@5:27 Unclear writing on my part, sorry. The ‘naked contempt’ applied to the person’s whole comment, not the use of ‘transgendered’ alone. Imagine a para break after ‘“Transgender”, not “transgendered”.’
I don’t see anything that’s really classified as “contempt.” Someone having a point of view different than yours does not warrant your attack on them. You’ve failed to see his/her esenstial point and, instead, opted to just dismiss them entirely rather than try to understand their view.
You might not classify it as "contempt," but I do (I am not the previous commenter). I took it as a statement that scholarship by anyone who is not a white male is likely to be praised because of their "otherness." The more “other,” the higher the praise will be, with the subtext that it will be undeserved praise. Whether that last part is true is, I suppose, up for debate, but something about their quick grouping of marginalized "types" by name (one of which was offensive) led me to suspect that s/he views "diversity" as absurd. Coupled with the “transgendered” typo, I feel pretty confident saying that this person does not spend a lot of time thinking or caring about underrepresented groups, but instead casually lumps them all into one category: “different.” Maybe that wasn’t the spirit of the comment, but that’s how it came across to me.
None of this is to say that I think any particular woman’s translation is better or even good (I might even agree that it isn’t helpful to highlight gender in this way). But I do think this sort of disingenuous, feigned confusion about why people call out offensive comments isn’t fooling the people you hope to fool.
Is one against diversity if they take the stance that we shouldn’t pay any attention to it? What I mean isn’t that having diversity is a bad thing, but instead that the world would be a better place if we followed MLK’s idea of not judging a man by the color of his skin, but the content of his character. Which, at its core, is calling for color blindness and has the hopes that one day people won’t care about race. So, to say that we shouldn’t pay attention to diversity (as I mean it) is that we shouldn’t continually categorize folks and place value in them simply on account of their “otheness” by only in them if they, personally, deserve it.
I understand that 99% of folks fighting for diversity are good people and mean no harm, but I cannot help but feel that they are making it all the more difficult to ever reach that MLK ‘dream’ state where we look right past one’s category. If we place so much emphasis on ensuring that x number of blacks, whites, Asians, women, LGBT folks, etc.. are present everywhere all that we’re doing is being even more divisive of different groups by creating a false comfort in seeing ‘a little bit of every sub-group everywhere.’
IMO, it’s far better to just aim to treat all people decently, never exclude anyone on account of race/religion/sex/gender, etc.. and stop acting as if a person of x ethnicity has some kind of special knowledge that they can impart on folks of y ethnicity. Thinking that a black man, just because he is black, can offer anything to a committee (or whatever) simply because he has more pigment in his skin, is racist; it’s not meant to be by those who hold that feeling, but it still is. Thinking that having a diverse group of folks all working together is better simply because they all are different ethnicities is passive racism which is dangerously masquerading as being some kind of social betterment ethic.
Here's another King statement, from the sanitation workers' protest in 1968: "“When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the black community, they call it a social problem. When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the white community, they call it a depression.”
King's views were much more complex and nuanced than one passage from one 1963 speech ("...that my four little children will one day...") can capture. His perspectives also evolved over time. Defining the 1963 statement as one that "at its core is calling for color blindness" is a real oversimplification and in fact I would argue a misrepresentation, in light of his larger corpus.
Well, whatever he was calling for, by definition economic depressions are determined by the level of economic activity, not employment level. But I guess some poetic license can be granted.
So-called 'color-blindness' is most often an excuse made by those who do not recognise that everyone's (yes, I mean everyone) judgment is clouded by implicit bias. If you are unwilling to admit the structural inequities that exist, then you simply have not earned the right to speak on this topic.
Yes, there is a sense in which we should all be color-blind (MLK said so), but if you're going to waste your time saying so BEFORE saying everything else that he said, then you might as well be living in Cloud cuckoo land. There are real problems in the real world.
I think 10.16 above is wrong, but he's explained his position and reasoning in a way that deserves a response. (And I think it's probably "he" instead of "she," although you do find some women--mostly younger ones--making this sort of comment too.)
It's true that no one has special insight simply because s/he has "extra pigment" and/or "a vagina." But they do have special experience as a result of being black or female in a world that treats black people and women differently from the white male norm -- which in turn results in special insight (though granted, more or less depending on the individual). If I'm trying to structure a department that will be welcoming to people of all colors and genders, then I want access to that experience and insight so that I can better reach my goals. What is it like for my black first-years in a Greek Civ class that is otherwise almost all white and focuses on writers that the local neo-nazis have (absurdly) claimed are identified with "white european culture"? What is is like for my female colleagues to be in a profession that encourages them to defer having and raising children? There will be problems and issues and possible solutions that I'm not going to see on my own, in the absence of these experiences and perspectives.
And on the Wilson translation -- no one has claimed that it's special simply because the author "has lady parts" (as some commentators here have repeatedly said). The claim is that it does a better job translating Homeric perspectives on gender (and class), in part because this translator's own experience has given her a different perspective than gives her more insight on certain issues and passages than the other current translators, all men. I have only read bits of the translation, so I can't say whether on the whole it is good. But different translators read a work differently, and that difference will be related to their own experiences, which incorporate issues such as gender, race, and class.
As a Classicist of Arabic descent I am surely of a minority of those in the field and I have most likely been through unique experiences in the world. Let me say, however, that I do not want my ‘Arabness’ to define or to categorize me and I shudder at the thought that (as awful as the current job market happens to be) I may be offered a job or receive an ‘edge’ simply because I may not be seen as a standard white male. If and when I ever get offered a T-T job, I want it to be 100% based on my merit and potential. I never want my ethnicity to factor into a SC’s decision making process. To think that a SC may say “well, we are a 100% white Dept and all things being equal between our top 3 choices, this guy is Arabic, so, let’s take him” makes my stomach turn.
I have to agree with the above poster who made the point that it is another form of racism. It makes me feel that I, simply because of my ethnicity, can provide something to the Dept that a white person cannot. That’s bullshit. I think that this a white person’s fantasy to think that every ‘other’ is so capable of providing insight and perspective to their white world. It’s a fetishization of non-white people, and IS a form of racism. Can anyone give a CONCRETE example of how having a POC in a dept makes a difference aside from making all the white peoples feel good? No, you can’t, because it’s all delusion.
White peop, please, stop looking st non-white people as prizes to be had and as being so different from you (we grew up in the same communities, went to same schools, are a part of the same broader culture) that we are all commodities to be collected.
@9:43. I think it is brave of you to identify yourself even as much as you have. I am going to be slightly more anonymous but I also fall outside of the norms of the Classics professoriat. I have fears in the opposite direction of yours. I worry sometimes that the narrative you identify is powerful, "we are an all white department, so we should try to hire a faculty member that can speak to diverse communities" and that such thinking will have other negative consequences in terms of workload, expectation, and balance. I understand that he market is bad and junior faculty are being asked to take on more and more work for less and less (either in terms of pay, job security, or both), but I feel like the the burden of decolonizing and diversifying the field (or the major, institutionally)is falling on junior faculty, regardless of any group identification they might express. We are always doing things (teaching, committee work, advising) for which we are not specifically trained, but the fact that students from backgrounds similar to mine might find me relatable does not mean that I have the skills to reach out to students from others. It also doesn't mean that I can dissolve a centuries-long relationship between racism, classism, or imperialism and the classical tradition.
I can’t say that I speak for all non-white candidates, but my choice of which of those institutions would see the demographics of the Dept not factor at all.
What I tend to do when I apply to a job is look through the sitting faculty, see where their PhDs are all from as a rough guide of my chances. Some, like Holy Cross (a job that was out this year) have something like 7/12 faculty all from Harvard, so there seems to be factors at play there. Others, will have none from a top 20 school, so myself being from a top-10 would fear that the SC holds worries that I may not be committed to their institution and will jump ship at first opportunity.
When looking through a Dept’s faculty, I never really notice race/gender numbers unless something is very unusual (all white men wouldn’t even make me take notice, since it’s so typical).
For me, I would make the choice between two offers based on the school’s proximity to my home state, the school’s respective acceptance rate for undergrads (the more selective the better), the closeness to a major city (not for diversity reasons as much as for reasons of having things to do, etc..), and the gut feeling about what school felt the best fit during the campus visit.
The Dept’s diversity would never be an issue for me. If I had to answer your question more directly, meaning that let’s say every factor I’ve mentioned here were completely equal, and all that was left was for me to make a decision based on the sitting faculty’s demographics, I would prefer the all white male Dept. Why? Because I would know that I was not a part of some kind of ethnic charity system that seeks to have “one of each” but that I really must be the best candidate of a Dept full of older white men invited me to be among them.
Again, we’re all individuals and I’m sure that many other non-white candidates would have a very different response than this. Just remember, there’s no reason to think that a Dept couldn’t get MORE diversity from a white, straight, male than a black, female, LGBT candidate. If the latter grew up in Greenwich Village, they very likely may have faced hardly any adversity, whereas the white, straight, male may have been a foster system child who grew up struggling their whole life in a rural Oklahoma trailer park, with little opportunity or chance to thrive. I know it’s never meant to be racist to think that all minorities face oppression or hardship, but it is in a way insulting and marginalizing to think that we all have undergone life situations worse than whites have.
As a male POC, I always find the hand-wringing over whether or not Classics should aim to be more inclusive and bring diversity of multiple kinds to Classics departments rather silly. One would think that the answer is a resounding yes, but as seen here in the comments, apparently this is controversial for some people. It isn't simply, "hey let's hire the black/latin/asian person because we don't have any." As 8:23 has pointed out, people who come from backgrounds that fall outside the default norm of white male bring to bear their own unique lived experiences to their doctoral training and teaching experience.
Moreover, the demographics of those who attend university will only become more diverse, and if you think that Classics can survive without figuring out how to show what the discipline has to offer students from a variety of backgrounds, you have another thing coming. I know a lot of people feel like the onus to make changes should not be on the women and POC in the field, but I personally have no problem with things like outreach, advising, etc.
As another non-white Classics person: I agree with 11.40 that there is often a "fetishization" of non-white people both in culture generally, but also specifically in the academy, which I find at best uncomfortable. I also see the point of 11.39, that the labor of responding to 'diversity concerns' often falls on people who fall at the normative margins of the field. But mostly, I agree with 12.24.
I know that this is not true for all non-white people, but I personally did grow up in a markedly different 'cultural sphere' of American life than most people I encounter in our discipline (with parents whose English was sufficiently poor that I translated both my and my younger siblings' parent teacher conferences, for example). And I think that the sum total of those experiences and their consequences on my academic trajectory have shaped me both as a scholar and as a teacher, although of course I recognize that my white colleagues have rich and nuanced back-stories as well.
Having taught at several institutions, (my elite PhD program as a grad student, a large public directional and a mid-range SLAC as a contingent faculty), I have had the opportunity to think about how my background informs my teaching (and my students' responses to me) in a variety of environments, and have come to recognize just how contextual these things are. But also, I have seen that in every single one of those environments, the students' backgrounds were wildly more varied than those of the people teaching them. So, yeah: things are changing, and having diverse voices in faculty meetings/ classrooms/ admin is important.
11.40, this is 9.57 again. Yes, your answer is very helpful. And I absolutely agree that there are many different measures of diversity, socio-economic status being one that is often overlooked. All of these issues of inclusion and fairness are really complicated, and cut in many different directions. They also can become more complicated as you get older, acquire more experience/bruises, and compete for higher stakes.
What do you think about 12.24's point? The courses I taught, with the possible exception of the largest (Myth), always seemed disproportionately white to me. I believe that Classics has a lot to offer everyone, but it does seem like we need to do more so that everyone realizes it. I don't think students pick courses based primarily on the instructor's race (gender, sexual orientation, etc), but I do suspect that having a diverse group of instructors would help send the message that the discipline is for everyone.
My lower-division courses at a public urban uni are upwards of 80% POC. But those POC see nothing but wypipo teaching Classics... So less than 10% of our major seniors are POC -- an unfortunate failure of retention.
THIS is why we need more POC in teaching positions:
Because our target demographic deserves to learn from people who don't always look like the cops who shoot them to death for no reason.
Your comments are ignorant and dangerous. You assume that black undergrads are incapable of seeing whites as anything but ruthless savages that seek to kill them all, you assume that black undergrads are so weak-minded that they will only respond to or listen to other black peoples.
(Also, your use of “wypipo” as a cute way to say “white people” is something out of a 1940s racist cartoon)
I'm a female POC, and I might not have used the same exact words, but I generally agree with 3:58.
Diversity, representation, and seeing people that look like you in positions of authority matter. I have countless anecdotes from students thanking me for helping them to see their own futures, just in my presence.
Hmm. I think that 3:58 is trolling. His use of “wypipo” to speak like Buckwheat is horribly tone deaf and racist. 3:58 is only on here stirring up trouble because he’s upset that Roseanne just got cancelled.
I'll echo the earlier sentiment from 5:40pm. While I wouldn't characterize the state of affairs in the same fashion as 3:58pm, they are generally correct. Representation, while not a panacea for the malaise that affects the field and the type of student it attracts, most certainly does matter. Way back when I was an undergrad all of my Classics professors were white and while this did not necessarily bother me since they were all excellent instructors, mentors, and good people, it was something of which I was quite aware. Likewise, I was always aware that even at my super-diverse undergrad institution, I was among only a handful of POC in the Classics courses beyond the standard myth or archaeology surveys; in the advanced language courses I was always the only one.
Now, this obviously did not deter me from studying Classics all the way through the PhD and then making a career of it, but I can certainly see how someone who was a POC and say, a first-generation college student from a working-class background might be drawn to other disciplines. These may not be super-diverse themselves in terms of faculty, but are certainly more diverse than Classics and make a big effort with outreach, mentoring, and other advising and support beyond the classroom.
If you are "a first-generation college student from a working-class background" then maybe you SHOULD be "drawn to other disciplines." Yes, of course, a classics degree can make one look good to law school admissions officers, yada yada yada, but the fact is that there are majors that make more sense for someone trying to have a much better standard of living than he/she had growing up. Let the working-class student's kids become classics majors 20 years from now, when they will have that luxury thanks to their father/mother being pre-law or studying accounting, or whatever.
yeah, and way to devalue the humanities, @7:24. Do you really think a classics major has less to offer than some bogus business or communications major? Sure, it's probably a good idea for every student to have a hefty minor that offers some immediate commercial payoff, maybe some statistics, accounting, or computer science. But then all the STEM people should be taking classics too.
Yeah, I knew I would get some shoot-from-the-hip dumbass response. If I am saying that I want people to enter a higher socio-economic class I am not being classist: to be classist I would have to be saying that I want people in the lower classes to stay right where they are, and would almost certainly believe that they are to blame for being in their situation.
Okay, I'll make the assumption that ME offers a more immediate payoff than Classics, especially for students without connections. But a Classics major with some sort of "practical" minor and some good internships is, I would guess, not that far behind. And ten years down the road, when the engineers all have to become managers in order to advance in their careers, the person with some humanities training may well be doing better financially, as well as having a richer intellectual life.
And again, why shouldn't all the MEs, and EEs, and ChemEs, and so on, all be taking classics minors and populating higher-level courses?
@8:43 are you aware of the course requirements for B.S. degrees in engineering fields? Couple that with distribution requirements and that will help explain why you don't see a ton of STEM majors in upper level Classics courses
I also constantly hear this argument about pay 'leveling out' over time and it overlooks something massive: retirement accounts. Being able to put in a ton of money right off the bat when you are 23-24 makes a massive difference over time compared to putting that same amount in starting at 33-34
@7:24: you are classist not because of your magnanimous willingness to see the unwashed masses rise above their station. You are classist because for some reason you think that the unwashed masses cannot profit from a liberal arts education the same way that people of the right sort do.
Did none of you here poo-pooing students selecting Classics over STEM ever think that some kids can double major? At my current university (elite public university on the East Coast) most of the undergrads who major in Classics or archaeology or whatever couple it with something like Computer Science or some other STEM major. You'd think that this is what we want to push, since it allows Classics to thrive but also gives the more immediate payoff after graduation. Most importantly, it hopefully helps accomplish what university is intended to do, i.e. produce thoughtful, well-rounded human beings. I myself started out intending to pursue Computer Science and let me tell you, everyone I know who did is now exactly the worst sort of master-of-the-universe tech bro scumbag you hear tell of slithering about in Silicon Valley.
