CAN BLOGGING DERAIL YOUR CAREER?

The Controversy That Wasn't

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By ERIN O'CONNOR

The Juan Cole controversy struck me as essentially uncontroversial: Cole is free to write what he wants on his Web log, Informed Comment; Cole's readers are free to criticize his writing and to criticize Yale for considering hiring him; Yale is free not to hire Cole. In the absence of evidence that Yale capitulated to a political campaign to sink Cole's appointment, there seemed nothing else to say. But plenty has been said nonetheless, much of it along the lines of the comment by Zachary Lockman, president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, that the opposition to Cole's appointment was "an assault on academic freedom and the academic enterprise."

Assuming that pro-Israel ideologues badgered Yale into rejecting Cole, Cole's defenders have proceeded according to two flawed assumptions: that blogs written by academic job candidates should be off limits to hiring committees, and that public debate about academic personnel processes threatens academic freedom. Both assumptions betray confusion about what academic freedom is — and what it is not.

Had the University of Michigan — where Cole is a full professor — sought to suppress his blog, it would have violated his academic freedom. But academic freedom is not freedom from criticism, nor is it freedom from judgment. And deciding whether to hire an academic is very different from continuing to employ one. Hiring is evaluative; it requires judicious criticism and definitive judgment.

Yale's search committee, according to one member quoted in the Yale Daily News, only considered Cole's scholarly writing. But what if Informed Comment did inform Yale's decision? There still would be no assault on academic freedom. Cole's Internet status as Middle East expert emanates from his academic position as Middle East expert; as a public intellectual, he is better known for his blog than his scholarship. In deciding whether to invest in the entire intellectual package Cole represents, Yale could legitimately have considered Informed Comment.

The real issue here is how little faith Cole's defenders have in academic procedure. They ascribe enormous power to outside critics, who, they believe, can sink appointments with columns and letters. They also ascribe enormous spinelessness to administrators, who, they imply, cannot maintain integrity when debate surrounds controversial candidates. The undocumented claim that a "neocon campaign" scuppered Cole's appointment masks an unacknowledged condemnation of academic ethics. It makes no sense to blame Cole's critics for Yale's — entirely hypothetical — failure.

Should Cole's critics have been silenced to preserve the integrity of the academic hiring process? No — debate is part of the process when controversial figures come up for prestigious appointments. Should Yale have hired Cole to prove it wasn't swayed by his critics? No — just as Yale should not have rejected Cole on the basis of negative opinions published by journalists, bloggers, or anyone else. Why did Yale pass on Cole? We don't know. And we shouldn't.

What we do know: Scholars who blog should accept that their writing affects their professional image. If they take controversial stances, they will be criticized. If they behave badly online, their reputations will suffer. Academic freedom protects the tenured (a fast-shrinking group) from punishment when speaking out — but it does not and should not protect them from the unforgiving sorting process that is the marketplace of ideas.

Much ink and many pixels have been expended deploring the energy with which Cole's candidacy was debated. But we should welcome such debate, and we should meet it with more. There is no threat to academic freedom in vigorous public discussion. There is only freedom itself.

Erin O'Connor is an associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Her blog can be found at http://erinoconnor.org