faculty application - Should academic CVs include reviewing, non-academic service, hobbies and languages?

Do you suggest adding these to an academic CV?

Answer

An academic CV is not intended to describe you as a whole person, but rather to describe your qualifications and accomplishments as an academic. The assumption is that of course you lead an ordinary human life (with hobbies, friends, family, religious beliefs or the lack thereof, etc.), but the people reading your CV are not trying to evaluate you as a human being and aren't interested in reading about the rest of your life.

Anything academic is fair game for an academic CV, including reviewing. How much to emphasize it depends on how many more important things you have to list.

Language skills are relevant to academia because they can assist with research, teaching, and public communication. You are right that this information could be used to discriminate, but I doubt this particular form of discrimination occurs often enough to be worth much worry.

Hobbies and non-academic service are generally not relevant (although there could be exceptions). It's not necessary to discuss them at all, and nobody will assume you have no hobbies or service activities if you don't mention any. It's OK to mention them in a very short section at the end of the CV if you feel it's important, but you should definitely not emphasize them. There are at least two reasons for this:

1. 
   

   It could come across as cluelessness, like you think they are an important factor in hiring/tenure decisions. This certainly won't ruin your chances, but it could look silly.

   
   
   


2. 
   

   It could be viewed as a defiant statement, along the lines of "I'm letting you know that my hobbies are particularly important to me and I intend to spend more time on them than you would like." If your CV is great otherwise you might be able to get away with this, but it will work against you. (I've seen this happen with graduate admissions, where someone devoted part of their personal statement to a favorite hobby and the committee worried that this hobby could be a distraction from research.)

   
   

Hiring committees do care about hiring reasonable colleagues who aren't going to be jerks, so human qualities are relevant (and not just academic accomplishments). Interviews shed light on this issue, as do letters of recommendation, and the CV is not so relevant.

Note that academic evaluation criteria are entirely different from undergraduate admissions in the United States. In that case, colleges are trying to assemble a self-contained community, and they really care about breadth, well-roundedness, leadership, personality, etc. Showing something about yourself as a human being is absolutely crucial. However, this is an anomaly of U.S. undergraduate admissions, and graduate admissions, faculty hiring, etc. are done completely differently. [I know your question never mentioned this comparison, but I decided to mention it for completeness since it's a common cause of confusion.]