The Philosophers' Cocoon

Dissertation committees and job-market recommendation letters: junior vs. senior faculty

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am currently starting to think about my dissertation committee and, as an extension of that, job market letter writers.

I'm not sure how much I should care about the prestige of the philosophers on my committee, who will end up being most of my letter writers (except, perhaps, for a teaching letter). For example, I can ask a recently retired and very-famous professor to be on the committee, but they have been pretty flaky lately and enjoying their retirement a lot, so I'm not sure how committed they would be and how closely I could work with them. On the other hand, there is a junior faculty member in my department who is only a few years out of grad school, but is already very well-respected and has a lot of connections in my AOS (and an extraordinary publishing record). I am leaning toward the junior faculty member because I think the dissertation would probably be better with their help, but perhaps some people might advise me to find a famous person and just do what you need to do to get a good letter from them? Or perhaps having someone well-connected is better, regardless of their seniority in the field?

I could also try and find a famous person outside of my department, but of course most of these people are extremely busy and might not be able to write me a great letter in the end, either.

I'm not sure what the best thing to do here is!

Good questions. Another reader submitted the following reply:

As a young faculty member I was involved in many situations where my older, more famous colleague was the official Chair of a committee, but I met much more frequently with the student dissertator. This is perfectly fine and everyone understands how it works. Get the respected figure on the committee for the letter, but add others who will help you do your best work. 

This comment sounds right to me, but I wonder what others think!

Philosophical competence, language, and the perplexing Gavagai problem

Many grad students at the department where I work (Saint Louis University, philosophy) are fluent Latinists. In the hallways they make constructions such as these for fun in Latin (I am unfortunately not so endowed, so I’ll give you my approximation in English):  

Q: Whether it is true that there are alligators in Florida?

A: It might seem there are no alligators in Florida, for such reports are no more than hearsay…

In this respect, my department is somewhat of an outlier. Even passive competence in a second language at anglophone departments is at an all-time low, and language requirements at universities are being cut back or altogether axed. This lack of linguistic competence presents a problem: it cuts us off from our own rich philosophical traditions and it prevents serious and deep engagement with other traditions where the primary texts are in languages other than our own.

Christoph Harbsmeier, at a conference in Singapore I attended just now, lamented this loss of language. He is a senior German scholar of Chinese, and spent time in multiple countries. He worked at the University of Oslo, where he spoke with the legendary Arne Naess in Norwegian. In addition, he not only speaks Mandarin fluently (and reads classical Chinese as one might expect from a scholar in Chinese history and linguistics), he also knows Latin, Greek, some Sanskrit, French, German (of course), Polish (which he said he took with the sole aim to better understand Tarski—given the notorious complexity of this language I hope for his sake Tarski was worth it for him), and, of course English.

Each of us ESL speakers has at least two languages, a fact that is curiously regarded as an impediment rather than an advantage because of the worry of non-idiomatic English (see some more thoughts on English as a lingua franca by Eric Schwitzgebel, here).

In Harbsmeier’s view, any philosopher who is only competent in English (or any other language for that matter), suffers a severe cognitive and epistemic disadvantage. The starting point for his talk was W.V.O Quine’s problem of radical translation (discussed in Word and Object, 1960) where a native speaker exclaims “Gavagai!” and you, a linguist, wonder whether this word might mean “rabbit.” In a similar vein, should we translate the crucial Confucian concept of cheng as sincerity, authenticity, or wholeheartedness? The holism inherent in Quine’s conception of language and thought threatens any adequate translation of cheng because to really understand this idea it you must know that Confucianism is among others about self-authentication, getting rid of doxastic and motivational conflicts, and become whole within yourself as you avail yourself of the finely-honed cognitive technology of the rituals of the sage kings of the Western Zhou.

