The Philosophers' Cocoon

5 responses to “How are tenure cases handled with interdisciplinary candidates?”

1. Interdisciplinary

   February 17, 2025

   As Marcus says, it will really depend. I do history of philosophy, and my work ranges across straight philosophy, intellectual history, areas studies, political theory, and translation.
   At my first (R1) institution, only articles published in philosophy journals could be counted for annual reviews, promotion, etc.
   At my current, much more diverse (R1) department, it all counts.
   I think that the departmental views on this issue are much more important than the views of an outside evaluator. If, for example, an outside evaluator said that a junior colleague’s 60 page translation was “not philosophy”, the department would ignore this, because it is confident that it understands what “philosophy” is – and would clearly articulate this in it’s letter to the Dean, etc.
   On the other hand, I suspect that if I wrote a letter praising a junior colleague’s interdisciplinary or translation work when they go up for promotion in a less cosmopolitan department, they’d ignore what I say on these points.

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2. Bill V.

   February 17, 2025

   This is going to depend so much on local conditions and the details of the case that almost nothing we can say here will be useful in general.
   Have these conversations with your chair, dean, senior members of your department, the faculty development office, and the like, early and often so you know what the expectations are. Check your hiring letter, departmental and college tenure standards, faculty union contract, etc. Find others at your university who have succeeded in interdisciplinarity and ask their input.
   When preparing your tenure file, give the committees as much info as you can to contextualize what you have done: Journal acceptance rates, percentage of effort on co-authored papers, the rareness/value of interdisciplinary/applied philosophy, explain why publishing in a science journal is a philosophical contribution, etc.
   In many cases the candidate or department suggests some part of the list from which external reviewers are selected, so choose people who do or appreciate interdisciplinarity. You can mention this as a consideration to the Dean’s office, too.

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3. also not philosophical enough

   February 17, 2025

   I think this very much depends on your department, as others have said. I’m in a similar position to you, and here’s how I’ve been handling it.
   I am also pre-tenure. I work in an R1 philosophy department in the US in an applied ethics field. I have actually been told, officially, that my work isn’t philosophical enough, and this could affect whether I get tenure. So far, my strategy has been to discuss my publishing plan/strategy with mentors inside and outside the department to figure out how to move forward.
   I am also attending carefully to the language in my third-year review. My review was successful, but critiqued my research for not being philosophical enough. My strategy for building my tenure dossier is to publish a lot in the next year and to add a couple of short analytical and conceptual articles to my paper pipeline.
   However, I’ve accepted that I might not get tenure at my current institution because I’m not willing to change my research agenda significantly in response to my third-year review feedback. (I could take this feedback, but I’m more committed to the research than the job.) So, I am actively on the market looking for jobs at other institutions that would be a better fit for me.
   I want to second the advice that you should read the P & T requirements at your institution carefully. At my institution, the requirements explicitly mention criteria like “research is of general philosophical interest.” This language showed up verbatim in some of my promotion documents to indicate that I need to steer my research in a “more philosophical” direction to get tenure.
   I think it would have been better for me if I had asked a mentor in my department directly whether my research met this and other criteria earlier in the tenure track. It may be good to ask someone you trust in the department to talk about this stuff with you directly.
   One more note. I mostly publish in ethics journals and specialty journals in philosophy. So, these issues don’t only arise because of the publishing venue.

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4. it depends

   February 19, 2025

   From my experience, working at a typical four year state college, research is research and there is a lot of tolerance for interdisciplinary work. In fact, where I was, tenure bids were evaluated by a committee from across a number of disciplines (after passing from the department committee). A mentor once told me that I should be sure to publish a few pieces in mainstream philosophy journals, journals that any philosopher would recognize, to balance the research I did outside of philosophy. It was a sensible strategy. But, where I was, the tenure bar was quite low.

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5. PhilosopherOf

   February 24, 2025

   I’m a recently tenured R-1 philosopher of X. My outside tenure letters (they required a lot) were mostly from philosophers, albeit who were experts or competent in philosophy of X, but it looks like at least two of my were simply from professors of X. I wasn’t told who they are, but I was allowed to see the redacted content, and what they say there is clear enough on that score, and I was independently told by my chair that they might reach out to ‘X-ists’ for letters, besides outright philosophers. The lesson I took was that it can be important, if only for a minority of your letter writers, that your work in the neighboring discipline be appreciated by someone who isn’t quite a philosopher.

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