In July 2004 an anonymous blogger revealed his identity when he allowed his photograph to be taken at the Democratic National Convention. “Atrios,” the writer of a prominent left-wing blog, Eschaton, turned out to be Duncan Black, an assistant professor of economics at Bryn Mawr College. Black had worried that a trenchant political blog might be perceived as inappropriate for a young academic and also wanted to avoid invasions of his personal and professional life. He went public only when he had quit the academy to join Media Matters, a watchdog organization.
Many young academics who are thinking about blogging share Black’s dilemma. Is it a good idea to blog if you’re on the job market or have a nontenured position? Tenured academics who blog face relatively little risk when they express controversial opinions -- they have job protection. It’s a different story for academics without tenure who want to blog. They may worry that their colleagues would find their blogs objectionable, damaging their career chances, and either blog under a pseudonym, like Black and the law professor “Juan Non-Volokh,” or not blog at all. Younger scholars may also worry that blogging would eat up time that could be devoted to publishing articles or working on a book. Few if any academics would want to describe their blogging as part of their academic publishing record (although they might reasonably count it toward public-service requirements). While blogging has real intellectual payoffs, it is not conventional academic writing and shouldn’t be an academic’s main focus if he or she wants to get tenure.
But to dismiss blogging as a bad idea altogether is to make an enormous mistake. Academic bloggers differ in their goals. Some are blogging to get personal or professional grievances off their chests or, like Black, to pursue nonacademic interests. Others, perhaps the majority, see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn’t a hobby; it’s an integral part of their scholarly identity. They may very well be the wave of the future.
Look at what’s happening in the disciplines of law and philosophy. According to a recent count by Daniel J. Solove of George Washington University, 130 law professors have active blogs. David Chalmers of Australian National University lists 85 philosophy professors or Ph.D. students with blogs, mostly oriented to the discussion of philosophical issues. In both of those disciplines, those who don’t either blog or read and comment on others’ blogs are cutting themselves out of an increasingly important set of discussions. Casual empiricism would suggest that blogs play a less important role in the social sciences, the humanities, and the hard sciences -- for the moment. But in those disciplines, too, blogs are becoming more prominent and more widely accepted.
Why are so many academics beginning to blog? Academic blogs offer the kind of intellectual excitement and engagement that attracted many scholars to the academic life in the first place, but which often get lost in the hustle to secure positions, grants, and disciplinary recognition. Properly considered, the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today. Academic blogs, like their 18th-century equivalent, are rife with feuds, displays of spleen, crotchets, fads, and nonsenses. As in the blogosphere more generally, there is a lot of dross. However, academic blogs also provide a carnival of ideas, a lively and exciting interchange of argument and debate that makes many scholarly conversations seem drab and desiccated in comparison. Over the next 10 years, blogs and bloglike forms of exchange are likely to transform how we think of ourselves as scholars. While blogging won’t replace academic publishing, it builds a space for serious conversation around and between the more considered articles and monographs that we write.
What advantages does blogging offer over the more traditional forms of academic communication? Blogging sacrifices some depth of thought -- it’s difficult to state a complex thesis in the average blogpost -- but provides in return a freedom and flexibility that normal academic publishing can’t match. Consider the length of time it takes to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal. In many disciplines, a period of years between first draft and final publication is normal. More years may elapse before other academics begin to publish articles or books responding to the initial article. In contrast, a blog post is published immediately after the blogger hits the “publish” button. Responses can be expected in hours, both from those who comment on the blog (if the blog allows them) and from other bloggers, who may take up an idea and respond to it, extend it, or criticize it. Others may respond to those bloggers in turn, leading to a snowballing conversation distributed across many blogs. In the conventional time frame of academe, such a conversation would take place over several years, if at all.
Once you get used to this rapid back-and-forth, it can be hard to return to the more leisurely pace of academic journals and presses. In the words of the National University of Singapore philosophy professor and blogger John Holbo, the difference between academic publishing and blogging is reminiscent of “one of those Star Trek or Twilight Zone episodes where it turns out there is another species sharing the same space with us, but so sped up or slowed down in time, relatively, that contact is almost impossible.” Which is not to say that blogs and more conventional forms of publishing can’t complement each other very nicely. Lawrence Solum’s Legal Theory Blog and Alfredo Perez’s Political Theory Daily Review are excellent examples of how blogs can improve the circulation of ideas in a field, by highlighting new, interesting papers and giving brief descriptions of their contents.
Academic blogs should be especially attractive to younger scholars, to whom they give an unparalleled opportunity to make their voices heard. Cross-blog conversations can turn the traditional hierarchies of the academy topsy-turvy. An interesting viewpoint expressed by an adjunct professor (or, even more shocking, an “independent scholar”) will almost certainly receive more attention than ponderous stodge regurgitated by the holder of an endowed chair at an Ivy League university. Prominent academics who start blogging do have an initial advantage; they’re more likely to attract early attention than people without established reputations. But if they want to keep readers and attract other bloggers’ links over the medium term, they need to provide provocative and interesting content. Otherwise, they’re likely to fall by the wayside.
By the same token, less-well-known academics, and nonacademics with interesting things to say, have a real opportunity to speak to a wider public and to establish a reputation over time. In this respect, the blogosphere resembles not only the Republic of Letters (where a printer’s devil could become an internationally renowned intellectual), but the “little magazines” in their golden age, when established scholars, up-and-comers, and amateurs rubbed shoulders on a more or less equal footing. This openness can be discomfiting to those who are attached to established rankings and rituals -- but it also means that blogospheric conversations, when they’re good, have a vigor and a liveliness that most academic discussion lacks.
