The Philosophers' Cocoon

Can a political scientist specializing in political theory obtain a job in political philosophy?

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

Could someone with a PhD in political theory from a European political science department be competitive for positions in philosophy departments? Consider a candidate who has a few publications in top-10 specialist journals in moral/political philosophy but hasn't published in other areas of philosophy.

Interesting question, and I have no idea beyond the fact that some hiring departments may specify in their job ads that successful candidates should have a PhD in Philosophy.

Do any readers have any helpful insights?

Pulling out of an unhappy fellowship?

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

I am beginning my second year in a clinical ethics fellowship. I am very unhappy with the program as I think I am not getting what I was promised. Moreover, I do not think that I really fit in with others in the department; something I have not yet experienced throughout my education, so it is quite jarring. During my first year, I gave several talks and published two articles and two commentaries. How bad would it look if I dropped out and went on the philosophy or medical ethics or health humanities markets this fall? Should I just stick it out for another 10 months? I don't know what to do. I have fairly substantial savings, so if I got some random job working at a grocery store or whatever, I wouldn't be too worried about money. Please help

Yikes, I'm sorry to hear this, but I guess I'm a bit uncertain what to advise. If you're deeply unhappy in a job or fellowship, then I think you have no obligation to continue on--but then again, assuming the fellowship is in the Northern Hemisphere, it seems to me pretty late to pull out of it at such a late date.

What do readers think?

Relocating to the US with family?

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

I would love to hear about the experiences of philosophers from outside the US who moved to the US with a family.

Those who relocated with a family, did your family move to the US with you? Do they also work in the US, or have you found that you can be the "sole breadwinner" in a TT job? If your spouse does work, how have they adjusted to the US employment "benefits"? (The poor parental leave and vacation allowance in the US sounds like a worry for spouses in non-academic positions - especially if they're used to more generous allowances in their home country). And how does your spouse manage continuous employment alongside Employment Authorization Documents that need to be renewed every year?

Excellent questions, and I suspect there may be many readers with experience in these matters.

Does anyone have any helpful tips to share?

Avoiding early morning classes (and asking on the job market)

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

For those of you with jobs - how easy is it to get out of teaching classes early in the morning (8-9am)? I am a PhD student who has had to teach at 8am and I didn't enjoy it (I'm a night owl and think it's just genetic). I would genuinely want to know more about the flexibility of the teaching schedule before accepting a job somewhere - would asking questions like that be frowned upon or hurt my candidacy? Does this vary a lot from school to school?

I suspect this is highly situation-specific. In my department, it's pretty easy to avoid early-morning classes due to the university's scheduling rules and guidelines. But I've been in other departments where many faculty were regularly expected to teach first thing in morning. But maybe my information is out of date, so it'd be good to hear from others. As for the job-market, I'm not sure what to advise, but I guess I'm inclined to say that it would be safer to wait to ask questions like these until after an offer is made, as I suppose it could backfire on a candidate to ask earlier. Then again, candidates are "interviewing departments" no less than the converse, so if this is important to a candidate (or a deal-breaker), then by all means ask.

But these are just a few of my quick reactions. What are yours?

What role do dissertations play in hiring?

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

How important is the dissertation for jobs? Do people on hiring committees even read them or should I focus my writing sample and getting published?

I highly doubt that many people on hiring committees have the time to read entire dissertations. I expect they'll take your writing sample as indicative of the kind of work you likely did in it, as well as recommendation letters. But, of course, to get good recommendation letters, you may need to write a good dissertation! Also, my sense is that for most jobs (though not all), publications are super important, as most of your competitors will have some.

What do other readers think? It would be great to hear from some search committee members!

How do open-rank searches go?

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

There have been discussions on both TT search and senior search but I do not see much about the "open rank" search. I am curious about how an "open rank" search goes. For example, when a position is advertised as "open rank", does the hiring department really mean it, or is there still some preference for a TT position? What is the context for this kind of search? Does the committee review materials separately (TT vs. Tenured) or altogether? Thank you!

Great questions. Do any readers with inside experience have any helpful insights to share?

Turning term-papers into publishable work?

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

Does anyone have any insight on their experiences moving from term papers to publishable work? I'm having trouble determining what good philosophical writing looks like and how/what I can do to improve the writing (and ideas).

