The Academy's Dirty Secret

[juillet]

why do you have an issue with my statement that race and gender were important considerations as to why these candidates were hired?

I don’t. That’s not what you said in your original comment. Here is what you said:

but one item not discussed was the impact of race, gender and nationality on the hiring process. For the graduating class in my first year, those items seemed to be more important than the actual qualifications of the PHD graduates.

and then

This was at a time when universities were just starting to seek diversity in hiring professors, particularly in this male centric field, so gender and race were the reasons given [for] their placement

I don’t dispute that departments take gender, race, and other factors into consideration when they make decisions. In fact, I said it in one of my own posts.

I’m not saying that some departments aren’t trying to improve their diversity and might like to hire women or African Americans if they can get it

What I take issue with is the idea that departments value the race or gender of minority and female PhD graduates/tenure-track job candidates over their academic and scholarly qualifications. That is, for a white male candidate, their scholarship and academic prowess are what’s most important, but for a female candidate or a candidate of color, their race or gender becomes most important. Number one, because it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny (if that were the case, departments would have no problems in increasing the diversity of their faculty - they could simply select any minimally qualified warm body that met the racial or gender categories they wanted. Obviously, search committees aren’t doing that).

And number two, because frankly, it - particularly the first statement - outright claims that minority and female candidates who are selected for tenure-track academic roles are selected primarily on the basis of their gender or race and not because of their qualifications. That’s insulting, especially when all evidence actually points to the contrary. And yes, I’d be mad if my department looked at my scholarly record and said “well clearly, her race and gender was the reason for that placement.” Doesn’t matter how much shepherding and education they’ve done to date. It erases my academic and scholarly prowess and reduces me down to a couple of categories. I would feel like it shows how my department really feels about 1) me and 2) other female scholars or scholars of color.

Also, people always ignore this part

We are especially interested in considering applications from members of underrepresented groups, those who have faced economic hardship, are first-generation college graduates, or work on topics related to these issues.

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