The Pseudonymunculus Returns, or Last Month's Squid Fancy, Anyone?

[Apologies in advance to those whose sites I cluttered with redundant trackbacks.  Must remember: press "Post" once.  Remain patient.  Patient.]

The latest Chronicle pseudonymunculus to discuss the (potential) professional pitfalls of blogging, one "Ivan Tribble," reveals the real problem with the academic hiring process: namely, that candidates are vetted by search committees as imperfect and impolitic in their lives as the candidates are in theirs.  What say ye, masses?

Daniel Drezner suggests that Ivan Tribble's department avoid adding to its collective imperfection by never hiring anyone ever again.  I'm inclined to agree.  J. Rice criticizes Tribble for condemning academics who have interests outside academia.  Again, I agree.  KF wants to know why Tribble assumes that professors who blog responsibly will turn turncoat once hired and air departmental dirty laundry.  So do I.  Finally, Colin wonders whether Tribble's candidates will recognize themselves in the article and file a formal complaint.  This one I'm not so sure about, but I'm not an overly litigious fellow.

Why, do you ask, have I taken you on a little tour of the results Technorati returns when you search for blogs that link to the Chronicle article?  (FYI: I could link to many more.)  Because anonymous or not, the almost instant response of working academics to an article published in the Chronicle is the very reason more academics ought to be blogging, not evidence of why more shouldn't.  Why is that?  Because I'm not intelligent enough to encompass an issue on my lonesome. 

In my perhaps over-enthusiastic response to the opening of the Valve, I noted the difference between what I thought academia would be like and what it turned out to be.  What I thought it would be: an intellectual forum in which stimulating ideas were bandied back and forth by parties arguing in good faith.  What it turned out to be (quoting Appiah again): an environment in which "the intertwining of academic and social agendas has given rise to an outlandish rhetorical inflation, a storming-of-the-Bastille bombast brought to bear on theoretical niceties." 

My point?  This is a blog, people.  As Mr. Tribble correctly observes, I don't need a point to write an entry.  Having a point isn't an enabling condition of blogging, it's an enabling constraint.  I could begin with a point (enabling condition) and communicate it to the world in the totaliterian fashion favored by totalitarians, but I could easily begin by entering a conversation (enabling constraint) among fellow academics and contribute to it.  Sometimes even constructively.  Or I could hunker down in my departmental office and silently grumble about the specious venditations of every one else employed by my employer.  Like the dreadful Dr. De Tenebration who published fourteen articles last year, and the insufferable Dr. Oegopsid, always carrying the latest issue of Squid Fancy, &c. 

Were I inclined to grumble so, my mutterances would be heard by a party of one.  No conversation.  No feedback.  No plaudits.  Nothing.  Still, I could always cart my muttertations to the Chronicle for anonymous publication.  Then all the unemployed academic bloggers could respond to it...

UPDATE: More proof of my intellectual limitations, this time in the form of a post from--Little Womedievalist, you're going to love this--the Ancrene Wiseass in which she wonders whether "all of academia is as petty as the search committee described in Mr. Tribble's article. But really: do I want to work with/for people like this? Do I want to work in an environment in which people are asked to pretend that they're colorless cardboard cut-outs who never watch TV, get pissed off about traffic, or have an opinion that's not couched in peer-reviewed prose and published in a journal? No, I don't."

UPDATE II: Matthew G. Kirshenbaum again demonstrates why I ought not be left alone to think. 

Comments

[MGK]

Hmmm. I *think* we agree?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

In a word: Yes.