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On being “over-qualified” for an untenured tenure-track job

Brian Leiter

A philosopher writes:

Here are some related questions for a thread on your blog:

(1) How much does having a strong publication record hurt one's chances for getting a job at less research-prestigious institutions? For instance, if a recent PhD has five publications in respected places will this count much against getting a TT job in "the middle of nowhere"? Will hiring committees be inclined to pass over such a candidate, thinking that he or she will just leave in a couple years due to the strong publication record? Or have hiring committees realized that the lack of philosophy jobs makes this strategy a mistake?

(2) Is there much resistance to hiring an associate prof for an assistant job, or a full prof for an associate job, or a full prof for an assistant job? Should there be? Given the horrible job market, an associate or full prof who needs to move from their current position may have few options other than taking an assistant job. 

I'll offer a few thoughts/surmises, and then open it for comments from readers.

On #1, I suspect it is still the case that schools that are non-research-intensive will wonder about the commitment of a junior candidate whose publication record is too strong.  I'm also not sure this is irrational, though it may be a question of degree.  But publication in top-tier journals is the most important credential for professional advancement and opportunities, so a rookie who arrives with articles in top-tier journals is, indeed, probably likely to have and probably seek other positions.  It's importnat to remember that at state schools in particular, there is never certainty that a line that becomes vacant will be authorized to be re-filled–and that may especially be true when it was just filled two years ago, and now the candidate hired has decamped.  That might make a Dean skeptical about whether the department can do appropriate hiring, even if that is an unfair suspicion.

On #2, there is sometimes such resistance, but mostly I expect for budgetary reasons:  if the Dean authorzies a junior position, and it is filled with someone who will likely seek early tenure given his/her record, that may present budgetary problems for the Dean.   Similarly, a Dean may be skeptical that someone qualified for a tenured position will really accept an untenured tenure-track position, thinking the candidate will try to negotiate a higher rank from the start–something which, again, may not be feasible as a matter of the budget.

What do readers think about these questions?

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33 responses to “On being “over-qualified” for an untenured tenure-track job”

  1. Daniel Kaufman

    We are such a school and we are currently hiring. I don't know what your philosopher means by a "mistake," as it is an employers' market. We have 257 applicants for our humble little tenure-track job.

    Our advertisement explicitly indicates that our most important criterion is teaching experience and excellence, as well as teaching-breadth — i.e. the capacity to teach courses across the curriculum — and the capacity and enthusiasm for teaching general education courses. I was in a top graduate program, heavily invested in the philosophy of language, back in the 1990's, and I can tell you that some of the hottest researchers there couldn't have taught Plato's Meno or Montaigne's Essays better than one of our per course faculty (if at all).

    The reality of working at an institution like ours is that the teaching load is heavy — 4/4 — and overwhelmingly gen ed. There are no graduate students, which means that all the grading will be done by the faculty. I had several hundred papers to grade, just at finals time, this semester. The overall number was even larger. The number of majors is small and hardly any of those majoring in philosophy will go on to graduate school.

    So, what sort of faculty do we need? Excellent teachers. Teachers who don't mind the bulk of their course load being introductory level and the majority of their students being non-philosophers. Teachers who are patient enough to teach an academically unskilled population. And teachers who can teach a wide variety of courses, as they will need to do a substantial amount of juggling. Ours is a small department — just five full time faculty — and will not get any bigger.

    It has not been my experience — over twenty years teaching, now, and more than that if you include all the teaching I did as an adjunct in graduate school — that the sort of person I've just described is typically the research powerhouse. Or put it the other way, it has not been my experience that research powerhouses are particularly good at the sort of work I've just described. So, that's not the sort of person we're looking for. And not only does this not strike me as a "mistake," it seems … well … bloody obvious. At least if one knows both levels of the profession, and I do.

    Finally, with respect to the second question, it's just flat-out unethical to keep pumping out Ph.D.'s into a profession in which schools like mine are getting almost 300 applicants for a single job. Since newly minted Ph.D.'s are going to have neither the teaching records nor the publication records of those who are already associate professors, they will have zero chance of competing, if those associate professors are now going to be in the entry-level job pool.

    Reply
  2. e.

    An anecdote to add to point #2: The chair of the search committee for an Assistant Prof position once told me that he had been instructed by the Dean to consider only recent PhDs. The reason was budgetary, but with a slight twist on what Brian imagined. Given the university's agreements with the faculty association, a more experienced hire would need to be paid a higher salary commensurate with her/his experience. Even if a more experienced candidate were willing to start at the lowest rank, accept the usual starting salary for that rank, and wait the normal time until tenure, that would not be permitted.

    Reply
  3. Daniel Kaufman

    e. What you describe would protect newly minted Ph.D.s from having to compete for entry-level jobs with those more advanced faculty, but only at schools with strong unions. It wouldn't have much effect in a union-busting/hostile state like mine.

    Reply
  4. Fritz McDonald

    I have been involved in several faculty searches at my university (Oakland University in Michigan) and, in the case of my employer, a very good record of publishing has always been much more of a plus than a minus. I'm not sure if that's representative or not. Instead of each of us offering anecdotes, a poll of people who have done hiring might be useful.

    My experience from being on the market about ten years ago is that a lot of places offering jobs that were once teaching-focused are more and more emphasizing research while hiring. So a research record might count more than you expect when going for a job at institutions other than highly regarded traditional research universities.

