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Somewhat uncharacteristically, I don’t think I have the energy for a knock-down-drag-out fight on this subject, even though I find…
14 responses to “Open thread on issues in the profession for the week of March 2”
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In her analysis of recent job market data, Carolyn Dicey Jennings found statistical bias favoring candidates who were female and who had a high prestige PhD: they had fewer publications on average than candidates who were male or had a lower prestige PhD. An anonymous metablogger on PM3B looked again at the 2012/13 spreadsheet which CDJ made available and compared this with information from PGR rankings of PhD programs. Call the Alpha candidates those with PhDs from programs with mean PGR rank 3.5-5.0, and the Betas those from programs with rank 2.0-3.4. For candidates getting a first postdoc or tenure track job, the average publication counts look like this:
###### Alpha females (0.6)
########### Beta females (1.1)
############# Alpha males (1.3)
################# Beta males (1.7)Observe that the most privileged group on the job market are the Alpha females, who have on average only a third of the publications of the Beta males. The gender bias is so robust that it trumps prestige bias, with Alpha male candidates outpublishing Beta female candidates. This contradicts what feminists have been telling us about biases in hiring favoring men over women with regard to personal merit. In fact, women face less expectation than men to publish in order to get a junior position in philosophy.
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Shorter comment (1): "Assume peer review is blind and perfect. Take publication quantity to be the only metric of candidate quality. Then some things follow (no, I won't tell you what _n_ is)."
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Feminists claim that the philosophy job market is biased against women in favor of men. This is not reflected in the gender ratio of hires in comparison with that of PhDs.
The opposite bias is seen in the publication counts, and this does not depend on claiming this to be the "only metric of candidate quality". For 2012/13, the average counts are:
Alpha females: 0.6 (N = 49)
Beta females: 1.1 (N = 37)
Alpha males: 1.3 (N = 114)
Beta males: 1.7 (N = 84)You can go through CDJ's spreadsheet online and try to work out different values if you like. So where is the statistic justifying the claim that female candidates need a "market boost" over men?
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Anon 2, you're perfectly welcome to find some other measure of candidate quality, track it across genders, and use it to show that women are in fact disadvantaged on the job market. For example, maybe they teach 3 more courses, on average, than men do. Or maybe they give 5 more conference presentations, or have letters twice as good. We don't have that data. Do you have some, or are you just insisting there is some? Or do you think it doesn't matter what the data says–women are disadvantages anyway?
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*disadvantaged
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An almost interesting development: the profound argument against sympathy for the plight of the adjunct at Bleeding Heart Libertarians http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2015/02/national-adjunct-walkout-day-should-we-feel-sorry-for-adjuncts/ appears to have been removed without explanation. Nothing seems to have been posted in its stead.
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Something different:
Could we speak a little (BL: could we have a thread/post?) about the logistics and ethics of hiring timelines? I.e. what are the standards and the reasons why? It seems to me that schools have an obligation to give a candidate a reasonable amount of time to decide, and candidates (on this flip side) have a responsibility to the school and to their fellow candidates to respond in as timely a manner as is possible. It's not good for anyone to bully a candidate into accepting an offer with a short timeline — It is a bad way to begin a relationship with a colleague (by holding their future hostage) and it would seem to lead to high turnover.
The problem may be made worse by the decoupling of hiring timelines from the JFP and the APA.
But I'm curious — what is the typical time between offer and decision deadline? What do schools hope to achieve with short timelines?
BL COMMENT: If it isn't pursued here, I will run a separate thread on it, but probably not until next week for personal reasons.
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This is an excellent article: http://chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes/190351/
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Any such thread should take into account the vastly disparate ways the US handles academic philosophy jobs vs. other countries. For example, last year, my now-university advertised a position in May with a deadline at the end of June; I received my invitation to interview about 10 days later, and interviewed 10 days after that; I got an email offer that evening and a formal offer early the next week (the interview was on a Friday), and we came to a mutually satisfactory agreement a week after that. I didn't really have the luxury of deliberating longer if I wanted to have sufficient time to apply for a UK visa before the position started Oct. 1.
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Huffington Post – College article cites the Marquette-McAdams Incident and the Salaita Affair as two of the 10 worst campus free speech offenders of 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/10-worst-for-free-speech_b_6769564.html
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'Came to a mutually satisfactory agreement a week after that'.
That seems extremely leisurely by comparison with my experience in the UK: I was offered a (permanent) job on a Wednesday (the day of the interview) and told that a decision was needed by the end of the week. Because I'd travelled from abroad and wouldn't have spoken to my partner face-to-face, I asked for some extra time, and was grudgingly allowed until 10am on the following Monday.
Visa issues weren't relevant – I'm a UK citizen. I turned the job down, at least in part because of the time-frame in which a decision was expected. (I knew I wanted the job, and I liked the city, but there were questions about what kinds of educational provision would have been able in the area for my son, who is autistic. It's possible that I might have been able to resolve these if I'd had more time.)
Of course, one can always say: research the city thoroughly before going to interview. But sometimes, the kind of information that would be helpful for this purpose isn't easily available.
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This just occurred to me, and I still haven't convinced myself that it isn't crazy, but I wonder if the APA or some other organization has some stake in preventing AOS monopolies. I just saw the announcement of Shafer-Landau's lateral movement to UNC. UNC was already a top place for metaethics, and now it will be even stronger. Wisconsin will largely fall off the map in that category, so future students interested in metaethics basically will need to cross Wisconsin off their list and put a big star by UNC now. Given the finite sizes of incoming cohorts, fewer students will have access to top scholars than when the wealth was more evenly spread, as it were. The analogy to sports may be unhelpful, but recall when NBA commissioner David Stern blocked the Chris Paul trade a few years ago, even though all of the effected parties had agreed to it (the title-hopeful Lakers were set to acquire Paul from the middling Hornets). Stern's interest was in protecting parity and not allowing top teams to horde all the talent. I wonder if there is any similar interest at stake here. I'm not suggesting that anyone has the power to do anything about top programs picking off all the top scholars. I just wonder if someone should have that power. And I don't mean to aim any particular fire at this case. Perhaps someone of similar stature at UNC is on their way out, I have no knowledge of such things. But the point seems interesting regardless.
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Anonymous Graduate Student,
A lot of people (rightly, in my estimation) thought that David Stern significantly overstepped his authority in blocking the Paul trade to the Lakers (something he did with regularity during his tenure as commissioner). More generally, it's doubtful that one could ever institute a more just system (in some domain) by copying the moves of professional sports league commissioners. But if philosophy does go that way, consider this my application for the job. I'll be happy to work for 1/100th of Roger Goodell's salary.
But seriously, having a centralized body that could have stopped Shafer-Landau (or anyone else) from moving seems seriously problematic.
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Question for anyone who knows: I have been attempting to find out, did Professor Salaita sign an employment contract or other legally binding agreement with the University of Illinois? If he did not, then did the university undertake some other promisory action sufficient to provide the basis for his lawsuit against them (& the donors)? Are there other relevant issues? Is there a link to a reliable source of information on this case? Thanks in advance.
BL COMMENT: He signed an acceptance of the Dean's job offer. The legal issues, including the contractual ones, were discussed in some detail back in the fall–google Salaita on this site.
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