The Philosophers' Cocoon

Teaching philosophy online (2nd Zoom session)

The second Teaching Philosophy Online series (via Zoom) will held this Wednesday, April 1, 1-2 EST. Here's the meeting link.

The sessions are relaxed and informal, and the audience will be able to participate via Zoom's chat function. We hope the sessions provide an opportunity to talk through the challenges we are facing, and to hear ideas about them from our volunteer panelists. We feel we have a great group representing a range of perspectives: mixing those with a lot of experience teaching in online environments with those doing it for the first time; teachers at SLACs, community colleges, and research universities; as well as senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students.

Session 2 panelists:

Audrey Anton (Western Kentucky University)

Mara Harrell (Carnegie Mellon University)

Jonathan Milgrim (University of Washington)

Janice Moskalik (Seattle University)

Kate Padgett Walsh (Iowa State University)

Justin Tiehen (University of Puget Sound)

Jake Wright (University of Minnesota, Rochester)

We have created a form where folks can register if they're interested in receiving reminders and a link to a recording of the session if they can't make it live. (Registration is not required.) The form also provides a place to express interest in various topics that we may try to cover in the webinar.

We hope to see y'all there!

Ian and Paul

Blogging in times of COVID-19

By Gottfried Schweiger (University of Salzburg)

At the moment most of us are sitting at home and are observers of events that are radically changing our lives and for which the outcome is open. The universities are closed and what remains for philosophers is online teaching, writing papers and books. As long as there are no childcare obligations that make all professional activities much more difficult and tedious, if not completely impossible, one might think that the COVID 19 pandemic does not change much for philosophers. Yes, there are no more conferences and jetting from one talk to another is no longer possible. Also the change to online teaching is challenging, but is possible in philosophy in principle, unlike laboratory-based teaching. My impression from my own experience and conversations with colleagues is that productivity is decreasing. On the one hand it is often not so quiet at home, on the other hand the overall situation is stressful, exhausting, even frightening for some. The COVID-19 isolation at home is not a nice writing retreat for most people. This can become a problem especially for early-career colleagues who depend on publications for job applications.

But since we are all thinking about the current situation and what is probably still to come, it is a chance for philosophy and especially for philosophical blogging. Many philosophical questions arise: Allocation of scarce resources, the weighing of different goods (health vs. economic losses), the legitimation of far-reaching state measures and surveillance. At least three debates are now needed: First, a public debate in which all sciences with their different expertise should participate. Secondly, internal debates within the discipline, including a debate in philosophy on the above questions. Thirdly, a debate on the role of philosophy in interdisciplinary and public debate and what role philosophy can play for the public right now. The COVID-19 pandemic has an existential dimension, which is also reflected in all kinds of practical advice on how to deal with it and reflections on the changes in our everyday lives. Questions about the meaning of life and one's own vulnerability now arise for many. This should also be a field for philosophy.

Teaching painful things in an unjust world

This is a guest post by Audrey Yap, Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria, on how, and whether to incorporate Covid-19 material in their classes. 

At this particular time, when many course instructors are transitioning, or preparing to transition, to different kinds of instruction amid a global pandemic, many of us will be struck by the relevance of much material with which we professionally engage. Many instructors are considering the extent to which they want to either include material relevant to COVID-19 in their classes, or acknowledge the extent to which the material they are already covering has implications for our thinking about the current situation. With respect to the former question, Sean Valles (Michigan State), who works on philosophy and public health, has written an extremely helpful Facebook post, and has a relevant interview on the Sci Phi podcast. But chances are that even those who are not explicitly including content on public health and pandemics might find that their philosophy of science, political philosophy, or value theory courses are occasionally hitting a bit too close to home.

But this situation is not all that new, particularly for many philosophers who work on conditions of oppression. Many such academics, including (but certainly not restricted to) feminist philosophers, philosophers of race, philosophers of disability, and philosophers working on decolonization, have already spent years talking to students about material that is both painful and directly connected to the circumstances of their lives. For example, when we teach material on gendered violence to our undergraduate classes, it is almost certain that we are speaking to an audience that contains victims of gendered violence, and perhaps some perpetrators of such violence as well.  In that spirit, this post intends to offer some considerations that have been helpful for me and some other feminist philosophers when we teach potentially painful material. Since gendered violence is one of my research areas, I thought I would share some things that I try to keep in mind when I discuss it in the classroom.

Dealing with post-publication anxiety

An early-career reader writes in:

I’ve been wondering how one deals with post-publication anxiety. After my first publication, I felt a great deal of anxiety and dread: I couldn’t bear looking at my paper (knowing all the changes I wish I would have made) and it was easy for me to think that my paper was just bad, that it somehow slipped through the cracks of the peer-review process. I feared the paper would eventually get read and word would spread about how lame the paper was and that my career would tank before it even got started. (To be sure, this certainly has happened to people, so why couldn’t it happen to me?!)

 

Do most people feel this way after publishing for the first time? Do people still feel this way after their nth-publication? How do you deal with it? What do you tell yourself?

 

This is a great query, and I'm very curious to hear how readers answer!

 

I have a bunch of thoughts about this, as I have particular attitudes (indeed, a bit of a philosophy) about publishing. I don't pretend that my philosophy here is the right or best one (even in my own case). I simply mean to report how I approach things and why (okay, to be fair, I do offer advice below, but I am well aware it may not be right!).

Publishing popular philosophy books (and a travel book during an international lockdown) - Guest Post by Emily Thomas

This is a guest post by Emily Thomas of the University of Durham.

I recently published a popular book, The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad. Written partly as a travelogue, it explores philosophical issues around travel, from the Age of Discovery to the present day. I learned a few things from writing it, and I hope describing them might be useful.

 

Why write a popular book?

Not as an easy route to career advancement 

Academic monographs aim at the highest levels of scholarship: diligent, rigorous world-leading research. Although popular monographs can evince a great deal of research and undergo peer review, I assume most do – perhaps even should - fall short of this highest level. The kind of precise, pernickety attention to detail required of the highest scholarship fits awkwardly with works which aim (at least partly) at making ideas accessible and engaging. If you can produce accessible, engaging and world-leading research, then congratulations - you can stop reading now. 

Academics write books for all kinds of reasons. To prove something, explain something, tell a story. Here’s a reason not to write a popular book: to land an academic job or promotion. At least, I believe this is true of countries with established ‘research excellence’ frameworks, such as the UK, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, and Australia. In these contexts (and many others) what matters above all else is publications in leading peer-reviewed journals and academic presses. Universities are not motivated to hire or reward colleagues engaged in other kinds of publishing: popular books are neither ‘essential’ nor ‘desirable’ criteria for academic appointments or promotions.  

 
Philosophers might want to write popular monographs to facilitate public engagement or societal impact. The UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework saw case studies built around books by Clare Chambers, Marina Warner, and Robert Macfarlane. However, this involves much more than just writing a book. Publishing is a one-way communication between you and your readers, whereas public engagement or societal impact requires two-way communication. (On alternative ways to achieve impact as an early career scholar, see here and here). 

