happy* when people get jobs, because I realize that they didn't get it OVER me, they didn't STEAL anything from me). I know it probably gets worse (your perspective) when you've been unemployed or in contingent positions for years, but that is literally your own decision. Why is someone who gets a job responsible for you not getting one?
@11:57AM: Wait, so women and minorities are hired because of their being observably women or minorities and are thus desired by administrators to further the Unqualified Good of DIVERSITY which disparately impacts stale-pale-males, but when anyone else also notices that they are women and minorities then that's sexist and racist? How are we doing anything different from the administrators who hired them?
I predict the usual FV response: "It's people like you who are the problem with Classics, I feel sorry for you. Women and minorities are so persecuted, as anyone can see from the blatant transfer of wealth, power, and prestige to white men that is continually taking place and being trumpeted by all of academia and the media. Now excuse me while I go and continue to evaluate job candidates on the basis of not being white or male, the two greatest plagues on humanity."
Hand over moderation to volunteers who want to do it. There's no reason to shut FV down because the Servii don't like the tone that the conversations here have taken on. I don't think that changing the platform will do anything to change the content of the discussion, so creating something new doesn't seem feasible.
I get small-time revenge on the diversity-humpers by leaving the toilet seat up in the department bathroom so that ladies have to put it down themselves when they go pee. MCGA!
Let this place die. It's a cesspool. Those protesting its demise are demonstrating exactly why it shouldn't exist anymore (or at least why we can't expect Servius to continue moderating it).
Two conversations that I loved from this year: the one about how to handle snow-cancelled SCS travel (which helped shape my email to a SC in the aftermath of a flight cancellation), and the one about negotiation strategies for women (which sadly was not of much use this year since I didn't end up with any negotiable offers, but was nevertheless great to read).
Maybe I'm moving through the 'stages of grief' faster than others here, but I'm very seriously thinking about whether I have it in me to start an FV 2.0.
The obvious consequence of shutting down FV are either of two: a) Some new FV-type place arises, probably without the sort of concern and oversight to prevent, e.g., the naming of junior scholars that we find here; or b) This is the end of any kind of centralized discussion of the market or even the field, and all will now spread to various wings of social media. Either would be a shame. #FViva
2:23, there is a third possibility, which is nasty comments being left on the wiki itself. Just think about what will happen when some ABD gets a really big job. So we'll probably be playing whack-a-mole over there (or, at least, those of us with some sense of decency).
2:23-- it is 2.11 here again. I really don't think those are the only two options. There are a lot of us here who want something to continue, why _can't_ there be a new centralized space that springs up? I mean, obviously everyone needs a few days to process and think about this, but it seems pretty doom-and-gloom to think that the people responsible for more that 3000 posts here can't get themselves together and, you know, start a new alternative. Maybe even one with a better and more transparent moderation system than here. It is not like the bar to entry is that hight.
@2:33 — But that very prospect (of a new centralized space springing up) is the first of the two I (2:23) mentioned. I'm just bearish on the notion that such a space would be MORE rather than LESS aggressive moderated. That is, the Servii are shutting this down because it's too negative, but I expect any successor would be only more so, as it seems THAT is where the energy is in our present space.
I agree. FV functions as a 'safety valve' that serves to keep the nastiness confined. At its best, FV is a wonderful source of information and dialogue, at its worst its a a wonderful source of information and dialogue that also has a few folks naming names and lashing out at those perceived to be unqualified for the jobs that they received.
Even at its worst, it's rather healthy to have a discussion about our own preconceived idea of what constitutes a 'qualified' applicant. Even though people can be cruel here, more people gain a better understanding of the fickleness of it all and what factors, if any determinate ones exist, help to get one employed.
I've been on here multiple times a day this year, and the ONLY times that names were named explicitly were of tenured folk. At times, initials were used, which doesn't always reveal who the person is, and rarely odd nick-names were used that only a very, very select few here knew to whom it referred (e.g., 'Typewriter McBowtie'.. how the hell is anyone supposed to deduce who that is supposed to be ?).
If names are named of senior faculty, retired faculty, or public figures that SHOULD NOT matter. I admit that often the attacks against junior PhDs or ABDs were very thinly veiled, and it was clear to whom comments referred, but that's why moderators exist: to delete posts that violate the rules.
I agree that it sucks that the frequency of "delete worthy" posts have been higher than they should be and that they clearly are more frequent than Servii anticipated, but FV serves too great a function to all of us just to trash it on account a few bad apples.
...As pointed out above, if FV goes down something else WILL take its place. And it assuredly will (as a step to prevent a similar shutdown) be less moderated, if moderated at all.
If Servii desire to do what's best, don't close down the one forum that exists and that *IS* moderated.
Much like Saddam, Qaddafi, and Mubarak may have been bad, they were known 'bads' and removal of something bad often results in something replacing it that is far worse.
I, for one, do no want to see what new blog will arise if FV goes away. It will be far worse than anything we have now... far worse.
I don't read Fama religiously, but regularly and I'm honestly not sure what all this is about...has the level of discourse really been that much worse than in previous years? This is my third year on the market/on FV and it seems about the same. Admittedly, I missed some now-deleted posts, but the threads I read didn't seem noticeably more vitriolic than earlier years.
Not that it seems likely to matter, but I'm adding my voice to those protesting the demise of this forum. Over the years, I've gotten some good, helpful information and advice and some kind commiseration from fellow FV-ers. At the very least, it's been a constant reminder that I'm not alone, that others go through multiple interviews/campus visits with no offers, and it's not just me who has failed in some unidentifiable way. Sure, there have been jackasses at times, but trolls lurk in every corner of the internet. I hope FV continues here or else rises, phoenix-like, from the ashes in some other venue.
Yeah, let's shut down the one outlet people have for their misery. I get it, we are supposed to rise above, but reality bites right now. SO MANY OF US HAVE NO JOBS OR JOB PROSPECTS! So a few people have been indecent....The rest of us have benefited from the inside scoop on jobs, etc. I.e. I didn't have to keep hope up for months and months because of this blog: I didn't get the job. I can and have to move on. But the SC's wouldn't have contacted me until June. This is about the only bright/dark spot I have. Sure, there are racist, homophobic, etc. people here but that is everywhere. I need this place.
Now that’s a CV that should have been the Princeton/Chicago here. Impressive has hell!! Man.. every line of it has me impressed. I don’t think anyone has ANY ground to grumble here on FV over this. Congrats to Colgate for getting such an impressive guy.
On a side note, I feel like not even bothering applying for jobs now after seeing his pedigree and experience. Wow. Just, wow.
Just his education pedigree makes me toss my hands up and quit. I didn’t think folks with that blind of background actually existed in the real world, but only in our worst nightmares as state school plebs. Yikes.
It’s always the same. Either non-Ivies are jealous of Ivy folks and bash them as privileged douches or non-Ivies are jealous of Ivy folks and are able to be adults about it (as above posters have been). I am a non-Ivy person who, while proud of my work and accomplishments at a top-10 school, will always be jealous of those with an Ivy pedigree. I don’t let it define me or others, but I would be lying if I said that I’m not jealous. Others here aren’t quite capable of acknowledging that and just lash out at those from Ivies, but it’s always the same root: jealousy.
The bashing of Cincinnati folks here is, however, an interesting one. Hard to tell if it derives from Ivy folk who are mad that a “lesser” PhD bested them or something else.
ivy-for-lifer here, looking at adjuncting next year. i dunno why people have an inferiority complex - if you are out-publishing ivy league folks, you are better than they are at being an academic. why feel bad about a lack of 'pedigree'? it certainly hasn't gotten some of us very far....
Could the Servii start a completely new thread/comment section (no idea what the various parts of the blog, with their own comments, are called) dedicated to the fact that FV is going to be closed, and how a new FV could be better? It is annoying for that discussion to be interrupted by all of these other comments. Thank you.
What is needed, whether it's a FV saved from the brink or a different site, is a forum that either has each post screened before going up, or one that requires people to be registered (anonymously, of course) and use any name they want, which then gives the moderators the ability to suspend for a period (or permanently) those who violate the rules by naming names or who troll. This year has proven that there are too many people incapable of showing basic respect for others, and any other site will be even worse UNLESS its moderators are empowered to do more than just delete posts after the damage has been done. (I would be curious to know if the Servii considered switching over to either system but decided against it.)
I thought The Discipline was supposed to come up with a solution for a kinder, gentler new online platform. The same Discipline that hasn't been able to come up with any solutions to the collapse of the job market even though it's had a decade.
A system like the one you describe would not work because it would require moderators to be relative active to approve new posts, especially when people are commenting relatively frequently.
Is anyone aware of entities similar to FV in other fields? If such things exist it might be a good idea to see if such setups are viable.
Tender fragile speech-policing and pearl-clutching aside, has anyone considered just... tolerating the bullshit on this site? Like, reading the useful bits and not letting the rest bother you? Why is that not the solution? And while we're at it: why, of all the problems in the world, is this the one you're getting worked up over in the first place? Are you that bored?
Yep, literally everyone in the field is a racist. Just throw the whole thing out, makes perfect sense! One would think that people as smart as the types who generally populate classics are capable of nuanced thinking, then you read comments like 8:51 and it makes you wonder.
@ 1:00 That would good except for the part about every post being moderated. But the ability to block a persistent abuser would help. And then we could also see that it's the same MCGAsshole over and over again.