Closely connected to linguistic competence is cultural competence. Harbsmeier agreed with someone during the Q and A that some translations are relatively speaking straightforward, for instance, as his interlocutor said, “a rose is a rose is a rose”—this is, allegedly, a straight botanical fact. However, as Gertrude Stein already implied when she penned that famous line, the point is that a rose is not just a rose. A rose is a flower with rich cultural connotations that vary across cultures.

In a recent public address, Harvey Lederman argues for the disciplinary autonomy of Chinese philosophy. He argues that such work involves, necessarily, a close, patient, unglamorous engagement with the primary sources in their original language, reading them with “rigor, care and precision.” Herein lies an enormous difficulty for those who, like me, merely dabble in Chinese philosophy and only have a bit of Mandarin and even less classical Chinese.

The severe difficulty of relying on translation was recently brought vividly to me in a graduate seminar where my students and I looked at Wang Yangming’s responses to questions posed by students on the Great Learning (da xue), a chapter in a pre-Qin Confucian text. Wang Yangming, a Ming dynasty neo-Confucian author, objects to Zhu Xi’s interpretation of the relevant lines in Great Learning. He says:

And so, enlightening one’s enlightened Virtue must find expression in loving the people, and loving the people simply is the way one enlightens one’s enlightened virtue. (Trans PJ Ivanhoe) 

Wang, unlike his predecessor Zhu Xi, does not think enlightening one’s enlightened virtue (ming ming de) lies in renewing the people but in loving the people. He objects to Zhu Xi’s innovation in this text which had snuck in since the Song dynasty. Wang preserves the older meaning. But how could renewing and loving the people be two such different readings of the same text?

One of my grad students who is Chinese and visiting from mainland China explained that it is a confusion or perhaps deliberate emendation on Zhu Xi’s part where loving the people (qinmin 親民, where the sense of love is specifically proximate or familial) became to renovate or renew (xinmin,新民), that is the same character as for New Years (xin nian). This and other subtleties you will not get if you do not study classical Chinese.

So much of our competence in other languages is down to linguistic luck. You have moved as a child or as an adult, or as in my case, grew up in Belgium where it is obligatory to learn the three national languages (French, Dutch/Flemish, and German) and the education is of good quality. Beyond that, there is a genuine problem of investing in another language even in graduate school. Learning a language is slow, unrewarding, and unproductive for a significant period. You must submit obediently (as Iris Murdoch, I believe, pointed out) to the peculiarities of the language. In that respect, learning a language in its slowness and lack of immediate reward mimics the model of Chinese philosophy as Lederman puts forward: patient, unglamorous, slow.

Our students are already expected to do so much. It is unsurprising that language and logic and other such requirements that emphasize a certain well-roundedness are disappearing as the pressures mount to publish. Whereas it was fine to just focus on coursework in the first years (I’m taking the American context here, I know it differs between countries) they must now also already do “their own” research so as to get ahead in the publication game (as this question by Lila Graham makes clear).

Tips for staying afloat for a first-semester prof?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I'm having trouble adjusting to TT life post-grad school. I started as an assistant professor at a SLAC this fall with a 3/4 load. I feel like I'm drowning in email, grading, and class preps. I don't know how to manage my Outlook inbox. I'm going to have to pick up some service activities soon on top of everything else. Any tips for a first-semester TT prof trying to figure out how stay afloat?

I'm so sorry to hear the OP is struggling, and I hope we can help! 

For what it is worth, my experience is that this is completely normal. Transitioning into a FT academic job is a lot, particularly with a fairly heavy teaching load. Fortunately, at least in my experience, things are likely to get better, particularly in future semesters as you have some of your new course preps behind you. Of course, this may be little solace now, but at least it may comfort the OP to hear that things won't always be this way.

Philosophy in Senegal

This is the thirty-third installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This installment is by Hady Ba, Associate-Professor of Philosophy,  is the Head of the Philosophy Department at Cheikh Anta Diop University’s Teachers College in Senegal.

