doi:10.1017/S1049096518001245 © American Political Science Association, 2018 PS • January 2019 31 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ P r o f e s s i o n s y m P o s i u m Reflecting on the Profession ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Introduction: Reflecting on the Profession Susan M. Sterett, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Jennifer A. Diascro, University of California Washington Program (UCDC) “A complexity of messages implied in our being.” (Williams 1988) This is how Patricia Williams, the legal scholar, closed her path-breaking essay, “On Being the Object of Property.” In it, she reflected on her place in law and the legal academy as an African American woman, as a law professor, and as the descendant of an enslaved woman. Storytelling illuminates how people experience their lives in professions and how professions mark belonging. In this symposium, writers draw on their professional experiences to reflect on universities and their practices. The purpose of this symposium is to tell stories of the academic profession, reflecting on problems of structure, agency, gender, and race. Articles offer advice for both universities and faculty mem- bers. Beyond the advice, though, each piece is valuable for reflecting on experiences in universities. We invite readers to think about how they would tell their own stories. In recent years, political science has been fostering discus- sion of strategies for advancing women in the academy. Data on tenure, on publication in the canonical journals, and on who advances to full professor by gender demonstrate that the profession and its pathways remain gendered (Claypool et al. 2017; Hesli, Lee, and Mitchell 2012; Teele and Thelen 2017). Experiments on differences in teaching evaluations in online classes reveal systematic gender bias by students (Mitchell and Martin 2018). Advice to women on how to suc- ceed highlights gendered strategies (Chenoweth et al. 2016). Academics in political science have not often publicly shared stories of how strategies exclude, or of the work required for people to fit themselves into the model of success advice implies (see, however, Anonymous and Anonymous [Sally Kenney and Susan Sterett] 1999; Givens 2017). Advice to individuals takes the profession’s practices as fixed. Using advice to figure out how to fit within institutions as they exist replicates defining individuals who do not fit as failures. Feminist scholarship on political success advancing women’s interests informs advice for collective advancement, and that could make it possible to change the institution (Mershon and Walsh 2014; 2015; 2016). Alternatively, telling stories of how people craft their lives in the profession could lead to questioning institutions. Turning to the institution itself and the limits of what it defines as successful can bor- row from queer theory. Drawing on stories, queer theory has questioned what it means to fail at being straight. Stories can critique institutions as setting the wrong standards: the met- ric for a life well lived is not a straight life well lived (Sjoberg 2014; Stacey and Biblarz 2001). A professional life well lived also could be too narrowly defined. Reflecting on the acad- emy’s exclusions requires animating data with individual stories to help with rethinking meanings of success and insti- tutional failures. Narrow metrics that universities use influence advice about how to improve the status of women, or how to advise anyone on how to succeed. Advice takes conditions as given. For example, if women do too much service, they should say no to service. Advice to women to turn down unrewarded service work avoids the question of how that work gets done. An alternative approach would be to recognize the work. For example, the public-administration scholar Shannon Portillo argued that she does not want to follow the common advice to women to take on less service work. Instead, she argued, of finding ways to get women to cut back, some men could contribute more (Portillo 2017). Advice also assumes con- ditions will not change, so the rewards for different kinds of work will not change if women change strategies. Advice or analysis of tenure rates also ignores the increasing number of people who work in more contingent positions, or in admin- istrative jobs, or who have left the profession, with varying degrees of joy or sorrow. Accomplishing change that does not only accommodate existing standards is difficult. How to manage family life also is central to advice. Advice holds that women need to hire help for more of the care work at home and count on a partner to do a lot of it (Chenoweth et al. 2016). That advice has a version of family life that does not fit everyone. Parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews need care, not only children. Many children