John Denker's question, "So, whom would you hire: Pierre, or Marie, or
neither?" is an interesting question, and it prompts me to offer more
explanation and expansion of my earlier message.
The underlying assumption is that there are only sufficient funds for
one position. If that is the case, and both Pierre and Marie come
knocking at the door, are they asking to share the one position, or are
they asking for full salary for each? Hiring two famous people when you
only have one position might be justified if you figure the reputation
of the school will go up and you will recruit more students or more
research dollars. But how often is a small school like mine given the
opportunity to hire even one very famous person, let alone a pair of
very famous persons. I would assume that if faced with the choice of
hiring Pierre or Marie or both or neither, we would hire both. Money
seems possible if something truly extraordinary comes along.
However, in all the cases I have experienced we were dealing with people
who were not famous, *and* we felt one was the person we wanted to hire
whereas the spouse was a person we would not have even interviewed. I
believe John explicitly has said we should not have hired them both in
that situation, but we did... more than once. One instance has turned
out great. The others bad; even disastrous. The department forced to
hire the less competent spouse sometimes really takes a beating; once so
bad that the academic major and department were terminated.
As for having spouses on the same committee, I have experienced two
opposite bad situations. In one situation the husband and wife agreed
on everything. However, there was reason to believe one spouse was
dominant and the other was submissive. That meant the dominant spouse
essentially had two votes for his/her ideas. In another case it was the
opposite; the husband and wife argued all the time in the committee.
Even when one spouse had some very good ideas, the other would attack
them. Although it certainly happens that non-spouses can actively agree
on something, or actively disagree on something, the cases I experienced
were obvious cases where the marriage relationship was allowing issues
unrelated to the committee to affect the committee. That can still
happen in a committee that includes friends (or enemies) but I think it
is more likely to occur if spouses are present.
In situations where one spouse supervises the other, I have seen
opposite sides to this as well. One side involves such a strong concern
about conflict of interest that the subordinate spouse misses
opportunities he or she would have otherwise had with a supervisor that
was not related. The other side involves just the opposite; the
subordinate spouse gets breaks other members of the department do not
get.
I should mention that we have several instances where, like John D.
mentioned, one spouse is a faculty member and the other works as a staff
member (custodial, secretarial, admissions counselor, etc.). While
these are still "deals" that were made, they do not trouble me as much
as faculty members that are spouses. As mentioned, one case I am
familiar with was a win-win situation, but I have seen too many win-lose
situations and even some lose-lose situations.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Chemistry
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu