Let’s Make the Academic Job Market More Humane

We recently completed a search at my institution for a historian of the Islamic World with a specialization in the vast period before 1800. I chaired the search, and am chairing another search in a different department right now. From the isolation of my family quarantine, I have thought a lot about the search. I am very excited about the person we hired. Still, as I reflect upon the process and what I hear from my younger colleagues, it seems to me that there is much that we as a profession might do better.

When I began applying for jobs a long time ago, the system was very different from today. Credentials stuck in files at the AHA, or mailing in letters and a CV with letters of recommendation to follow. All carried out through the U.S. Mail. Administrators and their so-called efficiencies have changed the way we conduct searches.

My campus, like many, uses an online employment system. Applicants upload the documents we ask for (a letter, a CV, and a statement of teaching philosophy). The system generates automatic emails acknowledging receipt of the applicant’s materials. If I let it, the system will also generate automatic emails informing applicants that they did not get the job. This is the default setting. That seemed a bit harsh and disrespectful to me, and a bit inhumane, but I have come to understand that these robo-mails, or no message at all, have become the norm. Applicants can be forgiven for feeling chewed up and spitted out, scorned and abused. It takes a lot of work to apply for an academic job. The opportunities are few and the stakes are high. An automatic email seems an unnecessarily callous ending in a world filled with callousness.

We must do better.

So I sent sixty-one emails personally, one to each of the applicants. It took a bit of time, but not much. I wanted the applicants to know that I appreciated the time and effort they put into their applications. I acknowledged the rottenness of the job market, and how I wished we could have interviewed more people. I told them how impressed my colleagues and I were with their credentials, and how difficult a time we had narrowing the applicants to a number of candidates we could meaningfully interview.

I expected nothing in response, but thirty-one of the applicants replied to my email. This surprised me. Though one was gently and reasonably critical of the time the search took, all were appreciative and thanked me for treating them with courtesy and respect. All of them either said, or strongly implied, that such minimal courtesy is all but unheard of in today’s academia.

I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter, so I read a lot from recent Ph.D recipients describing their searches for a tenure-track job. These are tales of desperation, despair and depression, with not a few instances of shabby treatment by hiring institutions along the way. We who are lucky enough to be tenured or on the tenure track must, and can, do better. Writing a personal message is only the start.

Decency matters.

Decency matters so much that it is worth the extra effort to treat job applicants as you would like to be treated. Yes, the market was brutal when I went out twenty -five years ago, but it is much worse now. Believe recent graduates when they tell you that.

We must recognize that we are so fortunate to have the jobs we have. Colleges and universities, I know, as workplaces can vary widely in quality. I spent the first four years of my career at a dysfunctional hellhole in Billings, Montana. But even in the midst of the shit-show that was that college, I enjoyed my students, the teaching, and the advising. I enjoyed the moments I squirreled away to work on my first book. Once I closed the classroom door or my office door, I was happy.

And even if you feel justified in whining about your place of employment, remember this: there are literally hundreds of people who would like to do what you are doing, but will never get that chance. This brutal reality imposes upon all of us the obligation to be the best historians and teachers we can be. You must remember, no matter how good you think you are at this work, no matter how paradigm-shattering you consider your research, it is almost certain that there is someone better than you, shut out by the brutality of the academic job market. One of my colleagues at the dysfunctional hellhole, who doubled as an associate pastor at a local Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, told me during my on-campus interview that being a college professor was the best part-time job in the world. I suspect that we all know people who take this approach to academia, who do not produce or take their teaching seriously, but I can think of no attitude more loathsome and disrespectful to the many hundreds of talented historians who will never get a chance.

We cannot undo all the macroeconomic changes in higher education. I recognize the magnitude of the fiscal challenges facing colleges and universities. But let’s push back against the increasing bureaucratization of the job search and the increasing role played by computers in the hiring process. Perhaps you have an Ivy-League pedigree, and you feel your research is so important that you cannot be bothered to pay attention to the lowly peons who want to join your department. Perhaps you went to a second-tier school and never looked back. Whoever you are, wherever and whatever you studied, there is no excuse for not being kind. Resist every institutional protocol, and every barrier, that keeps you from treating job applicants the way you would like to be treated. If you are that barrier, and find that you cannot find the time to treat applicants with decency, perhaps you ought to step aside. Be kind and be decent. Most of all, show compassion. It matters.

