philosophysmoker-Mstarz

Here. It’s behind a paywall, and unfortunately I don’t know of anyone who has posted a PDF to the internet like last time. Sorry.

It paints a horrible picture of McGinn using mostly his own words. It has him saying stuff like, “a superior person is not necessarily arrogant, but just superior”; and how he is “the most enlightened person in the world”; and how “his situation will fan anti-American sentiment” (in the words of the author, but attributed to McGinn). He complains, again, of everyone else’s lack of senses of humor and irony.

(Which is really old hat, right? “It's not that I'm a jerk; it's that your sense of humor sucks.” Y’all jerks need to work on your excuses.)

But as far as I can see, it doesn’t say anything new or groundbreaking, other than a few stray details, with one fairly notable exception. It does contain what would seem to be the verbatim text of the handjob pun: he says that he “had a handjob imagining you giving me a handjob.” First off, that’s awfully yucky. Secondly, even if his claim that it was a joke in which ‘handjob’ doesn’t mean “handjob” is credible, it seems to me that it’s still pretty clearly inappropriate. Thirdly, although he makes another attempt to connect the stuff with the handjobs to his research, it still seems to me like that entire avenue is complete bullshit. Fourthly, even if you interpret it as McGinn says he intended, it’s still really weird. He, McGinn, had a manicure while imagining her, his research assistant, giving him a manicure. What? A) who thinks about their research assistant while getting a manicure? B) who thinks about getting a manicure from their research assistant under any circumstances? C) what is he talking about? I mean, he’s free to insist that he had created a context in which ‘handjob’ is to be read as “manicure,” and where anyone who doesn’t see that is has an irony-related disability. But the fact is that if you read it that way, the message doesn’t make any goddam sense. And this is why nobody who has ever read it has read it that way.

It has him describe his relationship with the RA as an “intellectual romance.” Whatever that means. Seriously: what does that mean? Why would anyone ever say something like that? If I were in his position, I think I’d be very careful to avoid using the term ‘romance’ in any capacity whatsoever.

He seems to suggest that the “genius project” literally had that name while it was going on, in spite of what he says in one of his blog posts:

Another time, the professor says, the student expressed reservations about her job prospects in philosophy. He devised a solution, an undertaking he called the “genius project.” He describes it as an experimental learning endeavor in which he hoped to help the student improve her philosophical abilities by fostering creativity and encouraging taboo busting.

I totally understand being worried about your job prospects. I could not be more sympathetic. I worried about that when I was in grad school, and my worries have not been assuaged since then. And I completely understand approaching your faculty honcho person with these concerns for advice and counsel and stuff. Makes perfect sense. And I totally get why the faculty member might start a formal or semi-formal project designed to put the student in the best position possible to go on the job market. I understand. With perhaps less explicitness, something exactly like that happened with me and with basically everybody I knew in grad school. We were all worried; we all went to our advisors for advice; our advisors all tried to help us get prepared. Nobody ever gave it a name, as though they were the first person to ever think of helping their students get ready for the job market, or they were really special for actually going through with it, but we were all engaged in some kind of Genius Project. If you twisted my arm, I would have just called it “My Graduate Training.” The “Ph.D. Project.” Whatever.

What I don't get is why “taboo busting” always so high on the list of Genius Project techniques. My “Ph.D. Project” consisted, in part, of various discussions with my advisor: what I should read; what I had read; how to approach the material; where my ideas fit into the larger literature/conceptual space; etc. Another substantial chunk of the project consisted of submitting written work; receiving withering criticism in return; revising the work in response; receiving more withering criticisms; and so on. We spent a lot of time working on my teaching, too.

Now, I understand that the Genius Project involved spending part of each day thinking about your own ideas without relying on outside texts, and that it also involved asking, “is that really true?” a lot, and that sounds good to me. And I don’t have any problem with the tennis or the paddle boarding. Seems basically normal. But I don’t get why busting taboos was such an important part of the project. Is there some reason to suspect that unbusted taboos cause problems for candidates on the job market? And what was the pedagogical purpose of agreeing that manicures will henceforth be called “handjobs”? That seems to come out of left field, as far as mentorship goes.

