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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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I had just been promoted, and BAU was less prestigious than my own university, so I thought the odds of me actually taking the BAU job if offered were low, but my academic friends and mentors all encouraged me to go along for the experience and to see if I fell in love with the BAU campus or faculty. And who knows, they might offer me so much I couldn't refuse.

This is a great example of how having other options, such as a current job you like, allows you to be more relaxed and treat the interview process as a two-way street to assure mutual fit. You then have greater latitude to do things like smoke-out any woke-scolds and Dolores Umbridges. With no other attractive options, one would have to play it more carefully. Beggars can’t be choosers. And with other attractive options, employers—like women—will often be more interested in you and work harder to compete for you.

the experience soured me considerably on US academia, and made me grateful that my corner of European academia seems to be working pretty well… the wider team gets on brilliantly, we pack out our rooms and the bars afterwards with a wide mix of academic staff, we routinely win huge grants to expand or collaborate, and my boss regularly talks about the importance of ideological diversity

"Best we can do is an icy, suffocating atmosphere where everyone’s a potential cop, talk-attendance is a zero-sum competition, after-hours drinks are a trap, and ‘ideological diversity’ is treated as a dog-whistle for wrong-think.”