Beyond this, I think there’s another point. You say “If one chooses to speak as an academic,” but it seems to me one could just as easily argue that, being an academic, one can’t really choose not to speak as an academic. Certainly my academic training, ways of thinking, and modes of employment affect everything I do and say (as is probably obvious from the pompousness and verbosity of this comment). I’ll never be able to blog in such a way as to hold my academic identity at a distance. It seems to me that what you’re really talking about has more to do with the authority attached to an academic status. What I take your point to be is more or less this: if you’re going to claim the authority, meager though it may be, that our society attaches to an academic position, then you really ought to follow the rest of the rules associated with academic discourse. Again, this is true, but it’s not quite the same as saying that an academic shouldn’t ever blog anonymously.

For one counter-example, I’ll point you <a href="http://j.mp/7HBn5q"here — it’s not a blog, but rather Thomas Hart Benton’s pseudonymous column for the Chronicle of Higher Education. You probably know it, but if you don’t, check it out. It’s a brilliant column. It helped keep me sane when I was an advanced grad student about to go on the job market. And for me at least, it’s impossible to imagine Benton writing any of the stuff he did under his real name, at least not as a beginning assistant professor (I think he’s since revealed his real identity, but I’m not sure).

I am not as focused in my post here on the anonymity than I am the content of our blogs. I am (perhaps not very clearly saying that it seems that academics stop being academic in the way we think, and thus in the way write, in many of our blogs.

As academics we hopefully cultivate a sense of rigor in our approach to our thoughts and our conclusions. We don’t rush to judgement without an analysis of the data/facts/other opinions, and we are careful to identify where our thoughts depart from those of others. We also, as academics, provide support for our position.

I personally believe that it is this discipline, this rigor, that makes our contributions (whether in peer reviewed journals our in blogs) valuable. If you go back to some of my earliest posts, while I have my share of “commentary” applying more rhetoric than research, I also have several posts where I tried to either analyze the data others (mis)use, or present my own arguments with support. One of my personal favorites is my defense of Republicans against the charge of hatred and prejudice.

My criticism then is that when academics start to blog on (potentially controversial) issues such as tenure, academic politics, climate change, or “regular” politics, often we leave this rigor behind and begin to shoot from the hip. We join the crowd of emotional response rather than reasoned, critical thinking. (Okay, and now here I am being lazy academically–I can remember several posts from others where this was done, but honestly, I don’t want to dig back through them right now…)

That said, I will now appeal to my post where I talk about my having different blogs to serve different purposes. Academics who blog don’t have to behave as academics in all we do. If one chooses to speak as an academic, then I believe one should bring some of that rigor to the table. On the other hand if, as in my “Father Son Chats” blog, the purpose is something else, then, well… the blog can reflect that “something else.”