My Five Years on the Philosophy Job Market
[This primary audience for this post is those already in academic philosophy. But perhaps others will find something of interest here too—particularly, other academics in adjacent areas, or undergraduates considering graduate school in philosophy or the humanities.]
I recently accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Georgia. I have wanted to be a philosophy professor since I first took an Intro to Philosophy course my first semester of undergrad. I have worked tirelessly for 15 years toward this goal. There were so many times when I felt completely defeated, hopeless, on the verge of giving up. There were several occasions when it seemed clear to that it just wasn’t going to happen. I am elated that it has worked out—even more so that it’s at such a wonderful place.
This new chapter for me also marks the end of a grueling five-year journey on the philosophy job market.
Five years is not an uncommonly long time on the philosophy job market. I’m not sure of the numbers, but I’d guess it’s pretty close to average—maybe a little on the high side, considering that many people leave for other careers after a few years on the market. Moving around for a years, living in relative financial precarity, constantly having to do confusing and time-consuming administrative paperwork in new places, finding new doctors, paying first/last month’s rent before receiving the returned deposit from your previous apartment, wondering whether you’ll ever be able to find longer-term stability in a place, losing and making new friends, and generally just uprooting your entire life (and that of your spouse/partner/family): these are, unfortunately, pretty standard occupational hazards in the field.
But it is not my aim in this post to wax poetic about this journey, what I’ve learned about myself and my profession, and so on. My goal here is rather to illuminate some of the more specific elements of my job search that, in my experience, remain relatively opaque to those who haven’t already experienced it—particularly, graduate students who are planning to enter the profession. In my case, while I knew that finding a job in academia would be hard, I didn’t have a clear enough sense of just how hard it would be—and what, specifically, my own trajectory might look like.
So I’m going to lay out what this journey looked like for me: what, roughly, my application looked like each year; how many jobs I applied to and what attention I received from them; what lessons I learned for myself from each stage of the process.
I worry this post risks reeking of self-importance. I assure you that is not my intention. If anything, what follows is mostly a catalog of five years of professional failures, concluding with a major success that in many ways will feel and seem (and perhaps is) totally luck-driven and random.
Also, this post is incredibly long. Sorry. Cue the relevant meme:
But First, Some Caveats
Before I jump in, let me make it very clear that I do not intend what follows to be read or understood as my offering advice.
As you’ll see, if the job market isn’t quite a full-on lottery, it is certainly extraordinarily random, unpredictable, context-specific, and absurdly sensitive to very minor differences between candidates. Your dossier could have 90% of the same features as mine and yet yield wildly different outcomes (in either direction). I wouldn’t want you to infer that my way is somehow a recipe for success. There are obvious survivorship bias issues here. (To me, this is not unlike how players react in post-game interviews after close games that were decided by, e.g., a missed last-second field goal: the victor points to all the things they did right to win, while the loser highlights all their failures—and yet, their positions would have been entirely switched had the wind pushed the ball a foot more to the right.)
So, in short: please don’t take me as offering advice here. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just sharing my information in an area that I find otherwise rife with opacity. This is intended only as offering perspective, not any type of roadmap for you.
Second, while I’m going to be perhaps inadvisably vulnerable here in sharing details of my many failures, I’m still going to keep certain of the details—e.g., many of the schools I interviewed with and didn’t advance, specifics on letter-writers—rather generic. In terms of those specifics, I’m mostly just going to tell you about the things you’d already know or infer from reading my CV. (If you know me personally, though, and are curious, I’d be happy to share specifics offline.)
And finally, I’m going to all but set aside here the more personal and emotional components of this period. But I don’t want that to be taken as suggesting that that wasn’t a significant part of this experience. Quite the contrary, in fact: one of the many reasons I’m glad to be off the market is that the process is so emotionally taxing. This truly cannot be overstated. But it’s not where I want to focus in this post.
Alright, let’s get to it. I’m going to go year-by-year, first outlining what my application looked like (or at least what I took to be most salient, and what I highlighted in my applications), then what the application cycle looked like for me.
