Alice Goffman, a sociologist at the U. of Wisconsin at Madison and author of the controversial book “On the Run,” was hired as a visiting professor at Pomona College, a move that drew sharp criticism from some students and alumni, who demanded that the job offer be rescinded. But many scholars, even critics of her book, say that demand treads on dangerous territory.Chang W. Lee, The New York Times, Redux
It’s no surprise that Pomona College’s decision to hire Alice Goffman as a visiting professor would raise some eyebrows. The young sociologist drew both widespread admiration and broad criticism for On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, her 2014 ethnography about poor black youth in Philadelphia.
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Alice Goffman, a sociologist at the U. of Wisconsin at Madison and author of the controversial book “On the Run,” was hired as a visiting professor at Pomona College, a move that drew sharp criticism from some students and alumni, who demanded that the job offer be rescinded. But many scholars, even critics of her book, say that demand treads on dangerous territory.Chang W. Lee, The New York Times, Redux
It’s no surprise that Pomona College’s decision to hire Alice Goffman as a visiting professor would raise some eyebrows. The young sociologist drew both widespread admiration and broad criticism for On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, her 2014 ethnography about poor black youth in Philadelphia.
But some students have gone beyond expressing basic disapproval. They say that Ms. Goffman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, isn’t welcome at Pomona, and are demanding that the college rescind its job offer. In a lengthy letter sent to Pomona’s sociology department last Friday, they described her selection as “egregious” and depicted it as “an instance of anti-blackness” that “directly contradicts the college’s mission of diversity and inclusion.”
The specter of students’ seeking a veto on a faculty appointment has led many scholars, even some who find fault with Ms. Goffman’s work, to come to her defense. Some have concerns about her research methods — she spent six years embedded in a poor, inner-city neighborhood and developed unusually close relationships with her subjects — and how her book might reinforce negative stereotypes about black people. But they don’t think she should be labeled an academic pariah.
Ms. Goffman’s new job has also landed her in the middle of broader debates about what it takes to create an inclusive campus, how to diversify a faculty, and whether students should be involved in a hiring process.
Ms. Goffman directed a request for comment to a Pomona spokesman.
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Goffman’s hire proves the college’s failure to wholeheartedly address underrepresentation of faculty of color and Pomona’s institutional inadequacy to recognize and advocate for the best interests of students of color.
The letter opposing her appointment was signed by a group of self-identified students, alumni, and “allies” who did not identify themselves in a public posting of the document. The signatories also sent it to David W. Oxtoby, the college’s president, and Audrey Bilger, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college.
In addition to demanding that Pomona withdraw its offer to Ms. Goffman, the authors called on the search committee, Mr. Oxtoby, and Ms. Bilger to meet with them; and they petitioned the committee to write a letter detailing “the lack of representative student involvement in the process” and what steps the sociology department would take “to ensure such undemocratic, covert hiring processes are never repeated.”
If they did not receive a response by Tuesday at 5 p.m., Pacific time, they vowed to take “direct action.” It’s not clear whether they did so, or what form that action might take.
“Goffman’s hire proves the college’s failure to wholeheartedly address underrepresentation of faculty of color and Pomona’s institutional inadequacy to recognize and advocate for the best interests of students of color,” the letter states.
The 128 signatories were redacted, according to the letter, “for individual safety in recognition of the violence inflicted on communities of color by various publications, namely the Claremont Independent.” The Independent is a conservative publication run by students at the five Claremont Colleges. The original letter has been deleted, but an archived version remains online.
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The college will not rescind its offer to Ms. Goffman, said Mr. Oxtoby, who is stepping down in June.
We went through a very thoughtful process, and we identified an outstanding candidate.
“We went through a very thoughtful process, and we identified an outstanding candidate,” he said.
Mr. Oxtoby said he thought the students’ attacks on Ms. Goffman’s fitness had gone too far. He was joined by many sociologists, who told The Chronicle they were dismayed at how students had vilified the professor.
That view was widely held but not unanimous. Johnny E. Williams, a professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Connecticut, described the students’ letter as “well reasoned.”
“It lays out for me that the problem” — a flawed hiring process, in his view — “is a systemic one, and that they recognize it as a systemic one,” he said.
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A Controversial Career Arc
Starting this fall, Ms. Goffman will spend the next two years teaching at Pomona and working on her next book. She was hired at Madison in 2012, and during the 2015-16 academic year, she was a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J. A Madison spokeswoman confirmed that Ms. Goffman was still on the faculty there, and a Pomona spokesman said she intends to return to Wisconsin after her term is up.
On the Run was Ms. Goffman’s first book, and it quickly provoked strong reactions throughout sociology. A number of scholars argued that Ms. Goffman, a white woman with an Ivy League education, had taken advantage of poor black people to jump-start her academic career.
The Pomona letter touched on that issue and discussed “positionality,” a sociological term describing how a person fits into a social structure with reference to characteristics like race and gender.
Ms. Goffman’s hiring at Pomona, the students wrote, bolsters “the framework that white women can theorize about and profit from black lives while giving no room for black academics to claim scholarship regarding their own lived experiences.”