8:43 here. What 9:48 said. And @8:49, I also have an undergraduate double major that combines humanities and STEM. If the engineering degrees at your school really don't permit any sort of humanities minor, then there is a problem with the degree requirements.
You're right about the power of compound interest. You're starting to hear that argument made in favor skipping college altogether for a trade apprenticeship or 2-year certification program that could launch a lucrative career in something like plumbing. And for some people, that's the right choice. But classics is for those people too, although maybe in a continuing education program rather than a BA degree.
Chicago actually gave the offer to their second choice- it just took a while for the offer to be formalized. They never offered it to the third choice candidate.
I've heard through the grapevine (so perhaps take this with a grain of salt) that in other humanities disciplines Chicago pays assistant profs surprisingly poorly (like ~$50k). Is that true in Classics too?
I would hope that a school dripping in as much money as Chicago would pay more than $50k to assistant profs (even notorious abusers like Arizona pay their assistant profs. at least $60k). Then again, the administration at UChicago consists of genuinely evil greedheads who have more interest in gentrifying and colonizing Hyde Park, so that's probably where the money goes.
5:16, no, that is not true. $50k was about the starting salary for an assistant professor in the humanities at Chicago fifteen years ago. For a floor, you can consider that their SOF pays $70k. Chicago faculty salaries are among the highest in the country, although of course a lot of the average comes from handsomely-paid stars and b-school types. It's possible that they lowball new hires and people who don't understand that you are supposed to negotiate get screwed as a result.
"The Dept’s diversity would never be an issue for me. If I had to answer your question more directly, meaning that let’s say every factor I’ve mentioned here were completely equal, and all that was left was for me to make a decision based on the sitting faculty’s demographics, I would prefer the all white male Dept. Why? Because I would know that I was not a part of some kind of ethnic charity system that seeks to have “one of each” but that I really must be the best candidate of a Dept full of older white men invited me to be among them."
This is very interesting to me: my response (female POC here) would be exactly the opposite, all else being equal. A department that is already diverse in certain respects would, I should think, be *less* likely to hire entirely on the basis of demographics; whereas it would be more likely for an all-white male department to suddenly have realized their composition doesn't make for good optics, or to be facing administrative pressure, and be looking for a "diversity candidate" as a result. I have had a few interviews (not many, but more than one) in which it became uncomfortably clear that the interviewers were more interested in my identity than my scholarship. These interviews were without exception at all-white departments.
Can confirm that a friend who was hired ABD at Chicago in a humanities dept (not Classics) started on $55k. This was in the past 5 years. This person would have had excellent negotiating advice, but AFAIK didn't have any other TT offers that year.
It was a mild comment about a tenured and senior professor. Nothing was said about the quality of his work, the importance of his scholarship, his right to hold the position that he has, or anything really damning. All that was said was that he (as many folks already know) can be a difficult person to be colleagues with. Dennis Rodman was the NBA's best rebounder (still holds records) but nobody every made excuses that he was a difficult person to be a teammate with. That in no way means that Rodman was not a great player or worthy of his salry, etc..
Stop thinking (not that 3:57 was) that just because something that isn't open praise is uttered on FV means that it is some kind of vile statement.
...Ando is not the kind of guy who would get upset by this, either. Knowing him (somewhat), he'd roll his eyes and not care one iota if a commenter on FV thinks he's not very Mr. Rogers-esque; which he isn't and he doesn't care to be.
I admit that if a junior scholar were named openly here and the same thing was said then it would be deserving of deletion. But one has to look at the whole picture, since all of us are not created equal; there is a MASSIVE difference between saying something like that about a fresh PhD on the job market who has no connections anywhere and who is desperately trying to find (any) job in the field compared to a tenured, well-respected, well-known and well-cited senior prof at one of the world's best institutions.
^^ speaking of the Chicago, whoever it was that did take the job (whether it was choice #3, #4 or whatever) made a point to delete the entries on the Classics Wiki where other scholars indicated that they were offered and turned down the job.
Maybe “shady” was a bad choice, but what I was trying to convey is that the new Chicago hire is fabricating what the situation was around their hire. This is surely vain, but it also is more than that; it demonstrates that that person has no qualms about falsifying information, which may be suggestive of how they also conduct research. Therefore, I used “shady.” Not sure if there’s a more apt term somewhere in between “shady” and “vain” that better encapsulates what’s happened there.
(FWIW, why would anyone even care? I mean, even if you were their 3rd or 4th choice, you still are now a T-T prof at fucking Chicago, so what’s there to be ashamed of ?? ...I’d gladly take the job being their 28th choice)
In defense of Ando, there are many other senior folks in Classics that we all also know who are not nice or decent people, but instead see all others as inferior. I'd say that this is the norm at the super-elite institutions. That doesn't make it OK to be a dick to people, but let's not act as if Ando is unique in any of this.
I've seen many profs nastily attack nervous grad students following their (likely first) conference presentation--I'd bet most of us have seen this. The kind of profs who enjoy doing these kinds of things are also among the most disliked and difficult scholars to work with.
Some of the most arrogant and (honestly) cruel scholars are well known. Surely, many here on FV have not yet crossed paths with some of the greater offenders, but you will. Just speak to your advisors to find out if a school that you have an interview at or better a campus visit contains a particularly noteworthy asshole in the department. If your advisor is worth their appointment, they'll be very aware of who falls into this category.
If, however, your advisor is at a top school yet claims to have no idea about who is an asshole, most likely YOUR advisor is a member of 'Club Asshole.' As such, you may be doing yourself some unknown harm by having them write letters for you (though, this isn't really your fault).
Generally speaking, I wouldn't be too worried. The most egregious members of CA tend to be in the best institutions, and it's more likely than not that a junior scholar won't be grace those halls at early stage in their career (of course some very infamous examples come to mind of abuses of junior faculty at a non-elite institution that used to take in 3-4 VAPs every year). By the time you may be putting in for tenured hire at such a school, you would have had some personal experience of your own and made enough contacts, heard enough horror stories to help you make an informed decision.
Anyways... Make judgement calls for yourself. I know a scholar who is considered by most classicists as being absolutely horrible and cruel beyond words. Yet, he has always been very kind and thoughtful towards me and strikes me as a very nice man, so I have a hard time understanding the harsh criticism of others.
Speaking for myself, a "seasoned Classics" person, my eyes light up when someone asks me my opinion of him, and I don't hold back. But I would write none of my thoughts here, as it's not the place, despite the absurd arguments above that he's senior enough and would roll his eyes, etc.
I understand why you like the scholar considered cruel by others; he's been nice to you. But I hope you don't excuse or support his mistreating others because of that. That's how bullies like Weinstein got by for so long; that's how they get by in Classics, too.
As someone who spent time at Arizona, I can say that the two people there known to be abusive were nothing but nice to me. This doesn't negate the fact that they behaved liked monsters for years and treated many junior and contingent faculty like trash.
My grad school and multiple vap experiences have taught me the very real lesson that no one is obliged to like you (nor you them), and that you likely won't get along with everyone in a given department. you'll also get along superbly well with faculty and colleagues whom others do not like, for reasons personal or professional, justified or not. It's called being human, and we are entitled to be arrogant as in any other profession. if you can't handle that, i don't know what to say...
I don’t think anyone here would disagree with you. The larger issue is that our field has about a dozen or so folks that are so notoriously fucked that they happen to stand out amongst all others at the SCS.
re Chicago: There is no real evidence to believe that the person hired there did anything to edit the wiki in a shady fashion or otherwise. As I remember (and just found: June 1, 1:23), someone posted here asking something along the lines of "anyone know who got hired at Chicago? Just got an email the position was filled." The wiki was also updated (also on June 1) to read "position filled" citing an email received 6/1.
My guess, fwiw, is that this edit to the wiki was made by the individual who asked the initial question, or another person who got the same email, rather than the lucky duck who got the gig. So nothing shady, nothing even terribly interesting, except maybe not by-the-book editing. One might note, though, that whoever had initially declared the search failed also seems to have made this edit incorrectly, for whatever reason, and that deleting this info was simply removing incorrect information that arguably never should have been there. And so, similarly no particular reason to say that this is anything other than a very slow process in a school that doesn't end its term until June (maybe even mid-June).
What there is, though, is yet another smear (albeit, as of yet, anonymous) on a junior scholar and fellow job-seekier/suppliant who, just like the rest of us, is trying to make it in a horrible job market and academic world (and apparently has!). I believe the correct phrase here is congratulations and good luck.
@3:44pm and all concerned. I was the one who posted the "position filled" email notice. But I did not delete anything, nor add anything else. I followed the wiki rules. I didn't check the wiki for another day, so I'm a bit unsure as to what happened *after* I posted that.
I also posted the comment, "anyone know who got hired at Chicago? Just got an email the position was filled."
Let’s just let this go. All that is known for sure is that someone decided to delete the two offer & decline posts on the Wiki. One can never prove that the deleter was the final choice at Chicago. Though it’s highly likely such is the case (they would be the only one to have any sort of benefit from its deletion), continuing to talk about it is silly.
...We can all hold our own judgments and conclusions on this, but let’s please stop beating a dead horse here.
On another note, has anyone heard any word or rumors of what’s happening re: the Ohio University VAP??
Is the Maynooth University poster who updated the Wiki here on FV? Wondering if it was limited to UK/Euro finalists or if Americans fell into the orbit of the SC.
FWIW, the St. Andrews job seems to be ok with US applicants
6:23 here (also an American). Thanks for responding. Maynooth was was one of the last remaining applications that I had outstanding, but that's how it goes: you win some you lose some.
From what I know of the institution and from what my advisor has told me (he's from the UK and taught for some time in Ireland), Maynooth is a great place to work with a very collegial group of classical scholars. Plus, living for two years in Ireland would be quite nice.
On the subject of Chicago, I have now had it directly from an outstanding source that they got choice #2, and it simply took until late last month for the offer to be accepted. It is simply unacceptable that multiple people here claimed knowledge of what was going on, reporting that it was a failed search, they got choice #3, they got choice #4, and perhaps variants of that. I hope that those of you who posted false information will question your source(s), as well as why as you were so willing to believe the rumors in question.
I find it amusing that FV often howls "How could ANY dept. justify a failed search in this market?", yet when the rumor flew that Chicago had hired candidate #4, there was outrage over why they went to #4 instead of declaring a failed search.
As it turns out, they hired #2. But if they HAD hired #4, what on earth would have been wrong with that? There's no magic Spell of Undeservingness that kicks in as soon as an SC lists someone as #4 instead of #3.
Nobody here is a good source unless a non-anonymous Chicago faculty member pops in and clarifies the situation. Period. All that is known is that multiple folks reported being offered the job and reported turning it down. Then, silence. Then, someone reported that an offer had been accepted. Whether that person is #2-#20, who cares? Seriously. Who gives a shit?
Clearly, Chicago did not have a failed search, and we CAN NEVER KNOW FOR SURE what # on the list the final hire was. And does it matter anyway?
...the bigger and ONLY ISSUE that we should be mad about is that someone (the final hire?) deleted posts on the Wiki indicating multiple offers has been made. That’s all that matters here.
Isn't all that matters the final hire? Why is the fact that other people were offered the position at all important for you? Anyone who gives a shit about that information and is bothered by the fact that this info was taken off the site strikes me as extremely gossipy people...
I have noticed over the last few months that there seems to be someone with an axe to grind regarding Ancient History at Chicago, regarding this search but also some people with Chicago phds (flames that got deleted as inappropriate). Whoever it is, get over it and move on.
I didn’t apply to the Chicago job, so I had no stake in it all. But, it is an issue that information was deleted off of the Wiki; that is something that effects us all and ought to be brought to attention. The fact that the deleter (most likely) was the eventual hire is less important if at all, but we should be talking about how the Wiki rules are being openly violated and for what appear to be selfish and narcissistic ends.
I agree. I don't care if the new Chicago hire was their very last choice either. However, I am very disturbed that *someone* felt it necessary to alter the posts on the Chicago job in order to hide the fact that they had made numerous offers that were declined.
...though it seems most likely to be the hire who did this, it is also possible that some bigger egos currently at Chicago could have done this, so as to save their reputation as being a school that nobody would ever reject... again, I don't really care *who* did this, as we can never know for sure, but let's not pretend 8:30 that it doesn't matter that Wiki data is being manipulated to save face for some parties.
...a solution that one finds for the History Wiki page is that users have to be logged in to edit the Wiki, or, if they choose to not have an account, their IP Address is logged and displayed publicly for all to see who edited what.
This is not foolproof, of course, but ut's a step in the right direction. I, too, am very bothered by people removing information off of the Classics Wiki. As noted above, anyone who has no qualms to do so likely has no qualms to also massage their evidence in their scholarship in order to fit their arguments. This 'Wiki editor' surely has more to their track record of falsifying information than just the Chicago job history info.
Re: Chicago I doubt the person who got the job was the person who added the comment (and may have deleted previous edits). When you get a job, you don't get a rejection email. The successful candidate would not have received the 6/1 email and probably has no idea when rejections went out.
I have it on good authority from a very reliable and informed source that they offered the job to their 11th choice after he/she initially turned down the job but it was then rejected by the 12th choice causing the '12th man' rule to be invoked which then reversed the order allowing the 11th pick to reconsider and take the job.
Given how the timetables have worked out for the last 3-4 post-spring-term VAPs, I’d expect word to go out to candidates for interviews by the end of this week or very early next week.
...best of luck to everyone still hanging on out there in limbo.
The wiki-editing issue is not a Chicago issue--the same is true for other schools like Columbia etc that went to their second or third choice candidates.
But only Chicago saw their earlier posts referencing declined offers being removed. That does make it a Chicago issue, since whoever cleared out those entries had *some* reason to only do so for Chicago. ...it’s silly, I agree, to postulate whether the deleter was the hire or sitting faculty member at Chicago, but this WAS an issue isolated to the Chicago post in the Wiki.
Do you guys realize what you're arguing over? Don't you have better things to do... like, read, write, and research? Take a deep breath. Everything will be OK.
Yes, let's all take a break from agonizing over bullshit minutiae that we and only we care about to do the things that really matter like agonizing over bullshit minutiae that we and only we care about!
So, first timer here on the market. Not sure what to do, looking for advice.
I had a VAP job for 2017/18, but nothing upcoming for 2018/19. There are a few local possibilities teaching intro to college writing courses and even a Latin course at a community college. What I’m wondering is, when it comes to applying for this next season does it look better to:
A.) Not be presently employed but the previous appointment was at a prestigious school B.) Adjuncting at a community college following a year at a prestigious school
I can see pros and cons to both, but would like feedback from people with more experience
I think do what you need to do to support yourself. Traditionally, having a break in academic employment was frowned upon, so that desperate candidates took VAP after VAP, moving every year and even taking on debt. But as the supply of VAPs is drying up, and the pool of candidates increases, it will be inevitable that some candidates have to work outside of academia while they still apply for a TT job.
If you do work out of academia, but want to take another shot, I would recommend making sure you do something to show you are still in the game, be it adjuncting one course at a local CC a semester, keeping up a publication pipeline, or trying to give talks at conferences. This will be tough if you are also working full time at a real job. But the difficulty staying in this profession is only getting worse.
I have no insider information on Chicago. I have no idea which candidate was successful. I didn't apply to the post myself. I have no horse in this race.
The wiki has a revision history. At no point in its earlier revisions was anything other than 'Job offered and declined (word of mouth)' written for Chicago. Nothing about multiple offers declined. Nada about a second candidate. Nothing about candidates three, four, or fourteen. Don't believe me? Look it up for yourselves — the history is visible in the very lower right, using the 'History' option. The person updating most recently was so kind as to indicate when they added the 'position filled' notice, so it is easy enough to see what was written prior to this. One can also go back to May 24th, or 14th, or 4th to check for the elusive 'second candidate offered and rejected' text.
At this point to continue to imply that anyone, anywhere — the candidate, a random MCGA troll, or a jilted lover with an axe to grind — has nefariously edited the wiki to remove information specifically about the number of offers made before one was accepted is absolutely and demonstrably false. You would think a forum so dedicated to discussing the ins and outs of every posting on the wiki would take the steps to understand how the wiki works, and to check up on what is a very trackable question before potentially slandering a junior colleague who was fortunate enough to secure a (good) job in this year's utter crapshoot.
Forgive me for changing the subject... but what are some important studies on Greek law / Greek legal discourse? I realized that I know nothing about this subfield and thought I'd read some things. Thank you!
