Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

More on merit, cronyism and discrimination against those with families in the philosophy profession

Brian Leiter

A senior philosopher out West writes:

The thread on TAR on "Philosophical Perspectives" and related issues
raises many very important and complex questions.  The roles of
institutional affiliation and "connections" are very significant in
various areas of our profession, although they sometimes work in
subtle ways.  A more thorough exploration of the VARIOUS ways in
which graduate school affiliation and connections to visible,
influential philosophers help to frame one’s possibilities in our
profession would be interesting to me.

Just to start: note that those of us who have families–young
children (or even not-so-young children)–or who live on the west
coast or really anywhere apart from the NY metropolitan area–have
significantly harder times attending conferences.  Since we cannot
attend so many conferences, colloquia, reading groups, and so forth,
we cannot "impress people in person."  That is, I have often heard it
said that certain philosophers, although they do not write much or
have not influenced the profession much through their writing, are
"very impressive in person."  Well, if you can’t go to the
conferences, colloquia, and so forth which are the "stages" or
contexts for impressing the relevant people, one is at a considerable
disadvantage.  This really seems to be important in the hiring
practices of the most elite departments these days, and it works
against those of us who have families or live in areas where there
are fewer opportunities for attendance and participation.  Also,
having a youngish family makes it considerably harder to go off to a
prestigious institute or to take a fellowship which requires
residence.

In general, the hiring practices of the profession at the senior
level seem to be changing: less emphasis is put on quality of work
and impact over time, and more emphasis seems to be put on whether
someone is "impressive" in participating in conferences, discussions,
and so forth.  In some ways this is good, as the "oral tradition" is
an important part of philosophy, and some extremely good philosophers
simply don’t write much, but have a salutary influence on the
profession through their conversations.  But in some ways this is
bad, exacerbating what is already a significant (although perhaps not
always decisive) role of institutional affiliation and connections.

Comments are open; no anonymous postings.  (Occasionally, readers ask why I require non-anonymous postings in response to an anonymous set of comments.  Lack of anonymity leads posters to be more responsible, I have found, and it also makes it possible for readers, sometimes, to interpret the poster’s remarks in light of what they know about his/her institutional affiliation, background, interests, and so on.  In the case of the comments quoted above, I of course know the identity of the philosopher making these remarks, and while others are deprived of relevant background information that might affect their interpretation of these remarks, I thought them interesting enough standing alone to solicit reactions.)

Leave a Reply to Robert Allen Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

18 responses to “More on merit, cronyism and discrimination against those with families in the philosophy profession”

  1. Robert Allen

    My wife and I have three young children and live in Michigan and I still manage to attend 1-2 APA meetings per year. (Did you know that you can write off 80% of your expenses as long as you are looking for a job?) I usually do the CD meeting and one of the others if I like program. I also try for the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, which features a different topic each year. If possible, I bring my family along and make a vacation out of it. If for some reason you cannot attend a conference, you can always ask the presenters for copies of their papers and then correspond with them.

    Reply
  2. David Manley

    Having a young family makes it a lot harder to *write* good philosophy too. (I have a one-year-old and a four-year-old.)

    But neither that nor the point that it's harder to go to conferences merits the sensationalized heading about "discrimination against those with families."

    Reply
  3. Brian Leiter

    I had not realized the use of the word "discrimination" was sensational!

    Reply
  4. Robert Allen

    Mr. Manley,

    For what it's worth, having a family has made it a lot easier for me to do my work. I see my wife and children as assets not liabilities. Nietzsche tried pushing the idea that one can't be a family person and a philosopher and, like a lot of other things he said, it's simply false.

    Reply
  5. Brian Leiter

    There will be no more defaming Nietzsche on my blog site!

    Reply
  6. John Fischer

    Brian, I found it amusing that you employed the description, "Philosopher Out West." This suggests the not entirely inappropriate acronym, "POW". Since I am also in this sense a POW, I thought I'd add my two cents worth.

    Some of what was posted resonated with me, especially the part about our instiutional practices changing over time. When I was at Yale, I and my other "junior colleague" were always told that what matters at a place like Yale was significant amounts of publication in quality venues. Moreover, the idea was not just to count up numbers of articles and/or books; one needed to present ideas that had impact–ideas that influnece people and help to frame ongoing debates in philosophy. We were told that this is what matters, and that it doesn't matter how "impressive you are in person," and so forth.

    Recently I was puzzled when I heard that a certain individual had been offered a position (a tenured position, I believe) at an elite department. When I asked a friend, he said, "Right, he hasn't published much, but, when you meet him in person and talk to him, you can see that he is very smart." I kind of laughed.

