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How much do search committees value public philosophy?

In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Hiring committee members: How much do you care about a junior candidate's work in public philosophy? For example: if they have a large substack, go on podcasts, write at outlets like Quilette or Prindle Post, does that matter to you?

My guess is that the work is a positive as long as the candidate hasn't neglected teaching and research. But I'm wondering just how much of a positive this is. Is it a big deal? Little deal?

My two cents: I think it should count alot, for the reasons Alex Guerrero gives in this DN post: https://dailynous.com/2023/06/27/the-fourth-branch-guest-post/

Great questions! Do readers have any relevant insights to share?

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12 responses to “How much do search committees value public philosophy?”

  1. over here

    I am sure you will hear many different views on this. I have worked in Canada, the USA, and Europe. In Europe (at least where I am), the administration would appreciate public facing work BUT it would count for nothing in terms of promotions and salary increases. Indeed, where I work, though teaching is a necessity, it also counts for nothing. You will never get a pay raise for your great teaching – you will for a grant, publications in selective journals, and other such matters.

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  2. Ceiling, not floor

    I’m not on a search committee, but I’ve applied with stuff like this and it always seems to come up during my interviews as something that makes me qua qualified applicant stand out, rather than making up for holes. So it’s a ceiling raiser, not a floor raiser. It gives people a chance to talk to you in novel ways that go beyond standard interview questions and you a chance to talk about yourself in a memorable way.
    Now: should it count for more? That’s a hard question. I think it should relative to what it tells you about the kind of teacher and colleague you are. But if I were in a search committee I’d be worried about whether this stuff means they’re less available for admin work or whatever. But other places will have other thing.

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  3. Bill V.

    The key to understanding many search committee opinions and decisions is that they are looking for a candidate who is a “sure thing” for getting tenure at their place.
    That always involves some mix of teaching, research, and service. Since different places have different teaching loads, different students, and different research expectations (departmental and university-wide), there’s no one right answer on the relative mix or the absolute level of performance they are looking for.
    But generally speaking, public philosophy is going to be something they like but don’t weight very highly: It doesn’t really count in any category relevant to tenure. (You’d have to persuade a college tenure committee, say, that public philosophy counts as community service/public outreach, or service to the profession, or as a measure of teaching competence or something–but that kind of persuasion isn’t the “sure thing” mentioned above, and different kinds of institutions may be open to it or not.)
    I would bet there are very few cases where an excellent public philosophy record would be a deciding factor in choosing between two candidates. I can imagine some curmudgeons (esp. at high-research places) being concerned that being distracted by doing public philosophy will decrease research output. But if the candidate’s research record and plan for getting tenure are good (relative to the department/university in question), then that will override that worry, I think.
    All that said, I hope more people do more public philosophy. It is interesting and important.

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  4. cecil.burrow

    I would say neutral to negative. The worry is that it is time consuming and will take away time from publishing in top tier journals, which is what really matters for tenure. (I am an associate prof at R1 school, 20+ years experience. This issue has come up before in our department and the majority of my colleagues share this view.)

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  5. I might be a snob

    This will be an unpopular comment that will probably get me labeled an elitist, but, since I am sure at least some people think like me: it depends if it seems to me to be very good, good, or bad. (The especially unpopular part, aside from the fact that, yes, I think I am capable of making a judgment about the quality of public philosophy even though I do not myself write it: most “public philosophy” is bad, and very little of it is very good.) Also relevant is whether there is much original content in it. If someone was doing excellent public philosophy that seemed like it both mattered and was good philosophy, I would certainly treat it as a huge positive. If they were doing bad public philosophy, I would treat it as a negative (just as I would if I thought some of their papers were bad!). If mediocre, I’d probably count it for nothing, but a negative if it meant they weren’t publishing as high-quality work in journals.

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  6. I might be a snob

    But I would add that it would be completely irrelevant to me how popular the public philosophy was (e.g. how many substack subscribers the person had). Jordan Peterson is not a good “philosopher”. Curtis Yarvin is not a good “philosopher”. I won’t name professional philosophers here, but number of followers/popularity is not a good guide to quality of work.

