To suggest that married professors will “vote as one” in a department’s policy and tenure decisions is offensive and … well, “laughable,” writes David Farley, a pseudonymous associate professor of English at a large research university, in a rebuttal to a recent column by Joseph Kay.
Although Farley’s column is written from a job seeker’s perspective, the topic is particularly relevant to search committees.
While he acknowledges that spousal hires can cause tension within a department in some cases — e.g., when the hiring process goes more smoothly for one couple than for another, or an underqualified spouse receives tenure, or conflicts of interest arise — he argues that such cases are the “exceptions rather than the rule.” He also points out that such problems aren’t unique to spousal hires — unmarried faculty members are just as likely to harbor resentment and have conflicts of interest as marrieds are.
Farley, who is himself the “trailing” half of an academic couple in a department filled with married couples, contends that couples employed in the same department often tend to be more, not less, “committed to departmental success than others” because “if the climate in the department turns sour,” they can’t easily jump ship and get two jobs elsewhere.
If Kay really wanted to reduce departmental tensions, he would “encourage the hiring of such couples, including same-sex ones,” rather than seek to limit them, Farley concludes.