political science job rumors

Things may get weird. Trying to fix the problems.

1. CGIS Knafel Denizen
   .edu verified member

   Various posters from the other thread asked me to provide specifics from my own experience about how the job market treats male and female candidates differently. Obviously I am not going name any specific names, but I will list some anonymous profiles of candidates without names and let readers guess how they fared on the job market.

   The following four candidates were the top graduate students from the same CHYMPS department, and all four went on the job market during either 2007 or 2008. Here were there profiles at the time they went on the job market.

   Candidate #1: Comparativist, no publications aside from an encyclopedia entry

   Candidate #2: Americanist, no publications

   Candidate #3: Americanist, had a JOP article

   Candidate #4: Americanist, had an APSR article

   Based on this VERY LIMITED information, can you try to guess which of these candidates have been successful at producing top publications since 2007, and which have not?

   Bonus question: Try to guess which of these four candidates received the best jobs on the market during 2007-2008. To make things harder, I intentionally have not told you their genders. I will tell you that all four of these candidates are white, so there are no complications due to racial minorities.

   Posted 10 months ago #

2. anon
   Unregistered

   Let me guess, 1 and 2 have since published in Cambridge and AJPS while 3 and 4 have bombed out?

   Posted 10 months ago #

3. anon
   Unregistered

   CGIS, why don't you tell us the distribution of departments they were placed at, and let us try to guess which candidate placed at which dept?

   Posted 10 months ago #

4. anon
   Unregistered

   Pretty sure I know where this is going...1 & 2 got the CHYMPS jobs but have produced nothing since...

   Posted 10 months ago #

5. hint please
   Unregistered

   Did any of them coauthor "with" Mo Fiorina?

   Posted 10 months ago #

6. anon
   Unregistered

   oh yes, and 1 and 2 were females for sure. I am pretty sure there are examples to the reverse as well, but this guy just wants to attack females. I am guessing he has some sexual problems, or got dumped recently.

   Posted 10 months ago #

7. anon
   Unregistered

   Ha ha, I love how being a racial minority is a "complication"!

   Posted 10 months ago #

8. anon
   Unregistered

   It's like giving birth or having open heart surgery.

   Posted 10 months ago #

9. anon
   Unregistered

   If all else is equal, then 3 an 4 are most likely to have produced the best publications since. Of course, not all else is always equal, and 1 and 2 might have shown better promise in grad school in spite of their weaker CV's.

   Posted 10 months ago #

10. anon
    Unregistered

    I know who some of these people are, and CGIS Knafel doesn't know the whole story. In particular, Candidate #4, although incredibly productive in grad school and since, had some issues with his/her job market paper and talk and therefore underplaced relative to Candidate #2, who say what you will, gives very good talks. People around at the time know this; apparently, CGIS Knafel does not.

    There's more to the hiring process than just your pub record, including whether you blow a job talk.

    Now, stop bashing people and get back to work.

    Posted 10 months ago #

11. anon
    Unregistered

    If ^ is posting accurate information (and I don't know for sure), then this is evidence that search committees are pretty bad at predicting future research quality. Candidate #4 would have been predicted to be a high-impact researcher simply by glancing at the CV.

    The "issues with the job market paper" comment is a fairly subjective commentary.

    Posted 10 months ago #

12. anon
    Unregistered

    Here's the thing. A committee of 3 people might find a candidate with an already good publication record a strong candidate. However, the department might have several faculty wanting someone studying Asia or Latin America -- and the committee invites some applicants who do these things even though the CV of the Asianist isn't that strong, but the other 2 Europeanists have great records. The Europeanists give poor talks and during deliberatoins over who to hire the Latin Americanist is hired because s/he gave a good talk.

    The fact is committess put too much stock in talks and not enough in the research itself. A good talk + filling some perceived regional need in a department can often get someone hired when it doesn't make sense from the outside.

    Posted 10 months ago #

13. anon
    Unregistered

    "The fact is committess put too much stock in talks and not enough in the research itself."

    Two points:

    1. This often happens at the department level. Committees come up with the short list and may issue a hiring recommendation, but the vote to hire is typically at the department level. Most department faculty outside the committee don't read the files, so the job talk is what they have to go on.

    2. When you're evaluating new PhDs/ABDs, there isn't much of a paper trail to look at. Dissertations can be misleading insofar as there can be a lot of hand-holding by the committee, the candidate may just be doing a spin-off of the adviser's research, etc. And not to mention whether the candidate can actually teach. The job talk provides evidence of whether the candidate really can explain and defend their research, whether they can communicate effectively, etc. It's a different situation when evaluating advanced assistants and senior candidates, but then they should be beyond bombing a job talk, no?

    Posted 10 months ago #

14. anon
    Unregistered

    When you're evaluating new PhDs/ABDs, there isn't much of a paper trail to look at.

    Seems like OP's point is that there is a difference on paper between Candidate #3 with a JOP and Candidate #1/2 with nothing. And I agree, provided that the JOP wasn't co-authored with the advisor (which is a far murkier situation).

    Posted 10 months ago #

15. anon
    Unregistered

    A solo APSR is going to be pretty attractive for most committees and departments. But even a solo APSR does not guarantee a job if 1) many people in the department think the paper has some pretty serious flaws (the review process is imperfect at all journals; 2) the candidate is a jerk; 3) the job talk was bad (not just mediocre, but bad); the candidate seems unable to formulate a wider agenda or articulate interesting questions (so paper could be a one hit wonder, reflect advisor, suggest technical merit but lack of broader insights, etc.).