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law isn't super old or useless. "Important" may be another matter, but it will point you to some of the fundamental earlier literature, and you can skip over the really dull stuff (if there is any) based entirely on chapter titles.
Any Americans here get a St. Andrews Skype invite? Sorta the same ideas as before - it'd help for the future to know how often these universities offering 1-2 year positions are interested in American candidates. Thanks!
Not that it directly applies, but the Maynooth campus invite on the Wiki was an American.
I say that it doesn’t apply, since Ireland does not require work visas for Americans. The UK does if your going to be there for more than 6 months. I imagine that folks in the British Isles, regardless of nation, will still hold their preferences for OxBridge candidates. The market over there is far more brutal than it is here and they’ve been over-producing PhDs to greater amounts and for longer than we have over here in the Colinies.
Also, many Americans would be a bit lost to know what is meant in a job description (a la Oxford) that says the candidate is to “offer papers” which, so far as I can construe, means something akin to an upper level special topic course (?)
Speaking of international jobs, am I correct in assuming that Canada is the only country to have an actual policy of "our own first" with regards to hiring ?
I think, though I might be wrong and I doubt I'd be putting in for a job there, that Poland falls into the whole nationalistic hiring thing
2;25 -- certainly not. Most permanent worker visas issued by the US also require an official determination that the sponsored individual is somehow more qualified than applicants who already have work authorization in the US. Canada just has the virtue of a simpler and clearer system.
One correction to 1:14 -- the UK requires work visas for ANY paying job, for any length of time. The 6-month visa you get automatically as an American citizen when you enter the UK specifically says "Employment prohibited". If you're an unpaid "Academic Visitor" or "Non-Stipendiary Fellow" at Oxford, you are not allowed to accept any money for anything -- no honoraria for lectures, for instance -- and you're not even supposed to do volunteer work.
So, any employment in the UK, even for just one term, would require a work visa, and those are very, very difficult to obtain for American citizens. They'd have to REALLY want to hire you, and that's unlikely for a temporary job.
Right, but that's not what's being asked. No US institutions have to deal with proving that they couldn't find an American who was qualified before being allowed to hire a foreigner. Canada makes one do just that.
Every country (practically) has laws and procedures for work visas, but only Canada has a prohibitive law in place in order to force Canadian hires. That is unique to Canada. It is not a matter of a "simpler and clearer system" but is something that, while related to work visas, has the aim of ensuring Canadians get 90%+ of the jobs in Canada. Other countries don't give a shit where you're from even if they have a pain in the ass process to attain a work visa.
SCs in the US never have to face the situation that they *must* exhaust American citizen applications first. If a SC here chose to have 12 finalists all from the UK, there would be no blowback.
Don't confuse the work visa application process here with a separate "us first" policy like that in Canada.
...To answer what 2:25 was asking: I'm not sure. I don't think any other countries have laws in place to strong-arm institutions to hire their own. That is a weird element that the otherwise friendly and welcoming Canadians have in place.
..It always struck me as something that only fascist nations would think of doing, which makes it so odd that Canada is (the only?) one to do this.
...The problem is that if Canada didn't do this, then Canadians wouldn't stand a chance. Every school would be full of American PhDs and sprinkled with a few OxBridge folks.
The fact that Canada has this policy always struck me as Canada saying that they can't be competitive without strong-arming SCs into hiring Canadians.
4:00, what? that's just not true. Canadian institutions hire non-Canadians all the time. I don't know what you mean by "exhaust"--they just have to explain why the Canadians didn't cut it by comparison. Sponsoring a foreigner for a work visa in the US may have a lower bar and less procedural safeguards to ensure preference for Americans, but I don't see how it's as different as you suggest.
5:50, based on what a faculty member at a top Canadian university once told me, it is clear that some searches will be more welcoming of foreign applications than others. Ever since he told me this I have applied for only one opening in Canada, and none at his university. (I am being deliberately vague, but will only add that I found the specifics of what I was told rather shocking and dismaying.)
Foreigners applying in USA = No hindrances Foreigners applying in UK = Pain in the ass Visa paperwork; low chance for VAP Foreigners applying in Canada = near impossible for TT; million to one for VAP
4:05 is quite right, Canada NEEDS to do this in order to have their own stand any chance whatsoever in getting a job. It’s nationalistic nepotism, no more no less.
8:32--"Foreigners applying in the US--no hindrances"
You're joking, right? Have you ever known someone who's wrestling with the extensive, complicated, and costly paperwork to get a work visa for the US? I have known several (I'm a US citizen so haven't been through this myself), and there are "hindrances" a-plenty. It may be easier for a European to get clearance to work in the US than for a US citizen to get clearance to work in the UK or the EU; I don't know if that's the case or not. But be that as it may, it's no cakewalk for a non-citizen to get a work visa for the US.
8:32 - your post is extremely conceited. I am a foreigner with a top American degree and I can tell you that applying for jobs in the States is extremely difficult for non-citizens. Quite a lot of job postings require you to already have a work authorization (ever noticed those short questions in virtually every SLAC job app?). Smaller colleges often don't sponsor visas for VAPs, not to mention adjunct positions. I got a job over a month ago and still haven't heard anything about my visa. For many it would mean that they wouldn't be able to start their work on time, as it is a long process to be approved. Consequently, late job postings are also out of reach for non-citizens.
I've gone the other way: US citizenship/degree, moved to continental Europe. It was nearly impossible and I think would have been actually impossible if my spouse hadn't had residency here already. I teach in an English-language program oriented partly toward producing graduates with native-level English, but with a total of one native-English speaking faculty member (me) because it is so difficult to get people work permits, and as I said, mine was only through special circumstances. Maybe it is easier for Oxbridge-type places. Just based on the sheer number of foreign faculty in the US vs. the number of Americans in Europe, I can't believe it is so hard going from Europe to the US.
PS Me again, while what 9:48 says is true, it is equally unimaginable that a European institution would sponsor a visa for an American in an adjunct or in most cases VAP position!!
A lot of this discussion is great, but it’s digressed from what the original question was.
Yes, it’s tricky and full of red tape to get a work visa in most countries. And yes, of course the hurdles make it complicated and like a lost cause for later job positings but there are not laws in place preventing foreigner hires; only paperwork issues.
The question oringially asked was if Canada was the only country with an actual law used to enforce nationalistic hires. I know people want to go off on tangents here (which everyone has), but can anyone offer an answer to this?
You're going to have a harder time getting a job anywhere you do not have citizenship, that is simply a fact no matter where you are from or want to go to. Canada probably does have hurdles slightly higher than other countries. The EU is probably in the middle. The US probably has lower hurdles. But nobody can tell you for sure where you will get a job or not, just where it is more or less likely.
What is the distinction you are trying to draw between a law requiring hiring preference for nationals and a law that requires the same preference at the work visa stage instead?
@10:53 (et al.) Canadian old guy here. There are rules, but they are not in my experience difficult to deal with. If a non-Canadian is judged to be the best candidate, there is a very short form to be filled in. The federal government does not seem to police those forms very closely—at least according to my provost whom I've heard say that he'd never heard of one being turned back. This is consistent with my experience. I've been directly involved in about a dozen hires (half in my dept, half out). About two-thirds of the offers have been to non-residents. No one ever questioned the committee's judgment. Impressionistically, I'd say that Classics Depts in Canada are more international than most other disciplines in the Arts, but that will differ from institution to institution. Also impressionistically, I'd say that Canadian departments are less Canadian than British ones British; German ones, German; or American ones, American. My advice to non-Canadians is to apply, both for TTs and VAPs. You might, of course, be disappointed, as it seems most are these days. But Canadian departments often have quite specific needs to fill.
Another old Canadian here. To hire a non-Canadian for any job, you have to account for why none of the Canadians who applied were offered the job instead, and account in detail for why you didn't hire any of the shortlisted Canadians. This is much easier to do for a TT job, when you are talking about long-term research/teaching potential, than it is for a VAP, when you are basically bringing in someone to teach for a year or two. It's hard to say that person X is so much more qualified to teach Mythology once than are all the Canadians who applied. I can't think of a single VAP in Canada that I know of that has gone to a non-Canadian in the past decade. TT jobs are different, but this is very dependent on schools. Most of the last few hires at schools like Toronto, McGill, and UBC have been non-Canadians. Smaller schools, like UNB, Guelph, or SFU, are much less likely to hire a non-Canadian. Add to this a very distinct Canadian preference for hiring back their alumni (look at the Dalhousie faculty list for an extreme example), and it is a bit of an insular system. Regional preferences are significant too, especially in the Atlantic provinces and in Alberta. However, it is VERY hard for graduates of Canadian PhD programs to get hired TT in Canada, because Canadian schools far prefer to hire Canadians who have gone to an Ivy or to Oxbridge for their PhD. Toronto has done well this year in placement within Canada, but if you look back over the years on the wiki, you'll see that's by no means the norm. Finally, postdocs: in Canada, postdocs are subject to separate labour laws, which means there is no requirement to justify hiring a non-Canadian.
TL;DR: non-Canadians should expect fair treatment in applications for postdocs and (some) TT jobs in Canada, but shouldn't waste their time applying for VAPs.
11:49pm again: just to add, with regard to 6:56's comment, a few years ago a number of hires (not AFAIK in Classics) fell apart at the visa processing stage, when the government did in fact argue that SCs hadn't taken sufficient count of Canadian applicants, see further https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/universities-caught-overhaul-foreign-workers-program/
You want exciting?! Then go over to Eidolon and read the multiple hip and edgy articles they've got about tattoos and the people who made the poor life choices to get them.
The only difference between people with tattoos and those without tattoos is that people with tattoos don't give a shit that those without tattoos don't have tattoos.
What a waste of time and energy to write so many articles about something that genuinely does not matter. "Classics people that get a tattoo get tattoos with a Classics theme." Wow. Really amazing stuff right there; groundbreaking and thought provoking journalism.
...Next on the horizon, an amazing article that exposes the fact that pizza (egad!) is a popular food in America.
So, wondering if Academia.edu has a weird ‘bot program’ that views profiles and papers of us all to make us think that we’re being viewed by mystery people so we ought to buy their premium package to see who they are.
I regularly get hits from the same odd places, please let me know if you all do too:
Jacksonville, FL Waco, TX
Like clockwork, they view my page every 3-4 weeks.
Jacksonville, FL hits me often, too. The name of the school and their role their are blurred out, but there isn’t any school worth mentioning from there, so who knows.
I’ve had Waco also, but not too much lately. I don’t think that one had a school affiliation
Remember, too, that SC members might check folks out but use a VPN, which can explain why I have hits from bizarre places like Azerbaijan or Sri Lanka.
A few months back this question came up. A lot of people here had a lot of hits from some weird location that has no schools nearby (e.g., Nome, Alaska) and the consensus was that it was either a SC member away from their institution or that he was using a VPN.
...of course I bet that Academia.edu does use shady practices to try to squeeze money from us freeloaders.
Geolocation of IP addresses isn't always totally accurate anyway (aside from using VPNs or bouncing your browsing around on the dark web to conceal your IP). I wouldn't read too much into it. It's of course possible that academia.edu is being shady, but it could also just be your parents googling you on the reg--who knows.
I do not have personal experience, but I have heard from other academics that getting a premium account is a total rip-off. It ends up being a lot of money for very little, if any, applicable benefit.
Just call them. You’ll get the secretary on the phone anyway—not an SC member—so, just ask them if they can share any information with regards to the search’s timeline. I do this all the time and usually find out info long before the Wiki can let me know.
The Wiki is generally a dead thing this time of the year, which can explain the lack of Harvard being on there. With regards to their process, I can only imagine that it will be fast; damn fast. They stated in their job ad that the position STARTS July 1. Which means that they need to fly through the process in the next week or so in order to get things ready in time. Now, being Harvard, they’ll have their pick of the litter and surely had a short list configured by the time applications were due, in order to hit the ground running.
I’d suspect that by the end of this week/weekend, they’ll have reached out to folks for interviews. The end of the following week they’ll make an offer. And the week after that (the last week of June), they’ll button up paperwork to make it official.
Best of luck, 5:02 (we all need as much as we can get).
Thanks for the reply. Can I ask whether you (or anyone else) has actually heard anything (as opposed to speculation, although yours seems very reasonable) about the process for their College Fellowship program? The short timeline made me wonder if they even do interviews.
A colleague of mine was interviewed for (but didn’t get offered) this same (?) position when it was out about 3-4 years ago. Expect an interview but don’t expect a campus visit phase. The chap that got the job last time had a CV to make you want to quit the field, so 5:57 is quite right that Harvard will still be able to have their “pick of the litter” even though we’re into June.
Well, if his/her C.V. made you want to quit the field BEFORE it had the word "Harvard" on it, I can only admire your dogged persistence in remaining among us now that it is no doubt mentioned early and often on that document.
I'm starting a new TT position in the Fall. Is it acceptable or frowned upon to cancel or postpone a class in order to attend a conference to which I've been invited? Our academic calendar does allow for two possible make-up dates at the end of the semester, but I wonder if my colleagues would see this behavior as prioritizing my own research above the progress of my students....
In a similar situation. I emailed the chair and let him know, and his response that it was expected that faculty would need to cancel class from time to time to attend conferences. You could check in, or simply cancel class and see if anyone cares. The students certainly won't.
Just schedule an exam for that day, and ask a colleague to proctor. Then return the favor later. Everyone misses a class for a conference now and then.
In this situation, it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. And in my experience no one will be watching you close enough to care if you cancel a class or two for whatever reason. And the students will love it.
It very much depends on what kind of institution you're joining (congratulations on the t-t job!). Having taught at large state universities and at SLACs (I'm tenured at one of the latter), I can say that while no-one might notice or care at a large place, if you are in a small dept. -- say, 3 or 4 faculty -- in an SLAC, your colleagues most definitely WILL notice that you're gone, and it may well be frowned upon.
If you're at an SLAC or another small-ish place that prioritizes teaching, I'd be very cautious about missing a day's class in your first semester. In your second semester, maybe; in your second year, no problem. But your very first semester, when you're learning the culture of the place, I think it's a little risky to cancel a class (or even to ask a colleague to sub for you, assuming that there's someone who is free that class period). Especially in your first year, you should demonstrate that you are concentrating on learning the job at that particular college, learning how things are done there, and giving your full attention to getting up to speed as a fully functioning member of that particular faculty (none of which is simple or straightforward).
And, btw, "just schedule an exam for that day" assumes that the conference in question falls at a time when an exam is appropriate. If a conference is very near the beginning or the end of the semester, scheduling an exam isn't a possibility.
None of the above, of course, is directly transferable to other types of institutions, so others will have to advise there. But if you're at an SLAC, I'd say no missed classes the first semester, except for dire illness or family emergency.
"except for dire illness...." Be a little compassionate about terrorizing the junior members of your profession, especially these days when they are terrorized enough to start with. One of my first semesters, a few years ago, I taught with the stomach flu because I had been so traumatized by pronouncements such as this. No, I didn't throw up in class. But I was actively calculating time to the hall garbage can the entire class period, which was pretty much the longest two hours of my life. In retrospect I can see how absolutely crazy this was. At the time, I was so terrified of losing my job over anything except "dire" illness, which I interpreted to mean being hospitalized with something life-threatening. This is not normal, and it is not healthy, for individuals or the profession.
Attending conferences is also part of the job, so you'd be missing one part of the job for another part of the job. It's not a vacation. I wouldn't worry too much about 7:23AM's dire warning. I would run it by the chair or another senior colleague casually and ask if it's more common for faculty to look for a sub, give the students and alternative assignment, or to just cancel class. I wouldn't ask for permission to take off, just guidance on what to do about the fact that you'll be gone.
You will want to find out about your institution's policies in case the institution frowns on cancelling class. You might be required to find a sub or tape a lecture for the students or find some other way for them to have those contact hours with a professor. Some places are pretty strict about this because of accreditation issues.
Tenured faculty member here. I've worked at both SLAC and Universities so I am confident in my advice. Don't miss the conference (all schools want research active faculty), but tell the chair about your absence and see if a colleague can cover for you (and then return the favor, as someone else said); if that's not possible, create a special assignment for your students for which they will use the missed class time (e.g. I sometimes assign a couple articles for them to read that relate to class material and ask them to write a summary/critique). It is absolutely normal for faculty to attend conferences and some of them will interfere with class sessions. But I cannot stress enough that you need to let your chair know. You do not want to give the impression that you are irresponsible or that you're hiding something. Also, you should not do this too often within one semester, but it seems that you already know that. Enjoy the conference!
