The Philosophers' Cocoon

What's it like to work as a philosopher in Mexico?

This is the eleventh installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that give a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This guest contribution is a fully collaborative, co-authored piece by two scholars in Mexico: 

Paloma Atencia is Research Associate at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas (Institute of Philosophical Research) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She works at the intersection between philosophy of art and the philosophy of mind and perception. 

 

Miguel Ángel Sebastian works as Investigador Titular (equivalent to tenured assistant professor) at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas at UNAM. His research focuses on the philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences and consciousness studies. He has also interests in aesthetics, philosophy of language, philosophy of physics and metaphysics.

When you think about Mexico, probably the first thing that comes to your mind are wonderful beaches, great food, friendly people, and Mayan ruins. Also, given the vast cultural and artistic opportunities that Mexico City has to offer, it’s not surprising that it was selected as a top destination to visit in 2019 according to the New York Times. However, it’s not likely that many people think about Mexico when it comes to academic life in general, and Philosophy in particular. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to encounter the more or less implicit assumption that very little interesting philosophical work is done beyond the US, Australia, Canada, the UK and a few other parts of Europe. We think that this is strongly misguided—that’s why we work here! Such an implicit assumption is partially explained by the lack of information, of which we have some responsibility. We would like to take this opportunity to share with you some thoughts on what it is like to do (analytic) Philosophy in Mexico.

It is true that the analytic tradition in Philosophy is still very much underrepresented in Latin America. However, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) and, more specifically, the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas (IIFs) stands out as one of the very few centers in the region that cultivate and foster work in this tradition. More importantly, contrary to what many people might think, UNAM ranks in Philosophy above many well-known American and European institutions (just go and check your favorite World Universities Ranking). But these are just statistics.

Showing recommendation letters to students?

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

I was wondering what people think of showing one's letter of recommendation to their students. The student has not asked me to do it, and of course they agree to the letter being sent without them seeing it. But I think by showing the letter to the student I might get feedback to help me write a better letter for that particular student. Perhaps they would alert me to the fact that something they find important isn't highlighted, or that I made some factual error. Is there any reason I should refrain from doing this?

I'm curious to hear what people think about this. Personally, I don't think I would want to do this, as I'm inclined to think it is important to be forthright in letters, including how the student compares to others as well as what areas they could improve in--and I am not sure I would be as forthright as I think appropriate if I were to show students their letters. In terms of avoiding factual errors and highlighting things the student may consider important, one alternative is to ask the student for relevant information prior to writing the letter. However, if others think that showing letters to students is a good idea, I am always willing to be persuaded. What do you all think?

Informal survey on service & the market

Several weeks ago, Daily Nous hosted a discussion on the distribution of graduate student service work and whether such work should receive compensation. This led to some further online discussion about whether and to what extent service plays a role in how job-candidates for academic jobs are evaluated. Does a candidate's service experience and overall service record (to their department, university, community, or the profession) play a role in hiring? Do individual search committee members take service into account when evaluating job-candidates (viz. who to interview or extend an offer to)? Do search committees take service into account in their collective deliberations?

Because I think job-candidates might benefit from getting clearer answers to this question, I decided to put together this informal five question survey for people who have served on search-committees to fill out. To be clear, this isn't a formal study, but rather just an informal poll to hopefully gather some helpful information. I am well aware of methodological issues with open polls like these, but am optimistic that some information here might be better than the status quo. Please fill out the poll only if you have served on at least one search committee--and please do not fill out the poll more than once. Although I may report results of the survey here, all individual responses will be kept confidential. The poll also ends with an optional item requesting respondents' email addresses (in order to give me at least some indication that the poll is being filled out by people in the discipline who have plausibly served on the search committees), but this item is entirely optional. Hopefully, I'll have some data to report back on next week!

Pregnancy and the market

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

I am a pregnant first-time job seeker on the North American market and my baby is due during the height of flyout season. I see no reason to mention this situation to search committees unless and until they invite me to visit, but I would like to prepare myself for such a conversation ahead of time. Can anyone illuminate the constraints on campus visit scheduling? How much flexibility do hiring departments have? Does this vary from institution to institution? Who makes these decisions? Also, does anyone have experience (either as a job candidate or hiring department) with a flyout involving a baby? I am 99% certain that I would rather cope with the challenges of bringing a nursing newborn than with the challenges of being separated from said newborn overnight. I am fortunate to have a family member who can travel with me to provide childcare. I imagine that I should plan for her to travel on my own dime, though please correct me if I am wrong. I should also add that this is not my first kid, so I have at least some idea of the exhaustion and other things I will be feeling.