Teaching philosophy online (Zoom series)

We (Ian Schnee and Paul Franco) are lecturers at the University of Washington, and we have organized a Teaching Philosophy Online series to be held over Zoom. 

Currently, we have two sessions planned. The first will be held this Thursday, March 26th, 12 - 1 EST (panelists and the link for the meeting can be found below). The second will be held the following week (details TBD).

The sessions are meant to be relaxed and informal, and the audience will be able to participate via Zoom's chat function. We hope the sessions provide an opportunity to talk through the challenges we are facing, and to hear ideas about them from our volunteer panelists. We feel we have a great group representing a range of perspectives: mixing those with a lot of experience teaching in online environments with those doing it for the first time; teachers at SLACs, community colleges, and research universities; as well as senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students.

What's happening to spring/summer 2020 conferences?

I realize lots of things are uncertain now, but I am curious about what is happening to conferences you would normally be speaking at, or that you are (co)organizing that were scheduled for the spring of 2020. I am co-organizing a conference at Saint Louis University for June 22-23 2020 that is going ahead. We will do it as an e-conference. This is not only because it is an externally funded project on a grant that cannot be extended (I asked the funder), but also because we are curious about how feasible it is to do this as an e-conference. 

Still, I was supposed to be a paper respondent in one conference which is now deferred to a later unspecified time, and I'm also speaking at a conference that is being moved to next spring (2021). There is one other conference where the organizers have let us know they are closely monitoring the situation, but it seems unrealistic to me that the conference will go as planned (it takes place in the UK). 

This makes me wonder what is happening to philosophy conferences. What are people doing in response to the impossibility of a conventional conference format in spring 2020? Cancellation, deferral, how many will become e-conferences? 

Applying for TT jobs just after starting one?

In our job-market discussion thread, a reader asked:

I was wondering about the ethics of accepting a TT job but then starting to apply for TT jobs again in the fall. This is a job where I suspect I will be unhappy for a few different reasons--no one to talk to about research, isolated geography, and weather.

My dissertation adviser says it is unethical to take a TT job and then start applying. And I am inclined to feel the same way. But philosophy friends say that in today's market, there is no problem in taking a job one would want to keep applying from. And that applying from a TT job for another job would give me a leg up. Versus staying in my current VAP job and applying in the fall.

I don't have an offer. I just finished a campus interview. No offer may be forthcoming. But I am just trying to sort my thoughts out about it.

What do people think?

A couple people answered in the discussion thread, but I'm curious to hear what more people think about this. For my part, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I'm inclined to think that employees don't have any general obligation to stay in a job they don't enjoy--particularly given that employers often have little compunction for letting employees go when it suits them. On the other hand, I'm also sympathetic to the idea that new TT hires have some kind of presumptive obligation to stick around for a year given how much time time and resources the hiring institution (and individuals in the department) invested in the process. Finally, I'm also sensitive to the idea that someone who was just hired TT would be taking a job away from other job-candidates who don't have a TT job--something that seems icky to me given how desperate people are on the job-market, especially in the post-COVID era.

For these reasons, I'm torn, and I'm not sure there is any kind of determinate moral answer here. What do you all think? 

Surviving social distancing

It goes without saying that the COVID-19 crisis is upending our lives. Some of us are ill and self-quarantining. Others have ill family members, friends, or loved ones--or know people who do (my wife, for example, already has friend whose mother-in-law died from COVID-19). And of course many of us are worried about our own health and the health of others, particularly (but not only) members of vulnerable populations. Changing how we teach has probably been challenging for many of us, but in many respects it is a very privileged problem to have right now given the labor markets and the overall state of things. Things, in other words, look increasingly dire. But we already know that. The task of this new series is to support and help each other cope with things. So in this post, I'd like to end the week here with what I hope is a little bit of a pick-me-upper: a quick post on some things I've found helpful or seen other people find helpful in surviving social distancing. I'd then like to ask all of you who are willing to share what you've found helpful in the comments section!

As a hard-core introvert, the easiest part of social distancing for me is not being around other people. Aside from not grabbing the occasional drink with my few close friends (which I do enjoy), thus far social distancing hasn't been very different in social regards than my typical summer. What has been different is basically being more or less stuck at home: not going to the gym, or to work, or taking my dog to the public park by the water, etc. That has been pretty tough--basically seeing and doing the same damn things every day, and having a lot of time to ruminate and worry (including worrying about my parents, who are elderly and living in San Francisco, one of whom has already had multiple bouts with pneumonia in recent years). So, while in some respects I may find social distancing easier than my more extroverted friends (including my spouse, who is a hard core extrovert!), it's still been pretty damn hard tbh. I'm also a bit of a hypochrondriac to boot, and have already "felt like I'm coming down with" COVID-19 at least a half dozen times. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Anyway, to make a long story short, I'm in solidarity with everyone who's finding social distancing difficult. The struggles that introverts and extroverts face here may be different, but in my experience at least they are equally real (just different). I also recognize that as a tenured academic, I'm in a relatively privileged position throughout this crisis--though I do have family who are very much at risk due to age and preexisting conditions. Bearing all of this in mind, here are some things I've found helpful or seen seem to be helpful for others so far:

1. Facetime/Zoom parties: my spouse has held several of these, and they seem to be vital to her well-being. As an extroverted person, she really needs social interaction above and beyond interacting with me. She and her friends have set aside time to do these in the evening every couple of days, and in some respects this has given her more social interaction than she had before. Indeed, given that many of her close friends are people who graduated from her PhD program in recent years and are now in jobs around the country, social distancing has had the somewhat paradoxical effect of actually bringing her closer together with these people--as during normal times she would maybe only text them or see them once every few months.
2. Online development of social groups and friendships: one thing that I've seen a lot of people express kind worries about online is about people who live alone and don't have many family or friends to engage with. There was a loneliness epidemic even prior to COVID-19, and social distancing may only make it worse, for obvious reasons. However, I know some people who live alone and didn't have strong social networks prior to COVID-19 adapt to social distancing in a fascinating and encouraging way: by cultivating healthy online networks that they didn't have before, finding other people with similar interests (such as science fiction, music, sobriety, etc.) to get to know online, talk to, and develop friendships with.
3. Hobbies: although I've participated a little bit in my spouse's facetime parties, as I mentioned above I don't need a lot of social interaction. For me, the real 'godsend' I have right now is a hobby. Throughout most of my adult life prior to getting my first academic job, I was a semi-professional musician. However, my last year in grad school I sold all of my equipment in order to get my act together, finish my dissertation, get a job, and eventually tenure. The past year or so, I bought some instruments and equipment again and started writing and recording songs. It was a good hobby to take up again to begin with--but it has been especially a godsend during COVID-19. I know buying lots of stuff is difficult (and potentially dangerous) to do right now, but if you do find yourself sitting around ruminating and worrying a lot (as I am wont to do myself), my experience thus far is that finding a hobby can be helpful. And of course hobbies don't have to involve buying stuff. Some people write fan fiction, others make philosophy videos. The potential hobbies one can pick up--even just electronically--can be nearly endless.
4. Getting outside: one of the strangely pleasant surprises I've experienced thus far from social distancing is simply getting outside more. I used to go to the gym to stay in shape. Now that's out. So, in addition to taking the dog out for walks (which I did before), I am not going outside for jogs, sit with my dog in the backyard while taking breaks from work and in the early evening, etc. It is almost strange being outside so much. It vaguely reminds me of my childhood, when I used to spend so much time outside just enjoying the outside world. Of course, who knows how long we will be able to do even that much (given the lockdown now in California)--and I am starting to get worried whether jogging is safe. But still, being outside so much has been pretty nice. It has also been nice to see other people outside: parents with their children, spouses taking walks together, etc. Although I am beginning to worry a bit about how safe it is (despite everyone I see keeping a seemingly-safe distance from each other), it has at least been nice to see people enjoying the outdoors more.
5. Slowing down life: one of the other odd things I have derived some solace from is how life appears to have slowed down a bit. Our lives, particularly in the US (or so it seems to me), were increasingly moving at a breakneck pace. Although I still have plenty to do, my life has slowed a bit--and, or so it seems (from how many people I see outside), other people's lives seem to have slowed a bit too. 
6. Catching up on good TV and movies: I'm normally not a big TV watcher (mostly because of time), but COVID-19 has been giving me a pretty good excuse to do it! Mindhunter is pretty good imho. Any other suggestions?
7. Pets: I know not everyone has pets, but one final thing I take some solace in is that our pets have us around a lot more. I recall watching a sad video a while back where people filmed their pets while they weren't home, and as it turned out dogs apparently spend a ton of time simply looking at the front door longingly for their humans to come home. Social distancing may be difficult for us, but I cannot help but derive a little happiness from things never being so good for some of our pets--like this old man (who also, paradoxically, just happens to also be my baby boy;):

Anyway, these are just a few things I've found or seen seem to be helpful to others for surviving social distancing. What about you? What are you finding helpful during these difficult times?

Potentially deceptive CVs/publication lists

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

I've noticed that people sometimes omit to indicate that a publication was a discussion note/reply, on their CVs. This strikes me as at least slightly deceptive. Do readers share this impression? Impressive though an discussion piece in Mind or Ethics is, the designation 'original article' (along with a difference in reviewing policies) suggests that we recognize there to be a meaningful difference in weight between ('original') articles and discussion pieces/replies. One can of course find out whether some listed publication was a discussion piece, but one worry is that, when CVs are compared at a distance, philosophers being transparent (in designating a reply as such) may be disadvantaging themselves via their transparency. (Of course, when CVs are compared at a closer distance, the fact that a reply is not indicated as such might count as a strike against the 'non-transparent' philosophers.) Anyway, I'd be interested to hear whether others share my reaction, and think that the norm ought to be to list replies/discussion notes as such, at least when their titles don't make this fact obvious.

I share these impressions. In fact, I've seen even more deceptive cases, such as where people list book reviews under 'publications' without making it clear that they are reviews. I hope there aren't many candidates who do either sort of thing, but in any case my experience is that even if it's done unintentionally, it does come off as deceptive. Given how competitive the market is, one of the last things you want to do is to give the impression (rightly or wrongly) that you are trying to pull a fast one on the committee. As a rule, be as perspicuous as you can on your CV. My CV lists "journal publications", and my two replies are clearly marked as such. I then have different categories for book chapters, book reviews, etc.

What does everyone else think? It might be good to hear from other people who have served on search committees here.

Online academic mental health support groups?

A reader just asked:

Do you know of any online academic (maybe only for philosophers, maybe not) mental health support groups for those of us that either don't have family in the area or are otherwise low in social contact? If there isn't a group like this, I'd be interested in starting one, provided some interest.

Anyone have any tips or thoughts on this? If you feel like remaining anonymous, feel free to email me details at marvan@ut.edu. I can either pass the details along here or encourage people (such as the above reader) to contact me privately to relay the details. Thanks!

Coping with COVID-19

Given how challenging the coming days are likely to be for all of us, both personally and professionally, the Cocoon has tentative plans for a new series, Coping with COVID-19. The aim of this new series will be very simple: to support each other through this. Are there particular things you are struggling with personally or professionally as a result of this crisis that you could use help with? Alternatively, are there ways of coping with things that you've found helpful that you'd like to share with readers?

If you would like to contribute a post to the series (including anonymously, if that is what you feel comfortable with), please email either me (marvan@ut.edu), Helen (helen.decruz@slu.edu), or Ian (Ian.Kidd@nottingham.ac.uk). Feel free to contribute on anything you like within the Cocoon's mission, including but not limited to things like teaching, grappling with illness (viz. you, your loved ones, etc.), parenting through the crisis, grappling with social isolation, and so on.

Again, our hope is that this series will respond to your needs and enable us all to do what we can here to help each other in these difficult times. However bad things are and might become, we trust that we can still do good for one another as a community.

Time between PhD and getting paid?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, PhDsoon writes:

I'll soon get my PhD and some of my senior coworkers have not found a postdoc yet, although they graduated quite a while ago. This raised the question, how long does it usually take between handing in your dissertation or getting your degree, and actually getting your first paycheck as a postdoc?

I realize that this depends on a lot of factors, but a rough average or some experiences would be great so as to not have an unrealistic idea.

Good question. I don't know the answer. I would have thought you first get paid two weeks after your contractual start-date, whatever that is (which at my uni is June 1, the beginning of our fiscal year). However, the more that I think about, I think I've heard that some universities don't actually start paying faculty until substantially later (in some cases, August). Am I misremembering? It might be good to hear from people who started new jobs in the past year. How long did it take you to first get paid?

How can we help you? (March/April 2020)

Now that it's been nearly a month since our last "how can we help you?" thread--and now that we've entered a vastly new personal and professional reality with COVID-19--I thought it might be a good time for another 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.

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

• Life and work in the COVID-19 era
• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Issues in the profession
• Work-life balance
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Fire away - we're here to help. 

Now that it's been nearly a month since our last "how can we help you?" thread--and now that we've entered a vastly new personal and professional reality with COVID-19--I thought it might be a good time for another 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.

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

• Life and work in the COVID-19 era
• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Issues in the profession
• Work-life balance
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Fire away - we're here to help. 

Philosophical Research after the Virus (guest post by Eric Steinhart)

This is a guest post by Eric Steinhart, William Paterson University

Most of us are acutely aware of the extreme impact of the virus on our teaching (it’s SARS-CoV-2, but I’ll just call it the virus).  We’ve been suddenly forced to move our entire teaching loads into new formats very rapidly.  This is disruptive.  Actually, it’s more than disruptive – it’s a shock.

