Dan Drezner wrote an oft-cited article in the Chronicle of Higher Education after being denied tenure at the University of Chicago. The article is worth keeping in mind as we charge into the brave new world of Web 2.0. As he explained in the article entitled "Can Blogging Derail Your Career?"., there are potential problems associated with blogging for those who are academics or wish to go into academia.
When I was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, a senior colleague once told me his secret to academic success: One bad article equals five great ones. His point was that the worst thing a scholar can do is to publish too much, as opposed to too little. Any substandard publication creates a black mark that is difficult to erase.
That point came back to me as I read about Yale's decision to reject Juan Cole for a senior position in Middle East studies — despite the recommendation of two departments to hire him. The combination of little to no comment from either Yale or Cole and the "star chamber" politics of hiring at elite institutions has led to speculation that Cole's prominent, left-wing, take-no-prisoners blog played a role in his nonhiring. That seemed to be the hope of Michael Rubin, of the American Enterprise crowd, when he wrote in the Yale Daily News that Cole has paid a price because he has "abandoned scholarship in favor of blog commentary." That was also the fear of Cole supporters like Philip Weiss, who noted in The Nation that "it is hard to separate Cole's scholarly reputation from his Internet fame." After I was denied tenure at Chicago last year, there was news-media conjecture that my blog was partly to blame, so Cole's story evokes an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.