Excellent question! Early in my career when I was having trouble publishing, I read an article by a fellow grad student in AJP and saw just how differently their paper was written from the way that term-papers were written: namely, much more authoritatively, and without as much background exposition as a term-paper. That would be my biggest tip: read published articles, and try to see how they differ in presentation style from how you write term-papers. It made all the difference for me!

What do readers think?

Responding to a reviewer error after rejection?

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

Is it possible, or generally considered acceptable, to reply to a referee's comments if (i) the referee recommended rejection, (ii) the referee's recommendation was based on an obvious misinterpretation or factual error, and (iii) the journal acted on the referee's recommendation?

Background: I submitted a manuscript responding to author A, and a referee claimed that I had attributed a view to A that A does not hold. But A does hold the relevant view, and my statement of A's view is provably equivalent to A's. (Indeed, my statement of A's view is barely even paraphrased.) It was clear to me that the referee had not read the relevant passages of A's work before writing their report, even though I identified these passages for them in a footnote. I am concerned that the same referee will be invited by other journals to review my manuscript and will once again recommend rejection if they are not made aware of this error.

Good question. I seem to recall hearing of one example of someone who raised an objection like this to an editor and was able to get the editor to reconsider the rejection and send out the paper to another reviewer. But, I'm not sure whether it's generally advisable to do something like this, and I've never tried to do it myself.

What do readers think? Do any readers with relevant experience, either as authors or as editors, have any helpful insights to share?

The Philosophy Podcast Hub

Jason Chen (Ohio State) has a cool new substack, The Philosophy Podcast Hub, which lists active podcasts in philosophy. New episodes will be posted every week!

Tips for international relocations with a partner?

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

Does anybody have advice on potential international relocations with a partner? I'm planning to apply for a phd program in North America and after that get back to my country (China). The problem is that my partner has a good job now and she prefers not to move. So I'd like to hear some advice on how realistic it is to get a temporal living in another country like the US, or advice on the predictable troubles on the horizon that we should really not get ourselves into.

Great question! Do any readers with experience have any helpful tips or other advice?

Grappling with cross-disciplinary journals not understanding philosophical style?

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

How do you handle editors and reviewers from cross-disciplinary journals not understanding philosophical style and research (and rejecting a paper because it's more of an "opinion piece" rather than what their discipline deems "research" or because they consider the use of first-person pronouns "informal")? This is a pattern I've noticed especially among reviewers with a computer science background, but I'm sure it's not limited to them.

I've never run into this problem, but I guess my hot-take is that I'd simply try to learn and adhere to their conventions as much as is feasible. But if reviewers at a journal aren't willing to consider philosophical arguments (deeming them "opinion pieces"), then maybe the journal just isn't a good fit for the piece.

Do other readers, perhaps ones with more experience on this, have any helpful tips to share?

Quantitative results from search committees for last year's job searches?

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

Could we maybe have a thread in which search committee members anonymously describe the quantitative results of their job searches from last year? I'm wondering how many people applied and how many were interviewed, etc. Of course, tenure-line searches are most interesting, but I'm also curious about non-TT searches like those for VAPs and Assistant Teaching Professors.

Interesting question. Are any search committee members able and willing to weigh in? It would be great to hear what kind of college or university you're at, what kind of position you hired for, how many people applied, etc.

What counts as a good generalist journal?

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

What counts as a "good" generalist journal? I am an MA student and have recently had a R&R from a well-known although not Top journal (the lower end of the Leiter Top 20) after being encouraged to submit by a professor. This is my first publication, and this was the first venue I submitted the paper to. After having read some posts (on here and elsewhere) about the importance of publications in top journals, I am now concerned that simply being in the top 20 does not mean that this venue is well-regarded enough, and a publication there may be looked on poorly during PhD applications. Am I overthinking, or should I really be aiming only for top 10ish journals?

Beauty, meet Eye of the Beholder. Seriously, I don't think there's any objective answer to this question. I've met some people who only seem to see top-5 or top-10 journals as good, others who only see some top-10 journals to be good, others who see all top-20 to be good, etc. I think a lot depends on context. If you're trying to get a job at NYU or Princeton, then yeah, you probably need to be publishing in top-10/top-5 places. But if you're like most of us who aren't at places like that, top-20 is probably sufficient for being considered "good."

