I recently took a look through the current issue of Jobs for Philosophers (which is available to APA members at the APA’s new-and-harder-to-navigate website). Listed here are the ads for positions listing Asian, Non-Western, or Chinese philosophy, as well as one position that was not listed in this JFP. If there are other jobs you know of, please let us all know. Other comments also welcome. (Update, 11/11: note the additional jobs listed in the comments, which are currely listed as “web-only.”)
From JFP 191 (October, 2011)
*43. HOWARD UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON,
DC. Department of Philosophy invites applications
for one tenure-track position at the rank of
assistant professor for the fall of 2012, pending the
approval of funding. AOS: Ethics. AOC: Open, but
the department has special needs in the following
areas: Applied Ethics, Aesthetics, Asian Philosophy,…
59. MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY, MILWAUKEE,
WI. One entry level Assistant Professor (tenure
track) position. AOS: Non-Western Philosophy
(including, but not limited to, Africana Philosophy,
Asian Philosophy, Indigenous Philosophy, and Latin
American Philosophy)….
101. UNION COLLEGE, SCHENECTADY, NY.
Visiting Assistant Professor, beginning September
2012. One-year renewable position. A tenuretrack
position may become available in place of
this position in the future. Areas of expertise and
competence are open, but they should include
Asian philosophy and philosophy of religion; the
successful candidate will regularly teach philosophy
courses cross-listed with the Asian Studies Program
and the Religious Studies Program.
110. UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, COLORADO
SPRINGS, CO. The Department of Philosophy
at UCCS invites applications for a tenure-track
appointment at the Assistant Professor level to
begin August 2012. The department is seeking
a candidate with an AOS in Asian Philosophy,
including but not limited to Buddhism, Chinese,
Indian.
120. UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS, MEMPHIS, TN.
The Department of Philosophy at the University of
Memphis is pleased to announce the establishment
of a Diversity Post-Doctoral Fellowship to begin
fall, 2012 (semester system). This is a one year
appointment with possible renewal contingent
upon performance and departmental needs. Salary
competitive. The successful candidate will pursue
research, teach one course per semester, and
exhibit a commitment to the department’s mission
of providing an inclusive environment in which
to study philosophy. The department is especially
interested in candidates who will contribute to
research and teaching in areas of philosophy that
are typically underrepresented in the canon. This
includes, but is not restricted to, African American
Philosophy, Latino Philosophy, Asian Philosophy,
and Critical Race Theory.
180. THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG,
HONG KONG, CHINA. …Assistant
Professor in the Department of Philosophy in the
School of Humanities …
Preferred area of specialization: Ancient Philosophy,
Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Social Science,
or Meta-Philosophy. Area of Competence: Open.
Preference may be given to candidates who also
work in Chinese or Comparative Chinese-Western
philosophy.
NOT IN JFP:
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, Albuquerque, NM. Assistant Professor, probationary position leading to a tenure decision, beginning August 2012. AOS: Asian philosophy. AOC: Open, but the Department regularly needs to offer a course in medical ethics. Preference for candidates who (1) have expertise in Chinese or Japanese philosophy, (2) whose research includes working with original texts, and (3) who have a strong background in philosophy.
Sadly, I don’t know of any postings to add to these. It does strike me, though, that the comparison between this year and the five year period (2003-2008) I surveyed some time ago for the APA Newsletter is disheartening. The comparison is of course inexact since I was looking at whole years rather than single issues of JFP. Nonetheless, in the 2003-2008 period, the lowest number of offerings for these keywords for a single year was 20, with 30 being the high end. It would be interesting to see whether the overall reduction in job postings has had a disproportionate effect in the areas included here. In 2003-2008, postings including these keywords constituted 5-6% of all offerings. I wonder if that’s holding steady or declining. The worry would be that the contraction in positions available might hit hardest in research/teaching areas considered desirable but not essential, and I fear these areas might register that way for departments facing losses of faculty lines or struggling to hold steady.
Wow–that really is disheartening! There are 166 positions listed in the US in this JFP. If we include the New Mexico job (and thus make the denominator 167) and exclude the HK job, we get 6/167= 3.5%….