2017-2018
I went on the job market in 2017, while I was still ABD. My dissertation—at that point, a completed first draft, in the editing phase—was on national partiality and war.
Initial prep:
At U of T, there is a lot of departmental support for job candidates (especially when they’re still local), so I availed myself of the departmental guides on how to write cover letters, research statements, and so on; I prepared a practice job talk, and benefited greatly from the faculty and grad students who came and gave me feedback; and I read Karen Kelsky’s The Professor Is In, which I have referred back to several times throughout my time on the market.
What my dossier looked like:
I had letters from my committee, a teaching letter from a professor at U of T who sat in on a class once, as well as one outside letter from a professor who knew my work reasonably well. I had one co-authored publication in bioethics in a top bioethics journal. I had taught (as sole instructor) two courses—a 2nd-year course in philosophy of law, and a 3rd-year course in advanced bioethics (Death & Dying). Great student evaluations for both; relatively interesting and dynamic course designs. I won a modest teaching award for the philosophy of law course.
Noticeably lacking, perhaps, was any convincing trajectory for my research beyond my dissertation. I did what a lot of people at this stage do: highlight the innovative dissertation I’m writing, and all the myriad ways I would like to continue to expand on this in the years to come.
Applications:
I applied to 36 jobs, most of which were TT. I applied for jobs in ethics (normative and applied), political philosophy, bioethics, and a few open/open jobs.
I had one first-round interview for a VAP in ethics, which yielded a fly-out, which yielded an offer. This was for a 3-year position at West Point, which I accepted—though I only ended up staying for two years (which, of course, is normal and expected for these types of jobs).
I should note here, in case you’re reading this and don’t know me personally: I don’t have military experience; I’ve never even so much as held a gun. West Point hires civilian instructors regularly. (I find some people mistake my working at West Point as an indication that I’ve served, but I want to be clear that I haven’t.)
Outcomes/Lessons:
I asked (as one does) during my fly-out at West Point whether there were any concerns about my candidacy. I was told that there was some concern about my comparative lack of teaching experience. (Remember: I had taught two courses on my own, and had a wealth of TA experience at that point.) It obviously didn’t prevent me from getting the job, but in a different candidate pool, it could have been a significant barrier.
Early on in this process, my eyes were opened to how much work goes into even a single application. A good approach, I was told, is to research the program/school as much as possible, and cater your documents to that school—that is, show them not just why you’re a good philosopher, but why you’d be a good fit for their program. Doing this took a distinctive sort of emotional toll: I started to seriously convince myself that I’d be such a good fit there, and it stung when I learned they not only didn’t agree, but waited until the following summer to tell me, via a generic HR email, that they didn’t agree.
(Okay, breaking my ‘no advice’ rule for a second—one important piece of advice for job-seekers: unless you have an offer in hand, never—and I mean never—go onto Zillow and look at houses in the town of a job you applied to and start seriously imagining your life there. It will almost always end in heartbreak.)
2018-2019
In 2018, I took up the VAP at West Point, while still ABD at Toronto. It’s probably not a great idea in general to begin a job while ABD, since it requires juggling a new job experience with the demanding process of submitting/preparing to defend/defending the dissertation.
The department at West Point was phenomenally supportive of me, and encouraged me to go on the market, checked in on how it was going, made accommodations when I had campus visits, etc. It was made very clear to me early on that this was not one of those VAPs that might convert into a TT job—which was tough for me to think about at times, but I was grateful to not have any false hope of staying there long-term.
Changes since the previous application cycle:
I had, of course, begun teaching at West Point; but the assignment was four sections of a single course. So while my experience was in some ways much greater, it was also only one additional syllabus in my teaching dossier.
I successfully defended my dissertation in November 2018, right as job applications were coming due. (This was easily the busiest period of my life.) I thought shifting from ABD to PhD would make a difference in how I was perceived, but I don’t think it did much of anything.