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  7. publicity is great

    I would say that it can be positive. Indeed, I have argued for a hire (successfully) based on that and other things.

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  8. The Real SLAC Prof

    As the comments above indicate, the answer seems to be “it depends.” For searches I’ve been involved in, I would say the effect was neutral to negative.
    I want to emphasize and second the point made above about quality by I might be a snob: the OP’s question is framed quite independent of the quality of the public philosophy produced. For me, quality is crucial: low quality public philosophy is likely to hurt one’s candidacy, and there is no easy heuristic to determine the quality of one’s efforts.
    Two additional points that I don’t see made above: First, having done multiple searches recently, I can say that “doing public philosophy” doesn’t, by itself, set candidates apart because most candidates now have some experience doing public philosophy that they can point to in their applications. It is almost refreshing to read a file that doesn’t stress all the strides the candidate has made in bringing philosophy to the masses.
    Second, where one publishes one’s public philosophy is going to send messages about one’s social and political commitments that one may not wish to broadcast. I don’t think this ought to matter, but any assumption that it won’t matter strikes me as wishful thinking.
    Doing good public philosophy is good for Philosophy and maybe the world, but it is tough to do well, and I don’t think candidates should assume that simply doing some public philosophy will help them stand out from the crowd or improve their chances of success.

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  9. avoiding the same mistakes

    can @I might be a snob or @the real slac prof say more about what makes most public philosophy bad? Is it that it is didactic, wrong, badly written, not a show of intellectual capability, some combination, something else? And are we thinking of written public philosophy, or other genres (YouTube, podcasts) as well?

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  10. Mike Titelbaum

    As to the question of what constitutes quality, I think most people on search committees understand that public philosophy is a different format than academic publishing, with different expectations. But I want to be sure that anyone we’d be hiring meets certain standards. Here are a couple of anecdotes that might help illustrate:
    (1) Some years back, our department was considering a candidate who had become well-known for their public philosophy, and who seemed like an exciting person to possibly bring aboard for that reason. But when we read their published work, it gave us serious worries about their depth of knowledge in their field. For instance, they would make certain points as if the idea was totally original, not mentioning that similar positions had been defended by historical figures well-known in the relevant field. Even in a book intended for a public audience, this made us concerned about the standard of scholarship this person would be teaching students in their classroom.
    (2) Sometime later, we considered an application from Annette Zimmerman, who does a great deal of public advocacy around technology and democracy. They not only write for the public; they also meet with stakeholders on both the technology side and the policy side. This struck me as a major plus to their application. At the same time, reading Prof. Zimmerman’s work and then interviewing them, it was clear that they are deeply-versed in the political philosophy literature and have insightful thoughts about it. I am now very happy that Prof. Zimmerman is my colleague, and value both their more academic work and the public-facing work they do inside and outside our university.

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  11. Assistant Professor

    One thing that might be worth considering, before asking whether public-facing work is good, neutral, or negative, for a candidate, is to clarify instances of public philosophy in the sense of doing philosophy with and for the public from instances of translating one’s philosophy to a wider public. In my view, both of these things can have value, in different ways.
    But I also think that doing something like translating one’s philosophical work through a well-placed op-ed or podcast guest spot to broader audience and timely on issues (say, in public policy or science) is notably different than organizing a community philosophy reading club or teaching philosophy in K-12 schools. High level administrators in some institutions might think that the former is worth more because it shows their (prospective) faculty member makes a major contribution that gets (hopefully positive) attention. Or they might find the former risky and therefore negative and be neutral to the latter so long as it doesn’t distract from the metrics that help someone get to their promotion/tenure. But lumping all “public philosophy” together isn’t helpful, and even less helpful is lumping this with being a philosopher who is in the public due to, for example, social media presence or splashy profiles.

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  12. Trevor Hedberg

    I will echo the second comment in the responses: doing good public philosophy is a ceiling raiser, not a floor raiser. Doing public philosophy in the absence of more traditional academic scholarship usually won’t result in success. But if you have some public philosophy to supplement your other scholarship, that can be a significant plus for some jobs and a possible way to differentiate yourself from other finalists for that job.

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