Is Blogging Unprofessional for an Academic?

In case you have missed the buzz, the International Studies Association Governing Council will be considering a resolution that requires any editor or editorial board member of the six journals affiliated with the association to give up blogging while serving unless it is the official blog of the journal or association (you can read about it here in Inside Higher Education).  I figured that people like Dan Drezner, Jon Western,  and Steve Saideman had covered this issue well, but decided to chime in myself after seeing this issue make it into a mainstream academic news service versus only seeing commentary in well, uhm, blogs.  So now in the early hours of my day I find myself giving my own two cents about blogging and professionalism among political scientists (I'll limit myself to this arena as I do not claim to be an expert in any other discipline and some might even question calling me an expert in political science).

So, I began blogging about three years ago.  I sometimes go a month between blog entries, other times I blog multiple times in one day.  My blog is a combination of humorous considerations (or at least I think they are humorous), my insights into personal hobbies and interests (cigars, movies, firearms, etc.), and the consideration of issues and events that puzzle me, or excite my thinking as a political scientist and a member of the academy in general.  Now we are being told by a sub-section of the academy that as political scientists it is potentially unprofessional of us to blog.  Yet, my blog is in part an outlet for professional commentary on issues of the day.  I also allow former students the opportunity to share their thoughts on important issues by guest blogging.  I carefully consider what I am posting in my blog even when it is of the more frivolous variety or simply about something I am interested in that falls outside the scope of my academic life and professional duties.   I do not believe that my blogging is unprofessional, nor do I believe that it casts negative light on any professional association I have (whether that is with the college where I serve on the faculty or any professional association of which I am a member).  I also believe that my blogging is to appropriate extent protected speech (lawyers and armchair lawyers feel free to dispute my understanding of protected rights of speech).

I regularly read what I consider to be the professional blogs of academics in areas of political science in which I study.  I gain some interesting insights regarding current events, and the application of theory of human behavior to be gained from considering these events.  I see in these blogs the shaping of research agendas, the spark of new questions, the culmination of careful thought regarding our world.  The discussion of important issues of our profession are also considered, including thoughts on directions for organization, boundaries of study, means and methods of study.  The status quo is often chastised, and as often defended in regard to the profession of political science.  So, I am hard pressed to see how blogging is unprofessional and should be avoided by the very people who we in the academy have elevated to important positions as gatekeepers in the process of publishing our detailed research.

I understand how a blog might make an employer uncomfortable.  We have all heard of places where K-12 faculty are asked not to use social media because of problems it can potentially create.  We have all read reports in information outlets regarding the use of social media by people in positions of authority for inappropriate liaisons and other nefarious purposes.  But, this is not the type of behavior we are talking about here, I will not defend inappropriate legal and social behaviors.  The problem is not that blogging can be used inappropriately, the problem is the insinuation that all blogging is unprofessional.  Sorry "Political Violence at a Glance", sorry "Duck of Minerva" the material being shared and used to spark research and teaching among a large swath of political scientists is just unprofessional, or at least so says a group of scholars who for my two cents are being irrational defenders of the status quo of academic communication created prior to accelerated use of digital communicative media in our world.    

Vodka Swillers R U.S.

 Apparently, according to Richie King and data from Euromonitor, Vodka is the spirit of choice in the USA.  Let the debate begin, is being a nation of Vodka swillers a bad thing?

Using Digital Media for Crowd Control?

Read a very interesting blog by Barbara Walter on Friday afternoon (read it here.)  Basically the government of Ukraine sent a cell phone text message out to every phone they pinged in the area where demonstrations were occurring and said "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance."  What this text really says is, "we know who you are, where you are, where you live." 

I found this action interesting for two reasons.  First, what does this action say about the use of and importance of the use of digital media and communications?  I read so many researcher's commentary on how digital communicative media were used in the Arab Spring and how important it was to organization of mass protests.  Now you must ask yourself what I was already asking myself (I guess that I am a little more skeptical of the niceness of government and was even before the NSA stuff was "leaked"), which is how long before governments use the connectivity against the protesting parties?

Second, how will people respond to government "pinging" their supposedly private and possibly secure communications.  I have argued for over a decade that your communication is not secure nor private from government intrusion--which is why I found no surprise in the disclosure of NSA programs gathering our communications.  If I am already involved in a protest that is semi- to fully violent, what do I have to lose now that the government knows I am present?  Or, will I run and hide and throw away the phone that cost me a good chunk of change and is the instrument I use for communication, information collection, and entertainment?  (I am guessing from the progress of the Ukraine protests, that "what do I have to lose" has been more prevalent than "run and hide").

Anyway, for my two cents, social media and digital communications are over-rated as means of protest organization.  The depth and breadth of digital communications availability is still not that high in many locations.  Also, if the government can track it, perhaps our best communication will be personal, not digitalized.

