Marty Nemko has decided to ignore me. Perhaps not the first time I’ve been ignored, but in some ways the most interesting.
In this specific instance, Marty is apparently refusing to post the comment I submitted to his blog entry, “This I Believe.” I’ve sent comments to this particular blog twice; one comment received a brief and unsatisfying response from Mr. Nemko, the other has apparently languished, alone and lonely, lost in cyber space…
Why oh why, Marty, wont you answer my call? Deep down, what have you given up, Marty? me or your cause?
But first, who is Marty Nemko?
Well, Marty Nemko is a Bay Area job coach who, by his own count, has coached over 2,900 customers in the last 23 years. He is an annual columnist on employment issues for U.S. World & News Reports and a semi-prolific blog writer. He also a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkley in something called educational evaluation (whatever that is) and has been a “consultant” to 15 college presidents. Marty will tell you these aspects of ‘Who is Marty Nemko?’ over and over again (and he might tell you he that he is married to Dr. Barbara Nemko, superintendant of Napa County public schools and is a co-president of something called The National Organization for Men). In fact, it’s (almost) fascinating to see how often Marty relies on these facts as rhetorical tools in his reasoning and argumentation. If there is anyone out there who wants a research project or is truly bored rigid, it might be interesting to see exactly how many times he does tell his readers these things….
You see, Marty seems to have a slightly obsessive personality and manifests a couple of cyber-obsessions, mostly job counseling (which might be expected) and “reverse discrimination,” the theory that Caucasian men and boys are systematically and institutionally discriminated against across American society. Particularly in higher education. Marty is a fairly severe critic of American higher education who first came to my, and many others’, attention in a debacle on the electronic version of the Chronicle of Higher Education. But more on that later -
Back to my story.
On September 27, Marty published one of his weekday blog-posts after reading a book called This I Believe. According to Marty’s blog, the book is a collection of essays based upon individual anecdotes that illustrate, as the title would suggest, what people believe. So Marty thought he’d weigh in with his own What He Believes –
I’m paraphrasing here because I am not sure what sort of trouble the inimitable Mr. Nemko might cause with straight quotation, so, in a nutshell, here goes –
Sometime unspecified time in the past, Marty, PhD in hand, began applying for professorships. He even deigned to apply for jobs at schools which didn’t carry the prestige of UC-Berkley. Yet to no avail. This despite, in Marty’s terms, the manifest glory of a PhD from UC-Berkley and the fact that his dissertation had been nominated for an award. Oh, and he’d always been told he was a fine teacher and writer.
Finally, Marty received an interview at San Francisco University.
By Marty’s estimation, the interview went swimmingly well, so when the chair asked the rest of the hiring committee to leave the room, Marty felt certain that he was about to be offered the job. But this is not what happened. ‘Marty,’ the chair allegedly said, ‘you are by far the most qualified applicant. But the dean has dictated that the next seven professors in this department will be women and minorities.’
Somehow Marty’s alleged job denial has something to do with major corporations being afraid of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Obama campaign. I’m not doing justice to his reasoning here, but frankly Marty’s reasoning is conveniently self-serving in this instance.
Now, to jump to the point I when enter the conversion, I sent a reply to Marty’s blog post that was, admittedly, a little too sarcastic and disrespectful:
"Sooooooo, we finally get to the root of Mr. Nemko's obsession with ‘reverse discrimination’ and his vitriol towards academics. Oh, how very interesting. Well, I am a little dubious about the anecdote (really, Marty, a chair was that was so stupid as to let you in on their little secret rather than simply let you slide out the door unknowing??) but the plot did get a little thicker. Could it be, Mr. Nemko, that you simply failed in the world of higher education and that, rather than facing the unfortunate reality, you wanted someone to blame? Oh well, keep building the cabal (I will be very interested to see if this comment is actually posted)."
To his credit, Marty did eventually post my rely (even though he did not think it worthy of being published), but only after explaining that he had a PhD in educational evaluation, had been a consultant to over 15 college presidents and a job coach to over 2,900 clients. Somehow this made his story true.
