Once again, I’m on the academic job market and encountering some curious measures of what it means to support diversity, equity, and inclusion. Namely, hiring committee members make assumptions based on whatever they locate online.
Simple searches on my name reveal quite a bit, though I share my name with many, many other people. Google and Google Scholar searches reveal data that aren’t supposed to be part of a job search. How people react to what they find varies wildly.
My online presence reveals my creative works, academic works, age, marital status, disabilities, (lack of) religious beliefs, and much more. People find bits and pieces because search engine results are personalized. Someone often on Pinterest would discover my passion for gardening, for example. If you don’t frequent Pinterest, my hobby boards won’t appear in your searches.
I’ve tested this theory of differing results for my own name by searching while in “private” or “incognito” mode and logging in to Google using various profiles (personal, university, and family).
What’s fascinating is that individuals locate different things via their searches, and then reach different conclusions about my past, my creative works, and my academic research agenda. It’s also possible to make limited assumptions about my teaching based on searches.
I’ve been told I might be “too politically engaged” (also known as “too woke”) and it’s been suggested my views don’t reflect “appropriate tolerance.” I have been informed that I am too progressive, too conservative, too secular, and too opinionated. Well, I’m a writer, and writers express perspectives.
The assumptions reveal more about the person drawing binary conclusions about me or any job applicant than they do the member of the interview committee hinting (not so subtly) at a lack of “fit” for a department.
Depending on which “me” people find online and their biases, they often leap to problematic conclusions
Tangent: I understand writing about the job search is “unwise,” and it isn’t something I’d recommend to a younger person. However, I’m not young, and we need to discuss the risks of drawing conclusions from online searches of job candidates. We also should discuss how political polarization in society can be expressed within the academic job search.
Disclosures by Google
Disabilities aren’t supposed to be a factor during job interviews.
During this round of searching, I have received emails from a handful of hiring committee members who have skimmed my blogs, listened to my podcast appearances, and read my published articles. One asked if I was the blogger and podcaster behind The Autistic Me. It was nice to have people mention that they have been following the blog for more than a decade.
Way back in 2011, in-person interviews included questions about my autism diagnosis and how autism affected my teaching. Apparently, that concern hasn’t faded over the last dozen years. In 2011, the titles of research papers prompted questions about autism. Now, it’s Google and Bing that lead hiring committees to the autism connection.
Age is another complicating factor when applying for academic posts. Some departments want recent doctoral program graduates, who are presumed to engage in active research agendas. (Yes, many older scholars produce copious papers and secure numerous grants, but ageism exists even in academic hiring.)
Since Google uncovers USENET posts from 1987, when I debated the future literary value of William Gibson’s cyberpunk works, estimating my age is possible. I was a young, ignorant college undergraduate when I discovered the USENET. I’m a Gen X technology dinosaur. My tech columns for three newspapers and one magazine insert appear in searches, too. I wrote 189 Virtual Valley columns from 2006 through 2021.
Marital status and parenthood shouldn’t matter, either, but they can. Parents have obligations and might not volunteer for every campus service opportunity. Searches reveal my advocacy work as a foster-adopt parent of two Neurodiverse daughters. Public appearances, media interviews, and my writings are all indexed by search engines.
Finding ‘Me’ in Blogs vs. Plays
My stage and screen colleagues have always supported my efforts to promote LGBTQA+ issues. Having written award-winning plays featuring LGBTQA+ characters as positive models, I often forget that my creative writing and academic worlds rarely overlap.
If someone finds the names of my plays, I’m asked very different questions than if someone finds my blog posts on the shifting terminology within the Pride movement.
Two or three other potential colleagues asked more pointed questions about my writing. Yes, my produced plays address gender, sexual identity, and religion. My creative works reflect my “socially liberal” views on some matters and an experience-based disdain for organized religion.
Did I really write a blog post about not updating a syllabus? Did I actually confess to not embracing an entire community? How could I support a diverse student community when I’m so careless?
