Felt a Tremor Stir Beneath My Breath, That Forecasts Storms on the Gallup Poll

I wrote this post a little while ago, so it's something of a first impression. I'll have more to say later. --PGS

When I went through this last year, the possibility that I wouldn't get any fly-backs never really sunk in until it was already happening. I mean, I knew it was a possibility in some vague, abstract sense, and when people asked I always made sure to emphasize that nothing was guaranteed and anything could happen. But in my gut, getting no fly-backs just never felt real. I wasn't prepared for how it'd hit me when it happened.

The nothing I had to show for months of some of the most intense work I'd ever done in my life, the total and unqualified failure--that stayed with me this year. It felt like a fifteen pound stone in the pit of my stomach whenever I was working on my applications. It was real enough to make me terrified of my own hope, because what I learned last year is, hope is just the groundwork for despair.

So. Here I am again. No fly-backs. And even though I've been carrying that nothing around in my gut for the past year, I still feel like I've had the rug pulled out from under me. I want to understand it, but I can't, because there really isn't anything to understand. It feels like I'm being punished and I don't know why.

Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap

Via Nathan Nobis at In Socrates' Wake, here's a piece from the AP about universities churning out an oversupply of PhDs. Justin Pope, the article's author, doesn't really get too far in explaining what the problem is--that is, why so many fucking schools feel like they need doctoral programs in everything. He says, "[f]aculty members like having graduate students around. They're good intellectual companions, and they bolster a professor's research efforts." Yeah. But also deans like having grad programs, because then they're deans of research institutions. States like having flagship universities. (In which case, interestingly, the schools' presidents are admirals. The presidents and deans of branch campuses--or "frigate schools"--are only captains and lieutenants. Grad students are cabin boys. Avast!)

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the AP piece. It does offer a fantastic little nugget to illustrate the basic dynamic at play in the issue.

In its report last month, a 30-member commission called for New York's state and city systems to alleviate the over reliance on adjuncts by hiring 2,000 more full-time faculty for their 87 campuses.

But just one page away, the report also called for adding at least 4,000 doctoral students.

I take it the problem here is, one thing universities produce is their own labor supply. That's weird, and it looks like it has some pretty clear economic consequences. Universities have a strong incentive to produce enough PhDs to keep the cost of PhDs down. As the AP piece puts it, "with universities already under fire for skyrocketing prices, it's probably unrealistic to expect most will pay more than the going rate for a captive labor pool." No doubt.

So it's nice for the New York schools to commit to hiring more tenure-tracked faculty to teach their students. But at the very same time, they're laying the groundwork to make sure the economic incentives cut the other direction. And when it comes down to it, which consideration do you think is going to win out? A high-minded commitment to the quality of a public school education? Or cash?

Crimson and Clover, Over and Over

Talking about Princeton's PFO the other day, I got bogged down looking at trees and I lost sight of the forest, so let me come back to that for a second. The funny thing about the Princeton PFO is, it doesn't really feel like a PFO to me. It feels more like me and Princeton are just playing out our little roles.

Here's some background, at least as I understand it, for the civilians. Princeton advertises a junior job in the JFP every year. They're not necessarily looking to hire anyone. Maybe they really are this year, I don't know. But for the most part, they're just dipping their line in the stream to see what they can catch. Maybe someone coming out of MIT or Berkeley or wherever is obviously the next monster, a 27 year old whose dissertation looks like the first major work in a brand new sub-discipline she just fucking invented. Who knows? Maybe. And Princeton doesn't want to get shut out of the race to grab that candidate just because they don't happen to be doing a search that year. So they just go ahead and do a search every year, regardless of whether or not they really need to hire anyone. It's actually pretty smart, when you think about it.

It also means losers like me are going to apply for the same job over and over again. And we're going to get rejected over and over again too, because it's fucking Princeton. I've got a better shot at getting a job as the Pope of the APA.

But here's the thing. If it's the sort of thing where I know I don't have a chance, and I just apply over and over again anyway, it's not really like a real job application, is it? The meaningless repetition actually makes it more like a little absurdist performance piece. "Total Fucking Loser: a play in n acts." This PFO brings act two to a close. Tune in next year for act three, when me and Princeton do the exact same thing again. That should be interesting!