But this is just my off-the-cuff reaction. What do readers think?

How to make (journal) rejections easier?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Cara asks:

How to make rejections easier? After years in the game I still get a gut punch when I get a paper rejected. Does anyone have tips for reducing this in advance (I guess I mean actionable tips while the paper is under review, not longer term ones like get therapy and don't tie your self esteem to your work…).

I really empathize, but unfortunately have no real tips. Although rejections have gotten a bit easier for me over the years because I don't need them so much (as I did while on the market), they still sting a lot, and I don't know if that will ever go away. 

Do any readers have any helpful tips?

A brief vacation

This is just a quick note that I’m taking a brief vacation the rest of the week. I’ll still moderate comments, but probably won’t publish any new posts until next Monday!

Best and Worst Conference Experiences

By Trevor Hedberg

Most philosophers have attended at least a few conferences. Sometimes, they are immersive and rewarding experiences where we get valuable feedback on our work, meet new people, and enjoy some good meals on the university’s funds. Other times, things do not go so well. I thought it might be worth sharing my best and worst conference experiences to provide a sense of how varied these events can be. Ironically, these took place at two iterations of the same event.

The best conference experience I ever had was the 2018 meeting of the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress (RoME). RoME is a fairly large conference that takes place in Boulder, CO in August. I attended a workshop the day before the conference hosted by the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals and delivered a commentary on a paper about how business ethics could incorporate animals into its traditional frameworks. I later gave a commentary during the conference on a paper about the ethics of experimenting on animals, and I journeyed to the Wild Animal Sanctuary outside Denver with other interested philosophers during the Saturday afternoon that is always kept free at this event (for hikes and other outings). In between and after these events were enjoyable dinners and a lot of interesting presentations. It was a good experience in all the ways a conference attendee could reasonably hope for.

When I returned to RoME in 2023, I wanted to visit the Wild Animal Sanctuary again, so I made arrangements to rent a car. (Ride services like Uber will typically not pick you up at the sanctuary – it’s too far outside the city limits.) Although my flight into Denver was a bit delayed, things started out well enough, and Friday was a reasonably good day. My paper presentation was neither great nor terrible, but I did get some high-quality feedback on the paper. I was out late that night with some friends, and I slept through my alarm the next morning. This is where things went awry.

I was slated to chair a session that day, and though I had overslept a bit, I still had plenty of time to drive into Boulder and get to the session. (I was staying a bit outside the city to reduce hotel costs.) Unfortunately, there was a significant accident on the highway that morning that turned a 15-minute drive into a 50-minute drive, and by the time I got the car parked and made it to campus, that session was well underway. Fortunately, one of the conference organizers stepped in to serve as chair, so nothing major was disrupted. I later learned that several other conference attendees got caught in that delay on the highway, so I imagine quite a few sessions were impacted. Still, it doesn’t feel great to shirk one’s professional responsibilities – even accidentally.

That afternoon (the Saturday with free time), I went back to the Wild Animal Sanctuary with another interested philosopher. I asked the staff a lot of questions about their operations and took a lot of pictures. My hope was to use this information to design an activity about animal confinement for future environmental ethics courses. Afterward, I dropped off my comrade in animal observation near the CU-Boulder campus, parked my car nearby, and went to dinner. I had one drink with the conference-going crowd at a bar and then decided to head back to my hotel. I planned to attend most of the sessions on Sunday before going back to the airport for my return flight.

When my rental car came into view, I sensed something didn’t look right. And indeed, it wasn’t. While I was at dinner, someone had crashed into the rear driver’s side of the car at high speed, knocking it up onto the curb. (There were cars on both sides of my vehicle on the street; it had to be impressively bad driving to hit the car at the angle of impact.) The damage was quite significant. As I surveyed the wreck, a few people approached me from a nearby building. This ended up being one of the college’s fraternities. Remarkably, a CU-Boulder student had seen the impact when it happened: a white Prius crashed into the car and then drove off. He had called the police and reported the incident, and he even managed to snap photos of the car fleeing the scene, which he texted to me.