The students also argued that Ms. Goffman’s research “reinforces harmful narratives about people of color.” Philip N. Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park and a critic of Ms. Goffman’s, agreed with that assessment.
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So did Mr. Williams. But he noted that the frequent criticism that On the Run engages in the “jungle-book trope” — a term describing when white people venture into “wild” worlds and emerge to share their stories — is a problem not just for white scholars.
I don’t think she’s acknowledged that she’s harmed people of color.
“I don’t think she’s acknowledged that she’s harmed people of color,” Mr. Williams added. Until that happens, he said, Pomona’s sociology department might not be a safe place for minority students to learn.
When Ms. Goffman goes to Pomona in the fall, he said, “she needs to own up to the fact that her work helps to perpetuate certain stereotypes.”
But Mr. Cohen, despite his criticism of Ms. Goffman, still sees value in her work, and he rejected the idea “that she would cause harm to students through her teaching.” The letter, he said, was “an unknown number of anonymous critics, attempting to spike the career of a young faculty member based on a superficial assessment of her work.”
“It’s one thing to say you don’t like someone’s research and disagree with a hiring decision,” he said. “It’s another to demand rescinding a job offer.”
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Jeremy Freese, a professor of sociology at Stanford University, called the letter’s depiction of Ms. Goffman unfair.
She certainly doesn’t deserve some anonymous horde of undergrads calling her a racist who has harmed black communities.
“She certainly doesn’t deserve some anonymous horde of undergrads calling her a racist who has harmed black communities and encouraged hyper-policing, and whose academic presence poses the threat of teaching ‘harmful research methods,’” Mr. Freese said in an email.
Mr. Oxtoby, Pomona’s president, said he had not been in touch with the students who signed the letter, but he added that he was always willing to meet with small groups of students.
He said he wished Ms. Goffman’s critics had raised their concerns earlier in the search process, with both the department and the administration, instead of publishing a letter and sharing it widely on social media after the hiring was announced.
“To me,” he said, “having a petition signed by more than 100 people is a little overkill for hiring a visiting faculty member.”
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A Student Say in Searches?
Ms. Goffman’s hiring was the catalyst for the Pomona students’ letter, but their concerns went beyond Ms. Goffman and her research. For one, the students said, it was “undemocratic” that they didn’t have a say in her selection. They demanded “the creation of peer-appointed, influential student positions on the hiring committee.”
Students are already involved in faculty searches at Pomona, Mr. Oxtoby said, probably more so than at many other institutions. Student departmental representatives take job candidates out to lunch and help with campus visits, he said.
Not only did many students listen to public lectures given by Ms. Goffman and the other two candidates for the visiting professorship, he said, but the students were also given a chance to interact with all three of them and to provide feedback. When the scholars spoke on the campus, he said, it was clear that they were candidates for a faculty position.
While the hiring process for a visiting professor is often less extensive than for a tenure-track job, this search was very thoughtful, Mr. Oxtoby said. “For a visiting-faculty hire, we’ve actually, in my view, gone way beyond what is typical.”
The Pomona students’ demands reflect a continuing trend of a “transfer of power to students” in higher education, said Jonathan Marks, a professor of politics at Ursinus College, in an email.
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What befuddles me about all this is why a visiting position is taken as having such enormous stakes for the ‘future trajectory’ of the department.
But he pointed out that graduate students often have nonvoting positions on hiring committees. “I have not been part of a hiring process in which student input was not solicited,” he said.
Stanford’s Mr. Freese wondered whether the students realized that Ms. Goffman was a temporary hire. “What befuddles me about all this,” he said, “is why a visiting position is taken as having such enormous stakes for the ‘future trajectory’ of the department.”
It’s possible, he said, that a “welt of discontent built up” after a speech by the conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald this month at Claremont McKenna College, another of the Claremont Colleges. Students “looking for a new target” could have landed on Ms. Goffman, he said.
Concerns Over Diversity
Another factor perhaps complicated matters at Pomona. As the letter pointed out, the other two finalists for the visiting-professor position were black women. Given that the sociology department currently has no female faculty members of color, the students said, not hiring one of them was a missed opportunity.
The other finalists also had more-impressive publication records than Ms. Goffman did, Paul F. Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in a blog post.
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They felt more comfortable with Goffman than the black women.
Racial inequality is often built into institutional hiring practices, Mr. Williams said. In terms of the Pomona visiting position, “obviously the candidates were all qualified — it comes down to department fit,” he said. “They felt more comfortable with Goffman than the black women.”
Still, while concerns about faculty diversity are legitimate, Stanford’s Mr. Freese said, “how does demonizing Alice Goffman serve that point?”
How does demonizing Alice Goffman serve that point?
There’s always room to improve faculty diversity, Mr. Oxtoby said, but he believes Pomona is ahead of its institutional peers on that front. He said his administration had worked hard over the past couple of years to expand applicant pools and recruit a broader range of candidates to the campus.
He also pointed out that Pomona’s sociology department has just five faculty members, giving the college few opportunities to recruit new scholars in that area.
He acknowledged, though, that the letter served as a reminder to administrators and faculty members to make sure all voices are heard. “We certainly felt that, in this case, our processes were very clear and very open to diverse candidates,” he said. “But maybe we need to be even more direct.”
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Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.