Sounds and Fury

芝加哥大學政治學教授Daniel Drezer在這個月初確定沒有拿到tenure，他是政治學者中最著名的blogger，blog也非常有影響力。
他的學術表現十分不錯，登過最好的期刊，也在不錯的出版社出過書。

所以，問題在哪裡？

這和他的blogger行為有沒有關係？

這已經在學術界和部落格界引起很多討論，如果你在google打上"blogger denied tenure"，你會發現他已經是最熱門的項目。


到底寫blog對你的學術生涯是不是壞事？


有的。在美國討論高等教育最重要的刊物上，一個匿名教授寫了一篇警告blogger的文章，說他們比較不會錄用blogger，他所描寫的過程，真是令人怵目驚心。
"I stated that several committee members had reservations about hiring a blogger, which many respondents dismissed as irrational"


他甚至威脅說：
when it comes to blogging, I just don't "get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.


令人感嘆的是，Daniel Drezer在七月時針對這篇文章寫了一篇給研究生的文章，雖然表達對該文不滿意見，但是還是認為研究生應該要好好注意這些老教授的保守心態。他當時大概沒想到，三個月後，他就成為這個學術與blogging議題的最大主角。


另一個今年也沒有拿到tenure的芝大物理系教授blogger，對這個問題提出很精彩的反省，讓人心有戚戚焉：

Like it or not, if you are very visibly spending a great deal of time doing things other than research, people might begin to wonder how devoted you are to the enterprise. To first order it doesn’t really matter whether that time is spent blogging or playing the banjo; some folks will think that you could have been spending that time doing research. (At second order it does matter; some people, smaller in number but undoubtedly there, feel resentful and jealous when one of their colleagues attains a certain public profile on the basis of outreach rather than research.) Of course nobody will ever say that they voted against giving tenure to someone because that person spent too much time on public outreach, or put too much effort into their teaching. But getting a reputation at being really good at that stuff could in principle make it harder to have your research accomplishments recognized — or not. It’s just impossible to tell, without access to powerful mind-reading rays that one can train on the brains of the senior faculty.

Blogging may very well be a contributor to this image of not being perfectly devoted — although, given the lack of familiarity with blogs on the part of most senior faculty, it’s very unlikely to be playing a major role. But even then it’s not blogging per se, it’s the decision to make an effort to communicate with the public. Blogging is just a technology, not a fundamentally new activity.


當然，他們兩人都不敢說他們沒拿到的主因就是因為他們bllogging，而且有很多學界的blogger也有拿到tenure。不過，我個人認為上面這段引文的確談到學界的偏見。


一個討論學術界的網站對這個問題有進一步分析。


諸位學者和博士生覺得呢？