(Just kidding, kind of. I realize that the reason that the “taboo busting” aspect of the Genius Project has been getting so much press is that the taboo-busting stuff is what got him in trouble, and that the press its been getting is not necessarily proportional to its prominence in the Project. But seriously. It got him in a shit ton of trouble, and it served no clear pedagogical purpose. It was a bad idea, and he should have known better.)

There's also this passage,

When he saw the student, they would perform a “ceremony,” he says, during which they went through a series of “hand grips” simulating closeness and social interaction.

Which sort of makes it seem like they had a secret handshake. What the hell? Is he a Mason? And what would it mean for a “hand grip” to “simulate social interaction”? Is that something people do?

Another passage reads,

“The relationship was difficult,” he says, speaking in his living room. “It wasn’t natural. It was constrained by the fact that I was a professor and she was a student. … We couldn’t just go in the way people normally would.”

Which really makes you wonder. Hadn’t he been teaching for a long time? The ins and outs of the teacher/student relationship shouldn’t have been that bizarre for a senior professor like him. You’d think that it would be sort of normal. He’d been around the block a few times by then.

But it seems to me that the most substantial new piece of information is that according to the RA’s boyfriend,

McGinn once wrote to the student that they should “have sex three times in my office over the summer when no one else is around,” Mr. Yelle [her boyfriend, that is] says. He also says the professor once suggested that the student should wear shorts more often because he thought her legs were attractive.

McGinn denies suggesting sex, and says that he merely told her that her legs were muscular. He also declined to share the emails.

Now, there are a lot of potential reasons why he might not want to share those emails, and the fact that he doesn’t share them doesn’t mean he said what Yelle says he said. And from our standpoint, there's a very real sense in which this is just a he-said/she-said thing. And if you just look at how he describes his style of interacting with people in general and her in particular, it’s fairly clear that the best-case scenario for these emails is that there's a lot of very borderline, easy-to-misunderstand material there, interspersed with a few things that are genuinely inappropriate (such as the oft-mentioned handjob pun). So, best-case scenario, releasing the emails won’t help him very much, and it makes sense for him not to release them.

On the other hand, on the best-case scenario, McGinn seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t realize how harmful releasing the emails would be. Case in point: everything he’s said up until now.

--Mr. Zero

(Just so we're clear, the Pinker text is bold and      offset; my text justified normally and in italics.)

STEVEN PINKER
Harvard College Professor
Johnstone Family Professor 

So far, so good. He knows who he is and where he works.

Professor Edwin Ervin 

I'm kinda sure it's 'Erwin' with a 'w', not 'Ervin' with a 'v'. Somehow I don't get the idea that this is going to be Pinker's most thoughtful work.  

Department of Philosophy
University of Miami
Miami, FL

 Coral Gables. 

June 13, 2013 
Dear Professor Ervin, 

Again, it's Erwin. With a 'w'. At least he's consistent.

I join you and other scholars, writers, and activists in protesting the threat of dismissal

According to McGinn, any threat of dismissal has been neutralized by the fact that he resigned. 

Also, activists? What activists?

of a brilliant and distinguished scholar, Colin McGinn, from the University of Miami for apparently nothing more serious than exchanging sexual banter with a graduate student.

McGinn claims that the only charge the University was considering was a failure to disclose a consensual but non-sexual relationship. But since the University has yet to publicly comment on the matter, it's difficult to know with any confidence what they thought he was up to, how serious they thought it was, how serious it actually was, or whether he would have been dismissed over it. 

Also, depending on whether the student was interested in engaging in sexual banter, the exact nature of the banter, and whether the student's participation was strictly and completely voluntary, engaging in sexual banter with a student could be fairly serious misconduct. Again, who knows what was really going on? Certainly not Pinker.

Even if the University had a clear policy that regulated communications between professor and student,

As far as I can tell, the University of Miami does have a pretty clear and sensible policy on this stuff. As I read the policy, very little in the way of professor/student communication is prohibited, though they are careful to point out that the uneven balance of power inherent in the professor/student relationship creates practical difficulties in establishing that the student has genuinely consented. 