    One more thing: Don't publish all of your good stuff, though! You might need some of that to get tenured, if you get a tenure-track job.

    Reply
  5. Guy

    I think publications will generally be looked at favourably even at Colleges that focus on undergraduate teaching. We certainly do look at them favourably at my State School. People with publications will get tenure, unless they are complete idiots. Further, contrary to what D. Kaufman says, I find active researchers are the best teachers. They bring enthusiasm and engagement with the profession into the classroom. My non-researching colleagues are complete duds, often giving poor advice to students.
    On the second issue, our institution, though not my department, have hired a number of people from R1 schools who failed to get tenure. They have fine careers here, provided they can (I) get over the fact that they were not tenured in their "dream job", and (ii) accept that our students require and expect more feedback and encouragement, even as they lack skills, than students at more selective schools.

    Reply
  6. Daniel Kaufman

    All of us have to be "active researchers" to some extent. We receive annual evaluations, even after tenure and promotion, and if you don't do research, you will fare poorly on that front. That said, to really be in the top of one's field, research-wise, today, typically entails a substantial narrowing of focus, often at the expense of breadth and certainly, the sort of facility in teaching across the history of philosophy and the various subject-areas, as required in general education. I had professors at my top graduate program who were the leading scholars in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and the like, who would have been quite clueless, if they found themselves suddenly required to teach Epictetus, Lucretius, Erasmus, Montaigne, Rousseau, or much else outside of their area. And I am hardly the first person to make such an observation.

    Entirely separate from the matter of knowledge, it is also the case that to be at the top of one's field research-wise requires the commitment of an amount of time to research and writing that one simply does not have, with the sorts of teaching loads we carry. Such a person, then, would become disgruntled quickly, a situation that we have experienced more than once.

    Reply
  7. Adam Rigoni

    To counter anecdote with anecdote, I've had a number of top researching professors who were excellent at teaching introductory courses and thinkers outside of their speciality. I'm not sure that covering someone like Rousseau for a class or two in an intro course is all that difficult for even very specialized folks. The point about the teaching load seems more accurate: if you are used to having a lot of research time, a 4/4 can be a bit of a shock.

    Reply
  8. V. Alan White

    There's an ongoing talent surplus relative to the TT positions for our discipline, both on the research and teaching side. What that means is that R1s will have continuing good opportunity to get really good people tilted to R-excellence and that everyone else will get the rest. Many going through grad schools now know that, and also know the numbers of R1 positions available in the foreseeable future relative to teaching-emphasis ones. That means that those outside the top 20 or so–the majority of grad students–also know that honing teaching skills is a prerequisite to being competitive on the market. But my experience on hiring committees in the last 15+ years of my 35+ year career at a 4/4 teaching institution shows me that plenty of Rutgers, Princeton, NYU, etc. students are hedging bets by applying to my humble institution. We've hired very few such graduates, but the ones we have adjusted well to our requirements of teaching vs. scholarship. It completely depends on how one wishes to be a professor in light of the present challenges of opportunity. I'm a nobody in the profession, but though I have some recognized success in the classroom by awards and such, I also have diligently pursued to publish, and succeeded in some top-tier venues. So, I'm happy–nobody will remember me in the big picture, but I had the privilege to be part of what I hope will continue to be a profession dedicated to the public good on all fronts–pushing forward values of enlightenment and personal virtue. Just today I went to an appointment for a medical procedure and met a nurse practitioner whom I had taught Bioethics 25 years ago–and her professional conduct left me proud to have played a small part of her career. That's what it's all about, whether we know it–as I luckily did today–or not.

    Reply
  9. Charles Pigden

    Ambitious young US philosophers, worried that their shiny list of publications might actually do them damage on the job market, should seriously consider an overseas post. In Britain, in Australia and New Zealand , and, I think, in many other countries, research in incentivized by funding regimes such as the British REF and the New Zealand PBRF. Universities get to supplement the income that they derive from teaching (roughly based on student bums-on-seats) by top-ups based on their research performance. The consequence is that although we ALSO value teaching, at universities such a Otago, we would not think of hiring somebody without research potential, of which a track record of stellar publications is obviously the best index. Our two most recent junior hires, Zach Weber and Kirk Michaelian (one American the other Canadian), already had impressive arrays of publication when they came to us, and, apart from the good they are likely to do us with respect the PBRF , they have also lined the Department’s and the University’s pockets by securing big research grants (they are called Marsdens in New Zealand). Many Australasian universities are ‘in the middle of nowhere’ at least by standards of a (say) New Yorker or a Bostonian. (Dunedin where I live is a city of 1000,000 and is five hours drive from the next ‘big’ city, Christchurch, which has about 300,000 inhabitants.) So if small-city life attracts you, and you want to go somewhere where your research achievements will be appreciated, perhaps a non-US post is what you should be looking for.