The recent debate on the Theory’s Empire anthology, organized by the Valve, demonstrates how blogospheric argument can work. Theory’s Empire is an ambitious volume, which seeks to provide a dissident’s version of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism and to argue against the perceived pre-eminence of “theory” in literary criticism. The book is now beginning to attract attention from the mainstream media and will probably be the subject of symposia and debates over the next couple of years. A semi-organized symposium on the Valve, the blog of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, allowed a wide-ranging and active debate on the book within several weeks of its publication. The debate included responses from authors of pieces in Theory’s Empire, as well as from prominent academics like John McGowan (an editor of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism) and Michael Bérubé, both of whom have successful blogs. But it also included, on an equal footing, responses from nonspecialists, like the Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong, and from nonacademic bloggers with an interest in the topic, like Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly. The result: an unusually high level of intelligent discussion around a topic more usually associated with stale pro- and anti-theory polemics. As McGowan describes it, “This is not yet another round in the culture and theory wars. ... Is it possible that academics interested in such questions have won their way through to a place where they can be discussed and examined calmly? As someone whose most usual stance has been a plague on both your houses, I am hopeful.”
Most important, the scholarly blogosphere offers academics a place where they can reconnect with the public. The links between academic argument and wider public debates are increasingly tenuous and frayed. It’s far harder than it used to be for academics to become public intellectuals (not that it was ever very easy, or very common). This has malign consequences, not only for the quality of debate on both sides of the divide, but also for public perceptions of the academy. It’s also a source of considerable frustration to many academics, who either believe that their academic expertise could be valuable to a wider audience, or resent the distorted public perception of what they do. Blogging democratizes the function of public intellectual. It’s no longer necessary for an academic to lobby the editors of The Washington Post’s op-ed page or The New York Review of Books in order to make his or her voice heard. Instead, he or she can start a blog and (with interesting arguments and a bit of luck and self-promotion) begin to have an impact on the public conversation.
This past summer saw an excellent example of that. Many scientists have started to blog because of their frustration with the treatment of science in the mainstream media; several of these bloggers objected strongly to a recent article in The New York Times on the politics of evolutionary theory. In the eyes of these scientists, the article gave the impression that there was a real debate between evolutionary biologists and intelligent-design proponents, rather than a controversy that had been cooked up by fringe figures for political reasons. Their objections soon attracted a response from the article’s author, who sought to defend the piece in the comments sections of the group blog Cosmic Variance and on P.Z. Myers’s Pharyngula. The ensuing debate not only illustrated how badly suited the “he said, she said” style of journalistic writing is to topics where there is an overwhelming scientific consensus on one side of the question, and a congeries of cranks and crackpots on the other; it also provided a point of tangency between science journalism and science as it is practiced by scientists, allowing a back-and-forth argument between the two positions.
Nor are scientists the only academics who have taken up blogging in order to connect to broader public debates. Literary theorists who lament the problematic public image of their field should look to the example of Bérubé and McGowan, who are happy to weave discussions of critical theory and its significance into their more general blogging. Scientists who are dismayed at the sloppy treatment of science in the media have set up group blogs including the Panda’s Thumb (evolution), RealClimate (global warming and climate science), and Cosmic Variance (physics). Other disciplinary group blogs include Savage Minds for anthropologists; the Volokh Conspiracy, Balkinization, and Prawfsblawg for legal scholars; the Duck of Minerva for international-relations theorists; and Cliopatria for historians. All of those blogs weave back and forth between the specialized languages of academe and the vernacular of public debate. They are creating a space for dialogue between the two, connecting them together, and succeeding, to a greater or lesser degree, in changing both.
Both group blogs and the many hundreds of individual academic blogs that have been created in the last three years are pioneering something new and exciting. They’re the seeds of a collective conversation, which draws together different disciplines (sometimes through vigorous argument, sometimes through friendly interaction), which doesn’t reproduce traditional academic distinctions of privilege and rank, and which connects academic debates to a broader arena of public discussion. It’s not entirely surprising that academic blogs have provoked some fear and hostility; they represent a serious challenge to well-established patterns of behavior in the academy. Some academics view them as an unbecoming occupation for junior (and senior) scholars; in the words of Alex Halavais of the State University of New York at Buffalo, they seem “threatening to those who are established in academia, to financial interests, and to ... well, decorum.” Not exactly dignified; a little undisciplined; carnivalesque. Sometimes signal, sometimes noise. But exactly because of this, they provide a kind of space for the exuberant debate of ideas, for connecting scholarship to the outside world, which we haven’t had for a long while. We should embrace them wholeheartedly.
Henry Farrell is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and a member of the academic group blog Crooked Timber.
BLOGS MENTIONED IN THIS ESSAY
Balkinization
http://balkin.blogspot.com
Cliopatria
http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html
Cosmic Variance
http://cosmicvariance.com
Crooked Timber
http://www.crookedtimber.org
Eschaton
http://atrios.blogspot.com
The Duck of Minerva
http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com
Legal Theory Blog
http://lsolum.blogspot.com
The Panda’s Thumb
http://www.pandasthumb.org
Pharyngula
http://pharyngula.org
Political Theory Daily Review
http://www.politicaltheory.info
Prawfsblawg
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com
RealClimate
http://www.realclimate.org
Savage Minds
http://savageminds.org
The Valve
http://www.thevalve.org
The Volokh Conspiracy
http://www.volokh.com
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 52, Issue 7, Page B14