It also says, and I have no idea whether this is strictly relevant, that faculty are required to disclose certain kinds of "amorous" relationships to a supervisor, and that they must do whatever is necessary to guarantee that they are not in a position of evaluative authority over someone with whom they are in such an "amorous" relationship. Failure to do so would create a clear conflict of interest, it says. It threatens the faculty member's ability to evaluate the person's work objectively. It can create the appearance (or fact) of favoritism. It creates a risk that the junior person might be exploited. It creates a risk that the faculty member or the University will be sued for sexual harassment, it says. Now, I'm not saying this is the kind of wisdom you'd consider going all the way to Dagobah to receive. But at the very least, it's fairly decent advice, and McGinn seems to have largely ignored it. At his peril. 

the punishment is ludicrously disproportionate to the alleged offense.

Again. McGinn says he wasn't "punished" or even charged by the University. He says he resigned and thereby halted any disciplinary procedures before they began. There's no such thing as the punishment. It doesn't exist.

As well as harming the reputation and intellectual quality of the University of Miami,

There's some low-hanging fruit here, but I'm not going to take it. Instead, I'm going to point out that this is one of the things that makes it so hard to square McGinn's version of the facts with reality. The story doesn't jell. 

McGinn really was one of the more prominent members of the UMiami philosophy department. Though I don't mean to disparage the other members of the department, it seems to be widely acknowledged that McGinn was disproportionately responsible for the department's overall reputation. The administration would have to have known this when they called him into a meeting and told him whatever they told him about what they found out about his "relationship" with his RA, explained to him that he was required by University policy to have disclosed it, and informed him of his options going forward. And whatever they told him must have been at least kind of bad news, or else he wouldn't have resigned rather than fight the charges or accept sanctions. It is at least a little unlikely that they would have done that unless they thought it was sort of serious. Add to that the disconnect between what he seems to have done and what he says the charge was going to be, and I'm not sure how to make it add up. 

Of course, for all I know, the administration was mistaken about how serious it was, or they were out to get him even though they knew he didn't do anything wrong. 

Of course, for all I know, they were not mistaken, or he is paranoid and has a persecution complex. 

On the other hand, maybe Pinker knows more about the case than I do. No he doesn't. 

such an action would put a chill on communication between faculty and graduate students and on the openness and informality on which scholarship depends. 

Perhaps Pinker's scholarship and teaching habits differ from mine (McGinn's seem to, after all), but I have not had to rely in my teaching on lurid puns about handjobs. To a captive audience. And from what has been made public, McGinn didn't get into any actual trouble until he inserted the RA herself into the jokes, and made handjob puns that were literally about her. I don't think I'd be chilled by a policy prohibiting handjob puns involving the students themselves in my communications with them. I don't think that would make me less "open" with them--and if it would make me more closed off, that just speaks to the necessity of the policy. A policy like that would really just codify what I've already been doing this whole time, in an attempt to avoid being thought of as a creep or having to explain my offbeat sense of humor to the Dean. 

There is such a thing as too much openness informality, you know. 

If the dismissal proceeds, I will certainly bring it up with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, on whose advisory board I sit. 

Pinker can rest assured that the dismissal will not proceed, because of the apparently little-known fact that McGinn has resigned his post. 

But really. Although McGinn's posting of the Pinker letter suggests that he substantially approves of it, it doesn't really seem as though FIRE's involvement is something that McGinn would welcome--and I base this entirely on McGinn's statements and actions, and not at all on my own suspicions concerning his innocence or guilt. He says doesn't want to spare the time or resources that a serious defense would require; he's unsure whether his passion for teaching could survive the ordeal; he's concerned about how it would affect his wife and family; he didn't like working at Miami anyway. He says he wants to put this whole mess behind him and move on. So he decided not to contest whatever charges an investigation might have turned up and resigned instead. Take this job and shove it, as the fella says. 

(On the other hand, McGinn doesn't totally act like someone who wants to put this whole mess behind him and move on. Someone who wanted to move on from this might begin by not posting fifteen blog posts about it, including seven following the one where he said he was done talking about it.)

I'm also far from convinced that this is the kind of case that FIRE could really dig its teeth into. I don't follow FIRE's activities very carefully, but it seems like they tend to go after freedom-of-speech/freedom-of-religion/due process cases where there's a relatively compelling prima facie case that someone's Constitutional rights were violated, or that the University jumped the gun in applying discipline, such that the accused didn't get a fair shake. Whereas, based on what has been made public, this seems like a case where the accused really did kind of break the rules, and where it's not possible to know whether he would have gotten a fair shake because he resigned before any shaking took place. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but it's hard for me to see where FIRE might find a handhold.