I didn’t have any new publications by this cycle, though I had several things under review that I could talk about in my dossier. Specifically, I had another paper in bioethics under review, as well as a chapter from my dissertation that I thought did something particularly interesting.
Applications:
I applied to 35 jobs—again, mostly TT. As with the previous cycle, I applied for jobs in ethics (normative and applied), political philosophy, bioethics, and a few open/open jobs. Since I had two more years guaranteed at West Point, I was super selective about other temporary jobs. For instance, I didn’t apply to anything that was under two years guaranteed; it wouldn’t have made sense.
I had two first-round interviews for TT jobs, both of which yielded fly-outs. Neither yielded an offer.
Outcomes/Lessons:
While in general I’ll play my rejection cards a bit closer to the vest, I think it will be important for me to be specific about these two particular TT fly-outs. The first was for a job at Norwich University in Vermont, which is partly a military college (like VMI, The Citadel, etc.) Many (though not all) of the students are in uniform, preparing for a future career in the military—just like cadets at West Point. The second fly-out was for a job in the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. NPS is a graduate-level institution that educates mid-career military officers in all branches, as well as some foreign service-members. This job was not for a philosopher specifically, and so I was competing against social scientists, etc. (Much of the interview process involved me making the case for why they should hire a philosopher, even though they already had one on faculty.)
The reason I wanted to be specific here is that, obviously, both of these jobs are military-centered institutions. My being at West Point and my work on the ethics of war were obviously significant factors in my getting attention from these places. While you might look at this and say “Hey! Two fly-outs! That’s great” (and, yes, it was great), they were highly context-specific.
Put differently, after two years on the market, I had yet to have even so much as a first-round interview for an institution that wasn’t in some way related to the military. While being at West Point was—and I was told this explicitly—a point in favor of my candidacy at these two places, I can’t say for sure whether my being at West Point was a positive or a strike against me at other places. (I think people don’t often know what to do with philosophers who have somewhat non-traditional teaching or research experiences.)
2019-2020
Having received no offers the previous cycle, I remained at West Point for year two of my three guaranteed.
Changes since the previous application cycle:
At the beginning of the 2019-20 cycle, I had no new publications. I did, however, have another co-authored paper in bioethics that had been R&R’d in July, and would eventually be accepted at the end of December. I also had a single-authored paper on the ethics of war that was R&R’d in December, and would be (quickly!) accepted in early January. I had yet another co-authored paper in bioethics that was R&R’d in February, and later accepted in April.
Alas, by this time, most of my applications for TT jobs had already gone out. (One can, in theory, update search committees about these changes; but it didn’t seem to make a difference in context for me. I already knew many of these places had moved on at this point.)
I had been teaching the same course—with a revised and improved syllabus—at West Point. I had also been approved to teach an upper-division course in bioethics in the spring. But this wasn’t germane to my application, unfortunately; it would have been weird to highlight in my documents this course I would teach soon. Yet another instance of how timing seems to matter quite a lot for these things.
I also added another outside letter from someone else who knew my work well. (I was still using that old teaching letter, which was almost certainly a bad idea.)
Applications:
I applied to 68 jobs this cycle, and a bit more widely than before. I still applied to the same AOS/AOCs as before, but I was applying to more two-year jobs, since I’d only have one more year at West Point after this cycle, so two-year gigs would net me a year of employment.
I had three interviews. Neither TT interview yielded a fly-out. One of these was for a TT at University of Florida (in bioethics). I then had an interview at the University of Florida with several of the same people, but for a post-doctoral position in AI ethics (something I had not, at that point, worked on). I got the post-doc offer, and I accepted it.
Outcomes/Lessons:
Despite my ultimate success in landing the post-doc, this was, in some ways, the most disappointing year on the market for me. I mistakenly assumed that a greater number of applications, a few more projects at least with R&Rs, more teaching experience, etc. would yield more interviews. But that was not the case at all. In fact, my rate of converting applications into interviews was much lower; and I didn’t get a single fly-out this year. So, despite the post-doc offer, I felt as though I was in some ways moving backwards.
