It’s not OK to say aloud that a candidate for the position of Full Professor (tenured) of Spanish literature speaks Spanish at the level that would merit her a C in an Intermediate Spanish course.
It’s not OK to say aloud that an aspiring professor of foreign languages has a really bad speech impediment that makes everything she says entirely incomprehensible.
It’s not OK to say aloud that at the age of 65 is too old to start a tenure-track Assistant Professor position.
It’s not OK to say aloud that a candidate for the position of an instructor of dance has a bad limp that will prevent her from teaching the course she is hired to do.
It’s not OK to say aloud that another candidate for the position of an instructor of dance weighs 300 lbs and will be even worse at the job than the one with a limp.
It’s not OK to say aloud that a student should save time and money and drop a course he has no chance of passing because of his non-existent Spanish.
It’s laudable that people are trying not to be mean but we have long ago sacrificed sanity to the pursuit of this fake, dishonest kindness that, in reality, is nothing but self-serving indifference. In order to spare ourselves a couple of embarrassing or tense moments, we create untenable situations where many people suffer. But they can’t say it aloud, so it’s OK.
Clarissa's Blog 
I think those candidates know it all themselves, but do not have courage to face the truth. Other people neither want nor can solve others’ mental problems, so they choose to stay silent.
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Yeah, but their mental problems become our shared problems. Because if you can’t voice these objections, you have to hire them / enroll them.
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“Because if you can’t voice these objections, you have to hire them / enroll them.”
Why you have to enroll them? You don’t have to tell a job seeker/student that he’s not good enough to not hire/enroll him.
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Why do…
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So, your Aspergers is their shared problem?
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For the purposes of my job, I don’t have any asperger’s.
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think those candidates know it all themselves, but do not have courage to face the truth. Other people neither want nor can solve others’ mental problems, so they choose to stay silent
Possibly. But Dunning-Kruger does exist.
Also, in many of those hypotheticals, there is nothing to be gained by telling the truth. I’m sure there are people who actually gained by keeping quiet about these impediments if not in the job applicant panel/grading box, then certainly at the earlier stages.
How much do applicant pools for university jobs benefit from a low acceptance/ high rejection ratio? Does it work the same way for university jobs as it does for university acceptance rates? I know in that that last example, the university benefits by pocketing the course fees.
Conversely I know selective college prep schools like to boast of their favorable college acceptance ratios so they’ll define safety, target and reach schools conservatively.
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The problem is not that one can’t say it to the candidates. One can’t say it to other members of the search committee. I tried (for instance, in the first case) but was shushed down.
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One can’t say it to other members of the search committee.
To whom are you showing kindness by not saying things to the other members of the search committee? Are people that leaky?
The only possibly legally actionable comment is the one about the elderly candidate.
I don’t understand what’s an acceptable criticism to voice out loud to others and what isn’t.
We’ve had candidates accused of being pregnant & called unhireable for that reason when they weren’t even pregnant, and candidates criticized for having accents from cities those in power did not like
Z’s account of what’s “acceptable” and what’s not sounds like a slippery way to justify prejudices, (“She sounds like she’s from ____ and looks pregnant”) whereas research sounds like something they’re sensitive about so nobody comments on it substantively?
Or is it a matter of who is making these criticisms on the search committees?
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Mental and physical capacity can’t be criticized because they are perceived as God-given and immutable. “Choices” can and must be criticized. This is why there is always such a scandal when a gay person says it might have elements of choice.
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So, Asperger “problems” in students should be criticized in State sponsored learning institutions?
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State-sponsored…
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Not true.
There are plenty of choices people want to exempt from real criticism such as the 1)decision to have a business open to the public and not obey public accommodation laws, 2)to be a pharmacist who doesn’t dispense birth control, 3)to do and say racist things and expect people not to criticize you because it hurts your feelings 4) to accept federal money and not follow federal law, 5) to move to a country where women aren’t veiled and then act like grabby ill behaved teens in public…
I’m sure you can think of many more.
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On the other hand, if it isn’t a disability or something vaguely embarrassing like being fat, you can say anything. Also if it is false. We’ve had candidates accused of being pregnant & called unhireable for that reason when they weren’t even pregnant, and candidates criticized for having accents from cities those in power did not like. Meanwhile I get accused of being too critical when I say I like one candidate’s research more than another’s (you are only supposed to check to see whether they have research or not, apparently).
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I have certainly told students that they would be likely better off if they dropped a particular course. I have also known dance instructors who were very good, even with a limp.
(I am using a computer different from my usual one, so my avatar may look different.)
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We are officially not allowed to tell students to drop a course. Which to me sounds like a type of fraud.
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I always tell such students that I cannot tell them what to do, but that I believe their chances of passing a particular course are very small. I actually do not know whether we are permitted to make this comment, but it has never seemed to me to be appropriate.