I Know There's an Answer

All this talk about Princeton's reminded me about something I was thinking about in the days after the APA, and it's come up over at Feminist Philosophers too. Princeton doesn't do APA interviews. I don't really know why not, but I assume it's at least partly because they're aware of the social psych literature showing that interviews don't really add much to an organization's ability to pick good hires. And Princeton's not the only school that's giving up on the APA. If I'm reading the wiki right, Washington didn't do APA interviews this year, either. No doubt there are others I don't know about. Also, if we pull the lens back a little, it's worth noticing that in a lot of academic disciplines, they've just done away with conference interviews entirely.

As far as I can tell, Princeton and Washington are making the smart decision. Going to the APA is fuck-off expensive, for both departments and candidates. So what does everybody get for the money? A fifty minute dog and pony show so contrived that in most cases it's not really going to say much that's reliable about a candidate? The chance to get punked by your own subconscious cognitive biases into thinking the tall, good-looking guy is really more promising than the short guy with the speech impediment?

Now, I know APA interviews can tell you some important stuff. Like, maybe a candidate who looks awesome on paper turns out to be really terrible or a complete asshole or just not the fit you thought they'd be. I get that. But how often does that happen? And wouldn't that sort of screening happen just as well--or, really, actually a lot better--on a campus visit? So why not take all the money a department spends on the APA and sink it into bringing a couple more people out to campus for job-talks?

This really does seem like no-brainer to me. But since I've never been on the searh committee's side of all this, I'm curious to see if anyone wants to make the case for APA interviews. In particular, does anyone want to make not just the case that they can be useful, but that they're more useful than skipping the APA in favor of a couple more job-talks? Why do we do the APA?

Sunday Comics

"There Can Be Only One." Soon-to-be-Jaded Dissertator says that title comes from his room mate, who around these parts goes by Fellow Grad Student, and who's apparently still feeling the Robbie Burns' day spirit. "We're the princes of the universe!"

If only this applied to my life, and not my embarrassing fantasies about sword-fighting.

Rocking the Passive Voice XX

In case anyone's missed it, people have been talking about the PFO we all got from Princeton. Here, read the whole thing:

Dear Applicant,

Once again I resort to a form letter, this time to report that the committee charged with selecting a manageable number of junior candidates from the ~291 junior applicants for the positions that we have advertised have completed their work. They have selected a number of candidates from among whom they hope very much to make one or two appointments (one, should we decide to try to fill one position a the senior level).

I am sorry to report that you are not in this group. We are painfully aware of the difficulty and unreliability of these choices, but they must be made nevertheless. Although it is far from certain we will succeed in our present attempts, we wanted to let you know where you stood so that you may take full advantage of the other opportunities that will surely arise for you in the coming weeks. Needless to say, I will let you know right away should we have occasion to reconsider your candidacy.

Once more, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for the opportunity to consider your candidacy.

Sincerely yours,

Etc.

There's actually a couple of things here I like. One, the letter thanks me for applying. Now, it could be better. The best PFOs thank applicants for taking the time to apply. There's a cost to applying to jobs, and it's a sign of minimal respect to acknowledge that explcitly. And there's also a certain ridiculousness in Princeton thanking me "for the opportunity to consider" me for a job. That turn of phrase seems pretty gratuitous. But fuck it. Any thanks at all is more than some PFOs give, so I'll take it.

The other thing I like is the acknowledgment that the process is "unreliable." Word. It's a fucking crap shoot. Now of course, what's not getting said here is, in the absence of reliable ways of making good hiring decisions, lots of search committees rely on plainly anti-meritocratic heuristics, like counting the rank of your department and the fame of your advisor above all else. (Troll repellent: I'm not the one saying this is true. I'm getting it from search committee members who, giddy with man-crushes on famous philosophers, let that sad little part of their id out to play in public.) I'm not saying Princeton does that, but it'd also be pretty fucking shocking if those biases didn't creep in to the process for everyone, even just a little bit, and even at the best department in the business. Anyway, while the Princeton letter doesn't get into that ugliness, it does at least admit there's a real element of arbitrariness in the job market.

Of course, I also have to note the passive voice here. Here's the key sentence, one more time: "We are painfully aware of the difficulty and unreliability of these choices, but they must be made nevertheless." So Princeton's "painfully aware of the difficulty and unreliability of these choices". Great. As I say, that's nice of them to admit. But the author of the sentence slips out the back door so as not to be around for anything so distasteful as making choices. Better to just leave those to be made.