It’s true, of course, that I got a postdoc—and I’m glad I did, since without it, I would have been entering my third and final year at West Point, while also entering the brutal pandemic-year job market (more on that below). I think if I hadn’t gotten that postdoc, there’s a good chance I’d have ended up out of academic philosophy at the end of my time at West Point.
2020-2021
I began the 2020 cycle having just moved down to Florida to begin my postdoc in ethics of AI at UF. Everything was virtual, since the pandemic was still raging. And since lots of institutions had gotten rightly frightened about low student enrollments and instituted hiring freezes, early indications suggested (and later were confirmed) that this would be a seriously impoverished year for job candidates.
Changes since the previous application cycle:
Those R&Rs I noted above were all eventually accepted. I began the 2020 cycle with three publications (all co-authored) in bioethics; one single-authored piece in the ethics of war; a short reply piece in business ethics (which almost certainly counted for nothing anywhere); and I had a chapter of my dissertation accepted by mid-November (so it was included in some, but not all, applications as ‘accepted/forthcoming’).
Upon arriving at UF, my postdoc advisor and I began working furiously on drafts that would soon be under review. (One advantage to co-authoring, of course, is that drafting things tends to move much more quickly in the early stages.) So I was able to consider these “in progress” for the early round of applications.
I had taught that advanced bioethics course at West Point in the spring—partly remotely, after the pandemic began. I also managed to snag a summer course, taught remotely, at NPS (where, recall, I interviewed previously). Solid evaluations for both.
I also began to pitch myself more as an AI ethicist, since that was the focus of the postdoc. At this point, I framed myself as an applied ethicist with specific projects in the ethics of war, the ethics of AI, and bioethics. (See below on my concerns about appearing dilettantish.)
Applications:
Again, a brutal year on the market: I applied to 24 jobs, including one non-academic job working on ethics for a large tech company (which landed me a few rounds of interviews, but no job).
I had four interviews for TT jobs, which yielded two fly-outs (both were fully virtual), but no offers.
I also had two interviews for postdocs, both of which were in clinical ethics. If you don’t know: clinical ethics is a philosophy-adjacent field in which, typically, people work in hospital settings (or otherwise in healthcare environments) and advise patients, physicians, healthcare organizations, etc. on ethical issues. A very good friend of mine does this work, and I know that many ethicists have gone this route. It sometimes even yields jobs in academia—usually in medical schools, but sometimes in philosophy departments. So it is in some ways leaving traditional academia; but in other ways it opens up many more doors.
One of these interviews for a clinical ethics postdoc yielded an offer. The position was for two years, with a focus on doing both research and clinical consultations. It would have positioned me well for a range of jobs doing clinical ethics. These postdocs are competitive, partly because they open so many doors. So I was lucky to get the offer.
But I mulled it over for almost a month, and ultimately I turned it down. Why on earth would I turn it down—in this economy?? Well, while the position was appealing for many reasons, I was also still at that time in the running for the two tenure-track jobs. From my vantage point at that time, those two jobs were both massively more appealing to me: I wanted to be able to work on theoretical issues relating to a number of different areas in ethics and philosophy; I wanted to have the more traditional academic path still; and I wasn’t ready to abandon that dream. Ultimately, my gut was telling me not to take the postdoc, so I turned it down.
Outcomes/Lessons:
Given that I didn’t get either of the TT jobs I was at that time still a candidate for, did I regret my choice to turn down the job? In some ways, yes. I think having taken that job would have helped alleviate a considerable amount of the anxiety that I felt in the months to follow; and had this year turned out differently (i.e. I didn’t get something), I might have felt even more regret. But in another sense, I thought it over deeply (and talked to several different people about it) and made what seemed to me at the time to be the best decision.
(Also, note that the post-doc would be no guarantee of a job afterward, though perhaps my prospects would’ve looked good. So it’s not as though my time on the job market would’ve been over.)
