Interim Postdoc Accord

The Executive Committee of the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) of the American Physical Society (APS) has formed an ad hoc panel to re-examine the issue of a common deadline for theory post-doc offers. The panel will not be able to make recommendations in time for the upcoming 2024/25 hiring season but  is expected to make recommendations starting with the 2025/26 hiring season. 

However, to avoid confusion, it would be desirable for the hep-th community to agree on a tentative deadline for this cycle, before a permanent solution can be found.  Public discussions about this matter have occurred at Strings and on the community Slack channel.  We have also received emails and have had direct discussions with some groups.  The constraints are complicated, especially if we include the entire global community.   Based on these interactions we propose, as a temporary compromise to reduce uncertainty for applicants and research groups in this cycle, and pending a full recommendation from the APS committee, that:

"For the 2024 - 2025 postdoc hiring cycle, the deadline for accepting postdoc offers will be no earlier than January 15."

We understand that some of you may prefer either later deadlines or the previous earlier deadline. However, we believe that, based on what we have heard, January 15 may be acceptable as an interim deadline while the APS panel works on a permanent solution. 

We note that if your groups have signed up to the February 15 accord last year, and if you want to move to the January 15 deadline, you can withdraw your signature from the accord. There are also groups whose hep-th parts have withdrawn their signatures.  If your group will sign up to the interim January 15 deadline for the 2024-2025 recruitment season, please indicate this on this webform 

There is no formal deadline to sign this interim accord. Since postdoc advertisements with application deadline will start go out in August, it would be helpful if you can sign before August 15.

The Strings community within HEP have set up a slack channel for further discussion, with the invitation link here. 

signed by high energy theory groups:

•     Arizona State University

•     Institute for Advanced Study (IAS)

•     MIT (CTP)

•     University of Birmingham

•     University of Pennsylvania

•     YITP, Kyoto University 

signed by hep-th groups:

•     California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

•     Durham University

•     HMI, Trinity College Dublin

•     Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)

•     KIAS

•     Mathematics Institute, University of Oxford

•     Princeton University

•    Queen Mary University of London

•     Stanford University

•     Stony Brook (SCGP and YITP hep-th)

•     University of California, Berkeley

•     University of Washington

•     Weizmann Institute of Science

signed by individuals:

•     Ibaraki University

•     International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

•     Nihon University

•     RIKEN iTHEMS

•     Toyama Prefectural University

•     University of Science and Technology of China

Link to sign:   https://forms.gle/F9NZeYv3ouWXtcow7