I honestly have no idea how diverse other humanities are in comparison to Classics writ large. I imagine it's probably among the least diverse. In my experience, however, from having spent time at several universities where I have interacted with archaeologists of both the Anthropological and Classical varieties, the former showed significantly more diversity in terms of both students and professors. Classical Archaeology occupies this weird space (at least in the US) where it is generally divorced from all other archaeology at the departmental level, despite often finding itself part of strange interdepartmental configurations that don't really bridge the gap.
I imagine that it would be fairly easy to gauge just how diverse classics may be, that is if the SCS/AIA can be a finger on the pulse.
In the U.S. 81% of the workforce is white. So, if when walking down the hallways in the hotels here in Boston you can count 8 white folks out of every 10 then perhaps it’s not as dire as we’re painting it. I mean, proportional representation is what indicates that any field is even-handed and balanced. To have an SCS/AIA meeting where 70% are black won’t happen-it just won’t. And that’s ok.
Now, I’m not at the SCS/AIA this year, but rather than look around and see a sea of white faces and feel despair, pause a moment and ask instead if it’s a 80/20 split, or if it really is closer to 95-99% white.
I’m not being cheeky, I’m really asking folks to do this. It’s better to not lose our minds thinking the sky is falling if, in fact, we’re rather close to being proportionally representative.
We should be thinking 77% white - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61. I was at the AIA council as well. There were around 100 people. So 10 should have been Asian, 3 black, 2 Latino, 1 native american, 1 two or more. Not sure where the remaining six fall but I'm guessing not white.
I'm sure the SCS is worse than the AIA if not by much. To think we approximate the numbers above is optimistic at best, total denial at worst. I'm even more interested in trends. I've been doing this for several decades and I would say we are going the opposite direction of the general populace, which will be majority visible minorities in your lifetimes regardless of present sentiments in federal governance.
There's no late check out, and the conference internet didn't work. Isn't the reason that we go to these godawful places supposedly that the hotel service is so much better??
To me it looks as though Classics gets whiter the higher up you go (undergrad majors are more diverse than graduate students, graduate students are more diverse than PhDs, and so on). If this is accurate, there are various explanations we could look into, but the answer will not be "white people are just that much more interested."
If you're using the AIA council, it's worse than we think. The council is not restricted to faculty. The US population is 63% white, but the better figure is just over 50% of bachelor`s holders are white. Council members are all college educated from what I gather. So the council should be somewhere between 52% and 77% white if it is reflective of the same demographic. The fact that it's something in the high 90s is disconcerting and suggests other factors are in play - no chicken little syndrome here.
After the meetings SCs often make campus invitations in one to two weeks, but it may take longer because of interviews which had to be rescheduled. And of course some schools take longer than others because of institutional protocols. And if you aren't being invited to campus you may not hear anything at all.
SC member here. We finished interviewing this morning and are ready to make interviews, but have to await our institution's HR approval. These processed are regulated at all stages by universities, so sometimes when we seem slow, it's because universities are making sure we're fair, equitable, and legal. Good luck to you!
@4:43 - SC member here. We finished interviewing this morning and are ready to make interviews, but have to await our institution's HR approval. These processed are regulated at all stages by universities, so sometimes when we seem slow, it's because universities are making sure we're fair, equitable, and legal. Good luck to you!
3:39: "Fair enough. But let’s not jump the gun and assume that Classics and Classicists are deliberately keeping minorities out."
I don't think that the discipline and people in the discipline work to deliberately keep minorities out so much as the discipline itself is one that has historically been steeped in privilege and so has a lot of catching up to do. The kids who show up in Classics courses at the university level without any prodding tend to be those who went to private/prep/magnet/Catholic schools, and so they already had taken Latin (more rarely Greek) or some other "humane letters" type classes.
One thing that I think is key is making students aware of what Classics is (many don't know) and what it has to offer. There's also something to be said for designing courses that will present the subject in such a way that it appeals to kids beyond the nerds who spend their free time reading Smyth or Allen & Greenough. This means coming up with courses that break the traditional straight language or lit in tranlastion courses. Some schools seem to do better at this than others.
I agree, but there’s no way to make profs all over the U.S. change their teaching style. Some may try to mix it up, but the lion’s share will continue to teach in a manner that they prefer, while others will end up changing things for the worse though well intentioned.
I think you hit the mail on the head regarding privilege. But, if that truly is what maintains Classics as an upper-class (and therefore disproportionetly white) pursuit, changing pedagogy won’t really impact the problem. In fact, it may make things worse, as those who normally would pursue Classics might find themselves turned off by a shifted approach, however dated or narrow it may be. It may be the traditional approach that attracted those few that it does; change Classics *too* drastically and we might lose a great number of those who would pursue it all while not effectively bringing in anyone new since, as I think many of us can agree, it’s a privilege, wealth, and socio-cultural problem more than anything.
...does that mean we do nothing? No. But we ought to be very careful to not further shrink an already-shriveled major by altering the very aspects of Classics that may act as a magnet for those who do wish to pursue it further.
My solution has been noted by others above: talk to students. Both sitting Classics majors as well as minorities who both in Classics or who show no interest to gauge *why* such disparity exists.
We cannot start proposing solutions until we truly know what the ailment is. Which is why we need to start investigating.
"So the council should be somewhere between 52% and 77% white if it is reflective of the same demographic. The fact that it's something in the high 90s is disconcerting and suggests other factors are in play - no chicken little syndrome here."
This is called the road to irrelevance, my friend. And what happens when the remaining 1%er donors who are staving off elimination for us lose interest in classics? Call me chicken little, but I think it can get much worse real quick.
Gettysburg didn't make it to the SCS; as far as I know, the interviews are to be done via Skype this week. Would it be ethical for an interviewee to share? Wouldn't that give interviewees who interview later in the process an unfair advantage? Genuinely asking.
Depends. If OP wanted to know the kind of questions a SC might ask for a VAP job, not necessailly. And, even if the person is also interviewing at the same school, it might not help too much since the interviewee may seem like they’re reading a script and come off as socially awkward and weird to the SC who would interpret the interviewee as having an unnatural way of speaking and make them unrepeatable. Plus, the SC might have a bank of potential questions and not neccesarilly use the same ones for all candidates. Lastly, depending on how one answers question #1, the entire trajectory of succeeding questions may take a course of its own.
So, in short, sharing interview questions (IMO) are beneficial only to indicate the general type of questions being asked, but are not helpful at all to those who will interview at a later date—and arguably can set up later folks for a bad interview.
So.. go ahead and share to ensure your better position.
So, sharing questions would either be unhelpful, or potentially harmful, and you'd still advocate sharing them? Damn, dude, that is cold. I hope we never meet.
They can be helpful insofar as indicating the general atmosphere of a SC and are surely useful for broad stokes purposes so that people know the kind of questions to expect.
I think the point being made regarding their danger is that one shouldn’t expect (and only prepare for) a carbon copy interview that someone else had.
One thing I learnt in Boston: Holy Cross was not taking any ABDs. I think that schools should specify this in the job ad, if it is already clear when the search is set up. It will save us all (incl. the SC!) a whole lot of time and energy. Likewise, letter writers: Can the SCS/AIA not send out some recommendations for better hiring practices? i.e., do not request letters or writing samples until the candidate has been long-listed or short-listed. Every SC member will thank the other for not making them write a letter that may never even be read!
Would anyone who got an on-campus at Rutgers mind sharing (in general terms) what you work on? Rejection email stated they had "very particular needs" in filling this position, and I'm just curious if they went closely with the philosophy/intellectual history side of things.
Could 11:53 or someone else point me to the argument against making letters part of initial applications? As a reader of files I find them very useful, and I’m pretty?sure that without them I’d lean more heavily on pedigree, which is presumably not anyone’s goal.
You are of the slimmest minority. I’m at a top-5 University and each and every member of the Dept here always bickers about how letters of recommendation aren’t unseful until a candidate is among those sought for an interview.
Their argument is that at the first stage of the process, CV and cover letter are far more important. In fact, many dept members even say that letters of rec. are not useful at any stage, since so many are so similar (c”andidate ‘x’ is great and they are an ideal fit for this position”). They argue that how many ways can one advocate for their students?
I did not interview with Gettysburg, but one interview posed a curveball question and I personally would be pretty angry if someone shared it with people who had not yet been interviewed. I think it's better not to share questions at all unless the school provided them to all candidates ahead of time, or unless we wait until all first-round interviews for that position are definitely over.
@1:13: purely out of curiosity (I'm not interviewing anywhere), if all the candidates for the job have indeed been interviewed, could you share that curveball question?
...as an aside, one odd, though not necessarily “curvey” question I was asked once was: “what was your biggest mistake that you’ve made when teaching, and how did you fix it? And what was the most brilliant thing you’ve ever done in the classroom?”
@12:55pm, 11:53am here. I agree with 1:12pm. My school is conducting a search this year, and several SC members have told me they won't read the letters at all (some think they're uninformative, others, biased), and others, that they don't do so until post-first round interviews. You may be among a minority. But it's probably down to the university hiring policies.
I would argue that letters skew more than institutional pedigree. There are a handful of truly big names and while their level of ethics vary, this generational crop of boomer bigshots are almost invariably competitive to the extreme with ginormous egos, which often prevents them for thinking objectively (at least when I compare them to their immediate forbearers, the Silent Generation that bore Gen X). This is the generation presently mortgaging the country's future and likely putting into motion the inevitable demise of the US as a world power. Please, get rid of first round letters for the sake of us all.
Several-time SC committee member here (including this year), and a writer of letters. I'm happy to have the letters and find them sometimes helpful, especially at the earlier stages. The idea of not asking for them until after the short-list, or the long-list, would not work for me: once I have those lists, I'm unlikely to return to the letters. I want to spend time reading submitted writing samples and (where available) publications.
Q about post-docs in the humanities and social sciences: for those that ask for a "PhD by June 2018" -- what if you are awarded one of these fellowships but decide to take a summer graduation (e.g., to receive the PhD in August 2018). is this a deal-breaker or is there some flexibility so long as one attains the degree before the fellowship start date?
This is a big reason why ABDs have a very hard time getting anything. The possibility always exists that an ABD may not finish in time. So, when ads mention ABDs are ok, 9/10 they aren’t.
Why would you risk a postdoc for the sake of graduating two months later? Health care? Visa issues? Otherwise I see no reason to do this. That being said I know of people who got their PhD months/years after starting their postdoc, and who have gotten their PhD months/years after getting a tenure track position. So whatever goes, I guess, as long as someone wants you.
@10:22, sometimes you're not given a choice. I finished in time for a spring graduation and even way ahead of time for a summer graduation, but my advisor was "too busy" to read my thesis until mid-summer, so I got bumped to the autumn graduation.
@10:01, usually when they're that specific, they mean it. I think ACLS even has a FAQ question that says you absolutely must be finished by x-date, no exceptions.
"You know people who got a T-T position while ABD and they stayed ABD for “months/years”?
No. No way at all."
Yes, I know of two people who graduated way after getting their TT positions. One of them referred the position for a year, another started working normally without the degree. Not in Tajikistan, if you really want to be offensive to a different country like that, but in a top LAC in the States.
Jumping in here.. Since who is faculty at any institution and when one received their PhD and position all public knowledge: name names.
Otherwise I have to call BS. How convenient it is to say there are examples and then not supply proof. So, I hope you folks can back up what you’re saying (which is highly unbelievable) with evidence rather than simply saying “I know a guy.”
Tenured person here. For those asking the question about ABDs receiving T-T positions before officially graduating, it happens, including at some of the most elite institutions in the country. They can vary in the circumstances involved: I am aware of cases where the person was finished (thesis pretty much approved by committee) but they had not had time to hold a formal defense (one or another committee member simply unavailable until many months later); cases where the thesis was finished and thought OK by advisor, but not yet approved by all or defended (obviously); and cases where defense was scheduled for after the start date but the hiring institution was very sure of it being all done in time.
There have also been cases where things were not in place and the person hired failed to finish within a year or two and were then dumped.
In general, it's actually at the higher end where ABDs are more likely to be hired. I'm not in the higher tiers and at my place, we simply will not consider ABDs unless we have assurances that the candidate is done and it's going to be defended in the Spring and it's a done deal. A summer defense could well put an ABD out of the running, because sometimes those summer defenses simply don't happen. We can't afford to have someone half-distracted by finishing their thesis while also prepping and teaching 3 courses.
Also a difference to note: at top tier places, they may still extend the title of "Assistant Professor," but at middle and lower places, such as where I work, the Admin would decree they can only be termed a "Lecturer" or "VAP," with a lower salary, until they have degree in hand. This will vary from institution to institution, of course.
@ 9:41. It does happen, and would be relatively simple for you to figure out for yourself if you just pulled your head out of your ass. It doesn't say great things about you as a person that you are so hell bent on getting your better-informed and more socially-connected colleagues to name and shame like this.
@ 10:22. I agree that it does happen, though more likely at the Ivies who love committing incest, but I don't think that your attitude here is warranted. OP (9:41) wants proof, which isn't a wild claim, especially if OP is not at an Ivy, whereas you may be. In any event, you are making things far worse by insulting them as such and your privileged status comes shining through for us all to see.
Rather than insult your peers, give an example of a scholar hired as such. I personally don't see it as "shaming" in any way. In fact, to be hired as an ABD who still has time to go only speaks volumes about that particular candidate. Think of a high school basketball player courted by the NBA and promised a slot after completing only the minimum (1-year) of NCAA playing.
...since so many here are afraid to cite public information, I will provide an example that (kind of) suffices:
UC-Berkeley graduate, Jeremy McInerney, many years back, was ABD and interviewed for a T-T job at UPenn. He bombed the interview. Horribly (by his own account). Then he called his advisor at Berkeley and told him. His advisor phoned the SC chair at UPenn. Jeremy then received a call from the SC chair and he asked him to meet him for a drink. He did, and they chatted for some time. Then, Jeremy was offered the job. Now, he likely got the first interview on account of the connection by his advisor to the SC chair at Upenn at that time, and even though he bombed his interview his advisor then got him a second, private and shady, interview over scotch and cigars. Then, he was offered the T-T job. Jeremy, as an ABD got the T-T job at UPenn solely due to his advisor.
This is not meant to tarnish (now Distinguished Professor) McInerney, as he always tells this story to first year grads at Upenn. In fact, he failed to get a publishing deal for his tenure, so he (again) called his old advisor at Berkeley and he (within an afternoon) got Jeremy a deal with UTexas press. So, he owes his interview, 2nd interview, job, and tenure all to the influence of his advisor. This, in fact, is the entire point of his story: "never go to a grad program if you feel that your advisor will not have your back every step of the way."
..so, while not a story of an unfinished ABD getting a job, it's not far from the mark so far as questionable hiring practices at the Ivies.
I agree that the Ivies will undoubtedly have very unethical hiring procedures and ‘norms.’ I think that even the very best of the public schools (UNC-Chapel Hill, UC-Berkeley, and Michigan) won’t do this, since they’re bound by admins and policies that private schools can flatly ignore or not even have in place.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions about McInerney's seemingly elite Berkeley-Penn background, know that he attended a fairly lowbrow uni (not even top 10 in Australia) and was a secondary school teacher for years. His tenure book on Phocis didn't gain as much traction back then due to its perceived peripheral nature and touching upon topics that weren't as hot as they are today (ethnicity, landscapes, memory, etc.). His PhD students I know down to a person would fight for him tooth and nail. He invariably supports similar "outlier" dissertations that individually do more than a half dozen typical classics diss. Penn got it right and it wasn't because of pedigree. He was and is immanently qualified and was fortunate (as was the discipline) to get a closer look. The outlier approach can be risky, but it's really what the discipline needs but instead we are supporting staid topics that move the ball an inch when we can ill afford to do so.