@ 1:13 Poli Sci Rumors is a (frightening) example.
What a classy rejection form email from Colgate... nice to see you think I'm a Professor already. Why not just send emails without titles, rather than reminding us of the job titles we do *not* have?
Wait are you serious? I got a nice email from Bill Stull, the department chair, that was very obviously personalized (it mentioned stuff I said in my interview). And I only did an SCS interview, no campus visit. I'd call my experience with Colgate one of the nicer I've had.
I think the poster above refers to the generic email that all applicants got. It's an unfortunate oversight, but good on them for caring about the actual, human interaction that they had with you, 12:46! Most schools/SCs don't include feedback on your answers, which I can imagine is quite valuable or at least comforting to know that they did hear you, but were looking for something else.
I got a generic rejection after an on-campus interview for a t-t job this year. It said "we enjoyed meeting you during your interviews" or something and then entered into the usual "we had a lot of strong applicants" etc. It was really disappointing.
Yes, a nice letter from Colgate. But then, and this always seems to happen, I get another letter from Colgate sent by the departmental secretary (I too was only a long-list candidate). Two nice rejection emails, but also two reminders that I was rejected. could be worse; I once received three rejections from a job, just to make sure that I knew that I wasn't going to be hired.
Well, I could be wrong, but based on that Eidolon piece's letting those outside of our field know about FV I expect that the number of trolls and other deplorable sorts around here is about to shoot up. If only Eidolon's editor were someone who understands how the internet works, or how virulent its nastiest participants can be when given anonymity. Nice going...
1:00 a.m. here. Of course I realize that having moderators approve each post is not ideal -- I simply threw it out there because it is a viable possibility. The best option is to switch over to a regular internet forum where one has to be registered, but can still post anonymously (using a made-up name, e.g. Armpit Goat). A benefit of this system is that anyone can start a thread -- so, e.g., those of us who don't care about the Colgate rejection letter don't have to bother reading about it. The Chronicle of Higher Education has such forums, and from my occasional visits they appear to work fine. The only possible downside I can think of is that the moderator(s) would probably have the ability to identify people by their hidden registration info, unless those people took the precaution of registering with an unidentifiable e-mail address (which, thanks to Gmail, is easy to get). And the best thing is that the moderators could ban trolls and ban or suspend those who attack defenseless colleagues.
Servii, is this system possible, and would you be willing to take on transitioning to it? I trust your judgment in such matters.
A note from the Servii about FV 2.0 or whatever comes next: We want to clarify a bit about our decision to shutter this incarnation of FV-- we've created a new section of the blog, following the requests of some users. We have posted some more information about our thought process there, for those who are interested in following 2:11PM and others' lead in thinking of alternatives. It would make things less confusing if people would use that post and comment thread to discuss specifics of future options.
Academia is always all-or-nothing. The same people probably got offers to 10 or 11 different PhD programs, and landed multiple outside fellowships while they were there. If academia wants what you're selling, then they all want it.
I agree with @1:36 AM. It's not unlike a draft pick in sports: everyone has worked very hard for a long time just to be considered, but even in a pool of such talented and qualified people, there are usually a few prospects highly desirable to every team. Other draft picks further down the line are used to shore up potential problem areas (an additional winger or running back might equate to, say, a specialist in Greek Comedy or Latin Epic if the hiring department feels those specialties aren't covered well enough by existing faculty). It's not a perfect parallel, but it isn't dissimilar either. Maybe one department feels you fit a niche it needs and that's great for you, now you're on the team. If two or three teams want you, it makes sense that a lot of other teams would too.
My spouse told me to stop looking at FV when I was on job-market, and it did wonders for my self-confidence; also helped get my head out of my a**. One less voyeuristic venue on the internet! Think of how much time we'll all save now!
If you want advice on any kind of matter related to academia, use chronicle.com forums: v. smart and professional folks, minimal trolling; in general great community for advice.
Should one be suspicious of a school that offers a T-T job, but that their tenure is awarded based on teaching and mentoring and you're re-reviewed every five years. Is this rather normal for SLAC tenure practices?
That seems to have been the goal. The Servii are conflicted as to how to deal with what they perceive as increasing nastiness in the comments here, but instead of handing the reins off to volunteers who are able to be more engaged in the conversation, they simply decide to kill FV and let "the discipline" figure it out. We've seen how woefully bad the discipline is at self-reflection and doing much of anything to address problems, so I'm pretty sure I have an idea about how that will go.
Why not just talk about the talk that was inappropriate, without slinging accusations about individuals? The entire panel was weird, and I think that would be fair game, but now it's wrapped up in this pointed accusation about one person and forecloses the conversation.
@2:09pm, it's people like you, who fail to do your own research and dig into this critical issue, that would allow our field to legitimize sexual predators. Unlike "Daddy Cruel" a.k.a. Holt Parker, whom no one ever suspected, the (senior) scholar in question has a public position on pederasty, which has directly affected his scholarship. He has an agenda. This BMCR debate nicely sums up what's at stake for the ignorant: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-11-03.html
Why aren't we talking about this more? Why are we all *hush hush*?
@2:09pm here, I didn't know all of that! I am aware of this person and have been (an audience member) in panels where he has made quite a nuisance of himself, I just thought that people's annoyance with his personality (which I, too, am annoyed with) led to those kinds of claims. Eek. I don't think that it's "failure to do research" that allows bad actors to thrive, you can't exactly spend your time looking up every person in the field, but I get the point in this case, that I stepped in to shut down more slandering of fellow scholars (which is what led to the problems brought up about this blog) without knowing the full story (whether or not he himself is a predator, we obviously can't say).
11:33 a.m. wrote: "The Servii are conflicted as to how to deal with what they perceive as increasing nastiness in the comments here..." Others have expressed similar skepticism, or outright denied this year's trend. If people have only been on F.V. for a year or two they lack the historical perspective to have a valid opinion on the matter (and as people who study a historical period should have some self-awareness of this); if they have been on F.V. for a longer time and are unaware of this then the most charitable conclusion I can reach is that they do not check in often enough to have read the nastier posts before they were taken down.
I have been on F.V. since pretty soon after it began -- so soon that it was still in the days when it was common to use nicknames instead of being "Anonymous [Hour:Minute]," with mine being The Old Oligarch. If that doesn't give you an idea of how long I have been around in these parts, I'll share something else: on the wiki-counter I am the one who right after the option "I'm a lurker" added the joke option "I'm so committed to the Lurker's Code that I refuse to respond even to this." (Someone rather impressively found a way to make my joke even LESS funny by inserting a parenthetical, so that it now reads "I'm so committed to the Lurker's Code (actually, our code is more like guidelines) that I refuse to respond even to this," but I never cared enough to change it back.) If you take the time to go back and check, you will see that's been there since the Bush #43 administration.
All of which is to say that if I'm the Old Oligarch AND the one who posted the longest surviving "joke" on the wiki I am quite qualified to discuss the trajectory of nastiness around here. And the Servii are 100% right about this year being considerably worse than other years, with some exceptionally unfair attacks on untenured members of our field, despite the rules against do so being crystal clear.
As for the people out there who do not see a problem... I hope it is because they simply missed the offending posts (which were usually deleted within a half day or so), and not because they actually read all of the personal attacks on junior academics' physical presentation, mental condition, ethnicity, etc., not to mention their (lack of) scholarship, and thought that there was nothing wrong with it. The former would reflect an admirable ability to stay off F.V. for long stretches of time, the latter would reflect something much worse.
Okay, now let's get back to attacking that boy love-loving senior faculty member .
I can’t say that I was present enough to have read all deleted posts before they were deleted, but I do feel that not all were deserving of deletion. If someone gets a T-T job that, at first glance, seems to be lackluster, I feel that it is a worthwhile discussion to have about what is a “deserving” C.V., or what standards SCs tend to apply to varying candidates. Just because a poster feels someone does not deserve a job is no reason to avoid addressing folks’ concerns about the frailty of the job market.
For every nasty post about junior colleagues, there are likely handfuls of others thinking the same thing but afraid to ask.
@2:47 you ask "@2:09pm, it's people like you, who fail to do your own research and dig into this critical issue, that would allow our field to legitimize sexual predators. Unlike "Daddy Cruel" a.k.a. Holt Parker, whom no one ever suspected, the (senior) scholar in question has a public position on pederasty, which has directly affected his scholarship. He has an agenda. This BMCR debate nicely sums up what's at stake for the ignorant: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-11-03.html
Why aren't we talking about this more? Why are we all *hush hush*?"
I can tell you that I said a LOT less than you just did on this very forum not a month ago, and had my response deleted by the Servii in less than a day. #complicit
A UNC ancient art historian (emeritus?) was mentioned on here a few weeks ago: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article139177388.html
^prominent Ciceronian and it wasn’t child porn but solicitation of a child that sent UCLA to jail. But he still publishes Green and Yellows and we still buy them.
Yeah I remember using one of his commentaries when I took a Cicero class for my MA ~6 years ago. I also remember running across a review article in a not particularly obscure journal by this person from just a couple years ago.
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@8:02, 11:46 -- word is that they were fighting for the same candidate, but then the candidate's partner got counter offers from two other institutions with the added bonus of a spousal hire for the Chicago/Columbia candidate. My guess is that Chicago and Columbia couldn't beat these other offers or couldn't offer the spousal hire. Some places have strict rules about spousal hires. Just goes to show how complicated the market can be behind the scenes. In the end, it's good news for the job seekers: one more job opened up (unless the Chicago and Columbia hires fail).