1. General information

Senegal is a country in West Africa with 18 million inhabitants living over 75,951 sq mi. The population is very young with more than 60% under 25 years old and 41.19% under 14 years old. 46.7% of the population lived below the poverty line in 2011. It is a relatively unequal country since the Gini index is 38.1. For comparison, France's Gini index is 32.4 and that of the USA is 41.5. Senegal is therefore less unequal than the USA but more so than France.

A former French colony, Senegal has around twenty ethnic groups who speak as many languages. French is, however, the official language of the Republic of Senegal while the 6 codified local languages ​​officially have the status of national languages. As such, education and state affairs are conducted in French, a former colonial language spoken by the educated elite. De facto, one of the national languages, Wolof, spoken as a first or second language by the overwhelming majority of the population serves as a lingua franca. As in many African countries, multilingualism is the rule. The Senegalese declare themselves muslims at 97.2%, and christians at 2.7%. Traditional African religions, however, persist either in the form of syncretism with imported religions, or, more rarely, in a pure form.

The Republic of Senegal is supposedly democratic. Senegal is one of 6 African countries out of 54 to have never experienced a coup or attempted coup since their independence. Despite the fact that the country is 97.2% Muslim, our first President, the poet and philosopher of Negritude Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Roman Catholic who ruled the country with an iron fist in a velvet glove for 20 years before passing power to his successor. Since Senghor, there have been three democratic changes and the country is preparing for presidential elections in 2024. The country's Constitution makes it a strong presidential system and successive leaders have often abused their power in the absence of effective parliamentary and judicial control. Despite everything, Senegalese democracy still holds strong thanks to a vibrant civil society and a culture of demonstration and resistance to abuse that dates back to colonization. The Senegalese even managed to obtain gains from the French during the colonial period.

2. The education system

Overall, the Senegalese school and university system is heir to the French system. Despite a series of reforms and transformations, school and university culture remains fundamentally French-speaking and Francophile. The Baccalaureate, a secondary school leaving diploma, is a national examination organized and delivered by the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, which is the first and main university in the country. Education is considered a public good deemed to be provided by the State from primary to higher education. 

In fact, many children are not in school or are in madrassas which teach the Koran rather than providing general or vocational training. Traditionally, the children of these madrassas begged at specific times of the day to ensure their subsistence, instill in them the virtues of stoicism and facilitate their collective care by the community. The current perversion of this system means that these children learn less and less of the Koran and spend more and more time on the streets begging to bring money to their teachers. The State is trying to encourage the formalization of madrassas and support those of them that agree to take children off the streets. The least we can say, however, is that the State of Senegal completely fails in its mission to protect these children and gives in to the lobby of Koranic teachers, some of whom import children from abroad to exploit them under the guise of religious schooling. 

Officially, Law No. 2004-37 of December 15, 2004 makes schooling compulsory for all children of both sexes aged six to sixteen and the State must provide this schooling free of charge. Actually, only 56.4% of the population aged 15 and over can read and write. Since the structural adjustment plans of the 1980s, the Bretton Woods institutions have forced the State of Senegal to reduce its spending on public services. Recurrent strikes followed, destabilizing the public. 

A private education system has consequently developed alongside the public, from primary to higher education. These private schools mostly follow the official Senegalese curriculum and are, paradoxically, subsidized by the State to help it ensure its public education mission. With the exception of some elite public schools, the state run schools have become de facto, at the primary and secondary levels, the refuge of disadvantaged populations and public school activists. Despite everything, public schools remain of quality and win prizes in standardized exams compared to their private counterparts who are much better endowed.

3. Philosophy in Senegal

Most Senegalese students discover philosophy during their last year of high school. A philosophy course is compulsory in most tracks. Philosophy is the dominant subject in literary majors and a fairly important minor in scientific majors. The Senegalese generally have an extremely positive view of philosophy which is often considered to be the counterpart of mathematics in terms of intelligence and esotericism. In high schools, philosophy teachers are the only ones who only teach final year, a subject known to be difficult and even dangerous. 

