Get Out The WayNot to alarm you, but I probably want you to quit your job, or at least take a demotion. Statistically speaking, you are probably taking up room that should go to someone else. If you are a white cis man (meaning you identify as male and you were assigned male at birth) you almost certainly should resign from your position of power. That’s right, please quit. Too difficult? Well, as a first step, at least get off your hiring committee, your curriculum committee, and make sure you’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person. Don’t have any in your department? HOW SHOCKING.
My reaction: As provocative and deliberately over-the-top as the proposed solution is, it still wouldn't accomplish the desired result. If all the cis-hetero white guys (or graying Baby Boomers, or any group of tenured faculty) quit their jobs tomorrow, they'd just be replaced with adjuncts--if they were replaced at all.
What do you think?
Frankie
And mostly replace by cis-white-male adjuncts.
ReplyDeleteIt's not clear to me how to even accomplish the task set forward. How do you know if a candidate is white - require a photograph? How do you know if they are CIS? (And then... how do you verify it?)
And women: my dept just had a search for a Visiting position. About 60 applicants, of which 50 had the qualifications in the ad. Of those 50, two were women. One of those women was too far away to interview; the other was offered another job before we could even get her on the phone.
There aren't ENOUGH.
I think the blogger’s solutions to the problems (as I understand them) would just make things worse. Unfortunately, anyone who disagrees with those solutions is a bigot. The blogger states:
ReplyDelete“What can universities do? Well, that’s easier. Stop hiring white cis men (except as needed to get/retain people who are not white cis men) until the problem goes away. If you think this is a bad or un-serious idea, your sexism/racism/transphobia is showing.”
Taking those ideas to their logical conclusion, we throw out Title VII and Title IX. Not revisit or refine, just throw it out.
The blogger doesn’t say it outright, but suggests we reject Title VII of the US Civil Rights Law. Would hiring committees go back to asking for pictures of applicants, now to determine their degree of whiteness, gender, sexuality, and whatever else they can suss out about a candidate’s biological characteristics and privilege because based on that, we think we know something about their political appropriateness for the position? What we do about multi-ethnic candidates? Do we interrogate them about who they mostly identify with? And who judges and weighs their answers? Does anyone really what to interrogate someone about their personal sex life or religion? What if the cttee inadvertently outs someone?
Why should a candidate even be interviewed about it? (But likely some new admin will have to be hired to oversee this process. They will likely make a six-digit salary or close to it for figuring this all out. Meanwhile, adjuncts make a barely living wage--including from institutions who pride themselves on their supposed progressiveness.)
http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians
I think the above link demonstrates having blind interviews not based on gender provide fewer opportunities for bias. (In fairness, it’s about orchestras, not math or STEM, but I think it’s a better way to go.)
Which brings me to the economic issue. If you read Dr. Herron’s post and her blog, she seems to be really struggling personally. I think simply firing people based on their race is, well, racist and doesn’t begin to fix the issues that people are struggling with. At least pay adjuncts a living wage. Add up how many hours they spend a year planning classes, giving classes, grading papers and attending mandatory campus events. Start from there. They should have health care. And it would make sense for universities and colleges to help adjuncts and all staff to have inexpensive access to childcare and eldercare. If you want to keep talent and stability, pay them.
Three Sigma pointed out that in hir school’s situation, there were very few female candidates. Two out of 50 qualified interviewees. Consider if they can go to a school where they are paid more or have better research opportunities or a better lifestyle...they’re going to go elsewhere. Even if that means the private sector or government service.
There are a lot of views I disagree with in the blogger’s post but I think she’s mostly aiming at the wrong target. I can’t help but conclude, based on reading here and other places, that if she were to address colleges’ financial policies and models instead of firing white men, she would face more resistance.
I'll take you at your word, Three Sigma, that the other women in the applicant pool weren't qualified. I've definitely seen that situation in the hard sciences. Still, I hope hiring committees remember that implicit bias sometimes comes into play in judging qualifications. There was a Swedish study that compared the accomplishments of winners of a prestigious medical fellowship and concluded that the women who won had, on average, more papers and more awards than the men who won. I'm too lazy to look it up now.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I really don't want cis white male tenured faculty leaving their jobs because (1) most of them are working hard and doing well, and (2) I want everyone who has a tenure line to stay in as long as possible. Let's at least slow down the transition to an entirely contingent workforce.
Count ol' cis whkte male me as being on board with that first step if I get to resign committee positions.
ReplyDeleteMy experience on research faculty hiring committees is similar to what other people have said. No female candidate even came close. How do I determine the impact of discrimination on a female candidate with one research publication compared to the impact of privilege of a male candidate with five publications? By the way, only three of our top 10 candidates were American. When we hire for teaching positions, two-thirds of the best candidates are women.
I have heard that one way to minimize the impact of bias is to skip the phone interview and bring the candidates with the best-looking dossier to campus. This adds a great deal of expense to the interviewing process since you tend to bring more people to campus.
I should add that no female candidates were close for our most recent search. Others have resulted in more diverse top ten lists but still favoring men.
DeleteFirst, I think your scenario is very plausible, Frankie. We'll just end up with more adjuncts (of every color, gender i.d., etc.) and (most likely) more administrators, with a significant number of those being white and cis-male.
ReplyDeleteA second (and most likely complementary) scenario is the one to which Ben alludes: the white, cis males will quit their committee positions (which they know all too well aren't positions of any real power), publish even more, and all move on to slightly more prestigious/better-funded institutions, leaving more junior women, people of color, and other already-marginalized groups to do the heavy lifting (i.e. teaching and committee work and less-glamorous/powerful administrative work) at less-well-funded institutions.
To the extent we can come up with them, I'm all for more gender/ethnicity/etc.-neutral approaches. As a contingent faculty member, I'd especially like to see understandings of "potential" which give greater weight to the proposition that people who can teach great quantities of intro/core courses while doing a bit of writing and research just might be able to teach a smaller number of mostly upper-level classes and publish a great deal more.
And, while I'm aware of critiques of the "pipeline" argument, I don't think we can ignore the fact that training for many academic jobs is just too much of an economic gamble for people from non-privileged backgrounds (and/or those who may have embraced discoveries about their own identity that have the potential to alienate families of origin).