The Chronicle of Higher Education’s latest weekly Chronicle Review section includes a symposium inspired by Yale’s rejection of controversial Middle East scholar Juan Cole, best known for his widely-read blog, Informed Comment.
Conservatives and supporters of Israel launched a campaign to persuade Yale against making the hire, and speculation leans heavily toward that being a decisive factor. He’s not the only professor whose blogging is suspected to have been an issue at review time: Last year, both Daniel Drezner and Jacob Levy were denied tenure at the University of Chicago. But those deliberations are secret, and unless somebody slips up, we’ll never know for sure.
Now the Chronicle brings us the next best thing: an octet of professor-bloggers, Cole included, addressing the question of what impact blogging has on hiring, tenure and academic freedom. It’s now hidden behind their subscription firewall, but you’re in luck: Blog P.I. has read them all and distilled each to the core argument or the best lines, and we’ve reproduced them below:
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, Sivacracy, NYU — “There has never been a better time to be a public intellectual, and the Web is the big reason why. … Who knows whether, without the fame and widespread respect Cole has earned via his blog, he would have been in the running for a position at Yale? We do know that without his blog as a target, the right-wing hit men never would have thought to make an issue out of him. He used to be harmless. Now he is dangerous enough to try to stop. … But Cole’s experience has shown us all just how tenuous academic freedom is when it comes to stuff that really matters. Thank goodness for tenure. Imagine what his critics would do at Michigan if they thought they could drive him away.”
- Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, Univ. of Tenn. — “Though the academy gives lip service to academic freedom, it’s quite clear that a candidate’s expressed views, and politics generally, are often important factors in hiring or tenure decisions. … One doubts that an admitted member of the Ku Klux Klan would do well … [but] far less controversial beliefs … might well stand in the way of hiring or tenure at many institutions. Expressing such ideas on a blog merely ensures that they are Google-searchable if anyone bothers to check.”
