The Philosophers' Cocoon

Publications undermining market competitiveness?

In our newest "Ask a search committee member" thread, Nate writes:

I earned my Ph.D. from an unranked program in 2016. My sense is that the unranked school at the top of my CV pretty much disqualifies me from R1 type schools. However, I've published a lot for someone at my career stage in an effort to overcome the unranked program that I'm coming out of. To date, I've got 11 publications. 2 are in general journals in the 15-20 range on Leiter's recent poll, a handful are in good specialty journals, and a couple are in edited volumes. Given my publishing record, though, I'm now starting to worry that I've published myself out of some of those teaching jobs.

I've had some success on the market so far. I had a fair number of interviews the past couple years, and I got a handful of offers for VAP/Postdoc jobs this past year (I'm currently in a postdoc at a med school). However, I've been pretty much shut out of the TT market. My worry is that my unranked PhD means I'm not a candidate for research jobs and my publication record means that I'm not a candidate for teaching jobs. Is this a legitimate worry? If so, what can I do?

Amanda then responded, "I will just say this - yes, unfortunately, that is a legitimate worry. Whether it is a legitimate worry for you in particular is unclear, I would have to see your CV." I think Amanda is absolutely right here. But let me try to elaborate on some of the issues that I think may be at play here, as I think it may help Nate and others make better sense of their situation as well as what they might do to be more competitive.

Competitive without 'major' publications?

In the comments section of our new 'Ask a search-committee member' thread, anon writes: 'Would someone without any major publications almost be immediately disqualified from consideration for a TT position?'

Although it's unclear what anon means by 'major publications', as two comments later in the thread indicate, I think the answer here is yes, both for R1 jobs and jobs at more teaching-focused institutions (SLACs, CCs, etc.)--though for very different reasons. Allow me to explain.

Hyman's analysis of atheism and some interesting Indian parallels

Gavin Hyman explains in his 2007 contribution to Martin's Cambdride Companion to Atheism as well as in his 2010 A Short History of Atheism that atheism is always the refusal of a given form of theism. In particular, in European history, atheism is the refusal of theism as conceived in modern times, with God as one "thing" among others. This claim might raise the eyebrows of readers of Julian Baggini, who in his 2003 Atheism. A very short introduction maintained that atheism is independent of theism, since it is tantamount to naturalism. The two claims are, however, less far than it might look like.

Modern atheism as naturalism refutes God because it considers him as a natural cause and shows (or believes to show) that there is no need to accept his existence, since the other natural causes are more than enough to explain the world.

By contrast, Hyman explains that the transcendental God of negative theology or of analogical theology* could not be attacked by atheism-as-naturalism. In short, Richard Swinburne's God can be attacked by atheism-as-naturalism, whereas this would have much less to say against the God of Meister Eckhart (the example is mine).

New sharing functions

Several weeks ago, the buttons for sharing posts disappeared due to Typepad's new security protocols. There is a finally a workaround: namely, the social media buttons now located on the left sidebar of the blog. If you visit one of our posts and are interested in sharing it, all you need to do is click the relevant button!

Survey results on peer-review

Several days ago, I put up this informal survey to gauge readers' opinions about various features of peer review. I am going to leave the survey up so that people can still take it. But here are the results so far (n = 91), organized by what I will call the good, the ambivalent, and the bad.

As this is only an informal survey, the results should of course be taken with a grain of salt (and then some). Still, I found the results interesting and will be curious to hear readers' reactions.

The Good

64.1% of respondents agreed that anonymized review works well on balance, giving authors a fair chance (whereas only 23.07% disagreed).

Ask a search-committee member (mid-market edition)

Now that we're in the middle of the job-market--with many job app deadlines already passed and at least some interviews occurring--I thought it might be good to run another ask a search-committee member thread.

For those of you new to the series, this thread is a place for you to share any burning questions you have for people serving on or who have previously served on search committees. So, in the comments section below, feel free to ask any questions you like within the blog's mission, including (but not limited to) questions about:

• The process of judging application materials
• Skype interviews
• On campus interviews
• Etc.