    I also agree with the posted comments of the POW that this change is not entirely bad, as it is always a mistake to define the criteria for hiring too narrowly, or to seek to reduce philosophical excellence to one dimension (or a small number of dimensions).

    But it is worrisome, since for as long as I can remember, these matters have been significantly influenced–although as Ken Taylor and others have helpfully pointed out, not decisvely and universally influenced–by institutional affiliation and connections. How much of this is avoidable is an interesting question, and not all of it is appropriately called "cronyism". But it is striking that we are a profession in which there is a high premium (in our ideology and our philosophy) on egalitarianism–we deplore (in our philosophy, if not our practices) anything that smacks of elitism or "the old-person network", and so forth. It has always struck me that there is a bit of a discordance here between our official ideology and at least some of our important practices.

    Reply
  7. Gilbert Harman

    In general, the hiring practices of the profession at the senior
    level seem to be changing: less emphasis is put on quality of work
    and impact over time, and more emphasis seems to be put on whether
    someone is "impressive" in participating in conferences, discussions,
    and so forth.

    I have the opposite impression, at least with respect to Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, MIT, Brown, Cornell, Michigan, and NYU. Perhaps things are different in the West?

    In the 50s and 60s Harvard Philosophy gave tenured positions to Dreben, Albritton, and Nozick, despite their minimal publication records at the time. (Nozick didn't publish until he was a full professor, I believe.)

    It might be argued that today there is an overemphasis on publication and a downgrading of the importance of philosophers like Socrates, Albritton, et al.

    Gil

    Reply
  8. Jason

    Prof. Harman makes some good remarks about the bad old days, ones that are worth bearing in mind when thinking about today. Perhaps the best comparison then is not with the old days vs. today, but rather between today and the egalitarian model that many of us so value, bearing in mind that will always remain somewhat of an ideal. No doubt we are closer to it today than we were forty years ago, but, as in every other area, we still are far from realizing it.

    Kieran Healy's post on Crooked Timber on research into the benefits of networks in other academic areas makes this point with a sounder empirical basis. It would be nice to see comparable research done about philosophy (the benefits of network relationships vs. value of published work). However, we would need better ways of 'evaluating' the impact of published work. But most of us would rather be doing philosophy, so I doubt it will ever get done, at least by philosophers.

    Reply
  9. Varol Akman

    I fully endorse the following excerpt from John Fischer's post as a wonderfully concise (and timeless) way of telling a junior philosophy faculty what should matter in our profession:

    When I was at Yale, I and my other "junior colleague" were always told that what matters at a place like Yale was significant amounts of publication in quality venues. Moreover, the idea was not just to count up numbers of articles and/or books; one needed to present ideas that had impact–ideas that influence people and help to frame ongoing debates in philosophy. We were told that this is what matters, and that it doesn't matter how "impressive you are in person," and so forth.

    Reply
  10. Brian Weatherson

    I'm sympathetic to the concern that having so much rest on personal appearances at conferences biases the system in favour of those with the flexibility to travel a lot. It's not clear that having everything rest on publications and citations will ameriolate significantly though – my papers are improved by presenting them at conferences and I'm often inspired to read and hence cite something because its author was impressive at a conference. So the situation is complicated – making the tenure-system more family-friendly won't involve simply going to some justice is blind ideal.

    But I don't really see why this is a west coast/east coast issue, or certainly a west coast/NY area issue. In the last year I've been to five conferences on the west coast and one in the NY metropolitan area. Now in part this is because west coast philosophers (including John Fischer!) are doing excellent jobs of organising conferences, and maybe that is because they feel they need to organise things themselves if there are to be conferences out west. But at least in the field(s) I drift through there were plenty of opportunities to be part of the conference scene without getting too far from the Pacific Ocean.

    Or maybe Brian's initial reference was to a philosopher from out in Western Australia. From there it is hard to get to conferences, I'll agree! The serious geographic discrimination issue here strikes me as being an America vs the world issue rather than a west coast vs east coast issue.

    Reply
  11. Barry Lam

    Just curious: for those who dislike a heavy emphasis on personal "impressiveness" for tenuring and tenured offers in favor of more and better writing….what do you take to be the rationale behind a *very* heavy emphasis on interviews and job talks for junior candidates? Presumably, those who favor personal "impressiveness" think it matters at both junior and senior levels, but at the junior level, it seems that everyone tends to favor "impressiveness" over writing and publishing ability. Is it because teaching ability needs to be established at the junior level, and impressiveness is indicative of that ability?

