The Philosophers' Cocoon

Moving from academia to a think tank (Guest post by Jason Schukraft)

I’m a senior research manager at a small, academically-unaffiliated think tank called Rethink Priorities. I’m paid to conduct original research, much of it philosophical in nature, that helps charities decide how to allocate their resources. It’s not a career I planned for, but it’s a great job, and my doctorate in philosophy turned out to be pretty good training. The demand for the sort of work I do seems to be increasing, and newly minted philosophy PhDs would be a good fit for many comparable positions. I’m writing about my experience so that others might pursue similar opportunities.

My Alt-Ac Journey

When I was accepted to PhD programs in philosophy in the spring of 2010, I naively believed that becoming a professor was more-or-less a given. Over the next several years, I was exposed to a variety of evidence to the contrary, but through a combination of confirmation bias and wilful ignorance, I convinced myself that the base rate of failure I observed on the academic job market didn’t apply to me. Since nobody in the department was talking much about alternatives to academia, I never really investigated my options, and I certainly did not tailor my research interests to appeal to the non-academic market. (My dissertation is in metaphilosophy.)

In my final year of grad school (2016-2017), I applied to 50 academic jobs and was rejected by all of them. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our second child. I could have applied to even more jobs, but I wasn’t willing to move my family across the country for a one-year VAP or adjunct position with uncertain prospects. (I’m not certain I would have received a VAP or adjunct position even if I had tried.) I was pretty despondent and totally unsure what to do with my life.

I assumed I would end up in a boring, entry-level, nine-to-five office job, probably in the tech industry. (There’s a lot of that around here.) I heard about Rethink Priorities through a newsletter I subscribed to. I didn’t think I was well-qualified for the position, but Rethink Priorities is a remote-only organization and thus offered flexible work hours. As the parent of two young children, that really appealed to me, enough so that I decided to write to one of the founders and inquire more. He encouraged me to apply, and I ended up being a good fit.

COVID-19, grad school, and the academic job market: a tentative proposal

Last week, Daily Nous ran a thread on next year's presumably extra-brutal academic job-market. Unfortunately, as Jonathan Kramnick points out here, COVID-19's effects on the academic job market will likely extend beyond next year ("for all practical purposes, the academic job market next year and perhaps the year after will be non-existent"). The fact that the job-market is likely to be especially brutal over the next few years raises many important questions. I want to focus on two:

1. What should PhD programs do to cushion the blow on their students?
2. What should search committees do to cushion the blog on job candidates?

I want to tentatively float for discussion a particular proposal in answer to both questions. I want to be clear that I am not wedded to the proposal. What I do want to do is get a conversation started, as I think we owe it as a profession to people who will be getting their PhDs during this very difficult time to do what we can to help.

Okay, then, here's the tentative proposal:

1. I'm inclined to think that PhD programs should immediately extend grad student funding for at least two years so that students don't have to go out on the market (or, if they do, they will have something to fall back on).
2. To help 'fund' (1), I'm inclined to think that PhD programs should consider not admitting new students, or at least admit far fewer new students than normal, for at least a couple of years.
3. I think it may make sense for search committees to adopt a policy for several years--to be explicitly stated in their job ads--that candidates who received PhD during 2020 or 2021 will 'receive special consideration' (if only to remind the search committee that any 'gaps' on a person's CV, or their inability to find full-time teaching work, may be due in large part to the extenuating circumstances generated by COVID).

Although I suspect people may have concerns about various elements of the proposal (and I do hope we can discuss them, as well as potential alternatives!), let me explain why I think something like this proposal might be helpful.

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? 

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.

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

A Professorship and three post-doc fellowships in Philosophy of Religion

I received from Yujin Nagasawa (via Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad):

I am starting a new Templeton-funded project called the Global Philosophy of Religion (https://www.global-philosophy.org/). The aim of the project is to promote research involving philosophers of religion from all religious traditions and geographical regions. As part of the project, we are advertising three postdoctoral fellowships - in Hindu philosophy of religion, Islamic philosophy of religion and Jewish philosophy of religion - as well as a senior lectureship in philosophy of religion (tradition unspecified).

The list of the positions are published here: https://www.global-philosophy.org/vacancies

-----

Yujin Nagasawa

H. G. Wood Professor of the Philosophy of Religion

School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion

University of Birmingham

Edgbaston, Birmingham

B15 2TT

United Kingdom

Web: http://www.yujinnagasawa.co.uk

How to move mid-career?

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

So here's something I've been wondering: How do people work their way up from a job at one place to another midcareer or later? I'm thinking about associate or above hires. It seems to me this might be more possible than say publishing your way into a job that wouldn't normally give someone from your program a look right out of grad school. I think this since I've known several people who did just this; that is going from a job in teaching school to an R2 and sometimes even onto an R1 even with very non-Leiterrific pedigrees. Is it really possible? Or have I just made too much of a few people who've done it? If it is possible how do people do it? Just publish a lot and hope someone notices them or is there something more proactive one can do? I'm not unhappy in my current job, which is teaching focused, and don't plan on going anywhere in the next few years but I'm also not sure I want to spend the next 30 years in this job so I was just wondering what the long term possibilities. (And of course in this day and age maybe no one should even count on having the same job for 30 years, but I suppose that's a grim thought.)

Anyone have any insight, say from personal experience? Here's one thing I've heard through the grapevine: it's helpful if , in addition to accomplishing stuff (publishing, etc.), you know people who like you and your work. This should probably be commonsense, given the statistics that something like 85% of all jobs are obtained through networking. Still, I think it may bear repeating, as there seems to be some tendency (suggested perhaps by S's question whether one should "just publish a lot...?") to believe that academic job-markets are bare meritocracies. Sure, I think there is a real meritocratic element--but it also seems to me that, as in most parts of human life, it doesn't hurt to know people. But what do I know? It might be good to hear from people who have 'worked their way up' mid-career what shape their path took!