These are really good and important questions. My experience serving on several search committees is that hiring committees can have a significant amount of flexibility, but that scheduling is also constrained by the schedules of administrators (e.g. Deans), the fly-out schedules of other candidates, and the overall timeline for the search (some hiring committees may be pushed to wrap up the search by a certain date). Consequently, I suspect (but don't know for sure) that things can vary quite a bit from institution to institution. Do other search committee members have any thoughts on these issues? And more generally: do readers have any relevant experiences and/or advice to share?

Palgrave books 90+% off

This is just a quick note that Palgrave MacMillan is holding a cyber sale (sale code CYBER19PA) though December 3rd, selling books that normally go for $109 for only $9.99. You can apparently order as many books as you want under the sale price. So this is not only a chance to check out philosophy books you might have avoided buying before for pricing reasons. It's also a chance to support your colleagues in the profession, giving their books a read and perhaps considering them for future courses you teach. Anyway, I plan to take advantage of the sale myself, and want to encourage any authors of Palgrave books who read this blog to post their book titles and links to their Palgrave page below! Here's my first book's page, for anyone who might be interested.

Reader query on pregnancy and having children while on the tenure track

An anonymous reader writes: 

“I am currently in a tenure-track job that I love so far, and my partner and I are hoping to have kids (at least one, but maybe two). When I was a job candidate, I heard horror stories about departments not wanting to hire women candidates in case they might get pregnant. Now, I’m worried that if I get pregnant and go on leave before tenure, that could hurt me in some way. Since my biological clock is running out before my tenure clock, I was hoping I might be in good enough shape to go up for tenure early and have kids after – but that plan puts a ton of stress on me to publish a lot of good work and fast. (And the prospect is taking a toll on my mental health.) Does anyone have advice for what people who want to have kids should do in this sort of situation? If we do have kids before tenure, are two full years of teaching sufficient before going on leave for this reason?”

I imagine many readers face this issue, and would welcome any insights from them. 

The importance of a good grad adviser

Each year, applicants accepted to PhD programs have to decide where to enroll. When I was in that situation, I made my decision on what in retrospect seem to me to be really naive, simplistic grounds. I basically looked at how highly ranked a program was, and whether it had good faculty in my area(s) of focus. Having talked to some recent grad school applicants, my sense is that this is still how a considerable number of them seem to decide where to enroll. However, I now think that this is exactly how not to make this kind of far-reaching decision. First, program rankings do not appear to be very good proxies of something that I cared about, and suspect most applicants care about: academic job placement rates. According to the ADPA report, some highly ranked PhD programs place their graduates well, others fare poorly. Conversely, some low-ranked and unranked programs have even better overall placement rates than top-ranked programs. Secondly, there are grounds for thinking that one's choice of PhD adviser/supervisor is one of the most important parts of one's graduate experience, in ways that in turn can have profound effects on one's professional prospects. Let me explain.

One of the more striking things I've noticed in my time in the profession is just how much the success rates of grad students depend upon who their adviser is. Some advisers basically never graduate any students, the vast majority of whom drop out. Other advisers do graduate students, but their students' average time to graduation is like 7-10 years, and their students rarely get full-time academic jobs. Then there are advisers who crank out new PhDs left and right, and whose students routinely end up hired quickly into tenure-track jobs. Then of course there are qualitative differences. Some advisers are encouraging, supportive, quick to provide feedback, provide good job-market guidance, professional connections, and so on. Other advisers are abusive, neglectful, take months to provide feedback, provide no job-market guidance, etc. All of these kinds of advisers can and often do exist within the very same program, including at top programs. So, it can be vital to end up with the right one!

