I am mentoring a couple of search committees through #academia hiring practices today, and how to hire diverse faculty (which I have been fairly successful doing). It's not hard, but there are some guidelines search committees will want to follow. a thread
Writing the job ad: Everyone puts women and BIPOC are encouraged to apply. Whatever. This sentence does not diversify the pool of candidates. Do you know what does? Creating a job ad that speaks to the research areas of BIPOC and female candidates.
Easy to do. See what diverse leaders in the field are writing about and then search for the next generation of them. Application of field to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc communities. Queer applications to field. Social justice movements in specific community.
The job ad doesn't consider these in addition to more traditional research areas. The job ad only considers these. More traditional research areas are overwhelmingly white-defined in the US. Therefore, research in the field as an open ended construction will be white.
Letters of Rec: Not on the first round. Research shows BIPOC and first generation college students do not feel comfortable asking for extra work from advisors, instructors, etc. Wait until later vetting for this.
Diversity statement: This is trite. Ask diversity questions from your applicants during an interview. You will get more information and application/praxis than a statement that I can adapt from online materials.
Setting up the interview: Send questions in advance. This is not an a-ha, I tricked you moment. It's letting people show what they think and are capable of. Non of the questions I have sent in advance are surprising--what is your research, what type of class would you teach...
...what it does is lower the anxiety of an applicant so that they do not always have to feed forward. My follow up questions always deviate from the sheet, but that's because we are in a conversation then. Not all students have access to amazing mentoring or know to ask for it
I can always tell a new phd out of a high ranked school because their answers are smooth and sophisticated. Not because they are more smooth or sophisticated but they typically have had a job prep class or 1-1 advising and mentoring sessions. So "meritocracy" elevates them
Inviting to campus?: ask them what their dietary constraints are and if they need time in the day for anything. I learned this second one when working with a Muslim candidate. So easy to ask these questions.
Starting a campus visit: Sit the candidate down at the beginning of the day and tell them who why are meeting, why, and what's at stake. What will that person/group want to know? What input do they have on the process? Also curate the lunch and dinner guests for inclusivity
Communication: Constant. It's easy. You do not need to hold the cards close to you chest.
Negotiation: Women and BIPOC candidates are punished for negotiating. It's not even that they do it less. If they do it, then they are punished. Study after study show this. This is where I put all my cards on the table and advocate like crazy. I tell them all the things to ask 4
I do most of the pushing behind the scenes because that's how we treat this group ethically at the moment of hire. And considering that women and BIPOC faculty are less likely to get a competing offer to raise their salary later on, this is the moment to combat salary compression
I just want to be clear on the comment above. In academia, men will get competing offers to raise their home salary. Women and BIPOC will just leave. They report feeling undervalued or betrayed by their home institution by the time they go out, so they leave with opportunity
I am sure that there are a lot of other things that I have learned over the years of doing this that I am missing, but the learning curve is steep because the culture resists these changes.
It is possible to diversify faculty and through faculty (and staff), diversify students in historically undiverse fields (I did this too--mostly through diversifying faculty and staff unsurprisingly). It just takes planning at the front end.
I apparently went viral overnight. A couple things to add: pay for travel up front. Fight hr for this. This was not standard when I first started this process but I argued it saved money in administrative time.
Be kind. I still make mistakes but I apologize and learn

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More from @jennomiko

7 Jan 19
watching my thread discuss #marikondo is close to my research heart: the global circulation of cultural artifacts and practices, a thread
The thing is that clutter and decluttering seems like an almost "human nature" phenomenon in late capitalism. We all have stuff and some of us are feeling overwhelmed by our stuff. Hence the long history of best-selling books about decluttering
Now #marikondo: her approach to "things" and objects points to a particular Japanese ideological and cultural construct of the emotional life of things.
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