There’s a male History postdoc at Yale who's been ranting on Twitter all weekend about not being able to get a job because he's white.
From one of his tweets: "So when I'm ready to pull the plug on my academic career once and for all I'll do a thread about every job I've ever applied for and discuss in detail why I would've been a better choice than the person they ended up hiring."
In response to one of his rants, someone posted the image below, which uses data from 2019 to show the overwhelming whiteness of the American professoriate.
I'll just leave this here.
From one of his tweets: "So when I'm ready to pull the plug on my academic career once and for all I'll do a thread about every job I've ever applied for and discuss in detail why I would've been a better choice than the person they ended up hiring."
In response to one of his rants, someone posted the image below, which uses data from 2019 to show the overwhelming whiteness of the American professoriate.
I'll just leave this here.
View Leslie K. Wang, PhD’s profile (She/Her)Author
Helping scholars publish books that matter | Writing & Career Coach | Podcast Host, Your Words Unleashed | Award-Winning Author
View Julien Cayla’s profile • 3rd+
Ethnographer-Consumer Researcher-Professor
2 Replies on Julien Cayla’s comment
View Leslie K. Wang, PhD’s profile (She/Her)Author
Helping scholars publish books that matter | Writing & Career Coach | Podcast Host, Your Words Unleashed | Award-Winning AuthorJulien Cayla, nailed it! How people assume that hiring has nothing to do with your personality is beyond me.
View Leah Borden’s profile • 3rd+
Computer Software ProfessionalNoah Smith had a great post about this guy's real problem being that he is a historian and imbalance of supply and demand for history PhDs since the Great Recession. Also he is a 20th century US historian which is very plain vanilla, pardon the possible pun.
1 Comment on Leah Borden’s comment
View Leslie K. Wang, PhD’s profile (She/Her)Author
Helping scholars publish books that matter | Writing & Career Coach | Podcast Host, Your Words Unleashed | Award-Winning AuthorLeah Borden, I think the formula is something like: white male entitlement + flooded field = no job
View Luis Camillo Almeida, Ph.D.’s profile (He/Him) • 2nd
Interim Department Chair of Mass Communications at Claflin University; PRNEWS Outstanding HBCU Educator of the Year (22, 23), Published Scholar of Technology, CCN Champions GranteeFinding a position in higher education is a complex, multi-faceted process. This term, I presented at a humanities conference on my research into the representation of Hispanic male scholars in Mass Communications departments in North and South Carolina, specifically at South Carolina State University. My findings were quite revealing: there are zero Hispanic male scholars in Mass Communications at both USC Columbia and Clemson University, the two public flagship institutions in the state!
Hispanic male scholars in this field are indeed a rarity. In fact, there are only two Hispanic male scholars in all of South Carolina’s educational institutions, and I am one of them. It is evident that equity efforts have fallen short for Hispanic males in academia.
Hispanic male scholars in this field are indeed a rarity. In fact, there are only two Hispanic male scholars in all of South Carolina’s educational institutions, and I am one of them. It is evident that equity efforts have fallen short for Hispanic males in academia.
View Kerem Morgul’s profile (He/Him) • 3rd+
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Elon UniversityThe truth is that the academic job market sucks, more so in some (sub)disciplines. My wife, an Asian woman, has PhDs from two highly respectable institutions and a postdoc from another top university. She has multiple peer-reviewed publications and has presented her work at conferences worldwide. She teaches as an adjunct faculty and her students love her. She didn't get a tenure-track job over the past three years because there are only a handful of job openings in her field each year. Unfortunately, it is easier to blame underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities than to take a hard look at the structural factors that have turned academia into a Ponzi scheme.
View Dr Prachi Thakur’s profile (She/Her) • 2nd
Creating Spaces for Empowered Women | TEDx Speaker | Diversity Trainer & Researcher | Tourism & HospitalityReminded me of a conversation w a man who was complaining how he feels unsafe 'now that every safety initiative is for women'!
3 Replies on Dr Prachi Thakur’s comment
View Dr Prachi Thakur’s profile (She/Her) • 2nd
Creating Spaces for Empowered Women | TEDx Speaker | Diversity Trainer & Researcher | Tourism & HospitalityYeah, it was an honour to meet him!
View Amanda Draper ?’s profile • 3rd+
Dynamic Operations Leader | Building & Scaling Companies | Building and Scaling Teams at VC-backed, PE-backed, and Public Companies | Trilingual (EN/ES/PT) Surfista1 Comment on Amanda Draper ?’s comment
View John "Boz" Handy Bosma, Ph.D.’s profile • 3rd+
IBM Open Innovation Community - Senior IT Architect, IBM Public Cloud at IBM - Master Inventor - Agilist #SystemicEquity #Allyship #Accountability(edited)
Thank you. I don't ever go to Twitter given the rampant racism and gender racism, so I appreciate the update. Just a note that this isn't unique to academia. It isn't even unique to white people or white men, though they are the predominant groups driving mathematically impossible reverse discrimination narratives.
Why do I say mathematically impossible? In almost every field, the number of people from privileged groups who are convinced their careers were derailed and feel "their" spots were taken by, for example, Black people vastly exceeds the number of Black people hired into those fields. And the focus of Black people and Black women as the main groups that supposedly doesn't belong spans the ideological spectrum. There's also the fact that the supply of US history professors positions hasn't been close to the number of "qualified" candidates produced for at least several decades.
Who would hire a candidate who would take such a stance?
Why do I say mathematically impossible? In almost every field, the number of people from privileged groups who are convinced their careers were derailed and feel "their" spots were taken by, for example, Black people vastly exceeds the number of Black people hired into those fields. And the focus of Black people and Black women as the main groups that supposedly doesn't belong spans the ideological spectrum. There's also the fact that the supply of US history professors positions hasn't been close to the number of "qualified" candidates produced for at least several decades.
Who would hire a candidate who would take such a stance?
1 Comment on John "Boz" Handy Bosma, Ph.D.’s comment
View Claire Marie Mannle’s profile (She/Her) • 3rd+
Director | Creative Producer | ProfessorI’d be curious to see how the chart would look if data for adjunct and contingent faculty were included as well.
2 Replies on Claire Marie Mannle’s comment
View Claire Marie Mannle’s profile (She/Her) • 3rd+
Director | Creative Producer | ProfessorNicholas Miceli I’d expect adjunct faculty to be still predominantly white, but perhaps proportionally more female and PGM suggesting a more even distribution when the work is more precarious.