The philosophy class and end of high school exam are a rite of passage for every educated Senegalese. Most students have either enthusiastic or horrified memories of this subject. Senegal being a 97.2% Muslim and very practicing country at that, philosophy has a sulfurous reputation, being seen as the subject which either promotes atheism or drives its practitioners crazy. It is not uncommon to be criticized and kindly called crazy when you study or practice philosophy. 

Tips from Search Committee Members: how do you evaluate recommendation letters?

The first six posts in this series examined how hiring committees read and evaluate CVs, cover letters, research statements, teaching statements, diversity statements, and writing samples. Before we move onto first-round interviews and various aspects of on-campus visits (e.g., job talks, teaching demos, etc.), I'd like to finish up this first part of the series by asking search committee members to share how they read recommendation letters.

I've heard anecdotally that some search committee members care a great deal about recommendations, whereas others care very little. The Cocoon has also fielded a lot of questions over the years about whether recommendation letters need to be updated each year, on how many letters to include (including teaching letters), on whether it looks strange to not have a letter from someone on their committee or from their current job (e.g., a postdoc or VAP), on how important it is to have outside letters from people not in your grad program, and so on.

So, I think this thread could be really helpful. If you're on a search committee or have served on one in the past:

1. How much value do you place in recommendation letters? A lot? A little? None? Why?
2. What type of institution do you work at? R1? SLAC? CC?
3. Do you notice or care whether a recommendation letter is updated or a bit old?
4. Do you notice or care about whether a candidate has letters from all of their committee members? Outside letters? From their current job (post grad school)?
5. How do you read letters?
6. What types of things reflect well on a candidate, and what kinds of things reflect not so well?
7. Anything else?

Curious to hear everyone's answers!

How can we help you? (September 2023)

Now that it's been over a month since our last "how can we help you?" thread, it's time for a new thread.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query.

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon's mission) that you could use help with, including but not limited to:

• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Work-life balance
• Mental health & well-being
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Ask away - we're here to help! 

Important reminder: if you submit a comment in this thread responding to someone's query, I won't post it, as this makes it difficult for me to keep track of everything in the comments section, particularly which queries I've started new threads on and which ones I have not. However, if you do post a follow-up comment, chances are good that I will post it in the new thread I start on the relevant query. So, do feel free to submit responses. Just know that they won't appear in this particular thread and might instead appear later in a new post.

Using an R&R as a writing sample?

A reader writes in:

I wanted to ask a question about writing samples on the academic job market. First, I suspect that using a paper that has a revise and resubmit status (that is still under review) from a solid journal would be fine, but is it prudent to share with the committee that it's under review or has an R&R status? For instance, is it prudent to have a note at the top of the paper that says "This paper received a major revision from Journal X and is currently under review" The only issue I see is that one of the committee members is a reviewer but that seems unlikely. 

What do you think? 

Good question. I've wondered about this too, and about even listing R&Rs on one's CV.

Is it worth it to risk violating anonymized review? What do you all think?

Job offers: can you negotiate down a teaching load?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, Emily asks:

I have a question about what can be negotiated once one receives a job offer. I'm looking at the market this year, and wondering whether I should apply to jobs with high teaching loads, given that I do not want a job with a high teaching load (I put a lot of effort into my teaching, *and* I love research and want to have time for it). Some advertised jobs are one the border of what I think I could reasonably handle. So, my question: Is it ever possible to negotiate down from something like a 3/4 to a 3/3, or a 3/3 to a 2/3? Or is it not worth applying if I know I don't want to teach the advertised course load?

Good questions. You can of course always try to negotiate anything you like. However, my sense is that trying to negotiate down a teaching load at a college or university that has teaching loads like these is probably a bad idea. Universities with higher teaching loads are, after all, looking to hire a teacher, and my sense anecdotally is that many places like these just don't do teaching reductions. As one reader put it in a submitted reply:

I've never heard that such a negotiation is possible, except for reduction credits (so, not long-term reduction). So I will vote for "not worth applying".

