There are many very insane people, so I can’t say for sure that the following is a completely baseless battle with a straw man:
So this is what is going on. People mistakenly think the MLA convention is a major source of revenue for the association. They actually think the MLA organizes the job search process in such a way as to profit from the misery of jobseekers. At an extreme, they think the MLA is not just a clearinghouse for academic jobs and interviews but some kind of regulatory agency that sets the terms for the number of jobs and interviews available. At an even more extreme extreme (and this takes us back to a certain angry-pseudonymous Chronicle commenter), they believe that the MLA is in possession of information about interviews that, if released, would lead to a radical democratization of the job system whereby everybody in departments in the modern languages would spontaneously agree to interview candidates from low- and middle-ranked institutions in proportion to their numbers in the applicant pool. Relatedly, some people argue that the entire job system should be run by lottery.
What do you think? Do these completely deranged “people” that Michael Bérubé is talking about exist? Is there a significant number of them? Or is this a way of distracting all of us from real grievances against the MLA?
Is he sincere in the rest of this comment? Because there are only two possibilities: he is either insincere or a heavy drinker. People who decide to hold the MLA on the frakking Nob Hill of San Francisco and then ask why grad students who attend are unhappy cannot possibly be anything but these two things.
And the same goes for people who pretend that technological progress hasn’t happened. “Here is a boring and long-winded explanation of why we invented the MLA job interviews long before Skype became widely available.” I’m shocked he thought of publishing his comments on Facebook if he is such a stickler for communicating with people in person and not over the Internet.
I don’t know. I want to like this guy (because who else is there to defend the Modern Languages?) but it isn’t working out for me a whole lot.
Clarissa's Blog 
This is a fight against a straw platoon.
To the extent that I was following this (not that closely) the anger wasn’t at the MLA but rather at the aloof and entitled (not to mention Luddite) attitude of search committees casually telling people, with little notice, that they might deign to interview them during the MLA convention (along with apparent indifference about the planned decline of TT positions in the humanities in favor of adjuncts). I had detected no real grievances toward the MLA (there may have been some around the sidelines but it wasn’t a major thing.
This response is so disingenuous to make me seriously wonder now if something really is up that people hadn’t known about. There reads very much like a nervous administrator who’s been up to some monkey business and becoming paranoid about it.
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Berube like all other “tenured radicals” is invested in defending the status quo as it exists to the very last drop of other people’s blood. I know on another thread you commented that you thought it was odd that I never got a US interview. But, the vast majority (99.99%) of tenured professors in the US think it is very a good thing I never got an interview. They deliberately set up the system so people like me could never get an interview. US academia hates diversity. They want a system that reproduces themselves. So even small challenges to the way things are run like removing barriers to attending interviews are militantly resisted. I also think this is a case where power corrupts, particularly in academic administration. From all I can tell Berube’s scholarship is fine and the stories he used to occasionally post on his developmentally disabled son were always wonderful.
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Berube is O.K. but not very lucky. You might want to read up on him. I don’t have the time to say more today.
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The only thing that interests me about Berube is how he runs the MLA. Nothing else is even remotely my business.
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he no longer runs the MLA.
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Berube is not radical at all. That’s just stupid David Horowitz’s claim.
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I don’t think Berube runs MLA anymore? At any rate, he has a nice follow up to the piece you posted above. I agree that the statement you posted isn’t particularly satisfying. But I think he’s also trying to defend against “MLA hate” also. And MLA is an orginization that does a lot of good in many ways. One good thing is MLA provides very strict guidelines/rules for member institutions when they conduct campus visits (for instance MLA mandates that the institution–not the candidate–pays all travel expences for campus visits.) At any rate, here is his follow up. It’s certainly something I agree with. The quicker we get rid of MLA inerviews, the better in my opinion. 🙂
https://m.facebook.com/michael.berube.169/posts/434062910053576
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My only personal grievance about the MLA is that time when it was held in Nob Hill. It was an absolutely unnecessary humiliation and cruelty. I will never respect people who do this to their colleagues. No matter how much time passes, they cannot wash this off.
Berube suggests that people hate the MLA because they didn’t get jobs there. Well, I got my job at that MLA on Nob Hill but I’m still angry as hell.
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Are the SF MLAs more expensive than the NY ones, etc.? I can’t afford to stay in the hotels anyway, so wherever it is I always have to commute in from further out. I am looking for cheap digs in Chicago for LASA at this very moment.
I do know people who believe really irrational things / say things are “the MLA’s fault.” People who will not believe a certain friend of mine and I are not applying for the same jobs (we aren’t, can’t realistically, are not similar enough), etc., etc. Some instructors in my department believe a Ph.D. is 2 years of coursework beyond the M.A., and that we got ours to spite them. On and on. I have heard more irrational rumors about the profession and how it works than I can recount.
Boring to remember when things were done entirely through nepotistic networks? I guess, if you don’t care about nepotism or access to the profession, and are not interested in the reasons for things having been done as they have been.
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“Are the SF MLAs more expensive than the NY ones, etc.? ”
– Depending where in NY. On Nob Hill, one can’t even afford a cup of coffee between interviews. And it’s filled with crowds of very rich, expensively dressed people. Who treat you like garbage if you are not covered in diamonds. In SF, interviews were scheduled in two very different parts of the city, meaning that one also had to spend a fortune on taxis to move between the interviews.
Horrible experience.
“Boring to remember when things were done entirely through nepotistic networks? I guess, if you don’t care about nepotism or access to the profession, and are not interested in the reasons for things having been done as they have been.”
– I don’t like it when people ascribe weird opinions to me and then argue with them.
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