Certainly the good-old boy net work can and has elevated people who became outstanding scholars despite earning their positions through connections and luck.
That need not be a defense of the system, however, which also filled the halls of academe with well connected mediocrities, and which inevitably favored the generation of mostly white men who now populate the ranks of senior scholars (would a woman be invited to a followup interview over cigars and scotch?)
Sadly, the current, seemingly meritocratic system is functioning just as badly, as overcautious SCs aim for safe mediocrity, while the same good old boy/girl system still flourishes beneath the HR imposed rules.
@9:41, I can think of two such cases from last year alone (TT job but unfinished dissertation). I'm not going to name names out of respect for the junior scholars who did not out themselves as such- perhaps for fear of your belligerence, but they were both discussed here on FV.
@12:01 his undergrad institution (Macquarie) is actually the best in Australia for ancient history (then and now)... they just don't have the same degree of elitism in their university system, since it's pretty much all publicly funded.
Still, how many average SC members would know this fact and not let the general cachet of the uni affect them? Texas has the best Linear B program in the world but it doesn't stop people from prejudging its alums (and the outlier nature of their subdiscipline).
In theory, agreed. But there are now two Mycenologists from Texas (Professor and PhD graduate) with MacArthur grants, and a third with a stint at the Harvard Society of Fellows (undergrad). If anything, there's some serious networking going on there.
Good for them for taking "risks" despite not holding elite status. So wtf is up with stodgy places like Harvard, Michigan, and Berkeley? It's good to be king so let's play it conservative until they're the last departments standing? I have a friend who is one of the McInerney/Penn PhD graduates doing remarkable things like those at Texas and I know it's generally a severe uphill climb at best for them, fancy grants and all. Where are the elite programs? Chasing away new fangled things like the Perseus Project, which should have never left Harvard?
@ 5:10, holy crap, how did nobody on the program committee notice that?! I haven't had a bad sexual experience with the alluded-to senior Classicist, but he was an ENORMOUS asshole to me once when I picked him up at the airport.
I just got a rejection letter for an ivy post-doc where I attend; my advisor was on the selection committee (along with other SC members that I know well and with whom I have good relationships). I'm disappointed but I suppose it's encouragement, even if it's just one example, for those who are disheartened by all of the unfair insider networking that goes on within elite universities?
Regarding that CAMWS panel with the questionable participant, can someone explain why classicists need to have anything to say or do IN OUR ROLE AS CLASSICISTS about campus rape? How are we supposed to be different from faculty in English, Earth Sciences, Communications, or just about any other discipline when it comes to such crimes? What am I, among the least "woke" people in the field, missing here in terms of why such a paper is being given?
Please tell me, so I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to find out in person.
6:30, take heart. I am sure you are nowhere near the least woke person in the field. But you could answer that question for yourself by reading the abstract of the talk:
"Given the complexity and timeliness of these evolving social and legal issues, what do we as classicists have to contribute? In Spring 2016 I designed and taught an undergraduate Classics/Honors seminar on “Mythologies of Rape,” convinced that dominant cultural myths and archetypes (Lucretia, the Sabine Women, Phaedra, the Trojan Women, Ovidian metamorphosis after metamorphosis) contribute to embedded modern constructions of rape and can open the door to a historically contextualized conceptual archaeology. Our discipline depends on demonstrating its continuing relevance to issues that our students confront both in the news and their own lives."
6:30 here. Yeah, I'm an idiot for not noticing the link to the abstract.
I hope I can be forgiven my skepticism, but I cannot help but think that even if every one of us in the field taught that "Mythologies of Rape" course there would not be one less rape committed on college campuses, or elsewhere. So it's back to the drawing board on trying to find a new way to demonstrate the field's relevance to today's society...
In terms of applications: I have learned that less is more. Every job is so flooded, that there is not point applying for a job that you do not fit well. If you are an ancient historian, do not apply for Latin lit jobs, or Archaeology jobs.
There are always exceptions. The notorious Albany add this year called for a Greek historian, but was willing to at least interview several Roman historians. So it might be worth applying to a job that you don't meet the specifics for, so long as it is firmly in your disciplinary profile (and of course, many of use have some interdisciplinary coverage).
That said, 5-10 TT jobs if your field is having a strong year is not unreasonable. Strategically limiting your applications also saves your recommenders time, and allows them to tailor the letters they do send out, if they are so inclined. It will also allow you to tailor your own applications. In short, more applications do not mean more interviews/visits.
Also, do not think that you are not getting a job because you are "not trying hard enough." This is what I call the "I will be a better boy/girl next time, I promise!" fallacy that many candidates fall into, thinking that one more VAP, one more publication, one more SCS paper will earn them a job. It most certainly will not, as evidenced by the ABDs waltzing away with jobs every year. You are not getting a job because the job market has collapsed, not because you are not trying hard enough.
Are you sure that Albany interviewed Roman historians? I know that so much was/is mismanaged with that job, but are you certain that they, too, interviewed Roman historians?
...also, as one who desperately hoped for that job and did not get an interview for their (odd) immediate campus visits and is hoping that some sliver of a chance may still exist, are you aware of what their current status is?
"dominant cultural myths and archetypes..contribute to embedded modern constructions of rape and can open the door to a historically contextualized conceptual archaeology." What in the tarnation does this mean?
The abstract continues: "Our discipline depends on demonstrating its continuing relevance to issues that our students confront both in the news and their own lives." Agreed, but is the use of such jargon helping bring things down to earth?
I am still reflecting on that abstract. If the key to understanding ancient rape myths is making sure they are historically contextualized, then how can they shed light on rape as a contemporary issue? Isn't the author suggesting that rape is a historically determined concept? So the Classics are obsolete on this matter (and everything else?).
@10:18 am Everyone has a different strategy. Some apply for just a few jobs and get something, some apply for lots of jobs and get nothing. And vice versa. Do what keeps you sane. I have reduced the number of jobs I apply for, choosing only ones that seem like a good fit, and I got exactly the same number of interviews this year as every other year I've been on the market.
Look at the North Alabama ad.. there’s no way that’s all true. My colleague interviewed (on 1/9) yet someone posted they got asked to go to a campus visit today (1/11)?? ...I doubt it greatly. To think that a SC can, within 48 hrs (!), contact folks for round 2 is laughable.
I cannot speak for Northern Alabama, but I have seen campus visit requests go out as soon as the afternoon first round interviews conclude. Remember, in some instances the SC already has a tentative shortlist in mind even before interviews happen. This need not always be the case, but it happens.
@10:03 I'm the poster for the N Alabama campus interview from earlier today. I had the interview on 1/9 as well, and received the e-mail from them this morning, so I don't know what to tell you. It's a freaky, weird world out there.
Oddly, I didn't receive a Skype request from them until last week. So like you, I thought that someone else on the board had 'mis-posted' that they received one back in December just to screw with everyone. So I guess you never know. Lying on here would be an... interesting strategy.
I was on an SC this year and the committee made its decision for the finalists immediately after the interviews (i.e. still technically at the conference). It can happen quite quickly.
As for an earlier comment, about "In short, more applications do not mean more interviews/visits." Studies have shown that actually more applications is one of the only things that actually seems to correlate with more interviews. See, for example, this person's experience (https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1775-i-found-a-tenure-track-job-here-s-what-it-took), where he says "Apply for everything." I can't find the article I read with the stats about more applications=more interviews, but it's out there somewhere. It's not a guarantee, and it's not for everyone, do what you feel comfortable with (people have different standards) and can live with, I'd say. There's no formula.
Not sure if it’s better to have had 1st round interviews and no invites to campus, or to have had nothing at all.
I’ve had 3 T-T interviews and have 1 scheduled VAP interview to go. The 3 T-T interviews all seemed to have went great; I clicked with the committees and turned off Skype feeling very optimistic. ...then, log in to the Wiki and see that campus invites happened and my email was empty.
In a way, it’s perhaps worse to always get 1st round interviews; it makes you feel like you’re “almost good enough.” Whereas, having no luck anywhere may you start to figure out something always in life.
...there’s still one T-T waiting to respond for all applicants (SUNY-Stony Brook), and a few VAPs left to contact, but I feel like shit.
With North Alabama not offerering me a campus invite, after what felt like a phenomenal interview, I don’t know what else to do. My CV couldn’t be any stronger given that I’m 1-year out with PhD. I’ve done everything you’re supposed to do, and done all of it to such a degree that I outshine my peers and even many of those on SCs. I don’t mean to gloat, and I am very humble, but being that this is an anonymous format I can speak candidly: what is wrong with my application that so little return happens? I ask rhetorically, of course, but I honesty don’t know how much more rejection I can handle.
@12:40, I hear you and understand where you are coming from, but I think you are making a mistake in believing the process to be fundamentally meritocratic. It is most definitely not. How do ABDs with zero publications and very little teaching experience best those who have similar institutional backgrounds, multiple publications, and years of VAPs? Connections, "fit" (a justification of all sorts of biases), fortuna, etc.
There is also the danger that one might appear too accomplished for certain institutions, or that you are somehow giving that impression. Who would want to hire a colleague who so clearly 'outshines them', as you say, (and who might flee for a better opportunity at the drop of a hat)?
I'm not judging you, as I am in an almost identical boat- through 3 years out. I'm jumping ship this year if nothing materializes.
@9:40, The rejection isn't personal, even though it sucks. If you are already at the place where you can't handle the rejection (at only 1 year out) you might need to reevaluate, or take up yoga, or channel your inner stoic.
It sounds like the disgruntled poster above is a historian. I am as well, and my experience with ancient history searches is that they are more unpredictable than other sub-fields: the split between history and classics departments, desire for specializations that often go unstated in the job ad (late antiquity, hellenic? roman, material culture, etc.), need for language teaching- all these make history searches variable, and ultimately discouraging for the applicant.
I second 1:04PM. After multiple years on the market, one thing that I have learned is that literally nothing matters. Everything SCs claim they care about, teaching, research, service, makes surprisingly little difference in who gets the job. If you have an impressive record in all three areas, expect to be beaten by ABDs with empty CVs (although usually posh degrees and influential advisors). Its okay to feel bitter, but avoid the "what more could I have done?" Because the answer is nothing.
1:04 also hit the nail on the head about history jobs. A Classics department might really want a candidate who analyzes narratology in Tacitus (and can also offer an advanced Greek course), whereas History Departments show strong preferences towards Late Antiquity, and the ability to BS through a World History course.
As noted by 12:53, less is also MUCH more at a place like North Alabama. My guess is they will hire someone who is from the south, probably with a PhD from UNC, UT Austin or a similar institution. The successful candidate will lack the publications that might allow them to jump ship to a better institution in coming job cycles. Institutions like North Alabama would rather have a stolid mediocrity who will nonetheless work to build their institution for forty years, rather than a callow hotshot who treats them as a stepping stone on the road to Harvard.
Yes, I am an ancient historian. And from what I’ve experienced thus far (3 T-T and 1 VAP this year; 2 T-T and 2 VAP last year while ABD), is that we can’t rrally throw our names in too many job postings. My BA and MA are in Classics while my PhD is in History, which (effectively) eliminates me from 99% of “historian“ jobs in a Classics Dept. Graduate-level Latin and Greek are requirements for entry into (and successful continence within) the PhD program in ancient history where I went, yet because I never taught a Latin or Greek course, and because my PhD is not a philology degree, Classics Depts are stand-off-ish. On the flip side, given that the super-prominent universities often do not offer a PhD in ancient history from a History Dept, *should* put me (with a degree from a ranked 5-10 program) at the top of the pile of applicants for jobs in a History Dept, but it does not: Philology folks from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale will be able to seduce SCs in History Depts just fine. ...the result: ancient historians with a PhD from a History Dept are looked on much like a bi-racial person may have been 50 years ago—not belonging to either group fully and never at any advantage given their situation.
12:40 again (I mis-quoted my time in previous post as “9:40” above),
@1:25,
I think you’re quite right about Alabama: I have 5 publications, 8 int’l conferences, 14 grants and fellowships, numerous teaching awards, 6 years of teaching experience, I am currently a VAP at a top-10, and I’m working (remotely of course) with a team of scholars for a DH project with Cambridge.
Oddly, I chose to not bother applying to Princeton or Chicago (I am a historian of the Roman Empire, to boot) because I felt under-qualified. ...imposter syndrome at its best.
Speaking as someone who spent too many years on the market. Please do not take rejection at the interview stage personally. If you only had 3 TT interviews, that is not enough to expect even an on-campus, much less an offer, odds-wise. Of course, SOMEONE gets lucky. SOMEONE has one TT interview that turns into a job offer, and you will you hear that story. Probably at the same time as your adviser informs you that "good people get jobs." But the vast majority get between 1-5 TT interviews and none of them go anywhere. The odds are against you.
Speaking as an SC member. It is SO not personal. So many people we interviewed were so wonderful. We could only hire one. It broke our hearts to reject the rest.
Some searches are biased, some are outright corrupt. They should be named and shamed here, and you can expect they will be. But the essential problem is that the market is FLOODED with exceptional candidates now. Some of them will get lucky, most won't, and it is a tragedy.
What do people think of "under review" articles being listed on a person's public CV, website, or Academia.edu page? Doesn't this go against the spirit of blind review? Maybe I'm just naive....
As odd as this may sound, I’ve only had T-T interviews. I have an upcoming VAP interview and don’t really know what to expect.
So, what kind of questions are typically asked of a VAP candidate? My gut tells me that they couldn’t care less about my research goals, or next project after diss-to-monograph; nor would they likely care much about my interests in Digital Humanities or public services.
My assumption is that they’ll be most interested to see what course offerings of theirs I’m most fit to teach; my approach to teaching topics ‘x’, ‘y’, and ‘z’, and a general feel of my “bedside manner,” so to speak...
How correct or incorrect am I here?
Btw, it’s for a small liberal arts college on a 3-3 load for 2 years.
@7:08 I've had a few VAP interviews and I've been pleasantly surprised that they have been interested in my research and have suggested ways that would be able to support it. At the very least they have always started with the "tell us about your research" opening question, then move on to teaching.
3:49 p.m., You wrote: "What do people think of "under review" articles being listed on a person's public CV, website, or Academia.edu page? Doesn't this go against the spirit of blind review? Maybe I'm just naive...."
Whatever you do, do not do this -- a lesson I learned just over a month ago. I have an article under review at a top journal, but unfortunately did not think to remove that from my c.v. when providing it to my department for posting on our website. One of the two anonymous reviewers while Googling my topic stumbled upon this and had to bow out from reviewing the article, forcing the journal editor to find a new reviewer, and potentially delaying my article's publication by a year (if it does get accepted by this journal). So, while it's a very good idea to include work under review in your c.v. when applying for jobs, never make this information public.
I think that the peer review world will need to adapt to the realities of the web. Most projects will be initially given in talks. Its not uncommon to publish some projects in a series of related articles. Some articles will be culled from PhD dissertations available on ProQuest or institutional repositories. There is nothing wrong with putting these initial steps on a public CV, or even positing them on a website. As such, a reviewer scouring the internet could identify many papers based on preliminary iterations, even if the paper itself is not posted.
I think the basic solution will be for peer reviewers not to act like Sherlock Holmes, but to review the article without going to great lengths to see if they can sleuth out the author on the internet. Because in many instances they can.
Peer review is never fully blind. I just reviewed my first article, and had a pretty good guess at the author by the number of times s/he cited their book in the piece (which was often). That didn't change my decision, but is simply a way of saying a determined or even sentient reviewer can find out whose article they are reading.
Re: Peer review I've worked for a Classics journal and can say that the editor receiving your submission is Googling to see if it has already been published or posted online. You'd be surprised what they find. It's not a far stretch to imagine reviewers may do the same. Everyone has articles under review or in prep, etc.. It really means nothing until it is accepted-- so best to leave it off the CV until then.