Am I missing something though; aren’t the Chicago and Columbia jobs two different positions, one for a Historian the other for a philologist ?
Yea, I know that historians have to know the language and that those who know the language may also have a grasp of history, but how often would we see an academic offered a T-T job as a historian of Napoleonic France by one school and a T-T job as a French instructor at another ? ...this is the proper with Classics: we’re still imagining ourselves as classicists as being too many things at once; we’re really the only branch of academia still functioning on an 18th century model. Should we really be surprised that our field is dying or that admin views us all as remnants of a distant age that refuse to be relevant in any way possible or even adjust our own self-identify or organization ?
^^ *problem* with Classics ^^
@10:58 - thanks for that info (11:46 here). I'd heard that a spousal hire was somehow in the equation but hadn't known that counter-offers had been made.
This is part of a wider problem that involves other disciplines / departments. At some institutions, the history department is openly uninterested in (or even openly hostile to) ancient history, and so the burden of ancient history teaching falls on the classics department. History is so huge and broad that it's easy for departments to go to war with themselves (this often happens in English, too). I acknowledge that this is not the case at Columbia or Chicago. But this is not a "problem with Classics" the fact that many of us could throw together a history, art and archaeology (not methods) , or mythology class, in addition to teaching one or two languages, is a huge advantage that ultimately serves the students at a time when all ancient studies are being squeezed.
Does this mean that Chicago and Columbia are moving to make offers to their #2 choices? Here is an instance where FV can be a helpful thing! In the absence of information from the SC, a campus finalist wonders whether to hold on to hope? Sad that updates and news come from FV rather than the committee.
I am also surprised that Columbia has decided to pursue a historian, but only because I thought their historian hire would take shape as a separate, later search.
@1:06pm -- it depends on your definition of "historian".
@1:06 the Columbia job is not meant to replace W.V. Harris. Pretty sure they will have another search at some point.
@1:06 -- @1:13 is correct. WVH's appointment was in History, not Classics, and the History Dept. will apparently soon be doing a search for a Roman historian, perhaps as early as next year.
I have it from a good source that NYU successfully hired one of the UCLA finalists, but I haven't posted the name to the wiki because it's not clear to me which NYU job the hire was for.
So I have some practical questions regarding potentially uncomfortable situations involving one's personal life. I'm an ABD grad student at a top program. I am also gay and while I am not closeted per se, I'm not somebody who thinks that what anybody does in their personal life is really relevant to their professional life. So, I've never discussed it with any of my professors or peers. This has not been a problem thus far because until recently I've been unattached and nobody has been eager to pry, but I've begun a relationship and it seems to be turning serious. I don't just want to show up to a departmental event or some social event outside of the department and go, "surprise! I have a boyfriend."
Now, my cohort and professors are, as far as I can tell open-minded people and I don't think they'd care. But I'm wondering, what sort of experiences others have had being out while still completing the PhD?
Also, since I will be going on the job market in the not-too-distance future, what are thoughts on dealing with this issue at that stage? Again, in theory it's nobody's business but we've seen plenty of stories here at FV about prying search committee members who are either oblivious about what is appropriate to ask or just don't care.
4:46, this is just my experience (and I'm not LGBTQ). My grad department hosted a number of gay and lesbian professors, so I know that the LGBTQ grad students never felt (or at least never let on that they felt) any anxiety. What was interesting to me happened my first year on the market as an ABD. The grad adviser pulled myself and two gay grad students (also on the market for the first time) aside for a talk. We were puzzled, because she didn't invite the straight single woman and married straight man who were also going on the market. The gist of her talk was that, until we had an offer on paper, we should not let on about personal details that might cause some institutions to pause. In the case of the other two, it was that they were gay. In my case, it was that I was married and had a baby. We were all pretty shocked, and the two guys and I still share a laugh that somehow being gay was potentially as limiting on the market as having a baby is. (NOTE: I firmly believe that neither should be limiting, but the world is not ideal).
I tried to follow her advice and got a VAP. Later, when searching for at TT, I was at an on campus and got a call from my husband that my toddler had fallen and was getting stitches. I had to take the call in front of others, so my "dirty little secret" was out. Got the TT offer anyway. One of the two guys who were initially warned never let on he was gay and is still adjuncting. The other refused to downplay his sexuality--he's published on LGBTQ related matters and kept them on his cv . He got a TT at a place with a specific religious affiliation. I guess the moral is it might matter, it might not, and it's tough to judge when it does? (Seriously, I'm not sure if there is a moral to this.)
@4:46, congratulations on your new relationship. I wish you and your partner luck and happiness.
Regarding internal departmental events, I've found an "Oh, I didn't tell you I have a new partner? I do! It's great" approach to be very effective. Don't be afraid to surprise people-they'll deal. It's not like you're stealing their jobs and/or lunch.
On the job market, until you have a legitimate offer, pretend like you're a monk. This goes for all genders/sexual orientations. I had a great meeting with a dean this year who basically told me (in a completely kind, looking-out-for-you way) to stay silent and not react as she detailed things like spousal hiring programs, child-care and maternity leave policies, etc. I thought it was a good approach: I got relevant information, she got no indication of my personal/family situation.
@4:46, congratulations on your relationship :)
@5.13: Your advice is great, thanks (from another gay job-seeking classicist). The trouble with pretending like you're a monk, though, is that when you've got research interests that pretty clearly out you (like @5:09's friend), you can't do that. I've been going back and forth about including a few gender/sexuality- related items on my CV, or drawing attention to them in cover letters. It would be a shame to lose them, because they're really great 'public engagement' things rather than just more scholarly papers, but I'm worried about outing myself on the job market, too.
Re: Columbia/Chicago
fama is that their top candidate took a position a Cornell, where she had been a postdoc previously.
Who was the top candidate for Columbia/Chicago?
5:35, Have you really not read ANY of the countless posts on FV about not naming people? (Does your graduate program not require reading skills for admission? Perhaps you just work on Bronze Age pottery sherds...) I don't believe in the history of FV anyone has ever named someone who did not accept an offered position, and we certainly should not start now. Not one of us here NEEDS to know, even if some of us are curious.
If someone accepts a position then about three weeks later it is okay to update the wiki with his/her name (after both the new hire and the department have had enough time to notify those who need to know), but otherwise we do NOT name people to whom offers are made.
4:46 here,
Thanks all for the advice and kind words/congratulations.
I'd been considering bringing my partner to some of the upcoming end-of-year events that my department hosts. People are encouraged to bring friends or spouses/significant others and the atmosphere is fairly casual, so this seems like as good a time as any.
I'm more concerned about the looming job market this fall than my department, so the advice on that end is much appreciated. My research does not reveal anything about my personal life, so that isn't something I have to be conscious of. That said, having to consider how any number of aspects of one's personal life (orientation, marital status, children) might impact their chances on the market just makes an already nerve-racking process even worse.
@ 5:54. About two years ago I turned down a VAP for another VAP and some douche put my name on the wiki as having turned the first job down. Luckily it was only up for a few hours before a friend told me and I took it down. The updater didn't even do me the courtesy of making it look like I was NOT the updater (e.g. by noting it was word of mouth). I looked like a real jerk for that day.
@11:38AM I lost out on a job this year--among other reasons--because of my imprudent expression of enthusiasm about teaching an ancient history course that has traditionally been taught by the history department and not Classics. TRADITION
Hi 4:46/6:11,
I am a tenured straight white lady with kids, so you might take my advice with a grain of salt, but I think you should just be yourself... within boundaries. Don't offer to show the search committee some awesome gay porn, but also don't be petrified that if they ask you or find out about your personal life, it's all over. Most departments will give you a sense pretty quickly of what their personal values are--for example if they talk about their own partners, kids, etc. If they try to make you feel comfortable, then that is a good place to be. If they don't seem interested in making you feel comfortable/assume you are straight/assume you are like them when you are not/try to pry too much into your personal life (since it sounds like you are worried about that), consider that you may just not want to work there. I recognize that the job market is beyond terrible, and most will not have any kind of choice about where they end out, but I know people who have been in very toxic work situations, and I would say (and again I recognize that this is easy for me to say from my position) that there are actually jobs that are worse for your well-being than not finding a job in Classics. Before you go on the market, consider where your line is. For instance, would you be willing to work in a place that is clearly homophobic? Or, it sounds like privacy is really important to you, would you be willing to work in a place that is very social and gossipy? If you think about it in advance and know where your line is, what lines you would or wouldn't cross, and recognize that there probably are actually some job offers that you would walk away from-- in other words, that you do actually have some (admittedly small) control of the process-- that can help you relax (as much as that is possible in these circumstances) and navigate personal issues on the job market in a way that works for you. I'll also add that, in my experience across several institutions (though again I am straight so take this with a grain of salt), most people, especially in the Humanities, at institutions that have Classics programs are not going to bat an eye one way or another at the news that a candidate is gay.
Good luck, and congrats on your new relationship!
^I don't know. Even an environment where people talk about their spouses and kids is not necessarily super welcoming. In some cases, it's fine to talk about your heterosexual partners, but all the sudden it's "unprofessional" and "oversharing" when it's a homosexual partner. See the kindergarten art teacher in Texas who just got suspended because she mentioned her wife: parents reacted that she had "come out" to her class and trying to push her sexuality on students, but if she had mentioned engaging in a regular weekend activity her husband, it would have been fine.