Feel free to circulate this letter, and to add my name to any list of McGinn’s supporters. 

Shorter Pinker: I'm not sure who I'm writing to, and I don't have any idea what's going on, but I have chosen sides and am attaching my name to this half-baked letter, which you should feel free to spread around. 

Man, what a pointless waste of everyone's time.

--Mr. Zero

There have been several recent discussions concerning concerning the best way for interviewees to deal with interviewers who ask so-called "illegal" questions. (Although my understanding is that Glaucon, writing here, is basically correct: though it is illegal for search committees to use the information as a basis for hiring decisions, it is not literally illegal for them to ask the questions. But whatever. I'm not a lawyer, and its not as though there's no relationship between the information the search committee attempts to collect in the interviews and the information the search committee might use as the basis for its decision.) A discussion at Feminist Philosophers is here; a discussion at NewAPPS is here.

As I read through the suggestions, I find myself thinking the same thing over and over and over: this won't work. It seems to me that all such suggestions are basically misguided, in that they are based on the premise that there is some reliable way to diffuse the situation without harming your chances of getting the job. I don't think there is any reliable strategy here.

As I see it, there are four main ways of responding to the situation:

1. Answer the question honestly. There's always the chance that they just want to let you know how great their department/school/community is for people in your situation, or how open and welcoming they are, and that they won't use the information in their deliberations, after all. Maybe. Probably, even. But I guess I wouldn't count on it.

2. Answer the question dishonestly. After all, at this point in the process, it really isn't any of their business. Of course, it'll be somewhere in the range between difficult and impossible to maintain the lie if you get the job, and it'll be awkward when the truth comes out. AWK. WARD.

3. Decline to answer the question in a way that draws attention to its inappropriateness. You can do this in a way that conveys some negative emotion, such as anger, frustration, disappointment, or sadness, but doing so is not going to be good for your chances however you do it. Letting your interviewers know you're not happy with them isn't a good interview strategy.

You could try to do it in jokey, laughy way, but any way you frame the joke, it's a joke about how the interviewer has asked you a question you find inappropriate and/or legally problematic. It won't work if joke is at the interviewer's expense; you have to bring him into the joke with you, but in a way that still makes it clear that the question was not appropriate and you're declining to answer it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's going to be hard. This is not a beginner-level joke.

4. Decline to answer using stealth, without drawing attention to the inappropriateness of the question. Maybe by changing the subject or something, or by telling an unrelated joke. There's a lot of potential for weirdness here. They asked you a question; you didn't answer it. It's not like they're not going to notice.

If I had to pick, I'd say #1 and #4 are the best of a bad bunch. This has happened to me only a couple of times, and both times it was fairly clear that they were just trying to let me know that their area had a lot to offer. At least, that's how I read the situation at the time. I adopted strategy #1, and answered honestly while trying to thread the needle between seeming open and forthcoming while revealing as little as possible and trying to move on quickly. The alternatives seemed much riskier. But I felt really awkward, and the awkwardness was not alleviated when, on one occasion, one of the other interviewers pointed out that the question was out-of-bounds. I wasn't at all confident that I was handling it right. And it goes without saying that I didn't get the job (not that I have any reason to suspect that there's any direct connection).

And so it seems to me that once a question like this comes up, there are no good alternatives. There's no reliable way to maneuver oneself out of the situation. It's possible to pull off, of course. There are things that will work here and there. But I can't see any general piece of advice that would be widely applicable and effective in a risk-free way. Which bums me out.

--Mr. Zero

I've been following this discussion at Leiter about how Philosopher's Imprint is charging a $20 submission fee. I didn't have much to say about it, except the obvious--it seems like a really bad idea that would unfairly burden the unemployed, underemployed, non-tenure-track people, and graduate students. I strongly agree with "Third year on the job market," who writes:

I get the sense that people are making nuanced points here whereas it gets ignored (or understated) how TERRIBLE this move is for those of us who don't have a TT job and who are either grad students or doing temp jobs in a bid to secure a TT job (and, arguably, this is the group of philosophers that are the most desperate to have a publication in an excellent journal like PI).

