Cornell University’s famous motto — a 19th-century quote from its co-founder, Ezra Cornell — is often cited as “any person … any study.” That promise of openness is commendable. But one recent advertisement for a faculty position at the institution fits that bill so literally that some observers have been taken aback.
“The College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University is seeking to hire a tenure-track assistant professor in some area of the humanities or qualitative social sciences,” the listing reads. No mention of a specific department or discipline. No indication of how much teaching or research the position involves.
The description continues: “We are especially interested in considering applications from members of underrepresented groups, those who have faced economic hardship, are first-generation college graduates, or work on topics related to these issues.” And that’s about it. The list of requirements candidates must meet is basic: Complete a Ph.D. by July 2016; provide a curriculum vitae, teaching and research statements, and some letters of reference; and show “outstanding promise.”
If you’re a young scholar scrambling to navigate the rogue waters of the academic-job market, you might think, Sign me up!
But once a few professors and graduate students noticed the listing and shared it among friends, speculation began to stir on social media. Was it a hoax?
It is not. Cornell administrators have confirmed that the job is real, though it is contingent on the availability of funds.
Scott MacDonald, Cornell’s senior associate dean of arts and humanities, describes the position as a “target of opportunity” appointment. Asked if it might be an attempt to hire an ethnically or socioeconomically diverse faculty member, he says, “there’s a background need in the college, which is part of the explanation.”
Bucking the Trend of Precision
The other purpose, though, is to advertise a position for which all of Cornell’s postdoctoral fellows are eligible, Mr. MacDonald says. Built into the university’s postdoc program, he says, is an expectation — not a promise — that all fellows will be able to apply for a faculty opening during their time at Cornell.
Recent budget constraints have limited the number of searches the university can run, so Cornell administrators decided to craft one listing and make it as wide-ranging as possible, as a way of encompassing all of the fellows’ fields. But the university’s own postdocs aren’t necessarily preferred candidates, Mr. MacDonald says.
The College of Arts and Sciences is running the search, though Mr. MacDonald says details of the process itself — for instance, who will be on the search committee — have not yet been finalized. One potential option, he says: A group of faculty members could sort the applications into pools and send each pool to a corresponding department.
The goal is to make an appointment in just one department. The chosen candidate would have to go through a normal vetting process, including a campus visit and a vote.
When individual college departments run open-discipline searches, they often receive 300 to 400 applications for one position. Mr. MacDonald is aware that this ad, which is even less specific, could yield 1,000 or more applicants, though he doesn’t know how many applications have come in since the listing was posted this month.
“I think we’ll be able to find an efficient way of working through the applications,” he says. “And I don’t think this way of proceeding will be any more time-consuming for the college than the alternative of running 10 or 12 separate departmental searches.”
A look at Cornell’s other faculty and academic professional job openings shows that virtually all of them list specific departments or research fields, or both. That’s the case at most institutions.
‘Really Bizarre’
David D. Perlmutter, dean of the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University, says he’s not sure Texas Tech would even be allowed to publish such an open-ended ad. For one thing, he says, the software the university uses to craft its listings might not permit that; for another, Texas Tech’s human-resources department might not approve it. Cornell might have more flexibility than Texas Tech because it is a private university, he says.
Mr. Perlmutter, who often writes for The Chronicle about academic careers, says he has never seen anything like the listing. But he appreciates its broadness because it might lead to more applicants from interdisciplinary backgrounds.
“The evolution of hiring ads over the last 30 years has been toward more and more preciseness,” he says. “I think there’s a yearning in many deans and search committees to say, What if we just say ‘exciting, amazing scholar wanted’ and see who applies?”
Karen Kelsky, a professor turned career adviser who recently published The Professor Is In, a book offering guidance on the academic-job market, calls Cornell’s listing “really bizarre.” It’s not the first “impossibly vague” job ad she has seen posted by an elite university, though. Prestigious colleges, she says, “can just sort of dream. They can say, We want the widest possible pool, and we can select the anointed one.”
But even if Cornell has such flexibility and a desire to diversify its faculty, Ms. Kelsky isn’t sure why the university would take this approach. “If I were a job applicant, this would be very anxiety-inducing,” she says. “There is such a gaping void of non-information. It seems more demoralizing than anything.”
Mr. MacDonald says Cornell won’t be looking at applications until the end of the year. He isn’t exactly sure what to expect, but he is confident that the university will eventually welcome a top-notch scholar to the faculty.
“Of course, we may discover we don’t want to try this sort of approach again,” he says. “We’ll see.”