    According to Dan Kaufman ‘to really be in the top of one's field, research-wise, today, typically entails a substantial narrowing of focus, often at the expense of breadth and certainly, the sort of facility in teaching across the history of philosophy and the various subject-areas, as required in general education’ I can only say that this simply does not square with my experience. I have known plenty of people at the top of their fields, notable for their breadth of interests and competence. Just a run through of some present and former colleagues proves the point. Greg Currie started out as the Co-editor of Lakatos’s papers (philosophy of maths, philosophy of science) and went on to publish a book on Frege (cited by Soames), and now writes about the ontology of art, about simulation theory in the philosophy of mind and about the philosophy of fiction in which fields he is highly prominent. Graham Oddie started out with a book on truthlikeness (a fairly recondite topic in the philosophical logic and the philosophy of science on which he continues to publish), edited a book ‘Justice, Ethics and New Zealand Society’ in which he has a co-authored paper on Hobbes and the Treaty of Waitangi, and has a book on applied ethics and another on meta-ethics: ‘Value, Reality and Desire’. He is not short of citations. Heather Dyke (co-editor of the Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Time, hence prominent in this area) has a book ‘Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy’ which is partly metaphysics and partly meta-philosophy, and includes chapters on meta-ethics as well as an important paper critiquing analytic metaphysics ‘What is Analytic Metaphysics For?’ and she also has an interest in the philosophy of sport. James Maclaurin is chiefly a philosopher of biology, having written on innateness, fitness, theoretical morphology, biological diversity and universal Darwinism) and in the application of evolutionary principles to other domains such as the philosophy of time and economics. He is the co-author with Kim Sterelny of ‘What Is Biodiversity’ (*the* book on the topic). But he has collaborated with Heather Dyke on projects in metaphysics and metaphilosophy including their joint paper ‘What Is Analytic Metaphysics For?’ and with Greg Dawes on empirically based Philosophy of Religion, culminating in their co-edited volume ‘A New Science of Religion?’. He is currently working on the ethics of flying. The idea that it is difficult to be eminent in any area of philosophy without becoming a narrow specialist is true only in the sense that it is difficult to be eminent any area of philosophy. Those who pull this off are often notable for their breadth and versatility. Furthermore, speaking only of my colleagues (as opposed to famous philosophers I have known) I work in a rather small department in which we all have to teach outside our research specialities if we are to cover a reasonable proportion of the bases. Since we are also high-achieving research department, I can confirm that it just isn’t true that you cannot become eminent in any domain without losing the ability to teach a wide range of courses.

    Now it may be that my experience is atypical, and that I have lived on an island of research-eminent (relative) polymaths, not noticing the surrounding sea of narrow specialists. On the other hand it may be that I am unusual only in having spent my career in the company of high-achievers, not in having spent it in the company of high-achievers who are also non-narrow. But if the research-eminent philosophers I have met over the last forty years are anything to go by, I would say that non-narrowness is the norm.

    Reply
  10. Daniel Kaufman

    Well, this is lovely. I feel very much the same way.

    Reply
  11. Daniel Kaufman

    We can all name names and it would remain anecdotal. (Since you are praising, it is easy for you to do so. Not so much so for me, given what I'm saying.) Suffice it to say that I studied with and did research for some of the top names in the philosophy of language, logic, and mind — and by "top" I really mean top — and their knowledge of the history of philosophy — not to mention the breadth of topics across the discipline — was meager.

    But why get all wrapped up in what can only be an anecdotal exercise? It was only one point in the several that I made and not the most important one. The real issue is the teaching load and the overwhelming amount of Gen Ed. You may know a lot of hot shot researchers who wouldn't mind spending 3/3 of their 4/4 load teaching General Education, but I do not. There is also the matter of the region we are in, which is the buckle of the Bible Belt. So, what we have found at our university is that our most successful hires are those who (a) have done and don't mind doing a lot of undergraduate teaching and (b) are from the region and have their Ph.D's from regional schools.

    I should also say that I have a number of close friends at British universities who have spoken very darkly of Britain's research-incentive scheme.

    Reply
  12. JR

    Here is a related possibility that I worry about. Suppose you publish a paper in a top 10 journal, whatever that means. You have perhaps just sent a signal to many schools that you're a flight risk. But schools that hope to hire the best researcher they can get have their pick among candidates with several papers in such journals. A candidate with just one publication of that kind may not even get a second glance. The result is an absurd predicament in which you may be better off not publishing a paper in Ethics unless you can also publish in, say, P&PA, Nous, and Phil Imprint. And all that before you get a tenure-track job.

    Reply
  13. Sandoval

    I have to agree with Kaufman to a large degree. My experience on multiple hiring committees and resulting hires is that significant publication records indicate that my school is nothing but a stop on a journey. We then have to fight to refund the position and it is not always successful. As to the claim by another that the best researchers are the best teachers is laughable. My PhD program had numerous "top" publishers yet few could teach. Heaven forbid if the said group had to teach an Intro or Logic course because students paid the price.

    We hire people with broad teaching experience and that are a fit for our students. That fit matters more than anything in my estimation.

    Reply
  14. Charles Pigden

    Dan Kaufman is right that I have him at a disadvantage since it is it is easer to name names when you are saying something nice than when you are saying something nasty. And I am of course saying something nice, namely that high –achieving research philosophers tend to be characterized by breadth as well as depth. But I have in fact named only a tiny fraction if the names I could name in support of my claim. Virtually NONE of the high-achieving research philosophers that I have known since I went up to Cambridge forty years ago (and I have known quite lot) have been the kind of narrow specialists that Kaufmann depicts, *and that includes the logicians*. I accept of course that Dan has known some high-achieving narrow specialists and therefore that such people exist. Nonetheless, it is worth insisting that high-achieving researchers are not necessarily, not always, and not even *usually* like this. The worry with Dan’s false generalization is that it supports an inference that is not only fallacious but dangerous since it may be doing gifted young philosophers out of a job: ‘X shows evidence of being a rising star in area Y. Just look at all those high-end publications! *Therefore* she is a narrow specialist and won’t be any good [or is unlikely to be any good] at 100-level undergraduate teaching, which is our bread and butter. So we should not hire her’ . I don't want fallacy based on falsehood to be doing down talent.