    Reply
  12. Keith DeRose

    Mr. Lam: I can only speak for myself, but when a department I'm in decides to do junior hiring, I always advocate not doing convention interviews. (I'm sometimes over-ruled, of course.) I don't think they are good indicators of much of anything, including teaching ability. I don't oppose job talks. I don't put much stock in them, but I think they're worth something. If hiring departments are really interested in teaching ability, I think they would do well to have candidates guest-teach a class, and observe them. That may a great indicator of teaching ability (nervousness on the part of students & the candidate, etc.), but seems to me much better than the alternatives.

    Reply
  13. Keith

    "may a great" should be "may not be a great"

    Reply
  14. Fritz Warfield

    Except in the rare case where the candidate is well suited for guest teaching the particular course they will be tossed into, I think the guest teaching thing isn't such a good thing to do our students. It's one thing to have an epistemology candidate guest teach in an epistemology course covering a central topic that day; quite another to have a candidate teach, well, whatever happens to be going on that week in an intro course with little or no knowledge of what's been covered earlier in the term.

    About convention interviews: one thing I think I've learned at them in the past is what *else* a candidate knows about and can talk about (besides her thesis work). It's not always easy to tell from an entry level candidate's dossier whether she is a narrow specialist or has wide ranging knowledg of many sub-fields.

    Reply
  15. Keith DeRose

    Should be able to find some class that's being offered that, with perhaps a little juggling of the schedule, the candidate can teach a meeting of. Not a perfect test, but the best I know of.

    Sometimes a candidate’s dossier makes a good case that they’re a successful teacher, citing such evidence as consistently good evaluations (which are limited in their value for reasons outline by Michael Huemer at home.sprynet.com/~owl1/sef.htm, but can be part of a decent over-all case), and positive, convincing reports from faculty who have observed the candidate teaching. But sometimes there are candidates whose dossiers leave you as an evaluator worried about their teaching. I’m thinking primarily in terms of what, if anything, can be done in such cases, and it’s about such situations that I’m saying the guest appearance is the best thing I know of. (Though maybe it could be worth having as an additional consideration even in cases where the dossier looks OK as far as teaching goes.) Amazingly (or at least it’s amazing to me), lots of evaluators in such cases use performance at convention interviews as a guide. Certainly, the guest appearance is better than *that*, don’t you agree? (Basketball try-outs are far from a perfect test for how someone will perform on the basketball team, the try-out situation being so very different from game situations, playing with players totally unknown to you, etc. Still, basketball try-outs are a better way to judge who's likely to do well on the basketball team than, say, tossing around a football! Likewise, seeing how well someone teaches a class, even in the somewhat unusual setting of a one-time guest appearance, is likely a better test of, well, how well a candidate is likely to do teaching classes than is a convention interview.)

    Reply
  16. Fritz Warfield

    Keith,
    I certainly agree that convention interviews and/or job talks are terrible ways to try to evaluate teaching ability / promise. And I agree that "guest teaching" is a better way to do it. But other than at large departments (like mine) or mid-sized one with lots of courses (like yours) I think few places will have appropriate "guest" slots available. The last two years I've heard stories of "guest teachers" thrown into classes covering material they've never heard of (let alone taught before or even *read* before) with little advance prep time and no background filled in about what students had already covered. But maybe that only speaks against *bad* guest teaching practices – perhaps it could be better run.

    Reply
  17. Brian Weatherson

    I have negative feelings about guest teaching because the only time I had to do that as part of an interview, the class was at 9am, and I'd got in from a cross-country flight at around 1.30am the night before. I don't remember being super energetic for that one!

    And I didn't get the job.

    I agree with Fritz though, stories like these, and what Keith refers to, speak mainly against *bad* guest teaching practices.

    Reply
  18. Josh Rayman

    Maybe the reason that some candidates are unable to teach material appropriate to the given class is that they do not have broad historical preparation in philosophy, which is likely to happen when your graduate program requires somewhere between 9 and 12 graduate classes for the Ph.D., as with numerous highly-ranked programs.

    As for what qualifications should be most important, we should first ask what qualifications have been most important in the field, and analysis of the fifty Gourmet Report schools shows (and this is supported by various sociological studies of academia) that pedigree is by far the most important factor. If you look at recent Harvard hires, for instance, you will see in some cases very low publication totals, but one of the 'right' schools–Princeton, U.C. Berkeley, Chicago. Many of the 'top' schools hire junior faculty with one article publication. So, we can then speculate as to what sets apart the numerous candidates from the 'right' schools, but that amounts to a much smaller effect than pedigree. It is obvious that this is a poor way of constructing a 'meritocracy', since admissions standards are roughly equal at many schools with vastly different placement records, and publication records of candidates from pedigreed institutions do not account for the disparity, despite the advantages in publishing given to students from these institutions.

    Reply

Designed with WordPress