Twitter thread on negotiating offers

Elisa Freschi drew my attention to this Twitter thread on negotiating academic offers. Here's the thread re-posted:

1/My first piece of advice is simple: negotiate the terms of a TT offer you receive. Negotiation is expected, it’s the norm, even if no one ever taught you how to do it.

2/Approach the negotiation with a positive attitude (not entitled). Let them know you are excited to be their colleague.

3/Overall, don't frame your ask as "I need/deserve more" but more like "there are just a few things I need to do THE BEST JOB I CAN FOR YOU."

4/The Chair is likely your go to person. They are “on your side” and can help you frame your ask in ways that make sense for that institution. Remember THEY WANT YOU!

5/SALARY. Your based salary is the place to start because it will make the most difference in your earning power long term (your raises will be a % of if).

6/In graduate school someone showed me a graph that said on average men get 4% more salary they are first offered, for women that number is 1% (b/c women don’t ASK). Everyone should ask for at least 5%. AT LEAST. I asked for (and got) 10% more on my first job offer.

7/Do your homework. Public institutions make salaries public. When I was negotiating with for my first job at UNCG I knew the salary of every member of the department. The Chronicle has averages for most other institutions by rank.

8/The Chair likely can’t offer you what an Associate Professor is making if you are hired as an Assistant, but she can offer you almost as much (and then has a recent to ask for an equity raise for that Associate next year).

9/Asking for money is awkward, I get it. A simple, “I am excited about the possibility of joining your department and a salary of X would make my decision easier” or “I was hoping for a salary of X” should work.

10/RESEARCH SUPPORT. Depending on what you need, this is the time to ask! And just b/c you are in a humanist doesn’t mean you don’t need guaranteed research funds. In my case I needed to do a lot of international travel of research so got a hefty start up fund for that.

11/Research funds can also pay for computer upgrades, professional dues, developmental editors, fancy office supplies, all kinds of things that will make you more research productive. And they are NOT TAXED.

12/TEACHING SUPPORT: If you have to teach new classes at the new job, ask for course develop funds (perhaps as summer salary) to get those new courses prepped. Think about if you need funds to purchase materials for library collection (that you can assign).

13/COURSE RELEASES: These can make a huge difference to you. First TT job? Ask for 2-3 course releases to take as a pre-tenure leave. If the institution already has a pre-tenure leave, ask for 1-2 to help you get new courses prepped and keep your research on track the first year.

14/Keep in mind that depending on the institution some things are easier to give you than others. Sometimes research funds are a no go, but course releases are fine. And vice versa. This is what the Chair can help with.

15/And just b/c they say no to something you ask for doesn’t mean they don’t value you. Institutions tie chairs'/deans’ hands on some matters. Don’t take it personally. The negotiation is a business transaction.

I wonder how accurate readers in the know think this advice is for philosophy. Six years ago, a job-candidate in philosophy had their offer rescinded mid-negotiation. I don't know how often this happens, as there may well be people who keep these things quiet (I don't know). In any case, for what it's worth (and I could be wrong), the Twitter thread above seems to me probably far too optimistic (and potentially dangerous) for the philosophy market (with the exceptions, perhaps, being the R1 and elite SLAC markets). My spouse recently negotiated competing offers in a STEM field, and in her case the above thread seems to me exactly right. But her discipline's job market is very good. Philosophy's market, as we all know, is horrible: it's a "buyer's market", meaning that there are far more qualified candidates than positions. My sense is that in general, this means that hiring institutions may be a heck of a lot less willing to negotiate. Sure, there are probably really good R1's that have the money and desire to negotiate substantially to get the candidate they really want. But R2's? SLACs?

In my case, all of my offers (after my first VAP) were from SLACs, and in each case the only thing the institutions were willing to negotiate on were salary. Further, I think it's really important to be sensitive to the norms at the institution that has an offer to you. For example, to the best of my knowledge (from fairly good first-hand experience), many SLACs just don't negotiate course releases, additional teaching funds, travel funds, or research funding. Salary may be the most you can get, and asking for a lot more could go very poorly. And, while I'd like to say that the worst that can happen is that "they say no", the above case shows that assuming this can (perhaps rarely) result in disaster. My suggestion, then, is this: try to find out what the norms are at the institution that has given you the offer! For example, suppose you have a good rapport with someone in that department: the chair, search chair, or another faculty member. Consider asking them what they think can and cannot be negotiated before you actually try to negotiate. My sense is that these people typically only want to help you. They're not deans or provosts looking to keep costs down. They want to hire you, and they probably want you to be happy! So, consider asking. See what they say. That's my advice.

What do you all think about the above Twitter thread, my alternative, and negotiating in general?

Reading recommendation letters

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

[W]hat are the ethics as far as *reading* [recommendation] letters are concerned[?]. Marcus, you said, you don't focus much on letters. Would a really bad letter turn you off a candidate you otherwise liked? I wills say that at R1's, and i've been involved in searches at 3 different institutions, letters are taken extremely seriously. Professors do distinguish between strong/stronger, sounding "restrained" etc. And with grad school applications they are maybe even more important. So what should a search committee member do when a candidate has, say, 1 really strong letter, 1 decent letter, and 1 bad letter?