Someone has to say this: Don't do that, Phil Imprint, just don't.

Part of the appeal of Phil Imprint was its democratic vision: everyone can read the papers published in this journal. But this new move cancels out this democratic vision as now not everyone can submit to this journal...*

I strongly disagree with David Wallace, who writes:

Actually, just picking up on Daniel Kaufman's point (which appeared while I was writing my last):

(A) I don't have a problem with the idea that the institution of a contributor to a magazine should pay the magazine to print that contribution.
(B) I don't have a problem with the idea that the institutions of junior faculty should have to pay their journals in order for junior faculty to submit to them.

If your institution isn't meeting your legitimately-incurred work-related expenses, that's a different matter, but it's not clear journals can do much about that.*

What Wallace doesn't seem to understand is that, for those of us not on the tenure track, this is not how it works at all. At all. My job comes with no research requirement or any official expectation that research will be done. If I want to do research, I am free to do so. But obviously I have to do research if I ever want a better job or if I want to stay in this profession long-term. Research is a practical necessity. But if I do research, I have to do it on my own time, and I am on my own. They're not going to pay any submission or contributor's fees for me. And so this idea leaves me and everyone like me completely stranded.

--Mr. Zero

* Emphases added. The ellipsis was in the original.

Holy shit! There's a print version of the May JFP! For the first time since '08! Holy shit!

--Mr. Zero

P.S. It has 30 ads and is a total disaster. But at least it exists.

Oh my God I am so fucking dumb. I thought I saw a link to vol. 194, but I guess I was wrong. Sorry. Shit. Sorry.

I stumbled across this blog post from NPR yesterday. It seemed interesting, so I started to read it. It begins like this:

"The human mind is more amazing than the universe," said my teenage daughter the other day. "How come?" I asked. "Well, it all really starts in our heads, doesn't it? Like, without our minds there wouldn't be a universe."

I'm glad that this line of thought came from a teenager, and not from the Dartmouth theoretical physicist and professor of natural philosophy who is the author of the post. I realize that something in the approximate vicinity of this way of thinking about things has a long and somewhat distinguished history, but seriously. The universe contains human minds. There is no way the universe is less amazing than the human mind. It might be just as amazing as the human mind, but since the universe contains the crab nebula in addition to human minds, my vote is for more amazing. Anyways, that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about what he says next.

It got me thinking. The rift between what is and what is perceived is at least as old as philosophy itself. Yes, it has something to do with the popular "if a tree falls in a forest and no one sees it, did it fall?"...

That's as far as I got before I had to stop, walk away, and pour myself a bourbon. When I read shit like this, a piece of me dies. There is no possibility of any interesting question here. It literally answers itself. If a tree falls, did it fall? Yes, it fell if it fell. If the tree falls, whatever else might happen, it falls. To be fair, he says he thinks the answer is 'yes.' But to be more fair, this is supposed to be a smart, well-educated person. His research centers on how non-living chemicals made the transition into life.* I realize that we're in an age in which public intellectuals are a rare breed, and so maybe we should just take what we can get. But I really feel like we're entitled to expect better than this. Not just anyone is cut out to be a public intellectual, and at the very least the person should be capable of knowing a profoundly easy question when he sees one.

--Mr. Zero

*Which, to be clear, is a fascinating and important topic.

When I was in grad school, none of the faculty taught any summer school; summer courses were the exclusive domain of the graduate students. And since there were a lot of us, competition could get pretty stiff--it wasn't at all unusual for classes to be cancelled due to low enrollment. As a result of this, there was a real incentive to advertise for your summer courses, and for those advertisements to make the courses seem interesting, relevant, and worthwhile to people with little background, experience, or prior interest in philosophical topics. People would put posters up around campus with funny slogans and pictures and stuff, trying to attract students.

But (while I was there, at least) nobody ever thought to advertise his course by putting himself in a photo surrounded by a bunch of barely-dressed women in schoolgirl outfits. And if somebody did do that, my sense is that the person would have been made to take the posters down immediately, had an unpleasant discussion with the department chair, and been thought of by the department at large as having behaved foolishly (to say the least).