What followed was a prolonged series of phone calls between the CU Boulder Police and the accident / emergency service with the rental car company. Amazingly, the police had already found the Prius and completed a report. I submitted a ton of information to the rental car folks and arranged for the vehicle to be towed: it was too badly damaged to be safe to drive back to the airport. And somewhere in that process I discovered that my driver’s license was not in my wallet…

I deduced that I had taken my driver’s license out at the bar and not seen it afterward. It was open until 2:00 am, so I walked back there. After explaining my situation, I was allowed to search the grounds. I didn’t find my license, but I was given a number to call the next day; perhaps my license would turn up after they closed and cleaned up.

I got an Uber and went back to my hotel. The next morning, though I was still tired (having gotten to sleep after 3:00 am), my head was clearer, and I carefully searched my laptop bag and clothes for my driver’s license. I found it buried in the bottom of one of the side compartments. I still don’t know how it got there, but I suspect that I did not get it secured in my wallet successfully and that it fell out at some point when I was searching for my insurance information and digging a pen out of the bag. Perhaps I just didn’t notice in the darkness.

With one crisis averted, I spent several hours making phone calls to my insurance company, filing a claim, filling out paperwork, and uploading pictures, documents, etc., to their online system. I then took a bus to the airport and went to the rental car kiosk to make sure everything was in order before I left Colorado. I did not go to any of the Sunday sessions at the conference.

Now that’s a rough night, but that’s not why this was the worst conference experience I have had. My suffering was not yet complete. Getting reimbursed for this conference travel took months. First, there was some weird error with my travel authorization (which I had submitted and gotten approved before leaving for the conference), so I had to resubmit that material and wait for it to be processed again before I could request reimbursement. Afterward, the financial office repeatedly asked for amendments and clarification on my expenses even after I had sent a detailed narrative of the chaotic events Saturday night and every conceivable receipt one could need regarding expenses. At one point, they even asked me to describe in detail what in-class exercise I was going to use with the information learned at the Wild Animal Sanctuary (because they apparently did not want to reimburse the $50 entry fee). I did get reimbursed eventually – almost 3 months after the trip.

The interactions between my car insurance and the rental car company lasted far longer, though. I had not opted into the extra insurance coverage with the rental car company, but my comprehensive coverage was, I thought, very good. Following several months of complete silence (where I could not get any concrete information from the rental company about the situation), negotiations between the damage recovery agent and my insurance took another several months. Throughout the process, I was repeatedly looped into email exchanges, sent bills (and amended / updated bills), and reminded that I would be liable for all costs if my insurance did not pay in a timely manner. At some point, they did pay, and presumably due to the police report and the other party being liable for the accident, the whole bill got covered. I was financially unscathed by the whole thing (although I still had to make several requests to the rental company to get an official letter documenting that the claim was closed and that I owed them nothing).

Near the end of April (almost 9 months after the conference), the aftermath of that unfortunate Saturday night was finally resolved. I remain deeply grateful for the quick-witted student who called the police and got photos of the fleeing vehicle. Good sir, wherever you are, I hope you’re doing well.

So that’s my experience from RoME 2023. For those of you who attended RoME 2024 (which just concluded), I hope you had a better time. I'm not sure there are any grand lessons to learn from this experience, but if I make it back to Boulder in the future, I won’t be renting a car.

Have you had a conference experience that is just as bad (or worse) than this one? If so, what made it so bad, and how did you handle it? Or if you want to inject some cheeriness into this thread, what was your best conference experience, and what made it memorable?

(Moderator’s note: given its safe and supportive mission, the Cocoon is not a place to “out” or malign people. So, if you share bad experiences, please suitably anonymize things so that readers cannot reasonably infer people’s identities. Comments that run afoul of this won’t be approved)

How junior faculty can become good supervisors to discouraged grad students?

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

How can junior faculty become good supervisors, especially when the students they are supervising are not optimistic/enthusiastic about their degrees?

I am tenure-track faculty in a department which requires regular supervision of MA and PhD students. I care deeply about philosophy and about my students, but many of my students seem unable to prioritize their own research and writing - indeed, several seem indifferent to their own thesis (even while expressing sorrow and regret at not being more productive/better philosophers). I have tried various things, including being very involved, very uninvolved, and strategies I experienced as a PhD student myself. Nothing seems to be working. The quality and quantity of work is not commensurate with what they (or I) expect/believe possible.