Good questions. I'm really curious to hear how people answer. Here are my answers, beginning with a quick clarification. Amanda is right that I don't focus much on recommendation letters. This is because the science on this is unequivocal. First, recommendation letters as standardly evaluated poorly predict future performance. In fact, they have some of the lowest predictive validity of future performance of any commonly used measure. Second, they show demonstrable gender bias in academia specifically. Consequently, I'm with Mike Huemer: I don't think the hiring process in academia should include recommendation letters at all anymore. I think they do more harm than good, making hiring more a matter of personal reputation than actual achievement.

Using other offers to renegotiate one's position

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

I am curious about experiences/advice on using new offers to renegotiate existing positions. So, you already have a full time permanent position at a University but get an offer from a different University that you want to use as a bargaining chip (at least potentially).

I am generally curious about the process here, but I am particularly interested in something that is likely a bit idiosyncratic: If you currently have a Non-Tenure Track (but permanent) position (something like an "Assistant Teaching Professor") and get offered a TT position at a different University. Is there any path to getting the NTT job switched over to a TT position (perhaps not immediately, but with some sort of guarantee or promise)?

I obviously understand one response is "just take the TT position" but let's assume there are some good reasons to stick at the current University, although preferably with a TT position.

Although I could be wrong, my sense is that this is pretty simple. All you need to do is schedule a meeting with your dean, letting them know, "I have an attractive offer from another university. But I really love this university, and would like to stay here." The ball is then in their court, and as far as I can tell, what happens next depends on a variety of factors:

1. the financial situation of your university,
2. the institution's hiring policies,
3. the freedom (or lack thereof) of the administration there to convert your current position into a tenure-track position,
4. how much they value you.

Tips for SLAC Skype interviews?

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

I would sincerely appreciate any advice on skype interviews for SLAC's. I have two coming up. I have a general sense of how to prepare but any tips on specific questions to prepare for would be much appreciated and any other general advice.

Any SLAC search committee members and/or SLAC interviewees care to weigh in?

Professional philosophy and authenticity

To set a price for oneself whereby one becomes no longer a person but merely a cog! Are you co-conspirators in the current folly sweeping over nations, which, above all else, want to produce as much as possible and to be as rich as possible? Your concern ought to hold out to them a counter-reckoning: what vast sums of genuine inner value are being squandered on such a superficial external goal! (Nietzsche, Daybreak, 206).

Like other fields with a high degree of professionalism and lots of competition, academic philosophy exacts a lot of us. It requires we're willing to move practically anywhere, face painful dilemmas about family, finding jobs in the same area of your spouse, relocate multiple times, lose our savings yet again, and--hardest of all--lose our friends or opportunities to be close to parents and siblings. For those of us who are first-generation, or immigrant, or both, it also often requires we cut emotional ties with our friends and home environment. Even if we don't want to cut ties, it happens, almost inevitably. Or so is my experience. 

But to what extent does academic philosophy require that you give up yourself? To what extent does it require the loss of authenticity? 

I've been mulling over this especially after I read this moving piece of philosophical autobiography. The piece is written by Fabio, who ended his career as a philosopher after a two-year postdoctoral fellowship. He writes honestly about his struggles with academic philosophy, 

Philosophy has always been a very personal affair. Well, not always. When it stopped being a personal affair, it also stopped being enjoyable. It became a performance. I realize that many of you are able to seamlessly weave personal involvement and academic performance together. For me, that’s always been impossible. I’m too slow, my thoughts too dim, and too prone to distraction to focus on one single problem. And when I do, I am unable to crystallize my involvement with such a problem to intelligible and coherent terms. And even if I manage that, I can at best produce a competent list of platitudes. When the inexpressible (not because mystical, but because too close to the bone for me to articulate onto the field of discourse) project of shaping (edifying, in both senses of the term) my own individuality — what I thought philosophy was about — became the public performance of puzzle-solving, that’s when I developed a rejection of philosophy.

My first response to this would be to say: but you don't need to choose! Philosophy can be so much more than puzzle-solving. Still, I think it's important to be honest and clear about the trade-offs involved. Philosophy written from the heart is, at least in my experience, more difficult to sell to a journal than philosophy that intervenes in some recent debate that you might have something useful to say about, but not really keeps you up at night. 

Clearly, though, philosophers do prize honesty and authenticity--the voice of the person who seeks and is honest about it. The best philosophy is deeply personal. Augustine's Confessions, which wrestle with faith, grief, family, still resonate today, as do Descartes' or Al-Ghazali's skeptical doubts. We value Zhuangzi's playfulness and Mengzi's earnest optimism. To know such people, even across the ages, is like having valuable friends we can lean back on, and from whose works we can draw wisdom and insights now. We marvel at Fanon's raw insights into racial micro- and macro-aggressions and how his perplexity gives rise to deep philosophical insights. We read along with De Beauvoir's mixed feelings on her mother's death, more recently also Elizabeth Barnes' and Havi Carel's deeply personal insights on disability and long-term illness. We admire philosophers who can weave the personal and the professional. 

Maybe there's a tension between two kinds of philosophy, as Martin Lenz speculates: "The first kind is what one might call a spiritual practice, building on exercises or forms of artistic expression and aiming at understanding oneself and others. The second kind is what one might call a theoretical endeavour, building on concepts and arguments and aiming at explaining the world." --maybe the problem is that we value the second one almost exclusively in professional academic contexts. 

The ethics of letter writing

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

So I have been shocked at the number of people who apparently agree to write a letter of recommendation for a student who they have very little confidence in, or even none at all. I have seen "recommendation" letters that do not say a single positive thing about the person they are supposedly recommending. A letter might focus on describing the class the professor taught (that the student was enrolled-in) describing the content of a paper the student wrote while saying nothing good about the paper, or sometimes straightforwardly expressing doubts about the student's talent, commitment, or attitude. I've seen many letters that are only a few lines long.