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Three points:
(1) I’ve had conversations with recruiters about age discrimination. It’s real, and everyone knows it’s happening. It just can’t appear in a document.
(2) You can say things, but they have to be done artfully so that no one can interpret the comment as discriminatory. That can be done. You should talk to my mother, the prof emeritus, who was a dept. chair there.
(3) Your comment is more about the insanity of the composition of the search committee. You don’t trust your colleagues, probably for good reason. The candidates might not take to direct comments well — everyone wants an excuse to consult an attorney these days and have a chance to make money without earning it. Hence point 2, above.
Happy New Year.
Vic
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These are stories from very different places.
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Re search committees (at research schools and in STEM): everyone on the committees is shrewd enough to know what’s not allowed to say out loud, but everyone is biased in various ways and they apply that bias during the first cut (when we go from 300+ applications to maybe 20-30 that get a second look). Each committee member screens and scores all candidates, and everything that is more than a little away from the norm will get a candidate scored as low priority/thrown out and we’ll never even discuss it unless at least one committee member saw something in the application that’s worth a second look. Honestly, I don’t even think people necessarily want to apply bias or be evil, it’s just that the competition is so steep that people apply any halfway rational excuse to eliminate an application.
For instance, in my field it’s common to get a PhD, then a couple of years postdoc (or maybe two postdocs), or a stint in a national lab or industry, and then apply for the tenure track — the peak probability of landing the interview is at 2-4 years post PhD. But more than say 5 years out of a PhD and the chances of getting that interview drop dramatically; it’s hadn’t, then you are probably not a prime candidate (I know how this disadvantages people who took time off for family, for instance); this also precludes other worthy candidates who had another faculty position or worked for years in a national lab/industry as permanent staff. Any situation outside the norm raises eyebrows. Committees are also highly prejudiced in favor of people from big known labs, even though based on some 20 Skype interviews we had this winter, these people have strong CVs with many papers but they (disappointingly) often turn out to be “doers,” hands in the lab, rather than people with ideas.
Relevant to Clarissa and likely a bit disappointing: applying cold, without an in, when you just received tenure or are pre-tenure is tough, because people catch a whiff of trouble (“something went wrong there” or “maybe the person is hedging bets as they think they won’t get tenure”) and they tend to want to stay from these invisible/imaginary issues. All the cases of people whom we’ve hired a little before or after tenure have happened because someone in the department had advocated for them as a rising star, a prize that we should “snatch.” This is why being known and respected in one’s professional circles is important in an academic job search, especially near or after tenure…
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Cut off a whole sentence in the 2nd paragraph there… It should have said, “…the peak probability of landing an interview is at 2-4 years post PhD. But more than say 5 years out of a PhD and the chances of getting that interview drop dramatically; people believe things should’ve happened for you already, and if they hadn’t, then they infer (and I am not saying this is true, but the inference is definitely often made) that you are probably not a prime candidate…”
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I think I should have chosen better examples because people seem to think the post is about job searches, which it is not. What I’m trying to discuss is that there is such a ban on noticing physical and mental deficiencies that people go nuts and vote for Trump.
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What I’m trying to discuss is that there is such a ban on noticing physical and mental deficiencies that people go nuts and vote for Trump.
This is a far better discussion than if people explicitly figured out it was political in any way. Then we’d just have people congratulating themselves on being clear-minded and calling everyone else delusional.
Saying things or not saying things has almost nothing to do with niceness or kindness but everything to do with preserving a world view. I do not know what worldview the people who are being quiet in those examples are preserving.
The bridge is little on the nose:
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies
Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
:-p
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I get the point you’re trying to make and agree with it. I have, however, seen many people with weight in the 300 lb range who are excellent dancers. (One of them happens to be a leading Bollywood choreographer.)
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If people freely choose to employ a one-legged ballerina or a mute language teacher, that’s their right and good for them. But students don’t get a choice. They pay sight unseen for people we foist on them. It would be fair to go with more traditional choices, I believe.
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Along with everything else it’s a cultural thing I think. There are enough examples in America of wildly unpredictable success that people are simply hesitant to predict failure in almost any case, no matter how improbable success might seem.
Take Carol Johnston who was a champion college gymnast despite not having a right arm below the elbow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Johnston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKLO_3RxZHI
It doesn’t take too many examples like that for many to simply accept the idea that willpower can overcome anything.
My own opinion is that those with that kind of willpower won’t be put off by people being “realistic” with them about their chances will those without it might save themselves some heartache.
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And it’s not OK to tell a statistician that econometrists and epidemiologists hate statisticians, but it’s OK for them to tell statisticians that they’re warmly acclaimed in econometrics and epidemiology, and it’s OK for them to refuse to work with a statistician only on the basis that he’s a statistician.
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