I know the job market is tough. I know that many grad students need to take paying work elsewhere, have family obligations, etc., and I am not unsympathetic - grad school is pretty recent for me, so I remember. None of this changes the fact that they are in this program and I need to help them get through it with a good, well-written thesis/dissertation. I worry that I am not doing the right thing(s) to help my supervisees (maybe it is a matter of time and experience, but I don't want to short-change my current supervisees while I learn how to be a better supervisor!). Any insights would be much appreciated!

This is a great query, and my first reaction is that the OP is already doing a lot right by caring about this. My own sense is that sometimes grad faculty can write off students like this, deeming them unsuitable for academia/professional success. As someone who struggled a lot in grad school--in significant part because of personal issues (like many people do in their mid 20s)--I'll forever be grateful to the faculty in my program who were simply patient with me and continued supporting me. That alone is really all that I needed. But, of course, I'm only one case. So, it would be great to hear both from faculty and grad students with experience in these areas.

Do you have any helpful tips or experiences to share with the OP?

The most rejections you’ve received on a paper?

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

What is the highest number of rejections you’ve ever received on a single paper? I have a paper that is now on its seventh rejection- not even an R&R. I’ve gotten some useful feedback. And I genuinely try to improve the paper in light of it. But I mostly find the reviewer comments to be trivial, misunderstand the paper, sometimes conflicting, or else unhelpful.

My record is 14 (it’s now one of my most-cited papers!). I’ve given up on papers before, but my recommendation is to keep at it until you’re convinced that a paper is hopeless.

What about the rest of you? What’s your record (and the paper’s ultimate fate)?

Resources for dealing with AI in education?

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

I was wondering whether you knew if there was a specific place on this website with discussion of A.I. in education where there are resources/links that might be useful? I've looked around and can't find anything (maybe I'm not searching properly and if so apologies in advance -- I haven't used this site for a long time)

Good query, and I'm curious too. Do any readers have any helpful resources to share?

Advice for new department chairs?

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

Advice for someone becoming a department chair? (Small department, small school, if that matters.)

Great question. I'm on childcare duty this week, so I don't have much time to type. But having served as chair for four years, I'll say that the job can be pretty easy until it's not (though maybe the easy part is idiosyncratic to my department, which is fortunately free of the kinds of divisions that can be hard problems for a chair to navigate).

In my experience, the most difficult parts (by far) are handling the kinds of emergencies/putting out fires that it's impossible to prepare for: instructors quitting mid-semester, student and/or parent complaints, etc. Do things by the book, document everything, stand by your faculty, treat them fairly and with integrity and transparency, and learn how to handle a hard conversation tactfully and compassionately when necessary.

Finally, I'd recommend realizing that some issues (e.g. legal ones) are above your pay grade, and should be settled by deans and other administrators, not you.

But these are just a few quick tips. Do any readers with experience have any other helpful ones to share?

Navigating a small department with preexisting internal conflicts?

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

Thoughts about how to successfully navigate a small department with preexisting internal conflicts? (I'm a mid-career, tenured philosopher, fairly new to the place.) I'd prefer not to say more to avoid identification--though sadly, this description probably fits a few institutions.

Great question. I'm not sure that I have many good tips to offer, as fortunately my own small department doesn’t fit this description. But I guess if I had one tip to offer, it would be this: don't presume to understand the nature or the depth of the conflicts there are. Obviously, there are many sides to most stories, and believing you have a grasp of the nature of them might land you in trouble. Also, of course, not all conflicts are equal. Some are mere conflicts of personalities or priorities, others the result of legitimately bad or even unethical behavior. I don't know if there are any good rules for handling different types of conflicts like these, as they can differ in so many details (every situation is different).

So perhaps it would be best to hear from readers who have grappled with this stuff. Do you have any helpful experiences, tips, or other insights to share?

One quick reminder: please be mindful of the Cocoon's safe and supportive mission. The Cocoon isn't the kind of place to spread rumors or "out" people or departments, either explicitly or by implication. Comments that run afoul of our mission in these or other ways will not be approved.