Of course, it is possible that these professors told the student that they would write this kind of letter. But I doubt that holds in most cases. So I am curious: what do people think are the ethics of this kind of thing? I would assume most think that it is wrong to agree to write such a letter, but maybe I am off base? Does it matter whether it is a letter for grad school or for a job? Do some think that chairing a committee comes with the obligation to write *some* letter if the student passes? Do writers have an obligation to tell students if the letter is going to be not so strong? And what, if any, is the minimum standard of confidence in a student a writer must have to ethically agree to write a letter? Is it wrong for a program to accept and graduate a student, say at an expensive MA program, but then refuse to write a letter?

I'd love to hear thoughts on this. One part of early career philosophy is that first time you are asked to write a letter of recommendation, and then the increasing frequency with which you get those requests.

These are all very good questions. My understanding has always been that it is an unwritten rule to only agree to write a letter if you can write a positive one--or, failing that, to be up front with the person requesting the letter that your letter might not be that strong. But, of course, as we all well know people don't always follow rules, written or unwritten. Further, I suppose it's always possible that some are unaware of these supposed rules, and that there may even be some who disagree with them (thinking they have some obligation to warn programs about particular candidates). I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks as well!

What do you all think?

Elements of a good professional website?

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

I wanted to ask for any advice on how to design a personal academic website. I will soon have my first publication out and thought it would be a good idea to have a web page for people to find out who I am. However, I am not sure what makes for a 'good' academic webpage. For example, should one have one's photograph featured prominently on the front page, as some philosophers do? Is the 'Papers' page simply a list of all publications, or is it helpful to e.g. include abstracts and context, to group papers together in subjects, etc.? Is it good to include personal details about e.g. hobbies, or does this detract from the main goal? I am not aware of any discussions on this topic, and would appreciate any advice people have, or indeed examples of 'good' academic webpages.

Really good questions! What does everyone think? I think it would good to hear what people think in response to the reader's various questions, as well as for readers to link in the comment section below to webpages they think think are particularly good! Here are a few brief thoughts of my own.

New series on tenure

Yesterday, I came across an interesting discussion on social media on what tenure requirements are at different schools. Because it is clear from that discussion and others discussions I have encountered that tenure requirements differ greatly at different institutions, I thought it might be good to run a short series on the tenure process and tenure requirements. It occurred to me that such a series might be of interest to a variety of the blog's readers, including job-marketeers (who might benefit from better awareness of differences in the tenure process and standards across institutions), tenure-track faculty who have not gone up for tenure yet, and members of the profession more generally.

Anyway, I tentatively plan this series to cover the following topics:

• What tenure processes themselves are like at different institutions
• How clearly and consistently tenure standards are stated and conveyed to job-candidates
• What tenure standards are like at different kinds of institutions
  • R1 (research) institutions
  • Elite liberal arts universities
  • Non-elite liberal arts universities
  • Regional public state schools (non-R1's)
  • Community colleges
• What tenure-denial is like and involves (including potential for appeals)

Are there any other topics the series should cover? If so, please let me know in the comments section below this post. Because the quality of information this series provides will depend on reader comments, I'd like to encourage readers to share posts in the series, so that readers who may have experience and insight in these matters can chime in! For now, I'd just like to solicit suggestions on any additional topics to cover in the series. The first substantive post in the series will come in the next day or two!

Mentioning age in recommendation letters

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

I am a professor at an European University, and I would have a question concerning letters of recommendation.
Is it appropriate to write something like "This is an impressive list of accomplishments for someone who has not reached their 30s yet"? I want to emphasize that these accomplishments are exceptional for a 28-year-old. Or should I never mention or refer to the student's age?

Interesting question. I guess I'm inclined to think one shouldn't discuss age (so as to avoid unwittingly playing into ageism). I think there's nothing wrong with saying in a letter that someone has an impressive list of accomplishments for their career stage--but again, I'm inclined to think it is best to leave chronological age out of it. What do you all think?

Tips for recruiting majors & promoting diversity

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

In the recent 'What do first-round academic philosophy job interviews look like?' it's suggested that there are two common questions one might get: (1) How would you recruit majors? and (2) How would you promote diversity in the classroom and/or on campus?

I'm wondering: (1) How does one recruit majors? and (2) How does one promote diversity?

Not just, what can I say? But, what are genuinely effective tactics for these projects?

Good questions, and I am curious how readers would answer. I will share just a few things I did, my department has done, and which I have seen work well.

In terms of recruiting majors, when I was in a non-TT position I took it upon myself to put together a detailed informational packet on philosophy and the major, which I then took to my department. The packet included information on the major itself, including how easy it is to double major, as well as information on graduate school test scores, employment and salary statistics, examples of successful, real life people in all different kinds of fields who majored in philosophy (focusing on diversity too), and so on. In the years after distributing that flyer, our major numbers more than doubled, and 60% of our majors are consistently women and historically-marginalized minorities. I also coached an Ethics Bowl team each year, which seemed to recruit some diverse majors, and one of my junior tenure-stream colleagues has been very active and creative in relaunching our Philosophy Club, organizing club meetings around philosophical issues related to hot topics in pop culture and the news. We also began a series of 'lightning talks', featuring philosophers from nearby universities who give 10-15 minute philosophy talks on their research to the club, followed by discussion--which I think attracts and interests students in philosophy far more than, say, a traditional 30-60 minute colloquium talk. Finally, this year we began the fall by putting together a "meet UT's philosophers" event (with food!) where new students, majors, and potential majors could meet each other and the faculty--and we even started a department Instagram page (thanks to the suggestion of several students).