6:17, 5:54 here. I vaguely remember that being done to you (though I don't recall who you are). It is for situations like that that for years now the policy has been to give people three weeks before "outing" them. (A different sort of outing from the sort relevant to the other ongoing conversation here.) Three weeks is enough for any new hire to tell friends and colleagues the great news, and gives departments time to notify those who did not get the job -- and so it was agreed upon that only the person getting the job should ever post his/her own name before a three-week embargo period had ended.
Since I have every year posted and explained this rule here, normally more than once, I know that there is absolutely no excuse for someone to do what was done to you. (Disclaimer: I am not Servius, and have no clue who Servius is, but was around when this rule was agreed upon, and am functioning as self-appointed institutional memory. Which is quite sad, when one realizes that the institution is FV. At least "Servius" appears to have been a series of people, à la Dread Pirate Roberts, and sometimes a team of people.
Could that three-week rule be included on the actual wiki? Like, written somewhere near the top in clear terms? Not everyone reads FV.
4:46/6:11 here again,
@6:46: thank you for the advice. It's good to have some insight from someone who's already on the other side of the job market. You raise a lot of questions that I'll have to seriously consider and that I will eventually have to bring up with my advisor and other professors when I start preparing for applications for the upcoming cycle.
@6:55: I looked up a couple articles about the Texas art teacher, the way that she was treated is ridiculous.
Question about LGBT and jobs.
What if you’re a gay married man and you get a T-T job, your husband is also in academia. Let’s say you’re both legally married in a state that recognizes gay marriage (NY) and the job you’re offered is in one that doesn’t recognize gay marriage (KY). Would a ‘spousal’ hire be applicable ? ..surely this would differ a between private/public schools to some extent (a very liberal private school in Mississippi may allown it while a very conservative private school in a liberal state may still forbid it), but I’m just wondering how this all shakes down.
Realistically, if you're a junior scholar, you don't need to worry about spousal hires because they're not on the table, regardless of the politics of the place or the gender of the spouse.
@12:20 -- that entirely depends on what it is that your spouse does.. always ask!! better to be told no, than to never ask at all. [sure, a TT spousal hire requires a bunch of administrative hoops that are quite hard to jump through -- but if your spouse has a good CV and is fine to start with adjunct / lecturer work, that's considerably easier for an SC to accomplish.. all depends what you're asking for / how you present it!]
@12:51 Don't marry someone in the same field as you!!! (Unless, of course, you have no intention of living together for the first decade or so, assuming everything works out -- for better odds, find someone in science or music, maybe!!)
I didn't know Cornell was hiring... unless it was a spousal/retention hire?
@2:07 retention of a senior faculty member required a junior spousal hire (Columbia/Chicago candidate). I hear that the other player was Toronto.
Those private, religiously-affiliated schools that wouldn't recognize a legal (gay) marriage probably don't offer spousal hires for anyone. As I understand it, small schools with current or former religious affiliations (the kinds of places that're most likely to object to hiring homosexual faculty) are the ones where there's the least amount of room for negotiation on things like that.
This is 6:46 PM from yesterday; thanks for your comment 6:55 PM, which gives me an opportunity to clarify. I should have said "if and *how* they talk about their own partners, kids, etc." I didn't really mean that if they all talk about their partners then everything should be fine, so much as if they do talk about their personal lives, you can then get a sense of what their personal values are and how you might fit in there. (If they don't talk at all about their personal lives, that too will tell you something.) I do recognize that it's still tricky, just as you point out: what's okay for straight couples may not get the same reaction regarding gays couples. I'll add that the same thing is true for mothers: just because the department chair says he has three kids doesn't mean that a junior female candidate should volunteer, "I have three kids too!" My point is really that you should think in advance about what is important to *you* in personal terms, how much you want to share (both at the job interview and longer term), and what is not acceptable to you; then when you start to get a sense of the department regarding these issues, you'll be ready to respond appropriately. The OP sounded rather stressed about it, and I think that one way a candidate can trip up in this regard is to let him/herself feel paralyzed by concern about this issue so that the candidate comes across as weird or defensive or extremely distant. Think it through, decide in advance where your lines are, and then be yourself within those lines.
4:46/6:11, to judge from the way you graciously handled both my comment and 6:55's comment, which were ostensibly at odds, you are already on your way to being someone who is seen as a good colleague. To me and I think many other search committee members, that is more important in a potential colleague than whether or not you are gay.
@9:46 AM, I think you're mostly right. As a person on the job market, it can be very overwhelming to balance judging all these social cues with trying to handle all of the other aspects of an on-campus visit. I do well with black-and-white rules, so my strategy was to never admit anything about myself that wasn't essentially neutral information ("My family lives in X."). But, in order to not totally deny my human side, I happily discussed another neutral-to-popular topic: my pets. I found this less stressful than trying to decide whether people were going to be okay with my partner or some other aspect of my private life.
My opposite-sex partner and I were apart for five years post-docking/vaping, and I accepted an first-year assistant prof (TT) job offer on the condition of spousal hire (in the same department). So it can be done even for the most junior faculty, but granted we are both urban metropolitans and now work at a VERY rural (but flagship) state university in flyover country.
The iron law of negotiating is that whoever wants it more always loses. It was my only TT offer (ever) but the partner and I were so committed to being together that we agreed it was spousal hire or no go. And, in the end, it came to that: They said no to the spousal hire, I said no to the offer, they came back a few days later with the spousal hire after we'd all but given up. This institution, though, at that point (six or seven years ago) had money to do it and a policy of faculty retention. Rural schools or schools in less desirable locations are often more open to spousal accommodation because they know that they can't get -- or keep -- junior scholars otherwise. The average stay-time of faculty couples at the university is between 15-20 years; the average stay-time for junior faculty who don't get faculty accommodations is 2-3 (in my experience at this place).
I've seen many people not get the spousal hire because the institutions simply can't or won't, but I've also seen cases where the partners were only 99% committed to doing whatever it takes to get it, and (as in every other aspect of academic life) the university will squeeze you on that 1% of fear-induced weakness until you are #bonedry. "We'll get it done next year," they say, or "we'll give them a VAP/lectureship" they say, "I want to but [bureaucrat higher up] is delaying" they say. They'll say whatever they can to keep dragging you along. The only way to get a spousal accommodation is if you are 100% willing right then and there to walk away from that university and academia entirely. The risk there, of course, is that oftentimes they'll let you do just that, and you have to be prepared for that.
You also have to be prepared for a trade-off. Unless you're a real superstar, you're probably not going to get spousal hire and get to be at a great university in a great location. But if the partner is the priority, you are orders of magnitude more likely to get the spousal the further you go down the US New Rankings. Surely we'd both rather be in London, but we've made a pretty good life here, and we're together and active research professors in our field, which were the two goals we had when we met as first-year grad students.
Why has the Ashland U job disappeared from the wiki?
@9:46, @6:55 here. I didn't mean to be totally at odds, I just think sometimes what seems like it would be acceptable and professional to a straight, white, female, tenured prof may not be universally generalizable, so it's important to keep that in mind.
Thanks, 6:55. It sounds like we are in agreement. I "identified" myself partly for that reason, and I appreciate your valuable counterpoint.
--9:46
4:46/6:11 here again
I found 9:46's insights to be valuable, and I think they made it clear that they were aware that they were speaking from a relative position of privilege and so their own experiences will not necessarily mesh entirely with what others might encounter. I appreciate their candor.
I think that the example you provided, 6:55, illustrates that although we might like to think that something like one's sexuality isn't a big deal anymore and that everyone is open-minded and accepting, that is clearly not true all the time. It's that uncertainty, I think, that gives me pause as a gay man soon to be on the job market. Who knows, though, maybe the stress of what's coming is making me overthink things.
Does anyone know if a non-Canadian ever stands a shot for a 1-yr VAP there ?
There’s the gig at Concordia, but my gut tells me that they wouldn’t really ever go through the red tape to take on an American just to fill a VAP slot.
Thoughts ?
@1:16, I applied for that job last year (they seem to advertise it every year). I got a reply five minutes after I sent in my materials asking about my citizenship status. After I told them I was American, I never heard back.
YMMV.
@1:16 it depends on the school. For VAPs/lecturer positions, schools with more money and immigration lawyers, like University of Toronto, UBC, and McGill, will be willing and able to hire non-Canadians. Schools like Concordia usually don't have the resources to sponsor a visa for a one year job. It's a different story for tenure-track jobs.
Question about the Gustavus Adolphus VAP. The job ad says: "The annual teaching assignment will be five or six courses (5/7 or 6/7 appointment)." The first part makes it seem like it will be a 2/3 or 3/3 job. The bracket makes it seem like you'll be teaching five to seven courses a semester. Am I misreading something here?
what this means is presumably that 3-4 is the normal courseload so your salary will be 5/7 or 6/7 (fraction) of that of faculty who teach 4-3/3-4 courseloads.
Some amazing ABD hires this year!
Big ABD year!
Yes, Let's see, we have ABD hires at Bard, Stanford, Princeton...where else?
I am pretty sure those hires are going to produce good work @7:51PM. Top institutions are usually pretty good at picking out the talent.