I'll tell my story in a minute. But before I do, here's why I'm writing this post: I came across this Inside Higher Ed piece today where I learned about a 2018 study in Nature that found that "factors strongly correlating with overall satisfaction [of PhD students in grad programs] include number of publications, work-life balance and, especially, the adviser-advisee relationship." So, don't take it from me: take it from science. If you're applying to PhD programs, don't focus all of your attention on rankings, average placement record for jobs, or the overall quality of a program's faculty. No, try to figure out before accepting an offer whether there is a faculty member there who would be a good adviser for you, and whether they would be willing to supervise you should you get in there.

Burnout and work-life boundaries

A reader writes in:

I am a big believer in the benefits of treating graduate school as a 9-5 job as a way of preventing burnout. While I have found that I am decent at following the letter of the law, I am not so good at following the spirit of the law. By this I mean that while I don't often actively work on projects in the evening, I cannot turn my mind off. I keep thinking about all the things I need to be working on and it has started interfering with my family life. I am not as present at home with my daughter or wife as I want to be. As a grad student, I know I have it the easiest now as I ever will. Should I be lucky enough to get a TT job, I will only be teaching more classes, with additional service duties, and more publishing pressures. Keeping a work/life balance will be even harder. 

I use some of the tactics that are often suggested for keeping a boundary between work and home. For instance, I keep a notebook with copious to-do lists and make a to-do list for the following day before I go home. I have longer term to-do lists for semester long projects as well. The goal is to externalize my projects and take them off my mind, but I still find myself thinking and worrying about them. I've started meditating and trying to visualize putting my work away until tomorrow, but I haven't been doing that long enough to see if it is effective. Are there any other tactics you or your readers have found helpful at turning your mind off from work for the night?  

I think this is a really important query. In my experience, this is one of the most difficult parts of being an academic. I struggled with it while I was on the job-market (the market was basically on my mind 24/7), I struggled with it once I finally got a TT job (stressing about publishing, teaching, etc.), and I still struggle with it today. Like this reader, I have actually set pretty firm limits on my workday. I only work from 9-5pm on weekdays, and I self-enforce a nearly categorical commitment to never work on weekends (sole exceptions being hard deadlines that necessitate it). I began this practice many years ago while still in a non-TT position, and it worked wonders. However, I've still always struggled with mentally distancing myself from work and not allowing work stresses to compromise my free time (viz. preoccupation when out with friends, etc.).

That being said, allow me to share a few things that I've found helpful and then open up the discussion for other suggestions from readers!

Reader query on overdue reviews

A reader writes in:

I would like to ask about review practices. I have a submission under a decent journal. At one point, correspondences with the editors indicated that a review was overdue several weeks, they will contact the reviewer, and hope to come to a decision soon; later, at 7 weeks overdue, they mentioned that the reviewer needs more time. I’m not exactly sure how to phrase my question. Is this normal? And what should I do, if anything? What do reviewers and editorials normally do in similar situations? The context is that I’m going on the job market now, but I feel that I don’t have enough publications to be competitive.

I'm glad this reader wrote in, as this indeed appears to be a very common issue. I often see posts by friends on social media (including more senior members of the profession) relating similar stories. Generally speaking, the advice I've seen people given is to simply contact the editors again for an update after a reasonable amount of time has passed. However, if it has only been a few weeks after the initial exchange with the editors (as seems to be the case here), then it may make sense to wait a couple of more weeks (though I'm note sure). Another possibility, if things go on too long, is to simply withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere, though I understand from experience why you wouldn't want to do that after you've already waited this long. I've been in a similar situation many times (including when I was on the job market in need of publications, and I never really felt like I knew what to do here aside from contacting the editors every month or so after the deadline. 

What does everyone else out there think? One thing to consider moving forward is to try to submit papers to journals with consistently good turnaround times. This 'Waiting for the Editor' webpage by Jonathan Weisberg is a great resource here, and I'm always surprised by how many people don't seem to be aware of it. 

CFP: Southeast Association for the Continental Tradition (SEACT)

A friend asked me to post this CFP, which is also posted on PhilEvents:

CFP: Southeast Association for the Continental Tradition (SEACT)

Southeast Association for the Continental Tradition

Submission deadline: December 15, 2019

Conference dates:
February 28-29, 2020

Venue: St. Leo University, Tampa FL

This Year’s Theme: “Community”

SEACT was created to provide a new space for scholars of Continental philosophy and the history of philosophy living in the Southeast region to come together and share their work with one another. Because it is an effort to build community in the region, we’ve chosen to highlight the theme of “community” for our first annual meeting. We encourage submissions that have to do with community and related concepts. Not all submissions need to address this theme, but we are hoping that a number of them will and that this will provide a focal point throughout the two-day conference.