    BL COMMENT: May I make the suggestion that many "high-achieving" philosophers have quite broad philosophical interests, but that is different from having broad competence in teaching philosophy to undergraduates. The truth is that most high-achieving philosophers are not very good undergraduate teachers, let alone good undergraduate teachers across a broad range of topics.

    Reply
  15. Daniel Kaufman

    Brian: Thanks.

    Charles: This is the third search committee that I've chaired, the fourth I've been on, and I've also been Department Head during a search. I am at a very typical, large, American public university, in the lower Midwest. Our experience, overwhelmingly, across any number of disciplines, including philosophy, has been that our most successful hires are from the region, attended regional schools, and typically are not the top researchers from our applicant pools, but have substantial teaching experience. Our least successful hires have been from the Princetons and University of Virginias and Harvards of the world, with impressive publications but typically less teaching if any at all — they have been graduate assistants, rather than full-blown adjuncts, in charge of their own courses. (This was one of the reasons I was able to get a job, straight out of graduate school, in what was also a very tough market — I had been teaching my own courses already for a good four or five years.)

    These sorts of folks typically do not stay. (The one I can think of who did, did so, because he received a named Chair.)
    They typically have zero interest in teaching gen ed students or even undergraduates at all. They find it difficult to adjust their assessment standards and criteria to an appropriate level, given the typical ACT scores of our entering students. And while they are hotshots in their areas of expertise, they are no more knowledgeable across the discipline than people from far less fancy places, and because of their attitude towards general education and undergraduate teaching, more generally, tend to be worse teachers for us — as well as less popular teachers — than their less fancy counterparts.

    This is *my* experience and that of my colleagues. You can deny it. You can say whatever you like about my alleged "false generalizations," but it is my (very typical) experience, nonetheless. And you aren't going to convince me otherwise, by somehow suggesting that your experience is more representative than mine. First, I doubt that it is. And second, *both* our accounts are based on anecdotal evidence — and one anecdote is about as good as another.

    Finally, maybe it isn't such a terrible thing that some of the more "blue collar" philosophers have a chance in the job market too, here and there. Aren't we liberals supposed to care about the lower classes?

    Reply
  16. Adam Rigoni

    Brian, I agree that most high achieving philosophers are not good undergraduate teachers, but I think that follows from a more general principle that has nothing to do achievement level. I don't get Kaufman's remarks about lower classes, since we were talking about publications and not pedigree. Search committees should focus on evidence of good teaching when hiring for a teaching position. That's obvious. However, the following committee decision strikes me as mistaken: Candidate A and Candidate B have equivalent teaching experience/credentials, but Candidate A has published more so she's probably a worse teacher. Lets hire B.

    Reply
  17. Daniel Kaufman

    See Sandoval's important comment above. If we hire someone who is a significant flight risk, we may very well not get another chance but have the faculty line frozen instead.

    Those who have serious research ambitions will not be happy with the teaching load or the teaching demographic at a school like ours. And given the precariousness of our position in the university more generally, we cannot afford to take such chances. Lose just one faculty line and we no longer can cover our course offerings.

    Reply
  18. WSC

    "maybe it isn't such a terrible thing that some of the more 'blue collar' philosophers have a chance in the job market too"

    In my experience (fifth year on the job market with impeccable teaching qualifications and decent research record), there are very few opportunities for "blue collar" philosophers. Even so-called teaching-oriented departments are jumping at the chance for research-focused candidates. Maybe Daniel Kaufman's department is an exception, but if you follow the hires every year as I have, you can see that those who get the teaching jobs now are just as likely not to have any (or much) teaching experience, while they often have at least one shiny publication. I suspect the days of the "blue collar" philosopher are numbered (or already over).

    BL COMMENT: If anyone has systematic data that bears this out, please post a link. Thanks.

    Reply
  19. Charles Pigden

    Dan the claim you made that I deny is this: ‘to really be in the top of one's field, research-wise, today, typically *entails* a substantial narrowing of focus, often at the expense of breadth and certainly, the sort of facility in teaching across the history of philosophy and the various subject-areas, as required in general education’. No. It is flat-out false ‘that to really be in the top of ones field, research-wise, today, typically *entails* a substantial narrowing of focus, often at the expense of breadth’. Why? Because there are plenty of philosophers, young and old ‘in [or on their way to] the top of their fields research-wise’ who are interested in, and work on, a wide range of topics. In fact, I find it hard to recall any really successful research philosophers who are NOT like this as even the ones whose research is relatively concentrated are often very good in discussion on topics other than their own. Thus you CAN be distinguished within an area without being narrow, the proof being that SOME people are like this, a point you are (very reluctantly) concede. Furthermore it is not even all that difficult, except in the sense that being distinguished is difficult, since AMONG the distinguished MANY are non-narrow. I don’t need to claim (although in my experience this almost always the case) that MOST high-achieving researchers are non-narrow. It is enough to refute your generalization that MANY are, and there are quite enough examples to prove *that* point. So we are not on a logical par in this respect. For your generalization to be false mine does not have to be true. It just has to have a reasonable number of true instances. When it comes to a universal generalization saying that something never occurs, one true anecdote is enough to refute it. When it comes to a rather more hedged generalization of the kind you are propounding saying that something *seldom* occurs, *a reasonable number* of true anecdotes is enough to refute it. And that your generalization *is* false is easily shown by the many counterexamples that I can adduce. Since it is possible and indeed not difficult to be distinguished within a research area without being narrow, then it is hard to see why being ‘in [or on your way to] the top of your field, research-wise, today’ should disqualify a person from ‘teaching across the history of philosophy and the various subject-areas, as required in general education’.