One of the TT jobs I didn’t get was at my home department at UF. I won’t lie: it really stings to be the insider candidate and be passed over for a job. (Though, as some people have reminded me, this is incredibly common in the business world: inside candidates are passed over for promotions by outside candidates all the time. The central difference, of course, is that in the business world, moving to other jobs elsewhere in the industry is common and relatively easy.)
2021-2022
I entered 2021 still at UF in year two of my two-year postdoctoral position. This was my first time in a ‘do or die’ scenario: if I didn’t find a job at the end of this cycle, I would be unemployed come summer time.
Changes since the previous application cycle:
In terms of publications, I had two new co-authored publications in AI ethics, as well as a single-authored paper in bioethics that came out. I also had a chapter in an edited volume on military ethics come out—but I didn’t highlight this in my documents because it was not really scholarly research: it was more written for service-member/undergraduate groups, and so was light on research.
I taught again at NPS in the summer of 2021 (virtually again). Same course, slightly different syllabus. Good evals again.
This year I also called in all favors, re: letter-writing. I had eight letters—two specifically on teaching, one teaching/research, and five on just research. I mixed and matched for applications based on what I thought might work best.
Applications:
Fortunately, the hiring freezes due to the pandemic seemed to have been lifted considerably. I applied to 60 jobs; and since I was approaching the end of my postdoc, I applied to anything I was eligible for (including some 1-year jobs).
I managed to get seven first-round interviews for TT jobs, which yielded four fly-outs, one of which yielded an offer. (I withdrew from two of the remaining jobs, post-fly-out, after accepting the UGA offer. I have no idea whether these might have also yielded offers.)
I also had two first-round interview requests for post-doc positions. I initially accepted one; and given that it was superior to the other postdoc, I declined the latter’s interview request. I later withdrew from the post-doc after receiving the TT offer. (I feel terrible about doing this, by the way. But I justify it by telling myself that my turning it down—as opposed to taking it and deferring the TT job for a year—allowed someone else a year of support, which is an overall good thing.)
Outcomes/Lessons:
It goes without saying that getting the TT offer was life-changing for me.
Beyond that, I also noticed a serious uptick in interest in my candidacy this year—and from places that wouldn’t have (and in some cases, hadn’t) given me attention in prior cycles. I’m not really sure why.
One hypothesis is that my publications became more attractive. Surely this is true in certain areas: I can more convincingly claim the new specialization in AI ethics when I have some publications in that area. But it’s not as if these publications were in top-five generalist journals or anything. Moreover—and this is really important—not all of the attention I got was for AI ethics jobs.
In fact, the fly-outs were each in a slightly different AOS. One was in general ethics; one was in bioethics; one was in a sort of blend of leadership, ethics, and military ethics; and one—the one I took—was in AI ethics. And while there was the occasional question of how all my research hangs together, no one seemed too concerned about me being a jack of all trades/master of none during this round of interviews. I suppose publishing in these areas assuages that concern somewhat; but I also think that I was finally able to convincingly tell a (true!) story about how these projects all overlap and relate in interesting ways. I’m not sure whether I’d have found success had that not been true.
A Bunch of Other Things of Note:
Extra-curriculars:
Throughout my time on the market, I did a bunch of ‘extra-curriculars’: I founded the U of T chapter of Minorities and Philosophy; I produced an ethics podcast; I coached ethics bowl; I organized a conference/workshop; I taught in a prison; etc.
I can say with some confidence that none of this mattered pretty much at all to my job prospects. The MAP chapter was something I noted during questions about the value of diversity, but I don’t think it mattered too much to people. I was able to talk about coaching ethics bowl, and maybe starting an ethics bowl team at whatever school I was interviewing at. But most people seemed to feign interest—plus, they’ve probably heard that from four other candidates that same day. Again, I just don’t think it made any difference.
I’m not suggesting that one ought not do these things. Quite the contrary: they were all, in their own way, valuable for their own sake. I didn’t do any of them because I thought they’d help get me a job. Which is good, because I’m pretty sure they didn’t.
