I'm a single parent for the next few days, as Caroline is in DC for the annual hiring meeting of the AALS which begins tomorrow. Blogging may be light as a result. Caroline is the Chair of the law school's appointments committee, which is a brutally hard job, but one she does well. Some of our colleagues have joked that Caroline should be Appointments Chair for life, but I don't know that she or I could take that.
Every year Miami and every other law school gets over a thousand forms provided by the AALS's central clearing service. Each contains a one-page summary of the c.v. and the teaching interests of a person who'd like to become a law teacher. In our school, the chair is the only committee member who has to look at them all; the other committee members get a chunk each, although they're invited to look at more if they wish. Then those thousand-plus forms must be culled. To the extent they can, the committee members call references, and read writings, of the applicants whose forms pique their interests. Then they debate.
Some years we have only one opening, or none. This year, as it happens, we have several openings, and also some fairly specific subject-oriented needs, so the committee is interviewing in two parallel teams. Even so, that means winnowing down the 1000+ hopefuls to about 50 persons who'll be seen at the, excuse the term, “meat market,” for about 30 minutes each. From that group, the committee will have to select a small number to invite to fly down here and spend a day being interviewed, presenting a paper, and having dinner with a semi-random group of faculty. It's a very intense process for the interviewee, and fairly high stakes for the faculty since people tend to get tenure here. (That would be because we make such good initial choices, of course.) The initial hiring decision thus risks being the start of a lifetime relationship, and the faculty takes it very, very, very seriously.
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