    Dan’s generalization then is false. What MAY be true however is something different. It MAY be true that the graduates of some top US programs with impressive strings of publications, are not much cop as classroom teachers a) because the are not taught the necessary skills and b) because the *are* taught (not explicitly of course) to disvalue low-level undergraduate teaching. But don’t confuse research excellence with the snotty attitudes inculcated at some research-excellent schools. And don’t turn away talented researchers simply on the assumption that BECAUSE they are talented researchers they won’t be any good (or are unlikely to be any good) in front of an introductory class. There are plenty of people who are both.

    As for all this nonsense about blue-collar philosophers, this is a bit rich coming from a graduate of the CUNY PhD program to a graduate of a PhD program which I suspect Dan has never heard of till now, namely la Trobe. (Indeed the world ‘program’ is a bit misleading in this connection since I have a research-only PhD for which formal instruction was confined to the occasional chat with my supervisor.) When it comes to PhD programs (though not, perhaps, in other areas) *Dan* is the privileged metropolitan and I am the ‘blue-collar’ philosopher from the down-list non-Leiterrific school. But privilege is beside the point: I am not arguing (as Dan seems to suggest) that a fancy pedigree *should* be a factor in in hiring decisions – indeed, I have argued often and at perhaps inordinate length that it should not. I am arguing that *having a good record of publications* (which is not the same thing as having a fancy pedigree) should not count *against* a person, since he is simply wrong in suggesting that there is a strong connection between research achievement and intellectual narrowness.

    Reply
  20. Ben Saunders

    I'm unclear on the assumptions being made about the connection between research and teaching. Maybe it's true that there's no correlation between research quality and quality as a teacher. I expect most of us can point to great researchers who are also great teachers and others who are useless teachers. But all this means is that one's publication record should have no bearing on one's application whatsoever.

    For research publications to harm someone's application – or for it to be rational for them to do so – something stronger is needed. It would have to be the case that one's quality as a researcher is inversely correlated with one's quality as a teacher (at least, within some given range). I don't see any reason to assume that someone with a paper in JPhil or Mind (or whatever) is likely to be a less good teacher than someone without.

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  21. Adam Rigoni

    Then it seems the reason you disfavor is those candidates is because they are less likely to stay, not because they are better teachers. That seems reasonable, but it's a different reason.

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  22. Daniel Kaufman

    Adam: There are a number of reasons, not just one. It is both the case that such people are flight risks *and* that we've found them to be poorer teachers of undergraduates and especially gen ed courses. The reasons are pretty straightforward, as I indicated.

    Charles: You're a bit excitable for my taste, so I'm not going to continue going round and round with you. I'm happy to leave the discussion as it is and let readers decide for themselves. I'm hardly the only one who has made this observation, as Sandoval's comment indicates. Hope you have a Happy New Year.

    Reply
  23. Adam Rigoni

    Just to be clear, I don't disagree that having publications indicates flight risk. I do disagree that it indicates being a poor teacher. Unfortunately, the anecdotes of "Sandoval," whoever he or she is, don't really move me, but I guess that matters not. Your people are, after all, the ones on the hriring committees. Perhaps Sanadovl would like to disclose which university he teachers at, so any high publishing potential candidates don't piss away their time and money applying there? I mean if we were really interested in transparency, perhaps places where publications actively hurt candidates should put that info in the job posting. Something like, "the ideal candidate is an excellent teacher without little to no evidence* of ambitions in research."

    *I say "evidence of" because clearly a number successful folks at such universities do actually produce research, so it's not like they lack the ability or desire.

    Reply
  24. Daniel Kaufman

    Adam: You are trying to reduce a complex process to a few simple variables, which simply cannot be done. I wrote what I wrote because the original post was about a specific sense of "over-qualification."

    If you don't understand why a person whose ambition is to be a major player in contemporary philosophical research tends not to be the best teacher of general education courses, as part of a heavy teaching load, with relatively unskilled students, I don't know what to tell you. It seems quite obvious to me, as well as to many others who teach at schools like mine and have been involved in the hiring process.

    We are *very* explicit as to our criteria in our advertisement; that our main concern is with the breadth and quality of a person's teaching experience, with special focus on general education. Indeed, we explicitly indicate that we will accept a person with virtually *any* research interest/background, providing these criteria regarding teaching are met.

    I'm afraid your advice to applicants is largely pointless in this market. As I said, we got over 250 applications, regardless of who and what we are. These folks are literally blanket-bombing in the desperate hope of getting a position. (It's interesting to note that entirely absent from any of the criticisms of what I've written here, is any comment about the ethical outrage of deliberately granting more and more Ph.D.'s in a market that is so demonstrably oversaturated.)