In terms of diversity, when I was still in a non-TT position, I also took it upon myself to create and c0-organize an annual human rights conference with a sociologist, which not of featured diverse academics but also representatives of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Enterprising Latinas, the League of Women Voters, the CARIBE Program for refugees, and many other organizations. These conferences were advertised all around the university, and attended by a diverse body of students.

Anyway, these are just some things we/I have done at my university, and I don't think there's any one way to do (1) and (2). But my advice is simple: be proactive and get creative. Talk to other people inside and outside of your department, brainstorming about things you could do. Chances are, you'll come up with something, and as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Do any of you have any tips of your own, including things graduate students might do (since the OP mentions they are ABD)?

Poll results: service and the market

A couple of discussions the past few weeks got me thinking about the role that service (to one's department, university, the profession, etc.) plays on the job market. First, a little over two weeks ago, Daily Nous hosted a discussion on whether graduate students should receive compensation for service work. Second, around the same time, a colleague in the discipline at a research university mentioned on social media that they actively discourage their grad students from engaging in service, the rationale being, if I recall, that it's just not worth grad students' time and energy. I weighed in on this discussion, saying that my experience working and hiring on four search committees at a liberal arts university is very different: namely, that service may substantially benefit candidates on the market for jobs at universities like mine. 

Anyway, both of these discussions got met thinking: do search committee members, and search committees as a whole, care about service? Do candidates' service records affect how they are evaluated by search committee members? If so, how?

Because these seem to me to be important issues, I decided to run an informal poll asking search committee members to weigh in on a few questions. To be clear, it is just an informal poll with a relatively small sample size (N = 29), not a formal study--so the results should be presumably taken with a serious grain of salt. However, here are the results:

• Number of respondents: 29
• # self-reporting as from R1 research universities: 18
• # self-reporting as from regional state universities: 4
• # self-reporting as from non-elite liberal arts universities: 3
• # self-reporting as from elite liberal arts universities: 1
• # self-reporting as from community colleges: 1
• # self-reporting as from 'other': 2

Q1 - A job-candidate's service record (viz. service to their department, university, community, etc.) can play a real role in how I personally evaluate their candidacy as a search-committee member:

Q2 - The search committee(s) I have been on have taken candidates' service records (viz. service to their department, university, community, etc.) into account in their collective deliberations on who to interview or hire:

Q3 - Depending on your answers to Q1 & Q2, what kind(s) of service may play a role in how candidates are evaluated?:

All responses, complete and unedited:

• "Diversity related service, public philosophy, service that brings in media attention, service that attracts grads to the department, undergrads to classes or the major."
• "All forms, but especially technology, diversity, and proactive, positive contributions to the profession."
• "Course development, curriculum reform, labour organizing, establishing MAP chapters, etc."
• "Student outreach, diversity initiatives, reading and discussion groups, syllabus reform."
• "Service with students."
• "Anything that indicates that they would be a responsible member of my department--graduate representative, serving on committees, organizing events, etc."
• "In a UK context, it really is a must. You need to be able to show some "admin" experience, e.g., being part of committees, taking on admin roles in your department."
• "Has the candidate been involved in any diversity initiatives on campus, or leadership/shared governance roles. At my institution we need people to do a lot of service because we are badly understaffed, and we also need people who can help with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts."
• "Undergraduate mentoring; teacher training related initiatives; diversity related initiatives (e.g. MAP chapter)."
• "It's not so much that kinds of service matter, but when debating candidates with differing research outputs, variations in teaching and administrative loads become relevant to predicting future performance."
• "Anything that indicates that the candidate is a team player."
• "Stuff that shows experience working with grad students, stuff that shows they would be a leader in enriching our intellectual community."
• "I don't care about journal refereeing. I take an absence of departmental service, or only insubstantial-looking service lines on the CV, as something of a red flag; it suggests to me that the candidate won't pull their weight in the department. Larger professional service roles suggest the candidate is becoming connected, which is a weak positive sign of reputation-building (which can matter for tenure)."
• "Work that showed a serious commitment to various kinds of diversity (running a MAP chapter, teaching philosophy in urban schools, etc)."
• "I was not allowed to officially consider any service, only the vague 'capacity' to take on roles within the department. This is a serious issue, and I wish that I could take into account junior colleagues that have undertaken senior roles (perhaps to the detriment of their research outputs). If able to, evidence of taking on important departmental roles would be great to ensure that we are hiring someone that can cope in those roles (i.e. future chairs of departments!)."
• "Primarily we have looked at administrative experience--has this person served as a chair, been in charge of adjuncts, performed class scheduling, served as an advisor."
• "Founding/running undergraduate clubs, recruitment efforts (with data to show their personal involvement), conference volunteer work, tutoring/mentoring students in an official capacity."
• "Philosophy club, public philosophy, pedagogical committees."
• "None."

Q4- I answered the above questions on the basis of my experience serving on search committee(s) at:

Again, this is just an informal survey--but I for one find the results intriguing, especially the qualitative answers to Q3 (indicating the kinds of service respondents care about, and their reasons for doing so). Anyway, I hope you all find this information helpful, and would be curious indeed to see what a more formal study might find!

Answering the 'any questions for us?' question

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

The "Any questions for us?" question. I'd be curious to hear general thoughts on how to handle this question, but even more, I'd appreciate concrete examples of good questions that search committee members have heard.

