I would like to highly commend to you two recent blog postings by Mark Goodacre on the New Testament Gateway blog: Should Blogs Count for Tenure? and Blogging and Tenure 2. Dr. Goodacre, as usual, pushes academia forward in trying to think about the potential for new technologies, rather than getting hung up on the dangers. He suggests that a well-respected academic blog (and his own would certainly fit the bill!) should count as one of many “esteem indicators” in consideration of an academic who is up for tenure. I agree; I think we should recognize the dangers, try to avoid them as best we can, but ultimately utilize whatever may be helpful to the academic enterprise. This is the “glass is half full” view of academic blogging and new technologies in general.
One comment that he makes stands out for me, given my own personal educational situation:
But I know that I would always look favourably on someone who has an intelligent and energetic blog, whether as potential applicants to a graduate programme, or as job applicants, or as applicants for tenure. To me it is likely to suggest several things, a commitment to the dissemination of scholarship outside of the guild, a commitment to collaborative scholarship, and some degree of courage and public risk-taking. So I would be strongly inclined to treat blogging as a plus.
I have a particular interest in this comment (and the whole post, for that matter) after recently reading a 2005 article from the Chronicle for Higher Education, entitled “Bloggers Need Not Apply,” which has a very unfavorable attitude toward academic job applicants with blogs (even if those blogs aren’t mentioned in their documentation!). Consequently, I locked up my more personal blog so only registered friends could read it and I thought twice about some of my past postings on kata ta biblia.
Being a future applicant to doctoral programs in NT studies, I am a little confused as to what role my blog on NT interpretation will play. Dr. Goodacre has a positive view of “intelligent and energetic” blogs, but there are obviously a lot of academics who are not as positive on the potential of academic blogging. Then there is the question about whether a blog would be considered academic (let alone “intelligent and energetic”) enough in the eyes of various academic readers. With these great unknowns, therefore, does a doctoral applicant make mention of her or his blog on her or his application? I lean towards “no.”
I would love it if professors or admissions committees reviewing my application took a look at my blog and, thinking it simply wonderful, count it as one of many various “esteem indicators” for me as their perfect applicant (yes, this is a grand fantasy). On the other hand, I am dreadfully aware of my ignorance on a great many subjects. My educational pursuit is in many ways a fight against ignorance, my own and that of other individuals, groups, or society as a whole. But I would fear that in this online experimental exploration of ideas, I may accidentally reveal some dastardly wrong-headed and unforgivable ignorance on one of my postings. As a result, instead of being an “esteem indicator,” this experiment would constitute a “folly alert” for those reviewing my application.
What say ye? Do prospective students reveal their blogs to doctoral programs? Perhaps it depends on the program and its professors? Perhaps one could mention it at appropriate moments in conversation with the potential doctoral advisors (e. g., “That’s interesting because I was just blogging about this the other day…”). This question is particularly for Dr. Goodacre, as this started out as a (too long) comment in response to his post, but I’d like to read what others would say as well.