    One last thing, with regard to Charles Pidgen's rant. I never identified *myself* as a "blue collar philosopher." I was explicitly and quite clearly speaking about those on the job market, whose credentials are strongest in teaching, as opposed to research. My point just was — and remains — that we shouldn't be so unhappy that some people with less impressive publication records, also have a chance in the market. The yeoman-teacher who may have amassed a lot of experience and skill teaching at the introductory level at local community colleges, versus the sort of research focused person who is used to and desires more rarefied environments and clienteles.

    Reply
  25. Charles Pigden

    Dan Kaufman says that ‘to really be in the top of one's field, research-wise, today, *typically entails* a substantial narrowing of focus, often at the expense of breadth’. [Note the terminology: ‘ones *field*’ which seems to imply that the typical researcher will have only *one* field of enquiry, a sentiment open to doubt.] By this I take it that he means to make two related claims: a) that it is very difficult (indeed almost impossible) to be a successful research philosopher without being a narrow specialist and b) that in consequence of this, philosophers who are simultaneously successful research philosophers but NOT narrow specialists are few and far between. (If A entails B then you can’t have A without B. ‘Typically’ softens this, presumably to the claim that it is *very difficult* or *almost impossible* to have A without B and hence that that A [research success] is seldom to be found without B [narrowness].) So if Dan is correct the *vast majority* of research-successful philosophers are one-trick ponies and one-note charlies, so much so indeed that at least in their early years cannot be trusted to teach introductory classes on subjects other than their own. Dan complains that my response to this claim is a little lively. Perhaps he is right. I guess it gets my goat when people self-righteously insist on what seem to me obvious falsehoods. But I would be disingenuous if I did not confess to another reason for finding Dan’s claim annoying. It is hard not to construe it as a personal insult. You see I am a fairly successful research philosopher myself (articles on the Stanford, articles in Oxford, Cambridge and Wily-Blackwell Companions, that sort of thing); I am at least close to ‘the top of my fields research-wise’ (note the plural), and I resent the implication that I am therefore very likely to be to be lacking in breadth, especially as I am not. It is a tough and challenging task writing decent philosophy but what I don’t find particularly difficult – certainly not ‘almost impossible’ – is combining success in one area with writing about subjects outside my primary areas of specialization. I have in fact done this on numerous occasions, and have succeeded in publishing every non-AOS paper that I have ever submitted, starting with my first journal article in 1987. (Of course, what tends to happen when you do this is that your areas of specialization continuously expand.) As for the idea that successful researchers are so narrow that they can’t be trusted to teach outside their areas of specialization, that’s a bit insulting too since I have been teaching outside my initial AOS on a regular basis, and with a tolerable degree of success, for thirty years. Dan might reply that he did not mean to insult me personally when he implied that the vast majority of research-successful philosophers are narrow specialists who can’t be trusted to teach outside their areas of specialization, since, after all, his generalization admits of exceptions. This is as if Trump had responded to an illegal Mexican immigrant who felt insulted by the claim that such persons are often rapists and criminals by insisting that his generalization too admitted of exceptions.

    But insulting or not, Dan is making a factual claim and it is at least *possible* that I am really unusual in this respect, and that the vast majority of successful researcher are indeed narrow specialists. The factual claim that can be refuted by showing that *many* successful researchers are *not* narrow specialists but have a wide range of philosophical interests. Refutation follows in the form of a list of 32 research-active philosophers all of whom I have met and some of whom I have known very well. They are (or were) not just active but successful ‘at [or near] the tops of their fields research-wise’ but as their research interests show, they have all published on a wide range of topics, proving thereby that they are not (or were not) narrow specialists. The research-interests are derived from their web-pages, online CVs or publication-lists or in some case from my personal knowledge of the relevant works. (So this isn’t anecdotal in any pejorative sense.) If I had talked about philosophers that I had not met, the list would have been a great deal longer. But life is short and refuting a mistaken generalization is only worth so much effort.

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  26. Charles Pigden

    Dan might complain that I am being unfair since he cannot retaliate by providing a list of successful but narrowly focused researchers. (There is only so much offence a man can cause without alienating too many colleagues and as my response indicates, he is already walking the line.) But the thing is that even if he could provide an equally long list, it would not prove his point. His claim is that it is *almost impossible* to be a research success without being a narrow specialist (it is hard to see what ‘typically entails’ could mean if it does not mean that) and if a reasonable proportion of successful research-philosophers manage to do this (it does not even have to be a majority), then it is *not* ‘almost impossible’ to be a research success without being a narrow specialist. In which case it is simply false that ‘to really be in the top of one's field, research-wise, today, *typically entails* a substantial narrowing of focus, often at the expense of breadth’ and to such a degree that the philosophers in question are unlikely to be any good teaching outside their research specialities.

    List follows in the next post.

