The broader issue, though, is that academic hires could never be audited in any reasonable sense, simply because there is no objective and quantitative way to rank candidates. We don’t have 40-yard dash times. Hiring committees are often faced with dozens of applicants, all with completed Ph.Ds, teaching experience, some publications, and glowing recommendations. How does one objectively measure teaching expertise? Even if that trick is mastered, how does one balance off an objective teaching score against some hypothetical metric of publications?

I have a question about that for those who have been involved in such decisions. How auditable is the academic hiring process, as compared to the hiring decisions made in civil service or private industry? What, if any, means of redress are available (excepting the more drastic recourse to a lawsuit)?

Regardless of subfield, the pathway to an academic position in a university or college is extremely difficult. The American Historical Review’s Perspectives is the best place to find statistics on precisely how what the odds are for the overall discipline of history and its various subfields. Academic job-seekers must prepare themselves for a psychologically and physically grueling (and potentially multi-year) process to land a tenure-track position.

A competitive job application strategy calls for applying widely for positions. Academic employment announcements often draw 50 to 100 legitimate job applications with “stellar letters of recommendation,” and some can draw many more. So, Mark Moyar’s claim to have “applied for 150 tenure-track academic jobs” over five years is hardly surprising or remarkable. That number represents only 30 applications per year—a number that I would consider entirely insufficient for his field!

Historians seeking a first academic position need to prepare themselves for the immense work of applying for dozens of tenure-track jobs (and perhaps some postdoctoral fellowships) each year. Candidates in any particular topical or thematic field (such as military/diplomatic history) should expect to apply for general positions in their geographic areas (American, European, Latin American, African, Asian history) and teaching fields (American History, World History, and Western Civilization surveys).

My own experience on the academic market involved applying hundreds of jobs over six years. During that time, I held two visiting positions, a tenure-track job, and two postdoctoral fellowships before landing my current tenure-track position. Even though my field is in Early Modern European History (a field with many fewer positions than Moyar’s Modern American History), I was applying to at least 40 tenure-track jobs and/or fellowships per year each year I was pursuing a full-scale job-hunt.

I would suggest that prospective candidates avoid a mentality of “bucking the liberal ethos on campus.” The supposed liberal bias of universities is certainly a hot political topic, but to my knowledge this assertion is not supported by hard statistical evidence. Texas A&M, Old Dominion University, and the U.S. Air Force War College seem to be poor candidates for promoting a hiring agenda against conservatives. Moyar’s assertion that the United States has “one-half of the political spectrum absent from higher education” is simply ridiculous.

Conference and on-campus interviews can be nerve-racking and tiring, but ideally they involve serious intellectual exchanges among potential academic partners. Displaying a sense of entitlement can damper such exchange. A candidate from an Ivy League university may not be necessarily the best candidate for a given position. Taking an oppositional stance vis-à-vis interviewers prevents candidates from acting as full-fledged intellectual equals. Following Moyar in adopting an identity as one of “a few token conservatives” could promote such an unhelpful antagonistic relationship with interviewers. The New York Sun’s article implies that research on the cultural history of diplomacy is somehow less valid than Moyar’s research on the Vietnam War. Were such an attitude to emerge in an interview, it would reveal a candidate’s inability to work with other colleagues. Academic job candidates should strive to be professional in interview settings and should assume that their colleagues who are interviewing them will attempt to do so also.

Another concern for potential job candidates is how to act when rejections arrive. Academic job candidates should expect to receive many rejections because of the incredible level of competition and the numerous candidates for each job. It is hardly surprising to find out that “most [universities] declined him [Moyar] a preliminary interview.” Moyar has good company. Almost all candidates for academic positions will find that they are rejected from most of the departments to which they have applied.

Most candidates never know why another person was chosen instead of them for a job. Candidates often never know which aspects of their presentations impressed, disappointed, or confused search committees.

According to The New York Sun article, Moyar is claiming “political discrimination” at multiple universities and has actually filed a complaint against the University of Iowa. Any candidate who suffers discrimination of any sort should indeed consider appropriate legal action. Whatever the merits of Moyar’s complaint, The New York Sun’s story reveals a strong political bias and provides only hearsay evidence against Moyar’s would-be employers.

Mark Moyar expresses a desire to “help other scholars in the future.” I hope that historians seeking academic positions will reconsider the arguments and implications of The New York Sun article. Then, they should find helpful job advice elsewhere.

PLUS, the September 2002 Perspectives has figures showing that 1/3 or all Ph.Ds are in 20th C. US history, but only 1/9 of all faculty jobs. You do the math.

Look, proportionate rhetorical counter-attack is one thing. Denying a job or nearly losing your job because you say things that go against the grain? If we’re going to make being over the top a disqualifier there’s a ton of profs who deserve to be collecting un-employment. That’s just silly.

We students know the score, Dr. Grim. That’s in part why I went chemistry instead of history. We know the score.

If you’re going to be a grenade thrower don’t be surprised if grenades get tossed back in your face.

You’re honest and forthright and not overtly hostile to contrary ideas, Dr. Grim. If others were more like you we wouldn’t have this problem. We’d just have lively coffee and cookie sessions between facultybefore seminars.;)

And if you had to pick a target War to exercise your inner revisionist, Vietnam is the one surest to raise hackles in ivory towers these days, and for a while yet. Moyar may simply he ahead of his time, for better or worse. Jaron’s comment goes to this a bit.