Reaching Under-Represented Job Candidates
Job search committees are asking the American Philosophical Association (APA) for help in reaching potential job candidates who are members of under-represented groups in philosophy, according to Teresa Blankmeyer Burke (Gallaudet), the acting chair of the Committee on Inclusiveness in the Profession. Of particular interest are email distribution lists (listservs) that may have a significant number of such philosophers among their subscribers. She adds that the APA will list these listservs on its Resources on Diversity and Inclusiveness page, and that lists will be added throughout the job search season.
If you know of any such lists, please leave them in the comments below. If you wish to create such lists and alert people of their existence, you are welcome to leave notice of that in the comments, too.
Sally Haslanger just pointed out on FB that the UPDirectory (http://www.theupdirectory.com/) has a moderated weekly email list. Email them at postupdirectory at gmail dot com. I doubt that it would make sense to spam the entire UPDirectory with, essentially, a bunch of links to PhilJobs (rather than using some more targeted list), but those in doubt could always leave that decision up to the moderators.
(Uh, incidentally, Rice is hiring! Ethicists and political philosophers from underrepresented groups in philosophy, please apply!)
There is something disingenuous about this whole thing. Are we to understand that there are people who are considering employment in philosophy, but are too “minority” to be aware of philjobs.org or other job board, but are eagerly checking the LGBT philosophy lists (or whatever)? Is this a cheap and easy ploy for departments to say they are reaching out to minorities (by posting to “minority” listservs) without actually having to do anything substantial? Or, are departments intending on hiring some minority, but can’t legally say that in their ads, so they are looking to advertise only on obscure “minority-specific sites” and hope the rest of the profession doesn’t notice? Just asking. . .
It makes a difference to actually send a more directed e-mail. If you’re a smaller college that wouldn’t automatically be on everyone’s list of jobs to apply to, or a hotshot place that people might self-select out of applying to because they think you’re not looking for them, an e-mail of the right sort sent to the right list might convince a few people to apply who otherwise might not have.
In response to karl, I think there is at least one practical reason for posting an ad on specialized philosophy lists, which is that if you’re doing a job search for anyone but an entry-level tenure-track or VAP position, i.e., at the associate or full level, many of the folks you’re looking for don’t make a habit of looking at philjobs.org, and so might not even know about the job you’re posting. (Incidentally, we at the University of Colorado at Boulder are conducting a search for a senior philosopher/chair! The ad’s already up on philjobs.org, but I will be posting the ad on the UP directory shortly.)
I agree that UPDirectory is a really good resource. But I do also get the sense that minorities are perfectly capable of using PhilJobs, jobs.ac.uk, etc.
However, some philosophers might not know some other efforts in which institutions aim to create jobs specifically for minorities rather than merely trying to make sure they know about a generally advertised position. http://www.minoritypostdoc.org/view/resources.html has a long list. One that I want to especially highlight (which I was happy to learn about when I was initially on the job market) is the Consortium for Faculty Diversity in liberal arts: http://www.gettysburg.edu/about/offices/provost/cfd/ . The application process is as simple as AcademicJobsOnline, and I’ve gotten a couple of postdoc interviews via that source a few years back.