Rejected/questioned by dean/provost

[rejected]

This has been long enough that I think it is safe for me to post here:

Anyone here ever have an issue with a dean or provost rejecting or at least putting up serious roadblocks to your candidacy after the search committee recommended you (and notified you) to either a campus interview or for the offer itself? If so:

- In the case where it was not an outright rejection, but instead merely a series of objections, would/did you take the job?
- In the case where the dean/provost did the rejection, did you change anything about your materials to avoid the same issue the next time? If so, how?

[honestly, yes]

This happened to me, and I was offered a shorter contract than the standard. Fortunately the dean was demoted 2 months after I started, and as soon as that happened, my chair insisted he sign the usual contract. For me, I believe it was not my record but some sexist assumptions the dean made. I was also fairly young and coming from what some would regard as a party school, which may have influenced their decision to not offer the full contract. There was nothing in my materials to suggest that I was not able to do or commit to the job, and I was told that I was overwhelmingly voted the top candidate by the faculty. I assumed my case was extremely rare, but from the first sentence, it seems that this may have also happened to the OP or others...

[from the inside]

I am TT AP. I remember too well how it was to be on the job market. So I wanted to share some insights. Two different departments at my university just had job searches. The first one was declared a "failed search" because the initial 3 candidates all accepted other offers, and the provost did not allow the department to go back to the applicant pool to reach out to others. In another department, the search committee unanimously recommended candidate A to be hired, but the provost hired candidate B. This is all to say that you never know what happens behind closed doors. I hope some of you can take comfort in this and know that it often not about you and your qualifications but also about institutional politics.

[Private]

I was on a SC that recommended a candidate in which the Dean suggested we think it over. The Dean and Provost did not think the candidate was very personable and questioned their ability to teach. This person did indeed come off as a bit weird and not in an entertaining quirky kind of way that some of us are. The individual was also not a very strong scholar, but we wanted to avoid a failed search. The other candidates simply screwed up at various points that got them excluded, which made this individual the strongest candidate. Similar to a response above, the individual was placed on a short-term contract that converted over to a tenure-track position after a year of successful teaching. I know that this is not the same case as above because the dean was never demoted. I'm guessing this might be more common at private institutions. Although I don't think this incident was shady, a lot of shady things have happened at my institution in the last couple years. I suspect there is indeed a lot that goes on behind closed doors that none of us (unless you are a high level admin) have control over.