Conferences:
I attended conferences throughout my time in graduate school, and whenever possible during my years on the market. I don’t think attending conferences per se ever mattered. No one ever asked me about a conference I attended. No one ever seemed impressed that I presented at some particular conference.
But we should all know by now that conferences don’t have value in this way. In fact, I think there are two main sources of value in going to conferences. First, you get practice in the soft but essential skill of presenting your ideas to others and responding to their questions on the fly—which, incidentally, will be useful come job talk time. (You also get feedback, which can occasionally be helpful, though it depends entirely on the conference format, etc.)
The second main source of value—which most philosophers hate to admit!—is that they offer you an opportunity to network. Which brings me to my next point…
Networking:
For me, networking was essential to my success, especially early on. I knew two people (from conferences) on faculty at West Point when I interviewed there; I knew someone on faculty (from a conference) at NPS when I interviewed there; I knew people (from life) on faculty at UF when I interviewed there; I was able to begin doing consulting because of someone I met through the conference circuit (which opened doors); I am fairly sure I got my clinical ethics interviews (and ultimately, that postdoc offer) via academic connections. I could go on and on.
Again, none of this is intended as advice. But for me, I know that I didn’t always get attention based purely on the strength of my application. In many cases, knowing someone on the inside helped to at least make it past the initial cut. (Though this wasn’t the case at all at my current job, so it’s not so simple.)
Competing in multiple AOS’s:
One relatively salient feature of my profile that may or may not be true of yours is that I was actively competing in somewhat distinct AOS’s. From a certain perspective, it’s probably not all that unusual: most applied ethics categories have tremendous overlap, so it shouldn’t be all that strange to have an AOS in bioethics, as well as work in AI ethics, theoretical work in normative ethics, etc.
And yet, I was asked with some regularity during interviews, and especially at fly-outs, to defend myself—that is, to prove that I wasn’t a dilettante, and that I was in fact actively pursuing each of these programs with a high level of seriousness. I think I was often able to convince them—publications and postdocs help, of course, as I noted above. But whether or not I was convincing was generally not enough: it’s not enough to pass some bar for consideration; to get the job, you have to do better than the others vying for that position (the ‘competition’, if you will—though I don’t like thinking of it that way).
The upshot for me was that even if I was sufficiently persuasive as a candidate for one of these jobs (e.g. a job in bioethics), I was still in competition with someone (perhaps several others) who essentially only worked in this area—and thus, had a much more coherent picture of their research, both past and future. I lost out to such people for these jobs more than a few times. And I certainly don’t blame committees for going that direction.
I think some people might say, “Well, hey, having multiple distinct AOS’s means you are eligible to apply for many different jobs—that’s good!” And that’s true: you never know what a committee will really be looking for—maybe they want someone who works in bioethics, but is also capable of doing work in other areas. But it’s also true that many, many more of these jobs didn’t look closely at me—not because they thought I was unserious or anything, but because (I suspect) there were sufficiently many more who had stronger and exclusive profiles in that AOS.
Another thing to note about competing in different AOS’s that might not be obvious at first glance: it’s a ton more work. Not only did I need to tailor my cover letters to each job to focus specifically on that AOS, but I also needed several versions of a research statement; I needed to indicate to my letter-writers how I wanted them to focus their attention (e.g., one who writes just on AI ethics stuff; another who talks about my work in this area as well as that area, etc.); I needed different, quite polished writing samples (sometimes multiples in a given AOS); and, if things were proceeding well, I needed solid job talks in each area. (Keep in mind that, with job talks, it’s often only a week or two between the invite and the talk itself. So it’s not like I could just wait until I got to that stage to write a talk. It had to be ready to go from the start (or else it risked being too sloppy to be helpful.))
So, overall, while I was grateful to have many irons in many fires, it was a considerable task at times to keep all these fires going.