are raised without a second parent or partner. The advice also denies the value of a life apart from the profession. Denying the importance of family and community life is a hallmark of a “greedy institution,” one that demands undivided loyalty (Sullivan 2013, following Coser 1974). Participants get the exclusive benefits of that voluntary loyalty. As the president of the University of Virginia, Teresa Sullivan, argued, universities have become greedy instititutions (Sullivan 2013). Electronic connections step up work demands. Describing a university as an institution that asks for one’s devotion highlights the costs to our- selves, our families, and our communities implicit in some of the advice about how to succeed on the profession’s own terms. ............................................................................................................................................... 32 PS • January 2019 P r o f e s s i o n s y m p o s i u m : R e f l e c t i n g o n t h e P r o f e s s i o n ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Analyses based in patterns of outcomes—tenure denials, or promotion, or salary—may give all the information anyone needs to decide within constraints. However, people make sense of information in the context of their and others’ expe- riences. Stories allow people to turn from the decisions they must make to the decisions organizations make. Stories also can include the whole person, not only what metrics measure. Telling stories about costs, successes, and strategies allows new ways of seeing a place in the world. James Pennebaker, a psychologist of language and stories, has argued that tell- ing stories helps people to reach a resolution once they can change perspectives. He argued that being aware of ourselves and aware of others in the story gives stories a more coher- ent structure (Pennebaker 2011). Ways of seeing social power also inform how people tell stories. Linking stories to broader structures shows patterns beyond any one individual’s con- trol. Alternatively, stories without a context and a link beyond immediate circumstances can reinforce power (Ewick and Silbey 1995). Political scientists have written about how sto- ries that social movements tell can promote or discourage action (Beckwith 2015). Stories that make failures contingent rather than necessary can encourage people to “fight another day” (Beckwith 2015). In summary, anyone can tell stories about professional experiences in multiple ways. Shifting per- spectives could make it more possible to name problems as collective rather than individual. Irreverent stories of the profession are becoming increas- ingly available via blogs, podcasts, hashtags, and social media. Gatekeeping through controlling publication does not work when Twitter handles are not subject to peer review. Fragments have gained new currency, evidenced by the #MeToo hashtag. Although neither 140 nor 280 characters allows con- text, reflection, and perspective shifting, that hashtag and a spreadsheet about the academy (Kelsky 2017) have promoted awareness that was not previously public. The recent turn to recognizing problems of sexual harassment and assault is wel- come in raising issues long ignored and underreported. Because discrimination on the basis of sex has long been illegal and uni- versities have long had policies against it, stories illuminate fail- ures of law as a remedy. As recent news about legal settlements demonstrates, people often do not complain, or complaints remain unaddressed, or cases settle and settlement means insti- tutions do not acknowledge problems as systemic (Sterett 2018). Therefore, this symposium comprises reflections on build- ing careers in political science. Each piece draws from experi- ence and offers insight for both insitutions and individuals. We began this project with Jennifer Diascro’s own reflections on tenure denial in her blog and responses it generated. We held a workshop on advancement through stories in October 2017. The organizers’ goal for the workshop was to bring together scholars to share their experiences of the academy. Partici- pants were diverse by gender, age, disability, sexuality, race, and ethnicity; academic rank and appointment; type and loca- tion of university; career paths in and out of the academy; and family responsibilities. In the following pages, contributors reflect on changing conditions in the academy. Many people entered expecting stability, recognizing that stability was not what other careers offered and included tradeoffs. Most of the essays touch on how careers were not as stable as expected. Perhaps instability is not surprising, but advice that takes conditions as fixed can- not make sense of things that do not go as promised. If universities are greedy institutions (Sullivan 2013), they impose costs on work choices, self, and