While I suspect that nothing bad is likely to happen if you ask, I know of at least one horror story where a philosophy job-candidate actually had a job-offer rescinded because her requests during negotiations "indicate an interest in teaching at a research university and not at a college, like ours, that is both teaching and student centered." But, of course, this is just one case, and honestly, the candidate probably dodged a proverbial bullet by not taking a job there. 

So, I'm not sure whether it's worth trying. What do you all think? It would be great to hear from job-candidates that have tried to negotiate teaching loads (particularly at places with relatively high loads), as well as from search committee members and administrators.

Making time for coursework and independent research in grad school?

On Twitter/“x” (lol), Lila Graham asks:

so. how do people make time for both their own research and also coursework during the first year(s) of grad school[?]

Great question! It’s been quite a while since I was in grad school, and to be honest I was terrible about getting my own research done when I was. So, I’m probably not a great person to ask—but still, summer breaks seem like they are probably a great time to get some work done.

Anyway, so any readers have any good tips?

Applying for an Associate Professor position from a non-TT position?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, S asks:

Suppose one has been on the job market for around ten years and has a publication record that compares favorably with what might be expected at the Associate Professor level. Suppose further that this person has never held a TT position. Would it be inappropriate or pointless for this person to apply for Associate Professor positions? Is it a requirement for such jobs that one already has tenure somewhere?

One can always try, of course, but unfortunately I suspect the chances of it working are close to nil. Another reader submitted the following reply:

You probably should not apply for associate prof positions. Though you might have a comparable research record, you may not have a comparable teaching and service record. Further, given that you have never been tenured, they may be very reluctant to hire you into a tenured position. The exception, I think, would be in certain parts of Europe, especially the northern parts, where assistant professorships are rare.

As unfair as it might seem, I expect this is probably how many committees are apt to think. Also, one must always remember that new hires need to be approved by Deans, Provosts, and Boards of Trustees. If an Associate Professor position is tenured (as virtually all of them are), the powers that be seem unlikely to me to approve hiring someone who has not achieved tenure into a tenured position.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Writing a lukewarm letter of recommendation?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, a worried reader writes:

It's the season of writing recommendation letters. I'd really like to have advice on how to approach writing lukewarm / weak letters of recommendation for job candidates, especially if you're junior yourself and don't have the option of declining writing the letter.

Hmm, not sure. I'm generally inclined to think that if you can't write a good letter, then you should probably decline. But the OP says they don't really have the option to do that. I wonder why, though? Doesn't one always have a choice? However, if you do need to write a lukewarm letter, I guess you should be honest? I suspect it's probably also good practice to let the candidate know that your letter won't be uniformly positive, just to give them the option of declining the letter.

What do you all think?

Applying to junior positions from a senior position after a 'redundancy'?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, Dr. Doom writes,

I'm currently a senior level academic who has learned that the university might announce plans to make massive redundancies that, if approved, would force me back on the job market. What would you recommend to someone looking for a job and seeing ads mostly for tenure track positions. If fired, I would be quite willing to start from square one, but I worry about the perception of members of the search committee and what strategy to take in trying to sell myself to a committee. (I'd try to briefly explain the situation and highlight willingness to start from square one, but I'm quite nervous that they'll assume that I'd want a better position than they're offering, that I'd try to get special treatment because of seniority, etc.)

I'm so sorry to hear about the OP's situation. Without knowing more about their particular case, I think it's hard to say whether search committees would seriously consider them for a lower-level (Assistant Professor) position. But in any case, I suspect the best thing for them to do is probably to discuss things openly in their cover letter, making it clear that they wouldn't expect any special treatment, etc. 

What do you all think? It would be great to hear from some search committee members.

