Civil Warriors

One of the smartest things the American Historical Association ever did was to move the timing of its annual convention from the period between Christmas and New Years to early January.  If nothing else, this cut down on the amount of drinking that might go on following several days of hustle and bustle, rumor and gossip, meeting with publishers, patrolling the book exhibits, networking, and what continues to appear to be for many historians the meeting’s primary function: job searches, usually for entry-level positions.  There is something surreal about the whole experience, which includes candidates shuttling in and out of one vast interview hall, where many of the interviews take place; job hopefuls huddled around several large bulletin boards where messages, declarations, and other tidbits are posted; people frantically hurrying into elevators on their way to interviews in hotel rooms, where they anxiously wait in the hall (in poorly-planned cases, they run into their competition); and a general sense of paranoia and angst.  This year’s event takes place in Washington, DC. 

I have gone through this process a handful of times, and although I was fortunate enough to land positions at a time when positions were scarce, especially for folks like me who were still completing their dissertations, I can testify that no matter what efforts have been made to improve this process, it remains less than ideal.  This is in part because sometimes the sought-after semifinalist interview turns out to be a courtesy call (a misapprehension that someone’s doing a favor for someone on your committee by interviewing his student), an effort by an interview team member to extract information about the situation at a candidate’s institution, an exercise in which someone on the committee wants to impress everyone else by putting you down (this is usually the junior member of the interview team), or an encounter with a hungover professor in a dark hotel room who can’t quite remember your file, in part, you suspect, because he hasn’t even opened it (although he had contacted you to set up an interview).  All of the above happened to me when I was interviewing for positions at the AHA.

Yes, I have more war stories, and the above is the tip of the iceburg.  I await the reality TV opportunity. 

At the same time, I have some understanding of what it’s like to be on the other side of the table.  I’ve served on search committees, and in the last five years, I’ve headed more than my share.  I can remember working very hard to do a good job for candidates we interviewed at the AHA meeting in Seattle several years ago.  I spaced out the interviews so that no one would run into someone else; all the candidates were serious contenders; I made sure that the interview committee was diverse in terms of rank and gender; I worked with the committee to frame a common bank of questions so that we could compare candidates on a number of criteria.  This fall I headed another search committee, and in this case I drove my colleagues hard so that we could conclude our business and make a hire before the convention met.  The pool of candidates was manageable, and it soon became apparent that we could move quickly and bring excellent candidates to campus.  I favored this in part because I really didn’t want to go through the AHA process if it was not necessary (a different pool and it might have been). 

I also have another appreciation of this process because I write letters for job candidates.  I try to offer a fair and accurate appraisal of candidates’ qualifications and abilities, and I highlight issues of institutional and individual fit when possible.  I don’t tend to write walk-on-water letters: folks still tell stories about how certain prominent historians would send out letters on behalf of several of their students, in each case claiming that the student in question was his best.  I recently came across a letter from someone who claimed a candidate was in the top 1% of all the students she had dealt with, which was a bit curious given her relatively junior rank.

So, now instead of waiting for the next interview, I expect colleagues and candidates to lobby me while graduate students keep me updated as to the last time they exhaled.  Next time I attend a Washington AHA I’m considering setting up residence on Roosevelt Island, just under TR’s statue.

As you might expect, the age of the internet has had an impact on this process.  Part of this is reflected in the posting of job ads; part of this is reflected in the willingness of some people to poke around in search engines to find out things.  My own students brought to my attention yet another sign of how things have changed: a wiki in which job candidates share information anonymously, or so they think.  Some of the posts are very helpful: some reflect that state of mind of applicants in an anxiety-filled process; some suggest a rather interesting turn of mind.  This year’s edition contains even more information, rumor, and speculation than I’ve seen in the past, and of course I could not help but glance at the discussion of the search I chaired.  And yet the wiki contains evidence that the anonymity that posters may think they have when they post is something of a dangerous delusion, for if one pokes into the “history” section and begins checking IPs, one can quickly link posts to posters (especially those who are kind enough to post from their institutional IPs).  I’m not sure why some people disregard this inconvenient truth, because it became a rather large subject of discussion when it appeared that someone from an institution that was advertising decided to challenge some of what was posted by applicants about a search being conducted by said institution.  There’s nothing to stop search committee members from checking out poster identities, which, given some of the wild things being posted, would be a natural response.  To acknowledge that, of course, will merely raise the paranoia about the whole process, and deprive the wiki of some of its useful features. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I passed up the opportunity to check on who said what in regard to the search I headed.

I’ll miss not being in Washington and seeing some friends, but I won’t miss not being at the AHA this year.  Happy holidays to all and good hunting.