community. In response to universities’ greed for initiates’ loyalty, Nikol G. Alexander- Floyd, Renée A. Cramer, and Taneisha Means appeal to living with integrity and abandoning the concept of balance. Stephen Bragaw writes about how his career was upended in the blink of an eye when his university closed. He reflects on his own Jungian “night sea journey,” rethinking his life’s purpose in the face of such dramatic change. The focus of universities and the profession on tenure does not structure later career reflections. Like Stephen Bragaw, C. Scott Peters takes on changing demands in the university. He argues for the importance of lining up rewards, including promotion, with the work that needs to be done. Increasingly, this work includes assessment, curriculum planning, and service learning. Only some univer- sities consider these in promotion decisions, yet the work is increasingly central to the mission in higher education. Changing contexts also shape how Christopher H. Foreman, Jr. began his career and how it progressed. Think tanks, where he spent much of his career, once rewarded reflec- tive books. Changing finances mean they do not anymore, and Foreman writes that such books do not always fit with what uni- versities want anymore either. He recognizes the importance of friendships throughout his career, a lesson that does transfer to new contexts. He recognized good questions and opportunities when he saw them, leading to creative books on congressional oversight and environmental justice. Working in government inspired some of his scholarship; he watched for opportunity. Lee Demetrius Walker tells of persistence and mentoring as he worked with a manuscript of his that journals turned down. He reflects on this story—which ends with two man- uscripts published in peer-reviewed journals—in light of scholarship on sensitivity to rejection. As one reviewer of this piece noted, anyone who finds rejection devastating can quit the profession. However, sensitivity in a profession built on rejection when not everyone knows that rejection is ordinary can contribute to patterns of exclusion. Getting beyond indi- vidual perceptions could contribute to changing persistence. Advice to individuals takes the profession’s practices as fixed. Using advice to figure out how to fit within institutions as they exist replicates defining individuals who do not fit as failures. PS • January 2019 33 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ The greediness of universities affects fatherhood and mas- culinity as well, just when many in the United States recognize that both require rethinking. Offloading care work to partners does not only implicate women’s care work. Foreman, Gould, and Lovato all include their experiences of fatherhood and the meaning of masculinity in the academy. As the writer Michael Ian Black (2018) argued, the world would benefit if we had more complex conversations about masculinity. These articles contribute. Jennifer Diascro and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman interpret tenure denials. Universities often describe the tenure process in rules and handbooks and guidelines. Decision points are multiple and appeals are possible: the extensive bureaucratic process described in handbooks does not include the people who are the subject of evaluation. Diascro and Sinclair-Chapman describe experiences in the process, not the rules. Sinclair- Chapman powerfully describes what it is like to be a black woman in a historically white institution. Diascro comple- ments Sinclair-Chapman by identifying the institutional failures in the tenure process, illustrating with her own experience. For both, the trappings of rational bureaucracy implied that there are no surprises. Yet, for Diascro and Sinclair-Chapman and many others, the outcome was sur- prising and devastating, not least because universities portray tenure denial as a matter of individual responsibility. Both argue that departmental and university power dynamics are central to tenure. The stories that are not told in this symposium are myriad. People who have the least security and a great deal to say had little reason to write. People who are on term-limited contracts, or getting advice from lawyers, or very junior and on the job market did not see writing as a good idea for them. Even so, workshop participants raised questions that are per- vasive in the profession and more evident in blogs and tweets than in reports. People decide about jobs within constraints not captured by a model of autonomous individuals that still inform advice. For example, people cannot always accept positions that require moving every couple of years, which the profession increasingly requires of young academics. The pro- fession can fault individuals for not moving, but it is a level of commitment that poses a problem for families and communi- ties. In