I am happy to announce that I was offered a tenure track Assistant Professor position for the fall 2020. I had to decline the offer. Even though I have no other current offers on the table. đŸ§” 1/7
The offer included no moving expenses, no start-up funds, no conference travel and they refused to negotiate salary. Honestly, the deal breaker was that they refused to pay me at the same salary as the two most recent hires in the dept (who are both white). 2/7
This is a public university, so all the salaries are available online. The goal has been a TT job offer. But what about really terrible offers? All the job market advice says that we are supposed to negotiate. That most PoC and white women do not negotiate. 3/7
What about the fact that our white male counterparts are offered a higher starting salary to begin with? What about the fact that many of us do negotiate, but academic institutions refuse to pay us equal to our white and/or male colleagues? It was a really hard decision. 4/7
Especially since Covid19 has made an already fraught job market even worst. it's not that academia doesn’t have enough jobs, but because the system purposefully makes jobs scarce. 5/7
That allows universities like the one who gave me a crap offer think that we will take whatever job we can get. So, I said no. I refused my labor. That is the only power I have right now. 6/7
On the face of it, come the fall, I feel like it will look as if I will have failed to get a job. This is not true. My job search was successful. Academia is the one that failed. 7/7
Also, if someone would like to pay me to write a longer essay on this that would be great. 😊

You're girl's TA funding is up this month and I also lose my health insurance too! 🙃
Also:
I was financially able to say no. Basically I'll be able to survive on adjunct pay in the fall, I'm losing my health insurance and will be making less than I do now. I'm not living it up. Not everyone has that option to say no.
This happened back in early March, right before Covid hit the US and US universities moved online and started canceling searches. I should be paid the same as my other colleagues. Even so, the pandemic doesn't justify me being paid less.
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