Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Perhaps (only) to Sleep

Eric Gordy, blogging as East Ethnia, has announced that his blog is set for imminent departure. Come November 2005, he’s putting East Ethnia to sleep. His readers are hoping it's not a permanent sleep, just a long nap. He’s off to write a book and we wish him well, not only with the writing and the publishing, but also the selling. In the hierarchy of words assembling together to provide understanding, writing a book certainly still outranks daily intelligent blog postings.
At least for now.
Perhaps some day tenure track positions at colleges will include blog authoring as one of its requisites. I don’t see why not. How better to communicate your own and your college’s philosophy than to offer it up for any and all comers on the Internet? If you were picking your teachers at a college, what better way to get an idea of what they're like than to read their daily musings? Timothy Burke @ Swarthmore, Amardeep Singh @ Lehigh, A Zoology Prof, Paul Z Myers @ U. of Minnesota are all great examples of how a professor can intrigue a student to their college or to their classes. Eric Gordy @ Clark University fits snugly in with these folks.

East Ethnia has been up for less than a year. Mr. Gordy has done a magnificent job of inclusion and of acting as a touchbase for all things Slavic. With his wit and gentle prodding style, it was always a treat visiting his neighborhood. I can’t think of another site out there that would serve as an adequate substitute. His touch was both personal and professional.

Comments:
facinating idea regarding tenure track & the effect of blogging... certainly, in many research oriented academic positions, the maxim of "publish or perish" holds true....

maybe for certain kinds of university positions, an active blog with many readers would be viewed as a plus, after all, many universities hire professors because of the "prestigie" they have in the world, online visibility is as viable visibility as anything... and maybe its arguably more accessable than pubishing in obscure journals...

instead of "publish or perish" it could be "blog or begone"
 
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