Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Blogging’s Impact on Academic Careers

Brian Leiter reviews the perennial question of whether blogging can hurt one’s academic career:

Because blogs are easily accessible and thus easier to read in a spare moment than, say, a scholarly article or scholarly book, blogs that purport to treat scholarly topics are far more likely to solidify an impression of a professor’s mind and overwhelm the merits of his or her actual publications (assuming the two have different merits).  This is why, it seems to me, it is particularly risky for either students or junior faculty to blog much:  the first, and perhaps dominant, impression of this person’s work is likely to be defined by the blog, whether fairly or not.  If you’re going to blog on scholarly topics, it had better be good!

But even blogs that avoid scholarly topics can bias the reception of one’s academic work.  If you blog about political topics, especially outside the spectrum of “ordinary” opinion (which is fairly narrow in the United States, of course), you run the risk of offending someone (or many), and thus prejudicing the reception of your scholarship.  I don’t know that this constitutes a particularly good reason not to blog; someone who wants to live in fear of what others think about fundamental moral and political commitments probably shouldn’t go into an academic career.  (Of course, there can be other kinds of reasons for not doing political blogging.)

And even if you avoid scholarly topics and politics, a blog can still reveal (or be taken to reveal) more about one’s personality and quirks than may be helpful.  I know of one case where a law school considering a blogger for appointment decided against going forward simply because the blog made the candidate seem “really weird.”

Enquiring minds are dying to know whose appointment got nixed. In any event, Brian identifies Orin Kerr and Larry Solum as two legal academics who have helped their careers by successful blogging.