I'm the one who posted the story about the anonymous reviewer. Obviously, he/she was trying to get up to speed on the topic, and to see what recent scholarship there had been on my very specific (and easily Googled) topic. If he/she were trying to discover my identity then why tell the editor I had been discovered and withdraw from reviewing my article? It was definitely an accident.
Here is where classics are well behind the sciences, where articles are posted online and even cited hundreds of times before they are peer reviewed and published. I am a firm believer in peer review. But I also don't think we have to keep our projects a state secret. Indeed, the whole idea of giving talks is to develop and publicize ideas on the road to publication, including to potential reviewers in the audience. Positing drafts online for crowdsourced peer review is simply the same process in the connected digital world.
In fields and subfields that are small, and there is already a hunch who is who.
In terms of the peer reviewer, I suspect they were being too scrupulous, to the point that they are hurting you with the delay. They should have simply noted to the editor that they had discovered your identity online, but offered to complete the review if they felt they could be impartial.
And you're talking about two different concepts: crowd-sourcing feedback on an unpublished article, and whether the journal to which it is submitted will make a purely unbiased decision regarding whether or not to accept it. Since, as we all know, there are many academics out there who will torpedo another's study for a range of reasons that have nothing to do with its merits, blind peer review is still necessary, and I value the integrity exhibited by both the anonymous reviewer, who may well know me but hadn't recognized the article as mine, and the journal editor.
Has anyone heard rumors about who may be offered the Chicago and Princeton jobs?
I ask because whoever takes these two positions will likely create 2 VAP slots in Roman history at their current institution for this job cycle, and likely will cause those institutions to put out an ad in the next year or so for a new T-T.
Rumors won't do you much good at this juncture. First, they are simply rumors, and there are often reports on the wiki of who got a job which later turn out to be inaccurate. Second, when someone leaves an institution, there is no assurance that a VAP will be hired in his or her stead, or that a search for a replacement will happen the following year, or at all. Some institutions will find other ways to cover teaching, such as adjuncts or a recent PhD of their own, and some will use a faculty member's departure as an opportunity to take a department in a different direction, or to make it smaller. There's no sense in getting yourself worked up about hypotheticals.
Obviously for T-T jobs, after a successful interview (typically) 3 candidates are then invited for campus visits and a second interview/teaching demo.
So... What is typical for a VAP after the first interview? I can't imagine that for a temporary position the school will pay to have 3 candidates fly out, though some very well may.
On VAPs, really depends. MOST offer the job after the first round Skype/phone interview. A few, especially competitive VAPs, will do campus visits. In one instance, I had a campus visit for a part time VAP, although I was the only person flown out, so either I did well enough on the interview and was hired, or if I botched it, the next person in line would be invited (as it was I was hired).
As a rule, the secondary market is even more unpredictable, capricious and corrupt than the first round. Places that might do a scrupulous, impartial TT search are happy to do a sloppy inside hire for a VAP, given the stakes are so low. Many VAPs are spoken for before they are advertised, even if HR requires a national search. I have many times been the other person interviewed for what turned out to be a rigged VAP search. And once I started a VAP interview with the person on the other end saying "not sure why we're bothering with this, because the job is yours." Its all unfair, and many of us will experience both sides of the coin.
Question...I just learned through the grapevine that one of the institutions I interviewed with (who did NOT invite me for a campus visit) DID invite a candidate who is one of their most recent PhD's. I was definitely surprised to see this--it's an R1 and I thought the days of hiring your own grads, at least right off the bat, were long gone. Am I just naive or is this a bit weird? I certainly don't hold it against the other candidate, who will of course job at the possibility and quite understandably, but it does seem quite nepotistic/incestuous.
I have a VAP at a highly ranked SLAC. I was not an inside hire. I did a skype interview (which mostly focused on teaching, though my research interests aligned well with other faculty in the department) and then they brought two candidates to campus. I got a phone call offering me the job the morning the second candidate left.
servius here: We removed several posts that included names. If the posters want to re-write their posts without names and specific identifying details, we welcome a continuation of the conversation. However, we will continue to moderate comments that exposed the career trajectories of individual scholars to public critique
I assumed that since the names and positions are all listed on the Wiki, that it wasn’t violating any rule. In the future I’ll be sure to not use names at all. I can see why it’s bad form, however, since it puts a spotlight on a single person and does set the stage for them to be criticized.
( Can I ask: is using names appropriate if the person in question is retired? )
...so, to respond to the comments made earlier about “incest”, let me say (a bit cleaner):
Yes, it still happens. Most recently there was a notorious incident at Chicago, which is why there is a T-T job out there this year.
It is rather rare, however. Aside from Chicago a few years ago, most schools follow a 10-yr unwritten rule; that you never hire your own for a T-T job until they’ve been out from that school for at least 10 years. At least in the U.S. Canada has the (horrible) policy of “Canadians first” which creates an atmosphere that, especially amongst the better institutions, welcomes “incest” or “close inbreeding” at least. This isn’t really Canadian schools’ fault, however, rather it’s a matter of policy. ...OxBrige is where the openly and happily commit incest, being so arrogant as to think that only Oxford and Cambridge grads are qualified to teach at Oxford and Cambridge.
The bigger problem in the U.S. is the practice of schools hiring their unsuccessful ABDs for post-docs or VAPs. The most egregious recent example being what happened at Yale last year for their Archaia program (this was discussed in detail here above).
I'm the one with the anecdote about anonymous peer review, which I posted in order to give some much-needed advice to one of you (and not to complain about what happened to me). Earlier today I realized I should have made one more point in response to one of the other posters. He/she was correct that in the sciences unpublished articles get posted online and people then can provide feedback, writing: "Here is where classics are well behind the sciences, where articles are posted online and even cited hundreds of times before they are peer reviewed and published. I am a firm believer in peer review. But I also don't think we have to keep our projects a state secret. Indeed, the whole idea of giving talks is to develop and publicize ideas on the road to publication, including to potential reviewers in the audience. Positing drafts online for crowdsourced peer review is simply the same process in the connected digital world."
I should have noted that those of us on Academia.edu both have the option of doing this very crowd-sourcing for our own work, and are sometimes invited to evaluate the unpublished work of others. In the past week, for example, I have received three such invitations (which presumably went to all of those scholars' followers). So any one of us who wishes may post articles for a large number of colleagues to poke around in, if we're on that website. (No, it's not an unlimited number of colleagues, but if you have at least a few dozen followers it's certainly more than enough.) I myself might do that at some point, if I have had an article accepted and have several weeks before I must provide the final version.
Okay, enough on that. Sorry to get us off-topic, when what we are obviously here for is to name and shame our colleagues.
Not planning to name or shame anyone, but about hiring one's own PhD's, I would say that it is becoming increasingly rare not only because of the eye-rolling but more importantly because it seems to be stunting and stifling for the person hired. They will always (even if subconsciously) feel like an underling and will always (even if not deliberately) be treated as an underling.
I once had the 'Canadian first' policy explained to me on the grounds that Canadians are more likely to remain at Canadian universities, whereas Americans are more likely to return to the US at some point. I don't have any numbers to support or refute the basis for this explanation, but it sounds reasonable to me. As an American I certainly don't resent Canadian universities for this, since in any given year there are relatively few suitable jobs for me in Canada. Indeed, a large number of the positions in Canada are at Toronto, which seems to adhere less to the 'Canadians first' approach than do other institutions.
The "Canadians first" is a nation-wide immigration law. In order for a Canadian university to hire a non-Canadian, they have to complete a costly Labour Market Impact Report that argues that you are more qualified than comparable Canadians for this job. The government may or may not buy their claim, and it can a while to get that report done. Some schools are willing to pay up, most aren't. Even if they do hire you, the process to get your permanent residency costs thousands of dollars, requires an absurd amount of paperwork, and can take upwards of 18 months.
A large number of the faculty at Toronto (Classics and otherwise) are not Canadians, so I'm not sure I put much stock in the "Canadians first" immigration law. They give notice of it on every application but following through on it seems to be another story.
Canadian universities are not necessarily bound to hire a Canadian. There are lots of Americans, Germans, and especially Brits in Classics departments. Canadian laws even allow for departments to advertise for a "preferential hiring addressing a gender imbalance." Compared to the current political climate in the US, Canada is a pretty great place to work and live.
@5:52, indeed I would never say anyone is better off unemployed or temporarily employed than permanently employed by their PhD-granting institution or one of these "toxic" departments we hear so much about. But I would advise anyone who gets an offer from such a department to accept but keep looking, and to jump ship at the earliest opportunity.
Re: the Canadian policy, no, we don't have to pay for a Labour Market Impact Report (? as a former chair, I know what it is, but have never had to do one for a position and have certainly never had to pay for it!), at least not at my Canadian institution (which is not Toronto). We have to fill in a form, listing the top 3-4 Canadians from the applicant pool and explain in a sentence why we didn't hire them. That's it; takes about 10 minutes, tops, because as we go through the pile of applications (and interviews) we keep this in mind, so we know the reasons and can explain. We do tend to look out for Canadians for the reason mentioned above: they are more likely to stay, and if someone leaves, we have to fight for the job all over again. Plus, the partners of non-Canadians might have more trouble restarting their career (in many professions, lawyers, teachers, etc. they will have to retrain to a greater degree than if they stayed home). Of course, we cannot ascertain any of that during the interview process, unless a candidate raises it; we just have to construct a short-list of 'best-fit' candidates and hope for the best. We don't bring in Canadians just because they are Canadian, and I think this is generally the case across Canada. It is all done in good faith, and it's always difficult.
@5:21pm, all good points. I have had a bad experience though with Academia.edu crowdsourcing and will not use it again unless authors acknowledge the participants by name. A senior scholar opened a paper to crowdsourcing and I contributed a few suggestions. He incorporated them into his final piece and acknowledged the participants in the crowdsourcing as a collective. But in all actuality only about three of the participants contributed anything he used--and the comments he used actually added much to his paper. Am I wrong to feel slighted for not being acknowledged specifically on providing him with a certain reference or intertextual possibility that considerably strengthened his argument?
Someone left a jeer on the wiki that I want to make sure doesn't get dismissed as the mere rantings of a millennial. A number of you have placed the burden of proof on minorities to demonstrate the reasons why classics (and I would argue academia as a whole) isn't a long-term destination. Though these sentiments might be well-intentioned and earnest for most, I've found that for many academics this is a cheap and dirty way to cleanse oneself of any nagging feeling that something isn't quite right (insinuating that minorities don't prioritize academic pursuits is usually the rationale I've heard down to the last neo-lib admin). As someone pointed out, it's a problem for academia as a whole (77% white when the general populace is 63% and bachelor's holders are 52%).
In many cases, the undergraduate minority doesn't even quite understand the underlying systemic forces at play. Going back to the jeer, many of you might balk at the $500 airfare up front, but will eventually overcome this through one phone call to a parent and some older member of the family who will front the money for the opportunity of a campus invite. This prejudices families who have generational wealth (and are overwhelmingly white). This isn't huge wealth of the type that would convince many that you are privileged. It's the type of wealth often dismissed by saying it was 100% hard earned and others don't have it because they waste their cash reserves on lottery tickets and blinged out cars. I have yet to have a white student not have the funds to attend the summer ASCSA program, which obviously gives aspiring academics a huge head advantage. The one black student of mine that attended (out of a dozen that have shown interest over the years at my urban state school) did so because his church community all chipped in - his relatives did as well but it was not enough. Anecdotal admittedly, but some things for us to think about especially if you are unlikely to encounter these types of students in your everyday.
@1:19 I was a white student who did not attend. Summers were for making money for tuition/room and board/books. Unless someone funded my trip AND paid me to go, I couldn't justify it.
The solution to inequality in academia, in addition to the stuff we already do with promoting students of color and working class students as best we can, is to socialize endowments. The Ivies do not need the GDP of a small country to function. Amherst College does not need 2.25 billion dollars to educate 2500 students. Let the Ivies share their wealth with smaller, more poorly-funded schools, women's colleges, HBCUs, and so on. Let them endow an endowment elsewhere. If they won't, then their commitments will be clear, and we won't have to pretend anymore that the elite university is a place for social change, rather than a hedge fund and a country club that happens to have a nice library.
For such a wealthy and well-endowed discipline as a whole, it is unconscionable that there isn't at least one fully-funded slot for minorities available in each ASCSA summer session (and similar programs). I can understand if this were 1960, but decades after the civil rights movement? What happened to all the hippy boomer activists marching around the country back then? Did they all sell out, or perhaps very few made it into academia and classics? For all the advances that have been made for women and the rightful highlighting of work that still needs to be done, I can't help feel that minorities, male and female, have been left behind in the 70s.
"As someone pointed out, it's a problem for academia as a whole (77% white when the general populace is 63% and bachelor's holders are 52%)."
So you're saying half the potential crop of academics end up filling more than three-quarters of the slots? This is pitiful. Considering the nation's demographics, this is undoubtedly not a natural process considering that our academic institutions are not doing much better than much more monolithic countries out there.
"In many cases, the undergraduate minority doesn't even quite understand the underlying systemic forces at play. Going back to the jeer, many of you might balk at the $500 airfare up front, but will eventually overcome this through one phone call to a parent and some older member of the family who will front the money for the opportunity of a campus invite. This prejudices families who have generational wealth (and are overwhelmingly white)."
Don't forget simple things like getting a credit card. I've heard people on here complaining (rightfully) about accruing credit card debt. Just by virtue of living in the wrong zip code, minorities can be denied a credit card (or the home equity cash machine that so many white boomers took advantage of in the last couple decades and probably shielded some of you from racking up huge college loan debt). These things add up. So, no, it's not a concerted effort by evil white men to keep minorities out of classics, but you can see the underlying systemic forces at play that lead to the super majority of academics being white, which is a particularly acute problem in classics. What gets me is that classics is no longer the gatekeeper for the elite. Why is it still discouraging a diverse clientele unless there is truth in our purposeful, if inadvertent, conservative imagining of its scholarly landscape that favor white folks. Hell, there are people on here who still think the ancient Mediterranean belongs to their lily-white northern European asses.
Before we all get the idea that Canada is as welcoming to Americans as Paris at its liberation from the Krauts -- it's an anonymous board, so you will never know who has used that offensive term, and on a day dedicated to racial harmony, no less -- I know of a search conducted by one top program that not too long ago ignored all applications by Americans. When I learned about that I decided never again to apply for a job in Canada, since I do not like spending several hours, only to have my application remain unread.
Ultimately, the biggest factor probably is wealth, but this is institutionally and overwhelmingly tied into ethnicity in this country. It's somewhat tragic to see how many folks on here seem to be experiencing the unfair manner in which privileges, such as academic positions, are doled out for the first time in their lives as they get left behind in this brutal market.
But it's better to never had a chance by getting winnowed out earlier, eh? ;-)
On VAP positions: some schools will offer the job based on Skype alone. Some will do a “one-at-a-time” fly out: fly out your first choice, if interview goes well, offer the job. If not, dean might allow you to fly out your second choice.
On VAP interviews: questions about teaching and research are fair game. The SC may not be interested in your 10-yr research plan, but still want to be convinced that you have an active research agenda which excites you and contributes to who you are as an academic. Don’t assume they don’t want to hear about your digital humanities work: maybe they’ll be excited that you can bring something new to the school, if only for a year. Keep in mind that some schools know exactly which courses they need the visitor to teach; other schools will have some flexibility according to the new hire’s strengths.
On getting first-round interview but no fly-outs: I interviewed for 6 years before landing a TT. Although it was frustrating, I found that the interview practice made me *much much* better at interviewing, and much less nervous each time. Eventually you will be a fine-tuned interviewing badass.