FV'ers are mainlining the Koolaid of false consciousness, I see.
@7:59,
Not always. I won’t name names but there a LOT of lackluster scholars (esp. for ancient history) at Harvard and Cornell and even a few at Penn (my alma mater). A lot. Many barely publish and when they do it’s pointless self-indulgent garbage or straight-to-a-Barnes-and-Noble near you kind of shit scholarship.
But, I agree that most of the time the Ivies do a good job, but let’s not think that all hires at top schools are wise choices.
^^Add to the soon retirements of Historian greats, Richard J.A. Talbert at UNC (History Dept.) and David Potter at Michigan (1/2 Classics/History Dept.)
RT is on phase retirement now, and it's VERY likely that a Asst. Prof in Roman History will open up at UNC-Chapel Hill for the 2019/20 year.
DP will be out in the next year or so, and rumor has it that a T-T line (unclear if it will be senior hire or not) for the 2019/20 year as well.
..Some great jobs on the horizon !
@9:08
You sound like a horrible person. And perhaps not the sharpest tool in the shed.
@ 9:16,
I'm confused as to what was so bad about 9:08's interpretation. I'm an archeologist, so I can't really comment on what schools are waxing/waning at the moment for history, but I don't really see an issue with what was said.
There's nothing wrong with being cognizant of strengths/weaknesses in the field and for particular departments. In fact, it's rather wise to be self-critical of the field, not to just think that everyone at an Ivy walks on water.
@9:15,
Thanks for the info !!
I had heard through the grapevine that RT was in retirement phasing (sad news) and that DP was on his way out, but it's great to hear to that UNC and Michigan expect to fill their positions as soon as 19/20.
No one in the real world thinks "Ivies" are the best programs even for the most stuck-up versions of philology. I can't tell you the last time I heard someone outside FV opine that Harvard is a top program. Most people shit on it, especially people who got their PhDs there. When people say "Ivy" here, I think they generally just mean "top program." Otherwise it makes no sense. The top programs in the study of the ancient world have included Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Chicago, Stanford, and more for many decades now, with an impact far outpacing the "Ivies."
9:08 sounds like the person who a few weeks ago (?) left an equally bizarre comment about how there aren't any leading ancient historians at universities A, B, and C, overlooking that each one has prominent historians on faculty. Some people hear weird opinions from their advisers and then repeat them as fact, thinking it makes them sound discerning and sophisticated. In this case, what about Manning at Yale and Hanink at Brown, just to name one per school? If you don't like their work, 9:08, that's fine, but it makes you look clueless to offer such "authoritative" pronouncements that anyone familiar with the field knows are bunk.
I agree with 9:56, but I also agree with OP that Cornell and Harvard have rather sub-par historians currently.
To clarify, I don't mean to suggest that (some of) "the Ivies" are not also top programs, just that using that term as a metonym is silly.
^^ So far as Roman history is concerned, there is perhaps little doubt that Noreña, Ando, and Scheidel are the current top 3 names in the field.
@9:56, I'd tend to not think of UCLA as a "top" program, but I would add UNC and Duke. Though, I don't mean to imply that you were attempting to make an actual list, per se.
9:56 here. I am not interested in starting a conversation about ranking specific ancient historians. I don't disagree that Berkeley, Chicago, and Stanford are top programs for ancient history. (After all, my degree is from one of them.) If you think they are THE top programs, more power to you. If you don't think that any of the ancient historians on faculty at Princeton, Penn, Yale, Brown, or what-have-you are also good scholars, you have a blinkered and foolish view of the field.
**Lurker here who's deciding to chime in**
^^^Notice that Cornell and Harvard are (purposefully) left off that list. ;)
Did anything ever happen with the Roman history position that had been open at UCLA?
^Agreed. It was good that 9:08 was called out for ignorance because anyone who actually works in ancient history knows that that "authoritative" comment was just dumb. Additionally, "There's one meh guy at Columbia, but he's very over-rated". Really? Doesn't the whole field of ancient history beg to differ? One wonders what 9:08 has done, aside from anonymous trolling, that gives a platform for undermining historians that really are changing the field.
@10:04,
There's a difference between being a "good scholar" and "producing good scholarship."
To draw a non-academic analogy: George Lucas. He is an amazing director/producer/writer, as witnessed by the original trilogy... but he also made the recent 3, gave us Jar Jar Binks, and made Indiana Jones a complete laughing stock in the abomination that was the Crystal Skull, or whatever it was called.
..Now, nobody would argue that GL is NOT a great director, etc.. but he (arguably) has not produced anything good in a long time... a very, very long time.
9:56 here again one last time. Look, I think we all have opinions about some scholars that diverge from the profession's assessment. To that extent, like I said, if 9:08 does not like the work of these scholars, that's fine. And I understand the thrill of poo-pooing someone that everyone else respects inordinately. To that extent, I don't have a problem with their comment, but I think it would be more interesting actually to poo-poo said scholars (maybe not on FV, however, as it's not really the point) rather than transparently to attempt simply writing them out of existence, which as I said just comes across as cluelessness or a desperate attempt to seem sophisticated.
I assume 10:09 is referring to John Ma?
I thought so also. What is 10:18 talking about?
Roger Bagnell (?) perhaps. He recently retired I believe, but he was a "big name" at Columbia for some time. I think he left 1-2 years ago?
I assumed RB was Richard Billows, who is a Hellenistic political historian in the more old-fashioned literary mold. Bagnall left several years ago to start ISAW.
I assumed RB was Ritchie Blackmore. I was quite mad, because 'Smoke on the Water' is a great song, though his work post-Deep Purple was really shitty.
^^^ thanks.. now I have that opening riff in my head. Time to go to YouTube and listen to 'Smoke on the Water' to get it out.
10:29, you couldn't be more wrong. Both Rainbow AND his solo work are outstanding.
Wow. I leave FV for a few hours and this craziness all happens. Let's all rank historians and rock out to 'Smoke on the Water.'
I'm an ancient historian, and would probably be known as such to some of you.
There are ancient historians at Brown, Princeton, and Harvard -- three schools whose ancient historians were dissed above -- who haven't been named, and whom I greatly respect. No, I won't name them, because I don't want my post to be deleted, like some of you all's posts will soon be. My point is that some of you have questionable criteria for judging ancient historians.
And, of course, some of you like to make yourselves feel better by putting others down. Which is what we academics do on an almost daily basis, but the proper place for that is in published articles, not anonymous forums.
Damn people, ouch.
Dear FV,
We've been your Servii -- reading every post on this blog -- for the past two years. We've seen some great things here, especially when people came together to support or advise each other in difficult moments. We still believe in the FV mission: a space in which field-wide conversations can take place with everyone on an equal footing and where difficult topics can be addressed, but where individual scholars are protected.
That said, much of what we have seen here over the past three or four months has been extremely dismaying to us. We can't any longer feel good about this space or its role in the field. Attacks on clearly identified individual scholars, including junior scholars, have been rampant, and generally hateful comments have appeared. We are comfortable neither with shutting down debate by fiat, nor with allowing the types of corrosive arguments that we have been seeing here. We cannot control all of this, or catch the personal attacks before the damage is done.
We therefore, sadly, have talked with the Ur-Servius, and all have concluded that FV has outlived its purpose, and will be shutting down.
We hope that the field-- or more specifically, users of this space-- will come up with a better platform for discussion, perhaps with logins and more comprehensive moderation. FV is, after all, ten years old, and there are new possibilities out there. The impending closure of FV is an opportunity for us as a discipline to have a discussion of what a better online landscape might look like, and then to make it happen. We will keep FV running through June partly in order to facilitate this discussion. We will continue to run the Wiki next season.
The Servii
^^ And that, folks, is the definition of fragility.
^^^and calling that fragility, folks, is the definition of stupidity. Time to head back over to 4chan with the lot of you.
I'm sure others will have much to say about this development and I don't have time to write at length right now, but obviously I find this decision to be extremely wrongheaded, to say the least. I find it ironic that the Servii want "the discipline" to come up with a better online environment. It is the abdication of the discipline in addressing the issues related to the job market and its collapse, it seems to me, that FV was created to address in the first place. The "discipline" has failed on multiple levels--at the level of the professional organization, at the level of individual departments, and at the level of individual tenured professors. The discipline has had a decade to do something.
I do wonder, though, if the decision was in part brought on by some of those aforementioned tenured professors. Several times this cycle professors have come here and identified themselves by name to express their displeasure at FV, whether in relation to comments about particular job searches or the environment in general. I wonder if pearl-clutching and tut-tutting had anything to do with this. Or perhaps a certain Eidolon editor, who has expressed their displeasure at FV in the past, got their knickers in a twist about some of the recent comments and decided to use their considerable power to apply the screw.
Whatever the specifics, I find this decision to be a disappointment and a shameful capitulation.
What a bunch of pansies.
We need someone to make an uncensored FV elsewhere. Perhaps a subreddit group would do.
Honestly I doubt the Servii's decision was due to sinister conniving on the part of senior academics (or the aforementioned editor). I'm an unemployed ABD postgrad, who comes here sporadically to keep an eye on the job market, and I find the conversation here physically sickening. I feel sorry for everyone who gets a job (NOT my usual reaction, believe me!), given the sour/ vicious scrutiny they come under here; I dread to think of who among my classicist acquaintances thinks it's funny to keep going 'MCGA!', or speculating about anti-white discrimination, or wilfully misreading even the best-intentioned post. I'd have shut down FV months, if not years, ago.
