My Colleagues Speak Up ...

Among others, Miriam Burstein, Mark Grimsley, Sharon Howard, Hiram Hover, and Rebecca Goetz have recently published rejoinders to"Ivan Tribble." Tribble warns us that blogging may not be good for an academic's professional prospects. Since he writes anonymously, Tribble can't be judged on the basis of his own modeling of professional advancement. He can be faulted for his cramped appeals to fear. Beyond that, we can point to evidence that he's simply wrong. [ ... ]

My young colleague, Rob MacDougall, for example, has a smart looking website that includes his cv, a statement about himself, his research interests, and – gasp -- a blog. Moreover, the blog isn't buried somewhere deep in his site. It is the site's front end, the point at which he engages his readers in ways that may interest them in wanting to know more. Caleb McDaniel has a similar format at Mode for Caleb. Has Rob MacDougall's blogging been a professional handicap? I can't see how. When he was on the job market last year, Rob had on site job interviews in three different countries and, day before yesterday, he taught his first class as an Assistant Professor of American History at the University of Western Ontario.

But there's other evidence that Tribble is wrong – not just wrong -- but that his message of fear is intellectually counter-productive. Mark Grimsley has written effectively of ways in which blogging is a step in scholarship for him. He's not the only one. Greg Robinson's"The McCloy Memo: A New Look at Japanese Internment," History News Network, 13 September, examines the implications of a newly found document for understanding Japanese internment in the United States during World War II. It began as two posts here at Cliopatria and will, I suspect, become a part of Greg's further publications. But there's additional convincing evidence in Hugo Schwyzer's"Saying No," Inside Higher Ed, 14 September, which discusses the necessity of rejecting student requests early in each term. Hugo's example is a particularly interesting one, I think. Long ago, he decided that archival research and publication was not what he wanted to do, but he did want to teach. Now, as tenured professor at Pasadena City College, he carries a very heavy teaching load and is under no pressure to publish. By all reports, Hugo is a very effective teacher and, through blogging, he's developed a very large audience – one to which he doesn't have to say"No." And his article is an extension of thoughts he first developed on his blog. Via blogging, Hugo's found a way back into publication.