I will then post new threads on each query for search committee members (and others) to weigh in!

Opportunity for a web-savvy philosopher

A reader writes in:

I recently came across a post from Andrew Beck, a Senior Editor at Routledge. I've worked with Andrew as an editor, and he seems nice. Some readers of your blog may be interested, so I've included the post below.

----

I’m looking for a web-savvy, philosophy major or philosophy Ph.D. student who can help me build a web site for a popular Intro to Philosophy text that Routledge has just secured from another publisher.

 Specifically, I need someone who can:

1. Find good translations of about a dozen primary sources in the public domain (e.g., from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, etc.)
2. Find high-quality, and freely available online materials (blogs, videos, podcasts) germane to the subject of each chapter (e.g., 16. Can Hume’s Skepticism Be Refuted?; 19. Dualism and the Mind/Body Problem)
3. Write some additional Review Questions and Problems for Further Thought at the end of each chapter, which we will also include online
4. Ideally, put together the web site

If you’re interested or know someone who is, please email me at [email protected]

Advice for applying to CC jobs?

In our job-market discussion thread, anon writes:

[W]ould anyone here be willing to give me just a bit of advice on applying for TT jobs at community colleges?

I have read somewhere that in addition to the cover letter, even regarding your CV, it might be wise to remove sections about research?

Anyone have a lot of experience or success applying for these types of positions?
Tips? Advice?

Great questions! I applied to a number of CC jobs during my seven years on the market, and think I only received one interview. So whatever I was doing didn't work very well--and I'm not sure what does. Does anyone with experience with community college jobs--as a candidate or search committee member--have any tips to share? 

An easier poll on peer-review

[Update: survey fixed!]

Following feedback on the poll on peer-review I rolled out the other day, I've tried to design an easier poll. HERE is a new survey that I think readers should have a much easier time with. Although it has 20 items, the items are so simple that I think it should take readers just a couple of minutes to click through. Hopefully we'll get some better data out of this one--and, although it's only an informal poll, my hope is that its results will give us some good material to discuss moving forward!

Inclusive citations and editorial word count policy

As executive editor of the Journal of Analytic Theology, I've been working with the other editors on a document to spell out our editorial practices and procedures. Having such a document will, we hope, inspire confidence in authors who submit to our journal and in our referees, improve transparency of the review process, and hopefully provides a set of guidelines for us as editors as well.

One thing we've been trying to address is citation practices. In particular, we've now included the following policy: 

Papers should normally be under 9,000 words in length, the word count is not including references but including footnotes, appendices and other supplementary materials. Longer papers will be considered but note that they need to clear a higher bar, and need to have some justification for their length. We value economy of expression. We are not including the list of references in the word count so as to encourage authors to cite inclusively, i.e., to cite work that has meaningfully played a role in

the ideas of their paper, rather than only signalling their knowledge of the prestigious or most well-known works in the field. [emphasis added]

Let me briefly elaborate on this policy. Although analytic theology is not exclusively a philosophical field (it is interdisciplinary), we get a lot of analytic philosophy of religion and have noticed that there is a trend among authors to cite sparingly, as is the general practice in analytic philosophy. 

When you cite sparingly, as Eric Schliesser observed, citation are in danger of becoming a commodity, a favour to be bestowed, presumably in exchange for other goods. And as Marcus Arvan argued, by having sparing citations we end up using citations as a form of status signalling. That is why philosophers tend to cite prestigious papers from prestigious journals, so called "agenda-setters". That practice is riddled with implicit biases--all things being equal, we're less likely to cite women, people of colour, people from less prestigious institutions.   

While it is difficult to fix these issues right away, one thing editors can do is to explicitly encourage people to cite inclusively, asking them to cite work that has actually played a role in their thinking. For unlike Marcus I am not convinced people just read and cite top generalist journals. But they might still cite, all things being equal, work from such journals as it is deemed more influential and agenda-setting. When the word count becomes pressing, how often do we not cut down on citations? And it is likely that the cutting of citations is riddled with implicit biases, thus further exacerbating unbalanced citation practices. 

