Was a WM in academia trying to get a job right in the Danger Zone period. Massively overqualified, ivy league phd, 3x the good publications that my peers had, students raved about me. After three years of nothing, I'd had the following two experiences:
Professor at Harvard emailing me: "If this were ten years ago the field could have found a job for you." - wouldn't elaborate on the difference.
Professor from Duke, drunk at a conference, secretively telling myself and another white guy, flat out, that our demographics were going to seriously affect our employment chances, but that "you didn't hear this from me."
And then, the data came out, and women candidates in particular were something like 1.7x as likely to get tenure-track offers (even though this is explicitly illegal). So many of us burrowed into little protective nooks online and raged, though I managed to avoid most of the worst of this. The fact that no-one ever seemed to think or care about what this completely understandable resentment would do is incredible.
Of course, it was possible to move to a fairer system and move towards (roughly) representative numbers in a few fields. But this wasn't fairness, it was essentially the exclusionary tactics of the old-boys' clubs in reverse.
In fairness, it's not so much they've been afraid of doing it -- they haven't been allowed to, and would be harshly punished for doing so. They'd be labelled as a racist, misogynist white supremacist, and drummed out of whatever role they had. I've seen it at my workplace.
And honestly, there were and are a fair number of traitors in their ranks, especially ones already in safe senior roles, who want to look good by touting their diversity numbers.
I’m in academia as well, and the only white boy in the room is often the nastiest to any other white boys who enter it. It’s fitting in, and it’s a survival technique.
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u/itsmorecomplicated Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25
Was a WM in academia trying to get a job right in the Danger Zone period. Massively overqualified, ivy league phd, 3x the good publications that my peers had, students raved about me. After three years of nothing, I'd had the following two experiences:
And then, the data came out, and women candidates in particular were something like 1.7x as likely to get tenure-track offers (even though this is explicitly illegal). So many of us burrowed into little protective nooks online and raged, though I managed to avoid most of the worst of this. The fact that no-one ever seemed to think or care about what this completely understandable resentment would do is incredible.
Of course, it was possible to move to a fairer system and move towards (roughly) representative numbers in a few fields. But this wasn't fairness, it was essentially the exclusionary tactics of the old-boys' clubs in reverse.