It is also my sense that this person would have to have been a fucking moron. It's pretty obvious, I think, that that kind of thing isn't appropriate for an advertisement for a university-level philosophy class. And it's pretty obvious that for every person who would be attracted to the course on the basis of something like that, there's at least one who would be turned off in a big way. And it's pretty obvious that the people who would be turned off by it would have a pretty solid point. And so I think it's pretty obvious that it would be a piss-poor advertisement qua advertisement, apart from the disrespect for women in general such a thing might display.

Just an observation, for no particular reason.

--Mr. Zero

As several people have pointed out, the February JFP is up, and it sucks. 30 jobs in the print edition, a couple more in the web "only" ads. They have added a search function to the web "onlies," but not to the print edition (that I can see, anyways).

Several people have also asked for a "Plan B" thread. Let's have this serve double-duty. Although I periodically find myself wishing for a viable plan B, I have no idea what it would be. I therefore have no advice whatsoever. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

--Mr. Zero

Spiros asks:

I was just getting my APA receipts organized. I'll submit them next week to my University, and in due course I'll get reimbursed for nearly every dollar I spent on the APA Eastern. But I have to say that the grand sum is pretty staggering, considering what one gets in return.

Unless one happens to live close enough to DC to not need to fly, the cost for most of getting to the conference and staying in the conference hotel has to be roughly $1000. How do graduate students and non-TT slave-wage earners who don't live on the East Coast afford it?

What we do is, we scrimp; we find less-expensive alternatives to the conference hotel; we eat as cheaply as we can; and we put up blog posts and comments in which we point out what a bunch of inhumane bullshit the current set of hiring procedures are and in which we propose more humane, less bullshitty alternatives, for which we are then derided as entitled whiners who are unwilling to do what it takes to get a job in philosophy.

--Mr. Zero

I've got a lot on my plate this week, so I won't have much time to post any of my own interesting thoughts until after some of these Bowl games are over. But I wanted to register my agreement with the observations of anonymous 1:50, who writes:

I assume there will be a post game thread [indeed], but in the spirit of thread hijacking and impatience, I was curious about trends those on the market for several years noticed. It seemed to me that slightly fewer schools did APA interviews, and even even fewer participated in the smoker. (Both nights it seemed like there were very few candidates at tables)

But it was hard for me to get a handle on overall numbers, especially because I didn't have any comparison class.

Thoughts?

It did seem to me that there were fewer departments interviewing at the conference this year; the ballroom seemed pretty sparsely populated, at least in comparison to past years. And it also seemed to me that there were a lot fewer departments with tables at the Smoker--and that several of the departments who did have tables were not interviewing. Additionally, it seemed to me that there were comparatively more applicants using the placement service than two years ago (which is the most recent year I know anything about, since I skipped Boston last year). I'm not sure what to make of this last thing.

Also, I wanted to express my gratitude to the Smokers who left suggestions in the "Things to Do" thread. I was able to put together a pretty nice sightseeing day on the basis of your suggestions. Thanks!

--Mr. Zero

An anonymous Smoker writes with the following stories:

Here were my first two hours at the APA:

1) As I approach the registration desk, the first thing I see is a prominent philosopher whose book is the subject of an author meets critics session telling the person at the desk that the program has the title of her book wrong.  She tells the person at the desk that the mistake is "embarassing".

2) In front of me is a philosopher who pre-registered on November 11th.  His credit card was set to expire on 12/1.  The APA waited until December to run his credit card and thus was not able to proces his payment.  The woman at registration tells him "Just because you submitted your registration on November 11 does not mean that we ran your credit card on November 11."  Okay, fair enough, but it really took you (at least) three weeks?  What is more, this philosopher, realizing that there might be a problem actuallly e-mailed the APA to let them know that his credit card was set to expire in December.  Apparently, they sent him back an e-mail saying that everything was fine, even though it was not.

3) Having registered for the conference, I headed down to placement services to register there.  There were three men sitting in front of computers registering people.  Two of them were only serving candidates who had pre-registered and one was there for candidates who were registering on site.  Virtually no one in line had pre-registered.  Now I understand setting aside a couple computers for those who pre-registered but if there was no one there who had pre-registered, you would think they would help those of us who were registering on site until someone who pre-registered showed up.   But no.  These two men sat there engaging in idle chit chat while the line for on-site registration stretched around the corner.  Only one of three terminals was being used.  The visual was so comical that I thought about taking a picture and sending it to fail blog.

