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20 Some Sceptical Doubts Alasdair MacIntyre What is most remarkable about the articles by Leslie Francis and Robert Simon is the uniform level of abstract generality at which their arguments move. Both articles could have been written by people who had heard and read about universities and colleges but had never actually been in one. And both authors share certain large assumptions that need to be put in question. Here I can raise sceptical doubts about only a few of them. A first assumption seems to be that in academia we already possess an adequate and generally agreed conception of what it is to be either the best qualified candidate for a particular academic appointment or at least a candidate as well qualified as any other. But for prejudice it would always and rightly be such a candidate who would be appointed . Sc that what we have to secure, without violating norms of justice in so doing, is a state of affairs in which it is always a candidate at least as well qualified as any other who is appointed. But what if it were the case that the concept of such a candidate is itself all too often a mask worn by prejudice? Consider the following three examples of types of appointment or tenure decision. A and B are candidates for the same position in a history department . Both are women. A is at work on a historical problem that requires skills in Latin, Old Slavonic, and the quantitative analysis of archaeological data. She has an excellent supporting letter from the only scholar competent to evaluate her work. She is aggressive and intolerant of pretentious questions about her work that exhibit the questioner's ignorance of that area. Only such questions are asked at her interview. B has what is called an interesting new feminist approach to the psychohistory of twentieth-century male politicians. Some Sceptical Doubts 265 She has enthusiastic supporting letters from several leading figures in her field. She is witty, well-mannered, and a subtle flatterer of aging, narcissistic, academic white males. Who gets the job? M and N are candidates for a position in a humanities department that has over a long period developed strength in a particular area. M is an excellent scholar in that area whose addition to the department would finally put it in the first rank. M is a man. N is a woman, also an excellent scholar, but in an area that tl:le department had decided some years ago not to develop. An ambitious dean lets the department know that it will retain positions left vacant by approaching retirements only if a woman is appointed. Who gets the job? V and Ware candidates for tenure in t)1e same humanities department . Both are men. W is a mediocre teacher, whose friendly, joking ways with his students secure him excellent teaching evaluations. W has published a dull book with a university press. V is an excellent, devoted, and demanding teacher, who a11tagonizes many of his students by requiring more of them than they enjoy giving. He therefore receives mixed teaching evaluations, including many negative ones. V has published one brilliant, path-breaking article. When asked how long it will be before he next publishes, he explains that his follow-up of his article involves a long-term project and that no publications can be expected for quite some time. Who gets tenure? Experience has taught me both that t):lese kinds of cases are not at all untypical and that the answers would almost always have been B, N, and W. Notice that, by the standards by which candidates for appointment and tenure are conventionally evaluated, there are available excellent arguments to show that in each such case it would have been by the received standards a candidate at least as well qualified as any other who got the job or received tenure. Yet it would in each case have been the wrong decision, and an appeal to the best standards that are currently shared in academia would have done nothing to prevent it. Why do I judge that it would have been the wrong decision? An adequate answer would require appeal to a highly controversial account of the proper ends and functions of universities and colleges. But this is the controversy that we need to have. And on all the issues that concern it both Francis and Simon are silent. They seem to agree in presupposing, like almost all...

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