More Tribble, More Troubles

Lo! Ivan Tribble has returned, with a little bit of self-revision thrown in.  In his first post, he wrote:

The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.

In other words, those anonymous committee members would look at this blog and say, "Ah-ha! Professor Burstein blogs! She might be the sort of person who writes about confidental search committee meetings online!"

Now, however, Mr. Tribble offers a new tune:

I stated that several committee members had reservations about hiring a blogger, which many respondents dismissed as irrational. I can't speak for every committee member's reasons, or every blogger's good judgment.

This revives the point that the issue is not the medium itself, but how it is used. Search-committee members have to consider a candidate's potential impact on their department and institution as a whole. If your blog raises doubts about you, those doubts would reasonably be factored into the equation. If a blogging candidate seems a loose cannon online, the department could easily regard that as a liability, not an asset.

As I have been known to write on students' papers: well, yes.  But Mr. Tribble's colleagues were not making claims about "loose cannons" before; they were talking about bloggers in toto.  And what's a loose cannon? Anybody who talks about their colleagues online? Anybody who doesn't talk about their colleagues online? People who have hobbies? (Will Harvard refuse to consider me for a job because I admit to watching Law and Order, love tap dancing, and can't stand opera? Do five thousand books offset all these character flaws?)

Now, I'm not sure how much time Mr. Tribble spends reading blogs.  I'm also not sure if he has read his own column--or, for that manner, any other essay in the CoHE.  Because, in case you hadn't noticed, Mr. Tribble apparently felt and feels no compunction about discussing search committee meetings and describing job candidates.  Other essayists have described breakdowns in their job situations, bankruptcy, and personal problems; some of them have mentioned their politics, their religious beliefs, and their sexual orientations.  A few have described colleagues and tenure cases at some length.  And not all of these people have done so under a pseudonym.   Yes, yes, I know: Mr. Tribble is a pseudonymous soul.  And yet, even when someone writes under an assumed name, the CoHE's readers have been known to recognize themselves, their friends, and their departments.    Money, of course, is not something to sneer at, and I'm sure that I'd happily bang out an essay (or two, or three...) for the CoHE if they asked me to do so.  (Granted, I'm rendering such an event increasingly unlikely.)  But if you wouldn't trust a blogger, does it make sense to trust a CoHE essayist?  I fail to see how the combination of print and payment makes the latter any more (or less) attractive than the former. 

Comments

[Another Damned Medievalist]

So I will probably never get a job, I guess. WOuld it help if I stopped blogging and just put up a sign that said I'd read Mr. Tribble's stuff and realized he was right and I'm ever so sorry?

[F. John Perry]

So, there are sound prudential reasons for bloggers - at least academic ones- to hide behind pseudonyms. In my ignorance I had supposed that these writers just found their assumed names (eg Professor Goose) to be irresistibly cute. After all, the writers of the blogs I follow present views that are neither outrageous nor scurrilous. The practice reminds me of the near-universal custom, in the 19th century, of anonymous letters to the editor. Smothering my contempt, I read these antique opinion pieces with interest anyway, and I do the same with a good contemporary blog.

[Bill Tozier]

You know, I summed up my reaction to Mr. Tribble a while back. I can be even more brief, now that he has clarified:

He presumes that we will be hired the same process, and by the same people, and for the same job at the same sort of institution as he was. Some of us doubt very much that any one of those assumptions is valid.

But you know, he's right on the face of it: if I wanted to work in a slow-witted, risk-averse, tyrannically hierarchical, self-importantly pompous, committee-burdened, navel-gazing hidey-hole tucked far away from the world and its concerns ... well, I'd be in trouble then, wouldn't I?

[gzombie]

Bill, you forgot "Quaint" and "Old."

[Bill Tozier]

No, I'm old enough not to want to use that one, and "quaint" enough myself, on purpose. ;)

[ianqui]

Ewww. That whole CoHE column smacks of a "wow, they don't like me, and now I want to rapidly backtrack and prove that I'm a good guy" response. Even while sticking to his guns.

That's right, Ivan Tribble, you don't get it. And don't forget that someday, it's the bloggers who'll be on the hiring committees.