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Candidate will also be expected to advance DEI, per the job description

Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Geography announced an open tenure-track faculty job in “Climate Justice and Youth Movements.”

The successful candidate will have “expertise in qualitative research with a focus on transnational youth movements, the intergenerational dimensions of climate change [and] decolonial relationships,” according to an ad posted to The Chronicle of Higher Education jobs board.

The professor will also be “expected . . . to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Geography and EMS [Earth and Mineral Sciences],” the college which houses the geography department.

Penn State “strongly encourage[s] applications from underrepresented groups within geography,” according to the ad.

The successful candidate will begin their new job July 1, 2024.

Geography Professor Jacob Shell of Temple University posted the ad to X Wednesday, noting that “the academic job postings are getting awfully…prescriptive.”

The academic job postings are getting awfully…prescriptive. The ad is specifying to the candidate the particular argument they ought to make.
Up until a few years ago you could still find postings like "we want an environmental geographer. Your research is up to you of course." pic.twitter.com/ubYJJKNZHn

— Jacob Shell (@JacobAShell) October 25, 2023

“The ad is specifying to the candidate the particular argument they ought to make,” Shell wrote.

“Up until a few years ago you could still find postings like ‘we want an environmental geographer. Your research is up to you of course,'” he continued.

Shell continued, “Imagine if this dept accidentally hires someone with an actual brain and the person realizes midway through the junior professor period that there are better ways to look at climate than the ‘youth movement’ focus which this posting strangely specifies.”

“Activist scholarship is inherently antiscientific,” he wrote. “There isn’t really a way around that.”

MORE: CUNY launches center to train students in ‘social justice’ activism

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