But the more I thought about it, the less likely the initial scenario got. So I wrote back again and explained why I was having a hard time believing Marty’s anecdote:
“Hello Marty, just thought I'd check back and see what had turned up on the board (after my Sept. 30 dubious response to your story). I must say, I give you credit for publishing stuff that does not fit your particular perceptions. Nevertheless, as I look over the comments and your response to my response, I have become even more dubious (for whatever that means).
“Firstly, this fabled job interview took place under one of two scenarios as far as I can tell.
“In the first scenario you are a newly minted PhD and, having been a job coach now for 22 years, this must have been some time ago (or did you somehow finish your degree while coaching?). If it was, in fact, twenty plus years ago, your fabled ‘Chair’ is probably retired, close to being retired, and at least tenured – so, despite the ‘fact’ that he spilled the diversity beans all those many moons ago, there is little actual “trouble” he could conceivably get into for an alleged event that’s now over 20 years old.
“Why not simply contact this man and ask him if you could use his name in your blog? Give yourself some credibility for those of us who are having a hard time believing your story and thus tending to dismiss your reasoning? Explain what is at stake and ask for his hand so that no more white, male but obviously most qualified candidates go through what you went through. I seem to remember you using this same tactic (“I wish I could reveal my source, but noble me will not get them in trouble”) on other occasions.
“In the second scenario, this event was far more recent – after you have been a long standing job coach for many years.
“While the career of a job coach is certainly an admirable and worthwhile pursuit, it does not qualify one as a college professor – PhDs do have half-lives, after all. Thus, logically, you would not have been the best candidate for a job in higher academia, and the kindly chair was lying to you for his own strange reasons.
“Finally, I don’t think your story holds water for those of us who have been on academic job searches. These searches are almost always done by committee decision and only after great discussion, a little like a jury deliberating a case. The dean would have final say, but only after faculty input. So – if the alleged ‘chair’ did, in fact, tell you that you were the most qualified candidate but didn’t stand a chance, he was speaking far out of turn. If it was the case that this college had no intention of hiring you under any circumstances, why did they interview you? Academic interviews are lengthy and time consuming for the faculty involved, and expensive for the university. Again, for those of us who are familiar with this territory, your story is hard to believe.
“I think you are very interested in dialogue with people on these boards – which I admire – but I’m afraid you’ll be dismissed by a good many of the people who could actually change things, and you’re only going to appeal to people who are looking for excuses.
“It’s too bad, really, because there is a good deal of actual dissent among not only academics but many professions regarding forced diversity hires – and you could be a voice to appeal to those really trying to change things who have the power to do so.
“Again, I’ll be very interested to see if these comments are posted.
“D.T.”
Anyone interested in the blog and its posts should go here: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2008/09/this-i-believe.html
Marty (who has the editorial review function active on his blog) responded the next day. He had chosen not to post my comment, but did refer to “someone named D.T.” who had asked for the name of the chair on his SFU job committee (which, if one reads closely, I had not) and claimed that the man in question would simply deny Marty’s version of events anyway. Marty stated that he would not reveal the mysterious chair for fear of the damage it would do his career. Marty then asked that I provide my name and an email and / or phone number. For some reason, Marty thought he could better answer my questions in person. What these reasons are is an enduring mystery.
I sent a third reply to his blog urging Marty to respond in public – after all, he had posted the anecdote in public and, as I told him in reply, I admired his bravery in outing his beliefs. “D.T.,” I explained, weren’t my initials, but stood for “Doubting Thomas.” I then sent Marty my hotmail address and have been waiting like a farm-boy before the prom, hoping to hear back from him.
Yet again in our story, all to no avail.
I have to imagine that Marty was fibbing. It is pretty convenient that, one way or the other, the mysterious chair would deny Marty’s story, even if crossed. And it’s unlikely that simply telling a young man he didn’t stand a chance of getting a job would do any real damage to this mysterious person’s career, even if the (20 years gone) dean was a real baddy. After all, academics can get away with a lot worse than what Marty has alleged.
In the end, I’m not sure that Marty really understands how academia works – here, and in other instances, Marty evinces a movie-of-the-week understanding of professors and their lives, despite the PhD. But again, these are topics for other posts.
For now I’m going to forge an appeal to Mr. Nemko: Marty, if you don’t wish to respond to my doubts on your own blog, will you lend me a comment here? After all, as you can tell, I’m rather lonely in cyberspace.
