AHA reminds departments that age discrimination is illegal

In 2005, the American Historical Association decided to retire its statement banning age discrimination, and simply added a line to general statements about all kinds of discrimination condemned by the society. This month, responding to reports of age discrimination in faculty hiring, the association has reinstated its original explanation about why age discrimination is both illegal and wrong. And some experts on age discrimination suggest that historians are hardly unique in experiencing the problem, and may just be ahead of other parts of academe in acknowledging it.

Among those who have most frequently raised concerns about age discrimination are adjuncts. Departments that have no problem hiring adjuncts to teach courses semester after semester many times hesitate, they say, even to consider these instructors when full-time, tenure-track positions open up. Younger candidates, with new Ph.D.’s and less teaching experience, seem to beat them out, many report, even for positions that are teaching oriented. And the AHA statement agrees that this is one of the situations in which age discrimination is taking place.

“When a department or institution decides to confine its search to younger applicants, it discriminates against two groups,” the statement says. “One is made up of older individuals who earned their doctorates during the job shortages of the 1970s and 1980s, have since held a variety of temporary and part-time positions, and are interested in entry-level positions that offer the possibility of tenured status. Although their teaching experience and often impressive publications might be expected to give them an advantage in the search process, they sometimes find themselves dismissed without interviews as ‘overqualified.’ “

The statement also refers to a second group of victims of age bias: “The other group that suffers age discrimination is made up of those who have earned their degrees later in life and thus are recent Ph.D.’s but no longer young. ...