addition, people are not always fully physically able, which feminist theory has long stated but professional liter- ature misses. Missing that point mistakes what people bring to the job, including empathy with students’ struggles and insight into fundamental political processes (Andersen 2016). In the current moment, we note that this symposium does not include any #MeToo stories. The proliferation of frag- ments using that hashtag, the controversy over #MeToo and gatekeeping in political science (Bartlett and Gluckman 2018; Midwest Women’s Caucus for Political Science 2018), and the Google sheet on which people can enter their fragments (Kelsky 2017) have named exclusion. Even without linking individual fragments to broader narrative arcs about insti- tutions and power, reporting has made sexual misconduct in the academy less isolating. The hashtag, spreadsheet, and workshop at the 2018 APSA Annual Meeting all allow ques- tions about how the workplace is sexualized in the academy. A report from the National Academies of Sciences (2018) found that universities have done little to address sexual harassment. So, tell your own stories. Shift perspectives. Find ways to incorporate a dominant framework and ways that do not. Learn, and learn with colleagues, and draw your own lessons about individual and collective problems. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are grateful to the editors of PS: Political Science & Politics, to Judith Grant, to Laura Mateczun, and to the partici- pants in the workshop funded by National Science Foundation Grant #1643084. n R E F E R E N C E S Andersen, Ellen Ann. 2016. “Unruly Bodies: My Life as an Academic with Disabilities.” Available at https://thewpsa.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/unruly- bodies-my-life-as-an-academic-with-disabilities. Accessed July 23, 2018. Anonymous and Anonymous [Sally Kenney and Susan Sterett]. 1999. Tenure in a Chilly Climate. PS: A Journal of Political Science 32 (1) (March): 91–9. Bartlett, Tom, and Nell Gluckman. 2018. “She Left Harvard. He Got to Stay.” Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at www.chronicle.com/interactives/ harvard-harassment. Accessed July 23, 2018. Beckwith, Karen. 2015. “Narratives of Defeat: Explaining the Effects of Loss in Social Movements.” Journal of Politics 77 (1): 2–13. Black, Michael Ian. 2018. “The Boys Are Not All Right.” New York Times, February 21. Available at www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/boys- violence-shootings-guns.html. Accessed June 26, 2018. Chenoweth, Erica, Page Fortina, Sara Mitchell, Burcu Savun, Jessica Weeks, and Kathleen Cunningham. 2016. “How to Get Tenure (If You Are a Woman).” Foreign Policy, April 19. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/19/ how-to-get-tenure-if-youre-a-woman-academia-stephen-walt. Accessed March 15, 2018. Claypool, Vicki Hesli, Brian David Janssen, Dongkyu Kim, and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell. 2017. “Determinants of Salary Dispersion among Political Science Faculty: The Differential Effects of Where You Work (Institutional Charac- teristics) and What You Do (Negotiate and Publish).” PS: Political Science & Politics 50 (1): 146–56. Coser, Lewis A. 1974. Greedy Institutions: patterns of undivided commitment. New York: Free Press. Ewick, Patricia, and Susan S. Silbey. 1995. “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative.” Law & Society Review 29 (2): 25–197. Givens, Terri. 2017. “Truths to be Told.” https://www.terrigivens.com/2017/ 04/22/truths-to-be-told/ April 22. Accessed August 14, 2018. Hesli, Vicki L., Jae Mook Lee, and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell. 2012. “Predicting Rank Attainment in Political Science: What Else besides Publications Affects Promotion?” PS: Political Science & Politics 45 (3): 475–92. So, tell your own stories. Shift perspectives. Find ways to incorporate a dominant framework and ways that do not. Learn, and learn with colleagues, and draw your own lessons about individual and collective problems. https://thewpsa.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/unruly-bodies-my-life-as-an-academic-with-disabilities https://thewpsa.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/unruly-bodies-my-life-as-an-academic-with-disabilities http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/harvard-harassment http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/harvard-harassment http://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/boys-violence-shootings-guns.html http://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/boys-violence-shootings-guns.html http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/19/how-to-get-tenure-if-youre-a-woman-academia-stephen-walt http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/19/how-to-get-tenure-if-youre-a-woman-academia-stephen-walt https://www.terrigivens.com/2017/04/22/truths-to-be-told/ https://www.terrigivens.com/2017/04/22/truths-to-be-told/ 34 PS • January 2019 P r o f e s s i o n s y m p o s i u m : R e f l e c t i n g o n t h e P r o f e s s i o n ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Kelsky, Karen. 