I have no idea what Bates College is but I have just discovered that it is filled with vicious, nasty, stupid creatures and deserves to be shamed, denounced, and denigrated from here to eternity. This stupid place is advertising a 3-year lectureship in German and Russian.
Can you believe the incredible cheapness and gall of these losers? They want to get two specialists for the price of one and don’t even have the decency to make it a tenure-track position. And the most ridiculous thing is that these freakazoids don’t even realize that Russian and German are not similar languages. They don’t belong to the same group of languages, they don’t even share an alphabet. Save for a few words that Russian borrowed from German, there is no significant affinity between them.
When a college offers a tenure-track in Spanish and French, I cringe at the cheapness, but at least the languages are related and it’s a permanent position that can make somebody happy. But a lectureship in German and Russian? Come on!
What’s next, people? A 3-year non-renewable lectureship in French and Quantum Physics? Or Comparative Literature and Geography?
Places like Bates College should be stopped before this practice becomes wide-spread. When an Internet campaign was unleashed against an administrator who wanted to extort faculty members, it took less than 48 hours of online shaming to bring her to apologize and choke on all of her vicious plans. If you weren’t following this blog at that time, here is how the campaign started. My post was #2 search on Google when looking for this administrator’s name. No wonder she crumbled under this sort of pressure.
Now I am beginning a campaign of shaming Bates College. I will persecute it until the first Google searches with its name reveal these disgusting facts about it. This is a strategy that works, and quite a few atrocities have been prevented through online awareness campaigns.
I have noticed that everybody likes to write at length about how much academia sucks but when it comes to something that can actually be done to improve things, nobody wants to participate except people in Australia and maybe one or two academics in North America. Rebecca Schuman is regularly posting detailed articles about appalling job ads like the one from Bates College. Where are similar posts from other people? Where are the specific lists of specific places that mistreat their faculty members? I can find a gazillion and three posts about tenure dying but nobody (except Schuman) is actually naming the killers.
Every college that has the gall to offer non-renewable, exploitative lectureship in non-existing fields should know that the academic community will fall on it like a ton of scholarly volumes from a dusty library shelf. Let’s start with Bates.
Bates College, you suck. Prospective students, don’t go to Bates. It is filled with people who don’t know the difference between Russian and German. This college is a joke, so stay away from it.
Clarissa's Blog 
You are absolutely right… but the job is probably for their current instructor… and the dept of German and Russian probably hope to hire hir on a more permanent basis in the future. This 3y position may be a first step towards that.
This, at least, is how it works at the SLAC I used to work. My dept. tailored a TT job for their VAP with such ridiculous demands that it was obvious that only 5 or 6 people would apply for the job. The administration, however, declined the TT position and transformed it into a 3y VAP position instead. Well, the VAP was tired of waiting for the illusive TT at this particular SLAC, and accepted a good job offer elsewhere. The dept. got stucked with their ridiculous job add and interviewed a bunch a weirdos. The VAP search failed. The dept. lost a faculty position.
Anyways, I hope that their current instructor find a TT job elsewhere and that the dept. of German and Russian at Bates starts the 2014-15 academic year with one less professor.
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I don’t know what their internal drama is and, honestly, I don’t care. But they place this ad in a public space, thereby legitimizing such disgusting practices. When several colleges start doing this simultaneously, it will become a norm. We can still stop this trend from developing any further.
Nobody listens to our excuses as to why we don’t fit every insane job description out there. Let’s stop listening to them for a change.
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It is obviously a fake search.
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This fake search will give a rise to a multitude of real searches if we don’t nip this in the bud.
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Bates charges students $61,000 per year, by the way. That is considerably less than this imaginary dual specialist will make, I’m sure.
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Are you serious?? God, this is too bizarre.
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They are a very highly-ranked SLAC in Maine. Top 10. They should be ashamed.
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Yale charges less and they are a little better known. 🙂
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I’d say.
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Bates College is actually a relatively well-thought-of school. Also, German and Russian are not a far fetched combination in the least. Language instructors at even the best of schools often teach more than one language, and to get a PhD in most any subject (not even a language specialty) you have to have command of more than one (I study archaeology, and I have 3 modern languages and 2 ancient languages). As an undergraduate, if you major in Modern Languages or in Education at a European university you are actually required to choose (and pass examinations in) two languages that are not in the same family. My Polish neighbor here in upstate NY is a lecturer at a major R-1 university in German, Polish, and Spanish. She’s paid quite well, and she loves her job. I’m sorry that your education has not prepared you for this particular job, but this search really isn’t that unreasonable, and your complaints and sense of entitlement actually are.
