Nova PhDs

A forum for grads of Villanova's Philosophy PhD program

On academic blogs
(Sorry I have not said much recently. I have been meaning to respond to Jaime's entry on the cont/analytic post but things have been a little crazy.)

You all may have run across the article Ivan Tribble in the Chronicle. (It requires subscription; let me know you have no means of getting the piece.) It basically advised folks on the market, as well as young untenured faculty to worry about their blogs. Tribble contended that since hiring committee members tend to google candidates, having a blog — personal or professional — may hurt one's chances.

I just read this piece about someone getting fired because of a blog. Granted, she was fired from DeVry and not Harvard, but it does show that this could be an issue.

On our blog, mostly folks who have a phd AND a job post stuff. Nothing here is of the nature that would be detrimental to our careers either, I think. Would anonymous blogs be better?
Posted by Farhang Erfani on Sunday January 8, 2006 at 10:23am
John Whitmire:
joe and i have actually discussed this issue a bit via email, particularly a couple months back when some issues of program rankings, etc. came up. i think we should probably be especially careful on that kind of front. and i think it goes without saying to avoid comments about particular people or departments in this kind of format. except for our tenured brethren, whom i suppose can say whatever they want! ;) (incidentally, ted, have you been tenured? i can't remember what year you went down to texas.)

another side issue is this one: i actually removed the little snippet from a paper i had posted, once i transferred copyright of it to a journal a while back. that's something else to consider.

in both cases, though, i can't imagine that anything anyone has posted here would be detrimental in the way the article you link to, farhang, although knows what was actually objectionable in it -- a significant number of our postings have actually been "philosophical" ones, which i confess i wasn't expecting when joe first tossed this idea out. i figured they would end up being more job/placement-oriented than they have been, actually...

by the way, farhang, i'm almost done revising my sartre paper. give me a couple more days and i should be ready to go on the ricoeur one. i'm looking forward to it!
1.8.2006 12:03pm