Our first annual meeting will be held in Tampa, FL hosted by Saint Leo University.

Instructions for Submissions:

To submit, please send an abstract of 300-500 words along with the following information:

• The title of the paper/ presentation (for panels: the title of the panel as a whole and the title of each contribution)
• Names, positions, and institutional affiliations for each author
• Contact information for each author
• Type of presentation (see below)

The abstract and the accompanying information should be sent by Dec. 15, 2019 to [email protected]. Notifications of decision will be sent by Jan. 3, 2020.

What to put on a grad application CV

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

I am applying to PhD programs in Philosophy. Many require submitting a resume/cv. As someone just coming out of undergrad, I do not have the level of publications/academic achievements that I am seeing on current grad students or faculty. What kinds of things should be included on this and how should it be organized? Should employment history also be included?

Good question. Given that grad school applicants may have little to report besides where they received the undergraduate degree or MA, what in the world should they put on their CV when applying to grad school?

What should search committees remember about the market?

Last month, Trevor wrote a really illuminating post on his job-market experience last year. One of the many things that stood out to me was a conclusion he drew about interviews:

Job interviews are bullshit. This is not a new observation, but it was reinforced throughout the year. I was always the same job candidate, and I always engaged in roughly the same interview preparation – same attire, same amount of time researching each school and department, the same interviewing location (with a few exceptions). Yet my interview performance varied dramatically and usually due to factors that had nothing to do with how well I could do the job in question. For this reason, you shouldn’t be discouraged if an interview goes badly, but it’s difficult to have that outlook when they can have such a huge impact on your career and life more generally.

My experience on the job-market was similar. Of every ten interviews I had, I'd say about 3 went really well, 3 went badly, and four went so-so. It was an incredibly frustrating experience, as just like Trevor I felt that they just weren't reliably reflective of who I was (and am) as a professional philosopher. No matter how well I prepared, my interview performances felt like a crapshoot. They seemed to vary depending on everything ranging from how well I slept the previous night to how well I could hear the committee's questions on Skype, to whether I drank too much coffee, to how sharp I felt on that particular day. Readers may also recall that I've also shared some of the science on hiring, including just how sensitive to job-irrelevant factors (attractiveness, height, weight, race, gender, etc.) interviews are known to be.

Why, then, do committees stake so much on interviewing? Having served on four search committees now, the answer is fairly clear to me: on the hiring side of things, interviews seem to have probative value. When a candidate answers questions very poorly, it can seem hard to imagine hiring the person. Or, when a candidate 'kills it' in an interview, it can be very hard not to come away impressed. The problem, though, is that the science doesn't support any of this--and a little commonsense reflection can help us remember why. Consider Tom Brady, by most estimations the best quarterback ever to play NFL football. Tom Brady impressed roughly no one in his combine try-out for the NFL, which is why he was drafted in the very last round of the NFL draft. Tom Brady has also had some miserable games during his long career in the league--just like every sporting great has ranging from LeBron James to Venus and Serena Williams. Conversely, here are some players who impressed just about everyone in their NFL tryouts: JaMarcus Russell, Ryan Leaf, Joey Harrington, Tim Couch, Kyle Boller...all players who were drafted in the very first round of the NFL draft who nevertheless went on to have miserable careers. What all of these cases show (including Trevor's experience) is something that should be obvious to anyone: namely, individual, one-off performances can vary tremendously in ways that make them horribly unreliable measures of future promise. Indeed, on that note, it's worth noting that I've seen some very famous and otherwise brilliant philosophers give bizarrely bad talks! Given that even Tom Brady can have miserable games, we should always remember just how fallible judgments based on single performances can be.

The problem, it seems to me, may be that search committee members simply forget this--that is, that they are so far removed from actually being job-candidates that they forget just how many so-so or bad interviews they gave as candidates, and how frustrating it is to prepare hard for an interview only to see it not go well when another interview you prepared just as hard for goes splendidly. Anyway, this got me thinking about what else search committees might forget about what it's like for candidates on the market. Here's another one that occurred to me: what an awful waste of time it is for candidates to have to create application materials (beyond the cover letter) specifically tailored to the job--such as a research vision indicating how you would specifically contribute to X, Y, and Y. These kinds of things can take forever for candidates to put together...and for what? 95% of the time, it will all go for naught--a committee may not be impressed enough by a candidate's CV to even spend the time to look carefully at the tailored materials the candidate spent so much time on!  

As someone who spent a ton of time on the market as a job-candidate and then served on several search committees, it occurred to me how important it may be for people like me to not lose touch with these facts about the market. Which brings me to my question for current and recent job-candidates out there: what do you think search-committees should remember about being a candidate on the market? What sorts of things seem just "obvious" to you as candidates that search committee members may have forgotten or otherwise be inadequately aware of or sensitive to?

Advancing the rights of non-TT faculty

I'm scheduled to serve on a panel on the rights of non-tenure-track faculty (i.e. adjuncts, non-TT lecturers, postdocs, visiting faculty, etc.), including how their rights can be better defended. More generally, now that I have tenure, I am interested in thinking more carefully about these issues and learning more about what I, professional organizations, and others can do to help defend the rights and advance the overall cause of non-TT faculty.

With this in mind, the present post aims to inaugurate a new series. In this series, I hope to crowdsource ideas from the Cocoon's readers on issues including but not limited to:

1. What non-TT faculty take to be important issues they face that warrant addressing.
2. The relative priority that non-TT faculty attach to different issues in terms of importance.
3. Diversity of non-TT faculty interests relating to different types of non-TT positions.
4. Which things should be considered rights of non-TT faculty.
5. What different classes of individuals can and should be expected to do to advance the rights and interests of non-TT faculty.
   1. Tenured faculty
   2. Tenure-track but untenured faculty
   3. Non-tenure-track faculty
   4. Individuals outside of the profession
6. What professional organizations (such as, but not limited to, the APA) can and should be expected to do.

As the series goes along, I tentatively plan to take some informal polls, as well as discuss some of my own thoughts and experiences, as I worked both as a non-TT faculty member for a number of years before becoming tenure-track (and now tenured).

My hope is that we can all learn from these discussions, and that readers will find the series helpful. I would also like to encourage other Cocoon contributors to contribute to the series, and invite readers to propose or submit any posts to me ([email protected]) that they might wish to contribute as well (bearing in mind the Cocoon's mission). 

Anyway, I would like to try to begin now with the first topic: non-TT faculty, what do you take to be important professional issues you face that you would like to see addressed in some way? Feel free to be as general or as specific as you like. This is a chance for your voice to be heard and stimulate future discussion in this series!

What are cover letters for?

A reader writes in:

What information can a cover letter provide that isn’t already provided by the other materials, the CV in particular? The latter lists AOSs, AOCs, publications, and past courses actually taught. If schools also require a research statement and/or a teaching statement (depending on how important research is), what’s left for the cover letter to do?

The most common answer I’ve seen is that it allows search committees to assess “fit,” and/or to assess how likely the candidate is to stay, if hired. But these both seem like dubious reasons for requiring cover letters. “Fit” is nebulous, and requires a lot of time and effort on the part of applicants. I also increasingly worry that, in practice, it’s used as excuse to toss a bunch of applications that committee members find irritating, as part of an (understandable but still probably objectionable) time-saving strategy. It also seems impossible to assess how likely a candidate is to stay--not to mention that the only reason anyone ever cites as one you can give that shows your willingness to stay is that you have family in the area, which is a help only rarely (unless your family lives in the northeast or in California, I suppose) and is also frustrating if you don’t particularly care whether you live close to family.

The other thing I can imagine a cover letter doing is explaining certain otherwise puzzling features of your application. If it isn’t plain from your CV that you fit the desired AOS or AOC, maybe you can explain your fit in your cover. But does that ever work? There’s also a question whether explanations of puzzling features of your application might tend to be too personal, or make you look bad (I haven’t published much because I’ve had a high teaching load in temporary positions, just had a baby, have been depressed, had a parent who was sick, etc.).

So, most generally: what really is the point of a cover letter?

Here's are my quick answers.