2017. “A Crowdsourced Survey of Sexual Harassment in the Academy.” Available at https://theprofessorisin.com/2017/12/01/a- crowdsourced-survey-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-academy. Accessed July 23, 2018. Mershon, Carol, and Denise Walsh. 2014. “Introduction.” Politics & Gender 10 (3): 432–7. Mershon, Carol, and Denise Walsh. 2015. “Introduction: How Political Science Can Be More Diverse.” PS: Political Science & Politics 48 (3): 441–4. Mershon, Carol, and Denise Walsh. 2016. “Diversity in Political Science: Why It Matters and How to Get It.” Politics, Groups and Identities 4 (3): 462–6. Midwest Women’s Caucus for Political Science. 2018. “Letter to MPSA.” Available at http://mwcps.org/letter-to-mpsa.html. Mitchell, Kristina, and Jonathan Martin. 2018. “Gender Bias in Student Evaluations.” PS: Political Science & Politics 51 (3): 648–52. Available at doi: 10.1017/S104909651800001X. National Academies of Sciences. 2018. Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate Culture and Consequences in Academic Sciences and Medicine. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available at http:// sites.nationalacademies.org/shstudy/index.htm. Accessed June 26, 2018. Pennebaker, James W. 2011. The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say about Us. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Portillo, Shannon. 2017. “White Men Must Learn to Say Yes.” Inside Higher Education, August 23. Available at www.insidehighered.com/advice/ 2017/08/23/white-men-should-do-more-campus-service-work-essay. Accessed April 17, 2018. Sjoberg, Laura. 2014. “Queer Failure for Diversity Seekers?” Paper presented at workshop on advancing diversity in the profession (SES-1447782). Manuscript in possession of the authors. Stacey, Judith, and Timothy Biblarz. 2001. “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” American Sociological Review 66 (2): 159–83. Available at www.jstor.org/stable/2657413. Sterett, Susan. 2018. “Law’s Presence, Law’s Absence: Reporting Stories of Employment Discrimination in the Academy.” Politics and Gender. Available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X18000119. Sullivan, Teresa. 2013. “Greedy Institutions, Overwork, and Work–Life Balance.” Sociological Inquiry 84 (1): 1-15. Teele, Dawn Langan, and Kathleen Thelen. 2017. “Gender in the Journals: Publica- tion Patterns in Political Science.” PS: Political Science & Politics 50 (2): 433–47. Williams, Patricia. 1988. “On Being the Object of Property.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (1): 5–24. S Y M P O S I U M C O N T R I B U T O R S Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd is associate professor of women’s and gender studies and political science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She has published in leading journals, such as Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, Frontiers, Feminist Formations, and the National Political Science Review, among others. She is the author of Gender, Race, and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics (Palgrave MacMillan 2007) and is coeditor, along with Julia Jordan-Zachery, of Black Women in Politics: Demanding Citizenship, Challenging Power, and Seeking Justice (SUNY Press 2018). Her current book project is Liminal Subjects: Black Women, Melodrama, and Postfeminism in the New Millennium. She may be reached at ngaf@womenstudies.edu. Stephen Bragaw is a visiting professor in the Department of Politics at Washington and Lee University, where he teaches courses in constitutional law, American politics, and statistics. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he earned his PhD at the University of Virginia in American government and public law. He is currently working on a project “The Rise of the Almighty Dollar” that examines the political and legal development of monetary power in the American constitutional system. He may be reached at bragaws@wlu.edu. Renée A. Cramer is a professor of law, politics, and society at Drake University. After having served as chair for seven years, she is about to begin a term as faculty senate president. Her current research, funded by the National Science Foundation, the Iowa State Historical Society, and a small grant from the American Political Science Association, is on the legal mobilization of home birth midwives and their advocates in the United States. She can be contacted at renee.cramer@drake.edu. Jennifer A. Diascro is associate academic director at the University of California Washington Program (UCDC). She teaches seminars on research design and implementation, law and society, and judicial process. Most recently, she is coauthor of “A Retrospective on Obama’s Judges: Diversity, Intersectionality and Symbolic Representation” (in Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2018) and co-PI on National Science Foundation Grant #1643084, “Advancement Through Narrative: Understanding and Navigating Success and Failure in the Academy.” She blogs about tenure denial and other things at www.jenniferdiascrophd.com and can be reached at jennifer.diascro@ucdc.edu. Christopher H. Foreman, Jr. is professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He is at work on a book about the evolution of twentieth-century American politics. He may be reached at cforeman@umd.edu. Jon B. Gould is professor of public affairs and law at American University in Washington, DC. He has held positions as a US Supreme Court Fellow, in the US Department of Justice, and at the National Science Foundation. Professor Gould writes on questions of law and justice. He may be reached at gould@american.edu. Brian Lovato is visiting assistant professor at Augustana College. His research focuses on social movements, identity politics, and critical Marxist theory. He is the author of Democracy, Dialectics, and Difference (Routledge, 2016). He may be reached at brianlovato@augustana.edu Taneisha Means is assistant professor of political science at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She specializes in judicial politics, and race, ethnicity, and politics, and is currently finishing a book manuscript on black state court judges’ identities and decision making. She can be contacted at tmeans@vassar.edu. C. Scott Peters is professor and head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Northern Iowa. His research interests focus on questions of judicial selection and retention in US state courts, particularly judicial elections. His book, Regulating Judicial Elections (Routledge, 2018) examines the effect of state codes of judicial conduct on state supreme court elections. Valerie Sinclair-Chapman is associate professor of political science and the director of the Center for Research on Diversity and Inclusion at Purdue University. Her research interests include American politics with a focus on legislative studies, political representation, and political participation. Current projects examine the effects of diversity in a range of contexts including Congress, political participation, and social movements. She can be reached at vsc@purdue.edu. Susan M. Sterett is professor and director of the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland Baltimore County. Since being denied tenure in 1993 she has been a faculty member at the University of Denver and at Virginia Tech before joining UMBC. Most recently she is the author of “Law’s Presence, Law’s Absence: Reporting on Employment Discrimination in the Academy” (Politics and Gender), and “Data Access as Regulation” ( forthcoming in American Behavioral Scientist). Coediting the journal Law and Society Review has taught her that being risk averse about rejection is unhelpful. She may be reached at ssterett@umbc.edu. Lee Demetrius Walker is associate professor of political science and associate chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of North Texas. His teaching and research interests focus on the areas of comparative judicial politics, Latin American politics, comparative democratization and political methodology. He has published his work in Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Law and Society Review, Party Politics, Latin American Research Review, and others. He may be reached at Lee.Walker@unt.edu. https://theprofessorisin.com/2017/12/01/a-crowdsourced-survey-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-academy https://theprofessorisin.com/2017/12/01/a-crowdsourced-survey-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-academy http://mwcps.org/letter-to-mpsa.html https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909651800001X http://sites.nationalacademies.org/shstudy/index.htm http://sites.nationalacademies.org/shstudy/index.htm http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/08/23/white-men-should-do-more-campus-service-work-essay http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/08/23/white-men-should-do-more-campus-service-work-essay http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657413 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X18000119 mailto:ngaf@womenstudies.edu mailto:bragaws@wlu.edu mailto:renee.cramer@drake.edu http://www.jenniferdiascrophd.com mailto:jennifer.diascro@ucdc.edu mailto:cforeman@umd.edu mailto:gould@american.edu mailto:brianlovato@augustana.edu mailto:tmeans@vassar.edu mailto:vsc@purdue.edu mailto:ssterett@umbc.edu mailto:Lee.Walker@unt.edu