Servius,
Why not just leave FV up but wash your hands of it and just let it be a public bulletin board. Leave it up, let people share input and feedback but no longer maintain an over-seeing role. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water, as the expression goes. FV has a nasty side, but it also has a far greater role for us all.
My opinion is to leave it up but eliminate any Servii.
As a possible new location: Grad Cafe. We all would need to have some form of public profile, but no need to have anything too identifying, but there certainly would be space for FV there.
@8:25, I think it was George Soros that got to the Servii, you circus-clown conspiracy theorist.
8:25 here,
Looks like I touched a nerve for you, 9:47...or are you Donna Zuckerberg come to grace us deplorables with your presence? Those knickers really are in a twist.
SVMMA PLACIDVM CAPVT EXTVLIT VNDA
Good. This place is a fucking garbage fire.
The problem with taking FV to some new platform is that it really would be a free-for-all, which it has not been here, in my estimation. I think the instances where junior scholars were mentioned by name have been relatively few in comparison to the number of comments here. As for the perceived nastiness? I don't know. Deal with it? I honestly don't think it has been that bad.
Just joined FV... who is Donna Zuckerberg? Why is everyone talking about her??
^She is a classics PhD who created/ edits Eidolon.
Donna Zuckerberg has a PhD in Classics from Princeton and runs the website Eidolon, which takes a very progressive approach to Classics. She is also the sister of Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. She is also occasionally the object of the ire of some here at FV.
^^She also struggled with the Classics job market, and confronted academic job struggles similar to many here. Perhaps the FV community should give her a break.
Wait, has the editor of Eidolon written about struggles with the job market? Please link to the piece(s). It would be useful for all of us!
It’s likely a rather fair statement that a direct relationship exists between the shittiness of the job market and the nastiness of posts here. People are angry and frustrated, and while it’s unfortunate that FV attacks 90% of job-getters that’s the world, folks. To shut down FV because a few people get out of hand is beyond childish of the Servii.
What the fuck do you think the job of a moderator is ?
Did you expect to be a Servii and never have to delete innapropriate posts ? Grow up and do your fucking job. Nobody forced you to take on the task, so your argument that essentially boils down to “we have to do our job 1-2 times a week and we shouldn’t have to” is pathetic.
If you feel so strongly about this, @11.10, why don't you step up and start the replacement blog?
Since FV already exists, it seems kind of pointless to have to create a new platform to do the same thing. If a new site is created it will take time for traffic to build up and it ultimately might die off. The Servii could just turn over the reins to people who want to do the work of moderating.
11:10 here...
@11:13: I don't want to be a mod, but those who elected to be mods knew what the job entails. Shame on them for deleting a forum for us all just because they don't like having to be mods. If they didn't want to be a mod, don't take the damn job.
Well, ok- fair enough. But since it is going to close, perhaps it is a good idea to actually engage in the conversation about what the 'something new' should be? To be honest, this is about the worst format for a long discussion thread that I've encountered on the internet in ... a long time. It would be nice to have a better interface.
Funny how the straw that broke the camel's back was a series of attacks on senior ancient historians and Ivy League departments, rather than the years of casually sexist and/or racist jabs at young scholars who got top T-T jobs (primarily women and minorities).
^true....
11:57/12:00, if you look at the timing, I'm pretty sure the decision was made before the ancient historians discussion that began around 9:00 last night. You don't exactly have to go into your "mind palace" to figure that one out.
Putting aside the vitriol, personal attacks made anonymously, and all the other reasons F.V. is dispiriting, I continue to be shocked by how many of my colleagues are deficient in terms of analytical and reading skills, and instead are prone to go with an emotionally satisfying interpretation, as shown by many of today's posts, not to mention countless others. If you can't properly analyze an internet post and think of the different ways in which it was intended as well as the factors leading to its posting, how can you properly get at the heart of a couplet by Martial, let alone Pindar's odes or Thucydides?!?
Are you all crazy? How do you know when Servius decided this? The recent round of Ivy League stuff started at most a day ago. That is pretty fast turn-around. Besides, I thought it was hinted at a few weeks ago in the Servius message during the race discussion.
***NEW JOB POSTED**
I putting this here because this school did not use the SCS placement service. It’s for a 1-yr Teaching Assistant Professorship in Classica at Oklahoma State University. They specify that candidates *MUST* have 5 years teaching experience in Latin and Greek. Yikes.
Anyways, I’ve added it to the Wiki along with the link.
^^I am^^
:/
Sorry. It’s a “3-yr” gig, not 1.
When the conversation gets uncomfortable to you, why participate in it? I mean, we should only listen when our perspectives are being validated by what we are hearing, amirite Servii?
So, if you don't like what people are saying, burn the whole conversation to the ground? Sounds like what you are saying is that there's no point in having all your millennial privilege if you're just going to waste it letting people yak on and on about things you don't like.
#controlledconversation
The issue is not that they don't want to do their job, it's that they think that the users of this forum are no longer capable of maintaining any sense of decorum. We all know that you can't name people on here, or attack anyone, let alone junior scholars, and yet.
If you sign up for something thinking that you're moderating the discussions of a bunch of generally reasonable, well-educated, well-read, critical thinking adults, but then find yourself constantly cleaning up when a bunch of jackass babies are mad that they didn't get a job so they lash out at everyone who did get a job, I can understand not wanting to continue and maybe thinking that this no longer works.
I get that the market is bad, I get that things suck, but you are not *entitled* to anything, not a job, nothing. If you aren't happy with your (lack of) success on the job market, find another path. You have literally ALL of the skills required to identify your strengths and weaknesses, research jobs that you might be well-suited for, tailor yourself for various fields, and argue your case. You don't know how to do that? There's a whole world of the Internet at your disposal, let alone your colleagues, things like the Legion Project or whatever through Paideia, etc. You are responsible for the shutting down of this forum, not the Servii.
I say all of this as a first-time reader of this blog (this year, not just this day), an ABD on the market who has had plenty of interviews but no offers, as someone who's going into the summer without a job or any prospects for one. I can separate my own "misfortune", which comes on the back of my own series of decisions to go to graduate school, from the success that others have had (I'm *happy* when people get jobs, because I realize that they didn't get it OVER me, they didn't STEAL anything from me). I know it probably gets worse (your perspective) when you've been unemployed or in contingent positions for years, but that is literally your own decision. Why is someone who gets a job responsible for you not getting one?
^^ when i started to draw pentagrams in kindergarden, my teachers took away my crayons.
now i'm all better!
@11:57AM: Wait, so women and minorities are hired because of their being observably women or minorities and are thus desired by administrators to further the Unqualified Good of DIVERSITY which disparately impacts stale-pale-males, but when anyone else also notices that they are women and minorities then that's sexist and racist? How are we doing anything different from the administrators who hired them?
I predict the usual FV response:
"It's people like you who are the problem with Classics, I feel sorry for you. Women and minorities are so persecuted, as anyone can see from the blatant transfer of wealth, power, and prestige to white men that is continually taking place and being trumpeted by all of academia and the media. Now excuse me while I go and continue to evaluate job candidates on the basis of not being white or male, the two greatest plagues on humanity."
Hand over moderation to volunteers who want to do it. There's no reason to shut FV down because the Servii don't like the tone that the conversations here have taken on. I don't think that changing the platform will do anything to change the content of the discussion, so creating something new doesn't seem feasible.
I get small-time revenge on the diversity-humpers by leaving the toilet seat up in the department bathroom so that ladies have to put it down themselves when they go pee. MCGA!
Let this place die. It's a cesspool. Those protesting its demise are demonstrating exactly why it shouldn't exist anymore (or at least why we can't expect Servius to continue moderating it).
I'm sorry the idiots have ruined this place. There used to be good information here.
Two conversations that I loved from this year: the one about how to handle snow-cancelled SCS travel (which helped shape my email to a SC in the aftermath of a flight cancellation), and the one about negotiation strategies for women (which sadly was not of much use this year since I didn't end up with any negotiable offers, but was nevertheless great to read).
Maybe I'm moving through the 'stages of grief' faster than others here, but I'm very seriously thinking about whether I have it in me to start an FV 2.0.
The obvious consequence of shutting down FV are either of two: a) Some new FV-type place arises, probably without the sort of concern and oversight to prevent, e.g., the naming of junior scholars that we find here; or b) This is the end of any kind of centralized discussion of the market or even the field, and all will now spread to various wings of social media. Either would be a shame. #FViva
2:23, there is a third possibility, which is nasty comments being left on the wiki itself. Just think about what will happen when some ABD gets a really big job. So we'll probably be playing whack-a-mole over there (or, at least, those of us with some sense of decency).
2:23-- it is 2.11 here again. I really don't think those are the only two options. There are a lot of us here who want something to continue, why _can't_ there be a new centralized space that springs up? I mean, obviously everyone needs a few days to process and think about this, but it seems pretty doom-and-gloom to think that the people responsible for more that 3000 posts here can't get themselves together and, you know, start a new alternative. Maybe even one with a better and more transparent moderation system than here. It is not like the bar to entry is that hight.
@2:33 — But that very prospect (of a new centralized space springing up) is the first of the two I (2:23) mentioned. I'm just bearish on the notion that such a space would be MORE rather than LESS aggressive moderated. That is, the Servii are shutting this down because it's too negative, but I expect any successor would be only more so, as it seems THAT is where the energy is in our present space.