By taking the pressure off the word count for references (after all, Journal of Analytic Theology is an online open-access journal so we do not need to worry about print runs and page counts), and by explicitly encouraging our authors to cite inclusively, we hope to redress the imbalance somewhat. 

Reader poll: best & worst parts of peer-review

Based on readers' answers to my query on what works and what doesn't in peer-review, I've put together THIS POLL (poll suspended for revisions - see comments) for readers to rank features of the peer-review process in philosophy from best to worst. Although I'm by no means an expert at putting polls together, my hope is the results will give at least some rough indication of readers' attitudes. We'll see how it goes--and I plan to host discussion threads on specific issues moving forward--but I hope some of you take part!

Sexual Assault and Citation Practices

By Peter Furlong

Another philosopher recently looked over a manuscript I had been working on for a book. He noted that in a footnote, I cited a comment from someone that has recently fallen from grace because of sexual assault issues. My friend, reading my manuscript, noted that readers might not respond positively to the inclusion of this footnote.

Before moving on to the issue of how we should treat these sorts of offenders, I want to say something about my specific case. The footnote was not really necessary. In the book, I was saying something about conflicting intuitions concerning an issue that people have been weighing in on for centuries. People have strong intuitions on both sides; this is well known. In a footnote, I quoted a particularly forceful endorsement of commitment to one side of this issue (one that was not even made in a piece of scholarship). The person I quoted does not even really work much in this area, just, apparently, has extremely strong views on this particular question. So I cited it to illustrate just how committed some are to particular answers. It was an illustrative citation, rather than one that recognizes prior contributions from others.

Peer-review: what works and what doesn't?

Several months from now, I'm scheduled to take part in a discussion on our profession's peer-review practices: what works, what doesn't, and what might be improved. To prepare for the session, I'd like to run a new series here at the Cocoon soliciting readers' opinions on our peer-review practices and norms, and what (if anything) readers think might improve the process.

In today's post, I'd like to ask readers to weigh in on two initial questions:

1. What do you think currently works well in the peer-review process?
2. What do you think the biggest problems are with the peer-review process?

After hearing what readers think, my plan is to run a few informal polls, so as to gauge readers' overall satisfaction with the peer-review process, desire for change, and priorities if change is pursued. Then, after those polls, I hope to have a series of posts discussing some of specific issues in more detail, including more detailed debates about whether the peer-review process should change at all, if so how, and so on. 

So please do considering weighing in on questions (1) and (2). The more readers we hear from, the better discussion we are likely to have in the series overall!

A little milestone

This is just a quick note that the Cocoon passed two million page views today. Many thanks to all of the blog's contributors and readers for making the Cocoon such a great place to blog and discuss early-career issues, issues in the profession, etc. If you're a reader and interested in becoming a contributor, please do let me know ([email protected]). We're always looking for new voices to add to our forum!

What kind of colleague do you want? (Or, why we don't want passionate teachers and kind people as academic colleagues)

Imagine you're a tenured faculty member at an average sort of department, not super-prestigious but still with some aspirations for research excellence. You're hiring a new tenure track faculty member. Although people do sometimes move from tenure track positions, it is still a safe bet that a new hire will stay and will be your colleague for many years to come.

What kind of colleague would you rather have? Would you like someone who is ambitious, puts their research first in everything they do, certainly does not have a passion for teaching? Or would you like someone who is an excellent scholar but who also is kind, considerate, collegial, cares about their students?

Supposing you're hiring someone for a senior position, such as an endowed chair, or a Reader or Professor or Department Head (in the UK the latter is not uncommon). Would you like someone single-minded focused on their next excellent book with a prestigious press--OUP or Cambridge, perhaps a few select other publishers for subfields? Or would you like someone who is an excellent research but who is also caring, compassionate, who thinks about the wellbeing and prospects of the graduate students and about the department's wellbeing, who serves the department and puts other people's needs (regularly) above their own? 

Going by advice for cover letter writing and for writing letters of recommendation, it would seem we want a colleague like the former. We want the ambitious, single-minded person for whom teaching is a necessary evil. Take the following handy advice sheet for how to write letters that don't show gender bias, from the University of Arizona (pictured below).