How do editors select reviewers, and how can one review more papers?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, Big Ben writes:

I am an early career researcher, and soon after completing my PhD, I received invites from two journals to review submissions. However, in the past one year, I have received no such invites. (although I do not have a stellar publication record, I do have a couple of articles in reasonably recognized journals.)

I would like to review more papers, but I do not know how to get invited to review one. Can someone share some tips?

More generally, I would like to know more about the method journal editors adopt in choosing reviewers (does the submission system suggest reviewers automatically based on the interests/published papers, do editors look at the bibliography of a submission and choose names, is there a cross-journal system to rate reviewers, is there a repository where one can volunteer to review, etc.)

These are both excellent queries. One reader with editing experience submitted the following reply:

One tip is to let senior people/junior people with name recognition/who work at research departments in your subfields know that you are interested in refereeing more and rarely get requests. I am an associate editor and almost all refereeing requests these days come from alternate suggestions from those who declined. And when I am making those suggestions when I decline things, I often am in a rush and just think of whoever pops into my mind most quickly and write down those names. If you make yourself salient to the people who are often turning things down, you will very likely start getting more requests. (And you shouldn't feel like you can only do this if you know the person likes your work, or anything like that--I think the bar is pretty low for what people think of as competency to review, so I think anyone you know who you feel comfortable randomly emailing would be fine!)

Another reader, an associate editor, submitted the following as well:

[A]s an associate editor (at a mid-level specialty journal), I use the following procedure: (1) if I know the area of the paper, I think of people I know of who might have something interesting to say about it. I don't spend a lot of time here, so inevitably I tend to favor people whose work I know well, either because I know them personally or because of their reputation (2) if I don't, and sometimes when I do, I use the references (3) when people selected via 1 and 2 decline, I hope to get recommendations from them for alternatives (4) if none of 1-3 work (unusual) I search the literature on my own I don't think there's much that could be done to hack this system. You'll naturally get more, and probably eventually too many, such invitations, as your networks, reputations, and citations counts grow. You could volunteer, and I guess I wouldn't have a problem with that, but it's never happened to me and so there's always a chance that someone would think it weird. If you're mainly interested in seeing early, new, work in your field, you might also contact the APA program committees; I believe (not sure) they take volunteer referees, and these papers are often more on the cutting edge than journal submissions.

Do any other readers have any other tips or insights?

Mental Health & Disability Network

Alexandra Gustafson (University of Toronto) writes in,

Philosophy graduate students worldwide are invited to join the Mental Health & Disability Network!

What is the Mental Health & Disability Network (MH&DN)? Now in its third year, MH&DN is a multi-university network devoted to bringing together philosophy graduate students searching for a supportive community. Hosted primarily over Discord, MH&DN has three aims: 1) to maintain a friendly, accommodating, and non-judgmental space in which peers can share their experiences and support one another; 2) to be an advocacy force that will assist in ongoing improvements to make our field an ever-kinder space conducive to everyone’s well-being; and 3) to work toward the broader de-stigmatization of mental health and disability in academia.

Any current philosophy graduate student (PhD or MA) is welcome to join, no formal (or informal) health diagnosis necessary. Interested students should contact Alexandra Gustafson (Toronto) at [email protected] for a secure link to join.

This seems like a wonderful resource, and I am glad that it appears to be flourishing!

To be a philosopher in Ukraine

This is the thirty-second installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This is a guest post by Viatkina Nataliia Department of Logic and Methodology of Science, Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

contact: [email protected]

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4839-1146

To practice philosophy in Ukraine, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of the history, culture, and political landscape of the country. Ukraine has a rich philosophical tradition with many famous thinkers and scientists who have significantly contributed to this field. How is it vital for a philosopher in Ukraine to navigate the complex social and political challenges facing the country while adhering to philosophical principles? This requires a high intellectual curiosity, critical thinking skills, and a willingness to consider new ideas and perspectives. After all, being a philosopher in Ukraine means using your knowledge and experience to help others navigate life in our vibrant, dynamic country with a tragic past and facing a sad present.