New AOS: Public Philosophy & Prison Education
Marymount Manhattan College is looking to hire someone with expertise in both public philosophy and prison education, neither of which have been listed as areas of specialization in a philosophy job ad before, to my knowledge.
(Correct me if I’m wrong about that.)
Lamont Thergood, “The Day”
The job is a two-to-three year visiting joint appointment as a fellow at the College’s Geraldine A. Ferraro Institute for Breakthrough Civic Leadership and its Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies.
The chief responsibilities of the position include teaching courses on public philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and related topics, teaching courses in the school’s prison education programs, developing and overseeing the programs, providing professional development opportunities for other faculty teaching in them, and helping the department revise its philosophy major to have a focus on public philosophy.
You can check out the ad here.
(via Thi Nguyen)
1. It’s too bad that this isn’t an on-going position. (It might convert to one, but it’s dependent on “securing outside funding” – hard to know how likely that is.) That surely will impact who can and will apply.
2. I don’t think it’s really right to say that they want an “AOS is public philosophy and prison education”. They want someone who will be/has been involved in those areas, and who wants to work in them, but that seems closer to an add that, say, says it wants someone who has experience and interest in teaching first-generation students, or on-line teaching, or teaching in other non-traditional ways than as looking for an “AOS”. (What would an AOS in prison education be for a philosopher?) They give a list of areas they want the person to teach in – “social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and other courses of interest”, and it seems that those are the “AOS” here, and that “public philosophy” and “prison education” are ways and places the want the person hired to pursue those areas of specialization. That makes the job look interesting (but too bad it’s fixed term), but not as radical as suggested.
Wait, let me get this straight: A two-to-three-year, visiting position, with loads of teaching responsibilities, including public instruction and instruction in prisons, as well administration of the prison-education program, professional development/training responsibility, and service in rewriting the department’s curriculum.
Does this seem absolutely crazy to anybody else?
It’s almost as if there’s a huge glut in the Philosophy Ph.D. supply and positions are being crafted in light of that glut.