On not getting the job: I’ve been on several SCs now, and every time, there are far more qualified applicants than there are jobs. We turn away so many amazing people. There is nothing wrong with you. When there are more qualified applicants than there are jobs, mathematicall speaking you must apply very broadly. If you are privileged enough to be mobile, then apply for all the VAP jobs in weird places you’ve never heard of. I wish our profession did a better job at training people for high school teaching, community college, etc, and did not treat these like lesser jobs. There is a national dearth of HS Latin teachers.
On pedigree: I don’t give a rat’s ass where your degree is from. If you got a PhD, I assume you are qualified. Pedigree is more correlated to generational privilege than your skill. I have met brilliant people from every type of school, and complete idiots from every type of school.
On CV there comes a point when I consider you “qualified.” If you’re already churning out 1 article a year but not getting a job, 2 per year isn’t going to make you more attractive. Let’s not kill ourselves playing some sort of “more is better” game.
Stay strong, warriors. Do what you gotta do to maintain your sanity.
"The solution to inequality in academia, in addition to the stuff we already do with promoting students of color and working class students as best we can, is to socialize endowments. The Ivies do not need the GDP of a small country to function. Amherst College does not need 2.25 billion dollars to educate 2500 students. Let the Ivies share their wealth with smaller, more poorly-funded schools, women's colleges, HBCUs, and so on. Let them endow an endowment elsewhere. If they won't, then their commitments will be clear, and we won't have to pretend anymore that the elite university is a place for social change, rather than a hedge fund and a country club that happens to have a nice library."
This. Absolutely this. Don't let rich white people's endowments piss on you and then tell you there's no money to educate minorities. Or some metaphor like that. But still: this.
Would it be kosher to post links to the job talks under the relevant entry on the wiki? Seems useful and if they're publicly listed it doesn't seem invasive.
I noticed that Carleton posted their job talks, but only the titles and abstracts-- they left off the names! It seems deliberate. There is so much more external scrutiny now.
I would say that the job process is brutal enough that there is no reason to post job talks on the wiki, other than to note that the search has moved into a new phase. Let the candidates do their talk in peace. The wiki is appropriately for successful candidates; no need to advertise those of us who fall short (as someone who has always fallen short).
Regarding that jeer, is the individual a foreign-born scholar with a beard at a Midwestern PhD-granting institution? I once had something similar happen to me (not after a talk, but loudly in front of others), and the only reason I didn't take enormous offense is that I'm pretty sure he is somewhere on some spectrum, and therefore didn't fully appreciate how wrong it was.
@6:53, um maybe some of us just want to know who got chosen over ourselves? We might want to rationalize our rejection or look for ways we can improve for another such job in the future... It's not going to cause the finalists any grief (that I can foresee), beyond a few extra google searches and CV hits on their Academia pages...
Who on earth gets FIVE flyouts???? And would they please write in if they have hints for the rest of us? I don't know how you'd even function during spring semester with that many flyouts.
@10:09...it could still affect that candidate if she has interviews elsewhere. I accidentally overheard a grad admission meeting once, and it was fascinating that certain information did affect the decision-making process. There was an apparently phenomenon candidate whose UG adviser at her liberal arts college was the student of Professor Matters-a-lot at Yale, and the department I was in decided 'not to waste an offer' on someone who was amazing and had a network connection to the program at Yale, since 'she will end up there most likely.' I imagine the same thing could happen to a job finalist. Carleton would be a nicer place to work than say, Randolph-Macon, which has a 4-4 load and a tiny endowment. If R-M knows one of their candidates is also interviewing at Carleton, they might be hesitant to make their first offer to that candidate. If she doesn't get the Carleton job, is #2 at R-M, and #1 at R-M accepts because its the only offer he got, then someone who would otherwise have been the top person for the job is now SOL!
With regard to Chicago, I do not know if the Chicago talks are or will be listed publicly. Can't be more specific, though this would be a better academic discipline were we able to be. Suffice it to say, there was little opportunity for people who were not already longtime favorites of the SC member in question to be finalists.
SUNY-Stony Brook just sent out their rejection email to the 209 applicants for their T-T job and failed to BCC our names/email addresses. So, now I can see the full names of all 209 applicants who were not chosen to be of the 15 to interview.
A second email followed immediately after saying not to look at list and to delete the email right away.
Too late, my Academia page has had a wild amount of hits in the last half hour.
...as if things aren’t shitty enough, let’s publicize the rejected applicants. FML.
So are these people being cultivated by that Chicago faculty member working on the same things he is, and thus would represent some amount of duplication? The only Boston interviewee I know of was someone who overlaps somewhat.
At least everyone who didn't get an interview dodged the bullet of having to work in a department where people aren't even competent at something as simple as email.
As one who was on the SUNY-Stony Brook email list (and saw the other 208 people and their institutions), let me just say that I am even more distressed.
First, that a job for Late Antique could get 224 (209+15 asked to interview) applicants is INSANE. How is that even possible? Surely a great number were “stretchers” (those who aren’t LA folk, and who greatly had to manipulate their research interests to seem applicable) as well as “dreamers” (those who are from 2nd or 3rd tier schools and/or have blank CVs and no connections). Even so, to think that 224 people would put in for that is mind blowing.
Second, where many of the are from is frightening. I counted a handful from each Ivy, Chicago, UNC-CH, Stanford, Duke, and many from Oxford as well. Those from this category totaled around 50. Let that sink in: 50.
That means that for even an oddball search (Late Antiquity) 50 PhDs from the very best programs applied. ...and were rejected. That suggests that pedigree is really meaningless once you’re already from a top-10. And connections? Well, it’s difficult to imagine that faculty at the top-10 are not connected. Furthermore, many of us (surely) have multiple publications, years of teaching experience, fantastic teaching evals, lists of prestigious fellowships, grants, and awards yet are tossed aside.
Third, one’s chances of even being asked to interview for a T-T job equate to being more difficult than getting into Harvard as an undergrad (9% acceptance rate for Harvard; 7.5% asked to interview for SUNY-Stony Brook). Then, of course, you have to be of the 3/15 for a campus visit, then 1/3 for job offer. At the end of the day, the SUNY hire will be 1/224 applicants. ...the odds being 0.44%
I didn't apply for the job at Stony Brook, but I just looked at the ad. It says: "Our search encompasses all fields and areas of medieval European, Mediterranean, and/or Near Eastern history, ca. 200–1400 CE." It is not surprising that this ad resulted in over 200 applications, and to think of it as a "LA" search is already a misconception.
Do we happen to know any other hard data from other jobs this year?
Meaning, how many applicants job 'x' had. It's rather rare, in my experience, for rejection letters to announce how many folks applied--but maybe my experience has been the rarity.
Regardless, I'd love to hear the numbers if anyone has them.
Sometimes rejection letters will indicate the overall number of applications, usually as a way of making failed candidates feel less bad. 224 is a lot, but 100-140 seems average from what I've seen. The numbers of the Stony Brook search were likely driven in part by ancient and Medieval specialists applying, as noted above.
This is why I have stopped encouraging undergrads to pursue PhDs in this field and, when they seek, actively urge them pick a different, truly any, direction. It is simply immoral to do otherwise.
If someone has a 2, or 3 year VAP can they still apply for T-T jobs and how bad would it be if someone (at year one) accepts a T-T offer while being a multi-year VAP?
I'm sure it happens all the time, and effectively what are going to do, make you stay and teach? ...what I'm wondering is how bad is this in reality, as surely many schools have to understand that taking someone on for a multi-year appointment poses this risk
Someone asked about metaphors for the job market: at this point I think it has become like making it as a professional actor. You can have talent, work extremely hard and still get absolutely nowhere. I was extremely lucky to land a tenure track position, and the operative word here is luck- it could just as easily have been someone else. One of my close friends from grad school- who would undoubtedly best me for all positions were we in the same sub-field- has ten published articles, multiple postdocs, a book contract, and is four years limping along in VAP-land. Once you are qualified, it is all about fortuna....
speaking of diversity issues, i was actually stunned to learn that there is 0 -- absolutely 0 -- ethnic diversity among faculty at IAS. And there is one current faculty member who is a woman, among a group of something like 25. Like, how is that even possible? Have they traditionally been known to be this... traditional?
My advisor, a massively well-known scholar and a household name said recently that if he were rewind the clock and be who he was 1-2 years out of PhD, her never get a job anywhere. He consistently says that far too much is expected of candidates and that schools are over-producing insanely qualified candidates for jobs they’ll never have.
He also says that over the decades he’s seen some of the most awe-inspiring junior scholars never land a job and end up working in finance or something else, yet he’s seen more inadequate buffoons land amazing T-T jobs at the best schools. One point he always makes is how much a SC can be comprised of people often afraid of bringing in someone who will make them look inferior, something he says is VERY common in Classics. He says that he’s been in arguments over candidates ‘A’ and ‘B’ with other SC members trying to get them to justify why they all prefer the dolt of the two, and time and time again they say flimsy things like “I get a feeling,” or “fit,” or the like as ways to justify poor choices.
One last point he made. That women can be at a great disadvantage at small schools. The reason? If you have a young female candidate the Dept knows that odds are she’ll be pregnantat some time and if she plans on having multiple children, the Dept can foresee her hiring being a hassle. ...as such, they’ll try sneaky ways to find out a young woman’s personal life plan. Often this happens during “friendly and causal” chit chat during a campus visit unbeknownst to the woman. ...so, keep your cards VERY close to your chest at campus visists. Never talk about your “husband,” “boyfriend,” or family at all and keep your wits about you if the conversation starts to be even slightly close to issues of family.
@7:04 Yep. This happens to men too. When I was on the market, 11 years ago now, I was being driven to dinner during a campus visit for a job at the school whose main college football rival is Michigan. A very prominent female scholar in the car said exactly the words "great elementary schools in the area". I immediately said, "Oh I don't have kids" just to see what would happen. She nearly choked on her tongue trying to say she wasn't asking me if I had kids. It was great. She said almost nothing else to me the rest of the night.
I'm a poc and while I haven't been on the market long (4 years), after many tt interviews, have still seen only one visibly identifiable poc (important because colorism is real) in the interview room so far.
@8:48 pm, you know probably 200 people applied for that FSU job (it was a generalist, wasn't it?) and that it just didn't appear on the wiki for some reason or another, right?
I second 9:19. I would love advice on how to transition from classics/ancient history/archaeology into finance. Does anyone know someone who has made the move and would be willing to have an informational interview?
Servius here: we've just opened a new section of FV to host a separate comments thread on job opportunities outside of post-secondary teaching, as discussed up-thread.
It can be found on the main FV page: "Circled by the circus sands," just above this post. We hope it gets use-- please spread the word.
The annual meeting would be a far, far more sensible affair if it included a serious series of non-academic workshops dedicated to professionalizing us for work related to classical antiquity but not involving membership in the professoriate (something that departments should be doing *more* seriously than their currently half-assed attempts to prep people for the academic job market).
I know we've moaned a lot about the annual meeting here already, but does anyone know how one would get a campaign going to petition the AIA/SCS planning committee not to have the meeting in cities that are known to become frozen hellscapes in winter? Or potentially moving the meeting to a different part of the year? Next year is San Diego, and it was recently in New Orleans, so sensible choices are possible. I've heard, though, that it will be in Chicago again in three years.
CAMWS is in Albuquerque this year, and ARCE is in Tucson. It's not as if there's a shortage of logical places where the meeting might be held.
"Does anyone know how one would get a campaign going to petition the AIA/SCS planning committee not to have the meeting in cities that are known to become frozen hellscapes in winter? Or potentially moving the meeting to a different part of the year?"
The SCS President for 2018, Joe Farrell, posted a letter about this on the SCS website two days ago. It looks as though the SCS is seriously considering changing either the venues or the time of the meetings -- there are problems with both (such as contracts already being signed for meetings through 2024), but there's also apparently a growing awareness that the current practice isn't going to work anymore. Here's a link to Farrell's letter:
It seems like the standard number of people shortlisted for TT jobs is anywhere from 8 to 15. Is there an "average" number of short listed for classics post docs or VAPs?
It varies even more widely than TT searches. In some instances, they will do a long-list (NB the shortlist refers to the 3-5 people invited out for campus visits) similar to that of a TT job, say around 10, and shortlist 2-4. In many instances, both the long list and short list will be somewhat shorter than they would be for a TT search at the same institution. But it really depends on how they intend to conduct the search. In a fake VAP search, only two people my be interviewed, and then the preselected candidate offered the job.
If a job sent out campus invites on the 13th, and I haven't heard from them yet (positively or negatively), does that mean they've stashed me on the long-list in case the campus invites are a disaster?
It might, if other people have gotten rejections, but realistically it means you aren't going to get that job. Plenty of places don't send out rejections until the search is definitively concluded.
I wasn't at SCS. Does anyone know about the special Rhetoric panel that Farrell mentions in letter linked at 6:13? Or what he means by "our responsibility to be political"?
4,546 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1001 – 1200 of 4546 Newer› Newest»I honestly have no idea how diverse other humanities are in comparison to Classics writ large. I imagine it's probably among the least diverse. In my experience, however, from having spent time at several universities where I have interacted with archaeologists of both the Anthropological and Classical varieties, the former showed significantly more diversity in terms of both students and professors. Classical Archaeology occupies this weird space (at least in the US) where it is generally divorced from all other archaeology at the departmental level, despite often finding itself part of strange interdepartmental configurations that don't really bridge the gap.
@9:02,
Minerva is the Roman counterpart to the Greek Athena.
I imagine that it would be fairly easy to gauge just how diverse classics may be, that is if the SCS/AIA can be a finger on the pulse.
In the U.S. 81% of the workforce is white. So, if when walking down the hallways in the hotels here in Boston you can count 8 white folks out of every 10 then perhaps it’s not as dire as we’re painting it. I mean, proportional representation is what indicates that any field is even-handed and balanced. To have an SCS/AIA meeting where 70% are black won’t happen-it just won’t. And that’s ok.
Now, I’m not at the SCS/AIA this year, but rather than look around and see a sea of white faces and feel despair, pause a moment and ask instead if it’s a 80/20 split, or if it really is closer to 95-99% white.
I’m not being cheeky, I’m really asking folks to do this. It’s better to not lose our minds thinking the sky is falling if, in fact, we’re rather close to being proportionally representative.
@11:53, "In the U.S. 81% of the workforce is white" - where do you get that figure?
@12:33,
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/diversity-jobs-professions-america/396632/
We should be thinking 77% white - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61. I was at the AIA council as well. There were around 100 people. So 10 should have been Asian, 3 black, 2 Latino, 1 native american, 1 two or more. Not sure where the remaining six fall but I'm guessing not white.
I'm sure the SCS is worse than the AIA if not by much. To think we approximate the numbers above is optimistic at best, total denial at worst. I'm even more interested in trends. I've been doing this for several decades and I would say we are going the opposite direction of the general populace, which will be majority visible minorities in your lifetimes regardless of present sentiments in federal governance.
There's no late check out, and the conference internet didn't work. Isn't the reason that we go to these godawful places supposedly that the hotel service is so much better??
To me it looks as though Classics gets whiter the higher up you go (undergrad majors are more diverse than graduate students, graduate students are more diverse than PhDs, and so on). If this is accurate, there are various explanations we could look into, but the answer will not be "white people are just that much more interested."
@2:15,
There is a very easy way to find out why: ask them. Take action and poll minorities. It’s really that simple to find out why.
If you're using the AIA council, it's worse than we think. The council is not restricted to faculty. The US population is 63% white, but the better figure is just over 50% of bachelor`s holders are white. Council members are all college educated from what I gather. So the council should be somewhere between 52% and 77% white if it is reflective of the same demographic. The fact that it's something in the high 90s is disconcerting and suggests other factors are in play - no chicken little syndrome here.
@3:05,
Fair enough. But let’s not jump the gun and assume that Classics and Classiscists are deliberately keeping minorities out.
Instead, let’s ask minorities their thoughts on Classics as a discipline and the ancient Mediterranean world as a whole.