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  27. Charles Pigden

    1) Richard Routley/Sylvan
    Logic (especially relevant and paraconsistent), anarchism, environmental philosophy, Meinong, ethics, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, the history of philosophy especially the history of logic, deontic logic.
    2) Graham Priest:
    Logic (especially paraconsistent logic), the Philosophy of Mathematics, the History of Philosophy (Kant, Hume, Heidegger, Hegel, Berkeley, Meinong, Marx Derrida), Buddhist Philosophy, Metaphysics, the Philosophy of Time, Sexual Ethics, the Philosophy of the Martial Arts.
    3) James Maclaurin:
    Philosophy of Biology, the Philosophy of Time, Metaphysics, Meta-Philosophy, Ethics (Climate Change), the Philosophy of Religion.
    4) David Armstrong:
    History of Philosophy (Berkeley) Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics. Philosophy of Science (Laws of Nature).
    5) John Bigelow:
    The Philosophy of Time, the Philosophy of Mathematics, General Metaphysics, semantics; epistemology; history of science; Platonism, the evolution of altruism.
    6) David Lewis:
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Convention), Logic the Philosophy of Religion, Philosophical Logic, Metaphysics, the Philosophy of Mind, Political Philosophy (Toleration), Meta-Ethics, Ethics, the Philosophy of Mathematics, Epistemology.
    7) Kim Sterelny:
    8) Philosophy of Biology, the Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics (Physicalism) the Philosophy of Mind.
    9) Alan Musgrave:
    10) Philosophy of Science, History of Science, the Philosophy of Mathematics, the History of Philosophy (Hume, Berkeley), the Philosophy of Economics, Epistemology.
    11) Annette Baier
    The History of Philosophy especially Hume, Ethics, Meta-ethics, Political Philosophy, the Philosophy of Mind, Moral Psychology, the Philosophy of Poetry (the subject of her B.Phil dissertation), Feminism.
    12) Philip Petitt:
    Ethics, Meta-Ethics, Political Philosophy, the Philosophy of Mind, Moral Psychology, History of Philosophy (Hobbes), the Philosophy of Action, the Philosophy of Social Explanation.
    13) Graham Oddie
    Philosophical Logic and the Philosophy of Science (specifically truthlikeness) Ethics, Meta-Ethics, Moral Psychology, the Philosophy of Time/Free Will.
    14) Brian Leiter
    History of Philosophy (especially Nietzsche), Meta-Ethics, the Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy.
    15) Greg Currie
    History of Philosophy (Frege) hence the Philosophy Mathematics, the Philosophy of Logic and the Philosophy of Language, Aesthetics, the Philosophical psychology, (simulation theory), the Philosophy of Fiction, Film.
    16) Frank Jackson
    Metaphysics, Epistemology, the Philosophy of Mind, Meta-Ethics, Meta-Philosophy, the Philosophy of Social Explanation, the Philosophy of Action.
    17) Heather Dyke
    The Philosophy of Time, Metaphysics, Meta-philosophy, Meta-ethics, Ethics.
    18) JJC Smart
    Metaphysics, the Philosophy of Time, the Philosophy of Science, the Philosophy of Mind, Normative Ethics, Meta-Ethics, the Logic of Imperatives.
    19) Gerhard Schurz
    Philosophical Logic, Meta-Ethics (especially Is/Ought), the Philosophy of Science.
    20) Stephen Stich
    Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Moral Psychology, Epistemology, Altruism, Moral psychology, Meta-Ethics.
    21) Nick Griffin
    The History of Philosophy (Bertrand Russell), Philosophical Logic, the Philosophy of Mathematics Epistemology, 19th and 20th Century Intellectual History (he is also amazingly well-informed about 19th and 20th Century History in general, least as it pertains to the life of Bertrand Russell.)
    22) Bernard Williams
    Ethics, Meta-Ethics, the History of Philosophy (especially Descartes), Ancient Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Imperatives, Classics, Philosophical Psychology. I was never much of a fan of Bernard Williams who seems to me a vastly overrated philosopher. But one thing he certainly wasn’t was narrow in his interests.
    23) Mark Colyvan
    Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics, Decision Theory, Environmental Philosophy, Ecology and Conservation Biology, Ethical Disagreement.
    24) Josh Parsons,
    Metaphysics, The Philosophy of Time, Ethics, The Logic of Imperatives (Josh is one of the major theorists this area although he started out as a metaphysician).
    25) Paul Griffiths
    The Philosophy of Biology (co-author of the key teaching text), Philosophical Psychology (especially the Philosophy of the Emotions, on which he is the author of the best book), Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science.
    25) Kristie Miller
    Philosophy of time including the metaphysics of time, temporal phenomenology and temporal attitudes, Composition and Mereology, Persistence, Personal identity, Meta-ontology and grounding, Disagreement, (verbal vs substantial) Concepts, conceptual revision and error theory, Experimental philosophy
    26) David Braddon-Mitchell
    Philosophy of mind; metaphysics; philosophy of science; meta-philosophy, philosophy of time, philosophy of biology and epistemology.
    27) Bill Lycan
    The Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology , Free Will, Philosophical Logic (Conditionals), Philosophy of mind; philosophy of language and philosophy of linguistics; epistemology; perception, Metaphysics, early twentieth-century philosophy; ethical theory, especially meta-ethics, theory of art criticism.
    28) Jack Copeland
    Cognitive science. Logic, Philosophy of computation, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of mind, The History of Computing especially the Life and Work of Alan Turing (which also involves the History of WWII and the History of Espionage).
    29) Geoff Sayre-McCord
    Meta-ethics, the History of Philosophy (especially Hume and Smith). Political Philosophy. (NB. Sayre –McCord is active in the UNC PPE program which requires quite a bit of breadth.)
    30) Peter Singer
    Normative Ethics, Political Philosophy (Democracy and Disobedience), Marx, Hegel, Sociobiology, Meta-Ethics.
    31) Brian Ellis
    Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, Moral and Political Philosophy.
    32) Tim Mulgan
    Ethics (especially utilitarianism), Political Philosophy, Metaphysics/Philosophy of Religion