Some of us have become aware of the impacts the virus will also have on our schools.  The outlook is not pretty.   For a large number of reasons, detailed in publications like The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed, many colleges and universities now face uncertain financial futures.  And even if jobs are not lost and departments are not closed, research funding is likely to be cut back severely.  This includes release time for research, as well as money for travel to conferences, and so on.  It also includes money for buying new books and maintaining subscriptions to journals.

If the shock to teaching is the lightning, then the shock to research is the thunder.  Already, in my own limited Facebook feed, I see conferences being cancelled, visiting professorships cancelled, travel to specialized libraries made impossible, collaborative projects suddenly ended by more pressing concerns. 

The immediate impact is on conferences – one after another is being cancelled.  These cancellations represent an enormous amount of potentially wasted labor.  You wrote that paper; it got accepted; you were going to present it – now nothing.  Of course, people are saying you should list it on your vita as accepted.  But that fails to address the problem of lost research, research done but now not disseminated.

On the evolution of a research project - part 1 (epistemic and moral concerns)

Most of my recent posts on this blog have been about transitioning to online teaching, the job-market and other issues in the profession. It has been quite a while since I have talked actual philosophy. This little series will try to do some of the latter, and I hope readers will find it an interesting change of pace (I don't know about you, but being stuck at home all day due to COVID-19 is getting pretty tiresome already!). In brief, my plan in the series to discuss some of the motivating ideas behind my two books, Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory and Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory. My hope here is two-fold. First, I'll be very curious to hear what readers think of the motivating ideas, particularly once I make the history of the project and its intended future trajectory clearer. Second, my hope is that the discussion will help readers of both books better understand what I am really up to and why.

Both of my books argue that normative moral philosophy should be based (at least in the first instance) on (1) instrumental ('means-end') normative rationality and (2) empirical moral psychology. Both of these claims have been met with resistance, for fairly obvious reasons. First, there are many in moral philosophy today who think (following Kant) that moral reasons are fundamentally different in kind than prudential ones (moral reasons being categorically binding, prudential reasons not - though see this). Second, there are those (including TM Scanlon) who argue that empirical psychology can have nothing useful to say about normative matters, since (supposedly) the empirical and normative are fundamentally different kinds of phenomena. Readers may be a bit surprised to learn than when I began my first book, I was actually sympathetic with both of these positions. As you can see on my university's faculty webpage (which I really need to update!), Rightness as Fairness initially had a very different title, "Reconstructing the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals." Early iterations of the book (right up to three months before the final manuscript was due) had nothing to do with instrumental rationality or empirical moral psychology, but instead defended my normative moral theory--Rightness as Fairness--on classically Kantian constituvist grounds (viz. categorical moral reasons).

Why did the aim of the project change so fundamentally? It will take a few posts to lay out the full details, including why I hope to return to the Kantian side of the project in future work. But let me conclude this first post by giving some hints. One of my main intellectual concerns dating all the way back to my undergraduate days has been to avoid what I take to have been a very (epistemically and morally) problematic trend in intellectual history: the trend of engaging in purely armchair speculation about matters of practical importance. Let me explain.

Putting declined fellowships on job-market CV?

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

I was offered several temporary jobs, but for personal reasons I have decided to stay in my current institutions. Two of these were very good fellowships. Is it ok to put on my CV that I have declined them? This is just to show that I'm competitive.

This was followed by two polar opposite responses. 'M' wrote:

I think it is NOT good to list fellowships declined. It may lead people to think you have bad judgment, especially if you stayed at a place that looks objectively worse than where the fellowships are.

However, Amanda then wrote:

If they are prestigious fellowships, I would put them on. I think the benefits would outweighs the risks. You could put on the CV (declined due to exceptional personal circumstances.) Anyone who assumed you had bad judgment rather than a special situation is, well, not charitable.

Can anyone who has served on a search committee weigh in with their thoughts? Who do you side with: M or Amanda?

Dealing with Learning Management System (LMS) Infrastructure (Guest post by Johnathan Flowers)

This is a guest post by Johnathan Flowers, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Worcester State University, Worcester, Massachusetts

It is my view that online teaching should always be informed by infrastructure limitations of our learning management systems (LMS) and our institutions. By infrastructure limitations, I mean both the physical infrastructure, as in the local and cloud servers that host our LMS and the physical connection of our campus to the internet, as well as the digital infrastructure of the LMS itself, or the availability of specific features of the LMS under the strain of multiple users under less than ideal conditions. To this end, this piece will focus on structural considerations where online teaching is concerned.

I will address concerns with physical infrastructure first. Most institutions have a sufficiently robust infrastructure to meet the needs of both students and faculty. In fact, most institutions rarely exceed the capacity provided by their local internet connections. As an example, the closest my institution has come to exceeding its capacity for internet connectivity was during the recent release of major updates to the first-person shooter, Call of Duty: Warzone, and the MMORPG Division 2. With students and faculty away from campus, and not using the institution’s connection, there is little risk to exceeding the institution’s available capacity.

Not every institution has a robust internet connection: many rural or underfunded institutions may not have sufficient capacity to maintain stable connectivity to their web-hosted portals. Library websites, institutional websites, and other crucial forms of information made available to students and faculty through institutional web portals may become unavailable during times of increased load. While this does not directly impact student use of online learning and LMS, it does impact student ability to access those LMS and online resources should they not have the resources themselves bookmarked.

These issues can be resolved relatively quickly under normal conditions: IT can establish alternate portals to ensure availability or can take actions to limit the strain on web portals by through other technological remedies. However, these are not normal conditions. The speed at which our IT support personnel can respond to overloaded or crashed websites is dependent upon the availability of those personnel, and their ability to address a problem remotely as many may not be on campus during the pandemic. Further, in a remote work situation, with IT Help Desk lines forwarded to personal or home phones, IT support may be quickly overloaded with requests to address crashed websites or portals and may be unable to respond with their typical speed.

As someone who has worked with and for campus information technology services as a faculty and an employee, here are some recommendations to minimize the strain on IT personnel.

• Reach out to your senior most IT personnel to determine the best means to submit help requests in the event of a remote work situation. Standard mechanisms may be inadequate or insufficient to handle a large volume of requests.
• Reach out to your senior most IT personnel to determine the appropriate information to submit in the event of outage. Not all information will be valuable to address the issue and providing the most helpful information to your IT personnel can speed their response to your issue.
• Be patient with your IT personnel as they may be experiencing increased call volume. That was a joke, but one that is grounded in reality: your IT help center and help desks may be overloaded in the event of a major outage.
• Your IT personnel may not be able to address every issue that arises with online teaching or with your LMS. Some issues must be outsourced to the LMS providers, particularly if the LMS operates on a software-as-a-service model.
• If you have concerns about your specific LMS installation, consult the LMS help pages. As an example, for Blackboard, consult blackboard.com for specific advice.

The other aspect of infrastructure concerns that educators should bear in mind are the infrastructure limitations of the LMS itself. To understand this point, we have to take a walk through the architecture of a LMS, Blackboard in this example. That said, it needs to be stressed that each of LMS has different attributes and features which means that the infrastructures have different kinds of limitations and should be considered differently.