4) After I registered with placement services, I headed to a session, which was scheduled for 6:30.  Someone (presumably from the APA) put a sign on the door saying that the session would start at 7:15.  This resulted in one of the speakers showing up 45 minutes late.

By themselves, any one of these errors are the kinds of things you expect at any large event.  But how could I witness all of these things in my first two horus at the conference and not conclude that the APA is incompetent?

Indeed.

--Mr. Zero

I thought it might be good to have a thread on the theme of "what not to do in your interviews," where we could share our "here's how I committed a life-altering fuck-up in a job interview" stories.

Here's one of mine: I was once asked a question about what challenges I have faced in my teaching and how I have met those challenges. The answer I was going for had to do with how some of my students are, sadly, not prepared for college-level work, and I have had to develop strategies for getting these people up to speed in a way that will also be valuable to those students who are better prepared. But the answer I gave implied that the main challenge I face is that my students are total dumbasses who suck, and I have dealt with this challenge by treating them as condescendingly as possible. (This is somewhat of an exaggeration. But not that much.) As I was answering this question, I was aware that I was in the process of blowing the interview. I literally had the thought, "because of this answer I am now giving--because of the sentence I am now uttering--I will not get this job." But it was too late; I was already giving the answer. To give a better answer, it seemed to me, I would have had to stop in the middle of what I was saying--in the middle of the then-current sentence--and start over. I considered doing it, but didn't think I could pull it off.

How to avoid this kind of stuff? I don't know, exactly. One thing is to try to anticipate what questions you'll get, and prepare answers to them in advance, and try to get ones that don't make you seem like a racist asshole. Our annual "interview Rehash" has been very helpful to me over the years in this regard. But, for me, anyway, there is no substitute for experience. My interviewing has gotten progressively better over time, as I've gotten more interviews under my belt.

Does anybody have any fuckup stories they wouldn't mind sharing? Does anybody know a better way to get good?

--Mr. Zero

1. Gettysburg College wants someone whose Area of Specialization is philosophy of peace and nonviolence. That seems pretty specific. Is this something that a lot of people specialize in? Are there enough controversial philosophical issues surrounding peace and nonviolence to make this a worthwhile area of specialization? Why would a philosophy department at such a small school require a philosopher with such a specific, narrow specialization?

2. This year's award for best "is there an echo in here?" ad goes to University of Reading, Reading, Reading. (#61, 192W). Yeah, but where is this university located?

3. Saint Anselm College wants someone who specializes in "contemporary" and whose AOC is the (entire?) history of philosophy. I guess they want a real generalist. Someone with a broad background.

4. I see a couple of one-semester VAPs (e.g. Lyon College, #30, 192W). Why would anyone agree to that? I could see it if you already lived in Batesville, Arkansas, pop. 9,556. But you don't, do you?

5. As Zombie points out, and has been discussed in comments, the Cycorp ad is pretty awesome.

6. I think I picked up exactly one new application in 192/192W. I'll double-check later when I have more time, but that's piss-poor.

7. This sucks.

--Mr. Zero

...is up. 105 total ads in the print edition; last year had 145; the year before that had 131; the year before that had 188.

68 more ads in the web-onlies, many of which are not web-only. Hard to say how many new ads total; I'll have to go through and count later on when I get a free moment. Or, some industrious Smoker could do it and post the number in comments; I'm sure we'd all be grateful to anyone who was willing to do it.

This sort of sucks; I don't like it very much.

--Mr. Zero

P.S. I suspect that this post sets a new Philosophy Smoker record for semicolons per paragraph in a post; I like semicolons.

I don't like being on the job market very much and I look forward to a time when I don't have to do it any more.

--Mr. Zero

194 ads, which is substantially better than last year's 157. There are another 48 web-onlies.

In October of '09, there were 140 in the print version; in October '08, there were 267; in '07, we had 347.

--Mr. Zero

P.S. hat tip to anon 9:21

I know everyone already knows this, but boy is that new APA website a complete piece of shit.

• It frequently goes offline. (As anon 4:00AM points out, it is offline right now.)
  
