Search Committee Process

[Ruralguy]

Especially your last statement, Dr_codex, is why its so important for search committees to have conversations about these matters before delving into the application materials.

[mleok]

This is an important thread. Academic hiring is overdetermined, with too many inputs sufficient to produce an outcome. For diversity to matter, it needs to be one of those inputs, and sufficiently weighted to potentially make a difference.

In any multi-objective optimization problem, there is a Pareto optimality boundary, and where you end up on the boundary is a function of the relative weight you assign to each criteria. Reasonable people can disagree about what those relative weights are.

We've hired a senior female faculty member a while back, and she did have a period of reduced productivity because of childbearing, but we were able to point to the fact that she had done very impactful research prior to that, and there was evidence that the productivity was coming back on track. The letters play an important role in communicating that.

Put another way, I think it's an easier sell when the high water mark is high, even if the accumulated productivity is not as high as a person without similar family commitments, and there is every reason to believe that the period of reduced productivity is temporary.

[Ruralguy]

..and this might be where the OP (Vid) was at in his search. That is, perhaps the women whom he selected as top candidates were close enough to the other candidates, even if they had (one indicated she had) some life events that limited productivity. That isn't precisely what was communicated, but perhaps some of that is suboptimal communication to us and not so much what happened in the search.

[marshwiggle]

This raises the issue of what I'll call the "Canoe Trip Problem".

When my wife was in high school, she went on a canoe trip. There was a long portage, and the students were in two groups. The first group (my wife's) got to the portage, and decided to load up all their gear and canoes so they could do it in one trip. When they were done, their teacher sent them back to help the second group with their gear. So, the first group didn't get the reward of their labours, and the second group got off easy. Were the first group chumps for their efforts?
Or were they mean for not wanting to help the others?

Translate this to academia. Two female candidates have babies. One works very hard to maintain research productivity, while the other takes time to focus on parenthood. When these candidates are compared, regardless of whether you treat them the same or differently, you are making a value judgement about what priorities are "correct".

Taking life circumstances into account may be a noble ideal, but how people respond to their circumstances is also a real indication of character and values.

Short answer: there is no "right answer" when taking "other" things into account.

[research_prof]

This raises the issue of what I'll call the "Canoe Trip Problem".

When my wife was in high school, she went on a canoe trip. There was a long portage, and the students were in two groups. The first group (my wife's) got to the portage, and decided to load up all their gear and canoes so they could do it in one trip. When they were done, their teacher sent them back to help the second group with their gear. So, the first group didn't get the reward of their labours, and the second group got off easy. Were the first group chumps for their efforts?
Or were they mean for not wanting to help the others?

Translate this to academia. Two female candidates have babies. One works very hard to maintain research productivity, while the other takes time to focus on parenthood. When these candidates are compared, regardless of whether you treat them the same or differently, you are making a value judgement about what priorities are "correct".

Taking life circumstances into account may be a noble ideal, but how people respond to their circumstances is also a real indication of character and values.

Short answer: there is no "right answer" when taking "other" things into account.

+1000. And I am sure there are people out there looking for jobs in academia that do not want to "publicize" their personal matters with the hope that this will land them an interview. They simply work their ass off, sleep less, and try to make things happen. But I agree. There is no "right answer" and there are cases of candidates who simply could not physically or mentally work anymore.

[marshwiggle]

It could also easily be argued that unconscious (or at least unspoken) factors lead some of the committee members, like this guy in question, to declare that the candidates who fall into certain categories are less qualified, even though on paper it is subjective at best. There have been numerous studies that have shown this happens frequently, e.g. the writing that was given high marks when it had a male name attached but lower marks when it had a female name attached; or how symphonies suddenly chose many more women musicians when the candidates auditioned behind a screen where their gender couldn't be seen.

One interesting result from an experiment like this on faculty hiring: like in the cases above, whether the candidate was chosen depended on the name.....

HOWEVER


There were actually two candidates; a "walks on water" candidate and a "middle-of-the-road" candidate. The less-publicized result is that the "walks-on-water" (WOW) candidate was hired regardless of name. It was only the "middle-of-the-road" (MOTR) candidate  for whom the name mattered.

What this indicates is that many diversity initiatives are likely to choose the "diverse" MOTR candidates; the "diverse" WOW candidates would have been hired anyway.

So what it achieves is basically "representative mediocrity". Maybe that's still a good thing, but it's going to create an apparent ongoing problem, since these MOTR faculty will publish less, and in less prestigious journals, etc., than the WOW candidates but when viewed without taking that into account, it will appear as though those candidates are being held back because they will be compared to the WOW faculty, of whom only some are "diverse".

