I think not. Here is why:
I will here share one relevant experience I had with the University of Groningen recently, which, according to some rankings, is in 100 top universities (this means a little for those who know how rankings are prepared).
Late last year they advertised a position in 'language and diplomacy'. It was obviously a position intended for a junior scholar or a fellowship. However, I applied with a reasonable addition of open-space to further negotiation, or something similar.
I know exactly what's this because, with some colleagues in Malta, I basically kick-started that vast field of inquiry, and had published some pieces that are widely read and cited.
In early February this year I received the message from the Groningen Uni, Humanities Dept., that I was not shortlisted, and also explaining that, I quote, "the social and political aspects of language and language use, which we felt were less strongly jointly represented in your background". Of course, this was not a rejection, this was an insult.
They told me openly that they have not looked at my application.
They left open the possibility for one to place an official request for explanation, and so I did on February 24 this year. By now I have received no response or some apology, or whatever. I am highly unlikely to receive any response.
This is, of course, clear to me. Now, I have this nearly systemic experience with applications in the area. Here is my first conjecture, if you wish to do a research:
1. Job Advertisements in the higher education area a fake. Most departments in the higher education sector already know who are they likely to employ. There are a few exceptions to this, but those are negligible.
My second conjecture, as a research proposal:
2. The social elite (meaning the richest and the most powerful folks in a society) determines the way of filling in the academic space - and it does so through a mixture of standards a majority of which is not related to so-called academic excellence (which cannot be defined). It may be a form of favoritism, pay-back for earlier services, or something like that.
As this entire field is thus forced to a high degree of hypocrisy (at least they need to act as if the process is democratic, legally sound, non-discriminatory etc.), there are two discursive means that those in power employ to protect their venues: either silence or a special ideology dispersed predominantly through the social-scientific field - for a start, postmodernism, or late modern relativism, or something like that....(This is an open-ended conjecture).
To this I add the last one:
3. The Marxist vocabulary is still the best kind of language to tackle the aforementioned issues. But you need to enrich it with some republican theoretical baggage.
Hope this helps somebody.
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