When to expect interview requests?

In our job-market discussion thread, ED asks, "Is it reasonable to expect to hear about interview opportunities (positive or negative) before the holidays, from departments in the US advertising tt jobs with deadlines in October or November?"

Good question. Our job-market reporting thread has been pretty dead so far this year. Is this because not many hiring departments have set up interviews yet, or is it because people aren't reporting? It's been a few years since I've been on the market, so I'm not sure what the market calendar is like these days. Anyone have any insight? When do the lion's share of interview requests go out these days?

Sustaining Activism

This is a guest post by Mark Lance, Professor at the Philosophy Department and Justice and Peace Studies Program at Georgetown University:

Early in my activist career, I had a mentor, Molly Rush. Molly has done an enormous amount in her life, but was most famous as a member of the first “Plowshares” action. She, Dan and Phil Berrigan, and others broke into a missile plant in Pennsylvania and poured their own blood on documents and damaged Mark 12a first-strike nuclear nose-cones. She was sentenced to five years in federal prison. I worked with Molly a couple years after her release and one day was saying how much I admired her courage. She insisted that this was not the right thing to admire. She felt called to perform this action, but insisted that sustained lifetime involvement was much more important and harder than bold, dramatic, performances.

She told me about, and later introduced me to, a woman in her early 60s. Mabel had decided in her 20s that she could devote one evening a week to social justice work. Sometimes she attended a protest; sometimes stuffed envelopes or worked a phone bank; sometimes she organized teach-ins. But she had not missed a week. In 40 years. (20 years later, when I was organizing one of the large mobilizations around the IMF/WB meetings, she emailed me with a long apology, because her doctor had forbidden her from coming to DC on her broken hip for the protests. In introduced her to a bunch of young activists over the phone.)

I’ve had a second career in activism for roughly 35 years. I have seen hundreds of passionate committed young people jump into the work, doing everything, 80 hour work-weeks, nights in jail, enduring verbal and physical abuse, inspiring the hell out of me and others. And then disappearing after a total burnout, never to be heard from again. I’ve also come to know a smaller number of folks who have made movement work an enduring part of their lives.

Interview practice and candidate rankings

In the comments section of our, 'Ask a search-committee member' thread, Anon writes:

Do search committees usually have a ranking in mind when they invite candidates for Skype interviews? How can candidates best prepare for these things, particularly on short notice when one is balancing a heavy course load?

Both are very good questions. I will be curious to hear what readers think--particularly search-committee members, though job-marketeers may be able to help with the second question. Here, at any rate, are a few thoughts of my own.

Interview questions

In our "Ask a search-committee member" thread, Recent PhD writes:

I was wondering if any search committee members would be willing to share the kinds of questions one might encounter in an interview. In particular, are there any difficult questions that get asked that tend to throw off candidates? What should a candidate be especially prepared to talk about beyond their research, teaching, etc.

This is a wonderful question. It would be great to hear of examples from search committee members. Here are a bunch that spring to mind to me...

Thank-you notes after interviews?

In the comments section of our "Ask a search-committee member" thread, Anon writes, "Should candidates send follow of thank you notes after Skype interviews?" Ah, the perennial question! I'm curious to hear how other people who have served on search committees answer. But here are a few quick thoughts...

'Nonideal Justice as Nonideal Fairness'

After over 11 years of work on the project, I am happy to report that my article, 'Nonideal Justice as Nonideal Fairness', is now forthcoming in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. The abstract:

This article argues that diverse theorists have reasons to theorize about fairness in nonideal conditions, including theorists who reject fairness in ideal theory. It then develops a new all-purpose model of ‘nonideal fairness.’ §1 argues that fairness is central to nonideal theory across diverse ideological and methodological frameworks. §2 then argues that ‘nonideal fairness’ is best modeled by a nonideal original position adaptable to different nonideal conditions and background normative frameworks (including anti-Rawlsian ones). Finally, §3 argues that the parties to the model have grounds to seek a variety of remedial social, legal, cultural, and economic ‘nonideal primary goods’ for combating injustice, as well as grounds to distribute these goods in an equitable and inclusive manner. Finally, I illustrate how the model indexes the nonideal primary goods it justifies to different nonideal contexts and background normative frameworks, illustrating why diverse theorists should find the model and its output principles attractive.

