Links ...

1. Kathryn Hume: Giving a Job Talk. Buried in some seriously great advice is this little nugget about the role of "class" in faculty recruitment:

   How you pitch your argument will depend on the institution interviewing you. A few very elite universities believe in intellectual hazing, and will think you a wimp if you don’t try to cow them with a brilliant, jargon-laden analysis. If you come from such a department, you presumably know how this game is played and can prepare for it, and only people from that kind of university are likely to be invited for a campus visit. Most departments are more welcoming and friendly; they want a good colleague with whom exchanging ideas will be fun, not someone determined to bully them intellectually in every exchange. You may meet someone who emerged from that kind of training in the audience, and that person may try to give you a hard time in the Q and A, but most of your potential colleagues don’t feel the need to prove themselves that way.[Bold emphasis added]

2. Matt McAllester: America is Stealing Foreign Doctors:

   As we sat in the cafeteria, I suggested [to Indian-Zambian doctor Kunj Desai] that if he did return to Zambia, he might be seen as something of a returning hero. Desai is a naturally polite and courteous man, but he is also disinclined to hold back from criticizing when he finds fault. In this case, his target was himself. He looked at the table and said: “The heroes are the guys that stayed. They didn’t quit, and they didn’t run away.”