I doubt the content of the weblog or its existence or popularity played negatively towards his tenure case. Perhaps some feel his time would have been better spent on "real academics" but most likely they considered his more traditional academic writings and, frankly, it's very difficult to get tenure at the U of C, particularly in the social sciences.
Will Drezner's weblog help him in his future job hunt? Ivan Tribble argued that weblogs can hurt a candidate for an academic position.
The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.I disagree with Tribble. Most non-anonymous academic webloggers know better than to discuss departmental politics in their blogs and departmental hiring committees should or will realize they have nothing to fear. A popular weblog raises one visibility in and out of their field—far more people read this weblog then download my research papers, for example. A weblog like Daniel Drezner's (much more read than this one) gives him an edge over his peers, a popularity that will open some doors that others will have to fight harder for.
Is it true, as the Chicago Tribune states, that only takes a handful of votes to be denied tenure in Chicago?
ReplyDeleteI thought 2/3 supermajorities were more the norm for tenure.
It's only vaguely related to your post, but what is your take on Tierney's recent op-eds in the times on few-republicans-in-academia?
ReplyDeleteWhile Dr. Fortnow's results on applications of arithmetization to the study of resource bounded computation are admirable, his highly publicized opinions on the euthanasia of virtual intelligences and typesetting indicates an incendiary and self-promoting type ... such behavior should not be rewarded with tenure... keep him away from plastic bags and hammers....
ReplyDeleteAn interesting research question is
ReplyDeletewhether people who blog are, on
average, less productive than their
non-blogging counterparts.
Just count young assistant professors
and grad students who blog. Tenured
professors don't count, because their
grad students contribute to their
publication record.
My hypothesis is that people who
blog are less productive, on
average. While the internet is a
boon, it is also a bane to
productivity. And the new-found fad
of blogging almost certainly
contributes to that.
Doesn't mean you should stop
blogging, though -- I enjoy your
posts!
I would offer a counter-hypothesis: As blogging is a leisure-time activity, there should be no correlation between it and productivity, since assuming that all other things are equal a person would devote the same amount of time for leisure activities no matter what they are.
ReplyDeleteGrad students don't contribute to the publication records of young assistant professors? Many grad students I know publish papers together with not-yet-tenured assistant professors. Do these not count toward the assistant professor's publication record?
ReplyDeleteBloggina and Tenure is actually an old
ReplyDeleteissue in a new form. CS Lewis and
JRR Tolkien had collegues that thought
there writing a mere fantasy stories
was not appropriate academic behaviour.
Carl Sagan had a hard time getting
into the National Academy of sciences
(which he did) BECAUSE he wrote for
a popular audience.
How much should an academics work that
IS accessible to a layman be counted
TOWARDS his case? Should it be counted
AGAINST his case since he SHOULD be
writing papers on (say) p-adic cohomlogy?
My point is that this is just the same
question now with Blogs.
(My opinion: TOWARDS his case)
bill gasarch