There’s been a lot of discussion around the philosophy blogs since Leiter brought everyone’s attention to this illuminating read by Lou Marinoff. I finally got around to reading the Marinoff piece today today.
One issue that some have seized on is that Marinoff confesses to taking academic pedigree into account.
How did we prune our field from 637 to 27? An important selection criterion was holding a Ph.D. from a good university. Members of our department earned their Ph.D.s at Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and University of London. Additionally, City College is known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat,” with distinguished alumni that include nine Nobel Laureates, more than any other public institution in America. Our faculty members are expected to live up to this legacy.
There has been some discussion about whether or not this is a good criterion. I actually don’t want to take issue with this here. But I do want to take issue with something else.
Clayton Littlejohn had a funny post about this. He listed the real job ad, and then followed it with what he dubbed “the better job ad” – His post was funny, but also not wildly off the mark. I noted all of this in the comment thread on Clayton’s post, and I now want to elaborate on something I said there.
It seems that if the director of the search committee knows, prior to the search, that pedigree will be an important litmus test (especially in the early screening of the applications), then this is something that ought to be disclosed.
The APA already requires that advertisers list (and be honest about) what AOS and AOC they’re looking for. In fact, this is their general statement:
The APA recognizes as a professional right of applicants for any position advertised in Jobs for Philosophers that no qualification for the position that will be given weight in making the appointment should be concealed from such applicants.
I don’t think the statement could be much clearer, and it seems to entail that the APA thinks it is the right of applicants to know if you’re going to screen them out because they didn’t get their Ph.D. from a program that’s on your list. If you want someone from a Leiter top-50, and you’d throw someone out for not having a Ph.D. from somewhere off the Leiter top-50, you need to say so in your ad. If you only want a person from the top-10…you need to say so.
p.s. Much of that discussion about the Marinoff is happening over at the Philosophy Smoker.
I agree with you, this kind of criterion should be disclosed and exposed. Not only for the value of honesty, not only because it will avoid wasted time and expense on the part of applicants from “lesser” schools; but also because if a department has those assumptions and can’t overcome them when confronted with an exceptional candidate holding a less impressive degree, that’s a sign of an unhealthy department. Fortunately I made it through the job search and earned tenure at a good university, but being on search committees has taught me a few things: Academic inbreeding and stasis result when big names and pedigree universities hire within their own set. Innovation often comes from those outside the existing power structure (especially a structure with a limited definition as per Leiter). Departments ought to be able to say outright that they don’t welcome certain schools, perspectives, innovative approaches, and they should be thanked for their honesty. The fact that few departments are willing to disclose this indicates either a) that they realize there should be room in their pool for bright, unusual candidates from “lesser” schools, or b) that they realize there is something wrong about the way they approach searches and they aren’t willing to be forthcoming with it until a media event like this happens. Either way it is unfortunate – but it’s an unfortunate truth those kinds of departments should be honest about.
Hear hear.
Agreed, these practices should all be made explicit. But I guess I always figured that Leiter-ranked schools pretty much all take pedigree into account rather heavily, especially places like CUNY. After all, even the schools on the bottom of the PGR top-50 have faculty primarily from Harvard, Cornell, etc.
Even if my assumption is an obvious one that we should all expect people to make, it would be helpful to have more fine-grained principles made explicit that can’t easily be assumed. As you note, for example, it would be extremely helpful if the ads said, say, “we’ll only consider someone from around PGR top-10-30” or something like that. But of course that’s likely to cause a fuss given that many don’t like to treat the PGR in this way—as if it’s a precise tool appropriate to use in such ways. They’ll likely have to make their claim in the ad highly qualified or highly general (e.g. “we’ll take pedigree into account”). And that might not be very useful.
Side note: I like how Marinoff in the quote you provide says they only considered PhDs “from a good university” and provides some top universities as examples. That seems to imply that universities that aren’t super prestigious aren’t good. I think he meant to say “from a prestigious university”—at least I hope. 🙂