by Jon Lackman | 17 March 2010 | Career
The “CV Doctor” at The Chronicle of Higher Education has returned and last December ministrated to a soon-to-be-minted art-history PhD who fields two CVs, one for academic jobs and another for nonacademic jobs. “Lucy Scholar,” who specializes in Chinese art, is “applying for tenure-track faculty posts at small teaching universities, and for postdoctoral fellowships at large research universities. Outside of academe, she is looking for museum, media, education, and other arts-related jobs that would make specific use of her Chinese language skills and humanities background.”
According to The Chronicle, “Lucy … had a busy fall, having been on the road for three weeks, and trying to apply for jobs, meet with dissertation advisers, and deliver conference papers … She’s mentioned to us that the tenure-track market for Asian art positions is good this year, and she is excited about her prospects.”
It’s easy enough to discover that “Lucy Scholar” is in fact Harvard graduate student Kristina Kleutghen (pdf of her actual CV is here), despite the changes made to some identifying details, which makes you wonder why she and The Chronicle bothered — no one need apologize for getting help with a CV. She does by the way have a blog (not updated since November) and a Twitter feed.
So, while it may make you wonder why the Chronicle bothered to disguise her identity, does it really make a difference knowing it? I feel like she’s been “outed” for no discernible reason — and given that I really like your blog, I am slightly disappointed to see this here.
I mostly agree with Aruna’s comment. The last paragraph of this post was unnecessary. While I’ve no idea how the student might in question might feel, the fact that it’s easy enough to find out someone’s true identity behind even a light disguise means that it’s polite or kind to publish it. Obviously I’m self-interested here, but nevertheless, it’s not very nice.
I worried that that paragraph would have the appearance of malice, but none was intended. I felt that the before/after comparison was rendered more interesting by knowing the actual person and her actual accomplishments. And I couldn’t see where the harm was in publishing her name.
I don’t want to pretend that it’s the biggest deal in the world. I don’t even know who was responsible for the decision to conceal her identity or why. So I’m not sure what harm there might be, but personally, I wouldn’t feel it was up to me to judge.
Amusing appreciation of Leonardo da Vinci’s “resume”: http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/2010/01/leonardo_da_vincis_resume.html