@7:42 AM, I completely agree with your last statement (I don't know anything about the Idaho hire, so I can't comment on that). I can intend to do anything I want, but it doesn't mean anything. Case in point: I've been intending to take the trash out to the dumpster all week, but it still hasn't happened yet. Furthermore, submitting an article to a specific journal in no way guarantees that the journal will accept it. I personally dislike "in preparation" sections on CV for anything except maybe a book if someone already has a contract with a press, but even calling your article "in preparation"—and leaving it at that—is preferable to listing an exact journal and submission date. That information can go in a cover letter when applying for jobs (to show scholarly engagement and whatnot), but it certainly doesn't need to be advertised for the world to see in a public CV.
Department chair here - please listen to 1:47. I want my APs. and VAPs going to every conference that they can, but I do want to know about it if they have to miss class, and I want to know that they are thinking about their students and how their absence might impact their progress. Some depts will have very specific policies for such situations, so you should definitely consult your chair or another senior colleague.
Uh, are the previous commenters seriously attacking a junior scholar whose identity is easily accessible to all? I'm usually in favor of under-, rather than over-, regulation, but this seems a pretty clear violation of commenting policy and just generally nasty. We all have wtf moments with certain hires, but maybe save specifics for in-person communication with close friends rather than public message boards frequented by colleagues. Imagine how you would feel if the above were directed at you.
Vehemently agree with 5:32. The above posts about the Idaho job are unprofessional and should be removed.
As for inside hires, often (in my experience) they are open to everyone, but the insider has both a great advantage (existing relationships, knowledge of students, colleagues, university culture) and a great disadvantage (the shiny unknown candidate might seem more attractive a candidate etc.). Friends who've been inside candidates have gotten the jobs about half of the time. As a grad student I was on an SC which hired the inside candidate. He was favored by many, but we nonetheless put him under even greater scrutiny than the other candidates because we didn't want to just hire him because we liked him.
The best, and by no means infallible, way to identify a job that is specifically designed for an insider is if the job ad is weirdly specific. For example, an ad for a "Greek historian of the early Hellenistic period who also specializes in the Sicilian reception of Euripides. Secondary fields in Byzantine numismatics or anacreontic meter are especially desired" just screams insider. But really, there's never any absolute way to be sure.
To all of you fretting over the idaho hire: honestly, would you even want to teach in a place like Idaho for the rest of your life??? Stop complaining for the sake of complaining!
I’d rather have a TT job than bouncing from adjunct to VAP to adjunct to VAP...
This day and age is not one where we, in a dying field with degrees that people laugh at and find less and less important every year, can afford to be picky and say that school X or location Y is “too good for us.” We are all beggars, and we all know what they say about that.
We’d all be lucky to get a TT job at a Community College in North Dakota, so let’s not kid ourselves here.
Wow. 2:16 perfectly articulates a problem with Classics: delusions of grandeur.
Let me remind everyone here.. we all have PhDs in a field almost as irrelevant to the real world as dance, women’s studies, or art. The biggest difference being that more lay people care about those three than they do about Latin and Greek. But, by all means, leave the field 2:16, we need less self-satisfied and narcissistic folks in the field and we surely need less applicants for the few jobs that appear every year.
It must be a nice life you have where you can just say “eh, I don’t care for any of the jobs out there so I’m just going to do something else.” Some of us are “pot committed” at this point and can not afford to just walk away; some of us don’t have trust funds or w wealthy mommies and daddies to take care of us while we find something else, but have to struggle and fight for whatever we can get in this field. If you happen to look down on others and certain schools that are “beneath you” then you really should not ever be in a faculty position leading and instructing undergrads; you and your distorted worldview are a poison to what higher education aims to achieve and you most certainly chose the wrong profession.
@2:39pm ... you can change professions without trust funds etc. I don't know what world you're living in. It's not always about delusions of grandeur or elitism.
Changing professions is a real choice for all of us. It's about knowing what life you want. That means knowing where you're willing to live and work. It's about timing and planning too-- applying for non-academic jobs will take time and resources, sure, but you don't need a trust fund to do that if you're smart (and I'm guessing that you've got the smarts, since you have or are completing a PhD). Some of us may not want to work in ND or other similar states, when we can get a job in another field and in a better city with better conditions (for me that means not living somewhere that will not discriminate against me on a regular basis).
You sound--besides bitter and frustrated like most of us on here--a bit trapped in your own situation and inside the neo-liberal machine of higher education as it increasingly is; don't accept your exploitation.
But if you are willing to accept your exploitation, don't go around berating those who choose to escape.
I work at an R1 where faculty send end-of-semester reviews for graduate student performance to one another, but not to the students directly. This seems wrong to me, especially because, in several instances, some faculty are vocally mean-spirited in their treatment of POC or openly gay students. (Grad students in this dept all have pretty similar issues, by and by, but gay and POC students are clearly given a harder time for the same sorts of normal developmental issues, eg difficulty presenting in seminar or teaching undergrads how to write well.) I’m strongly considering forwarding the faculty reviews to the students involved, either before / after a strongly worded email to the faculty themselves, because it is my feeling that the review process should be more transparent. With or without some wider emailing, i plan to meet with a few of the students privately to let them know what’s up / show them their internal reviews. Thoughts / comments on the legalities or ethics or potential repercussions of such an action, one way or the other?
If you forward confidential stuff to students, your colleagues will probably hate you. If you are not tenured and hope to be tenured at this institution, this seems like a VERY risky career move. Do you have any other allies among the faculty? This seems like a coalition-building kind of thing, not a whistle-blower kind of thing to me.
What do you hope the students will learn from this? That the faculty are assholes? Do you want them to drop out? These are not rhetorical questions...if you are at a non-top 10 or 15 or whatever R1, the Ph.D. program is almost certainly indefensible (as pre-professional training for academic research and teaching, that is, which is supposedly what Ph.D.s are). If on top of that, students are being treated like garbage by faculty - time for an exodus.
4:39 ... that is a terrible idea and it's mindblowing that you would even consider doing so. You could probably be fired for cause if you share protected student information that they aren't supposed to see. There are other ways to address the problem, although frankly none seem at all realistic if you are a powerless junior dept member.
Do you want to get fired? Because that’s how to get fired.
How the hell can you think that what you’re talking about is even slightly acceptable and more importantly how did someone with your kind of judgment ever get a fucking job in this hyper-competitive environment to begin with?
6:18 PM here. I was trying to be nice, but I also think it's possible (maybe likely) that forwarding the stuff, or even sharing what's written without permission, will get you fired.
Honestly any faculty who talk that way about grad students are trash and should be exposed. They shouldn't have grad students at all if they feel that way, to be honest. As others have pointed out, however, you need to find a strategic way to deal with it, especially if you do not have tenure. Just doing it on your own is a bad idea.
I've been an adjunct for the last couple of years at a small midwestern college, have a book under contract with a big university press, editing a volume of essays also by said big university press, and have a few articles in the pipeline... yet I still have no job offers.
I'm beginning to suspect it's something about my personality, which I've been told can come off as either energetic (when seen in a good light) or aggressive (when seen in a bad light). Is it possible for top candidates to be turned down based what others perceive to be a personality flaw? I love to engage others vigorously and I love what I do, but I fear others perceive me as being hostile, which is not my intention... Any thoughts from seasoned members of SCs?
I’d be hesitant to take what 4:39 at face value. I highly doubt faculty members are openly being racist/homophonic in interdepartmental reviews of grad students. A more likely and believable scenario is one in which 4:39 sees fair criticism of POC or gay students and internalizes it as prejudice. None of us can say for sure what it is without actually seeing it, so let’s not fuel what is (more likely than not) imagined prejudice in the mid of 4:39.
@4:39,
Your accusations are horribly dangerous if not 100% true. If, IF, these faculty members are being clearly and openly racist/homophobic speak with the dean, do not ever share the information with the grad students. Don’t even share the documents with the Dean nor say the names of the faculty members when you first speak to the Dean, but speak in vague and careful terms.
If you are wrong, you’re setting yourself up to be seen akin to a girl who falsely accuses a guy of rape: word will spread about you and Depts will avoid your application like the plague.
@all others,
How on Earth did someone with so little common sense ever get hired?
Interviews are always about *you* as a person. The fact that you made it to the interview stage means that you’re seen as “good enough” on paper and meeting their qualifications. The interview is about how well you’d fit for them and to ensure that you’re not a crazy person or a weirdo. Aside from obvious blunders in the interview and campus visit, almost all decisions are gut decisions by SC members based on how well you mesh with them. This comes off as “fit” to a SC, or a “good/bad feeling” about candidate X, Y, or Z.
You’re not just interviewing to prove that you’re qualified (that’s already been established by the fact that you have an interview) but that you’ll be a good colleague and have a good “bedside manner” for students. If you come off as unappealing as a person (be that socially awkward, never making eye contact, seeming creepy or bizarre, acting oddly) that can kill your chances. On the reverse, someone who just has a wonderful personality and has a knack to make people like them (e.g., Bill Clinton, Bob Ross, Mr. Rogers) has an enormous advantage at the interview-onward phases of a job search than those who may be more “qualified” but has a bad personality (e.g., Ted Cruz, Hilary Clinton, Kanye West). It’s unfair, but nobody ever said life was fair.
As a professor in North Dakota who was raised as a stereotypical "coastal elite," I had the same internal debate when I was offered my position here. Turned out to be among the best I ever made. Generous travel funding, cheap home prices, a 2/2 load (with additional course releases meaning some years it's a 1/1 or fewer) which leaves plenty of time for publishing and conferences, and a salary which goes far enough to take my family and I to Hawaii over winter vacation and Paris every summer. You won't have the size or concentration of scholars in your specialty, it's true, but if you're a self-starter and are happy spending the long winters writing, you can make a good life.
@3:57 I think the take away--which was obvious from the start--is that North Dakota or Idaho works for some and not for others. For someone like myself, it's definitely off the table for various personal reasons, despite all the benefits you enumerated. If no other opportunities in the Classics surfaced for me, I would search for employment elsewhere with optimism. I would also continue to the love the classics and not resent the path that I took.
I'd say the takeaway is rather that some places are not intrinsically good and others inherently bad. Instead, our own unique personal circumstances determine whether any individual place could work for us or not. Taking a dump on "flyover country" like the commenter above (at June 17, 2018 at 2:16 PM) did is very different from explaining that one's personal circumstances mean that this isn't an option (even if one's personal circumstances are pearl bedposts and solid gold flatware). Some peoples' circumstances mean that a soulless hellhole like NYC is "off the table" and others' circumstances mean that a soulless hellhole like Texas or SoCal or The Northwest is "off the table." But that doesn't make the soulless hellholes objectively horrible places to live and work. Though I'm sure that many MANY of my esteemed colleagues would disagree. And maybe that fact says something about our elitist, privileged, closed-minded collective. But maybe not. In any case, if they're handing out TT jobs in ND, sign me the hell up, personal circumstances be damned! Jobs in South Dakota? Nah, not so much. Personal reasons.
The problem lies not with the place but with the person. If you move from NYC to ND and still try to live like you did in NYC, you'll be disappointed. Equally, if you're from ND and bring an ND state of mind to NYC, you'll hate it. But if you move to ND and acclimate yourself to the things ND'ers do or vice-versa, you'll be fine, thrive even. Everywhere you go, you'll find happy and unhappy people. If you're rigid, you'll be unhappy; if you can learn how to balance who you are with where you are, you'll be happy. And anyway, none these people who wouldn't debase themselves by moving to such an unprestigious place as ND don't sound too happy anyway, so even though they have nothing to lose but their pride, ND is probably better off without them anyway. All this I've learned from my own lived experience and observation as someone who had numerous jobs from most to least prestigious, from city to country and back again and who is now happily settled in a TT.
Not everyone can or wants to have to adapt to everything, and that's fine. Coastal snootiness is often very silly, but to pretend that everyone can just pick up and move to the sticks or to the big city and if they're unhappy it's their own damn fault for being rigid is also very silly. A little stoicism goes a long way, but some people have cultural values that won't just slip under the surface without a trace when thrown overboard in pursuit of a job.
Not to shit on everyone's imagined Eureka moments, but can we please for just a second pause to note that this debate is by no means novel. Authors from antiquity, especially Horace, wrote about it extensively. Only Classicists would seem to miss the irony of such FV posts.
also note the first comment was about a 'bad' job (CC) in a 'bad' place (ND), and the person replying was talking about a 'good' job (time for writing! course relief! summers off! a large enough salary to go to hawaii and paris) in that place.
most of us don't have the option of a TT job anywhere. we are wondering whether we want to spend 1-3 years of our 30's renting in North Dakota and teaching 3-3 for a lower salary than TT faculty get.
i suspect even many of the 'never ND' folks would take the job and adapt if it were TT and 2-2, sometimes reduced to 1-1.
Believe it or not, not every Classicist has read everything written by every ancient author. I can say, for one, aside from knowing he wrote Odes, I’ve never read a single line of Horace and (egad!) it hasn’t effected my life in the slightest.
4,546 comments:
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Unclear writing on my part, sorry. The ‘naked contempt’ applied to the person’s whole comment, not the use of ‘transgendered’ alone. Imagine a para break after ‘“Transgender”, not “transgendered”.’
@7:24,
I don’t see anything that’s really classified as “contempt.” Someone having a point of view different than yours does not warrant your attack on them. You’ve failed to see his/her esenstial point and, instead, opted to just dismiss them entirely rather than try to understand their view.
@7:48,
You might not classify it as "contempt," but I do (I am not the previous commenter). I took it as a statement that scholarship by anyone who is not a white male is likely to be praised because of their "otherness." The more “other,” the higher the praise will be, with the subtext that it will be undeserved praise. Whether that last part is true is, I suppose, up for debate, but something about their quick grouping of marginalized "types" by name (one of which was offensive) led me to suspect that s/he views "diversity" as absurd. Coupled with the “transgendered” typo, I feel pretty confident saying that this person does not spend a lot of time thinking or caring about underrepresented groups, but instead casually lumps them all into one category: “different.” Maybe that wasn’t the spirit of the comment, but that’s how it came across to me.
None of this is to say that I think any particular woman’s translation is better or even good (I might even agree that it isn’t helpful to highlight gender in this way). But I do think this sort of disingenuous, feigned confusion about why people call out offensive comments isn’t fooling the people you hope to fool.
Is one against diversity if they take the stance that we shouldn’t pay any attention to it? What I mean isn’t that having diversity is a bad thing, but instead that the world would be a better place if we followed MLK’s idea of not judging a man by the color of his skin, but the content of his character. Which, at its core, is calling for color blindness and has the hopes that one day people won’t care about race. So, to say that we shouldn’t pay attention to diversity (as I mean it) is that we shouldn’t continually categorize folks and place value in them simply on account of their “otheness” by only in them if they, personally, deserve it.
I understand that 99% of folks fighting for diversity are good people and mean no harm, but I cannot help but feel that they are making it all the more difficult to ever reach that MLK ‘dream’ state where we look right past one’s category. If we place so much emphasis on ensuring that x number of blacks, whites, Asians, women, LGBT folks, etc.. are present everywhere all that we’re doing is being even more divisive of different groups by creating a false comfort in seeing ‘a little bit of every sub-group everywhere.’
IMO, it’s far better to just aim to treat all people decently, never exclude anyone on account of race/religion/sex/gender, etc.. and stop acting as if a person of x ethnicity has some kind of special knowledge that they can impart on folks of y ethnicity. Thinking that a black man, just because he is black, can offer anything to a committee (or whatever) simply because he has more pigment in his skin, is racist; it’s not meant to be by those who hold that feeling, but it still is. Thinking that having a diverse group of folks all working together is better simply because they all are different ethnicities is passive racism which is dangerously masquerading as being some kind of social betterment ethic.
Here's another King statement, from the sanitation workers' protest in 1968: "“When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the black community, they call it a social problem. When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the white community, they call it a depression.”
King's views were much more complex and nuanced than one passage from one 1963 speech ("...that my four little children will one day...") can capture. His perspectives also evolved over time. Defining the 1963 statement as one that "at its core is calling for color blindness" is a real oversimplification and in fact I would argue a misrepresentation, in light of his larger corpus.
Well, whatever he was calling for, by definition economic depressions are determined by the level of economic activity, not employment level. But I guess some poetic license can be granted.
So-called 'color-blindness' is most often an excuse made by those who do not recognise that everyone's (yes, I mean everyone) judgment is clouded by implicit bias. If you are unwilling to admit the structural inequities that exist, then you simply have not earned the right to speak on this topic.
Yes, there is a sense in which we should all be color-blind (MLK said so), but if you're going to waste your time saying so BEFORE saying everything else that he said, then you might as well be living in Cloud cuckoo land. There are real problems in the real world.
I think 10.16 above is wrong, but he's explained his position and reasoning in a way that deserves a response. (And I think it's probably "he" instead of "she," although you do find some women--mostly younger ones--making this sort of comment too.)
It's true that no one has special insight simply because s/he has "extra pigment" and/or "a vagina." But they do have special experience as a result of being black or female in a world that treats black people and women differently from the white male norm -- which in turn results in special insight (though granted, more or less depending on the individual). If I'm trying to structure a department that will be welcoming to people of all colors and genders, then I want access to that experience and insight so that I can better reach my goals. What is it like for my black first-years in a Greek Civ class that is otherwise almost all white and focuses on writers that the local neo-nazis have (absurdly) claimed are identified with "white european culture"? What is is like for my female colleagues to be in a profession that encourages them to defer having and raising children? There will be problems and issues and possible solutions that I'm not going to see on my own, in the absence of these experiences and perspectives.
And on the Wilson translation -- no one has claimed that it's special simply because the author "has lady parts" (as some commentators here have repeatedly said). The claim is that it does a better job translating Homeric perspectives on gender (and class), in part because this translator's own experience has given her a different perspective than gives her more insight on certain issues and passages than the other current translators, all men. I have only read bits of the translation, so I can't say whether on the whole it is good. But different translators read a work differently, and that difference will be related to their own experiences, which incorporate issues such as gender, race, and class.
Re: diversity
As a Classicist of Arabic descent I am surely of a minority of those in the field and I have most likely been through unique experiences in the world. Let me say, however, that I do not want my ‘Arabness’ to define or to categorize me and I shudder at the thought that (as awful as the current job market happens to be) I may be offered a job or receive an ‘edge’ simply because I may not be seen as a standard white male. If and when I ever get offered a T-T job, I want it to be 100% based on my merit and potential. I never want my ethnicity to factor into a SC’s decision making process. To think that a SC may say “well, we are a 100% white Dept and all things being equal between our top 3 choices, this guy is Arabic, so, let’s take him” makes my stomach turn.
I have to agree with the above poster who made the point that it is another form of racism. It makes me feel that I, simply because of my ethnicity, can provide something to the Dept that a white person cannot. That’s bullshit. I think that this a white person’s fantasy to think that every ‘other’ is so capable of providing insight and perspective to their white world. It’s a fetishization of non-white people, and IS a form of racism. Can anyone give a CONCRETE example of how having a POC in a dept makes a difference aside from making all the white peoples feel good? No, you can’t, because it’s all delusion.
White peop, please, stop looking st non-white people as prizes to be had and as being so different from you (we grew up in the same communities, went to same schools, are a part of the same broader culture) that we are all commodities to be collected.
9:43, this is 8:23. Thank you for that thoughtful response. Here's a question for you:
Let's say you have two TT offers that are substantially equivalent in every way, except that
(1) The first department's faculty is all-white and all male;
(2) the second department's faculty is much more diverse in both race and gender.
Let's further suppose that your own race or ethnicity was considered by neither department, not even in the "thumb on the scales" sense.
Would the departments' composition make any difference to you?
@9:43. I think it is brave of you to identify yourself even as much as you have. I am going to be slightly more anonymous but I also fall outside of the norms of the Classics professoriat. I have fears in the opposite direction of yours. I worry sometimes that the narrative you identify is powerful, "we are an all white department, so we should try to hire a faculty member that can speak to diverse communities" and that such thinking will have other negative consequences in terms of workload, expectation, and balance. I understand that he market is bad and junior faculty are being asked to take on more and more work for less and less (either in terms of pay, job security, or both), but I feel like the the burden of decolonizing and diversifying the field (or the major, institutionally)is falling on junior faculty, regardless of any group identification they might express. We are always doing things (teaching, committee work, advising) for which we are not specifically trained, but the fact that students from backgrounds similar to mine might find me relatable does not mean that I have the skills to reach out to students from others. It also doesn't mean that I can dissolve a centuries-long relationship between racism, classism, or imperialism and the classical tradition.
@9:57,
9:43 here.
I can’t say that I speak for all non-white candidates, but my choice of which of those institutions would see the demographics of the Dept not factor at all.
What I tend to do when I apply to a job is look through the sitting faculty, see where their PhDs are all from as a rough guide of my chances. Some, like Holy Cross (a job that was out this year) have something like 7/12 faculty all from Harvard, so there seems to be factors at play there. Others, will have none from a top 20 school, so myself being from a top-10 would fear that the SC holds worries that I may not be committed to their institution and will jump ship at first opportunity.
When looking through a Dept’s faculty, I never really notice race/gender numbers unless something is very unusual (all white men wouldn’t even make me take notice, since it’s so typical).
For me, I would make the choice between two offers based on the school’s proximity to my home state, the school’s respective acceptance rate for undergrads (the more selective the better), the closeness to a major city (not for diversity reasons as much as for reasons of having things to do, etc..), and the gut feeling about what school felt the best fit during the campus visit.
The Dept’s diversity would never be an issue for me. If I had to answer your question more directly, meaning that let’s say every factor I’ve mentioned here were completely equal, and all that was left was for me to make a decision based on the sitting faculty’s demographics, I would prefer the all white male Dept. Why? Because I would know that I was not a part of some kind of ethnic charity system that seeks to have “one of each” but that I really must be the best candidate of a Dept full of older white men invited me to be among them.
Again, we’re all individuals and I’m sure that many other non-white candidates would have a very different response than this. Just remember, there’s no reason to think that a Dept couldn’t get MORE diversity from a white, straight, male than a black, female, LGBT candidate. If the latter grew up in Greenwich Village, they very likely may have faced hardly any adversity, whereas the white, straight, male may have been a foster system child who grew up struggling their whole life in a rural Oklahoma trailer park, with little opportunity or chance to thrive. I know it’s never meant to be racist to think that all minorities face oppression or hardship, but it is in a way insulting and marginalizing to think that we all have undergone life situations worse than whites have.
I hope that this helped to answer your questions.
As a male POC, I always find the hand-wringing over whether or not Classics should aim to be more inclusive and bring diversity of multiple kinds to Classics departments rather silly. One would think that the answer is a resounding yes, but as seen here in the comments, apparently this is controversial for some people. It isn't simply, "hey let's hire the black/latin/asian person because we don't have any." As 8:23 has pointed out, people who come from backgrounds that fall outside the default norm of white male bring to bear their own unique lived experiences to their doctoral training and teaching experience.
Moreover, the demographics of those who attend university will only become more diverse, and if you think that Classics can survive without figuring out how to show what the discipline has to offer students from a variety of backgrounds, you have another thing coming. I know a lot of people feel like the onus to make changes should not be on the women and POC in the field, but I personally have no problem with things like outreach, advising, etc.
As another non-white Classics person: I agree with 11.40 that there is often a "fetishization" of non-white people both in culture generally, but also specifically in the academy, which I find at best uncomfortable. I also see the point of 11.39, that the labor of responding to 'diversity concerns' often falls on people who fall at the normative margins of the field. But mostly, I agree with 12.24.
I know that this is not true for all non-white people, but I personally did grow up in a markedly different 'cultural sphere' of American life than most people I encounter in our discipline (with parents whose English was sufficiently poor that I translated both my and my younger siblings' parent teacher conferences, for example). And I think that the sum total of those experiences and their consequences on my academic trajectory have shaped me both as a scholar and as a teacher, although of course I recognize that my white colleagues have rich and nuanced back-stories as well.
Having taught at several institutions, (my elite PhD program as a grad student, a large public directional and a mid-range SLAC as a contingent faculty), I have had the opportunity to think about how my background informs my teaching (and my students' responses to me) in a variety of environments, and have come to recognize just how contextual these things are. But also, I have seen that in every single one of those environments, the students' backgrounds were wildly more varied than those of the people teaching them. So, yeah: things are changing, and having diverse voices in faculty meetings/ classrooms/ admin is important.
11.40, this is 9.57 again. Yes, your answer is very helpful. And I absolutely agree that there are many different measures of diversity, socio-economic status being one that is often overlooked. All of these issues of inclusion and fairness are really complicated, and cut in many different directions. They also can become more complicated as you get older, acquire more experience/bruises, and compete for higher stakes.
What do you think about 12.24's point? The courses I taught, with the possible exception of the largest (Myth), always seemed disproportionately white to me. I believe that Classics has a lot to offer everyone, but it does seem like we need to do more so that everyone realizes it. I don't think students pick courses based primarily on the instructor's race (gender, sexual orientation, etc), but I do suspect that having a diverse group of instructors would help send the message that the discipline is for everyone.
O you wypipo... SMH
My lower-division courses at a public urban uni are upwards of 80% POC. But those POC see nothing but wypipo teaching Classics... So less than 10% of our major seniors are POC -- an unfortunate failure of retention.
THIS is why we need more POC in teaching positions:
Because our target demographic deserves to learn from people who don't always look like the cops who shoot them to death for no reason.
So by saying your POC students cannot distinguish between a white police officer and a white professor you're accusing them of being racist. Nice.
@3:58,
Your comments are ignorant and dangerous. You assume that black undergrads are incapable of seeing whites as anything but ruthless savages that seek to kill them all, you assume that black undergrads are so weak-minded that they will only respond to or listen to other black peoples.
(Also, your use of “wypipo” as a cute way to say “white people” is something out of a 1940s racist cartoon)
I'm a female POC, and I might not have used the same exact words, but I generally agree with 3:58.
Diversity, representation, and seeing people that look like you in positions of authority matter. I have countless anecdotes from students thanking me for helping them to see their own futures, just in my presence.
@ 3:58,
80% to less than 10% is a heck of a drop. Have you tried any particular strategies to increase retention?
(Assuming that your post was serious -- the "wypipo" made me wonder.)
Hmm. I think that 3:58 is trolling. His use of “wypipo” to speak like Buckwheat is horribly tone deaf and racist. 3:58 is only on here stirring up trouble because he’s upset that Roseanne just got cancelled.
MCGA folks, Roseanne was about *us*!
I think there's a misunderstanding of the term wypipo and its place in current discourse: https://www.theroot.com/in-defense-of-wypipo-1797033553
I think we have some woker-than-thou discourse happening here....
No, it's not about being woker-than-thou or even woke. It is about the internet and how words are being used on the internet.
@6:27,
this is 5:49. Thank you for the link! I had no idea.
You're welcome!
12:24 here,
I'll echo the earlier sentiment from 5:40pm. While I wouldn't characterize the state of affairs in the same fashion as 3:58pm, they are generally correct. Representation, while not a panacea for the malaise that affects the field and the type of student it attracts, most certainly does matter. Way back when I was an undergrad all of my Classics professors were white and while this did not necessarily bother me since they were all excellent instructors, mentors, and good people, it was something of which I was quite aware. Likewise, I was always aware that even at my super-diverse undergrad institution, I was among only a handful of POC in the Classics courses beyond the standard myth or archaeology surveys; in the advanced language courses I was always the only one.
Now, this obviously did not deter me from studying Classics all the way through the PhD and then making a career of it, but I can certainly see how someone who was a POC and say, a first-generation college student from a working-class background might be drawn to other disciplines. These may not be super-diverse themselves in terms of faculty, but are certainly more diverse than Classics and make a big effort with outreach, mentoring, and other advising and support beyond the classroom.
If you are "a first-generation college student from a working-class background" then maybe you SHOULD be "drawn to other disciplines." Yes, of course, a classics degree can make one look good to law school admissions officers, yada yada yada, but the fact is that there are majors that make more sense for someone trying to have a much better standard of living than he/she had growing up. Let the working-class student's kids become classics majors 20 years from now, when they will have that luxury thanks to their father/mother being pre-law or studying accounting, or whatever.
Holy classist warfare @7:24.
yeah, and way to devalue the humanities, @7:24. Do you really think a classics major has less to offer than some bogus business or communications major? Sure, it's probably a good idea for every student to have a hefty minor that offers some immediate commercial payoff, maybe some statistics, accounting, or computer science. But then all the STEM people should be taking classics too.
Yeah, I knew I would get some shoot-from-the-hip dumbass response. If I am saying that I want people to enter a higher socio-economic class I am not being classist: to be classist I would have to be saying that I want people in the lower classes to stay right where they are, and would almost certainly believe that they are to blame for being in their situation.
Do you really think a classics major has less to offer than some bogus business or communications major?
No, but it certainly has less to offer than a degree in Mechanical Engineering in terms of immediate, substantive payoff.
@8:23,
Okay, I'll make the assumption that ME offers a more immediate payoff than Classics, especially for students without connections. But a Classics major with some sort of "practical" minor and some good internships is, I would guess, not that far behind. And ten years down the road, when the engineers all have to become managers in order to advance in their careers, the person with some humanities training may well be doing better financially, as well as having a richer intellectual life.
And again, why shouldn't all the MEs, and EEs, and ChemEs, and so on, all be taking classics minors and populating higher-level courses?
@8:43 are you aware of the course requirements for B.S. degrees in engineering fields? Couple that with distribution requirements and that will help explain why you don't see a ton of STEM majors in upper level Classics courses
I also constantly hear this argument about pay 'leveling out' over time and it overlooks something massive: retirement accounts. Being able to put in a ton of money right off the bat when you are 23-24 makes a massive difference over time compared to putting that same amount in starting at 33-34
@7:24: you are classist not because of your magnanimous willingness to see the unwashed masses rise above their station. You are classist because for some reason you think that the unwashed masses cannot profit from a liberal arts education the same way that people of the right sort do.
Did none of you here poo-pooing students selecting Classics over STEM ever think that some kids can double major? At my current university (elite public university on the East Coast) most of the undergrads who major in Classics or archaeology or whatever couple it with something like Computer Science or some other STEM major. You'd think that this is what we want to push, since it allows Classics to thrive but also gives the more immediate payoff after graduation. Most importantly, it hopefully helps accomplish what university is intended to do, i.e. produce thoughtful, well-rounded human beings. I myself started out intending to pursue Computer Science and let me tell you, everyone I know who did is now exactly the worst sort of master-of-the-universe tech bro scumbag you hear tell of slithering about in Silicon Valley.
8:43 here. What 9:48 said. And @8:49, I also have an undergraduate double major that combines humanities and STEM. If the engineering degrees at your school really don't permit any sort of humanities minor, then there is a problem with the degree requirements.
You're right about the power of compound interest. You're starting to hear that argument made in favor skipping college altogether for a trade apprenticeship or 2-year certification program that could launch a lucrative career in something like plumbing. And for some people, that's the right choice. But classics is for those people too, although maybe in a continuing education program rather than a BA degree.
Any word on who got the second round offer at Chicago? I received an email today saying the position has been filled.
WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BREAK DOWN CLASS BARRIERS NOT REINFORCE THEM.
GTFO WITH YOUR "TRADE SCHOOL FOR POOR PEOPLE" BS.
CLASSICS MAJORS ARE THE HIGHEST PAID HUM/LA MAJORS.
CLASSICS FOR ALL!
MCGA!
Chicago went to their 4th choice and didn’t just consider it a failed search!?? Wow.
Chicago actually gave the offer to their second choice- it just took a while for the offer to be formalized. They never offered it to the third choice candidate.
^^Chicago was offered and turned down by multiple people. This hire was at least their 3rd choice. Maybe not the 4th, but at least the 3rd.
I’d not mind being Chicago’s 4th choice. Im a few years nobody will even remember that whoever took the job was #3 or 4 anyway.
...I bet a reason why #s 1-3 turned down Chicago (at least in part) is because they met Ando and decided life was better elsewhere.
I've heard through the grapevine (so perhaps take this with a grain of salt) that in other humanities disciplines Chicago pays assistant profs surprisingly poorly (like ~$50k). Is that true in Classics too?
Mmm...not true 4:46. The person offered the Chicago position was one of the 3 on the list of campus visits. Definitely can't be a 4th choice.
@6:22,
Where can one find that list of names? Is it public record?
I would hope that a school dripping in as much money as Chicago would pay more than $50k to assistant profs (even notorious abusers like Arizona pay their assistant profs. at least $60k). Then again, the administration at UChicago consists of genuinely evil greedheads who have more interest in gentrifying and colonizing Hyde Park, so that's probably where the money goes.
5:16, no, that is not true. $50k was about the starting salary for an assistant professor in the humanities at Chicago fifteen years ago. For a floor, you can consider that their SOF pays $70k. Chicago faculty salaries are among the highest in the country, although of course a lot of the average comes from handsomely-paid stars and b-school types. It's possible that they lowball new hires and people who don't understand that you are supposed to negotiate get screwed as a result.
Something from yesterday’s Guardian that fits nicely into the debates about hiring and diversity in academia:
https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/jun/01/academics-candidates-outstanding-application-recruitment
9:43/11:40:
"The Dept’s diversity would never be an issue for me. If I had to answer your question more directly, meaning that let’s say every factor I’ve mentioned here were completely equal, and all that was left was for me to make a decision based on the sitting faculty’s demographics, I would prefer the all white male Dept. Why? Because I would know that I was not a part of some kind of ethnic charity system that seeks to have “one of each” but that I really must be the best candidate of a Dept full of older white men invited me to be among them."
This is very interesting to me: my response (female POC here) would be exactly the opposite, all else being equal. A department that is already diverse in certain respects would, I should think, be *less* likely to hire entirely on the basis of demographics; whereas it would be more likely for an all-white male department to suddenly have realized their composition doesn't make for good optics, or to be facing administrative pressure, and be looking for a "diversity candidate" as a result. I have had a few interviews (not many, but more than one) in which it became uncomfortably clear that the interviewers were more interested in my identity than my scholarship. These interviews were without exception at all-white departments.
newly minted phd here-- should i get business cards for conferences/ interviews/etc?
Can confirm that a friend who was hired ABD at Chicago in a humanities dept (not Classics) started on $55k. This was in the past 5 years. This person would have had excellent negotiating advice, but AFAIK didn't have any other TT offers that year.
Surprised the Ando comment above hasn't been purged.
@3:57,
It was a mild comment about a tenured and senior professor. Nothing was said about the quality of his work, the importance of his scholarship, his right to hold the position that he has, or anything really damning. All that was said was that he (as many folks already know) can be a difficult person to be colleagues with. Dennis Rodman was the NBA's best rebounder (still holds records) but nobody every made excuses that he was a difficult person to be a teammate with. That in no way means that Rodman was not a great player or worthy of his salry, etc..
Stop thinking (not that 3:57 was) that just because something that isn't open praise is uttered on FV means that it is some kind of vile statement.
...Ando is not the kind of guy who would get upset by this, either. Knowing him (somewhat), he'd roll his eyes and not care one iota if a commenter on FV thinks he's not very Mr. Rogers-esque; which he isn't and he doesn't care to be.
I admit that if a junior scholar were named openly here and the same thing was said then it would be deserving of deletion. But one has to look at the whole picture, since all of us are not created equal; there is a MASSIVE difference between saying something like that about a fresh PhD on the job market who has no connections anywhere and who is desperately trying to find (any) job in the field compared to a tenured, well-respected, well-known and well-cited senior prof at one of the world's best institutions.
^^ speaking of the Chicago, whoever it was that did take the job (whether it was choice #3, #4 or whatever) made a point to delete the entries on the Classics Wiki where other scholars indicated that they were offered and turned down the job.
..Some shady stuff if you ask me
shady how? vain, at worst, it seems
"PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE OR ERASE PARTS OF PRIOR POSTINGS!"
This is the first statement on the wiki. So it may not be "shady", but it's not exactly cool either.
5:37 here..
Maybe “shady” was a bad choice, but what I was trying to convey is that the new Chicago hire is fabricating what the situation was around their hire. This is surely vain, but it also is more than that; it demonstrates that that person has no qualms about falsifying information, which may be suggestive of how they also conduct research. Therefore, I used “shady.” Not sure if there’s a more apt term somewhere in between “shady” and “vain” that better encapsulates what’s happened there.
(FWIW, why would anyone even care? I mean, even if you were their 3rd or 4th choice, you still are now a T-T prof at fucking Chicago, so what’s there to be ashamed of ?? ...I’d gladly take the job being their 28th choice)
Yes, you should have a business card (and learn how to deploy it gracefully). Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
why is he hard to be colleagues with?
9:33,
This really isn’t the place to discuss this. You’re best bet is to just ask more seasoned Classics folks that you know.
In defense of Ando, there are many other senior folks in Classics that we all also know who are not nice or decent people, but instead see all others as inferior. I'd say that this is the norm at the super-elite institutions. That doesn't make it OK to be a dick to people, but let's not act as if Ando is unique in any of this.
I've seen many profs nastily attack nervous grad students following their (likely first) conference presentation--I'd bet most of us have seen this. The kind of profs who enjoy doing these kinds of things are also among the most disliked and difficult scholars to work with.
Some of the most arrogant and (honestly) cruel scholars are well known. Surely, many here on FV have not yet crossed paths with some of the greater offenders, but you will. Just speak to your advisors to find out if a school that you have an interview at or better a campus visit contains a particularly noteworthy asshole in the department. If your advisor is worth their appointment, they'll be very aware of who falls into this category.
If, however, your advisor is at a top school yet claims to have no idea about who is an asshole, most likely YOUR advisor is a member of 'Club Asshole.' As such, you may be doing yourself some unknown harm by having them write letters for you (though, this isn't really your fault).
Generally speaking, I wouldn't be too worried. The most egregious members of CA tend to be in the best institutions, and it's more likely than not that a junior scholar won't be grace those halls at early stage in their career (of course some very infamous examples come to mind of abuses of junior faculty at a non-elite institution that used to take in 3-4 VAPs every year). By the time you may be putting in for tenured hire at such a school, you would have had some personal experience of your own and made enough contacts, heard enough horror stories to help you make an informed decision.
Anyways... Make judgement calls for yourself. I know a scholar who is considered by most classicists as being absolutely horrible and cruel beyond words. Yet, he has always been very kind and thoughtful towards me and strikes me as a very nice man, so I have a hard time understanding the harsh criticism of others.
10:03 is quite right.
Speaking for myself, a "seasoned Classics" person, my eyes light up when someone asks me my opinion of him, and I don't hold back. But I would write none of my thoughts here, as it's not the place, despite the absurd arguments above that he's senior enough and would roll his eyes, etc.
@11:26,
I understand why you like the scholar considered cruel by others; he's been nice to you. But I hope you don't excuse or support his mistreating others because of that. That's how bullies like Weinstein got by for so long; that's how they get by in Classics, too.
As someone who spent time at Arizona, I can say that the two people there known to be abusive were nothing but nice to me. This doesn't negate the fact that they behaved liked monsters for years and treated many junior and contingent faculty like trash.
@10:16 & 1:05,
Yes, abusive people often are not abusing to literally everyone, otherwise they could never survive.
My grad school and multiple vap experiences have taught me the very real lesson that no one is obliged to like you (nor you them), and that you likely won't get along with everyone in a given department. you'll also get along superbly well with faculty and colleagues whom others do not like, for reasons personal or professional, justified or not.
It's called being human, and we are entitled to be arrogant as in any other profession. if you can't handle that, i don't know what to say...
4:14,
I don’t think anyone here would disagree with you. The larger issue is that our field has about a dozen or so folks that are so notoriously fucked that they happen to stand out amongst all others at the SCS.
re Chicago: There is no real evidence to believe that the person hired there did anything to edit the wiki in a shady fashion or otherwise. As I remember (and just found: June 1, 1:23), someone posted here asking something along the lines of "anyone know who got hired at Chicago? Just got an email the position was filled." The wiki was also updated (also on June 1) to read "position filled" citing an email received 6/1.
My guess, fwiw, is that this edit to the wiki was made by the individual who asked the initial question, or another person who got the same email, rather than the lucky duck who got the gig. So nothing shady, nothing even terribly interesting, except maybe not by-the-book editing. One might note, though, that whoever had initially declared the search failed also seems to have made this edit incorrectly, for whatever reason, and that deleting this info was simply removing incorrect information that arguably never should have been there. And so, similarly no particular reason to say that this is anything other than a very slow process in a school that doesn't end its term until June (maybe even mid-June).
What there is, though, is yet another smear (albeit, as of yet, anonymous) on a junior scholar and fellow job-seekier/suppliant who, just like the rest of us, is trying to make it in a horrible job market and academic world (and apparently has!). I believe the correct phrase here is congratulations and good luck.
@3:44pm and all concerned. I was the one who posted the "position filled" email notice. But I did not delete anything, nor add anything else. I followed the wiki rules. I didn't check the wiki for another day, so I'm a bit unsure as to what happened *after* I posted that.
I also posted the comment, "anyone know who got hired at Chicago? Just got an email the position was filled."
Re: Chicago
Let’s just let this go. All that is known for sure is that someone decided to delete the two offer & decline posts on the Wiki. One can never prove that the deleter was the final choice at Chicago. Though it’s highly likely such is the case (they would be the only one to have any sort of benefit from its deletion), continuing to talk about it is silly.
...We can all hold our own judgments and conclusions on this, but let’s please stop beating a dead horse here.
On another note, has anyone heard any word or rumors of what’s happening re: the Ohio University VAP??
Is the Maynooth University poster who updated the Wiki here on FV? Wondering if it was limited to UK/Euro finalists or if Americans fell into the orbit of the SC.
FWIW, the St. Andrews job seems to be ok with US applicants
@6:23 I'm the poster for Maynooth University. I'm an American citizen and I've done all of my schooling and post-graduate work in America.
@9:09,
6:23 here (also an American). Thanks for responding. Maynooth was was one of the last remaining applications that I had outstanding, but that's how it goes: you win some you lose some.
From what I know of the institution and from what my advisor has told me (he's from the UK and taught for some time in Ireland), Maynooth is a great place to work with a very collegial group of classical scholars. Plus, living for two years in Ireland would be quite nice.
Best of luck to you, 9:09 !!
On the subject of Chicago, I have now had it directly from an outstanding source that they got choice #2, and it simply took until late last month for the offer to be accepted. It is simply unacceptable that multiple people here claimed knowledge of what was going on, reporting that it was a failed search, they got choice #3, they got choice #4, and perhaps variants of that. I hope that those of you who posted false information will question your source(s), as well as why as you were so willing to believe the rumors in question.
I find it amusing that FV often howls "How could ANY dept. justify a failed search in this market?", yet when the rumor flew that Chicago had hired candidate #4, there was outrage over why they went to #4 instead of declaring a failed search.
As it turns out, they hired #2. But if they HAD hired #4, what on earth would have been wrong with that? There's no magic Spell of Undeservingness that kicks in as soon as an SC lists someone as #4 instead of #3.
Re: Chicago
Why are people so obsessed with this?
Nobody here is a good source unless a non-anonymous Chicago faculty member pops in and clarifies the situation. Period. All that is known is that multiple folks reported being offered the job and reported turning it down. Then, silence. Then, someone reported that an offer had been accepted. Whether that person is #2-#20, who cares? Seriously. Who gives a shit?
Clearly, Chicago did not have a failed search, and we CAN NEVER KNOW FOR SURE what # on the list the final hire was. And does it matter anyway?
...the bigger and ONLY ISSUE that we should be mad about is that someone (the final hire?) deleted posts on the Wiki indicating multiple offers has been made. That’s all that matters here.
Isn't all that matters the final hire? Why is the fact that other people were offered the position at all important for you? Anyone who gives a shit about that information and is bothered by the fact that this info was taken off the site strikes me as extremely gossipy people...
I have noticed over the last few months that there seems to be someone with an axe to grind regarding Ancient History at Chicago, regarding this search but also some people with Chicago phds (flames that got deleted as inappropriate). Whoever it is, get over it and move on.
@8:30,
I didn’t apply to the Chicago job, so I had no stake in it all. But, it is an issue that information was deleted off of the Wiki; that is something that effects us all and ought to be brought to attention. The fact that the deleter (most likely) was the eventual hire is less important if at all, but we should be talking about how the Wiki rules are being openly violated and for what appear to be selfish and narcissistic ends.
@12:14,
I agree. I don't care if the new Chicago hire was their very last choice either. However, I am very disturbed that *someone* felt it necessary to alter the posts on the Chicago job in order to hide the fact that they had made numerous offers that were declined.
...though it seems most likely to be the hire who did this, it is also possible that some bigger egos currently at Chicago could have done this, so as to save their reputation as being a school that nobody would ever reject... again, I don't really care *who* did this, as we can never know for sure, but let's not pretend 8:30 that it doesn't matter that Wiki data is being manipulated to save face for some parties.
...a solution that one finds for the History Wiki page is that users have to be logged in to edit the Wiki, or, if they choose to not have an account, their IP Address is logged and displayed publicly for all to see who edited what.
This is not foolproof, of course, but ut's a step in the right direction. I, too, am very bothered by people removing information off of the Classics Wiki. As noted above, anyone who has no qualms to do so likely has no qualms to also massage their evidence in their scholarship in order to fit their arguments. This 'Wiki editor' surely has more to their track record of falsifying information than just the Chicago job history info.
Re: Chicago
I doubt the person who got the job was the person who added the comment (and may have deleted previous edits). When you get a job, you don't get a rejection email. The successful candidate would not have received the 6/1 email and probably has no idea when rejections went out.
Any word on the Ohio University VAP?
@3:38 RE Ohio University
I have it on good authority from a very reliable and informed source that they offered the job to their 11th choice after he/she initially turned down the job but it was then rejected by the 12th choice causing the '12th man' rule to be invoked which then reversed the order allowing the 11th pick to reconsider and take the job.
@3:38,
Given how the timetables have worked out for the last 3-4 post-spring-term VAPs, I’d expect word to go out to candidates for interviews by the end of this week or very early next week.
...best of luck to everyone still hanging on out there in limbo.
The wiki-editing issue is not a Chicago issue--the same is true for other schools like Columbia etc that went to their second or third choice candidates.
@5:19,
But only Chicago saw their earlier posts referencing declined offers being removed. That does make it a Chicago issue, since whoever cleared out those entries had *some* reason to only do so for Chicago. ...it’s silly, I agree, to postulate whether the deleter was the hire or sitting faculty member at Chicago, but this WAS an issue isolated to the Chicago post in the Wiki.
Do you guys realize what you're arguing over? Don't you have better things to do... like, read, write, and research? Take a deep breath. Everything will be OK.
Yes, let's all take a break from agonizing over bullshit minutiae that we and only we care about to do the things that really matter like agonizing over bullshit minutiae that we and only we care about!
@5:54
The same is true of Columbia.
So, first timer here on the market. Not sure what to do, looking for advice.
I had a VAP job for 2017/18, but nothing upcoming for 2018/19. There are a few local possibilities teaching intro to college writing courses and even a Latin course at a community college. What I’m wondering is, when it comes to applying for this next season does it look better to:
A.) Not be presently employed but the previous appointment was at a prestigious school
B.) Adjuncting at a community college following a year at a prestigious school
I can see pros and cons to both, but would like feedback from people with more experience
I think do what you need to do to support yourself. Traditionally, having a break in academic employment was frowned upon, so that desperate candidates took VAP after VAP, moving every year and even taking on debt. But as the supply of VAPs is drying up, and the pool of candidates increases, it will be inevitable that some candidates have to work outside of academia while they still apply for a TT job.
If you do work out of academia, but want to take another shot, I would recommend making sure you do something to show you are still in the game, be it adjuncting one course at a local CC a semester, keeping up a publication pipeline, or trying to give talks at conferences. This will be tough if you are also working full time at a real job. But the difficulty staying in this profession is only getting worse.
I have no insider information on Chicago. I have no idea which candidate was successful. I didn't apply to the post myself. I have no horse in this race.
The wiki has a revision history. At no point in its earlier revisions was anything other than 'Job offered and declined (word of mouth)' written for Chicago. Nothing about multiple offers declined. Nada about a second candidate. Nothing about candidates three, four, or fourteen. Don't believe me? Look it up for yourselves — the history is visible in the very lower right, using the 'History' option. The person updating most recently was so kind as to indicate when they added the 'position filled' notice, so it is easy enough to see what was written prior to this. One can also go back to May 24th, or 14th, or 4th to check for the elusive 'second candidate offered and rejected' text.
At this point to continue to imply that anyone, anywhere — the candidate, a random MCGA troll, or a jilted lover with an axe to grind — has nefariously edited the wiki to remove information specifically about the number of offers made before one was accepted is absolutely and demonstrably false. You would think a forum so dedicated to discussing the ins and outs of every posting on the wiki would take the steps to understand how the wiki works, and to check up on what is a very trackable question before potentially slandering a junior colleague who was fortunate enough to secure a (good) job in this year's utter crapshoot.
Forgive me for changing the subject... but what are some important studies on Greek law / Greek legal discourse? I realized that I know nothing about this subfield and thought I'd read some things. Thank you!
^^^ 0/10. Troll bibliography somewhere else.
Aristotle wrote a couple didnt he
https://www.sfu.ca/nomoi/
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law isn't super old or useless. "Important" may be another matter, but it will point you to some of the fundamental earlier literature, and you can skip over the really dull stuff (if there is any) based entirely on chapter titles.
@9:41: many of us find L'Annee Philologique helpful.
@12:38 , I'm not the person who asked the original question, but thanks.
Important resources for Greek law (and also other things Classics-related) at:
https://bit.ly/1dNVPAW
[edit} and also here: https://bit.ly/IqT6zt
The UT rejection email could have used a bit of editing...
^copy and paste for those of curious? :P
Any Americans here get a St. Andrews Skype invite? Sorta the same ideas as before - it'd help for the future to know how often these universities offering 1-2 year positions are interested in American candidates. Thanks!
Not that it directly applies, but the Maynooth campus invite on the Wiki was an American.
I say that it doesn’t apply, since Ireland does not require work visas for Americans. The UK does if your going to be there for more than 6 months. I imagine that folks in the British Isles, regardless of nation, will still hold their preferences for OxBridge candidates. The market over there is far more brutal than it is here and they’ve been over-producing PhDs to greater amounts and for longer than we have over here in the Colinies.
Also, many Americans would be a bit lost to know what is meant in a job description (a la Oxford) that says the candidate is to “offer papers” which, so far as I can construe, means something akin to an upper level special topic course (?)
Speaking of international jobs, am I correct in assuming that Canada is the only country to have an actual policy of "our own first" with regards to hiring ?
I think, though I might be wrong and I doubt I'd be putting in for a job there, that Poland falls into the whole nationalistic hiring thing
2;25 -- certainly not. Most permanent worker visas issued by the US also require an official determination that the sponsored individual is somehow more qualified than applicants who already have work authorization in the US. Canada just has the virtue of a simpler and clearer system.
One correction to 1:14 -- the UK requires work visas for ANY paying job, for any length of time. The 6-month visa you get automatically as an American citizen when you enter the UK specifically says "Employment prohibited". If you're an unpaid "Academic Visitor" or "Non-Stipendiary Fellow" at Oxford, you are not allowed to accept any money for anything -- no honoraria for lectures, for instance -- and you're not even supposed to do volunteer work.
So, any employment in the UK, even for just one term, would require a work visa, and those are very, very difficult to obtain for American citizens. They'd have to REALLY want to hire you, and that's unlikely for a temporary job.
Sorry to be discouraging.
@3:29,
Right, but that's not what's being asked. No US institutions have to deal with proving that they couldn't find an American who was qualified before being allowed to hire a foreigner. Canada makes one do just that.
Every country (practically) has laws and procedures for work visas, but only Canada has a prohibitive law in place in order to force Canadian hires. That is unique to Canada. It is not a matter of a "simpler and clearer system" but is something that, while related to work visas, has the aim of ensuring Canadians get 90%+ of the jobs in Canada. Other countries don't give a shit where you're from even if they have a pain in the ass process to attain a work visa.
SCs in the US never have to face the situation that they *must* exhaust American citizen applications first. If a SC here chose to have 12 finalists all from the UK, there would be no blowback.
Don't confuse the work visa application process here with a separate "us first" policy like that in Canada.
...To answer what 2:25 was asking: I'm not sure. I don't think any other countries have laws in place to strong-arm institutions to hire their own. That is a weird element that the otherwise friendly and welcoming Canadians have in place.
..It always struck me as something that only fascist nations would think of doing, which makes it so odd that Canada is (the only?) one to do this.
right. just because the UK can be tricky for Americans to gain the right to work there, is not the same thing as saying "Brits first"
...The problem is that if Canada didn't do this, then Canadians wouldn't stand a chance. Every school would be full of American PhDs and sprinkled with a few OxBridge folks.
The fact that Canada has this policy always struck me as Canada saying that they can't be competitive without strong-arming SCs into hiring Canadians.
Aside from Toronto, no Canadian school really produces PhDs who are seriously a force on the (Classics) jobs market.
@4:07 & 4:05,
sounds like the whole policy is a fantastic way to ensure Toronto grads get all the jobs in America Jr.
To quote POTUS, "Canada keeps our farmers and others out." Well, here are some others!
4:00, what? that's just not true. Canadian institutions hire non-Canadians all the time. I don't know what you mean by "exhaust"--they just have to explain why the Canadians didn't cut it by comparison. Sponsoring a foreigner for a work visa in the US may have a lower bar and less procedural safeguards to ensure preference for Americans, but I don't see how it's as different as you suggest.
5:50, based on what a faculty member at a top Canadian university once told me, it is clear that some searches will be more welcoming of foreign applications than others. Ever since he told me this I have applied for only one opening in Canada, and none at his university. (I am being deliberately vague, but will only add that I found the specifics of what I was told rather shocking and dismaying.)
Foreigners applying in USA = No hindrances
Foreigners applying in UK = Pain in the ass Visa paperwork; low chance for VAP
Foreigners applying in Canada = near impossible for TT; million to one for VAP
4:05 is quite right, Canada NEEDS to do this in order to have their own stand any chance whatsoever in getting a job. It’s nationalistic nepotism, no more no less.
Make Canada Great Again!
How is this Free Trade?
8:32--"Foreigners applying in the US--no hindrances"
You're joking, right? Have you ever known someone who's wrestling with the extensive, complicated, and costly paperwork to get a work visa for the US? I have known several (I'm a US citizen so haven't been through this myself), and there are "hindrances" a-plenty. It may be easier for a European to get clearance to work in the US than for a US citizen to get clearance to work in the UK or the EU; I don't know if that's the case or not. But be that as it may, it's no cakewalk for a non-citizen to get a work visa for the US.
8:32 - your post is extremely conceited. I am a foreigner with a top American degree and I can tell you that applying for jobs in the States is extremely difficult for non-citizens. Quite a lot of job postings require you to already have a work authorization (ever noticed those short questions in virtually every SLAC job app?). Smaller colleges often don't sponsor visas for VAPs, not to mention adjunct positions. I got a job over a month ago and still haven't heard anything about my visa. For many it would mean that they wouldn't be able to start their work on time, as it is a long process to be approved. Consequently, late job postings are also out of reach for non-citizens.
I've gone the other way: US citizenship/degree, moved to continental Europe. It was nearly impossible and I think would have been actually impossible if my spouse hadn't had residency here already. I teach in an English-language program oriented partly toward producing graduates with native-level English, but with a total of one native-English speaking faculty member (me) because it is so difficult to get people work permits, and as I said, mine was only through special circumstances. Maybe it is easier for Oxbridge-type places. Just based on the sheer number of foreign faculty in the US vs. the number of Americans in Europe, I can't believe it is so hard going from Europe to the US.
PS Me again, while what 9:48 says is true, it is equally unimaginable that a European institution would sponsor a visa for an American in an adjunct or in most cases VAP position!!
A lot of this discussion is great, but it’s digressed from what the original question was.
Yes, it’s tricky and full of red tape to get a work visa in most countries. And yes, of course the hurdles make it complicated and like a lost cause for later job positings but there are not laws in place preventing foreigner hires; only paperwork issues.
The question oringially asked was if Canada was the only country with an actual law used to enforce nationalistic hires. I know people want to go off on tangents here (which everyone has), but can anyone offer an answer to this?
You're going to have a harder time getting a job anywhere you do not have citizenship, that is simply a fact no matter where you are from or want to go to. Canada probably does have hurdles slightly higher than other countries. The EU is probably in the middle. The US probably has lower hurdles. But nobody can tell you for sure where you will get a job or not, just where it is more or less likely.
What is the distinction you are trying to draw between a law requiring hiring preference for nationals and a law that requires the same preference at the work visa stage instead?
@10:53 (et al.) Canadian old guy here. There are rules, but they are not in my experience difficult to deal with. If a non-Canadian is judged to be the best candidate, there is a very short form to be filled in. The federal government does not seem to police those forms very closely—at least according to my provost whom I've heard say that he'd never heard of one being turned back. This is consistent with my experience. I've been directly involved in about a dozen hires (half in my dept, half out). About two-thirds of the offers have been to non-residents. No one ever questioned the committee's judgment. Impressionistically, I'd say that Classics Depts in Canada are more international than most other disciplines in the Arts, but that will differ from institution to institution. Also impressionistically, I'd say that Canadian departments are less Canadian than British ones British; German ones, German; or American ones, American. My advice to non-Canadians is to apply, both for TTs and VAPs. You might, of course, be disappointed, as it seems most are these days. But Canadian departments often have quite specific needs to fill.
It can't be impossible seeing that a non-Canadian phd got a postdoc at UToronto...
7:29,
Was said candidate a Canadian citizen, though?
@10:00. According to the c.v. at his academia.edu page, he is an American citizen.
Another old Canadian here. To hire a non-Canadian for any job, you have to account for why none of the Canadians who applied were offered the job instead, and account in detail for why you didn't hire any of the shortlisted Canadians. This is much easier to do for a TT job, when you are talking about long-term research/teaching potential, than it is for a VAP, when you are basically bringing in someone to teach for a year or two. It's hard to say that person X is so much more qualified to teach Mythology once than are all the Canadians who applied. I can't think of a single VAP in Canada that I know of that has gone to a non-Canadian in the past decade. TT jobs are different, but this is very dependent on schools. Most of the last few hires at schools like Toronto, McGill, and UBC have been non-Canadians. Smaller schools, like UNB, Guelph, or SFU, are much less likely to hire a non-Canadian. Add to this a very distinct Canadian preference for hiring back their alumni (look at the Dalhousie faculty list for an extreme example), and it is a bit of an insular system. Regional preferences are significant too, especially in the Atlantic provinces and in Alberta.
However, it is VERY hard for graduates of Canadian PhD programs to get hired TT in Canada, because Canadian schools far prefer to hire Canadians who have gone to an Ivy or to Oxbridge for their PhD. Toronto has done well this year in placement within Canada, but if you look back over the years on the wiki, you'll see that's by no means the norm.
Finally, postdocs: in Canada, postdocs are subject to separate labour laws, which means there is no requirement to justify hiring a non-Canadian.
TL;DR: non-Canadians should expect fair treatment in applications for postdocs and (some) TT jobs in Canada, but shouldn't waste their time applying for VAPs.
11:49pm again: just to add, with regard to 6:56's comment, a few years ago a number of hires (not AFAIK in Classics) fell apart at the visa processing stage, when the government did in fact argue that SCs hadn't taken sufficient count of Canadian applicants, see further https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/universities-caught-overhaul-foreign-workers-program/
Thanks for the link, 11:49pm/11:52pm. It's helpful to see an explanation of the policy in practice.
I know of one American hired for a one-year VAP in Canada last year, but no idea how that happened.
Y’all boring AF. :-P
You want exciting?! Then go over to Eidolon and read the multiple hip and edgy articles they've got about tattoos and the people who made the poor life choices to get them.
The only difference between people with tattoos and those without tattoos is that people with tattoos don't give a shit that those without tattoos don't have tattoos.
What a waste of time and energy to write so many articles about something that genuinely does not matter. "Classics people that get a tattoo get tattoos with a Classics theme." Wow. Really amazing stuff right there; groundbreaking and thought provoking journalism.
...Next on the horizon, an amazing article that exposes the fact that pizza (egad!) is a popular food in America.
What happened with the Edinburgh lectureship that wasn't filled? Any famae or inside info?
^re: Edinburgh @12:19: expect to re-advertise early next year.
So, wondering if Academia.edu has a weird ‘bot program’ that views profiles and papers of us all to make us think that we’re being viewed by mystery people so we ought to buy their premium package to see who they are.
I regularly get hits from the same odd places, please let me know if you all do too:
Jacksonville, FL
Waco, TX
Like clockwork, they view my page every 3-4 weeks.
Re: Academia
Jacksonville, FL hits me often, too. The name of the school and their role their are blurred out, but there isn’t any school worth mentioning from there, so who knows.
I’ve had Waco also, but not too much lately. I don’t think that one had a school affiliation
Remember, too, that SC members might check folks out but use a VPN, which can explain why I have hits from bizarre places like Azerbaijan or Sri Lanka.
There* I feel compelled to correct my autocorrect above.
Re: Academia,
A few months back this question came up. A lot of people here had a lot of hits from some weird location that has no schools nearby (e.g., Nome, Alaska) and the consensus was that it was either a SC member away from their institution or that he was using a VPN.
...of course I bet that Academia.edu does use shady practices to try to squeeze money from us freeloaders.
Geolocation of IP addresses isn't always totally accurate anyway (aside from using VPNs or bouncing your browsing around on the dark web to conceal your IP). I wouldn't read too much into it. It's of course possible that academia.edu is being shady, but it could also just be your parents googling you on the reg--who knows.
On that note - has anyone here upgraded to premium on Academia? Is it worth it? Pros/cons?
I do not have personal experience, but I have heard from other academics that getting a premium account is a total rip-off. It ends up being a lot of money for very little, if any, applicable benefit.
Anyone hear back from the Wake Forest PT position?
@10:15,
Just call them. You’ll get the secretary on the phone anyway—not an SC member—so, just ask them if they can share any information with regards to the search’s timeline. I do this all the time and usually find out info long before the Wiki can let me know.
Has anyone applied to the college fellow program at Harvard? Not on the wiki yet. Anyone have experience with their process? What is the timeline?
Re: Harvard
I also applied.
The Wiki is generally a dead thing this time of the year, which can explain the lack of Harvard being on there. With regards to their process, I can only imagine that it will be fast; damn fast. They stated in their job ad that the position STARTS July 1. Which means that they need to fly through the process in the next week or so in order to get things ready in time. Now, being Harvard, they’ll have their pick of the litter and surely had a short list configured by the time applications were due, in order to hit the ground running.
I’d suspect that by the end of this week/weekend, they’ll have reached out to folks for interviews. The end of the following week they’ll make an offer. And the week after that (the last week of June), they’ll button up paperwork to make it official.
Best of luck, 5:02 (we all need as much as we can get).
Thanks for the reply. Can I ask whether you (or anyone else) has actually heard anything (as opposed to speculation, although yours seems very reasonable) about the process for their College Fellowship program? The short timeline made me wonder if they even do interviews.
@6:21,
They will interview.
A colleague of mine was interviewed for (but didn’t get offered) this same (?) position when it was out about 3-4 years ago. Expect an interview but don’t expect a campus visit phase. The chap that got the job last time had a CV to make you want to quit the field, so 5:57 is quite right that Harvard will still be able to have their “pick of the litter” even though we’re into June.
Well, if his/her C.V. made you want to quit the field BEFORE it had the word "Harvard" on it, I can only admire your dogged persistence in remaining among us now that it is no doubt mentioned early and often on that document.
@June 12, 2018 at 10:15 AM
Wake Forest job has been offered and accepted.
Teaching / etiquette question:
I'm starting a new TT position in the Fall. Is it acceptable or frowned upon to cancel or postpone a class in order to attend a conference to which I've been invited?
Our academic calendar does allow for two possible make-up dates at the end of the semester, but I wonder if my colleagues would see this behavior as prioritizing my own research above the progress of my students....
In a similar situation. I emailed the chair and let him know, and his response that it was expected that faculty would need to cancel class from time to time to attend conferences. You could check in, or simply cancel class and see if anyone cares. The students certainly won't.
Just schedule an exam for that day, and ask a colleague to proctor. Then return the favor later. Everyone misses a class for a conference now and then.
In this situation, it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. And in my experience no one will be watching you close enough to care if you cancel a class or two for whatever reason. And the students will love it.
This conversation is so cute.
It very much depends on what kind of institution you're joining (congratulations on the t-t job!). Having taught at large state universities and at SLACs (I'm tenured at one of the latter), I can say that while no-one might notice or care at a large place, if you are in a small dept. -- say, 3 or 4 faculty -- in an SLAC, your colleagues most definitely WILL notice that you're gone, and it may well be frowned upon.