A brief tour of an online business ethics course (Guest post by Jake Wright)

A brief tour of an online business ethics course

Successful online teaching requires a different set of skills than successful in-person teaching.  Some of these skills are related to how a course is organized and how students interact with a course.  Having your course shifted online means that you lose all of the regular, impromptu, and informal opportunities to update your students on course logistics before class, after class, and whenever you handle housekeeping announcements like upcoming assignments.  Functionally, this means you have to plan for your students to be able to access all of the course’s materials independent of your guidance, especially if your course is delivered asynchronously. 

Having a well-organized course site can go a long way towards ensuring that students can navigate the course easily and independently.  What follows is a brief tour of my business ethics course, which I’ve taught online for the past six years.  Obviously, you might not be in a position to implement everything found in an online course that has benefitted from six years of iterative development, but having an example may be useful as you consider how to shift your course to online delivery.  The good news is that many of the features of a well-organized online course mirror or closely align with a well-organized in person course.

My course is run through Canvas, so major course components are divided into modules.  Similar divisions exist in other LMSes like Moodle or Blackboard, but the terminology might be different.  The main point is that all of the major LMS platforms are capable of supporting courses broadly organized in this way.

Facilitating Learning Online in face of Pandemic (Guest post by Adam Bowen)

Practical Strategies for Facilitating Learning Online in the face of Pandemic

By Adam J. Bowen, PhD

Assistant Teaching Professor

Dept. of Philosophy & Religious Studies

Ball State University

In the face of the imminent covid-19 pandemic, academics are being tasked with carrying out an unprecedented mass migration to online learning environments. For many colleagues at my institution and others across the globe, this is a daunting and stressful task, due to general unfamiliarity with online education and the tools available. I have been teaching philosophy online full-time for 5 years, and prior to that I utilized online tools to supplement my traditional courses, so I have been training myself on online teaching methods and becoming proficient at developing online learning experiences for over a decade. Given my virtual battle scars and time served in the online trenches, I acknowledge a collegial obligation to assist fellow educators in their efforts to transition their courses online, in an attempt to sustain our universities and colleges in this time of crisis. My advice is not intended as a guide to master online teaching, since that requires years of experimentation and revision to one’s methods, as with anything worth mastering. I will, however, offer some practical strategies for how to effectively transition into an online learning environment, implement course activities that help realize target learning objectives, and temper your expectations about how to undertake this without scrapping your course-plans for the current semester.

To begin, I recommend some reflection on the methods you currently use in the traditional classroom, why you make those pedagogical choices, and how those choices are intended to facilitate student learning. What in-class activities do you initiate that helps develop critical thinking skills? What is the purpose of your lecture? Do you use structured group activities to encourage peer-to-peer cooperative learning? These types of questions will help identify exactly what you want your students to learn and how your pedagogical choices are intended to accomplish these objectives. Everyone has already thought about this to some degree when designing our courses, but re-evaluating your course activities and content delivery methods will help you decide what you need the online tools to help you achieve, in a manner that is comparable to your traditional course. Will you be able to find an easy analogue for every aspect of your current course? No, that is unlikely, and it would be unwise to set that as your goal under the current emergency circumstances. Rather, I recommend identifying the essential features of your course, i.e. the content and learning activities that make your course valuable to your students. There are a diverse set of tools in the online toolbox, and many of them do not require mastery to successfully implement.

Switching Quickly to Online Teaching with Canvas (Guest post by Nicholaos Jones)

Some Suggestions for Switching Quickly to Online Teaching with Canvas

Nicholaos Jones, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama

I began teaching online four years ago. I have converted three courses into fully online formats. I offered my first online course during a summer semester, for the sake of experimenting with strategy. The next was a proof-of-concept for doing an upper-level undergraduate course online (Asian Philosophy) in a way that students found rigorous and engaging. I converted the third for the sake of gaining flexibility in balancing child-care with an emergent chronic health condition in my family.

My university will transition to online-only instruction beginning next week. As the chair for a joint department of Philosophy and Political Science, with faculty of all sorts and varying degrees of experience teaching online, I created a nut-and-bolts list of suggestions for switching quickly to online teaching, along with some samples of content I provide (when I have ample time to design the content).

My university uses Canvas, and so the suggestions are targeted for that platform. I do not know whether the suggestions are helpful for faculty who use other platforms. So please receive these suggestions with appropriate qualification. (Canvas offers free accounts to teachers and students. But if your institution uses an alternative platform, switching now is likely to cause logistical issues.) 

Like Professor McDonald, I prefer asynchronous teaching online. Disruptions to student schedules, and disparities in student resources and obligations, might interfere with their ability to attend an online session at a set time. Asynchronous teaching avoids this issue. Here's a suggestion for implementing an asynchronous approach.

First principles for emergency online teaching (Guest post by Jake Wright)

Some first principles for emergency online teaching

Many of us are struggling to transition our courses from well-planned in-person offerings to online delivery in various states of panic.  Perhaps we are worried because we have high expectations for our courses.  Perhaps we have never taught online before and aren’t sure where to begin.  And perhaps we are simply overcome by the news of the day and the speed at which it seems to be moving.

I am confident that many of the pieces being written for this series will ably handle specifics of how to rapidly prepare one’s course for online delivery in the midst of a crisis.  I also believe that one of the best things we can do to be successful is to take a moment, take a breath, and consider some first principles that might guide us through this rapid transition.  I would like to share my first principles here.  They all boil down to a pretty simple ethos: we find ourselves in challenging times that are deeply unsettling, but we can get through it by maintaining our communities and trusting ourselves, our students, and each other.

Trust your students

Even in normal circumstances, there is no better place to start than by trusting your students.  We all deserve grace and compassion in the best of times, and we especially need it in times of rapidly developing crisis.  These are not times where we want to obsess over how a rogue student might game the system to their advantage.  Rather, we should keep in mind that our students want to do right by themselves and us as surely as we want to do right by them.  Trusting your students will not only allow you to build and maintain an academic community (see below), but also frees you up to concentrate on what really matters—creating an online environment where students can successfully learn and demonstrate that learning.

Performing Triage on Your Suddenly Online Class (Guest post by Jake Wright)

This guest post by Jake Wright (University of Minnesota, Rochester) is the fourth post in our COVID-19 teaching transition series. I hope you all find it helpful!

Performing Triage on Your Suddenly Online Class

So you’ve just gotten an email from the chancellor/president/provost announcing that your courses are moving online for the month/semester/god-only-knows.  You have several days to make this transition if you’re lucky, and several hours if you’re not.

Surprise!

If you’re (understandably) freaking out a bit, I’d like to offer some suggestions as someone who has taught online for several years.  The ongoing series on COVID-19 teaching and transition here at the Cocoon will offer a lot of helpful advice on how to manage this emergency shift.  My suggestions will focus on how to triage your course.