@ 2:26,
I agree. FV functions as a 'safety valve' that serves to keep the nastiness confined. At its best, FV is a wonderful source of information and dialogue, at its worst its a a wonderful source of information and dialogue that also has a few folks naming names and lashing out at those perceived to be unqualified for the jobs that they received.
Even at its worst, it's rather healthy to have a discussion about our own preconceived idea of what constitutes a 'qualified' applicant. Even though people can be cruel here, more people gain a better understanding of the fickleness of it all and what factors, if any determinate ones exist, help to get one employed.
I've been on here multiple times a day this year, and the ONLY times that names were named explicitly were of tenured folk. At times, initials were used, which doesn't always reveal who the person is, and rarely odd nick-names were used that only a very, very select few here knew to whom it referred (e.g., 'Typewriter McBowtie'.. how the hell is anyone supposed to deduce who that is supposed to be ?).
If names are named of senior faculty, retired faculty, or public figures that SHOULD NOT matter. I admit that often the attacks against junior PhDs or ABDs were very thinly veiled, and it was clear to whom comments referred, but that's why moderators exist: to delete posts that violate the rules.
I agree that it sucks that the frequency of "delete worthy" posts have been higher than they should be and that they clearly are more frequent than Servii anticipated, but FV serves too great a function to all of us just to trash it on account a few bad apples.
...As pointed out above, if FV goes down something else WILL take its place. And it assuredly will (as a step to prevent a similar shutdown) be less moderated, if moderated at all.
If Servii desire to do what's best, don't close down the one forum that exists and that *IS* moderated.
Much like Saddam, Qaddafi, and Mubarak may have been bad, they were known 'bads' and removal of something bad often results in something replacing it that is far worse.
I, for one, do no want to see what new blog will arise if FV goes away. It will be far worse than anything we have now... far worse.
Leave FV (junior Classicist's safety valve) open!!!
Waiting for the first one of you to cry about your free speech rights being stamped on.
This conversation feels like a joke: "how many classicists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
I don't read Fama religiously, but regularly and I'm honestly not sure what all this is about...has the level of discourse really been that much worse than in previous years? This is my third year on the market/on FV and it seems about the same. Admittedly, I missed some now-deleted posts, but the threads I read didn't seem noticeably more vitriolic than earlier years.
Not that it seems likely to matter, but I'm adding my voice to those protesting the demise of this forum. Over the years, I've gotten some good, helpful information and advice and some kind commiseration from fellow FV-ers. At the very least, it's been a constant reminder that I'm not alone, that others go through multiple interviews/campus visits with no offers, and it's not just me who has failed in some unidentifiable way. Sure, there have been jackasses at times, but trolls lurk in every corner of the internet. I hope FV continues here or else rises, phoenix-like, from the ashes in some other venue.
Get a postdoc and marry someone *famous*. That's the rule.
Yeah, let's shut down the one outlet people have for their misery. I get it, we are supposed to rise above, but reality bites right now. SO MANY OF US HAVE NO JOBS OR JOB PROSPECTS! So a few people have been indecent....The rest of us have benefited from the inside scoop on jobs, etc. I.e. I didn't have to keep hope up for months and months because of this blog: I didn't get the job. I can and have to move on. But the SC's wouldn't have contacted me until June. This is about the only bright/dark spot I have. Sure, there are racist, homophobic, etc. people here but that is everywhere. I need this place.
From total bumble USA, please,
Loser without a job and with a Classics PhD,
me
@12:30am, they are keeping the wiki up, which is where all the job stuff gets posted.
Colgate hire finally announced on Wiki.
Looks like a top-notch hire, and though I lost out to him, I can acknowledge that he’s surely a great choice. Congrats.
@1:36,
Now that’s a CV that should have been the Princeton/Chicago here. Impressive has hell!! Man.. every line of it has me impressed. I don’t think anyone has ANY ground to grumble here on FV over this. Congrats to Colgate for getting such an impressive guy.
On a side note, I feel like not even bothering applying for jobs now after seeing his pedigree and experience. Wow. Just, wow.
@1:42,
Just his education pedigree makes me toss my hands up and quit. I didn’t think folks with that blind of background actually existed in the real world, but only in our worst nightmares as state school plebs. Yikes.
Kind of ^^^
the "pedigree" mood swings in here are something to behold
@3:23.
It’s always the same. Either non-Ivies are jealous of Ivy folks and bash them as privileged douches or non-Ivies are jealous of Ivy folks and are able to be adults about it (as above posters have been). I am a non-Ivy person who, while proud of my work and accomplishments at a top-10 school, will always be jealous of those with an Ivy pedigree. I don’t let it define me or others, but I would be lying if I said that I’m not jealous. Others here aren’t quite capable of acknowledging that and just lash out at those from Ivies, but it’s always the same root: jealousy.
The bashing of Cincinnati folks here is, however, an interesting one. Hard to tell if it derives from Ivy folk who are mad that a “lesser” PhD bested them or something else.
I believe it's something to do with lunches too.
@3:52, well said!
Colgate hire was a finalist for the ISAW position, but didn't get the offer. Hard to beat a candidate like that for a Greek history job.
Chad Chaddington III from and Ivy got a job? Oh bravo, I say, good show! MCGA!
ivy-for-lifer here, looking at adjuncting next year. i dunno why people have an inferiority complex - if you are out-publishing ivy league folks, you are better than they are at being an academic. why feel bad about a lack of 'pedigree'? it certainly hasn't gotten some of us very far....
3:52, I guess the tertium quid would be... not ....being.... jealous.... of.... Ivy people? By Jove, I think he's got it!
Could the Servii start a completely new thread/comment section (no idea what the various parts of the blog, with their own comments, are called) dedicated to the fact that FV is going to be closed, and how a new FV could be better? It is annoying for that discussion to be interrupted by all of these other comments. Thank you.
12:16, terribly sorry to clog up your discussion with silly job stuff. A thousand apologies.
What is needed, whether it's a FV saved from the brink or a different site, is a forum that either has each post screened before going up, or one that requires people to be registered (anonymously, of course) and use any name they want, which then gives the moderators the ability to suspend for a period (or permanently) those who violate the rules by naming names or who troll. This year has proven that there are too many people incapable of showing basic respect for others, and any other site will be even worse UNLESS its moderators are empowered to do more than just delete posts after the damage has been done. (I would be curious to know if the Servii considered switching over to either system but decided against it.)
I thought The Discipline was supposed to come up with a solution for a kinder, gentler new online platform. The same Discipline that hasn't been able to come up with any solutions to the collapse of the job market even though it's had a decade.
@1:00:
A system like the one you describe would not work because it would require moderators to be relative active to approve new posts, especially when people are commenting relatively frequently.
Is anyone aware of entities similar to FV in other fields? If such things exist it might be a good idea to see if such setups are viable.
@1.03: creating a new web platform is presumably much easier that confronting wide-scale structural issues in higher education?
Tender fragile speech-policing and pearl-clutching aside, has anyone considered just... tolerating the bullshit on this site? Like, reading the useful bits and not letting the rest bother you? Why is that not the solution? And while we're at it: why, of all the problems in the world, is this the one you're getting worked up over in the first place? Are you that bored?
I am honestly at a point where I'd be fine if this entire field of racist and bigoted white men and women just collapsed into oblivion.
Yep, literally everyone in the field is a racist. Just throw the whole thing out, makes perfect sense! One would think that people as smart as the types who generally populate classics are capable of nuanced thinking, then you read comments like 8:51 and it makes you wonder.
Did the ISAW history/archeology job go to a current Cincinnati prof?
Crooked Cincinnati eats our lunch once more!
Good luck to everyone presenting at CAMWS!
@ 1:00 That would good except for the part about every post being moderated. But the ability to block a persistent abuser would help. And then we could also see that it's the same MCGAsshole over and over again.
@ 1:13 Poli Sci Rumors is a (frightening) example.
What a classy rejection form email from Colgate... nice to see you think I'm a Professor already. Why not just send emails without titles, rather than reminding us of the job titles we do *not* have?
Wait are you serious? I got a nice email from Bill Stull, the department chair, that was very obviously personalized (it mentioned stuff I said in my interview). And I only did an SCS interview, no campus visit. I'd call my experience with Colgate one of the nicer I've had.
I think the poster above refers to the generic email that all applicants got. It's an unfortunate oversight, but good on them for caring about the actual, human interaction that they had with you, 12:46! Most schools/SCs don't include feedback on your answers, which I can imagine is quite valuable or at least comforting to know that they did hear you, but were looking for something else.
FV on Eidolon today
I got a generic rejection after an on-campus interview for a t-t job this year. It said "we enjoyed meeting you during your interviews" or something and then entered into the usual "we had a lot of strong applicants" etc. It was really disappointing.
Yes, a nice letter from Colgate. But then, and this always seems to happen, I get another letter from Colgate sent by the departmental secretary (I too was only a long-list candidate). Two nice rejection emails, but also two reminders that I was rejected. could be worse; I once received three rejections from a job, just to make sure that I knew that I wasn't going to be hired.
Well, I could be wrong, but based on that Eidolon piece's letting those outside of our field know about FV I expect that the number of trolls and other deplorable sorts around here is about to shoot up. If only Eidolon's editor were someone who understands how the internet works, or how virulent its nastiest participants can be when given anonymity. Nice going...