Update: Please be sure to look at Comment #7 below, where I significantly qualify this statement.
For what it’s worth, here is the information from the corresponding issue of JFP from a year ago (volume 187, October 2010). There are a total of 143 jobs listed there for the US, so we get 6/143= 4%.
60. NORTH GEORGIA COLLEGE & STATE
UNIVERSITY, DAHLONEGA, GA. Tenure-track
position beginning Fall 2011. Rank: Assistant
Professor. 4/4 teaching load; Fall/Spring Semesters.
Summer teaching a possibility. Usual non-teaching
duties. AOS: Open but the university is actively
engaged in enlarging its Asian studies. AOC:
Metaphysics and Epistemology.
63., *64. GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY,
STATESBORO, GA. Georgia Southern University
invites nominations and applications for the position
of Assistant Professor of Ancient Philosophy in
the Department of Literature and Philosophy in
the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
Required Qualifications: Ph.D. in Ancient Philosophy
by the starting date of the position, August
1, 2011. Demonstrated teaching expertise.
Preferred Qualifications: Preference may be given
to candidates who, besides their area of expertise in
Ancient Philosophy, have an area of concentration
in one or more of the following fields: Medieval
Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy, Applied Ethics,
Formal Logic.
69. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA,
JACKSONVILLE, FL. We seek a colleague who
specializes in Comparative Philosophy (AOS). Broad
interests in Asian and/or non-western philosophy
(e.g. African, Latin-American, or Middle-Eastern
philosophy), including theoretical and/or applied
philosophy. AOC open. Assistant Professor, tenuretrack,
beginning fall semester, 2011.
80. XAVIER UNIVERSITY, CINCINNATI, OH.
Assistant Professor, tenure track, starting August
2011. AOS: history of philosophy, with an emphasis
on the close reading of great books. AOC: open.
Possible areas of competence include, but are not
restricted to, medieval philosophy, Asian philosophy,
history of the philosophy of science, and history
of analytic philosophy.
*117. FORT LEWIS COLLEGE, DURANGO, CO.
Assistant Professor, tenure-track, beginning fall
semester 2011, contingent upon funding. Six
courses/year (three/semester), undergraduate
only. Usual non-teaching duties. AOS: any area
of non-western philosophy, broadly construed
(e.g. African, Eastern, Native American, etc.) with
the ability to teach courses in Native American
philosophy, Philosophies of the Southwest, and/
or World Religions highly desirable.
137. WHITMAN COLLEGE, WALLA WALLA,
WA. JOHNSTON VISITING PROFESSORSHIP IN
PHILOSOPHY: One year visiting position at the rank
of assistant professor. Effective August, 2011. Ph.D.
required, with evidence of scholarship in field. AOS:
Asian Philosophy. AOC: Open.
For those who are interested, the Newsletter Amy edited is available here, and see also some discussion of it on this blog.
There is another interesting pattern here, I think. While some of these ads are relatively ambiguous with respect to the strength of their interest in Asian (e.g., Union College, #101 this year), the list tilts toward a stronger level of interest than the period I surveyed. I looked at whether postings were including the keywords under AOS, AOC, or “other,” the latter category meant to capture those listing where neither AOS or AOC included the keywords but the ad expressed some interest in, e.g., someone who could teach Asian, Chinese, etc., apart from the AOS and AOC explicitly expressed. On that metric, here’s a contrast:
2003-2008 jobs listing each of the following were:
AOS: 35% of jobs listing the keywords
AOC: 27%
Other: 37%
The two issues of JFP Steve has listed here (JCP Oct of 2010 and 2011):
AOS: 73%
AOC: 18%
Other: 9%
In calculating the above, I omitted the post-doc just because that would have fallen out of the data I gathered back when. So too, I gave the strongest reading to postings such as Union’s. Setting aside those elements, though, this seems a curious sort of shift.
I see that Steve has posted a link to the Newsletter. Just for clarity, the data above are drawn from Table 3 there.
