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David Michael Roberts (Jun 14 2026 at 00:59):Asaf Karagila reached out to me to point out these:
https://jobs.leeds.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=EPSMA1141
he wrote:
Our School of Mathematics had advertised five(!!!) new positions, all at the starting rank of lecturer, so they are aimed at fairly early career people (either fresh off a good postdoc, or just started a permanent job at a place they wish to escape kind of thing). There's a reasonable chance that the logic group can get one of those, and with Nicola Gambino and Michael Rathjen leaving over the past few years, our breadth of subject had shrunk significantly, and I'd love to have someone doing some kind of logic and foundation research from the point of view of category theory or type theory.
Do you have any names in mind? Ideally, we'd like to hire someone who is not a straight white* man. But as long as its someone who expands our research themes, that'd be enough. The deadline is the end of June.
Emphasis added on the important parts
Kevin Carlson (Jun 15 2026 at 12:55):I find it remarkable that Asaf would list sexual, racial, and gender preferences for this position, which are just as illegal in the UK as in the US, explicitly, in a message he apparently is happy to have shared in public.
David Michael Roberts (Jun 15 2026 at 13:08):Hmm, I didn't check, this was just to me. It's not proscribing such attributes for applicants, I would read this as "people from under-represented groups are strongly encouraged to apply".
Kevin Carlson (Jun 15 2026 at 13:24):Yes, well, one could read it generously or less so; people are usually careful to use phrases like the one you suggested in public, I think.
David Michael Roberts (Jun 15 2026 at 23:30):Here in Australia we have slightly different laws, and more than once in my memory universities have explicitly advertised mathematics positions that only women could apply for.
David Michael Roberts (Jun 15 2026 at 23:32):It's some kind of very narrowly delineated circumstances that this is allowed to be done, and I think only with careful negotiation and permission.
Kevin Carlson (Jun 15 2026 at 23:49):Yeah, I remember seeing such postings. Explicit quotas or set-asides are not only illegal but unconstitutional here, but perhaps the UK situation is somewhere in between. I only glanced at the British law.
Jules Hedges (Jun 16 2026 at 10:21):Incidentally, several years ago when I had to do hiring for the first time my sister sent me a research paper that I read trying to pick apart the effects of different wordings of the equality bit of job adverts (which is presumably extremely hard to do reliable, as with all social science). The one conclusion that stuck with me is that any wording that repeats exactly what is necessary to not be literally illegal is generally perceived as bad, possibly since it is perceived as "we will follow the law, which right now says we have to be nice to you, but who knows about the future". Incidentally I read this several years before the law changed to make it illegal for trans people in the UK to use a toilet [mild exaggeration of the legal reality]
Jules Hedges (Jun 16 2026 at 10:21):Jules Hedges said:
any wording that repeats exactly what is necessary to not be literally illegal is generally perceived as bad
And this includes the vast majority of job postings that I see in the wild