This is a good query. I vaguely recall serving on a search committee and being very impressed by some questions candidates asked, in ways that made a real difference in how I evaluated their interview (as in, "Wow, that question was really a breath of fresh air!" - though, to be clear, I am generally skeptical of the value of interviews on scientific grounds). Although I'm having a hard time recalling specific examples, one general thing that stood out to me was the overall thoughtfulness and originality of the questions asked. One definite thing not to do is to say you don't have any questions. My sense is that this comes across very poorly, making the candidate look unprepared or uninterested in the department and institution. But what are good questions to ask?

Book contracts and the market

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

To search committee members: how does receiving a book contract from a mid-tier press look to potential search committee members?

How should one go about listing this on their CV?

'Press' then responded:

Book contracts are not that impressive - in part, because they are not binding on the press, and they are often based on work not yet done. You say mid-tier ... that is hard to image which press. Can you be more specific: Springer, Chicago, Cornell, MIT? If you are dipping lower still, it really cannot count for much.

For what it is worth, Press's comment does not cohere at all well my experience on the market or my experience hiring at a liberal arts university. Here are my thoughts.

Grad school grades & the market

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

...I have question concerning job prospects. I'm relatively early ish in my Grad program, but I've had some conversations recently with others in my program and they made me curious about what others thought (not just in my department).

1. 1. How important are your grades when applying for a job? Do they even look at them? Straight A's vs. a couple of B's.
   2. Should one just focus more on publication than grades?
   3. How many publications should one aim for? For instance, avg number for most graduates, a good number, a great number, and an outstanding number of publications?
   4. Mainly, is it better to focus on conferences, publication rather than getting top grades when it comes to getting a job?

I know that my advisor has a big role to play in me landing a good job, but I'm wanting to figure out where I should be putting most of my energy.

I could always be wrong (I am more often than I expect!), but my guess is that grad school grades almost never matter in any direct way on the job-market. When it comes to getting hired for R1/research university jobs, what matter most seem to be: (A) grad program prestige, (B) the overall perceived quality of your work (viz. your writing sample and letters of recommendation), and (C) the quality of your publication record (viz. publishing in top journals). Conversely when it comes to jobs at teaching institutions (e.g. SLACs), grad program prestige seems to matter less, as does publishing in top-journals. My own sense, having hired at a SLAC four times, and having been very competitive on the SLAC market when I was a job-marketeer, is that publication quantity matters more for SLAC jobs, as does the perceived quality and innovation of one's teaching and perhaps even one's service record. Here again, I suspect hardly anyone is likely to pay attention to grades--though I guess if you did have a very spotty grade record, it might raise a yellow flag, leading people to wonder about your work ethic, perhaps (I don't know). [Side note: as we've discussed many times on this blog, the above differences between what different types of schools look for suggests that different people should probably have different job-market strategies, depending on what kinds of jobs they are likely to be most competitive for!]

Does this mean you shouldn't care about grades in grad school? No! The way I see it, the point of grad school grades isn't to impress potential employers. The point is what they reflect: your philosophical development, and the extent to which your work has impressed faculty in your program. These are things worth caring about, but only as means to ends: namely, producing good work, publishing effectively, and so on. So sure, try to get good grades, but don't be mistaken: they're not what people on the hiring end of things care about. You're not going to get tenured on the basis of your grad school grades, but on the basis of your publications, outside letters in support of your candidacy, teaching, and so on. Your real focus, in other words, should be on becoming the best researcher, teacher, and member of the profession you can!

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

What do first-round academic philosophy job interviews look like?

The job market timeline is a bit more spread out than it was in the past, but it's still pretty much the case that for most tenure track jobs, interview requests will go out this month, perhaps also next month. 

Job interviews have moved to Skype. It's been a while that Marcus or I have interviewed for a tenure track position. If you were recently on the market, what does a job interview for a TT job in philosophy look like? What questions were you asked? Feel free to chime in with any recent experiences and observations! 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Informal survey on service & the market

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

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

Pregnancy and the market

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

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

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

The importance of a good grad adviser

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

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

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

What should search committees remember about the market?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are cover letters for?

A reader writes in:

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

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

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

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

Here's are my quick answers.

[When] should you stretch your AOS?

A reader writes in:

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

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

Anyone have any helpful insight?

Cover letters: how forthright to be?

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

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

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

Prof L responded:

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

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

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

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

What academia in Flanders is like

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for a leadership & administration statement?

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

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

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

Network for European Early Career Philosophers

A reader brings my attention to this relatively new organization, which looks to me on its face to be a great resource for early-career philosophers in Europe!

What’s it like to be a philosopher in Germany

This is our seventh installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series of posts on what's it like to be a philosopher in different countries outside of the Anglophone west. This is a guest post by Gen Eickers, postdoc at the University of Education Ludwigsburg (Germany).

I am not sure I know what it’s like to be a philosopher in Germany – I am quite young and just finished my Ph.D., I am trans, I do not have an academic family background – all of this makes me somewhat unrepresentative of philosophers here, but, at the same time, this very fact tells us something about the system and tells us something about what it is like to be a philosopher in Germany. A lot of people think of Germany as some kind of philosophers’ nation. At least, this is a comment I have frequently encountered at philosophy conferences and also from non-philosophers at private gatherings. Being a philosopher in Germany is thought of as stepping into big shoes, it seems. However, thinking of Germany as a kind of philosopher’s nation is true only if we think of philosophy as the discipline of white cis men, since the figures that have earned that reputation fall under that label. Philosophy in Germany is still dominated by white cis men and their advantages in accessing the field remain immense. Referring to Germany as a philosophers’ nation plays into this narrative of philosophy as the discipline of white cis men. This is a narrative I resist. For what I know, like all things in Germany, being a philosopher here requires patience, access to know-how that’s not explicitly formulated anywhere, and a lot of paperwork. The access to the know-how is, I think, what makes being an academic philosopher in Germany so difficult for some of us.