"Does anybody know if the passage about beams in your eye/motes in your neighbors has been translated into Greek or Latin?"
That passage was written in koine Greek...
1:00 a.m. here. Of course I realize that having moderators approve each post is not ideal -- I simply threw it out there because it is a viable possibility. The best option is to switch over to a regular internet forum where one has to be registered, but can still post anonymously (using a made-up name, e.g. Armpit Goat). A benefit of this system is that anyone can start a thread -- so, e.g., those of us who don't care about the Colgate rejection letter don't have to bother reading about it. The Chronicle of Higher Education has such forums, and from my occasional visits they appear to work fine. The only possible downside I can think of is that the moderator(s) would probably have the ability to identify people by their hidden registration info, unless those people took the precaution of registering with an unidentifiable e-mail address (which, thanks to Gmail, is easy to get). And the best thing is that the moderators could ban trolls and ban or suspend those who attack defenseless colleagues.
Servii, is this system possible, and would you be willing to take on transitioning to it? I trust your judgment in such matters.
I wondered how long it would be until FV got its own piece on Eidolon. Great article that ultimately contributes nothing!
The article on Sententiae Antiquae was better, in terms of its engagement with FV as a forum.
A note from the Servii about FV 2.0 or whatever comes next: We want to clarify a bit about our decision to shutter this incarnation of FV-- we've created a new section of the blog, following the requests of some users. We have posted some more information about our thought process there, for those who are interested in following 2:11PM and others' lead in thinking of alternatives. It would make things less confusing if people would use that post and comment thread to discuss specifics of future options.
Any word on what's going on at FSU with Roman archaeology?
@4:48 -- offer was rejected by first candidate; second candidate is fighting through extended negotiations for a (very well-qualified) spousal hire.
ANOTHER rejected offer? I did not know how common it was for T-T positions to go to the second or third choice candidate. Helpful in moving forward.
Its hard to believe with so many candidates with amazing CVs desperate for jobs, so many offers go to so few.
@ 10:09
Academia is always all-or-nothing. The same people probably got offers to 10 or 11 different PhD programs, and landed multiple outside fellowships while they were there. If academia wants what you're selling, then they all want it.
I agree with @1:36 AM. It's not unlike a draft pick in sports: everyone has worked very hard for a long time just to be considered, but even in a pool of such talented and qualified people, there are usually a few prospects highly desirable to every team. Other draft picks further down the line are used to shore up potential problem areas (an additional winger or running back might equate to, say, a specialist in Greek Comedy or Latin Epic if the hiring department feels those specialties aren't covered well enough by existing faculty). It's not a perfect parallel, but it isn't dissimilar either. Maybe one department feels you fit a niche it needs and that's great for you, now you're on the team. If two or three teams want you, it makes sense that a lot of other teams would too.
On the closing of FV. Good riddance.
My spouse told me to stop looking at FV when I was on job-market, and it did wonders for my self-confidence; also helped get my head out of my a**. One less voyeuristic venue on the internet! Think of how much time we'll all save now!
If you want advice on any kind of matter related to academia, use chronicle.com forums: v. smart and professional folks, minimal trolling; in general great community for advice.
It used to be that words couldn't hurt anything.
Now, all the snowflakes melt when people use language around them.
Why was Ashland University removed from the Jobs Wiki in the first place? What manner of mischief...
Should one be suspicious of a school that offers a T-T job, but that their tenure is awarded based on teaching and mentoring and you're re-reviewed every five years. Is this rather normal for SLAC tenure practices?
And with one fell swoop, the comments slow to a trickle. Atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
That seems to have been the goal. The Servii are conflicted as to how to deal with what they perceive as increasing nastiness in the comments here, but instead of handing the reins off to volunteers who are able to be more engaged in the conversation, they simply decide to kill FV and let "the discipline" figure it out. We've seen how woefully bad the discipline is at self-reflection and doing much of anything to address problems, so I'm pretty sure I have an idea about how that will go.
^ can you elaborate? (I did not go to CAMWS)
Why not just talk about the talk that was inappropriate, without slinging accusations about individuals? The entire panel was weird, and I think that would be fair game, but now it's wrapped up in this pointed accusation about one person and forecloses the conversation.
@2:09pm, it's people like you, who fail to do your own research and dig into this critical issue, that would allow our field to legitimize sexual predators. Unlike "Daddy Cruel" a.k.a. Holt Parker, whom no one ever suspected, the (senior) scholar in question has a public position on pederasty, which has directly affected his scholarship. He has an agenda. This BMCR debate nicely sums up what's at stake for the ignorant: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-11-03.html
Why aren't we talking about this more? Why are we all *hush hush*?
Whoa. NAMBLA.
How the hell is a NAMBLA person mainstream in a public university?
#DTS.
@2:09pm here, I didn't know all of that! I am aware of this person and have been (an audience member) in panels where he has made quite a nuisance of himself, I just thought that people's annoyance with his personality (which I, too, am annoyed with) led to those kinds of claims. Eek. I don't think that it's "failure to do research" that allows bad actors to thrive, you can't exactly spend your time looking up every person in the field, but I get the point in this case, that I stepped in to shut down more slandering of fellow scholars (which is what led to the problems brought up about this blog) without knowing the full story (whether or not he himself is a predator, we obviously can't say).
Search for this scholar's name on YouTube and you'll find a talk relevant to this discussion that he gave at the APA several years ago.
11:33 a.m. wrote: "The Servii are conflicted as to how to deal with what they perceive as increasing nastiness in the comments here..." Others have expressed similar skepticism, or outright denied this year's trend. If people have only been on F.V. for a year or two they lack the historical perspective to have a valid opinion on the matter (and as people who study a historical period should have some self-awareness of this); if they have been on F.V. for a longer time and are unaware of this then the most charitable conclusion I can reach is that they do not check in often enough to have read the nastier posts before they were taken down.
I have been on F.V. since pretty soon after it began -- so soon that it was still in the days when it was common to use nicknames instead of being "Anonymous [Hour:Minute]," with mine being The Old Oligarch. If that doesn't give you an idea of how long I have been around in these parts, I'll share something else: on the wiki-counter I am the one who right after the option "I'm a lurker" added the joke option "I'm so committed to the Lurker's Code that I refuse to respond even to this." (Someone rather impressively found a way to make my joke even LESS funny by inserting a parenthetical, so that it now reads "I'm so committed to the Lurker's Code (actually, our code is more like guidelines) that I refuse to respond even to this," but I never cared enough to change it back.) If you take the time to go back and check, you will see that's been there since the Bush #43 administration.
All of which is to say that if I'm the Old Oligarch AND the one who posted the longest surviving "joke" on the wiki I am quite qualified to discuss the trajectory of nastiness around here. And the Servii are 100% right about this year being considerably worse than other years, with some exceptionally unfair attacks on untenured members of our field, despite the rules against do so being crystal clear.
As for the people out there who do not see a problem... I hope it is because they simply missed the offending posts (which were usually deleted within a half day or so), and not because they actually read all of the personal attacks on junior academics' physical presentation, mental condition, ethnicity, etc., not to mention their (lack of) scholarship, and thought that there was nothing wrong with it. The former would reflect an admirable ability to stay off F.V. for long stretches of time, the latter would reflect something much worse.
Okay, now let's get back to attacking that boy love-loving senior faculty member .
@4:13,
I can’t say that I was present enough to have read all deleted posts before they were deleted, but I do feel that not all were deserving of deletion. If someone gets a T-T job that, at first glance, seems to be lackluster, I feel that it is a worthwhile discussion to have about what is a “deserving” C.V., or what standards SCs tend to apply to varying candidates. Just because a poster feels someone does not deserve a job is no reason to avoid addressing folks’ concerns about the frailty of the job market.
For every nasty post about junior colleagues, there are likely handfuls of others thinking the same thing but afraid to ask.
yeah, there were some give-me-a-break hires this year. time to silence the boy who shouts 'the emperor has no clothes'!
Did anyone else notice the awful and rather distasteful pun that is one of the titles of another paper in the CAMWS panel with Professor NAMBLA?
@2:47 you ask "@2:09pm, it's people like you, who fail to do your own research and dig into this critical issue, that would allow our field to legitimize sexual predators. Unlike "Daddy Cruel" a.k.a. Holt Parker, whom no one ever suspected, the (senior) scholar in question has a public position on pederasty, which has directly affected his scholarship. He has an agenda. This BMCR debate nicely sums up what's at stake for the ignorant: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-11-03.html
Why aren't we talking about this more? Why are we all *hush hush*?"
I can tell you that I said a LOT less than you just did on this very forum not a month ago, and had my response deleted by the Servii in less than a day. #complicit
A UNC ancient art historian (emeritus?) was mentioned on here a few weeks ago: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article139177388.html
Did not hear about the UCLA case. Link?
The UCLA professor:
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/oct/03/local/me-prof3
http://dailybruin.com/2003/10/05/professor-charged-with-porn-di/
^prominent Ciceronian and it wasn’t child porn but solicitation of a child that sent UCLA to jail. But he still publishes Green and Yellows and we still buy them.
Yeah I remember using one of his commentaries when I took a Cicero class for my MA ~6 years ago. I also remember running across a review article in a not particularly obscure journal by this person from just a couple years ago.
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