Would you hire this man?

Debito is looking for a job. Why? Because his employer wouldn't let him take a sabbatical for a year. Why wouldn't they let him take a sabbatical you ask? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that if he takes a sabbatical they might have to hire another Eikawa teacher since, even though he teaches at a business school, all Debito teaches is Conversational English so none of his Japanese collegues can cover for him during the year. Although he does have "more publications than pretty much anyone else", of course none of those publications are relevant to the area he is employed to teach in, and none are in peer reviewed journals, in fact 99% of them are Op-Eds. And the poor guy wonders why noone gives them any weight?

So Debito decided to post an angry blog entry as well as sending out his rant to some of his lists. Well, someone with more self control and common sense must have told Debito "hey, noone is going to hire you with you bad mouthing your employer like that, especially when any employer is going to throw you into google and see this rant." So Debito, who loves to harp about people deleting the permanent record, deleted his rant off his website. Fortunately he doesn't have those editing rights so here, from the horses mouth, is Debito's rant:

Hi lists. I've talked this over with a few friends, and they insist I should make this public:

As the title indicates, I'm looking for a new job.

I mentioned in an earlier Debito.org newsletter that I had a pretty rotten September. One reason is that my workplace, Hokkaido Information University in Ebetsu, Hokkaido, a place where I have been working since 1993 in earnest and with great diligence, finally made it clear that I am just a gaijin teacher to them.

I have spent the past three years lining up a one-year research sabbatical at several universities in Tokyo. Last April, a first-tier Private University in downtown Tokyo said yes. Research topic: I would visit each and every Diet Member over a year for an oral interview, and asking them one fundamental question: "Do you support the passage of a law against racial discrimination? Why or why not?" Record it, create transcripts in English and Japanese, and put it up on Debito.org so that the issue would also garner attention in the press. Let's see where our elected officials stand on this fundamental building block of Japan's internationalization. My publisher, Akashi Shoten Inc., even gave me a formal letter of interest in my publishing a book about it. It was all falling into place.

Except that a few weeks ago my university rejected my request for the sabbatical. First they said that sabbaticals only apply to overseas junkets(which is not true in other universities). Then they said one year was too long(even though other native Japanese teachers have taken one to two years overseas. One teacher has even taken three sabbaticals in 19 years, even though you're only supposed to take one every seven years or so). When I raised allthese points, they were deemed irrelevant.

Finally, it all came down to exactly what I have been studying--a matter of discrimination. They made it clear that I'm just employed as an English teacher (with tenure, but still), so my research was inapplicable to my field. Even though in Japan we are guaranteed freedom of study (gakumon no jiyuu), and my field for more than the past ten years has been Japan's internationalization(not merely how Japanese should learn English). As you might know, I've published two books (a third coming up for sale in January) on the subject, as well as two textbooks and a
slew of articles and research papers.http://www.debito.org/publications.html

In the end, even after more than 14 years of dedicated service and more publications than probably anyone else, it was clear my research just didn't matter to them.That's it then. I'm not going to stay at a place which doesn't appreciate what I'm doing. Anyone want me to teach human rights at their institution? My resumes in English and Japanese are downloadable from http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=641

Sorry to kvetch in public like this, but I think I've done enough to warrant better treatment. But in the end, at this university, anyway, it's clear I'm just a gaijin. I'll have another Debito.org Newsletter out shortly. I didn't want to bury this appeal within one.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

www.debito.org, debito@...

ENDS