In an emergency management context, triage is the process by which we determine how to use limited resources (e.g., supplies, personnel, and time) to address needs that outstrip the system’s capacity.  Medically, triage is used to sort cases into three groups based on the presumed efficacy of treatment: those likely to survive in the absence of treatment, those unlikely to survive even if treatment is provided, and those for whom treatment is likely to make the difference between life and death.  In triage, only the last group receives treatment because it is that group where one’s efforts are most likely to make a positive difference.

Academically, we are facing crisis conditions.  We are tasked with making an enormous transition in our pedagogy in a matter of days or hours.  Resources on which we would normally depend, like academic technologists and our teaching centers are likely to be severely overtaxed and unable to provide meaningful assistance.  We therefore need to triage our classes in order to give our classes (and thereby our students) the best chance to succeed under these crisis conditions.

Performing triage on your course involves making two sets of judgments.

Online teaching poster: 'do this, not that'

I came across this helpful poster on social media yesterday. It sums up a lot of advice I have heard recently that seems right to me, and which I myself plan to adopt:

Tips For Moving Your Course Online (Guest-post by Mary Beth Willard)

This is a guest-post by Mary Beth Willard (Weber State University). Many thanks to her for putting it together!:

Why Listen To Me:

Free advice is worth what you pay for it, but I have been teaching online with success for about seven years now, and I know many philosophers haven’t, and now have to do so with very little notice. 

You are not going to create an awesome, interactive, beautiful online course in less than a week. Online courses that are done well require enormous amounts of prep. You don’t have that, and you shouldn’t be expected to do that. A lot of the guidelines that are out there assume you’re designing a new course. This isn’t what we’re doing, so I wrote up some tips on Facebook. They were shared and liked and hearted so Marcus asked me to write them up for you all here.

I am assuming that you have access to a learning management system like Canvas or Blackboard, and that you will never put this class online again, and that while you’re willing to fiddle with your syllabus a little, you want to minimize doing so to whatever extent possible. I’m also writing under the assumption that this is for an undergraduate course. 

Big Picture Preliminaries

Backwards course design: That's the buzzword and the term to Google, but the idea is that you start with what you want them to learn and work back to how you will get them to do that.

Please do a bad job of putting your courses online (Guest Post by Rebecca Barrett-Fox)

This post first appeared on Rebecca's blog on 12th March 2020. We're very grateful to her for allowing us to repost it.

I’m absolutely serious.

For my colleagues who are now being instructed to put some or all of the remainder of their semester online, now is a time to do a poor job of it. You are NOT building an online class. You are NOT teaching students who can be expected to be ready to learn online. And, most importantly, your class is NOT the highest priority of their OR your life right now. Release yourself from high expectations right now, because that’s the best way to help your students learn.

If you are getting sucked into the pedagogy of online learning or just now discovering that there are some pretty awesome tools out there to support student online, stop. Stop now. Ask yourself: Do I really care about this? (Probably not, or else you would have explored it earlier.) Or am I trying to prove that I’m a team player? (You are, and don’t let your university exploit that.) Or I am trying to soothe myself in the face of a pandemic by doing something that makes life feel normal? (If you are, stop and instead put your energy to better use, like by protesting in favor of eviction freezes or packing up sacks of groceries for kids who won’t get meals because public schools are closing.)

Remember the following as you move online:

1. Your students know less about technology than you think. Many of them know less than you. Yes, even if they are digital natives and younger than you.
2. They will be accessing the internet on their phones. They have limited data. They need to reserve it for things more important than online lectures.
3. Students who did not sign up for an online course have no obligation to have a computer, high speed wifi, a printer/scanner, or a camera. Do not even survey them to ask if they have it. Even if they do, they are not required to tell you this. And if they do now, that doesn’t mean that they will when something breaks and they can’t afford to fix it because they just lost their job at the ski resort or off-campus bookstore.
4. Students will be sharing their technology with other household members. They may have LESS time to do their schoolwork, not more.
5. Many will be working MORE, not fewer, hours. Nurses, prison guards, firefighters, and police officers have to go to work no matter what. As healthcare demand increases but healthcare workers get sick, there will be more and  more stress on those who remain.
6. Some of your students will get sick. Others will be caring for people who are ill.
7. Many will be parenting.
8. Social isolation contributes to mental health problems.
9. Social isolation contributes to domestic violence.
10. Students will be losing their jobs, especially those in tourism and hospitality.

New series: COVID-19 teaching transition -- Fritz McDonald on the basics of teaching online

My university, like many others across the world is moving to teach online in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that many of us have little prior experience with this (I personally have none), the Cocoon thinks it is useful to host a series on this. Anyone with experience in online teaching is welcome to submit material for this series. 

Our first post is by Fritz McDonald, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

I have been teaching online for about a decade. In fact, my whole course load this year is online. It’s a matter of convenience for me and my students—I have a long commute to my university, and so do many of my students. I am still not sure, as I’ll note below, that online classes really are a good substitute for the work we typically do in face to face classes. All of us should do what we can, no matter how we teach, but within reason.

The first thing I would stress to those of you new to online instruction is that instructor presence is a big deal in online teaching. Email your students to keep them updated on exactly what they need to do, how they need to do it, and when. Don’t just assume they will read what’s on the learning management system page. Keep on top of students who are not doing the work, or not doing well.

This is a lot of work, obviously, and so is converting a face to face class into an online class. Online teaching is not easy. Making a face to face class into an online class is not a simple matter. It took me years, not days, to figure out better ways to teach online. I spent a good two years researching best practices in teaching logic online, and I’m still not sure I have it figured out.

If your university has a center for online teaching, take advantages of all its resources. Don’t be afraid to look dumb or silly—you’re learning a whole new way of teaching, and it’s best to be humble about what you know.

Letting candidates know about poor materials?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader 'empathy') writes:

I was on a search committee this year and I read a lot of cover letters.
One not successful applications [sic] stood out to me.

This applicant in many ways was strong: they had a strong post doc, a pretty good publication record and good letters. Their area of specialization was not what we were looking for, so it was why they were eliminated.

But if they did have our AOS, they might have been eliminated anyway because of their cover letter.

The cover letter consisted of, first, the author listing their publications and providing links to them. The applicant did not explain what the publications were about, or say anything about teaching, nor said anything about being a fit for us. They said very little about their future research plans other than a vague proclamation about a book. And then they had a self-deprecating paragraph about their publication record, where they said something along the lines of" I have a poor publication record so don't hire me if you want someone with a great record, instead, hire me if you want a researcher who will be great in the future."

For what was an otherwise a strong application, this cover letter could be very damaging. First, expecting a search committee to read your publications when we have 200 plus applications,( instead of giving us an overview of what you do and why it fits the job description,) comes off as arrogant and out of touch. But also, we are just busy and many SC members won't bother. We already have a list of publications on your CV. Second, the line about a poor publication record (when you have a decent one) does not make you look good. And vague proclamations about future productivity are even worse.