Then, and ONLY THEN, can we begin to address the problem(s). We can not prescribe a remedy until we have adequately diagnosed the problem.
When can we expect to hear from SCs about campus visits?
After the meetings SCs often make campus invitations in one to two weeks, but it may take longer because of interviews which had to be rescheduled. And of course some schools take longer than others because of institutional protocols. And if you aren't being invited to campus you may not hear anything at all.
SC member here. We finished interviewing this morning and are ready to make interviews, but have to await our institution's HR approval. These processed are regulated at all stages by universities, so sometimes when we seem slow, it's because universities are making sure we're fair, equitable, and legal. Good luck to you!
@4:43 - SC member here. We finished interviewing this morning and are ready to make interviews, but have to await our institution's HR approval. These processed are regulated at all stages by universities, so sometimes when we seem slow, it's because universities are making sure we're fair, equitable, and legal. Good luck to you!
3:39: "Fair enough. But let’s not jump the gun and assume that Classics and Classicists are deliberately keeping minorities out."
I don't think that the discipline and people in the discipline work to deliberately keep minorities out so much as the discipline itself is one that has historically been steeped in privilege and so has a lot of catching up to do. The kids who show up in Classics courses at the university level without any prodding tend to be those who went to private/prep/magnet/Catholic schools, and so they already had taken Latin (more rarely Greek) or some other "humane letters" type classes.
One thing that I think is key is making students aware of what Classics is (many don't know) and what it has to offer. There's also something to be said for designing courses that will present the subject in such a way that it appeals to kids beyond the nerds who spend their free time reading Smyth or Allen & Greenough. This means coming up with courses that break the traditional straight language or lit in tranlastion courses. Some schools seem to do better at this than others.
@6:09,
I agree, but there’s no way to make profs all over the U.S. change their teaching style. Some may try to mix it up, but the lion’s share will continue to teach in a manner that they prefer, while others will end up changing things for the worse though well intentioned.
I think you hit the mail on the head regarding privilege. But, if that truly is what maintains Classics as an upper-class (and therefore disproportionetly white) pursuit, changing pedagogy won’t really impact the problem. In fact, it may make things worse, as those who normally would pursue Classics might find themselves turned off by a shifted approach, however dated or narrow it may be. It may be the traditional approach that attracted those few that it does; change Classics *too* drastically and we might lose a great number of those who would pursue it all while not effectively bringing in anyone new since, as I think many of us can agree, it’s a privilege, wealth, and socio-cultural problem more than anything.
...does that mean we do nothing? No. But we ought to be very careful to not further shrink an already-shriveled major by altering the very aspects of Classics that may act as a magnet for those who do wish to pursue it further.
My solution has been noted by others above: talk to students. Both sitting Classics majors as well as minorities who both in Classics or who show no interest to gauge *why* such disparity exists.
We cannot start proposing solutions until we truly know what the ailment is. Which is why we need to start investigating.
Did anyone here interview with Gettysburg? Would you mind sharing the questions you were asked?
"So the council should be somewhere between 52% and 77% white if it is reflective of the same demographic. The fact that it's something in the high 90s is disconcerting and suggests other factors are in play - no chicken little syndrome here."
This is called the road to irrelevance, my friend. And what happens when the remaining 1%er donors who are staving off elimination for us lose interest in classics? Call me chicken little, but I think it can get much worse real quick.
Gettysburg didn't make it to the SCS; as far as I know, the interviews are to be done via Skype this week. Would it be ethical for an interviewee to share? Wouldn't that give interviewees who interview later in the process an unfair advantage? Genuinely asking.
@10:18,
Depends. If OP wanted to know the kind of questions a SC might ask for a VAP job, not necessailly. And, even if the person is also interviewing at the same school, it might not help too much since the interviewee may seem like they’re reading a script and come off as socially awkward and weird to the SC who would interpret the interviewee as having an unnatural way of speaking and make them unrepeatable. Plus, the SC might have a bank of potential questions and not neccesarilly use the same ones for all candidates. Lastly, depending on how one answers question #1, the entire trajectory of succeeding questions may take a course of its own.
So, in short, sharing interview questions (IMO) are beneficial only to indicate the general type of questions being asked, but are not helpful at all to those who will interview at a later date—and arguably can set up later folks for a bad interview.
So.. go ahead and share to ensure your better position.
So, sharing questions would either be unhelpful, or potentially harmful, and you'd still advocate sharing them? Damn, dude, that is cold. I hope we never meet.
@9:40,
They can be helpful insofar as indicating the general atmosphere of a SC and are surely useful for broad stokes purposes so that people know the kind of questions to expect.
I think the point being made regarding their danger is that one shouldn’t expect (and only prepare for) a carbon copy interview that someone else had.
One thing I learnt in Boston: Holy Cross was not taking any ABDs. I think that schools should specify this in the job ad, if it is already clear when the search is set up. It will save us all (incl. the SC!) a whole lot of time and energy. Likewise, letter writers: Can the SCS/AIA not send out some recommendations for better hiring practices? i.e., do not request letters or writing samples until the candidate has been long-listed or short-listed. Every SC member will thank the other for not making them write a letter that may never even be read!
Would anyone who got an on-campus at Rutgers mind sharing (in general terms) what you work on? Rejection email stated they had "very particular needs" in filling this position, and I'm just curious if they went closely with the philosophy/intellectual history side of things.
Could 11:53 or someone else point me to the argument against making letters part of initial applications? As a reader of files I find them very useful, and I’m pretty?sure that without them I’d lean more heavily on pedigree, which is presumably not anyone’s goal.
@12:55,
You are of the slimmest minority. I’m at a top-5 University and each and every member of the Dept here always bickers about how letters of recommendation aren’t unseful until a candidate is among those sought for an interview.
Their argument is that at the first stage of the process, CV and cover letter are far more important. In fact, many dept members even say that letters of rec. are not useful at any stage, since so many are so similar (c”andidate ‘x’ is great and they are an ideal fit for this position”). They argue that how many ways can one advocate for their students?
I did not interview with Gettysburg, but one interview posed a curveball question and I personally would be pretty angry if someone shared it with people who had not yet been interviewed. I think it's better not to share questions at all unless the school provided them to all candidates ahead of time, or unless we wait until all first-round interviews for that position are definitely over.
@1:13: purely out of curiosity (I'm not interviewing anywhere), if all the candidates for the job have indeed been interviewed, could you share that curveball question?
@1:13,
I second that. What was the curveball?
...as an aside, one odd, though not necessarily “curvey” question I was asked once was: “what was your biggest mistake that you’ve made when teaching, and how did you fix it? And what was the most brilliant thing you’ve ever done in the classroom?”
@12:55pm, 11:53am here. I agree with 1:12pm. My school is conducting a search this year, and several SC members have told me they won't read the letters at all (some think they're uninformative, others, biased), and others, that they don't do so until post-first round interviews. You may be among a minority. But it's probably down to the university hiring policies.
I would argue that letters skew more than institutional pedigree. There are a handful of truly big names and while their level of ethics vary, this generational crop of boomer bigshots are almost invariably competitive to the extreme with ginormous egos, which often prevents them for thinking objectively (at least when I compare them to their immediate forbearers, the Silent Generation that bore Gen X). This is the generation presently mortgaging the country's future and likely putting into motion the inevitable demise of the US as a world power. Please, get rid of first round letters for the sake of us all.
Several-time SC committee member here (including this year), and a writer of letters. I'm happy to have the letters and find them sometimes helpful, especially at the earlier stages. The idea of not asking for them until after the short-list, or the long-list, would not work for me: once I have those lists, I'm unlikely to return to the letters. I want to spend time reading submitted writing samples and (where available) publications.
Q about post-docs in the humanities and social sciences: for those that ask for a "PhD by June 2018" -- what if you are awarded one of these fellowships but decide to take a summer graduation (e.g., to receive the PhD in August 2018). is this a deal-breaker or is there some flexibility so long as one attains the degree before the fellowship start date?
@10:01,
There’s no flexibility.
This is a big reason why ABDs have a very hard time getting anything. The possibility always exists that an ABD may not finish in time. So, when ads mention ABDs are ok, 9/10 they aren’t.
Why would you risk a postdoc for the sake of graduating two months later? Health care? Visa issues? Otherwise I see no reason to do this. That being said I know of people who got their PhD months/years after starting their postdoc, and who have gotten their PhD months/years after getting a tenure track position. So whatever goes, I guess, as long as someone wants you.
@10:22, sometimes you're not given a choice. I finished in time for a spring graduation and even way ahead of time for a summer graduation, but my advisor was "too busy" to read my thesis until mid-summer, so I got bumped to the autumn graduation.
@10:01, usually when they're that specific, they mean it. I think ACLS even has a FAQ question that says you absolutely must be finished by x-date, no exceptions.
@10:22,
You know people who got a T-T position while ABD and they stayed ABD for “months/years”?
No. No way at all.
Admin will not allow that hire to happen and if the candidate doesn’t get their PhD by the designated time the job search is considered failed.
The only possibility is if we’re talking about a CC or an online college perhaps. Or maybe a technical school in Tajikistan.
@11:54, This does happen, and did in one of the best T-T jobs on offer last year. It's not frequent, but it does happen.
@11:54, I've seen it happen, too. It absolutely does.
@1:16,
Can you share the institution and/hire?
"You know people who got a T-T position while ABD and they stayed ABD for “months/years”?
No. No way at all."
Yes, I know of two people who graduated way after getting their TT positions. One of them referred the position for a year, another started working normally without the degree. Not in Tajikistan, if you really want to be offensive to a different country like that, but in a top LAC in the States.
@1:16
@9:08
Jumping in here.. Since who is faculty at any institution and when one received their PhD and position all public knowledge: name names.
Otherwise I have to call BS. How convenient it is to say there are examples and then not supply proof. So, I hope you folks can back up what you’re saying (which is highly unbelievable) with evidence rather than simply saying “I know a guy.”
Tenured person here. For those asking the question about ABDs receiving T-T positions before officially graduating, it happens, including at some of the most elite institutions in the country. They can vary in the circumstances involved: I am aware of cases where the person was finished (thesis pretty much approved by committee) but they had not had time to hold a formal defense (one or another committee member simply unavailable until many months later); cases where the thesis was finished and thought OK by advisor, but not yet approved by all or defended (obviously); and cases where defense was scheduled for after the start date but the hiring institution was very sure of it being all done in time.
There have also been cases where things were not in place and the person hired failed to finish within a year or two and were then dumped.
In general, it's actually at the higher end where ABDs are more likely to be hired. I'm not in the higher tiers and at my place, we simply will not consider ABDs unless we have assurances that the candidate is done and it's going to be defended in the Spring and it's a done deal. A summer defense could well put an ABD out of the running, because sometimes those summer defenses simply don't happen. We can't afford to have someone half-distracted by finishing their thesis while also prepping and teaching 3 courses.
Also a difference to note: at top tier places, they may still extend the title of "Assistant Professor," but at middle and lower places, such as where I work, the Admin would decree they can only be termed a "Lecturer" or "VAP," with a lower salary, until they have degree in hand. This will vary from institution to institution, of course.
@ 9:41. It does happen, and would be relatively simple for you to figure out for yourself if you just pulled your head out of your ass. It doesn't say great things about you as a person that you are so hell bent on getting your better-informed and more socially-connected colleagues to name and shame like this.
@ 10:22. I agree that it does happen, though more likely at the Ivies who love committing incest, but I don't think that your attitude here is warranted. OP (9:41) wants proof, which isn't a wild claim, especially if OP is not at an Ivy, whereas you may be. In any event, you are making things far worse by insulting them as such and your privileged status comes shining through for us all to see.
Rather than insult your peers, give an example of a scholar hired as such. I personally don't see it as "shaming" in any way. In fact, to be hired as an ABD who still has time to go only speaks volumes about that particular candidate. Think of a high school basketball player courted by the NBA and promised a slot after completing only the minimum (1-year) of NCAA playing.
...since so many here are afraid to cite public information, I will provide an example that (kind of) suffices:
UC-Berkeley graduate, Jeremy McInerney, many years back, was ABD and interviewed for a T-T job at UPenn. He bombed the interview. Horribly (by his own account). Then he called his advisor at Berkeley and told him. His advisor phoned the SC chair at UPenn. Jeremy then received a call from the SC chair and he asked him to meet him for a drink. He did, and they chatted for some time. Then, Jeremy was offered the job. Now, he likely got the first interview on account of the connection by his advisor to the SC chair at Upenn at that time, and even though he bombed his interview his advisor then got him a second, private and shady, interview over scotch and cigars. Then, he was offered the T-T job. Jeremy, as an ABD got the T-T job at UPenn solely due to his advisor.
This is not meant to tarnish (now Distinguished Professor) McInerney, as he always tells this story to first year grads at Upenn. In fact, he failed to get a publishing deal for his tenure, so he (again) called his old advisor at Berkeley and he (within an afternoon) got Jeremy a deal with UTexas press. So, he owes his interview, 2nd interview, job, and tenure all to the influence of his advisor. This, in fact, is the entire point of his story: "never go to a grad program if you feel that your advisor will not have your back every step of the way."
..so, while not a story of an unfinished ABD getting a job, it's not far from the mark so far as questionable hiring practices at the Ivies.
@10:50,
I agree that the Ivies will undoubtedly have very unethical hiring procedures and ‘norms.’ I think that even the very best of the public schools (UNC-Chapel Hill, UC-Berkeley, and Michigan) won’t do this, since they’re bound by admins and policies that private schools can flatly ignore or not even have in place.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions about McInerney's seemingly elite Berkeley-Penn background, know that he attended a fairly lowbrow uni (not even top 10 in Australia) and was a secondary school teacher for years. His tenure book on Phocis didn't gain as much traction back then due to its perceived peripheral nature and touching upon topics that weren't as hot as they are today (ethnicity, landscapes, memory, etc.). His PhD students I know down to a person would fight for him tooth and nail. He invariably supports similar "outlier" dissertations that individually do more than a half dozen typical classics diss. Penn got it right and it wasn't because of pedigree. He was and is immanently qualified and was fortunate (as was the discipline) to get a closer look. The outlier approach can be risky, but it's really what the discipline needs but instead we are supporting staid topics that move the ball an inch when we can ill afford to do so.
Certainly the good-old boy net work can and has elevated people who became outstanding scholars despite earning their positions through connections and luck.
That need not be a defense of the system, however, which also filled the halls of academe with well connected mediocrities, and which inevitably favored the generation of mostly white men who now populate the ranks of senior scholars (would a woman be invited to a followup interview over cigars and scotch?)
Sadly, the current, seemingly meritocratic system is functioning just as badly, as overcautious SCs aim for safe mediocrity, while the same good old boy/girl system still flourishes beneath the HR imposed rules.
@9:41, I can think of two such cases from last year alone (TT job but unfinished dissertation). I'm not going to name names out of respect for the junior scholars who did not out themselves as such- perhaps for fear of your belligerence, but they were both discussed here on FV.
@12:01 his undergrad institution (Macquarie) is actually the best in Australia for ancient history (then and now)... they just don't have the same degree of elitism in their university system, since it's pretty much all publicly funded.
Still, how many average SC members would know this fact and not let the general cachet of the uni affect them? Texas has the best Linear B program in the world but it doesn't stop people from prejudging its alums (and the outlier nature of their subdiscipline).
In theory, agreed. But there are now two Mycenologists from Texas (Professor and PhD graduate) with MacArthur grants, and a third with a stint at the Harvard Society of Fellows (undergrad). If anything, there's some serious networking going on there.
Good for them for taking "risks" despite not holding elite status. So wtf is up with stodgy places like Harvard, Michigan, and Berkeley? It's good to be king so let's play it conservative until they're the last departments standing? I have a friend who is one of the McInerney/Penn PhD graduates doing remarkable things like those at Texas and I know it's generally a severe uphill climb at best for them, fancy grants and all. Where are the elite programs? Chasing away new fangled things like the Perseus Project, which should have never left Harvard?
