This is probably a joke, but since the academic job market begins again soon: What is something that you (or someone you know) successfully negotiated for in academia that might not be obvious to others that they could ask for?
Reducing use of cash bail & pretrial detention should be an easy place for bipartisan consensus. Smaller govt + less infringement on civil liberties + research-supported! I'll gladly talk w anyone who's curious about the evidence & tradeoffs. #txlege
For those requesting a reading list, here are a bunch of papers that cover the consequences of pretrial detention and cash bail, for those on the margin (that is, for those likely to be affected by policy changes):
"Distortion of Justice: How the Inability to Pay Bail Affects Case Outcomes" by @MeganTStevenson
PSA from a non-econ friend who recently served on an interdisciplinary search cmte: Econs need to step up our game in mentoring our students to write useful diversity statements. 1/n
Their hiring cmte used diversity statements for an initial screen of applicants. Very few econ candidates made it thru. She was completely bewildered by how bad their statements were. 2/n
After hearing how her field (psych) approaches such statements, I see at least 3 issues in econ: (1) We generally advise students not to 'waste' much time on these other statements. All that matters is the JMP and the letters, amirite? 3/n
Greg DeAngelo - an econ prof @CGUnews - has sent letters to several faculty & our employers as retaliation & harassment for supporting an AEA investigation into credible, serious allegations of serial sexual harassment. I'm so over this. #EconTwitter
I'm going to create a separate category on my calendar to keep track of the time I spend fighting bad actors in econ. So much time. Time I don't get to spend on research. The number of hours is going on my annual report next year.
The most strategic bad guys know that wasting people's time is the best way to win. FOIAing emails, sending scary-sounding letters from their lawyer to your chair/provost/GC so that you get called into meetings. Eventually, they figure, you'll cut your losses and give up.
In the meantime, the costs get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And when some junior person comes to me in a year saying they've been harassed by a different bad guy, I think about all that before helping them fight. Do I really want to commit another gazillion hours?