    Why should the job talk matter? Failing a job talk suggests many different things: candidate could be too arrogant to put the time into developing a good talk. Who wants that kind of arrogance around? Even more worrying, paper may not reflect work of student but of advisor. Paper may be fluke, etc. Point: even with a solo APSR paper (which is a strong signal), it may be difficult to evalute quality.

    Posted 10 months ago #

16. anon
    Unregistered

    http://youtu.be/QaTbErVDQ40

    Go on, name name.

    Posted 10 months ago #

17. anon
    Unregistered

    ^^^Sure, in theory that's possible, but you couldn't name a single person in recent history who had a solo APSR or AJPS article as a grad student and later turned out to be a "one hit wonder," as you called it. This simply does not happen.

    Go on, try to name a single example from the past ten years. Just a single one.

    The fact is that it's extremely rare for a grad student to have a solo APSR or AJPS, and when it happens, it's a very, very strong signal that the person will publish at that level again in the future. It's a much stronger signal than any recommendation letter from any pestigious adviser, or any dissertation awards, or a PhD in hand from any top department.

    Posted 10 months ago #

18. anon
    Unregistered

    ^This is actually correct. Those journals are just ruthless nowadays.

    Posted 10 months ago #

19. anon
    Unregistered

    ^^
    I think this is the wrong attitude, except for finding a**holes.

    Tenure is evaluated on the ability to write interesting work. Committees and departments should read the work, whether in JOP or unpublished. If a candidate has a solo JOP or solo APSR, then that should count even if the talk is a bomb. No one evaluates talks when they receive someone's tenure file.

    Now using the talk to find a**holes or to learn that someone doesn't know much about their co-authored work is a different story.

    Posted 10 months ago #

20. anon
    Unregistered

    ^I'd second this by noting that if someone has a solo-authored APSR or AJPS, combined with having gone through Harvard's quant training, you really can't get any greater assurance that a particular grad student is going to be a high quality publisher.

    For such a candidate, I would argue that the job talk has the danger of being a distraction for hiring departments, as it adds noise to the equation by giving faculty who want to derail the candidate an opportunity to look for subjective reasons to discount the objective evidence (Harvard PhD and the top journal article).

    Posted 10 months ago #

21. anon
    Unregistered

    um, actually I can think of someone who has had a solo APSR, from a top five program, with excellent training, who has gone on to produce virtually nothing. and no, I will not name names. It happens. there are no guarantees.

    and yes, if a person has a solo APSR and bombs the job talk, there are still good arguments for hiring the person. But a bombed job talk + acting like an ahole + terrible one on ones == may add up to not hiring that person.

    if you think shite doesn't get through AJPS and APSR, you are hopelessly naive.

    Posted 10 months ago #

22. anon
    Unregistered

    and get over yourself about "Harvard's quant training." I really hope you don't believe "Harvard's quant training" is so special?

    Posted 10 months ago #

23. anon
    Unregistered

    ^By construction, someone who has a solo APSR has not "produced virtually nothing."

    A solo-authored APSR is, in fact, "virtually something." If you have one as a grad student, then you have a very significant head start on your way to a tenurable record.

    Posted 10 months ago #

24. anon
    Unregistered

    Listen, dudes. You people don't have a clue.

    Think Hobbes. the jobs go to the people who are nastiest, brutish, and shortest.

    You got to claw your way in. "record" and "pedigree" dont mean NOTHIN

    If it means sleeping with the search committee, or getting someone high, or even blackMaleing someone,

    you gots to do what you gots to do.

    If you want to become a part of the promised land, you got to promise you will do anyting to get to that land.

    So, do it, good people.

    Posted 10 months ago #

25. anon
    Unregistered

    While the OP appears to hang around CGIS-Knafel, he (I think we can assume its a he) doesn't seem to have a very good understanding of what counts as adequate evidence on which to base broad conclusions. A sample of 4 individuals over the course of a job season or two isn't really an adequate sample; and to assert that the decisive factor is sex/gender, one would need to control for other factors -- but the OP seems to have made no attempt to do so (other than controlling for institutional affiliation by focusing on just one program -- but that gets us back to the problem of representative sample).
    If this is indicative of the quality of reasoning and argument in the OP's work, it's no wonder that he is (evidently) frustrated and envious about his professional performance.

    Posted 10 months ago #

26. anon
    Unregistered

    what's the answer??

    Posted 10 months ago #

27. good show
    Unregistered

    ^^that's great. You're so smart. But have you actually ever been on a search committee or in a department meeting?

    If you have, then you would know that people know that what he describes is how our world works-- it's that way at my middling R1 now, and was that way at the middling private R2 where I used to work. Every year, I have friends at SLACs call me to ask if I know of good women in my field.

    The only question is whether the gender issue is explicitly discussed or discussed with winks and coded language, and whether the practice itself is treated with irony or earnestness.

    Posted 10 months ago #

28. anon
    Unregistered

    ^don't bother. Women are like mad dogs when it comes to defending their institutional privileges.

    Posted 10 months ago #

29. anon
    Unregistered

    Think Hobbes. the jobs go to the people who are nastiest, brutish, and shortest.

    I know someone who's nasty, brutish, and short, and he's had a pretty tough time with the job market.

    Posted 10 months ago #

30. anon
    Unregistered

    I think OP's main point, which I acknowledge, is that one's publication record before the PhD is the strongest predictor of one's publication record after the PhD.

    OP's argument falls short, however, because OP fails to realize that universities have other goals in mind in hiring aside from just producing good research. Many universities are constrained to hiring a specific demographic (female faculty, for instance) because donors have given money with that requirement. Other universities care about teaching, and maybe the worse researcher is the better teacher. There are many other factors at play in hiring aside from just hiring the best researcher.

    Posted 10 months ago #

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