Applying to postdoc & TT in same dept?

In the comments section of our "Ask a search-committee member" thread, Mercado writes:

(1) Should someone who is ABD apply to a tenure-track job and a postdoc that are in the same department? The worry here is that applying to both positions will cause the committee to undervalue your application.

(2) In this kind of case, is a job-search committee the same as the postdoc search committee? That is, do these committees have the same members?

Good questions. Although I could be wrong, I see no reason not to apply to both. To the best of my knowledge, there are usually separate search-committees for each job advertised. I also think it is unlikely (though not impossible) that the committees will talk to one another about their candidate pools--with perhaps one exception (one that might benefit you!): if the TT committee thought very highly of you but you end their second-place finalist, it's possible they could lobby with the postdoc committee to hire you into that position. I've actually heard of something like this happening before. On the other hand, if you don't fare well with the TT committee, the postdoc committee still might think highly of you. So, it seems to me best to apply to both jobs, as I'm inclined to think it will maximize your chances for both jobs.

But perhaps I am wrong about this. Admittedly, I haven't been in a department where simultaneous hires like this have been done, so I could be offbase! What do those of you in the know think?

Seeking out external committee-members

A reader writes in:

I'm in a low-ranked PhD program located in a geographical area surrounded by much larger, more highly ranked departments with lots of rockstar faculty in my AOS (metaphysics). I would really like--no--I would LOVE, when the time comes, to have them on my committee. I know people do this from time-to-time. But what's appropriate? How proactive should one be? What's appropriate assertion, vs. being inappropriate/ annoying? What I'm most interested in hearing is if any faculty who check this blog have received such contact from graduate students in nearby departments. How did the exchange come across on your end? 

I'll give my own thoughts in a moment. But given that this reader is most interested in hearing from faculty with some experience in these matters, are there any out there willing to weigh in?

Asking about spousal hires

A reader writes in:

When is a good time in the interviewing process to bring up spousal hires? My spouse is an academic in a different discipline. I’ve heard some people say that they’ve had remarkable success being upfront about their dual body problem— that is, early in the interview process. And yet I can’t help but feel that a committee would be less inclined to invite or extend an offer to a candidate with a dual body problem. At the same time, my fear is that a department would be resentful if I didn’t bring it up until the last minute. I also worry that it would be more difficult to negotiate a spousal hire within a two-week exploding offer window.

I don't have any experience with this, so unfortunately I don't have any idea! Does anyone who has served on the hiring side of things have any insight they are willing to share? 

Tips for a first-time colloquium speaker?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Lauren writes:

I've been asked to give a colloquium talk at a different university for the first time (well, the first time in a department that isn't my own and where I am not a job candidate). If it matters, though I am in the same very large metro area as the university where I will give this talk, I don't know anyone in the department or university. I'm very excited, but not entirely sure about the norms for things like: how soon before the event do I need to have the topic nailed down? Is it appropriate or expected to ask what they want to hear or suggest a few different talks and see what they're interested in? Since the department where I'll be giving the talk is undergrad-only, what should I be thinking about in terms of pitching the talk? Should I be thinking of this as an extended classroom-style lecture, or is that the wrong way to think about it?

I haven't done a colloquium talk in a few years, so I'm perhaps not the best person to ask. But I guess my suggestion is for Lauren to simply ask the person scheduling the colloquium some of these questions! The reasons I'd give for this are simple: I expect different people are looking for different things in a colloquium speaker. For example, some people might want to know the talk topic fairly well in advance so they can advertise it on the university schedule, others may not be so concerned about this. Similarly, some might want a talk to undergrads to be akin to a classroom lecture, whereas others might not mind the talk being pitched at a higher level. My advice, then, is to just ask!

But of course these are just my reactions, and again I might not be the best person to ask. What do you all think?