Attitudes about specific jobs:
One thing that puzzled me throughout the process was how I could almost never predict whether I stood any chance at getting a serious look at a given job. When I knew someone on the inside, I was often somewhat more hopeful, and sometimes (though not always!) this was correct. But often I’d read a job ad and think “well, gosh, if this isn’t the perfect job for me!” only to find out that, in fact, the search committee did not see it that way.
Incidentally, this cut both ways: there were at least four jobs I can think of off the top of my head that I interviewed for that, when I applied, I thought I stood no chance of getting a look at. So, again, the process was so incredibly random and hard to predict.
Non-academic work:
As you can see, I applied for a few non-academic jobs during these cycles. I mostly didn’t get interviews, but I’ll admit that I also didn’t put too much time into it.
In 2021, I started doing consulting work on the side, which I got via a connection with a colleague/mentor/friend who runs an ethics consulting firm. (So I didn’t apply, he just reached out and I just discussed it with him.) I suspect if I had really worked at leveraging this into other consulting or consulting-adjacent jobs, I might’ve found success. But again, this wasn’t my focus.
But in 2020, I also got to the second round for a job as an in-house AI ethicists for a large tech company. The interview process was quite a bit different than academic jobs, but not wildly unfamiliar. I was told I didn’t get the job because they wanted someone with more technical expertise—which, fair.
Overall, I approached non-academic work as a 'plan b’—and I suspected many of these places saw that. I know many folks who have found success pursuing alt-ac jobs; and it’s my impression that the stigma against these jobs is (thankfully! finally!) much lower. In fact, I think in many ways, these jobs are viewed as success stories—not just that a job was found, but that a higher-paying, upwardly mobile, location-variable job was secured after spending nearly a decade of pursuing one’s own preferred research project. I respect that, and I sincerely admire those who can make it happen.
Nationality:
It was never lost on me, throughout this multi-year process, that there were several factors about me that often counted in my favor. I am a white, American man with a PhD from an institution that borders on ‘prestigious’. (I’ll come back to the prestige thing in a second.) I won’t go deep into the various biases that tend to work in favor of white men in our field; I trust you, reader, are well aware.
However, the fact that I am American actually turned out to matter quite a bit—perhaps more than most people (except non-Americans, I’m sure) realize. For example, it is (to my knowledge) a requirement of being eligible to be faculty at West Point that one is American. (There are perhaps exceptions, though I imagine that in practice, being American is at least all-but-necessary, if not in-fact-necessary.) The same is true for NPS, and certain other places I applied. Many job ads state explicitly that they cannot support international visas; this is especially true of shorter-term jobs, like 1-3 year VAPs, etc. I have also heard horror stories of people who received jobs at various places, only to find out later (much too late, in some cases) that they were incapable of receiving the necessary visa support.
There were a few instances where my nationality counted against me: certain jobs in Canada and the UK were out of reach for non-nationals. But given that a substantial portion of the jobs in academic philosophy are in the US, my being an American was an extremely valuable asset. The counterfactual scenario in which everything else is true of me, but my nationality was, say, Canadian is hard to assess. But it’s certainly possible that this would have made my job market journey much more complicated.
Concluding Thoughts
As it happens, I don’t think my journey on the market offers too many lessons that we didn’t already know; and when it looks like such a lesson might be available, I suspect it’s not very replicable—it’s too specific to my circumstances, the circumstances of the job itself/the committee/the university/the other candidates. The randomness of this process is just so pervasive.
And in a way, this is sort of the rub: while I know I worked so hard to get here, I don’t think I earned it in any real sense. I, like every other job candidate, made a series of choices, over the course of many years, that happened to align in the right way—in some sense better than a sufficient number of other candidates—with the needs and interests of a certain group of people who just so happened to be hiring that year.
Let me be clear: this is neither imposter syndrome nor false modesty. I think it’s coherent to say that I think I am a sufficiently good philosopher, and yet the nature of the job market—particularly the ratio of solid candidates to jobs—means that this isn’t ever enough to guarantee success. Other factors matter—not least of which: the luck of placing the right number of chips on the right cards.