I second Ursula’s invitation. There’s much wonder to discover this side of the Atlantic.
It's bonkers, really, to play against yourself that way.
By default, all jobs are supposed to be open-ended. Fixed-term contracts are only allowed for legitimate reasons. Hiring someone for the expected duration of a PhD is a legitimate reason. The availability of funding is not. And even if the reason would be legitimate in isolation, multiple consecutive fixed-term contracts would be evidence that the employer has a permanent need for the employee, turning the contract automatically permanent.
When I was still in Finland, people were speculating that all postdoc positions were technically illegal, as were tenure-track positions. But it was also understood that if someone actually insisted on enforcing the law, the government would have to change it. Because rewriting the laws is much easier than making universities change their ways.
anovikov•2h ago
Even these ridiculous cases aside, in Europe it's very difficult to fall out of line and question the authority on every level. Whole society is based on that - subordination, tradition, and long-term personal connections lasting generations. Same shit first settlers in the US ran away from, it's still here.
Some European languages have no word for "networking". Because it's not a thing. You are supposed to work with the people you went to school with, and your family connections, all your life. It takes weeks to build trust with an American, it might take whole life to build trust with a European.
rbanffy•2h ago
> You are supposed to work with the people you went to school with, and your family connections, all your life
What you describe is common in very closed societies, something we are proud we work not to be. In places where the language doesn’t have a word for networking, we use “networking”. Not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but where I live we have a lot of “new Irish” (as opposed to “born Irish”) and we like to have meet-ups so that all those people who are new to this place can feel welcome.
n_ary•12m ago
inglor_cz•11m ago
I wonder what metric you use for (too many problems). We also jail the most outspoken jihadis, but western Europe has a huge problem with Islamic radicalism anyway.
The far right has fairly high preferences in the last decade or so, so in practice, you have a lot of far right politicians in parliaments and sometimes governments.
Jailing people don't make them disappear, indeed they are good at exploiting the forced pause and radicalizing other people that happen to sit behind the same bars. Which means that their new recruits will stem from the most violent, least socialized subsets of the society.
Ideologies are somewhat contagious. Unless you isolate the carriers socially, which is hard to impossible, they tend to infect new people.
cruzcampo•2h ago
__m•1h ago
> Not sure what they are planning to gain this way. Just alienate Trump administration and become a subject of government action? That's near certain to happen when you fall out of line.
avhception•1h ago
FranzFerdiNaN•2m ago
This seems completely made up.
> Even these ridiculous cases aside, in Europe it's very difficult to fall out of line and question the authority on every level.
What a bunch of nonsense. Exactly because we have things like worker protections we are perfectly fine telling our boss when nonsense comes out. We cant get fired on a whim like Americans, which forces Americans to sycophantic behavior so they wont lose their job and healthcare.
> It takes weeks to build trust with an American, it might take whole life to build trust with a European.
Sounds like a you problem.