Subject: Re: Job opportunity at Lancaster University (UK) pure poetry
From: Kevin Austin (kevin.austin@videotron.ca)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2007 - 18:33:35 EDT
At 5:49 PM -0400 8/19/07, Peter Castine wrote:
>Although I see both points, and without actually knowing details of
>the situation at Lancaster, I have experienced such weird decisions
>on the part of search committees (from both sides of the search
>process), that my gut tends to side with...
Hiring a fulltime tenure track position is not 'simply' hiring
qualifications. Central to all hires into an academic unit is the
committee's perception of the individual to be able to "fit" in,
whether from the academic, personal or political perspective.
Sometimes the person who is hired will be the one who will pose the
fewest difficulties in integration in the department -- they are a
low maintenance individual and will not disturb the existing lines of
communication and interests.
Sometimes the person hired will fill a political role -- the
department has been identified as lacking ethnic / gender diversity
and non-WEMs will get preference because of the 'optics' of hiring a
black, half-blind Jew (as Sammy Davis Jr spoofed himself as being).
Sometimes the individual reads well on paper, but in the "sample
class" taught on the interview day, they demonstrate that they mumble
and get into corrosive arguments with students and faculty. Yes, this
does happen.
I was on a committee that made the wrong choice and we were met and
told that our eight months of work was appreciated but was going to
be ignored because the candidate had been selected before the
committee was formed. Not a happy situation.
I have met 'desperate' candidates who have 'misrepresented' their
true interests, (simply) wanting to be closer to the real job they
wanted to get, or to get away from a worse situation. In these cases,
honesty is left far behind expediency in the representation to the
committee.
At one time I was on a committee that had to hold its nose to make
the recommendation, but it's as Churchill said, "... democracy, no
matter how bad, is better than any of the alternatives."
But my experience is that in the long run, (and it may be a long
run), it catches up. The unhappy individual is not made happy by
getting a plum position, and the megalomaniac is always pursuing more
power and territory regardless of the damage done to others along the
way.
Hmmm .... sounds a bit like the rest of life.
Best
Kevin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b27 : Sat Dec 22 2007 - 01:46:29 EST