Hurry up and wait

Job hunting is a strange, drawn out process. You spend hours preparing for an interview or series of interviews that the prospective employer wants to take place ASAP. After the interview, you send personalized notes--within 24 hours of the meeting--to everyone whose path you might have crossed during the interview, thanking them for meeting with you and a) gushing about what a fine organization it is; b) restating your interest in the job; and c) demonstrating how you're the perfect person for the job. Then you sit around for weeks, possibly months, waiting to hear the outcome of said interview.

I remember once going to a job interview in February only to be told that the employer didn't expect to hire anyone until September. Did they expect that I would hang on until then in the hopes of getting this not-terribly-interesting entry level job?

Academia is particularly prone to dragging things out. They'll advertise for a position in January with a closing date of April, interviews will begin in June for a job that should start in September but will quite possibly stay open until the following semester. That is, if they don't reopen the search and start all over from scratch.

My most unsatisfying job searching experience was for an academic job. The process took forever: I interviewed in March and found out that I wasn't hired in August. But that was by far the least of it. No, it was necessary that I jump through about six dozen hoops before I was rejected.

It started, as these things often do, with a conference call. A three-way. A week later I received a packet in the mail advising me of the next steps. The evening before the actual interview I was to get a tour of the campus led by my would-be boss followed by dinner with her and her second-in-command. At 8 am the following morning came breakfast with a couple members of the department. This was followed by an interview with the HR person, followed by a tête-à-tête with the director of the whole shebang.

After I chatted with the director, I would give a short presentation of about 20 to 25 minutes to the entire library staff--about 50 people. The presentation should end with a question-and-answer session of about 15 minutes, so I should take pains to make the subject provocative to ensure that the audience would have questions. After a group interview with seven staff members, I would lunch with three other people.

I was to have a 15-minute break after lunch to compose myself before setting off across campus to the building where the lucky candidate would actually work. There, I would meet for about 20 minutes with the entire group, and then meet individually with each of my would-be colleagues, about 5 or 6 people. I would then meet with my would be boss again. And then her second-in-command would let me know what the next step in the process would be. It turned out to be another conference call with her and someone else whom I hadn't met in the first marathon session.

I won't bore you with every detail (especially since I've already bored you this much), but it was far from an outright disaster though there were a few glitches.

Dinner went swimmingly; it was convivial yet restrained. Both my dinner companion took great pains to tell me that they were very interested in hiring me. They kept saying "We wouldn't make you do all this if you weren't a serious candidate for the position."

But the next morning my car stalled out on I-95 and so I missed breakfast. Perhaps this was the nail in the coffin, but I don't think so.

The presentation was fantastic and I'm not bragging. My would-be boss was giving me the thumbs up from the audience. The thing broke up only because the audience kept asking questions way past the alloted time period. Afterwards, my would be boss pulled me aside and told me how fantastic it was and reiterated: "We wouldn't make you do all this if you weren't a serious candidate for the position." This was the mantra of the day and I believed them.

During my final encounter of the day, I was assured that they wanted this position filled yesterday. Again, I was told "We wouldn't make you do all this if you weren't a serious candidate for the position." Within a week, I had the second conference call. Five months later, I was informed that I didn't get the job.

What happened? Beats me, though someone told me sometime that day that the decision on whom to hire was done by consensus. And that even those people who just sat in on my talk had a say in the matter.

So someone I would probably only see once a year at the annual Christmas party could veto my candidacy if she didn't like my haircut, my face, or my choice of footwear.

You just never know.

War and Peace

Two articles in The City Journal that everyone should read: Bruce Bawer's look at peace studies and Victor Davis Hanson on the academy's neglect of the study of war.

British Medical Journal debates Israel boycott

To that end the journal is conducting a survey. You can make your feelings known here.

Tom Hickey supports a boycott.

No Israeli college or university has publicly condemned what is being done in the Occupied Territories in the name of every Israeli citizen. Some Israeli educational institutions have established campuses for settlers on illegally confiscated land; others conduct archaeological digs on land from which Palestinian farmers have been expelled.

Some Israeli colleagues have spoken out against the occupation. But these are the heroic few. They risk their professional careers and being ostracised.

Our boycott debate is accused of infringing academic freedom. It does so, and that is to be regretted. The pursuit of scientific and artistic advance without hindrance is indeed crucial for human improvement. But academic freedom is not an absolute value taking precedence over all else. The values of human life and dignity are the ultimate objectives, and sometimes these may not be entirely compatible with the principle of untrammelled academic freedom.

Thanks to Stuart.

Liberalism gone mad

Is what killed Antioch College 155 years after its founding, says Michael Goldfarb.

