My Job Search

Like Don Douglas, Robert Maranto, and so many other conservatives in academia, I too have suffered the heartbreak of discrimination in the job market. Prior to settling at the University of Kentucky, I was turned down for roughly 140 jobs over a three year period, my status as an angry left-wing polemicist notwithstanding. The following is a partial list, with suspected discriminatory reasons for non-employment:

University of Memphis (insufficient rhythm), University of Richmond (confessed that I bet on Syracuse in 1991 NCAA Tournament), University of Minnesota-Duluth (mocked snow in my cover letter), SUNY-Albany (not Albanian), Temple (couldn’t find Philadelphia on a map), Albright (too right wing), Georgia State University (too left wing), Austin College (thought it was “Boston” and expressed admiration for the clam chowder), UC-Berkeley (Ha!), Arkansas-Little Rock (favored school desegregation), NYU (there’s a “New” York?), Wabash (sang six lines of “Wabash Cannonball” during phone interview), Wake Forest (discriminated against because I’m gay), Vermont (anti-separatist attitude), Middlebury (discriminated against because I’m straight), American (anti-American attitudes), Elon (lost all the applications except mine, and still didn’t hire me [true story!]), Texas Tech (Texas has tech?), Swarthmore (discriminated against because I’m a lesbian), Wesleyan (discriminated against because I’m not sufficiently lesbian), SUNY-New Paltz (thought it was in New Mexico), Babson College (discriminated against because I’m pro-victory), Texas Christian (anti-Christian attitudes), Drew University (discriminated against because I’m pro-defeat), University of Georgia (allergic to dogs), Agnes Scott College (who was Agnes Scott?), Appalachian State University (declared in phone interview that they’d never beat a real football team) , Furman (asked if the school was named after Mark Fuhrman), Hamline (too transgendered), Kent State (made crack in phone interview about being tougher on students than the Ohio National Guard), Yeshiva (too Palestinian), Occidental (not Palestinian enough), George Washington (suspect views on American Revolution), University of Northern Iowa (insufficient enthusiasm for corn), Case Western Reserve University, Georgia Southern (too transgendered), Wisconsin-Madison (not transgendered enough), Puget Sound (called Tacoma “the asshole of western Washington), CUNY-Queens College (not bisexual enough), Kansas State (kept asking if Danny Manning frequented campus), Wayne State (made seemingly solid assumption that institution was named after Wayne Newton), Assumption (too bisexual), University of Illinois-Chicago (too white), Seattle University (not white enough), Rollins College (kept asking when I would get to meet Henry), Naval Postgraduate School (at the time, insufficiently anti-Air Force), UC-Santa Cruz (too pro-Governator), San Diego State (explained that I really wanted the job so I could wear shorts and a t-shirt every day), SMU (expressed too much support for death penalty… in football), Eastern Michigan (kept getting them confused with Central and Western Michigan), UW-Tacoma (too Republican), Ohio University (let JRD write a letter of recommendation for me), Canisius College (dissertation topic ran counter to the teachings of St. Canisius), Johns Hopkins (asked what the deal was with the multiple johns), Hood College (asked if they were afraid of being sunk by Bismarck College), Portland State University (insufficiently pro-heroin), Tufts (they were holding out for a better blogger), Hobart and William Smith (not Republican enough), Bucknell (kept expressing my admiration for Ithaca), Marietta (kept insisting that they should have held out for “Lockheed-Martin-Marietta”), Adrian College (not Methodist enough), Hawaii-Pacific (shouldn’t have told them that my dissertation was titled “Was Higgins REALLY Robin Masters?”), University of Guam (couldn’t bring self to actually send in completed application), Penn (kept calling Benjamin Franklin a lecher), SUNY-Geneseo (told them “9/11 Changed Everything” was dissertation title), Dickinson (over-praised US News and World Report), Vermont (not socialist enough), Georgia State (too socialist), Kansas State (kept asking why an institution named “Kansas State” was located in Manhattan), Northern Illinois (told department I thought Robert Zemeckis was over-rated), UMASS-Amherst (not anti-Confederate enough), James Madison at MSU (said in cover letter that John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were the “real Federalists”), CUNY-Brooklyn (tried to conduct entire interview in what I then believed was a “Brooklyn” accent), Hofstra (too many drugs), UC-Boulder (not enough drugs), Georgia (too anti-Confederate), Colorado State (expressed too much admiration for Fat Tire Brewery), George Washington (oh, I thought you said Gorge, Washington), Sacramento State (insufficiently pro-Governator), Penn State Erie Behrend College (kept asking “when do I meet Joe Paterno?”), Western Washington (asked “isn’t this just Eugene-North?”), Clemson (not pro-treason enough), West Florida (opined that they’d never be as good as South Florida), Maryville (too pro-treason), Rowan University (tried to conduct interview in what I then believed was a “Joisey” accent), York College of Pennsylvania (expressed pro-Athenian attitudes during interview), Alabama (kept asking when I got to meet Bear Bryant), UN-Reno (in interview, focused too much on the question of whether or not Reno really was “the biggest little city on earth”), George Mason (wrote “I mean, it’s not like the basketball team will ever reach the Final Four” in cover letter) , Canisius (not Catholic enough), Georgia Southern (too Canadian), St. John Fisher College (too Mormon), Trent University (not Canadian enough), and Utah Valley State College (not Mormon enough).

I think that my biggest problem was that so many of these schools discriminated on the basis of competence…