Let me try to explain the procedure first. The first step in order to become a professor is the doctoral thesis. Most people here take on jobs in academia before starting to work on their dissertation. A lot work on their dissertation while having a job contract at a university as academic staff. That is why a lot of philosophers here need 5-7 years to finish their doctoral studies. For philosophers, a German-wide rule is that the doctoral dissertation needs to be published. Typically, you need to publish within two years, and as long as the dissertation is not published, you are not eligible to call yourself a “Dr” - publishing one’s dissertation is key to being able to carry the title. Among the hierarchical structure this rule carries and permeates, this practice has also led publishing houses to charge people for publishing their dissertation. Typically, the amount one has to pay is between 800-2000€. The classist and elitist underpinnings of this practice aside, being charged to publish one’s own work downplays the value and amount of work one has put into a dissertation.

With the doctoral degree, you can apply for lectureships or postdocs at universities. The salary is not overwhelming, but you can certainly survive well if your position is full-time and if you do not have to commute. It’s pretty normal for philosophers in Germany to not get a full position and to commute, however. There are very few tenured jobs in academic philosophy in Germany – this is due to the system that requires a “Professor” title in addition to the “Dr” title in order to be tenured. For people who want to become a professor in Germany, publishing papers, teaching, and researching is not enough. Being a professor in Germany means being legally permitted to carry the title “Prof.”. In order to achieve that, philosophers here have to write a habilitation. While some universities have opened up to the option of a cumulative habilitation (i.e., publishing several papers about a specific topic), it is still common practice to have to write another dissertation, one that is supposed to be more impactful and substantive than the first. The habilitation gets evaluated by a committee and typically one has to go through a kind of defense as well.

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In my last major post, I gave the details on how a major depressive episode radically disrupted my academic year and ongoing job search, but I never specified how that search ended. The job search itself wasn’t the core topic of the post, and it wasn’t over when I first drafted the post. But I did survive the gauntlet, and enough time has passed that I think I can finally catalog everything that transpired.

In this post, I’m going to chronicle some of the noteworthy events  that took place during my 8-month academic job search in 2018-2019 while I was completing the final year of my postdoc at the University of South Florida. As will become obvious, there are some aspects of this story that are extremely idiosyncratic and unlikely to be a part of anyone else’s job search. Still, I think there are some meaningful takeaways from the tale, and since it does actually end in success, it’s a reminder that perseverance does sometimes pay off – a message that is all too often overshadowed by the grim realities of the current job market.

Once the lengthy recap of the job search is complete, I’ll highlight some general lessons that can be gleaned from the journey.

Pub-Impeding VAP vs. Pub-Conducive Adjuncting?

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

I received my PhD this spring. No pubs yet. Extracting papers from my dissertation has taken a long time. I'm well-positioned for 3 decent, but far-from-elite pubs over the next year. As for this year’s job market: at best, 1 pub *very* late into the job-market season.

I gather there’s a good chance I’ll face the following choice:

(A) Pub-Impeding VAP: Take a VAP with a 4/4 load that includes major preps, not to mention moving. Being realistic, this will lead to little pub-work getting done.

(B) Pub-Conducive Adjuncting: Local adjuncting with classes requiring very little prep. This would be highly conducive to getting pubs over the next year.

I would pick (B) in a heartbeat but have heard that doing so would have significant costs when going on the market in 2020-2021, especially since it took me forever to finish the PhD.

Would it?

I think this is a great question, and am very curious to hear what everyone thinks. My own sense is that (A) is probably the better bet, and for a couple of reasons.

Writing diversity & inclusion statements

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

Nearly every single job ad I read says something like the following: "Please explain how your research, teaching, or service would/do contribute to a climate of diversity and inclusivity."

Are there effective ways to do this without sounding too on the nose, so to speak?

I would love for committee members to speak to how they think this can be done effectively because it is so pervasive in job ads now.

What are you looking for?

My general worry is that things I say come across as forced/disingenuous, i.e. "I make sure I include non-canonical texts in my courses."

Good questions. I have heard a lot of job candidates raise similar questions, saying they have no idea what to write in these things. My guess is that the thing to do is to simply report any clear ways you have been involved in diversity and inclusion efforts (at a department or university level), as well as any things you actually do in the classroom like the kinds of things anon mentions. But beyond that, I have no idea. It would be great to hear from some search committee members on this!

Student evaluations: what to include in a dossier

In the comments section of the teaching portfolio entry in our Job-Market Boot Camp, Grad Student Z writes:

Thanks for this (and all the other) helpful posts. Do you think there is a reason to include unedited student comments as opposed to a selection of student comments along with a website link to the original evaluations (including student comments)?

I'm also wondering how to approach the quantitative data in the following cases:

(i) You are slightly below university and department averages (e.g., less than a 1 point difference with 5 being the maximum) for a particular semester (e.g., your first time teaching), but above those averages for subsequent semesters. Is it worth including all of the data with the the hope that committees will interpret this as exhibiting improvement over time?

(ii) You are above university averages, but slightly below department averages (e.g., less than a 1 point difference with 5 being the maximum). Would you recommend only including a comparison to the university averages (and excluding the department averages)? Or could that come across as if you have something to hide?

(iii) On some metrics, you are above university averages, but below department averages; on others, you are above department averages, but below university averages. Should you include everything? Nothing?

Good questions! I don't think there are any hard and fast rules for any of these things, but want to suggest it is probably best for candidates to try to (A) frame themselves in the best light, while (B) not looking like they are trying to hide anything. Let me explain.