@ 5:10, holy crap, how did nobody on the program committee notice that?! I haven't had a bad sexual experience with the alluded-to senior Classicist, but he was an ENORMOUS asshole to me once when I picked him up at the airport.
So, UAlbany had their early campus visits some time back now. Has anyone heard anything more about about this (albeit wonky) job search?
I just got a rejection letter for an ivy post-doc where I attend; my advisor was on the selection committee (along with other SC members that I know well and with whom I have good relationships). I'm disappointed but I suppose it's encouragement, even if it's just one example, for those who are disheartened by all of the unfair insider networking that goes on within elite universities?
Regarding that CAMWS panel with the questionable participant, can someone explain why classicists need to have anything to say or do IN OUR ROLE AS CLASSICISTS about campus rape? How are we supposed to be different from faculty in English, Earth Sciences, Communications, or just about any other discipline when it comes to such crimes? What am I, among the least "woke" people in the field, missing here in terms of why such a paper is being given?
Please tell me, so I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to find out in person.
@5:58pm: was it the Cornell post-doc?
Another person curious about Albany over here....
6:30, take heart. I am sure you are nowhere near the least woke person in the field. But you could answer that question for yourself by reading the abstract of the talk:
"Given the complexity and timeliness of these evolving social and legal issues, what do
we as classicists have to contribute? In Spring 2016 I designed and taught an undergraduate
Classics/Honors seminar on “Mythologies of Rape,” convinced that dominant cultural myths and archetypes (Lucretia, the Sabine Women, Phaedra, the Trojan Women, Ovidian metamorphosis
after metamorphosis) contribute to embedded modern constructions of rape and can open the
door to a historically contextualized conceptual archaeology. Our discipline depends on
demonstrating its continuing relevance to issues that our students confront both in the news and their own lives."
6:30 here. Yeah, I'm an idiot for not noticing the link to the abstract.
I hope I can be forgiven my skepticism, but I cannot help but think that even if every one of us in the field taught that "Mythologies of Rape" course there would not be one less rape committed on college campuses, or elsewhere. So it's back to the drawing board on trying to find a new way to demonstrate the field's relevance to today's society...
@7:57PM
I see why you might be jaded, I am a bit too... but never give up on the opportunity to open or even change a mind. It does happen.
BS in academia...and all sectors are complicit. Higher Education is Drowning
How many applications on average people send out before getting any kind of position? I want to know if I'm not trying hard enough.
In terms of applications: I have learned that less is more. Every job is so flooded, that there is not point applying for a job that you do not fit well. If you are an ancient historian, do not apply for Latin lit jobs, or Archaeology jobs.
There are always exceptions. The notorious Albany add this year called for a Greek historian, but was willing to at least interview several Roman historians. So it might be worth applying to a job that you don't meet the specifics for, so long as it is firmly in your disciplinary profile (and of course, many of use have some interdisciplinary coverage).
That said, 5-10 TT jobs if your field is having a strong year is not unreasonable. Strategically limiting your applications also saves your recommenders time, and allows them to tailor the letters they do send out, if they are so inclined. It will also allow you to tailor your own applications. In short, more applications do not mean more interviews/visits.
Also, do not think that you are not getting a job because you are "not trying hard enough." This is what I call the "I will be a better boy/girl next time, I promise!" fallacy that many candidates fall into, thinking that one more VAP, one more publication, one more SCS paper will earn them a job. It most certainly will not, as evidenced by the ABDs waltzing away with jobs every year. You are not getting a job because the job market has collapsed, not because you are not trying hard enough.
11:31,
Are you sure that Albany interviewed Roman historians? I know that so much was/is mismanaged with that job, but are you certain that they, too, interviewed Roman historians?
...also, as one who desperately hoped for that job and did not get an interview for their (odd) immediate campus visits and is hoping that some sliver of a chance may still exist, are you aware of what their current status is?
@12:07, they interviewed at least one Hellenistic/Roman person, and wanted someone with material culture expertise.
Does anyone know what the Columbia jeer was about on the wiki?
@Jan. 9, 7:10 PM:
"dominant cultural myths and archetypes..contribute to embedded modern constructions of rape and can open the door to a historically contextualized conceptual archaeology." What in the tarnation does this mean?
The abstract continues: "Our discipline depends on demonstrating its continuing relevance to issues that our students confront both in the news and their own lives." Agreed, but is the use of such jargon helping bring things down to earth?
I am still reflecting on that abstract. If the key to understanding ancient rape myths is making sure they are historically contextualized, then how can they shed light on rape as a contemporary issue? Isn't the author suggesting that rape is a historically determined concept? So the Classics are obsolete on this matter (and everything else?).
So, how often can we assume that people deliberately post incorrect info on the Wiki?
I’ve noticed a few *updates* this season that seem to be lies.
...thoughts?
@9:16: of course they do. would you really expect otherwise?
@10:18 am Everyone has a different strategy. Some apply for just a few jobs and get something, some apply for lots of jobs and get nothing. And vice versa. Do what keeps you sane. I have reduced the number of jobs I apply for, choosing only ones that seem like a good fit, and I got exactly the same number of interviews this year as every other year I've been on the market.
@9:16,
Look at the North Alabama ad.. there’s no way that’s all true. My colleague interviewed (on 1/9) yet someone posted they got asked to go to a campus visit today (1/11)?? ...I doubt it greatly. To think that a SC can, within 48 hrs (!), contact folks for round 2 is laughable.
@10:03 @ 9:16. I don't claim to know anything about the North Alabama job, but lots of SCs notified within 48 hours this very season, e.g. Rutgers.
I cannot speak for Northern Alabama, but I have seen campus visit requests go out as soon as the afternoon first round interviews conclude. Remember, in some instances the SC already has a tentative shortlist in mind even before interviews happen. This need not always be the case, but it happens.
Anyone heard from or about Colgate?
@10:03 I'm the poster for the N Alabama campus interview from earlier today. I had the interview on 1/9 as well, and received the e-mail from them this morning, so I don't know what to tell you. It's a freaky, weird world out there.
Oddly, I didn't receive a Skype request from them until last week. So like you, I thought that someone else on the board had 'mis-posted' that they received one back in December just to screw with everyone. So I guess you never know. Lying on here would be an... interesting strategy.
I was on an SC this year and the committee made its decision for the finalists immediately after the interviews (i.e. still technically at the conference). It can happen quite quickly.
As for an earlier comment, about "In short, more applications do not mean more interviews/visits." Studies have shown that actually more applications is one of the only things that actually seems to correlate with more interviews. See, for example, this person's experience (https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1775-i-found-a-tenure-track-job-here-s-what-it-took), where he says "Apply for everything." I can't find the article I read with the stats about more applications=more interviews, but it's out there somewhere. It's not a guarantee, and it's not for everyone, do what you feel comfortable with (people have different standards) and can live with, I'd say. There's no formula.
And now for something slightly different:
Favorite metaphor for the job market?
Not sure if it’s better to have had 1st round interviews and no invites to campus, or to have had nothing at all.
I’ve had 3 T-T interviews and have 1 scheduled VAP interview to go. The 3 T-T interviews all seemed to have went great; I clicked with the committees and turned off Skype feeling very optimistic. ...then, log in to the Wiki and see that campus invites happened and my email was empty.
In a way, it’s perhaps worse to always get 1st round interviews; it makes you feel like you’re “almost good enough.” Whereas, having no luck anywhere may you start to figure out something always in life.
...there’s still one T-T waiting to respond for all applicants (SUNY-Stony Brook), and a few VAPs left to contact, but I feel like shit.
With North Alabama not offerering me a campus invite, after what felt like a phenomenal interview, I don’t know what else to do. My CV couldn’t be any stronger given that I’m 1-year out with PhD. I’ve done everything you’re supposed to do, and done all of it to such a degree that I outshine my peers and even many of those on SCs. I don’t mean to gloat, and I am very humble, but being that this is an anonymous format I can speak candidly: what is wrong with my application that so little return happens? I ask rhetorically, of course, but I honesty don’t know how much more rejection I can handle.
"I think I am actually humble. I think I'm much more humble than you would understand."
@12:40, I hear you and understand where you are coming from, but I think you are making a mistake in believing the process to be fundamentally meritocratic. It is most definitely not. How do ABDs with zero publications and very little teaching experience best those who have similar institutional backgrounds, multiple publications, and years of VAPs? Connections, "fit" (a justification of all sorts of biases), fortuna, etc.
There is also the danger that one might appear too accomplished for certain institutions, or that you are somehow giving that impression. Who would want to hire a colleague who so clearly 'outshines them', as you say, (and who might flee for a better opportunity at the drop of a hat)?
I'm not judging you, as I am in an almost identical boat- through 3 years out. I'm jumping ship this year if nothing materializes.
@9:40, The rejection isn't personal, even though it sucks. If you are already at the place where you can't handle the rejection (at only 1 year out) you might need to reevaluate, or take up yoga, or channel your inner stoic.
It sounds like the disgruntled poster above is a historian. I am as well, and my experience with ancient history searches is that they are more unpredictable than other sub-fields: the split between history and classics departments, desire for specializations that often go unstated in the job ad (late antiquity, hellenic? roman, material culture, etc.), need for language teaching- all these make history searches variable, and ultimately discouraging for the applicant.
I second 1:04PM. After multiple years on the market, one thing that I have learned is that literally nothing matters. Everything SCs claim they care about, teaching, research, service, makes surprisingly little difference in who gets the job. If you have an impressive record in all three areas, expect to be beaten by ABDs with empty CVs (although usually posh degrees and influential advisors). Its okay to feel bitter, but avoid the "what more could I have done?" Because the answer is nothing.
1:04 also hit the nail on the head about history jobs. A Classics department might really want a candidate who analyzes narratology in Tacitus (and can also offer an advanced Greek course), whereas History Departments show strong preferences towards Late Antiquity, and the ability to BS through a World History course.
As noted by 12:53, less is also MUCH more at a place like North Alabama. My guess is they will hire someone who is from the south, probably with a PhD from UNC, UT Austin or a similar institution. The successful candidate will lack the publications that might allow them to jump ship to a better institution in coming job cycles. Institutions like North Alabama would rather have a stolid mediocrity who will nonetheless work to build their institution for forty years, rather than a callow hotshot who treats them as a stepping stone on the road to Harvard.
9:40 here,
Yes, I am an ancient historian. And from what I’ve experienced thus far (3 T-T and 1 VAP this year; 2 T-T and 2 VAP last year while ABD), is that we can’t rrally throw our names in too many job postings. My BA and MA are in Classics while my PhD is in History, which (effectively) eliminates me from 99% of “historian“ jobs in a Classics Dept. Graduate-level Latin and Greek are requirements for entry into (and successful continence within) the PhD program in ancient history where I went, yet because I never taught a Latin or Greek course, and because my PhD is not a philology degree, Classics Depts are stand-off-ish. On the flip side, given that the super-prominent universities often do not offer a PhD in ancient history from a History Dept, *should* put me (with a degree from a ranked 5-10 program) at the top of the pile of applicants for jobs in a History Dept, but it does not: Philology folks from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale will be able to seduce SCs in History Depts just fine. ...the result: ancient historians with a PhD from a History Dept are looked on much like a bi-racial person may have been 50 years ago—not belonging to either group fully and never at any advantage given their situation.
'Stolid mediocrity'... 'callow hotshot'... sheesh.
12:40 again (I mis-quoted my time in previous post as “9:40” above),
@1:25,
I think you’re quite right about Alabama: I have 5 publications, 8 int’l conferences, 14 grants and fellowships, numerous teaching awards, 6 years of teaching experience, I am currently a VAP at a top-10, and I’m working (remotely of course) with a team of scholars for a DH project with Cambridge.
Oddly, I chose to not bother applying to Princeton or Chicago (I am a historian of the Roman Empire, to boot) because I felt under-qualified. ...imposter syndrome at its best.
Blech. Live and learn.
Speaking as someone who spent too many years on the market. Please do not take rejection at the interview stage personally. If you only had 3 TT interviews, that is not enough to expect even an on-campus, much less an offer, odds-wise. Of course, SOMEONE gets lucky. SOMEONE has one TT interview that turns into a job offer, and you will you hear that story. Probably at the same time as your adviser informs you that "good people get jobs." But the vast majority get between 1-5 TT interviews and none of them go anywhere. The odds are against you.
Speaking as an SC member. It is SO not personal. So many people we interviewed were so wonderful. We could only hire one. It broke our hearts to reject the rest.
Some searches are biased, some are outright corrupt. They should be named and shamed here, and you can expect they will be. But the essential problem is that the market is FLOODED with exceptional candidates now. Some of them will get lucky, most won't, and it is a tragedy.
What do people think of "under review" articles being listed on a person's public CV, website, or Academia.edu page? Doesn't this go against the spirit of blind review? Maybe I'm just naive....
As odd as this may sound, I’ve only had T-T interviews. I have an upcoming VAP interview and don’t really know what to expect.
So, what kind of questions are typically asked of a VAP candidate? My gut tells me that they couldn’t care less about my research goals, or next project after diss-to-monograph; nor would they likely care much about my interests in Digital Humanities or public services.
My assumption is that they’ll be most interested to see what course offerings of theirs I’m most fit to teach; my approach to teaching topics ‘x’, ‘y’, and ‘z’, and a general feel of my “bedside manner,” so to speak...
How correct or incorrect am I here?
Btw, it’s for a small liberal arts college on a 3-3 load for 2 years.
@7:08 I've had a few VAP interviews and I've been pleasantly surprised that they have been interested in my research and have suggested ways that would be able to support it. At the very least they have always started with the "tell us about your research" opening question, then move on to teaching.
They'll ask basically the same questions, but will weigh the teaching answers a bit more.
3:49 p.m.,
You wrote: "What do people think of "under review" articles being listed on a person's public CV, website, or Academia.edu page? Doesn't this go against the spirit of blind review? Maybe I'm just naive...."
Whatever you do, do not do this -- a lesson I learned just over a month ago. I have an article under review at a top journal, but unfortunately did not think to remove that from my c.v. when providing it to my department for posting on our website. One of the two anonymous reviewers while Googling my topic stumbled upon this and had to bow out from reviewing the article, forcing the journal editor to find a new reviewer, and potentially delaying my article's publication by a year (if it does get accepted by this journal). So, while it's a very good idea to include work under review in your c.v. when applying for jobs, never make this information public.
For what purpose would an anonymous reviewer of a "top journal" Google the article's topic?
I think that the peer review world will need to adapt to the realities of the web. Most projects will be initially given in talks. Its not uncommon to publish some projects in a series of related articles. Some articles will be culled from PhD dissertations available on ProQuest or institutional repositories. There is nothing wrong with putting these initial steps on a public CV, or even positing them on a website. As such, a reviewer scouring the internet could identify many papers based on preliminary iterations, even if the paper itself is not posted.
I think the basic solution will be for peer reviewers not to act like Sherlock Holmes, but to review the article without going to great lengths to see if they can sleuth out the author on the internet. Because in many instances they can.
Peer review is never fully blind. I just reviewed my first article, and had a pretty good guess at the author by the number of times s/he cited their book in the piece (which was often). That didn't change my decision, but is simply a way of saying a determined or even sentient reviewer can find out whose article they are reading.
Re: Peer review
I've worked for a Classics journal and can say that the editor receiving your submission is Googling to see if it has already been published or posted online. You'd be surprised what they find. It's not a far stretch to imagine reviewers may do the same. Everyone has articles under review or in prep, etc.. It really means nothing until it is accepted-- so best to leave it off the CV until then.