I felt bad for this applicant, as no one apparently has pointed this out to them. I wanted to write them or a mentor and give some kind advice, but because of privacy rules I couldn't. I've heard stories about professors writing to letter writers and saying that their letter is inapt. But does anyone know if there is any legal way to let someone know about something like this? I am mainly asking out of curiosity, as I would have to look up all details of my own school's policies before I could risk it, and I don't think it is worth risking my job. But I'm just wondering if finding major problems in applications is something that happens, and if persons ever inform others about aspects that might be killing a hopeful person's chances.

This is a very good question, one I suspect more than a few search-committee members have wondered about. I also think it draws attention to an important issue for job-candidates to think about as well. As someone who has served on four search-committees, I too have read cover letters and other materials that came across very poorly--either out of touch with the nature of job being applied for or seemingly arrogant, or both. Whenever I've read these kinds of materials, I couldn't help but wonder whether the candidate ever received outside feedback on their materials before applying (a real must, I think). Sadly, one year I even met a first-time job-candidate at a conference in September, where I learned the applicant had received no job-market mentoring in their PhD program, didn't have their research or teaching portfolios drafted, or have any real idea of what these things involved--despite job-market ads already appearing on philjobs for at least a month! That case is one of the inspirations behind our Job-Market Boot Camp, though I still think nothing is quite as helpful as good personal mentoring.

In any case, does anyone have any insightful answers to empathy's question?

Teaching demo activity tips?

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

I had to do a campus interview with a teaching presentation. I've worked hard in my teaching to structurally make it possible to have a very good, dynamic, discussion based classes, but of course you can't do that for teaching demonstrations. It's clear that teaching the reading then pushing for discussion questions doesn't work because these students are strangers and you've already lost them. Anyway, I have two more teaching demonstrations in the next few weeks, does anybody have any good ideas of how to start a demonstration with activity, rather than end it?

Good query, and I hope we can give the reader some helpful tips. However, before I open things up for discussion, I want to say something about the reader's claim that, "It's clear that teaching the reading then pushing for discussion questions doesn't work because these students are strangers and you've already lost them." I found this a bit of a strange comment, as it's how I teach and did my teaching demos--and I was told on more than one occasion that my teaching demos went quite well. One possibility is that it's not so much the order you do things in (lecture then activity vs. activity then lecture) but rather how you do them. I'd be very curious, for example, to hear how this reader conducts discussion activities. Do they just lecture and then ask students for discussion questions? Alternatively, do they just lecture and then have an activity later where they tell students, "Turn to a partner..."? If either of these things is what they do, then it's not too surprising to me that they've "lost" students during the teaching demo. My own experience is that good activities that get students involved may need to be quite a bit more structured than that and involve, say, groups of 4 or 5. Also, how many activities does the reader do? Do they just do one at the tail end of the lecture, or do they have multiple activities (say, 2 or 3) interspersed in the lecture? Again, my sense is that the latter is probably a better way to go, as it promises to get the students involved early and often.

In any case, because I don't know the answers to the above questions, it may be helpful if the reader says a bit more in the comments section below about how they currently do things. In the meantime, do readers have any good answers to the reader's actual question: does anybody have any good ideas of how to start a teaching demonstration with activity, rather than end it?

Psychological effects of job-market discussions?

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

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but this blog has made me irrationally fearful of backlash from people after it'll become public news that I got the job that I got. I've got some **very** good publications, numerous teaching awards, been awarded prestigious international and domestic research fellowships, excellent teaching experience at prestigious places... But the atmosphere in, e.g., the job market discussion thread and in the blog in general here is so toxic that I feel like I'll get flamed for not deserving my job. People saying things like "Skype interviews are worse than garbage," or "Anyone with less than 600 publications doesn't deserve a job" (hyperbole) -- do you know the effect this has on other people? Sigh. Just venting.

I have to confess that I found this comment very surprising. As moderator of our job-market discussion thread, my own impression is that the discussion has been in line with this blog's safe and supportive mission. Do other readers share this reader's concern?

How to handle strange journal rejections?

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

I'm relatively new to peer-reviewed publishing. I recently received a desk rejection from Journal X. They said that my scholarship did not meet their scholarly standards because I did not cite people of color who work on my paper topic Y. They then proceeded to list a number of very famous authors that I could/should have cited. (The email did not suggest that I should have cited *all* of these authors, nor did it suggest what number of authors would have met their standards.)

I'm not sure how to take this desk rejection because my paper did cite people of color. My paper even cited people of color on their list of people I should cite (I also cited poc not on their list). Additionally, not all the people on their list wrote specifically on my paper topic Y (but do work in the subfield more broadly).

I know that editors are overburdened in many cases, so I cannot tell if this is just an oversight. (Although I should add that one of their listed authors was the very first bibliographic entry in my paper, so I can't even explain it away as a brief skim where authors of color were buried in a very long bibliography.)

I'm curious to hear how others with more experience might explain this rejection, because as it stands it strikes me as somewhat sloppy decision-making, and it makes me want to send my work elsewhere in the future.

Amanda then followed up:

If I were you, I'd write back in a very friendly and polite way, and tell them what you told us. If they rejected you for not citing people you cited, then clearly it is a mistake on their part. I am not one to usually recommend challenging editors, but I think when editors made a factual mistake and when the fact that they did so can be easily demonstrated, then this is a rare case that justifies contending the decision.

I've heard that in rare cases, it can make sense to write to editors in the way Amanda suggests. Indeed, I've heard that it sometimes works, getting the editors to reconsider their verdict. At the same time, I've also heard anecdotally that editors receive these kinds of emails constantly, often from people who simply disagree with reviewer reports. Given how inconsistent the peer review process generally is (I am always reminded of just how many influential papers are rejected), my own attitude toward these cases as an author is that it's simply not worth my time to worry about it. I'll just suck it up and send the paper to a new journal. There are also some journals that I now simply avoid due to cases like this: journals that take forever to render a verdict where there appear to be no expectations for halfway professional reports from referees, and where editors simply defer to blatantly unprofessional and/or incompetent reports (I am no longer to wait 8 months for a two-sentence referee report that gives no reasoned justification for its recommendation - sorry!).

In short, while it may make sense to write to the editors on this occasion, my general recommendation to this reader (since they are new to the publishing game) is much more cynical: by and large, you'll just have to get used to sloppy referee reports. None of this is to deny that there are good referees out there (I've had my fair share) or good editors who ignore unprofessional reports (which I also have some positive experience with). It is simply to say that the peer-review process can be wildly inconsistent and, at least in my experience, this is generally something one just has to put up with as an author. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Spousal hires for new PhDs?

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

I’m a PhD student in a long-term relationship with another PhD student. While the job market is difficult enough as it is, my two-body problem makes thinking about the job market much more complicated and uncertain. I’m aware that spousal hires happen, but I’m wondering how often, if ever, are institutions willing to do spousal hires where both hires are recent PhD graduates?

Good question. Another reader responded:

For spousal hires you need to consider if your work is complementary. Time from PhD isn’t the main issue (though associate profs are often harder to move than assistant). Most programs will not need two people working in Aristotle, for instance. And heaven help you if you work in “non-western” fields where despite significant differences in time, subject, texts, etc., (think to Parfit and Kant), you and your spouse’s work will be treated as “redundant.”