  
• The items on the menu bar are indistinguishable. You can't tell where one item stops and the next starts.
  
  
• There's (still, in 2011) no way to pay your dues online.
  
  
• There's (still, in 2011) no way to register for conferences online. (Right? I'd like to verify this, but, alas, the website is down.)
  
  
• The JFP ad-submission system is fucked up and doesn't function, which has caused the publication of the October JFP to be delayed.
  
  
• The JFP itself is somewhat hidden. And, apparently, some members in good standing are unable to see it at all.
  
  
• The online paper-submission system for the Pacific Division Meeting is so poorly designed that it is nearly impossible to use successfully. I have never seen a submission system with such a counterintuitive set of procedures--you have to press the "back" button before you can press a "submit" button. And, of course, there is no clear set of instructions.
  
  
• The other divisions, of course, do not seem to have online paper-submission systems at all. (I'd like to verify this, but, alas, the website is down.)
  
  
• The administration doesn't respond to emails about this.
  

What in the fuck? Seriously. What. In. The. Fuck. The incompetence of this organization is simply amazing. It lacks even the most basic abilities required by a professional organization. Can I join and pay my dues online? No. Can I post a job ad online? No. Can I look at the jobs newsletter online? No. Can I submit a paper to one of your meetings online? No. Can we get a navigable website? No. Can I at least look at your website? No. Can I get a reply to my email about what in the fuck is going on? No.

--Mr. Zero

Although there is a clear sense in which this is old news, I bring it up because I don't want this discussion to die. It seems to me that it is very important to have good information about departments available for prospective graduate students. It also seems to me that the people who put up websites claiming to provide this information have a responsibility to do a good job, to explain how they came up with the information, and to be willing to respond to criticism and to act on suggestions for improvement. And it seems to me that the editors of the "Pluralist's" Guide are not living up to these responsibilities.



In comments in the Gender, Race and Philosophy post in which Linda Alcoff presented some information concerning and momentariliy defended the methodology behind the Climate Guide, anonymous graduate student writes:

Dear Professors Alcoff, Taylor, and Wilkerson [editors of the Pluralist's Guide]:



The sarcastic last comment here [this one] does not, in my view, dispense you, the authors of the "climate for women" section, from addressing in detail the several very serious questions and worries that were brought to the table by the previous commenters. I am sure that I am not the only one to find it very troublesome that there is neither any attempt on your part to defend the "climate for women" section its current form - which, as the many thoughtful comments above have shown, would be a difficult feat - nor the slightest admisssion of the insufficiency and indeed indefensibility of the section as it stands at this time.



The only conclusion I (and, I imagine, many others) am able to draw from the exasperating refusal by you, the authors of the "pluralist's guide", to engage even in the most rudimentary way with serious criticism is that despite the title of your "report" you are not in fact guided by the concern that informs the comments in this thread - the climate for women in philosophy - but rather by an undisclosed private agenda that abuses this concern as a cover.

I guess I'm not willing to draw any specific conclusions about why the authors of the Climate Guide haven't withdrawn it, or edited it in such a way as to acknowledge its many methodological and factual problems, or explained how it was compiled, or even evinced comprehension of these problems. But I will say that it gets sadder and sadder with each passing day.



--Mr. Zero

In comments, anon 1:27 writes,

Speaking of the new APA website, is there any word when the JFP will be back online?

None that I'm aware of. Anybody know the answer to this one?

--Mr. Zero

P.S. The new website is worse than the old one, difficult as that is to believe.

The University of Oregon is on the "strongly recommended" list on the Pluralist's Guide's Climate for Women page. But by now it is well-known that this department's climate for women shows clear signs of being terrible: their undergraduate program director is alleged to have made sexual advances toward female undergraduates and to have groped female undergraduates in his office, and another, "feminist" faculty member is alleged to have orchestrated a coverup of this information so as not to interfere with their being recognized for their friendliness to women. As far as I can see, these charges have not been disputed. (If they have, please let me know.) Why hasn't this school been removed from the list? The "Pluralists" removed Oklahoma from the "needs improvement" list almost immediately when it became clear that they had been working to improve the climate. I mean, if there was ever evidence of a chilly and inhospitable climate for women, that's gotta be it.

But as of this morning, it's still up.

--Mr. Zero