I'm the one who posted the story about the anonymous reviewer. Obviously, he/she was trying to get up to speed on the topic, and to see what recent scholarship there had been on my very specific (and easily Googled) topic. If he/she were trying to discover my identity then why tell the editor I had been discovered and withdraw from reviewing my article? It was definitely an accident.
Here is where classics are well behind the sciences, where articles are posted online and even cited hundreds of times before they are peer reviewed and published. I am a firm believer in peer review. But I also don't think we have to keep our projects a state secret. Indeed, the whole idea of giving talks is to develop and publicize ideas on the road to publication, including to potential reviewers in the audience. Positing drafts online for crowdsourced peer review is simply the same process in the connected digital world.
In fields and subfields that are small, and there is already a hunch who is who.
In terms of the peer reviewer, I suspect they were being too scrupulous, to the point that they are hurting you with the delay. They should have simply noted to the editor that they had discovered your identity online, but offered to complete the review if they felt they could be impartial.
I do not consider myself to be a victim here.
And you're talking about two different concepts: crowd-sourcing feedback on an unpublished article, and whether the journal to which it is submitted will make a purely unbiased decision regarding whether or not to accept it. Since, as we all know, there are many academics out there who will torpedo another's study for a range of reasons that have nothing to do with its merits, blind peer review is still necessary, and I value the integrity exhibited by both the anonymous reviewer, who may well know me but hadn't recognized the article as mine, and the journal editor.
Has anyone heard rumors about who may be offered the Chicago and Princeton jobs?
I ask because whoever takes these two positions will likely create 2 VAP slots in Roman history at their current institution for this job cycle, and likely will cause those institutions to put out an ad in the next year or so for a new T-T.
Rumors won't do you much good at this juncture. First, they are simply rumors, and there are often reports on the wiki of who got a job which later turn out to be inaccurate. Second, when someone leaves an institution, there is no assurance that a VAP will be hired in his or her stead, or that a search for a replacement will happen the following year, or at all. Some institutions will find other ways to cover teaching, such as adjuncts or a recent PhD of their own, and some will use a faculty member's departure as an opportunity to take a department in a different direction, or to make it smaller. There's no sense in getting yourself worked up about hypotheticals.
Dumb question:
Obviously for T-T jobs, after a successful interview (typically) 3 candidates are then invited for campus visits and a second interview/teaching demo.
So... What is typical for a VAP after the first interview? I can't imagine that for a temporary position the school will pay to have 3 candidates fly out, though some very well may.
Any info is appreciated.
@8:02: they usually decide on the candidate after the first interview
I had a fly-out 2nd round interview for a VAP, so I think it depends on the institution.
9:10 and 9:14,
Can you (and any other people here) share with us:
A) School Name
B) How they handled VAP for you:
Decision after Skype; fly-out; second Skype (?); or any other procedure
Thanks
On VAPs, really depends. MOST offer the job after the first round Skype/phone interview. A few, especially competitive VAPs, will do campus visits. In one instance, I had a campus visit for a part time VAP, although I was the only person flown out, so either I did well enough on the interview and was hired, or if I botched it, the next person in line would be invited (as it was I was hired).
As a rule, the secondary market is even more unpredictable, capricious and corrupt than the first round. Places that might do a scrupulous, impartial TT search are happy to do a sloppy inside hire for a VAP, given the stakes are so low. Many VAPs are spoken for before they are advertised, even if HR requires a national search. I have many times been the other person interviewed for what turned out to be a rigged VAP search. And once I started a VAP interview with the person on the other end saying "not sure why we're bothering with this, because the job is yours." Its all unfair, and many of us will experience both sides of the coin.
Question...I just learned through the grapevine that one of the institutions I interviewed with (who did NOT invite me for a campus visit) DID invite a candidate who is one of their most recent PhD's. I was definitely surprised to see this--it's an R1 and I thought the days of hiring your own grads, at least right off the bat, were long gone. Am I just naive or is this a bit weird? I certainly don't hold it against the other candidate, who will of course job at the possibility and quite understandably, but it does seem quite nepotistic/incestuous.
I have a VAP at a highly ranked SLAC. I was not an inside hire. I did a skype interview (which mostly focused on teaching, though my research interests aligned well with other faculty in the department) and then they brought two candidates to campus. I got a phone call offering me the job the morning the second candidate left.
servius here: We removed several posts that included names. If the posters want to re-write their posts without names and specific identifying details, we welcome a continuation of the conversation. However, we will continue to moderate comments that exposed the career trajectories of individual scholars to public critique
OP here, sorry.
I assumed that since the names and positions are all listed on the Wiki, that it wasn’t violating any rule. In the future I’ll be sure to not use names at all. I can see why it’s bad form, however, since it puts a spotlight on a single person and does set the stage for them to be criticized.
( Can I ask: is using names appropriate if the person in question is retired? )
...so, to respond to the comments made earlier about “incest”, let me say (a bit cleaner):
Yes, it still happens. Most recently there was a notorious incident at Chicago, which is why there is a T-T job out there this year.
It is rather rare, however. Aside from Chicago a few years ago, most schools follow a 10-yr unwritten rule; that you never hire your own for a T-T job until they’ve been out from that school for at least 10 years. At least in the U.S. Canada has the (horrible) policy of “Canadians first” which creates an atmosphere that, especially amongst the better institutions, welcomes “incest” or “close inbreeding” at least. This isn’t really Canadian schools’ fault, however, rather it’s a matter of policy. ...OxBrige is where the openly and happily commit incest, being so arrogant as to think that only Oxford and Cambridge grads are qualified to teach at Oxford and Cambridge.
The bigger problem in the U.S. is the practice of schools hiring their unsuccessful ABDs for post-docs or VAPs. The most egregious recent example being what happened at Yale last year for their Archaia program (this was discussed in detail here above).
...
I'm the one with the anecdote about anonymous peer review, which I posted in order to give some much-needed advice to one of you (and not to complain about what happened to me). Earlier today I realized I should have made one more point in response to one of the other posters. He/she was correct that in the sciences unpublished articles get posted online and people then can provide feedback, writing: "Here is where classics are well behind the sciences, where articles are posted online and even cited hundreds of times before they are peer reviewed and published. I am a firm believer in peer review. But I also don't think we have to keep our projects a state secret. Indeed, the whole idea of giving talks is to develop and publicize ideas on the road to publication, including to potential reviewers in the audience. Positing drafts online for crowdsourced peer review is simply the same process in the connected digital world."
I should have noted that those of us on Academia.edu both have the option of doing this very crowd-sourcing for our own work, and are sometimes invited to evaluate the unpublished work of others. In the past week, for example, I have received three such invitations (which presumably went to all of those scholars' followers). So any one of us who wishes may post articles for a large number of colleagues to poke around in, if we're on that website. (No, it's not an unlimited number of colleagues, but if you have at least a few dozen followers it's certainly more than enough.) I myself might do that at some point, if I have had an article accepted and have several weeks before I must provide the final version.
Okay, enough on that. Sorry to get us off-topic, when what we are obviously here for is to name and shame our colleagues.
Not planning to name or shame anyone, but about hiring one's own PhD's, I would say that it is becoming increasingly rare not only because of the eye-rolling but more importantly because it seems to be stunting and stifling for the person hired. They will always (even if subconsciously) feel like an underling and will always (even if not deliberately) be treated as an underling.
more stunting than them being unemployed and uninsured? :)
I once had the 'Canadian first' policy explained to me on the grounds that Canadians are more likely to remain at Canadian universities, whereas Americans are more likely to return to the US at some point. I don't have any numbers to support or refute the basis for this explanation, but it sounds reasonable to me. As an American I certainly don't resent Canadian universities for this, since in any given year there are relatively few suitable jobs for me in Canada. Indeed, a large number of the positions in Canada are at Toronto, which seems to adhere less to the 'Canadians first' approach than do other institutions.
The "Canadians first" is a nation-wide immigration law. In order for a Canadian university to hire a non-Canadian, they have to complete a costly Labour Market Impact Report that argues that you are more qualified than comparable Canadians for this job. The government may or may not buy their claim, and it can a while to get that report done. Some schools are willing to pay up, most aren't. Even if they do hire you, the process to get your permanent residency costs thousands of dollars, requires an absurd amount of paperwork, and can take upwards of 18 months.
A large number of the faculty at Toronto (Classics and otherwise) are not Canadians, so I'm not sure I put much stock in the "Canadians first" immigration law. They give notice of it on every application but following through on it seems to be another story.
Canadian universities are not necessarily bound to hire a Canadian. There are lots of Americans, Germans, and especially Brits in Classics departments. Canadian laws even allow for departments to advertise for a "preferential hiring addressing a gender imbalance." Compared to the current political climate in the US, Canada is a pretty great place to work and live.
@5:52, indeed I would never say anyone is better off unemployed or temporarily employed than permanently employed by their PhD-granting institution or one of these "toxic" departments we hear so much about. But I would advise anyone who gets an offer from such a department to accept but keep looking, and to jump ship at the earliest opportunity.
speaking of Canada: does anyone know what's up with the postdoctoral position in Ancient History at the University of Toronto?
Re: the Canadian policy, no, we don't have to pay for a Labour Market Impact Report (? as a former chair, I know what it is, but have never had to do one for a position and have certainly never had to pay for it!), at least not at my Canadian institution (which is not Toronto). We have to fill in a form, listing the top 3-4 Canadians from the applicant pool and explain in a sentence why we didn't hire them. That's it; takes about 10 minutes, tops, because as we go through the pile of applications (and interviews) we keep this in mind, so we know the reasons and can explain. We do tend to look out for Canadians for the reason mentioned above: they are more likely to stay, and if someone leaves, we have to fight for the job all over again. Plus, the partners of non-Canadians might have more trouble restarting their career (in many professions, lawyers, teachers, etc. they will have to retrain to a greater degree than if they stayed home). Of course, we cannot ascertain any of that during the interview process, unless a candidate raises it; we just have to construct a short-list of 'best-fit' candidates and hope for the best. We don't bring in Canadians just because they are Canadian, and I think this is generally the case across Canada. It is all done in good faith, and it's always difficult.
@5:21pm, all good points. I have had a bad experience though with Academia.edu crowdsourcing and will not use it again unless authors acknowledge the participants by name. A senior scholar opened a paper to crowdsourcing and I contributed a few suggestions. He incorporated them into his final piece and acknowledged the participants in the crowdsourcing as a collective. But in all actuality only about three of the participants contributed anything he used--and the comments he used actually added much to his paper. Am I wrong to feel slighted for not being acknowledged specifically on providing him with a certain reference or intertextual possibility that considerably strengthened his argument?
Someone left a jeer on the wiki that I want to make sure doesn't get dismissed as the mere rantings of a millennial. A number of you have placed the burden of proof on minorities to demonstrate the reasons why classics (and I would argue academia as a whole) isn't a long-term destination. Though these sentiments might be well-intentioned and earnest for most, I've found that for many academics this is a cheap and dirty way to cleanse oneself of any nagging feeling that something isn't quite right (insinuating that minorities don't prioritize academic pursuits is usually the rationale I've heard down to the last neo-lib admin). As someone pointed out, it's a problem for academia as a whole (77% white when the general populace is 63% and bachelor's holders are 52%).
In many cases, the undergraduate minority doesn't even quite understand the underlying systemic forces at play. Going back to the jeer, many of you might balk at the $500 airfare up front, but will eventually overcome this through one phone call to a parent and some older member of the family who will front the money for the opportunity of a campus invite. This prejudices families who have generational wealth (and are overwhelmingly white). This isn't huge wealth of the type that would convince many that you are privileged. It's the type of wealth often dismissed by saying it was 100% hard earned and others don't have it because they waste their cash reserves on lottery tickets and blinged out cars. I have yet to have a white student not have the funds to attend the summer ASCSA program, which obviously gives aspiring academics a huge head advantage. The one black student of mine that attended (out of a dozen that have shown interest over the years at my urban state school) did so because his church community all chipped in - his relatives did as well but it was not enough. Anecdotal admittedly, but some things for us to think about especially if you are unlikely to encounter these types of students in your everyday.
@1:19 I was a white student who did not attend. Summers were for making money for tuition/room and board/books. Unless someone funded my trip AND paid me to go, I couldn't justify it.
The solution to inequality in academia, in addition to the stuff we already do with promoting students of color and working class students as best we can, is to socialize endowments. The Ivies do not need the GDP of a small country to function. Amherst College does not need 2.25 billion dollars to educate 2500 students. Let the Ivies share their wealth with smaller, more poorly-funded schools, women's colleges, HBCUs, and so on. Let them endow an endowment elsewhere. If they won't, then their commitments will be clear, and we won't have to pretend anymore that the elite university is a place for social change, rather than a hedge fund and a country club that happens to have a nice library.
For such a wealthy and well-endowed discipline as a whole, it is unconscionable that there isn't at least one fully-funded slot for minorities available in each ASCSA summer session (and similar programs). I can understand if this were 1960, but decades after the civil rights movement? What happened to all the hippy boomer activists marching around the country back then? Did they all sell out, or perhaps very few made it into academia and classics? For all the advances that have been made for women and the rightful highlighting of work that still needs to be done, I can't help feel that minorities, male and female, have been left behind in the 70s.
@12:31, this is a phenomenal idea. It should have been adopted long ago, but it clearly hasn't. Should be pitched to the ASCSA board.
"As someone pointed out, it's a problem for academia as a whole (77% white when the general populace is 63% and bachelor's holders are 52%)."
So you're saying half the potential crop of academics end up filling more than three-quarters of the slots? This is pitiful. Considering the nation's demographics, this is undoubtedly not a natural process considering that our academic institutions are not doing much better than much more monolithic countries out there.
"In many cases, the undergraduate minority doesn't even quite understand the underlying systemic forces at play. Going back to the jeer, many of you might balk at the $500 airfare up front, but will eventually overcome this through one phone call to a parent and some older member of the family who will front the money for the opportunity of a campus invite. This prejudices families who have generational wealth (and are overwhelmingly white)."
Don't forget simple things like getting a credit card. I've heard people on here complaining (rightfully) about accruing credit card debt. Just by virtue of living in the wrong zip code, minorities can be denied a credit card (or the home equity cash machine that so many white boomers took advantage of in the last couple decades and probably shielded some of you from racking up huge college loan debt). These things add up. So, no, it's not a concerted effort by evil white men to keep minorities out of classics, but you can see the underlying systemic forces at play that lead to the super majority of academics being white, which is a particularly acute problem in classics. What gets me is that classics is no longer the gatekeeper for the elite. Why is it still discouraging a diverse clientele unless there is truth in our purposeful, if inadvertent, conservative imagining of its scholarly landscape that favor white folks. Hell, there are people on here who still think the ancient Mediterranean belongs to their lily-white northern European asses.
Before we all get the idea that Canada is as welcoming to Americans as Paris at its liberation from the Krauts -- it's an anonymous board, so you will never know who has used that offensive term, and on a day dedicated to racial harmony, no less -- I know of a search conducted by one top program that not too long ago ignored all applications by Americans. When I learned about that I decided never again to apply for a job in Canada, since I do not like spending several hours, only to have my application remain unread.
Ultimately, the biggest factor probably is wealth, but this is institutionally and overwhelmingly tied into ethnicity in this country. It's somewhat tragic to see how many folks on here seem to be experiencing the unfair manner in which privileges, such as academic positions, are doled out for the first time in their lives as they get left behind in this brutal market.
But it's better to never had a chance by getting winnowed out earlier, eh? ;-)
SC member here:
On VAP positions: some schools will offer the job based on Skype alone. Some will do a “one-at-a-time” fly out: fly out your first choice, if interview goes well, offer the job. If not, dean might allow you to fly out your second choice.
On VAP interviews: questions about teaching and research are fair game. The SC may not be interested in your 10-yr research plan, but still want to be convinced that you have an active research agenda which excites you and contributes to who you are as an academic. Don’t assume they don’t want to hear about your digital humanities work: maybe they’ll be excited that you can bring something new to the school, if only for a year. Keep in mind that some schools know exactly which courses they need the visitor to teach; other schools will have some flexibility according to the new hire’s strengths.