Antioch College became a rump where the most illiberal trends in education became entrenched. Since it is always easier to impose a conformist ethos on a small group than a large one, as the student body dwindled, free expression and freedom of thought were crushed under the weight of ultraliberal orthodoxy. By the 1990s the breadth of challenging ideas a student might encounter at Antioch had narrowed, and the college became a place not for education, but for indoctrination. Everyone was on the same page, a little to the left of The Nation in worldview.

Much of this conformist thinking focused on gender politics, and it culminated in the notorious sexual offense prevention policy. Enacted in 1993, the policy dictated that a person needed express permission for each stage in seduction. (“May I touch your breast?” “May I remove your bra?” And so on.) In two decades students went from being practitioners of free love to prisoners of gender. Antioch became like one of those Essene communities in the Judean desert in the first century after Christ that, convinced of their own purity, died out while waiting for a golden age that never came.

Via Michael J Lewis.

Brave new world: Academia without tenure

New state college in Georgia will offer faculty 1-, 3- or 5-year appointments and no tenure.

Daniel Kaufman, the school's president, said the no-tenure policy gives the school the flexibility to adapt as students come on board.

"We are an institution starting in the 21st century and we need to work differently," Kaufman said.

McQ demolishes an Op-Ed by a local academic who argues that tenure is necessary because, among other things, it's good for the children.

Tenure grants a special status which has come to be seen as a right of the profession. It forms an unanswerable elite. And among the radical-egalitarian crowd, which I would guess includes the vast majority of tenured professors, this sort of thing should be anathema. Obviously, however, its a matter of "what is good for thee, not me."

Here they go again

British academics call for Israel boycott.

Delegates at the first conference of the new University and College Union in Bournemouth voted by 158 to 99 for "a comprehensive and consistent boycott" of all Israeli academic institutions, as called for by Palestinian trade unions in response to Israel's "40-year occupation" of Palestinian land.

The union's leadership must now circulate calls from Palestinians for a boycott of Israeli universities to all branches throughout the country.

Trying to get rid of a student can be tough

Very tough.

I was the director of a new, highly specialized, disability-specific graduate program, requiring a synthesis of science, mathematics, and human service skills. My accuser was admitted to the program on academic probation, the terms of which were clearly specified.

The cracks in her academic preparation surfaced almost immediately. Her writing skills were abysmal and her mathematics background was severely deficient. When I met with her to critique her work, she accused me of forcing her to “talk white” and to use the “white man’s arithmetic.”

She demanded that I assign her a tutor. I replied that our department was very small and tutors in our specialty area were rare. I suggested that she ask a classmate for help or consider joining a study group. She replied that the other students shunned her because she frequently disagreed with them.

After several such meetings, I asked if she’d consider speaking with a counselor who could help her sort through these issues. She became visibly agitated and replied that the “white people” at our medical school didn’t understand the “emotional style” typically used by black people when communicating.

The next day, I spoke with the Dean of Students, informing him that I thought it best not to meet privately with this student any longer. A week later, I initiated dismissal proceedings in accordance with academic policy. When I informed the student of my actions, she was outraged.

Several days later, my Dean received notice from a law firm representing the student. She had filed a complaint with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the severity of her accusations required a full on-campus investigation. The sole object of her complaint was me.

Read the whole thing.

And it's not just academia. Firing people can be fraught as well. A public librarian I know fired a page, a high school student who worked part time, only to have him turn up at a meeting of the library board and accuse her of racism--he was Asian. The thing dragged on for months while an investigation was being conducted. In the meantime, the kid kept showing up at meetings--the town council as well as the library board--and disrupting the proceedings. The librarian was eventually vindicated, but not before going through hell.

A bunch of pussies

Academics with tenure.

Professors in our study were more timid than we expected, rarely confronting departmental colleagues who disagreed with the content of their research and teaching. Interestingly, everyone thought that everyone else would behave more boldly than they themselves would.

Having tenure was not associated with a greater willingness to speak one's mind or publish controversial findings. Comparing tenured associate professors with untenured assistant professors and tenured full professors revealed that the associates behaved more like their junior colleagues than like their senior ones.

Next he'll hold his breath 'til he turns blue

MIT faculty member won't eat until he gets tenure.

James Sherley, a biological engineer whose opposition to embryonic stem cell research has been controversial among his peers, charges he has been denied the same freedom to challenge scientific orthodoxy afforded his white colleagues.

MIT expressed concern for Sherley's safety but said his case was rigorously reviewed and the decision to deny him tenure was fair. Twenty Biological Engineering department faculty signed a statement saying they believed race did not play a role in the decision.

Sherley, who has vowed to stand in protest outside the president and provost office for three hours each morning, says he believes the research is immoral because it requires the destruction of days-old embryos. He works only with adult stem cells.