Some Thoughts on COVID-19, Your Courses, and Our Path Forward Together

We are entering a period of uncertainty. For me, part of that uncertainty involves the effort to continue offering quality instruction through a computer. I cannot tell you that the transition will be seamless or easy. There are going to be some significant bumps in the road. I have a lot to learn about using Canvas, Zoom, and a host of other platforms my more knowledgeable friends have recommended to me. I will communicate with you all as thoroughly and completely as possible. If going home poses difficulties for you, let me know. If you do not have reliable internet access at home, let me know that, too. You can email me, or message me on Twitter (@NativeAmText).

I know you took your books home with you for Spring Break. You will need them over the course of the next two months. I will be working in the coming days to learn how best to continue our class discussions online. Because I do not lecture, and because I do not use Powerpoints, I suspect there might be some reasonably easy fixes for our classes. But I don’t know for sure, and I will keep you informed about what I learn, and I am open to any suggestions you might have. We will get through this.

You are living through historic times, I suspect. I think back to the Great Depression, when the collections of shacks and shelters thrown together by the homeless were called “Hoovervilles,” after the particularly ineffective President who watched the Nation’s economy flow down the drain. I wonder if we will someday soon call the quickly constructed emergency medical centers, should they be required, “Trump Hotels,” or something like that, given our current particularly ineffective President’s bumbling response. Still, I remain hopeful that if we are smart and conscientious, and that if sensible precautions are followed, that the impact of this deadly virus will be blunted. It is best to err on the side of caution.

As a historian, I might suggest you keep a journal of this plague year, a record of the events you witnessed, your fears, and your concerns. That one of your eight semesters at college was significantly disrupted by a global pandemic is something I suspect you may remember for the rest of your life. I am willing to bet that the historians of the future would love to read about your experiences during this crisis. And if keeping a journal is not your style, do something creative. Do some art, if that is your thing. Write some poetry or some music. Take care of yourselves and those who you hold close. The coursework, whatever form we agree it will ultimately take, is not as important as your health and the health of those people you care about. I can be flexible. We are all in uncharted territory.

I spent the end of last week and the beginning of this one sitting in a hospital room, and then in a skilled nursing facility. My mom had a major health crisis that has really thrown all of us in my family for a loop. Your health is a fleeting and a fragile thing, and it can be gone in a second. I think about this a lot, about how quickly our fortunes can turn.

The “In-Person” part of our semester in the Humanities class ended with the Gospels. As we move forward, we will make our way through Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s Inferno, More’s Utopia, Father Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart, and Hamlet. All of these texts can be read in such a way that they force us to consider how to live meaningful lives in the midst of grave crisis. In a world that can seem so cruel and foolish, so short-sighted, empty and mean, it is worth considering the significant questions these readings raise: How to be virtuous, brave, and compassionate. Some of us may be tested in the days and weeks ahead.

We can stand in a circle, as I told you in class, with no one excluded. No us and them–just us. No one excluded, cast aside, or discarded. Help those in need. Be generous and kind. Remember that we all have a lot weighing upon us. Maybe, with compassion, we can emerge from this crisis wiser and better than we were before.

I will stay in touch. I hope you will, too. I look forward to reading what you write, and hearing your thoughts as we move forward together.

What You Need To Read, March 2020.

It has been an incredibly busy and trying semester thus far, so I have not posted as much as I normally do. Nonetheless, I have tried to keep up with the scholarship I see coming out.  Here is the latest quarterly bibliography of things I think you need to read. 

Ablavsky, Gregory. “Species of Sovereignty: Native Nationhood, The United States, and International Law, 1783-1795,” Journal of American History, 106 (December 2019), 591-613.

Adams, David W. “A Year of Crisis: Memory and Meaning in a Navajo Community’s Struggle for Self-Determination,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 42 (no. 4, 2018), 113-130.