If you're at an SLAC or another small-ish place that prioritizes teaching, I'd be very cautious about missing a day's class in your first semester. In your second semester, maybe; in your second year, no problem. But your very first semester, when you're learning the culture of the place, I think it's a little risky to cancel a class (or even to ask a colleague to sub for you, assuming that there's someone who is free that class period). Especially in your first year, you should demonstrate that you are concentrating on learning the job at that particular college, learning how things are done there, and giving your full attention to getting up to speed as a fully functioning member of that particular faculty (none of which is simple or straightforward).
And, btw, "just schedule an exam for that day" assumes that the conference in question falls at a time when an exam is appropriate. If a conference is very near the beginning or the end of the semester, scheduling an exam isn't a possibility.
None of the above, of course, is directly transferable to other types of institutions, so others will have to advise there. But if you're at an SLAC, I'd say no missed classes the first semester, except for dire illness or family emergency.
This question is relevant to me too, but I'll be starting a VAP, not TT... I suppose @7:23's prudent words would apply to someone in my situation?
"except for dire illness...." Be a little compassionate about terrorizing the junior members of your profession, especially these days when they are terrorized enough to start with. One of my first semesters, a few years ago, I taught with the stomach flu because I had been so traumatized by pronouncements such as this. No, I didn't throw up in class. But I was actively calculating time to the hall garbage can the entire class period, which was pretty much the longest two hours of my life. In retrospect I can see how absolutely crazy this was. At the time, I was so terrified of losing my job over anything except "dire" illness, which I interpreted to mean being hospitalized with something life-threatening. This is not normal, and it is not healthy, for individuals or the profession.
Attending conferences is also part of the job, so you'd be missing one part of the job for another part of the job. It's not a vacation. I wouldn't worry too much about 7:23AM's dire warning. I would run it by the chair or another senior colleague casually and ask if it's more common for faculty to look for a sub, give the students and alternative assignment, or to just cancel class. I wouldn't ask for permission to take off, just guidance on what to do about the fact that you'll be gone.
You will want to find out about your institution's policies in case the institution frowns on cancelling class. You might be required to find a sub or tape a lecture for the students or find some other way for them to have those contact hours with a professor. Some places are pretty strict about this because of accreditation issues.
(And yes, 8:15AM!)
Tenured faculty member here. I've worked at both SLAC and Universities so I am confident in my advice. Don't miss the conference (all schools want research active faculty), but tell the chair about your absence and see if a colleague can cover for you (and then return the favor, as someone else said); if that's not possible, create a special assignment for your students for which they will use the missed class time (e.g. I sometimes assign a couple articles for them to read that relate to class material and ask them to write a summary/critique). It is absolutely normal for faculty to attend conferences and some of them will interfere with class sessions. But I cannot stress enough that you need to let your chair know. You do not want to give the impression that you are irresponsible or that you're hiding something. Also, you should not do this too often within one semester, but it seems that you already know that. Enjoy the conference!
@7:42 AM, I completely agree with your last statement (I don't know anything about the Idaho hire, so I can't comment on that). I can intend to do anything I want, but it doesn't mean anything. Case in point: I've been intending to take the trash out to the dumpster all week, but it still hasn't happened yet. Furthermore, submitting an article to a specific journal in no way guarantees that the journal will accept it. I personally dislike "in preparation" sections on CV for anything except maybe a book if someone already has a contract with a press, but even calling your article "in preparation"—and leaving it at that—is preferable to listing an exact journal and submission date. That information can go in a cover letter when applying for jobs (to show scholarly engagement and whatnot), but it certainly doesn't need to be advertised for the world to see in a public CV.
Department chair here - please listen to 1:47. I want my APs. and VAPs going to every conference that they can, but I do want to know about it if they have to miss class, and I want to know that they are thinking about their students and how their absence might impact their progress. Some depts will have very specific policies for such situations, so you should definitely consult your chair or another senior colleague.
Uh, are the previous commenters seriously attacking a junior scholar whose identity is easily accessible to all? I'm usually in favor of under-, rather than over-, regulation, but this seems a pretty clear violation of commenting policy and just generally nasty. We all have wtf moments with certain hires, but maybe save specifics for in-person communication with close friends rather than public message boards frequented by colleagues. Imagine how you would feel if the above were directed at you.
Is there ever a way to know if a job is an inside higher or genuinely open to all candidates?
Vehemently agree with 5:32. The above posts about the Idaho job are unprofessional and should be removed.
As for inside hires, often (in my experience) they are open to everyone, but the insider has both a great advantage (existing relationships, knowledge of students, colleagues, university culture) and a great disadvantage (the shiny unknown candidate might seem more attractive a candidate etc.). Friends who've been inside candidates have gotten the jobs about half of the time. As a grad student I was on an SC which hired the inside candidate. He was favored by many, but we nonetheless put him under even greater scrutiny than the other candidates because we didn't want to just hire him because we liked him.
The best, and by no means infallible, way to identify a job that is specifically designed for an insider is if the job ad is weirdly specific. For example, an ad for a "Greek historian of the early Hellenistic period who also specializes in the Sicilian reception of Euripides. Secondary fields in Byzantine numismatics or anacreontic meter are especially desired" just screams insider. But really, there's never any absolute way to be sure.
To all of you fretting over the idaho hire: honestly, would you even want to teach in a place like Idaho for the rest of your life??? Stop complaining for the sake of complaining!
@11:58,
I’d rather have a TT job than bouncing from adjunct to VAP to adjunct to VAP...
This day and age is not one where we, in a dying field with degrees that people laugh at and find less and less important every year, can afford to be picky and say that school X or location Y is “too good for us.” We are all beggars, and we all know what they say about that.
We’d all be lucky to get a TT job at a Community College in North Dakota, so let’s not kid ourselves here.
@2:14: no, speak for yourself. If I had no choice but a TT job at cc in ND, I'd change professions in a heartbeat...
a dying self-loathing field
Wow. 2:16 perfectly articulates a problem with Classics: delusions of grandeur.
Let me remind everyone here.. we all have PhDs in a field almost as irrelevant to the real world as dance, women’s studies, or art. The biggest difference being that more lay people care about those three than they do about Latin and Greek. But, by all means, leave the field 2:16, we need less self-satisfied and narcissistic folks in the field and we surely need less applicants for the few jobs that appear every year.
It must be a nice life you have where you can just say “eh, I don’t care for any of the jobs out there so I’m just going to do something else.” Some of us are “pot committed” at this point and can not afford to just walk away; some of us don’t have trust funds or w wealthy mommies and daddies to take care of us while we find something else, but have to struggle and fight for whatever we can get in this field. If you happen to look down on others and certain schools that are “beneath you” then you really should not ever be in a faculty position leading and instructing undergrads; you and your distorted worldview are a poison to what higher education aims to achieve and you most certainly chose the wrong profession.
@2:39pm ... you can change professions without trust funds etc. I don't know what world you're living in. It's not always about delusions of grandeur or elitism.
Changing professions is a real choice for all of us. It's about knowing what life you want. That means knowing where you're willing to live and work. It's about timing and planning too-- applying for non-academic jobs will take time and resources, sure, but you don't need a trust fund to do that if you're smart (and I'm guessing that you've got the smarts, since you have or are completing a PhD). Some of us may not want to work in ND or other similar states, when we can get a job in another field and in a better city with better conditions (for me that means not living somewhere that will not discriminate against me on a regular basis).
You sound--besides bitter and frustrated like most of us on here--a bit trapped in your own situation and inside the neo-liberal machine of higher education as it increasingly is; don't accept your exploitation.
But if you are willing to accept your exploitation, don't go around berating those who choose to escape.
I work at an R1 where faculty send end-of-semester reviews for graduate student performance to one another, but not to the students directly. This seems wrong to me, especially because, in several instances, some faculty are vocally mean-spirited in their treatment of POC or openly gay students. (Grad students in this dept all have pretty similar issues, by and by, but gay and POC students are clearly given a harder time for the same sorts of normal developmental issues, eg difficulty presenting in seminar or teaching undergrads how to write well.) I’m strongly considering forwarding the faculty reviews to the students involved, either before / after a strongly worded email to the faculty themselves, because it is my feeling that the review process should be more transparent. With or without some wider emailing, i plan to meet with a few of the students privately to let them know what’s up / show them their internal reviews. Thoughts / comments on the legalities or ethics or potential repercussions of such an action, one way or the other?
If you forward confidential stuff to students, your colleagues will probably hate you. If you are not tenured and hope to be tenured at this institution, this seems like a VERY risky career move. Do you have any other allies among the faculty? This seems like a coalition-building kind of thing, not a whistle-blower kind of thing to me.
What do you hope the students will learn from this? That the faculty are assholes? Do you want them to drop out? These are not rhetorical questions...if you are at a non-top 10 or 15 or whatever R1, the Ph.D. program is almost certainly indefensible (as pre-professional training for academic research and teaching, that is, which is supposedly what Ph.D.s are). If on top of that, students are being treated like garbage by faculty - time for an exodus.
4:39 ... that is a terrible idea and it's mindblowing that you would even consider doing so. You could probably be fired for cause if you share protected student information that they aren't supposed to see. There are other ways to address the problem, although frankly none seem at all realistic if you are a powerless junior dept member.
4:39,
Do you want to get fired? Because that’s how to get fired.
How the hell can you think that what you’re talking about is even slightly acceptable and more importantly how did someone with your kind of judgment ever get a fucking job in this hyper-competitive environment to begin with?
6:18 PM here. I was trying to be nice, but I also think it's possible (maybe likely) that forwarding the stuff, or even sharing what's written without permission, will get you fired.
@4:39
Honestly any faculty who talk that way about grad students are trash and should be exposed. They shouldn't have grad students at all if they feel that way, to be honest. As others have pointed out, however, you need to find a strategic way to deal with it, especially if you do not have tenure. Just doing it on your own is a bad idea.
I've been an adjunct for the last couple of years at a small midwestern college, have a book under contract with a big university press, editing a volume of essays also by said big university press, and have a few articles in the pipeline... yet I still have no job offers.
I'm beginning to suspect it's something about my personality, which I've been told can come off as either energetic (when seen in a good light) or aggressive (when seen in a bad light). Is it possible for top candidates to be turned down based what others perceive to be a personality flaw? I love to engage others vigorously and I love what I do, but I fear others perceive me as being hostile, which is not my intention... Any thoughts from seasoned members of SCs?
@6:19,
I’d be hesitant to take what 4:39 at face value. I highly doubt faculty members are openly being racist/homophonic in interdepartmental reviews of grad students. A more likely and believable scenario is one in which 4:39 sees fair criticism of POC or gay students and internalizes it as prejudice. None of us can say for sure what it is without actually seeing it, so let’s not fuel what is (more likely than not) imagined prejudice in the mid of 4:39.
@4:39,
Your accusations are horribly dangerous if not 100% true. If, IF, these faculty members are being clearly and openly racist/homophobic speak with the dean, do not ever share the information with the grad students. Don’t even share the documents with the Dean nor say the names of the faculty members when you first speak to the Dean, but speak in vague and careful terms.
If you are wrong, you’re setting yourself up to be seen akin to a girl who falsely accuses a guy of rape: word will spread about you and Depts will avoid your application like the plague.
@all others,
How on Earth did someone with so little common sense ever get hired?
@8:47,
Interviews are always about *you* as a person. The fact that you made it to the interview stage means that you’re seen as “good enough” on paper and meeting their qualifications. The interview is about how well you’d fit for them and to ensure that you’re not a crazy person or a weirdo. Aside from obvious blunders in the interview and campus visit, almost all decisions are gut decisions by SC members based on how well you mesh with them. This comes off as “fit” to a SC, or a “good/bad feeling” about candidate X, Y, or Z.
You’re not just interviewing to prove that you’re qualified (that’s already been established by the fact that you have an interview) but that you’ll be a good colleague and have a good “bedside manner” for students. If you come off as unappealing as a person (be that socially awkward, never making eye contact, seeming creepy or bizarre, acting oddly) that can kill your chances. On the reverse, someone who just has a wonderful personality and has a knack to make people like them (e.g., Bill Clinton, Bob Ross, Mr. Rogers) has an enormous advantage at the interview-onward phases of a job search than those who may be more “qualified” but has a bad personality (e.g., Ted Cruz, Hilary Clinton, Kanye West). It’s unfair, but nobody ever said life was fair.
As a professor in North Dakota who was raised as a stereotypical "coastal elite," I had the same internal debate when I was offered my position here. Turned out to be among the best I ever made. Generous travel funding, cheap home prices, a 2/2 load (with additional course releases meaning some years it's a 1/1 or fewer) which leaves plenty of time for publishing and conferences, and a salary which goes far enough to take my family and I to Hawaii over winter vacation and Paris every summer. You won't have the size or concentration of scholars in your specialty, it's true, but if you're a self-starter and are happy spending the long winters writing, you can make a good life.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
@3:57 I think the take away--which was obvious from the start--is that North Dakota or Idaho works for some and not for others. For someone like myself, it's definitely off the table for various personal reasons, despite all the benefits you enumerated. If no other opportunities in the Classics surfaced for me, I would search for employment elsewhere with optimism. I would also continue to the love the classics and not resent the path that I took.
I'd say the takeaway is rather that some places are not intrinsically good and others inherently bad. Instead, our own unique personal circumstances determine whether any individual place could work for us or not. Taking a dump on "flyover country" like the commenter above (at June 17, 2018 at 2:16 PM) did is very different from explaining that one's personal circumstances mean that this isn't an option (even if one's personal circumstances are pearl bedposts and solid gold flatware). Some peoples' circumstances mean that a soulless hellhole like NYC is "off the table" and others' circumstances mean that a soulless hellhole like Texas or SoCal or The Northwest is "off the table." But that doesn't make the soulless hellholes objectively horrible places to live and work. Though I'm sure that many MANY of my esteemed colleagues would disagree. And maybe that fact says something about our elitist, privileged, closed-minded collective. But maybe not. In any case, if they're handing out TT jobs in ND, sign me the hell up, personal circumstances be damned! Jobs in South Dakota? Nah, not so much. Personal reasons.
The problem lies not with the place but with the person. If you move from NYC to ND and still try to live like you did in NYC, you'll be disappointed. Equally, if you're from ND and bring an ND state of mind to NYC, you'll hate it. But if you move to ND and acclimate yourself to the things ND'ers do or vice-versa, you'll be fine, thrive even. Everywhere you go, you'll find happy and unhappy people. If you're rigid, you'll be unhappy; if you can learn how to balance who you are with where you are, you'll be happy. And anyway, none these people who wouldn't debase themselves by moving to such an unprestigious place as ND don't sound too happy anyway, so even though they have nothing to lose but their pride, ND is probably better off without them anyway. All this I've learned from my own lived experience and observation as someone who had numerous jobs from most to least prestigious, from city to country and back again and who is now happily settled in a TT.
Not everyone can or wants to have to adapt to everything, and that's fine. Coastal snootiness is often very silly, but to pretend that everyone can just pick up and move to the sticks or to the big city and if they're unhappy it's their own damn fault for being rigid is also very silly. A little stoicism goes a long way, but some people have cultural values that won't just slip under the surface without a trace when thrown overboard in pursuit of a job.
Not to shit on everyone's imagined Eureka moments, but can we please for just a second pause to note that this debate is by no means novel. Authors from antiquity, especially Horace, wrote about it extensively. Only Classicists would seem to miss the irony of such FV posts.
also note the first comment was about a 'bad' job (CC) in a 'bad' place (ND), and the person replying was talking about a 'good' job (time for writing! course relief! summers off! a large enough salary to go to hawaii and paris) in that place.
most of us don't have the option of a TT job anywhere. we are wondering whether we want to spend 1-3 years of our 30's renting in North Dakota and teaching 3-3 for a lower salary than TT faculty get.
i suspect even many of the 'never ND' folks would take the job and adapt if it were TT and 2-2, sometimes reduced to 1-1.
@1:56,
Believe it or not, not every Classicist has read everything written by every ancient author. I can say, for one, aside from knowing he wrote Odes, I’ve never read a single line of Horace and (egad!) it hasn’t effected my life in the slightest.
How did you get through a Classics Ph.D. program and exams without reading Horace? Were you in a history or phil dept.?
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