Bonus comedy: In comments, Anon. 2:16 flags this clause: "Although it is far from certain we will succeed in our present attempts [to hire someone]. . .", and responds, no doubt with a sentiment all of us can share, "Go, Princeton! We're pulling for you, you lovable underdog!"

Frank, He Showed Me the Ropes, Sir, Just 'Till I Could Get Back On My Feet

I keep trying to write this post, and I keep quitting because it just seems too obvious to bother saying. But what the hell, here it is, obvious or not.

Doing the job market this year was a lot easier for me than doing it last year. Partly, it was just because I'd been through it before, and kind of sometimes sort of knew what to expect. But the biggest thing by far was having a different placement committee.

Longtime readers have heard my stories about the Old World Septuagenarian and Evil Columbo: how they didn't know what our application pckages would actually have to contain beyond a CV, letters and a writing sample; how the Old World Septuagenarian just stared at me in puzzled silence when I asked questions using words he clearly thought were made-up gibberish--words like "student evaluations" and "teaching philosophy"; how Evil Columbo never seemd to get tired of telling us happily over and over and over again just how easy it'd been for him to get a job; how they both disappeared at the end of the semester, leaving it to other faculty to tell us what was actually going to go on at the APA. Every meeting with them left me and my office mates feeling helpess, completely adrift, and screaming mad from frustration.

This year couldn't have been more different. The official committee, Placement Committee Senior and Placement Committee Junior, as well as some other junior faculty, walked us through every step. Both PC Sr. and PC Jr. have an actual sense of how the job market's worked since the fall of Saigon. Fuck, PC Jr.'s even done it in the last few years. But also, when PC Jr. didn't know something about, say, what exactly the department sends out with our letters, he found out and explained it to us in a timely manner. He even met with me when I was working on my spiel, to give me the chance to bounce some ideas off someone who doesn't really know my work. That was a really menschy thing to do.

And PC Sr.? I can't know for sure what goes on behind the Senior Faculty Curtain of Tenured Mystery, but what I do know is this. Last year, it was my job to hound the senior profs on my committee for my letters, many, many weeks after I'd first asked for them. And you know what? Senior profs in my department aren't super-happy about having grad students trying to impose deadlines on them. In fact, they recoil in horror at such a profound upset of Nature's just and true order. But this year, it just never came up. Maybe that's because this year, my committee members were all just ahead of the game with their updated letters. But maybe it's because they had one of their colleagues--insead of some dipshit grad student--reminding them what's what.

But more important than all the bullshit logistics was their kindness. From our first placement meeting, PC Sr. was preparing us for the coming circus of cruelty and failure. And at placement meetings--or around the lunch table or in the hall or wherever--PC Jr. has been unfailing in his encouragement, understanding and sympathy.

I'm immensely grateful to both of them.

Keep Your Promise, Willie Thomas

Speaking of things the wiki's good for, it's how I found out I wasn't getting an fly-back from this one department I interviewed with at the APA. At the end of the interview, the guy who'd sort of taken point on the interview looked me at me and said, "Let us know if anything changes for your search, and when we've made a decision about who we're bringing out to campus, we'll let you know, either way." Yes, the guy said either way. As in, he'd let me know if they wanted to bring me to campus and he'd let me know if they decided not to being me to campus.

Well, that didn't happen. I saw that school show up on the wiki for fly-outs a while ago, and I've still heard sweet fuck all from the department.

Look, dickwad. If you look me in the eye and tell me you're going to let me know how your search goes, and if you expect the same fucking courtesy from me, it's really fucking shabby not to follow up on that.

If You Don't Love Me, Lie to Me

There's a thread on the Chronicle forums right now that's covering a lot of the same ground I've covered in conversations with various people on the job market over the last couple of months. Do you think the wiki's a good thing or a bad thing?

I like the wiki, because how the fuck else am I going to get any information about jobs I've applied to? Search committees sending effortless, but timely and considerate updates? No, seriously. How the fuck am I supposed to find out about jobs I've applied to? But the haters say the wiki's bad because all it ever gives you is bad news. Now, to me this sort of has the air of George Costanza avoiding his girlfriend because he knew she was going to break up with him and he figured if he avoided her she'd never the get the chance. But whatever.