What's it like to be a foreign philosopher in mainland China?

This is the tenth installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that give a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. Ever wondered what it's like to teach and research in mainland China? Find out by reading this guest contribution by  Peter Finocchiaro, who is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow (a position equivalent to TT assistant professor) in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University.

Thanks to Helen and Marcus and everyone who has contributed already to this series. I've thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn about how philosophy is faring in other parts of the world. I hope I can help others do the same by saying a few things about philosophy in mainland China.

Let's start by acknowledging the obvious: I'm not a Chinese national. I'm an American who has been working in China for all of 15 months. My experience is therefore limited and unrepresentative of that of a typical Chinese academic, being tinted especially by the fact that I am a 外国人 (foreigner). But I will do my best to speak to both my own experiences and the broader state of philosophy in China.

Academic philosophy in China is big and it is growing. Philosophy departments often have dozens of faculty members with large budgets to spend on development. In contrast to the state of academic philosophy in the United States, this growth is helped, rather than hindered, by changes in government spending. That being said, some philosophy departments feel more like a collection of mini-departments organized by research areas. Of those, two tend to be the biggest and most influential: Marxist philosophy and Chinese philosophy. But “foreign philosophy” is growing.

My own university, Wuhan University, is a good case in point. Before 2015, our department’s foreign philosophy faculty were all Chinese nationals, many of them western-trained. The department has since aggressively recruited western-trained philosophers who are themselves westerners. Over the course of four years, the department recruited 14 foreigners, 7 of them as professors and 7 of them as post-docs. This rapid growth has the support of the university’s administration: it recently designated our department a “model department” for internationalization and has awarded it even more money to continue the process. With this support, we've been able to not only hire more people but also finance pretty much anything we foreigners can organize, including colloquium series, research workshops, international conferences, and summer school programs for our students. We're in a very fortunate situation.

[When] should you stretch your AOS?

A reader writes in:

When I was first on the market, I was told by my program’s placement director that I should never apply for a job if I didn’t fit the AOS, which I take to mean: if the AOS doesn’t appear as an AOS on my CV. More recently, though, it was suggested to me (by two different job marketers from two different highly ranked programs) that, while this may be true of research jobs, it isn’t true of teaching jobs; in particular, they suggested that I should apply for jobs at teaching universities with an AOS in [area I’ve taught during six semesters in the last three years, and the only thing I taught for almost two years], and simply highlight my teaching experience in that area in my cover letter. Which, if either, of these claims is correct?

I am very curious to hear what people think. My own experience on the hiring side of things at a liberal arts university has been that we are expected to hire squarely in the AOS advertised. If this were my only experience, I would be strongly inclined to advise candidates not to stretch their AOS (or AOC for that matter). However, my experience hiring isn't the only relevant experience I've had. I have also heard stories to the contrary second- and third-hand, of people saying they've heard of, known, or even been someone who was hired who didn't fit a job ad well at all. Further, I've heard stories of this happening at R1's and teaching-focused universities. What I don't know is how common these cases are, or how to evaluate the veracity of the stories I have heard. 

Anyone have any helpful insight?

Cover letters: how forthright to be?

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

When your applying for a job opening in your own department, is it assumed your going to say things in your cover letter that play on your knowledge of the department? Would it be stupid not to?

Or, instead, would it be stupid to over-emphasize these aspects because it shows that you somehow presume it will give you an advantage?

Prof L responded:

[W]hy not just say what you love about your department and how it makes you want to stay forever? This will be convincing since you are there already. Eg “I have had a fulfilling professional life at U. I have benefitted from the rich intellectual culture, the inquisitive students, and [&c.]. As a professor on the tenure track I could see myself contributing in such -and-such a way.. I have settled in the area and have a strong desire to stay...”. You can make this very specific, which does give you an edge. It would be odd to say “you should hire me because I know so much...” The mere fact that you know so much does not give you an advantage. That’s not a good reason to hire someone.

I am curious whether other search committee members agree. More generally, I am also curious how forthright search committee members think job-candidates should be in cover letters. For example, is it a good or bad idea for a candidate to mention in a cover letter that they hope to move to the university's area for family reasons? On the one hand, I could imagine this potentially assuaging concerns about whether a new hire really wants to live where the university is located. On the other hand, I could imagine some thinking it is 'too personal' or 'too much information' for a cover letter. What do search committee members think? What kinds of things are good to be forthright about in cover letters, and what kinds of things are not?