I'm Back, Three Movies to Waste Time

Well, I'm back from taking students to France.  I think, for my own two cents, that the travel highlighted course material and was enjoyable to all involved.  One of the best group dynamics among the students that I have taken out of the country for travel portions of courses in recent years.

I always have trouble sleeping on an airplane when flying west.  I can sleep all through a flight heading east, but for whatever reason am wide awake headed west.  So, I watched three movies between Paris and Washington, DC.:  Act of Valor, Argo, and The Family.  My casual assessment is 6 hours of wasted space.

Argo lacked the flair that I expected given its high reviews and returns of acting and screen awards.  Sorry, Ben Afflicted is still Ben Afflicted, you simply can not make a good actor out of him.  Alan Arkin and John Goodman were not central enough characters with enough screen time to potentially save this film.  The movie was slow, even though it was not supposed to be a fast paced action film.  The film was poorly acted, again good jobs by Arkin and Goodman, but the rest of the cast was hollow and I have seen better acting in a rural high school gymnasium.  The Iranians were everything that conventional expectations of Hollywood films should lead us to expect.  Again, overall it just was not a good film--how the heck did it get the reviews and awards it received?  Were people deaf, dumb, and blind when they watched this movie?

Act of Valor could have been made by any studio following any one of hundreds of formulaic scripts about a military mission by pick your choice of special operations groups.  Sorry SEAL teams, but this was not even a good 2 hour long commercial to advertise your work, your integrity, your (insert your next word of choice here).  HALO insertion over a target--seen it before in at least a few dozen other movies.  Sniper takes out hostiles all over the bad guys camp--uhm, yeah check seen it before.  Motor Vehicle chase to extraction point, yeah that's been done again and again.  What were these scenes supposedly more realistic than others?  If so, they failed to be more realistic than any other movie (ok, maybe more realistic than Rambo--Rarely Anything Marginally Believable Occurs).

The Family left me wincing in mental pain, as in why did I just waste 2 hours on this film.   I really like De Niro, I think he has mastered the archetype of "wise guy".  I also think De Niro got a paycheck and told the rest of the actors that he would contact them after the film was completed.  No chemistry between the actors really existed.  If the attempt here was to be comedic, other than a few De Niro scenes the attempt fell flat.  Tommy Lee Jones also phoned in this movie (are you two broke and in need of paychecks at this point in your careers?).  Hey, I really like campy, stupid, comedic movies (anyone for Dude, Where's My Car or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), but The Family was just bad.

So, I was 0 for 3 in my movie picks coming back from France.  I guess I need to figure out how to sleep when flying west.  Or maybe I'll get someone to pick movies for me next time.  
  

Stay Warm, I'll Be Back...

As I start this post I checked the weather again.  Yep, it still says -5F with wind chill of -25F.  Ok, so my few friends in Canada, Alaska, Wisconsin, etc. may think these temperatures are normal, acceptable, something to that effect, for my two cents it is just cold, d--- cold.  I feel like Robin Williams in reverse.

 

It's Cold, Cold, Cold,.......

Not gonna have much to say about the world for a few days, or about much of anything for that matter.  Gonna be traveling, will be visiting some pretty cool stuff in France (the Chateau at Clisson, the Apocalypse Tapestries in Angers, Normandy).  Always enjoy a visit to Normandy, gonna make it to Utah Beach this time, never been there, so I guess I'll get to see where Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. reorganized the off-target landings and got us back on track at Utah Beach, and get to look again at how crazy heroic it was just to move forward at Omaha Beach, or scale the cliffs at Pont du Hoc.

Gotta go, ya'll stay warm.

Tibetan Self-Immolation Count Update

Tibetan Self-Immolation Count from Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, 2013:      120

Death by Dog

Wow, as if simply engaging in a feudal style power play to ensure no competition exists for control is not enough, now we get the story that Kim Jong Un had Jang Song Thaek and a few of his aides executed by feeding them to ravenous dogs. 

"Forget the hangman’s noose, the firing squad or lethal injection: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed his uncle and a handful of the man’s aides by feeding them to a horde of 120 starving dogs, according to a shocking account."

 “Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called ‘quan jue’, or execution by dogs,” according to the Straits Times of Singapore. The daily relied on a description of the execution in a Hong Kong newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece of China’s government.

Well, for my own two cents, this form of execution harkens to days of yore when Romans threw Christians to the lions, etc.  I would argue and believe myself safe in doing so, that this type of execution is cruel, unusual, and must represent a violation of any norm (if any norm does exist) of human rights.  Way to go Kim Jong Un, you just made it into my top ten list of despicable government leaders (hey, I probably need to publish that list sometime soon).