[Ruralguy]

Since our walks on water candidates won't accept the job anyway, it helps to spend a good amount of time filling in the, say 3 to 10 best ranked candidates. I wouldn't say they are mediocre, just obviously not a lot better than the top couple. So, practically speaking for a school like mine, we'd probably end up more diverse by interviewing several minority candidates who are not obviously better the top pack, but not bad. By the technique you suggest, you probably wouldn't know who you were selecting until you looked up contact info for inviting them for a phone/Zoom interview, so it would be a true experiment in selecting without certain biases. It probably wouldn't work in some fields in which the representation is too low for this to matter. But probably worth a try.

[mleok]

Short answer: there is no "right answer" when taking "other" things into account.

Indeed, there are no right answers on this issue. But, I question the wisdom of the approach taken by the OP, as it's not really a battle I encourage junior non-tenured faculty to fight, since it's an effort that ultimately should be led by senior tenured faculty, and it would be futile without buy-in from the senior faculty anyway. If diversity is an administrative and institutional priority, then it's better to leave it to the dean to impose those demands on the department.

[Ruralguy]

I can agree that there is no one right answer, but there probably are some wrong ones (ignore the problem, for one).

Also, its a fact of human existence that only women can give birth. Men can raise children from the moment after, but that doesn't change the facts of pregnancy. In other words, we should all acknowledge that humanity can only exist and persist with some women being pregnant, and some will be career academics. To me this seems less a value than a fact of life. I don't think we should offer huge childbearing discounts for candidates. Or, say similar for men or women taking care of elderly parents. But just be realistic in realizing some facts of human existence and that they can from time to time get in way of mere article writing and grantsmanship. There is no one true weight to apply, just some reasonable things reasonable people can do.

[research_prof]

It is indeed a fact of human existence and no one can deny that. However, let me play the devil's advocate for a second. How do you know that a candidate has indeed experienced what they describe in their cover letter? How can you tell that they are not magnifying or "dramatizing" what they went through hoping that this might land them an interview?

And I am not talking about the applicant in question, who might have very well made truthful statements about her situation, but every time we try to deviate from the evaluation rubrics or norms to look into candidates that fall in the "other" category? FYI: Before you say that the assumption here is that applicants make truthful statements, I would like to mention I know of at least 1 candidate that has tried to play the "dramatization" card to cover for scholarly deficiencies.

The solution here might be to talk with an applicant's references.. but sometimes an applicant's references might not be fully aware of their personal situation. As I mentioned before, not everyone wants to share personal matters with hiring committees, supervisors, or collaborators.

[Vid]

mleok= Those were my suggestions only and actually one senior faculty agreed with it later.  In the last meeting,  he said we should  improve diversity (he might have given it a serious thought:-))... as the number of female faculty at our college is too low! 

I feel we should recognize, accept, and celebrate our differences, NO IMPOSEMENT!

Thank you, folks.

[Ruralguy]

I don't think (for most of us) its an issue of not accepting differences.  Its more about solving problems fairly and in ways that won't cause more problems down the road.

[marshwiggle]

I don't think (for most of us) its an issue of not accepting differences.  Its more about solving problems fairly and in ways that won't cause more problems down the road.

It's also about not turning the process into a contest of self-promotion in areas which are not directly related to job competency. If every candidate is trying to frame all of their life circumstances in the way which makes them most "sympathetic", and these have nothing to do with the explicit requirements of the position, then the process has become completely derailed.

[Ruralguy]

I don't think that's what candidates are really doing when they mention, say, a difficult pregnancy. I likely only gets a brief mention (or I hope so) and perhaps a references says a bit more, but also greatly backs up the candidate's bona fides. We're all humans. Can't we mention human circumstances?

[mleok]

I feel we should recognize, accept, and celebrate our differences, NO IMPOSEMENT!

How is this relevant to the job specfications again? This is why such issues need to be addressed head on prior to the evaluation of candidates. If diversity is a priority, then there should be a clearly articulated policy statement about how it should be addressed in the evaluation process, and the pedagogical and institutional benefits that accrue from it. In addition, one needs to distinguish between improving the representation of women in your department, and increasing the representation of women who are also parents. While there is of course an overlap between these two categories, they are not equivalent. It also requires a serious discussion of family accommodations in university policy, such as maternity and childcare leave, and the impact it should have on promotion and tenure policies. Put another way, it's not simply a question of attracting more women to apply, interviewing more women, hiring more women, but also the question of retention and advancement once they are hired. This is why there needs to be broad buy-in from your senior faculty, because hiring women is really just the start of the challenge.