On getting first-round interview but no fly-outs: I interviewed for 6 years before landing a TT. Although it was frustrating, I found that the interview practice made me *much much* better at interviewing, and much less nervous each time. Eventually you will be a fine-tuned interviewing badass.
On not getting the job: I’ve been on several SCs now, and every time, there are far more qualified applicants than there are jobs. We turn away so many amazing people. There is nothing wrong with you. When there are more qualified applicants than there are jobs, mathematicall speaking you must apply very broadly. If you are privileged enough to be mobile, then apply for all the VAP jobs in weird places you’ve never heard of. I wish our profession did a better job at training people for high school teaching, community college, etc, and did not treat these like lesser jobs. There is a national dearth of HS Latin teachers.
On pedigree: I don’t give a rat’s ass where your degree is from. If you got a PhD, I assume you are qualified. Pedigree is more correlated to generational privilege than your skill. I have met brilliant people from every type of school, and complete idiots from every type of school.
On CV there comes a point when I consider you “qualified.” If you’re already churning out 1 article a year but not getting a job, 2 per year isn’t going to make you more attractive. Let’s not kill ourselves playing some sort of “more is better” game.
Stay strong, warriors. Do what you gotta do to maintain your sanity.
"The solution to inequality in academia, in addition to the stuff we already do with promoting students of color and working class students as best we can, is to socialize endowments. The Ivies do not need the GDP of a small country to function. Amherst College does not need 2.25 billion dollars to educate 2500 students. Let the Ivies share their wealth with smaller, more poorly-funded schools, women's colleges, HBCUs, and so on. Let them endow an endowment elsewhere. If they won't, then their commitments will be clear, and we won't have to pretend anymore that the elite university is a place for social change, rather than a hedge fund and a country club that happens to have a nice library."
This. Absolutely this. Don't let rich white people's endowments piss on you and then tell you there's no money to educate minorities. Or some metaphor like that. But still: this.
Re the question about Chicago and Princeton, for what it's worth, at least two of the Chicago candidates have been groomed for a WHILE by a SC member,
@4:03 - I saw the job talks publicly advertised but none got their degree from Chicago. Can you clarify what you mean, or be more precise?
Where are the talks advertised?
@4:55pm Can you share the link to the job talks? I can't see them anywhere on the History Dept. calendar...
Would it be kosher to post links to the job talks under the relevant entry on the wiki? Seems useful and if they're publicly listed it doesn't seem invasive.
I noticed that Carleton posted their job talks, but only the titles and abstracts-- they left off the names! It seems deliberate. There is so much more external scrutiny now.
I would say that the job process is brutal enough that there is no reason to post job talks on the wiki, other than to note that the search has moved into a new phase. Let the candidates do their talk in peace. The wiki is appropriately for successful candidates; no need to advertise those of us who fall short (as someone who has always fallen short).
Wowza that recently added jeer!
Regarding that jeer, is the individual a foreign-born scholar with a beard at a Midwestern PhD-granting institution? I once had something similar happen to me (not after a talk, but loudly in front of others), and the only reason I didn't take enormous offense is that I'm pretty sure he is somewhere on some spectrum, and therefore didn't fully appreciate how wrong it was.
@6:53, um maybe some of us just want to know who got chosen over ourselves? We might want to rationalize our rejection or look for ways we can improve for another such job in the future... It's not going to cause the finalists any grief (that I can foresee), beyond a few extra google searches and CV hits on their Academia pages...
Who on earth gets FIVE flyouts???? And would they please write in if they have hints for the rest of us? I don't know how you'd even function during spring semester with that many flyouts.
@10:09...it could still affect that candidate if she has interviews elsewhere. I accidentally overheard a grad admission meeting once, and it was fascinating that certain information did affect the decision-making process. There was an apparently phenomenon candidate whose UG adviser at her liberal arts college was the student of Professor Matters-a-lot at Yale, and the department I was in decided 'not to waste an offer' on someone who was amazing and had a network connection to the program at Yale, since 'she will end up there most likely.' I imagine the same thing could happen to a job finalist. Carleton would be a nicer place to work than say, Randolph-Macon, which has a 4-4 load and a tiny endowment. If R-M knows one of their candidates is also interviewing at Carleton, they might be hesitant to make their first offer to that candidate. If she doesn't get the Carleton job, is #2 at R-M, and #1 at R-M accepts because its the only offer he got, then someone who would otherwise have been the top person for the job is now SOL!
8:13. AKA tufts syndrome!
With regard to Chicago, I do not know if the Chicago talks are or will be listed publicly. Can't be more specific, though this would be a better academic discipline were we able to be. Suffice it to say, there was little opportunity for people who were not already longtime favorites of the SC member in question to be finalists.
Chicago was fairly secretive about their Greek search two years ago. I have no evidence of shenanigans, though.
Ugh.
SUNY-Stony Brook just sent out their rejection email to the 209 applicants for their T-T job and failed to BCC our names/email addresses. So, now I can see the full names of all 209 applicants who were not chosen to be of the 15 to interview.
A second email followed immediately after saying not to look at list and to delete the email right away.
Too late, my Academia page has had a wild amount of hits in the last half hour.
...as if things aren’t shitty enough, let’s publicize the rejected applicants. FML.
@11:16,
Same for me. I was coming here to vent about this as well.
On the plus side, we can all become pen-pals now.
So are these people being cultivated by that Chicago faculty member working on the same things he is, and thus would represent some amount of duplication? The only Boston interviewee I know of was someone who overlaps somewhat.
Welp, anyone else leaving the field after this latest round of bull?
RE: Stony Brook
At least everyone who didn't get an interview dodged the bullet of having to work in a department where people aren't even competent at something as simple as email.
Planning to leave the field after four years on the market, barring a miracle.
As one who was on the SUNY-Stony Brook email list (and saw the other 208 people and their institutions), let me just say that I am even more distressed.
First, that a job for Late Antique could get 224 (209+15 asked to interview) applicants is INSANE. How is that even possible? Surely a great number were “stretchers” (those who aren’t LA folk, and who greatly had to manipulate their research interests to seem applicable) as well as “dreamers” (those who are from 2nd or 3rd tier schools and/or have blank CVs and no connections). Even so, to think that 224 people would put in for that is mind blowing.
Second, where many of the are from is frightening. I counted a handful from each Ivy, Chicago, UNC-CH, Stanford, Duke, and many from Oxford as well. Those from this category totaled around 50. Let that sink in: 50.
That means that for even an oddball search (Late Antiquity) 50 PhDs from the very best programs applied. ...and were rejected. That suggests that pedigree is really meaningless once you’re already from a top-10. And connections? Well, it’s difficult to imagine that faculty at the top-10 are not connected. Furthermore, many of us (surely) have multiple publications, years of teaching experience, fantastic teaching evals, lists of prestigious fellowships, grants, and awards yet are tossed aside.
Third, one’s chances of even being asked to interview for a T-T job equate to being more difficult than getting into Harvard as an undergrad (9% acceptance rate for Harvard; 7.5% asked to interview for SUNY-Stony Brook). Then, of course, you have to be of the 3/15 for a campus visit, then 1/3 for job offer. At the end of the day, the SUNY hire will be 1/224 applicants. ...the odds being 0.44%
...in short, we’re all fucked.
I didn't apply for the job at Stony Brook, but I just looked at the ad. It says: "Our search encompasses all fields and areas of medieval European, Mediterranean, and/or Near Eastern history, ca. 200–1400 CE." It is not surprising that this ad resulted in over 200 applications, and to think of it as a "LA" search is already a misconception.
That aside, it is true: we are all fucked.
@ 2:17 and 2:33,
Do we happen to know any other hard data from other jobs this year?
Meaning, how many applicants job 'x' had. It's rather rare, in my experience, for rejection letters to announce how many folks applied--but maybe my experience has been the rarity.
Regardless, I'd love to hear the numbers if anyone has them.
and to put it in perspective, what does Stony Brook even pay? and what is the cost of living on long gisland?
Sometimes rejection letters will indicate the overall number of applications, usually as a way of making failed candidates feel less bad. 224 is a lot, but 100-140 seems average from what I've seen. The numbers of the Stony Brook search were likely driven in part by ancient and Medieval specialists applying, as noted above.
Either way, we're fucked.
This is why I have stopped encouraging undergrads to pursue PhDs in this field and, when they seek, actively urge them pick a different, truly any, direction. It is simply immoral to do otherwise.
*when they seek advice
If someone has a 2, or 3 year VAP can they still apply for T-T jobs and how bad would it be if someone (at year one) accepts a T-T offer while being a multi-year VAP?
I'm sure it happens all the time, and effectively what are going to do, make you stay and teach? ...what I'm wondering is how bad is this in reality, as surely many schools have to understand that taking someone on for a multi-year appointment poses this risk
You are always justified in leaving a VAP for a TT job.
Someone asked about metaphors for the job market: at this point I think it has become like making it as a professional actor. You can have talent, work extremely hard and still get absolutely nowhere. I was extremely lucky to land a tenure track position, and the operative word here is luck- it could just as easily have been someone else. One of my close friends from grad school- who would undoubtedly best me for all positions were we in the same sub-field- has ten published articles, multiple postdocs, a book contract, and is four years limping along in VAP-land. Once you are qualified, it is all about fortuna....
anyone heard back from monmouth since the scs?
speaking of diversity issues, i was actually stunned to learn that there is 0 -- absolutely 0 -- ethnic diversity among faculty at IAS. And there is one current faculty member who is a woman, among a group of something like 25. Like, how is that even possible? Have they traditionally been known to be this... traditional?
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/faculty-emeriti
My advisor, a massively well-known scholar and a household name said recently that if he were rewind the clock and be who he was 1-2 years out of PhD, her never get a job anywhere. He consistently says that far too much is expected of candidates and that schools are over-producing insanely qualified candidates for jobs they’ll never have.
He also says that over the decades he’s seen some of the most awe-inspiring junior scholars never land a job and end up working in finance or something else, yet he’s seen more inadequate buffoons land amazing T-T jobs at the best schools. One point he always makes is how much a SC can be comprised of people often afraid of bringing in someone who will make them look inferior, something he says is VERY common in Classics. He says that he’s been in arguments over candidates ‘A’ and ‘B’ with other SC members trying to get them to justify why they all prefer the dolt of the two, and time and time again they say flimsy things like “I get a feeling,” or “fit,” or the like as ways to justify poor choices.
One last point he made. That women can be at a great disadvantage at small schools. The reason? If you have a young female candidate the Dept knows that odds are she’ll be pregnantat some time and if she plans on having multiple children, the Dept can foresee her hiring being a hassle. ...as such, they’ll try sneaky ways to find out a young woman’s personal life plan. Often this happens during “friendly and causal” chit chat during a campus visit unbeknownst to the woman. ...so, keep your cards VERY close to your chest at campus visists. Never talk about your “husband,” “boyfriend,” or family at all and keep your wits about you if the conversation starts to be even slightly close to issues of family.
@7:04,
They may also mention to you the “great elementary schools in the area,” as a way to see how you reply.
"My advisor, a massively well-known scholar and a household name..."
Victor Davis Hanson has grad students?!?
Op here, No. Lol. Not VDH. Perhaps I overstated it, but he’s a scholar I’d imagine most here know of.
@7:04 Yep. This happens to men too. When I was on the market, 11 years ago now, I was being driven to dinner during a campus visit for a job at the school whose main college football rival is Michigan. A very prominent female scholar in the car said exactly the words "great elementary schools in the area". I immediately said, "Oh I don't have kids" just to see what would happen. She nearly choked on her tongue trying to say she wasn't asking me if I had kids. It was great. She said almost nothing else to me the rest of the night.
I'm a poc and while I haven't been on the market long (4 years), after many tt interviews, have still seen only one visibly identifiable poc (important because colorism is real) in the interview room so far.
Anyone know what's going on with Cornell? My interview was over a month ago.
The teaching postdoc? It's my understanding that the position has been offered.
So, since it got (worthy) backlash and is not present on the Wiki, is it a safe assumption that we all protested the FSU 5-5 exploit VAP?
I haven’t heard anything about it anywhere. Hopefully word got back to FSU and they tucked tail and pulled ad.
@ 7:04 PM (or anybody else for that matter)
So what kinds of positions in finance are Classics Ph.D's suited to?
Leaving a multi-year VAP to take a tt-position is expected and applauded.
Your multi-year VAP, if you drill down into the contract, is probably a series of one-year positions anyway.
@8:48 pm, you know probably 200 people applied for that FSU job (it was a generalist, wasn't it?) and that it just didn't appear on the wiki for some reason or another, right?
Perhaps we should codify the addition of the number of applicants (if available) in the wiki?
Has anyone heard from Colgate?
I second 9:19. I would love advice on how to transition from classics/ancient history/archaeology into finance. Does anyone know someone who has made the move and would be willing to have an informational interview?
Cornell is still green on the wiki. If someone has more information, please update! I also never heard anything after my interview in early Dec.
Servius here: we've just opened a new section of FV to host a separate comments thread on job opportunities outside of post-secondary teaching, as discussed up-thread.
It can be found on the main FV page: "Circled by the circus sands," just above this post. We hope it gets use-- please spread the word.
The annual meeting would be a far, far more sensible affair if it included a serious series of non-academic workshops dedicated to professionalizing us for work related to classical antiquity but not involving membership in the professoriate (something that departments should be doing *more* seriously than their currently half-assed attempts to prep people for the academic job market).
@ 9:05
Meeting organizers are moving in that direction, given the rise in similarly themed events over the last few years.
I know we've moaned a lot about the annual meeting here already, but does anyone know how one would get a campaign going to petition the AIA/SCS planning committee not to have the meeting in cities that are known to become frozen hellscapes in winter? Or potentially moving the meeting to a different part of the year? Next year is San Diego, and it was recently in New Orleans, so sensible choices are possible. I've heard, though, that it will be in Chicago again in three years.
CAMWS is in Albuquerque this year, and ARCE is in Tucson. It's not as if there's a shortage of logical places where the meeting might be held.
6:05 p.m. scripsit:
"Does anyone know how one would get a campaign going to petition the AIA/SCS planning committee not to have the meeting in cities that are known to become frozen hellscapes in winter? Or potentially moving the meeting to a different part of the year?"
The SCS President for 2018, Joe Farrell, posted a letter about this on the SCS website two days ago. It looks as though the SCS is seriously considering changing either the venues or the time of the meetings -- there are problems with both (such as contracts already being signed for meetings through 2024), but there's also apparently a growing awareness that the current practice isn't going to work anymore. Here's a link to Farrell's letter:
https://classicalstudies.org/scs-news/from-scs-leadership
It seems like the standard number of people shortlisted for TT jobs is anywhere from 8 to 15. Is there an "average" number of short listed for classics post docs or VAPs?
It varies even more widely than TT searches. In some instances, they will do a long-list (NB the shortlist refers to the 3-5 people invited out for campus visits) similar to that of a TT job, say around 10, and shortlist 2-4. In many instances, both the long list and short list will be somewhat shorter than they would be for a TT search at the same institution. But it really depends on how they intend to conduct the search. In a fake VAP search, only two people my be interviewed, and then the preselected candidate offered the job.
If a job sent out campus invites on the 13th, and I haven't heard from them yet (positively or negatively), does that mean they've stashed me on the long-list in case the campus invites are a disaster?
It might, if other people have gotten rejections, but realistically it means you aren't going to get that job. Plenty of places don't send out rejections until the search is definitively concluded.
I wasn't at SCS. Does anyone know about the special Rhetoric panel that Farrell mentions in letter linked at 6:13? Or what he means by "our responsibility to be political"?
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