Anderson, Chad. The Storied Landscape of Iroquoia: History, Conquest, and Memory in the Native Northeast, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

Bonnin, Gertrude Simmons (Zitkala-Sa), “Help Indians Help Themselves”: The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), (Lubboock: Texas Tech University Press, 2020).

Boudreaux, Edmond A and Maureen S. Meyers, Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2020).

Canby, William C. American Indian Law in a Nutshell, 7th Edition, (St. Paul: West Academic, 2020).

Carr, W. Kurt, et. al., The Archaeology of Native Americans in Pennsylvania, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).

Clemmons, Linda M. Dakota in Exile: The Untold Stories of Captives in the Aftermath of the US-Dakota War, (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019).

D’Oney, J. Daniel. A Kingdom of Water: Adaptation and Survival in the Houma Nation, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

Davies, Wade.  Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895-1970, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020).

DeCoster, Jonathan, Conflict and Accommodation in Colonial New Mexico, (New York: Oxford university Press, 2020).

Deer, Ada. Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice.  (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019)

Deloria, Philip. Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019). 

Dorgan, Byron L. The Girl in the Photograph: The True Story of a Native American Child, Lost and Found in America. (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2019).

Eastman, Charles A.  The Soul of an Indian: An Interpretation, ed. Brenda Child, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020.

Fletcher, Matthew L. M. American Indian Tribal Law, (New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2020).

Fullagar, Kate, The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

Gagmpm. Celeste Marie and Sara K. Becker, “Native Lives in Colonial Times: Insights from the Skeletal Remains of Susquehannocks, A.D. 1575-1675,” Historical Archaeology, 54 (March 2020), 262-285.

Gilio-Whitaker, Dina.  As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019).

Hall, Ryan. Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Hart, William B. “For the Good of their Souls: Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020).

Hatton, Heather. “Narrating Sovereignty: The Covenant Chain in Intercultural Diplomacy,” Journal of Early American History, 9 (December 2019), 118-144

Lapham, Heather A. and Gregory A. Waselkov, Bears: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives in Native Eastern North America, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2020).

Lappas, Thomas J. In League Against King Alcohol: Native American Women and the Woman’s Christiann Temperance Union, 1874-1933, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020).

Legg, John R.  “White Lies, Native Revisions: The Legacy of Violence in the American West,” Great Plains Quarterly 39 (Fall 2019), 341-362.

Lewis, Courtney, “Confronting Cannabis: Legalization on Native Nation Lands and the Impacts of Differential Federal Enforcement,” American Indian Quarterly, 43 (Fall 2019), 408-438.

Loftin, John D. and Benjamin E. Frey.  “Eastern Cherokee Creation and Subsistence Narratives: A Cherokee and Religious Interpretation,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 43 (no. 1, 2019), 83-98.

Midge, Tiffany. Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).

Momaday, N. Scott. The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems, (New York: Harper, 2020).

Murdoch, Sierra Crane. Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, (New York: Random House, 2020).

Nelson, Megan Kate. The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, (New York: Scribner, 2020).

Rice, James D. “War and Politics: Powhatan Expansionism and the Problem of Native American Warfare,” William and Mary Quarterly, 77 (January 2020), 3-32.

Richotte, Jr., Keith. Claiming Turtle Mountain’s Constitution. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

Sachs, Stephen M, et. al., Re-Creating the Circle: The Renewal of American Indian Self-Determination,(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020).

Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “Reconsidering Domesticity through the Lens of Empire and Settler Society in North America,” American Historical Review, 124 (October 2019), 1249-1266.

Smith, Andrea Lynn. “Settler Colonialism and the Revolutionary War: New York’s 1929 ‘Pageant of Decision.’” Public Historian, 41 (November 2019), 7-35.

Swensen, James R. “Bound for the Fair: Chief Joseph, Quanah Parker, and Geronimo and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair,” American Indian Quarterly, 43 (Fall 2019), 439-470.

Wadewitz, Lissa K. “Rethinking the ‘Indian War’: Northern Indians and Intra-Native Politics in the Western Canada-U.S. Borderlands,” Western Historical Quarterly, 50 (Winter 2019), 339-361.