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Having a command of a language – or even being a native speaker – in no way qualifies one to teach it at college level. And if this is news to you, then I’m not surprised you waste your life on thinking well of this shit-hole.
And by the way, try to pay attention before commenting, ok? I’m not looking for a job. I’m not commenting out of some personal resentment but because of a principled position. I hope you understand what that means.
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This Lish creature is perfect proof that only illiterate idiots defend this crap college.
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I’m fascinated by your assertion that I’m illiterate, since I’ve already revealed that I can read and write in 6 languages. And for your information, I’m completely against the abuse of adjuncts. However, I know several people in fixed lectureships (which are certainly not the same as being an adjunct), and I happen to know that they are often very good jobs, and the people who hold them sometimes don’t want to be professors, with all the associated rat race of research, publication, and administration. Additionally, liberal arts colleges operate under constraints that you seem to be completely unaware of, but maybe you should take under consideration. I’ve spent my entire life in academia, attending some pretty respectable schools, (in addition to being a child of academics as well) on both sides of the pond, so I actually do have a pretty good idea of how these things work. Look, you don’t hide your identity very well (which is fine, I think we should own up to our opinions), but if nothing else, perhaps referring to a highly-ranked school in such unsavory terms without knowing the whole story isn’t a great political move. And as someone with a PhD from Yale, I would think you would have better debating skills than petty ad hominem attacks.
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You are a boring and stupid troll. It is unbelievable that a loser like you would dare to offer unsolicited advice to people who have already demonstrated how little they value your idiotic opinions.
Go away, “child of academics.” I’ve had thousands people comment on my blog over the years but few had such poor English skills and such obviously sociopathic tendencies.
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I wasn’t trolling. I was actually looking for an intelligent conversation, since academic hiring practices are an interest of mine. But clearly intelligent conversation is not something you participate in on this blog, since your regular commenters are just sycophants who agree with everything you say, and your response to those who don’t agree with you is to attack them personally rather than their arguments. Is this how you do your research? I can’t imagine any reputable journals publishing an article written with such deplorable debate techniques.
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Stop bullying and threatening. Go away, cyber bully!
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First, she threatens a person and then says she expected “an intelligent conversation.” Unbelievable. Your debating strategy is to make threats, and you dare to criticize people who try to defend themselves??
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Whenever I’ve disagreed with Clarissa, she’s answered in a perfectly calm tone, attacking my arguments rather than me personally. This probably has something to do with my disagreement being presented in a perfectly calm tone, and being supported with arguments rather than personal attacks. You do not get to decide what the tone of discussion is in a space that is not yours, nor do you get to demand that people answer your passive-aggressive snipes at their education with calm and well-reasoned arguments, or that people start ignoring your snipes and only answer your arguments. Basically, you don’t get to diss people and expect not to be dissed in return, even if your dissing is much more ladylike than Clarissa’s 😉
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This is sad to hear. I went to Bates College ~20 years ago. It was a great, intellectually stimulating place back then. As I recall, everything was taught by tenured or TT professors. The school actually seemed especially proud of that fact at the time.
Maybe I’ll write them a letter letting them know that at least one alumnus doesn’t appreciate them contributing to the further marginalization of instructors.
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Wow, you seem mentally ill and paranoid. Do you honestly believe posts like this one will endear you to prospective employers? Please seek the help you clearly need and stop slandering a small liberal arts school.
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What prospective employers, you silly little airhead? I’m not looking for a job. And what ‘small school’? The post is about a scam, not a school. Please try to concentrate.
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Ah, you are from Connecticut. That explains a lot. The worst, most miserable state in the country. Have you tried working and improving life in your miserable, ugly little town instead of trolling blogs/
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The “worst, most miserable state”? Grossly inaccurate by any measure: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/06/20/best_state_connecticut_measure_of_america_suggests_state_is_best_place_to.html I’m from a picturesque suburb, the kind often associated with CT. You seem consumed by jealousy and rage. Sad. But you’re right, I am above this kind of pointless interaction. I should be helping others less fortunate than myself. Consider this comment an intervention: http://www.crisiscallcenter.org/crisisservices.html
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I’ve lived in your stupid “picturesque suburb”, you freak. I can see your address when you post on my blog.
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I realize that, but your insistence on lashing out at me won’t make me back down. I’m having too much fun riling you up! I guess Trinity, Wes, ConnColl, Yale, and Wesleyan won’t be calling you anytime soon….good luck with your “academic” “work.”
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Yale calls me every month, you silly thing. I’m an alumna. 🙂 The other places you named – I don’t know what they are and why they would want up call me if I never went there.
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