Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Academic Job Market Notes (Followup)

    A scan of my web stats shows that my recent Academic Job Market Notes post has already received more traffic than any other single post in the past 12 months, and almost twice as many pageviews as its closest competitor. Wow. This leads me to wonder if there any other advice that I ought to share.

    The truth is, most everything that really matters and which is generally applicable to just about everybody has been covered already by Chris Blattman’s original post on the academic job market. I wholeheartedly endorse all of this, especially the parts about increasing returns for the main chapter/paper and the absurdity of concept of the “limited market” or “going selectively on the job market.” I applied to more than 100 jobs the first time around.

    That said, I can think of two additional, disconnected points that probably deserve separate emphasis.

    Practicing the Job Talk

    Your file gets you an interview, but your job talk is the single most important part of the interview. Lots of things can prevent a fly-out from turning into an offer (your competition, search committee/department politics, funding, etc.), but your talk is one that you can control. I advise students to practice delivering the complete talk at least once a day, every day starting September 15.  Do it on skype with your friends or family, or in front of a mirror, or just sitting at your computer. Note what that means: you should have your talk to be ready by September 15 so that you can practice it. I’d advise even earlier. Shoot for Labor Day.

    Once a day for at least a month probably seems extreme for many readers, but I stand by it. Here is personal note to explain why. I practiced my talk in 2007 at least 50 times before the first time that I delivered it “live” in an interview. I practiced it so much because when I was younger I struggled with stuttering, and in high pressure situations my stutter returns. Now that I’ve had years of lectures and conferences and presentations in other languages, it doesn’t bother me so much, but I am positive that having practiced my talk dozens of times made it easier for me to deliver, even if practicing was nothing more than a psychological crutch. I don’t regret for one second the time that I invested in practicing that talk.

    Now, most people don’t stutter, but my advice still stands. The broader point is that you want to be so familiar with your presentation that you can move fluently through it, especially when you are presenting anything complicated (which you almost certainly are). Fluid delivery projects confidence and comfort, with your work and with yourself. It puts the audience at ease and helps them to focus on you, which is exactly what you want your talk to do.

    The Variety of Academic Jobs

    The more “job market advice” that I read, the more I realize how little I know. Most advice targets tenure-track jobs at the most research intensive, PhD-granting departments. That’s the advice that I’m qualified (I guess) to provide. From time to time I see advice from other types of academic jobs: community colleges, liberal arts colleges, departments that offer a master’s degree but no PhD, public policy schools, interdisciplinary departments, plus the global academic marketplace (a PhD granting department in the U.S. looks very different than one in England, to say nothing of Europe or emerging Asia). PhD candidates on the market ought to know that people like me are not the best people to provide advice on applying to those kinds of jobs.

    Postscript

    Here are the Top 10 Indolaysia posts between 10/30/2011 and 10/29/2012:

    1. Indolaysia
    2. Academic Job Market Notes
    3. If It Rains Tomorrow, I Save
    4. Identification is Neither Necessary nor Sufficient for Policy Relevance
    5. OMFG Exogenous Variation! Or, Can You Find Good Nails When You Find an Indonesian Politics Hammer
    6. Graduate Study in Southeast Asian Politics at Cornell: Advice for Prospective Applicants
    7. Chinese Indonesians, Then and Now
    8. Methodology in Southeast Asian Studies (Part 2 of 2)
    9. About the Author
    10. About Indolaysia

    Also interesting are the top ten sources of web traffic, by city: Ithaca, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Unknown, Singapore, New York, Washington, London, Oxford, and Cambridge (MA).

  • Is Malaysia an Islamic State?

    There is something of a political dust-up happening in Malaysia right now. At issue is whether Malaysia is an Islamic state.

    On one side we have Mahathir Mohamad, former prime minister, who declared years ago that Malaysia is an Islamic state. On the other we have critics who say no, Islam is the state religion but Malaysia is nevertheless a secular state. Against that perspective we have people like cabinet minister Nazri Aziz who say that Malaysia is not a secular state, meaning that it is something else, and implying (but not stating like Mahathir) that it is indeed an Islamic state. Then we have former PM Abdullah Badawi who is on the record that Malaysia is a negara Islam, which can be translated either as “Islamic state” or “state with Muslims in it.”

    This is another teachable moment. It goes to the heart of what it means to be an Islamic state, and more generally, what it means for politics and Islam to mix.

    “Islamic state” could mean many things, but there are two basic ways to interpret this term.

    1. A state where where the ultimate source of legal and political authority is Islam: the Qur’an, the Hadith, fiqh, etc.
    2. A state where Islam has a legal status which is distinct from other religions.

    If a state that has a Muslim majority does not fulfill either of those requirements, it could be either a secular state (like Mali until recently) or it could be something else, a state which is neither secular nor Islamic, just religious in some explicit way (see Chapter XI of the Indonesian constitution).

    So, now that we’ve cleared some conceptual brush, what do the facts say? Legal and political authority in Malaysia comes from the Malaysian constitution—you can read it here. The ultimate source of political authority in Malaysia is not Islam, it is the constitution. Article 3(1) stipulates “Islam is the religion of the Federation,” but this very fact confirms that Islam’s status as the official religion derives from the constitution, not the other way around. Malaysia is by this standard not a secular state, nor is it a religious state in the sense that Indonesia is. Malaysia is an Islamic state in the second sense, in that the Malaysian constitution confers a particular legal status on Islam which is distinct from other religions. That can change only through an amendment to the Malaysian constitution.

    Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy where Islam is the official religion. It is neither a secular state nor a state where law is ultimately derived from Islam. It matters not what some prime minister said about this issue (sorry, Mahathir), nor whether or not he said it while holding office or not.

    So actually—and it surprises me to say this—Nazri Aziz is the closest to being correct. So why can’t he say it? Why can’t he say “Malaysia is an Islamic state, and by that I mean that our constitution makes Islam the official religion, not that Islam is the source of all political authority here in Malaysia.” I suspect that the answer is, he and his fellow travelers fear that if they say directly that Islam is not the source of worldly authority, they will be accused of being insufficiently pious or religious by the very groups who do believe that Islam must be the source of all worldly authority. A common dilemma for UMNO politicians who want to use Islam, but not get swept away by it.