Terri Senft - Re: Bloggers Need Not Apply

12:31 pm - Re: Bloggers Need Not Apply

I wrote this in response to a piece called Bloggers Need Not Apply, in which a pseudonymous member of an academic committee at a midwestern university describes reading applicants' blogs as a "train wreck," and warns people not to put things on the internet because they can be "easily Googled." The Always Great Danah Boyd had some good thoughts on the topic,. Below are my additional musings:

I had trouble with the Chronicle article, and not just because I just posted a video of myself in a PowerRanger suit chasing four year olds. This is one is the kicker sentence of the piece for me:

It would never occur to the committee to ask what a candidate thinks about certain people's choice of fashion or body adornment, which countries we should invade, what should be done to drivers who refuse to get out of the passing lane, what constitutes a real man, or how the recovery process from one's childhood traumas is going.

Um, thanks?

I wonder if the problem lies in the title for this piece. It's called, "Bloggers Need Not Apply," but as you rightly hint, it's really intellectual freedom (with the should-be-old-by-now notion that the personal is political), rather than blogging, which is at issue, here.

Understand this: committees aren't doing anyone a favor by not asking these questions; they are simply obeying the law. Every hiring committee knows that asking certain question in a job interview will almost guarantee that some candidate will take legal action eventually.Anyone who has ever sat through an interview knows exactly why these laws exist: to protect candidates from undue duress during the application process, when they are at their most vulnerable.In short, and at least in theory: nobody should feel forced to give personal information in a job interview. The issues mentioned by the author are one of a million on an employer's "don't ask" list.

But as some of us learned after the Clinton Administration's handling of the military, not everyone does best in a climate of not asking and not telling. Here are at least four things I've been warned by others (but interestingly, never my employers) not to discuss in public until tenure:

1. Sexuality and sexual politics

2. Labor issues at the university

3. U.S. sanctioned military activities

4. Disability issues in general, and mental health issues in particular

Now, according to Dr. Anonymous at MiddleGround U., I should add to these the following:

1. Interest in technology beyond Microsoft Word

2. Passing familiarity with anyone else on the internet who might overstate the scope or importance of my research

3. Feelings about the passing lane.

Contrary to the author's position, I'm going to go out on a limb and argue it's GOOD to be a potential job candidate and a blogger. The issue of brand that Danah addressed is one reason. Another is that some of us actually want to have a life with fewer, rather than more surprises after being hired. The author of the Chronicle piece says it straight out: blogs are easier to track and read than scholarly papers. When someone hires me, I assume they've done due diligence and are comfortable with someone for whom the personal, the political, and the pedagogical are of a piece. This means I can come into a place committed to working my butt off and not pull back for fear that I'll be asked to leave once someone discovers the Real Me.

Perhaps the writer of this Chronicle piece is right and perhaps there are some bloggers who really don't understand how their blogs display them as political and social beings. Perhaps I'm being too harsh and all this writer is doing is reacting to the latest warm and happy gushing about blogs. Perhaps all she wants is to warn potential job applicants that writing in public carries risk. With that I would agree, but in the end, I still think it's a risk worth taking. Disclosure requires trust and trust carries the potential for betrayal, but it's in those moments that a life worth living unfolds. I don't think anyone dies thinking of the last chapter of their dissertation, but there is a strong chance that some of us will carry in our final moments of life a photo, a text fragment or a memory of an interaction derived from some time spent online. For me, that's probably the best reason to insist on an identity as both an academic and a blogger.