PressEthic

If one googles Daniel W. Drezner, the first hit will be his blog. It concerns the international political economy, and according to today’s New York Sun, is the most widely read blog on the international economy. But Drezner is not a professional blogger. He is foremost a political science professor at The University of Chicago, or at least he is for now. The Sun picked up the story, because Drezner was recently denied tenure, and was told to look for another job. Drezner and others have argued that his loss of a job has something to do with his extracurricular blogging, and while the University of Chicago refuses to say that the blog was entirely the problem, something just isn’t right in the blogosphere.

Apparently academic bloggers have been struggling for a long time with what The Sun calls “a double edged sword” where blogging becomes both, “a powerful way to communicate scholarly ideas to the public and increase name recognition, and a risky venture in a field where every idea-even those roughly thrown together at 3 a.m.-matters.” Heads of departments don’t want to see their employees squandering away their time on the internet, where it can better be served doing scholarly research. As the article states, blogging is still perceived in the academic world as “a slight activity lacking in intellectual value.”

Then there is the problem of offending other members of the department with more political blogs, alienating and irritating colleagues to the point where ones’ s job might be in danger. One humanities professor wrote that he had seen a lot of job seekers ruin their chances of academic stardom by irritating people with their blogs and writes, “What is the purpose of broadcasting one’s unfiltered thoughts to the whole wide world?”

I see no reason why a professor can't have his or her own blog. Chances are their blog would be one of the most researched out there. I think it adds something to a teacher’s creds when he or she has a blog. Sure, you see a professor every few days in class, and may be able to gauge their point of view on certain matters, but a blog can really get into their brain, the parts of their brain that aren’t doing a service for a particular university of college. But this whole issue does bring up the upside/downside issue constantly circling about the effects of the internet, blogging, etc. Everyone’s connected, everyone’s blogging, and everyone knows everything about everybody else. Google a name of a promising candidate for that job and you get a blog. Read the blog, and grow irritated by the rant and ravings. Hmmm…next applicant please. It’s an open world out there, but also a dangerous one.