Thanks, Amy for the further statistics. Considering them, and the percentage of positions listed in your Table 1 (consistently 5%-6%), suggests that maybe the situation today isn’t so disheartening after all. Given that it’s AOS listings that are most likely to lead to a job for a specialist in Chinese philosophy, it looks like the real change has been in % of jobs listing “Asian” (etc.) as AOC or Other, rather than as AOS. Compare:
2003-2008: 5.5% of all jobs are in “Asian” x 35% of those jobs are AOS = 2.1%
2010-2011: 3.75% of all jobs x 73% = 2.7%
Several caveats: (1) we’re comparing whole years with Oct JFP-only; (2) we’re only looking at percentages, and there is a significant decline in overall numbers, which of course matters greatly, but not to the comparative standing of Asian philosophy; (3) the fact that Amy omitted the post-doc position probably means I should have gone back and re-calculated my original percentages without that, but I haven’t.
Still, it looks like the idea that in tough economic times, departments may be less likely to go for Asian philosophy turns out not to be well-supported in the data, at least not for the types of positions that are most likely to lead to an actual job *in* Asian philosophy.
Steve, That’s my sense too. The more refined data of Table 3 is the more telling, I think, with respect to postings likely to yield jobs. Just from memory, the category “other” included many very mild and perhaps even idle expressions of interest. E.g., a department could be interested in having classes in Asian, African, business ethics, environmental, and on and on. And many departments did have veritable laundry lists of possibilities. That would count as an “other” listing on the table, but the probability of it yielding a job for a specialist in Chinese was never going to be good.
Another perhaps mildly positive sign is that the jobs you list are pretty decisive in their interest in the keyword categories. In Table 3, you can see I divided the AOS listings into 2 categories, one for jobs that listed the keywords as an exclusive AOS (labeled AOS-E) and those in which they were included in a disjunctive AOS (as in AOS: Asian, Metaethics, or Social Political). I didn’t do that with these newer listings, but at a glance, they also tilt more toward the AOS-E category, where nothing *but* Asian or non-western is listed. In short, of all the categories, the AOS-E is the best bet to actually *yield jobs*. And it seems the best represented in the more current listings.
It has come to my attention that there are now several relevant “web-only” jobs, which presumably will also be listed in the next full JFP issue. One is the New Mexico job listed above. Here are the others (summaries only):
28. LINGNAN UNIVERSITY, TUEN MUN, HONG KONG. …two substantiation(tenure)-track positions, one at the rank of Assistant Professor, and the other one at the rank of Professor/Associate Professor/Assistant Professor subject to the qualifications and experience of the appointee. For both positions, the area of specialization is open. The Department has a preference for applicants with competence in teaching Chinese philosophy. …
15. COLGATE UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, NY. …tenure-track assistant professorship in Philosophy to begin Fall Term 2012. Applicants must have an AOS or strong AOC in either (i) some area of non-Western philosophy (Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, etc.), or (ii) philosophically important issues of diversity (queer theory, philosophy of race, feminist philosophy, etc.). …
85. PACIFIC UNIVERSITY, FOREST GROVE, OREGON. Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Tenure-track. Beginning fall 2012. AOS: History of Philosophy. AOC: At least one of the following: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion, Asian Philosophy, Continental Philosophy….
Here are two more, thanks to the new PhilJobs site:
Humanities and Arts Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Open rank, philosophy, ethics, religion. (Tenure-track)
AOS: Areas of specialization open, but we have particular interests in philosophy of science and technology and non-Western intellectual traditions.
AOC: Open
Posted: Oct 28 Deadline: Nov 14
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Assistant Professor of Philosophy (Tenure-track)
AOS: East Asian or Islamic Thought.
AOC: World Religions, Philosophy of Religion.
Posted: Oct 27 Deadline: Nov 28 Start: August 16, 2012
So far, then, in 2011-12 we have:
6 jobs with AOS in, or including, Non-Western, Asian, or Chinese Philosophy (Colgate, Colorado/Colorado Springs, Marquette, New Mexico, SIU Edwardsville, and WPI);
Along with several more listing Non-Western/Asian/Chinese as an AOC or strong teaching interest.