Against letters of recommendation

Helen has an important post up at the APA blog about why job-apps should no longer involve letters of recommendation. While I am personally very thankful to those who have written me letters, I wholeheartedly agree with Helen's take that letters in general are more problematic than they are worth. I'd just add that I think the "ghostwriting" issue is a very serious one. Helen writes:

I’ve also seen and heard (especially in Europe, but  I’m not sure how widespread this is elsewhere) that letter writers request the candidate to write their own letter. This demand puts candidates in a terrible bind—it is very difficult to sing one’s own praises with conviction. There are even blogs detailing how to ghostwrite your own letter. The evidential value of a ghostwritten letter is zero.

At a recent event, I met several people who told me they did this as a job-candidate: that their letter-writer(s) had them write their own recommendation letter. I have to confess to being totally flummoxed as to how common this apparently is, and how anyone could think it is ethical!

The job-market across time

In response to my previous post asking how the job market looks, Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) posted the following graph on Twitter on how the academic job-market in philosophy has looked up to this point in time (8/1-10/10) over the past seven years:

As you can see, the job-market has been basically flat. Last year's market was a bit better than this year's at this point, but this year's market is roughly on par or a bit better than several years prior. Many thanks to Carolyn for sharing this!

How does the market look?

A few weeks ago in our job-market discussion thread, some people remarked that the job-market looked pretty bad so far, with fewer jobs this year than last year at the same time. I've been following job listing at PhilJobs and Higher Ed Jobs, and it seems to me that there's been a deluge of jobs posted recently. So, how does the market look on the whole now? Also, which areas seem to be hiring this year? Which areas aren't? I'm curious to hear people's impressions.

Submitting extra/optional application materials?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, 'job applicant' writes:

Should applicants submit materials that are "optional"? Will it hurt our chances if we don't? This is a general question, but the ad I'm thinking of gives very specific instructions about the documents the applicant must submit and does not mention any optional documents. It's only while working on the application through the university's website that one sees one may upload additional optional documents (research statement, cover letter, etc.). If submitting optional materials increases one's chances, I'll do it, but if it doesn't, I'd rather not spend the additional precious time it takes to do it. And if it will or even just may make a difference, I wonder why these documents aren't just listed as required.

This is a great question. Someone recently asked me, for example, whether they should upload a diversity statement if they have the chance, in cases where a job ad mentions diversity but doesn't explicitly ask for a diversity statement. I guess I'm inclined to think that candidates should upload exactly what is asked for (and no more), as uploading additional documents might rub search committee members the wrong way (viz. the applicant trying to give themselves an unfair advantage). However, I'm not sure about this. 

What do readers think (not just about the example I gave, but about job applicant's query in general)?

CV's: norms for listing work

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, 'ostdoc' writes:

I was recently invited to write a book review. I am a young scholar, and having the book review on my CV would be useful for job applications. The question is, when can I list the book review on my CV? Since it isn't refereed, it (barring doing a terrible job) won't be rejected. Can I list it as forthcoming already? Can I list it as expected? What the the norms on this?

'An editor...' replied:

I certainly would not list it before you submit it to the journal. It does not exist yet, and it may not. Once submitted it is a different matter.

And I added:

editor is right. Never list something as forthcoming unless it has been officially accepted. You may list it at this point as “commissioned.”

I think this is an important issue. A recent study went around my social media last week indicating that academics routinely misrepresent things on their CVs. My own sense, having seen some CVs with misleading stuff, is that at least sometimes, people aren't even aware that they are misrepresenting things (though I am sure in other cases people are well aware of what they are doing). By my lights, the right thing to do in every case is to be forthright about exactly where a given piece of work is in the process. If it's a paper that's not finished or under review, list it as 'in preparation.' If it is book review or book chapter that you have been commissioned to do, then until it is accepted, list it as 'commissioned.' If you have a book under contract but the final manuscript isn't accepted yet, list it as 'under contract.' Only list something as forthcoming after the final manuscript has been officially accepted. Does anyone disagree? Are there are any norms I'm missing?

One final thought: the initial commenter here, 'ostdoc', writes that "having the book review on my CV would be useful for job applications." I think it is worth discussing whether this is true. Back when I was in grad school, I vaguely recall some other grad students thinking that book reviews might help them on the market. I thought then, and still think now, that this is almost certainly not true. Perhaps having a book review on your CV will look 'better than nothing' (if you have no other publications). However, I very much doubt that book reviews play any significant role in how search committees evaluate candidates. When it comes to research, my sense is that people on the hiring side of things are interested primarily (and perhaps entirely) in candidates' capacities for publishing original work. But perhaps I am wrong about this. 

What do readers 'in the know' think?

A writing sample dilemma

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

I claim two AOS, A and B. I plan on applying to jobs in AOS A, but all of my current work on A is co-authored. (Just one other co-author, and it's fully jointly authored.) My ordinary writing sample is in in AOS B, but it's single-authored.

For those jobs that are looking for AOS A, should I (1) send my regular writing sample from AOS B, which is single-authored but on a different AOS; (2) send my co-authored paper on AOS A; (3) do some combination, or (4) something else entirely?

Good question. I've heard over and over again that it is a really bad idea to submit co-authored pieces as writing samples. This may be entirely unfair (co-authorship is standard in many academic fields, and increasing in philosophy), but the general thought is that search committees want to know your philosophical 'chops' and co-authored pieces make it unclear what exactly you have done and what is the work of your co-authors. So, I am inclined to think option (1) is probably the way to go, at least for jobs that only permit one writing sample. The ideal case, I think, is to submit both pieces, but in my experience very few jobs request multiple writing samples or even permit them in the file-upload process.

What do you all think?