    Reply
  28. Charles Pigden

    One reply that Dan Kaufman might make is this: ‘That was then, this is now. The philosophers you list are mostly old or dead. My claim was that to really be in the top of one's field, research-wise, TODAY typically entails a substantial narrowing of focus. Those philosophers you list (in many cases old buddies) are (if still alive) the polymathic survivors from more spacious age. Times have changed. It is only young people *nowadays* that have to be absurdly specialized of they are to make it as researchers.’ Actually some of the philosophers I have listed are a fair bit younger than I am, but to answer this objection effectively I must resort to some philosophers that thus far I have only known through the internet. (Since 2008 I have savagely cut back on my conference travel in an effort to reduce my personal responsibility for the coming climate catastrophe. Hence I am not as well connected with younger philosophers as would otherwise be desirable. ) Here are two youngish but top-of-the line research philosophers with notably wide-ranging research interests.

    Helen de Cruz
    The evolution of human cognition, cognitive science, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mathematics, Hume, Aesthetics, Meta-Philosophy, the Philosophy of Science, epistemology.

    Caterina Dutihl Novaes
    History and philosophy of logic and mathematics. medieval philosophy, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, general philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, gender and race, and empirically-informed approaches to philosophy in general.

    Helen de Cruz has looked like a generalist from the word ‘go’ (check out her page on Academia.edu) but Caterina Novaes is a more interesting case as her early work and much of her current work is on the recondite and specialized area of medieval logic, which would have made her, I suspect, totally unemployable to the likes of Dan Kaufman. (Fortunately for her she has spent most of her career in the Netherlands.) But medieval logic has led to work in the philosophy of cognition which suggests that the alleged norms of logic acquire such authority as they possess in the context of interpersonal debate, thereby giving rise a less individualist conception of reasoning in general. But to spot these implications for the nature of cognition you have to be something more than the narrow specialist of Dan Kaufman’s caricature.
    .
    The conclusion, anyway is that today as yesterday you can be a successful researcher without degenerating into a narrow specialist. QED.

    Reply
  29. Stephen Nayak-Young

    http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Maurice-Moss-Eating-Popcorn-The-IT-Crowd.gif

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  30. Stephen Nayak-Young

    My thanks to Brian for hosting this discussion and to those who've posted comments.

    As an academic job-seeker, I have occasionally guessed that my applications might have been passed over for fear of "flight risk" or departmental incompatibility, but one never knows.

    From my perspective, I understand why many hiring departments would have such worries, but I have little practical idea how to mitigate the worry in a given case. For example, I gather that the cover letter is the place to convey one's sincere interest in working (and staying) in a given department, but I can only guess (and second-guess) what would be effective in that regard.

    If anyone following this discussion could offer insight and/or practical suggestions, I (and other candidates, I'm sure) would greatly appreciate it!

    Reply
  31. Daniel Kaufman

    All:

    I think the issue has been vetted well enough. Brian asked a question about hiring at unranked, non-R1, "less prestigious" schools. Being at such a school, having chaired several search committees — including one right now — and having been Department Head during a search, I felt that I could shed some light on how things are done at schools like mine, and I did. I hope that it was at least somewhat useful for those who are currently in the position described by Brian in the OP.

    As for Charles Pidgen's weird, borderline-stalker behavior in the discussion, I can only apologize for whatever role I played in it. It's always unpleasant to see someone go after another person like that, and unfortunately, it's all too common in our profession, which seems alas to select for such types. I'm certainly not going to continue to engage him, though not for the reasons he thinks or because of the veiled threats he seems to imply ("walking the line" and the like). I am fully promoted at my university, have done what work in my corner of the philososphere I am interested in doing, and have no further ambitions in the profession, so I'm not really very concerned about the perceptions and preoccupations of the Pidgens of the world or of the sorts of people that occupy his obsessively compiled list of all-stars.

    I was simply explaining the sorts of considerations that little departments like mine, at run-of-the-mill schools like mine, have to take into account, when hiring, given our extremely vulnerable position and the reality that we may very likely not be permitted to do another search, after a failed one, or after a person has left for a more desirable position, prior to receiving tenure. We have to take very seriously the question of whether someone is a flight risk, as well as whether he or she is going to be good at/happy with teaching a heavy load of general education, to students who are not much above the remedial level. It has not been our experience that research powerhouses — meaning those whose primary ambition is to be a significant player in contemporary research — fit that particular bill, though everyone we hire and employ does do research, both before tenure and after, as a condition of continued employment.

    Best of luck to the job-seekers. I certainly have my hands full this break, with 250+ applications.

    Reply
  32. Daniel Kaufman

    Oh, and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and all the rest to everyone and especially Brian, who I hope will be enjoying some Sufganiyot. I know I will!

    Reply
  33. Brian

    Having met Charles, he is a nice guy, even though he seems to have gotten a bit too worked up about this particular topic. Having met Dan, I can also vouch for him too! Cyberspace lends itself to exaggerated disagreements like this, but let us put this one to rest, though readers are welcome to address Stephen Nayak-Young's question. Dan, I had to look up Sufganiyot, not knowing the name, though knowing its referent! My wife just bought a Bouche de Noelle, so you know who is running the show here.

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