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Adam Kirsch,"American Messiah," Tablet, 20 July, reviews Elliott R. Wolfson's Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson.
Thank you for rephrasing it, Ralph. I did misunderstand what you were saying, and I apologize for it.
On the actual point, if the construct of evidence in this thread is that hypothetically someone with more acceptable politics might skate through a hiring committee below the R-1 level, that Hill's case might hypothetically be a time when, if he had had more acceptable politics, he might have skated through this particular hiring committee, and that he did not was, hypothetically, the reason for not hiring him, then we have an awful lot of substantiation needed before deciding that this was a "chilling" decision.
The person they appear to have hired for the position (if I’m reading the departmental web page correctly) works in "medieval social and religious history, particularly the role of the bishop in the early Middle Ages, as well as the Crusades and the history of political and religious dissent," and has a book coming out with Cambridge called _Episcopal Lordship and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire, 950-1150_. You can decide whether that sounds radical.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/25/2010
O-kee-doaks, David. This shouldn't be necessary, but here goes:
Had I intended a universal claim as you say I did, I would have said something like: "... but I suspect that, even in 2010, always and everywhere below the R-1 research university level, expectations for publications are invoked when the authorities care to invoke them." As you can plainly see, I didn't say that. A plain and charitable reading of what I did say would see it as a claim that it happens on occasion below the R-1 level. I cannot know how commonly it happens. I *do* know that it happens. Try to read more carefully next time.
David Silbey -
7/24/2010
You fail as a communicator. Try it again.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/24/2010
You fail as a grammarian. Think it through.
David Silbey -
7/24/2010
but I suspect that, even in 2010, below the R-1 research university level, expectations for publications are invoked when the authorities care to invoke them.
As a universal case (i.e., the way you phrased it), you would be wrong.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/24/2010
You may be correct, of course, but I suspect that, even in 2010, below the R-1 research university level, expectations for publications are invoked when the authorities care to invoke them.
Alan Allport -
7/24/2010
You're tempting me, Alan, to think of historians in each of those categories for whom someone, at some point, must have "rolled out a red carpet." Otherwise, their survival is hard to explain.
There's nothing particularly hard to explain about dead wood, Ralph, and it comes in all ideological varnishes. But don't change the subject. Paquette was discussing newly minted Ph.D.'s seeking tenure-track positions in 2010, not 1970. If he seriously thinks that anyone on the market today - even a 'feminist lesbian', even someone with a prize-winning novel! - can shimmy their way into a job with radical chic but no worthwhile publications, then he's so out of touch as not to be worth paying attention to.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/24/2010
You're tempting me, Alan, to think of historians in each of those categories for whom someone, at some point, must have "rolled out a red carpet." Otherwise, their survival is hard to explain. Which isn't to claim that there are no historians outside those categories whose survival is hard to explain.
Alan Allport -
7/24/2010
"Had [Hill] identified as, say, a feminist lesbian, an African-American Marxist, an Al-Gore-style environmentalist, or a Muslim post-colonialist ... one could easily imagine he would have had the red carpet rolled out for a full-time or tenure-able position."
For me, this was the point at which there was no further need to take this article seriously.
David Silbey -
7/24/2010
I think that the requirements for a term contract are substantially lesser than for a tenure-track position and would likely pull a much different pool of candidates (or, at least, that's been my experience).
In the tenure-track position committees I've been a part of, Hill's CV (or the glimpses we've seen presented of it), wouldn't have gotten him through the first cut. That's at a small, not particularly prestigious institution, way below Hamilton in just about any ranking you care to mention.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/23/2010
If you think his credentials were so weak, how would you explain Hamilton's hiring him to a term position that led to consideration for a tenure track position?
David Silbey -
7/23/2010
Why was Hill's rejection "chilling"? He seems to have been an exceptionally weak candidate, who hid his major qualification, if the article is to be believed:
"To be sure, his vita in a buyers market lacked the publication record of some of the scholars short-listed, although he did have to his credit as a freshly-minted Ph.D. several book reviews for the Wall Street Journal, which, undoubtedly, to most progressive faculty, probably counted as strikes against him. Yet Professor Hill, as it turns out, had more in his haversack than a meager ration. For, truth be told, in taking the lay of the land at Hamilton College shortly after his arrival, he felt compelled not only to closet his politics but the full gamut of his intellectual handiwork."
If the major things on his CV were book reviews in the WSJ, that's a remarkably slim vita, even for a newly minted Ph.D.
Jeremy Young -
7/22/2010
Joseph Urgo, the dean at Hamilton who meted out Paquette's "punishment," is about to become president of my alma mater. I've heard excellent things about him from faculty there, so I'll reserve judgment until I see the remaining posts from Bauerlein. I'll also say that I found Paquette's post presumptuous and occasionally factually incorrect (for instance, Paquette doesn't have a good understanding of why Urgo was hired at SMCM instead of Jim Bacchus -- conservative bogeymen aside, I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with the World Trade Organization).
That said, it seems at the very least that Urgo's response to Paquette was heavy-handed and troubling.