Update

Yesterday I hosted a guest discussion that I hoped job-candidates would find helpful. Although some readers expressed that they did find it helpful, others expressed some serious concerns. Because this blog's mission is to provide a safe and supportive atmosphere, and my policy as moderator (as expressed in our mission statement) has always been to moderate with an eye to reasonable reader concerns, I elected last night to unpublish the thread. I created this blog many years ago in the sincere hope that a unique and supportive forum like it might contribute positively to the profession, and be of some help to early-career philosophers in particular. Although I have worked very hard over the years to advance and preserve this mission (and take precautions as moderator), it became clear to me yesterday that I should have done a better job. I thank you all (new readers and old) for reading and contributing to our forum, and promise to redouble my efforts to moderate more carefully moving forward.

Writing good letters for grad applicants

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

Can someone explain to me the basics of writing a letter of recommendation for a PhD applicant? How long? What do you spend time talking about? Do you make direct comparisons? Is there a big difference between writing one for an undergrad vs a MA student?

Great questions! Although I've had a few students accepted to MA and PhD programs, I can only report on what I do. Here, in brief, is how I go about things...

What it's like to be a philosopher in Flanders (Belgium)

This is our ninth contribution for The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that give a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. Today: Belgium. This is a guest contribution by Sylvia Wenmackers, BOF research professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven.

What academia in Flanders is like

Belgium is a small country in the West of Europe. Flanders is the North part, where Dutch is the official language. In the South part, Wallonia, French is the official language. (There's also a small German part in the East, but since there is no university, it will not figure here.)

There was a time when the elite in Belgian spoke French and all university education was in French as well. As a result of the Flemish emancipation, the universities still have language regulations: a substantial percentage of courses must be in Dutch (more at Bachelor than at Master level) and professors are required to learn Dutch, typically in five years. This requirement does not apply to doctoral or postdoctoral researchers. Still, I will teach you two Dutch words right away! They are synonyms for philosophy: filosofie and wijsbegeerte. (The last one is a literal translation of the Greek.)

In Belgium, all students who have finished their secondary education, typically at 18 years of age, are allowed to start higher education at the university or university college (hogeschool) of their choice. There are no entrance exams (except for medicine and dentistry). Lately, many universities have started organizing orientation tests, but the results of these are non-binding. For international students, language requirements are common.

All Bachelor programs take three years. The regular Master program in Philosophy takes one year, while the Research Master is two years. After that, selected students can start a doctoral program, which typically takes at least four years.

There are five Flemish universities, four of which have a philosophy faculty. From large to small:

• Leuven University. This is the only Flemish university were philosophy is an autonomous faculty, called the Institute of Philosophy. It's organized in six research centres, of which the Husserl archives are probably the best well-known. Leuven offers both a Bachelor and Master program fully in English (parallel to the programs in Dutch), so there is certainly an international student community and some opportunity to get teaching experience in English.

Tips for a leadership & administration statement?

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

I realize this is an 'early career' site, but has anyone ever had to write a statement of 'leadership and administration philosophy' when applying for a chair position? I am interested in applying to such a position at another college and am looking for some pointers. There seem to be some obvious things, like how you would mentor faculty, but any advice would be welcome.

I've never had to write a statement like this, so I'm not sure what to advise. But I'm inclined to think one should probably approach it like any other similar kind of statement (e.g. teaching statements, diversity statements, etc.): namely, that you should just explain what you do as an administrator and why you do it.

Department chairing do’s and don’ts?

A little while back, Helen asked me if I would be willing to write a post or find someone to write a guest post on how to be a good department chair. I thought it was a great idea—but naturally because I'm a chair, things have been really busy, so I hadn't been able to get around to it. However, in our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a potential future chair made a similar query, asking:

Would you be willing to run a "do's and don't's" post on being a chair? I want to see what kind of consensuses there are.

So I figured I should try to finally write something up, and then ask you all what you think some department chairing do's and don'ts are. I think it would be great to hear not only from department chairs, but also people who aren’t, as it's not just department chairs who can have views about these things!