My point here is, I'm starting to think you can actually tell something interesting about a person by how they feel about the wiki. What it comes down to is this. Which would you rather not have: bad news or false hope?

Listen to the Band!

Female Grad, a, um, female grad student in philosophy who you might remember from a few posts back, has been good enough send along her thoughts about how we, as philosophers, tend to talk about sexism in the discipline. I'll have more to say about her thoughts a little later on, but for now let me just say how extremely fucking important her idea is that sexism can be--and often is--invisible to introspection. This bears a lot of thinking about. --PGS

It's nice to get a chance to steal someone else's audience for a little while, especially for this topic which is so close to home for me.

When I read PGS's (excellent, by the way) post, I thought, this comment section isn't going to be pleasant. But all thing told, it wasn't so bad. There were some clueless things that turned up. But not the really nasty and virulent misogyny one can find so easily on blogs. It seemed to me that there were a number of people who genuinely wanted to recognize a problem if there was one, and they just didn't see one; there were some false assumptions, some good old-fashioned arrogance, and the ubiquitous call for more empirical evidence. Even though there's room for improvement, I think it indicated good things about philosophers in general (or at least the ones who read and comment here). We are generally a good group of people who want to be just in our interactions with one another; the ongoing issues of sexism and racism aren't problems of bad intentions.

That's the main thing I wanted to get at in this post. In discussions of sexism, there is a tendency to get defensive because one feels like one is being attacked, being accused of being a Bad Person. The blunt truth is that, pretty much unless you are young and from a Scandinavian country, we were all raised in some kind of sexist environment. It varies from mildly sexist to rabidly so, but most of us were raised in sexist environments and pretty much all of us are, to a greater or lesser degree, sexist. There are quite few people who really do just think women don't belong in the field and should stay home and learn to cook instead or writing dissertations. Most of us don't want to be sexist, and most of us don't think we are sexist, and so accusations of rampant sexism in philosophy seem baseless.

The problem with sexism in philosophy (in my oh-so-humble opinion) is its invisibility to introspection. When the topic comes up, people reflect, Do I think women are poor philosophers? Am I doing anything that hinders the success or thriving of my female colleagues? Why, no. I see no evidence of sexism in my beliefs or actions. And conclude that the accusations are overblown. But that's the deal with having been raised in a sexist culture - these things are invisible. Until you really know what to look for, and really start paying attention to stuff you might not have before, you aren't going to notice it.

Because the sexism is there, but people don't usually know what to look for. And then they protest that they don't see it. And I think yeah, 'cause you're looking in the wrong spot. It's not something you can just introspect and discover, oops, here is my nasty greenish sexist belief pile, and now I will purge them and be sexism-free. The reason why women in philosophy just notice this stuff more is because it affects us on a day to day basis. After a while, you really start to notice how it adds up. And then someone comes along who is not affected by this stuff, who has never had to pay attention to it before, and they make a comment to the effect that maybe you are just being too sensitive (as if gee, I hadn't thought of that, thanks for pointing out the obvious).

So - if you've never had to deal with this stuff, and if you haven't put a substantive amount of thought into it (and probably some reading, too), chances are you don't know what the varieties of sexism in philosophy look like. And now that I have had to learn the hard way what it looks like, it's annoying to have someone tell me that perhaps I haven't, you know, considered the other obvious explanations. I have had to put a lot of time and thought into it, and I have now done a good amount of reading on it, and damn! it is annoying to have someone point out the mundane and obvious as if you hadn't ever thought of it yourself. It's kinda like reading one article on a topic and then deciding that the practitioners in the field have got it all wrong (and proceeding to tell them all this, while wondering why they are rolling their eyes).

Upshot is: we aren't accusing people of being intentionally Bad. The sexism left in philosophy is mostly the unintentional kind. In order to get rid of it, we need to know what it looks like (and that brief introspection will not get you there). And so when women list their experiences of sexism in philosophy, it's because this is what sexism looks like. These kinds of cases. None of us were there for what happened to her except her; and so we can rampantly speculate ad nauseam about whether or not her judgment of sexism is appropriate. We'll never know. There is never enough info that you can put in a comment to definitively make a case for sexism. But what we should get out of this is a sense of what sexism still looks like, so that we can all start looking for those kinds of things, and start recognizing it more when it happens. That's what will make it a more just profession.

--Female Grad