Some sobering data: I and my partner have yet to solve our problem after five years, excellent publications, and pedigrees from top schools. This is with fly outs every year. I know others going on a decade. It will get harder, not easier.

Anyone have any experience or insights here?

The philosophy profession in Israel

This is the nineteenth installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. Today's entry is by Dr. Samuel Lebens, Research Fellow at the University of Haifa.  

 

Israel is a country of approximately 9 million citizens. Roughly 75% of the population is Jewish, and roughly 25% are Arabs. Both of those communities are host to tremendous cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity.

Roughly a quarter of the Jewish population are religiously observant, and that, in itself, spans a range from ultra-Orthodoxy to Modern-Orthodoxy. The Jewish population, more generally, is host to distinct ethnic communities: Moroccan, Yemenite, Persian, Ethiopian, Eastern European, Western-European, and more.

 

The Arabic population is host to Bedouin, Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities, and more. All of this is focusing only on Israeli citizens, and not on the many Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.

 

I imagine that any population with this much diversity will likely be witness to all sorts of internal tensions, and Israel is no exception. There are tensions between religious and secular Jews, between Eastern and Western Jews, between Jews and Arabs, between Muslims and Christians, between Arabs who identify as Israeli (with many Druze and Bedouins, in particular, serving in the Israeli army) and Arabs who identify as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (who are exempt from serving in the Israeli army). There are also pronounced political tensions between the Israeli right, and the often beleaguered Israeli left. For about a year, we haven't had a functioning government, since the various parties are too divided to form a coalition.

 

And yet, this context of tension and conflict can often make Israel a very rewarding place in which to teach University level philosophy. I teach in the university of Haifa, which is perhaps Israel's most ethnically diverse university, with roughly 40% of our student body coming from the Arab community of Israel.

Tips for academics with children?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, 'Don't regret my kids but this is hard' writes:

I'm a mom of young kids on the TT who is seriously struggling, particularly with producing research that is up to par while coping with time, energy, mental fitness, sleep, health, and money issues caused by pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. Any and all advice is welcome—financial, related to time management, daycare, or otherwise. Moms—or dads—how did you make it through? Is this possible?

These are really important questions for obvious reasons, so I hope readers out there with children chime in with their perspective and/or tips! Unfortunately, I must confess that I cannot add much here. Me and my spouse (who is also an academic) have put off having children for years for these very reasons. Given our workloads, neither of us can quite fathom how we could do everything we need to do with children. At the same time, I have colleagues with children who have pulled it off somehow, so I have some grounds for believing it's possible (albeit very difficult, or so I've heard). So, then, anyone else out there have any insight that might help "Don't regret" and other academics struggling with similar issues?

Dating seriously while in temporary jobs?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Certainly writes:

It is increasingly common that people have a litany of non-TT jobs before they land a TT job (if they do land one at all). Anyone familiar with this knows that a string of such jobs tends to be strewn across the country, or world. Moreover, each job tends to be for a year, or two, or often for 'one year with the possibility of renewal for a second but it's not in your contact that you'll get a second year and we won't be able to tell you whether we'll renew you for a second year until a few weeks before the end of your first year'. Uncertainty, in most of its varieties, is never in short supply.

Do people who enter into that cycle without a partner just put their love lives on hold indefinitely? Do people put 'must be able to work remotely, have no long term career goals other than to follow me around the country, be ready to bail on all of your friends, etc.' on their dating app profiles? I should add that this is from the point of view of someone looking for long-term partnership. A one year position is plenty of time to make other kinds of romantic connections and I am not disparaging those at all. But in terms of long-term relationships, the non-tenure track isn't exactly fertile soil.

Curious whether and how other people address this issue, what people who disagree with my assessment of the situation have to say, etc.

A quandary for an evolving journal reviewer

In his post yesterday on some reasons he rejects papers, Trevor wrote:

When I first started peer reviewing a few years ago, I thought it would be very difficult to differentiate between papers that warranted R&R verdicts and those that should just be rejected. I wound up being wrong about this for the most part. (There has been only one paper I’ve reviewed that I think was genuinely on the borderline.) The reason I was wrong is that most papers I review feature glaring problems, some of which should be addressed well before the paper is submitted to a journal.

My experience as a reviewer is very different, and indeed, evolving--albeit in a way that has landed me in a bit of a quandary as a reviewer. Allow me to explain, and then ask for some advice!

Ambivalently going on the market?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, ambivalent grad student writes:

I am an advanced graduate student, on track to graduate next year. I'm really ambivalent on whether I want to go on the academic job market. On the one hand, I do enjoy (most aspects) of teaching. I like researching and learning new things, but not so much when I feel pressured to come up with an original thing to say about it. I think I could be happy at a teaching-focused school. Luckily, the university I'm at which I'm getting my PhD prepares its graduates very well for teaching jobs. For what it's worth, I'm in an AOS that has (relatively) high demand.

On the other hand, I am very aware of the many stresses put on faculty members that go above and beyond the considerable stresses I feel as a grad student. I'm not sure I will be happy constantly dealing with all the stress. I haven't had a great track record of separating work from the rest of my life and I'm not sure I can trust myself to do much better when the workload and stakes are higher.

I have a young family. I am not willing to spend many years on the market moving them from short-term appointment to short-term appointment, and we are not willing to move just anywhere for a job. So the incredibly slim chances of me landing a TT job are even more minuscule.

Should I even bother going on the market? Or should I save myself the stress and anxiety of applying? When do I need to make a decision and let my committee know so they don't have to write LORs?

Some Reasons I Reject Papers

One of the recurring discussions on this blog concerns paper rejections and the ongoing quest to get a paper past peer reviewers. The big question is how someone can increase their odds of getting a paper accepted to a good journal instead of just accumulating rejection verdicts. I thought it might be useful to share a little insight from my own experiences as a reviewer since I have given a lot of rejections and only a few revise-and-resubmit (R&R) verdicts, though all those papers got an “accept” from me after revisions).

When I first started peer reviewing a few years ago, I thought it would be very difficult to differentiate between papers that warranted R&R verdicts and those that should just be rejected. I wound up being wrong about this for the most part. (There has been only one paper I’ve reviewed that I think was genuinely on the borderline.) The reason I was wrong is that most papers I review feature glaring problems, some of which should be addressed well before the paper is submitted to a journal. Here’s a short list of the common reasons I have rejected papers as a peer reviewer:

• The paper ignores relevant literature. Sometimes, when a paper is in my wheelhouse, I can detect this immediately, but even in other cases, a quick search on PhilPapers often reveals that other philosophers have addressed the same issue as the author and that the author is either unaware of this or has ignored those scholarly contributions. I don’t expect authors to cite every existing source on their topic (which would be utterly impossible in certain subfields), but if robust and relevant debates on that topic are not even acknowledged in the manuscript, then the paper is seriously deficient in its level of scholarship.