In 2020, I reflected on being criticized by colleagues, not students, when I forgot to update some course materials to LGBTQ+ (or something similar). My course documents had remained “LGBTQ” for some time, and it is something I admittedly neglected. Today, I use LGBTQA+ and I understand that the acronym might shift again. That’s what language does: it evolves.
I actively work to promote and protect LGBTQA+ rights, yet I also critique the long and ever-changing acronym that falls short for some people. We went from LGBT to LGBTQ, and now LGBTQA+ is common and the acronym I use. On the extreme, some advocate for the unwieldily LGBTQQIP2SAA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersexual, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual, allies and more).
I have written arguments for “queer” as an all-inclusive term. Maybe we need a term similar to Neurodiverse for the spectrum of genders and sexualities. I don’t know the best solution. If we don’t ask ourselves about our personal language usage patterns, how can we teach students to evaluate themselves?
The words and phrases we used in the 1970s and 80s aren’t considered appropriate. That’s fine. That’s change in action. I’m okay with admitting I’ve drifted along with social currents.
Language sometimes changes quickly, while other changes are more gradual. Thank goodness the people who matter most to me in my life know I stand with them, no matter what terms we used 30, 20, or 5 years ago.
Defender of the Faithful vs. Anti-Religious Me
Searches might reveal I have written plays and stories with religious main characters. Other searches would reveal my actively anti-religious views. I’ve been asked about my “spiritual writing” and my “antagonism towards religion” by potential colleagues.
My stands on LGBTQA+ rights, disability rights, and reproductive rights further complicate my views on religion. Reject my friends and family for their authentic selves and I must reject the system upon which you base that bigotry.
As a creative writer, I cannot ignore the role of faith in society. Religion helps some people dedicate themselves to justice and equity. However, religion has also been used to defend all forms of hate.
Faith, or a lack of faith, should not be a factor during a job search.
I understand the contributions of religious people to our society, from ending slavery through the Civil Rights movements. Religious people do good and great things. That doesn’t mean we should accommodate their religious traditions in publicly funded spaces.
I have written that public schools, colleges, and universities should not have religiously based accommodations for any group of students. Let private schools do whatever they want, but government money should never support religious practices.
My plays and writings do include satirical depictions of faith. My writings also feature characters of deep faith. I can and do respect some people of faith while being actively anti-religious. A personal aversion to religious and spiritual beliefs places me in opposition to the views of left, right, and center. Religions are often dangerous and easily hijacked by authoritarian zealots.
Religions are belief systems unsupported by objective evidence and scientific examination. Religions are interesting tropics for sociology, history, and psychology… as academic topics. We can respect the histories, cultures, and religions without accommodating outdated ideas and explanations for natural phenomena.
I’ll state it bluntly: I don’t comprehend contemporary religious beliefs. Communities should have outgrown myth-based faiths. I study religion. I am curious about various faiths. But, I do not understand clinging to mythologies and oppressive traditions. I am increasingly intolerant of religion, especially after having students object to assigned readings or assignments on “religious” grounds. Either you are in a class or not.
As an instructor, I had men refuse to work with women on group projects. I’ve had students object to the works of a transgender economist. You are either in a business communications course or you aren’t.
One reason I own many books on religion is that I perversely enjoy nitpicking the contradictions within faiths. I do this on my own as I read. I don’t seek out people to tell them how wrong a particular belief might be. There’s no point in arguing with believers. It doesn’t take long to find “holy scriptures” to support almost any viewpoint. And many religious people adhere to beliefs that don’t appear in their books of faith.
Faith is exclusionary. If you don’t adopt the faith, your soul is likely condemned. Whatever that might mean within a particular faith’s belief system. I offend many religious people by stating I don’t believe in their human-created deities.
Believe what you want, dress as you want, but stay out of my life, and don’t try to impose your values on me.
Career Sites and Anti-Capitalism
LinkedIn and Facebook reveal what we’ve done professionally, including positions we omit from an academic curriculum vitae. Some potential colleagues are stridently “anti-capitalist” and object to my career path as exposed by my online identities.
“How can you defend the exploitative economic system of capitalism?” I was asked by a hiring committee member during a break.
There was no good reply. I’ve worked in banking and tech. I’ve been an entrepreneur. My wife’s family owns several businesses, including a small family farm and a bookstore.
My family was lower-middle or even lower-class. I am a first-generation college graduate. The flaws in our economic system are painfully apparent to me and to those with similar backgrounds. “Success” in our system rarely reflects merit alone. I’d argue merit is a minor factor in success, far less statistically significant than the zip codes of our families.
Yes, my wife and I have owned businesses. That makes me a “capitalist pig,” a phrase I heard from an academic colleague and decided to embrace. Yes, we owned a computer store and a bookstore. I believe in small, independent businesses. We shop locally whenever possible because we differentiate capitalism from crony corporatism.
“Your research statement mentions the rhetoric of economics and understanding of capital. Doesn’t that mean you defend capitalism?”
Asking questions about capital isn’t the same as defending “capitalism.” Most people, not even most scholars outside economics, don’t know the six forms of capital. The forms of capital in economics models include human, social, natural, financial, manufactured, and time. Economics is the study of allocating these resources, regardless of the economic model applied to any analysis.
In my creative writing and scholarly works, I ask how we make allocation decisions. Every major choice we make in life is an economic choice representing a dilemma of capital. Whatever I am doing, I am not doing something else.
Language Barriers
Searching the online identity of any job candidate exposes how language and expression are contextual. My stage plays, screenplays, and other works of fiction serve audiences different from those of my academic writings. Even my research projects serve different disciplinary audiences.
Academia has a language barrier between our works and the larger world. We don’t even communicate well across disciplines.
The word “liberal” is misunderstood because academics in political science and philosophy generally mean the post-Enlightenment theories of individual autonomy and minority rights protected within an otherwise democratic framework of constrained governance. Other disciplines use “liberal” in the contemporary vernacular of the United States.
Writing and speaking publicly ensures I will offend someone with almost every published work, online post, podcast interview, and public appearance. Expressing an opinion, no matter how mundane, inevitably leads to misunderstandings and serious disagreements.
Readers know that I am not a radical of the “left” or “right,” and I don’t find those terms particularly helpful. Neat boxes don’t work, even for those claiming to be in a box.
How do we, as a society, move forward when we’re so busy not only attacking the “other team” but also enforcing litmus tests within our self-selected communities of like-minded friends and colleagues based on their uses of language?
Conclusion
Few things matter to me more than how my friends and family are treated within our society. I have faced harassment because I actively advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is frustrating when potential academic colleagues find bits and pieces of my works online and make erroneous assumptions.
Allyship means speaking out, staking out public positions, and accepting the consequences of being engaged.
Stream-of-conscious rants like this post get me into trouble with a few passionate academic colleagues. Yet, aren’t we supposed to debate ideas, especially with ourselves? I tire of being told by potential colleagues what I must be, based on a superficial knowledge of me and my background. Even the need for various labels strikes me as absurd and revealing.
Yes, I loosely align with what some call “Heterodox Academy” positions. I might also be considered a “libertarian leftist,” as much as there is a libertarian left in the United States. (There isn’t much of a libertarian-left in the United States, obviously, where libertarians rarely align with Greens.)
Arguments within groups with similar goals assume a particularly nasty tone. Slight shades of disagreement and nuances become reasons to expel community members. Failing to be perfect within the community is worse than being an outsider.
We often debate language instead of the actual social problem of equity. A few academics get caught up in the argument that language choices must dominate all political and philosophical discussions.
Words matter. I study rhetoric and the choices people make. There’s plenty of research evidence that framing conversations influences the outcomes. I continue to express views that offend people because I’m also trying to discern what might be the best language and framing for these debates.
Find “me” online, and you find only a part of me. Depending on your assumptions, the “me” you create might not resemble the authentic me.