The University of Chicago’s decision to deny tenure to Dan Drezner has predictably led to quite a bit of discussion; the highlights (as far as I’ve seen):

• Steven Taylor expresses confidence that Dan will land on his feet and considers the question, “do we blame the blog?”
• Leopold Stotch emphatically says yes. Juan Non-Volokh is not so sure. Both (who are not tenured) will remain pseudonymous for now.
• Ann Althouse points out that ”[t]ime spent on a blog is visible in a way that time spent watching movies or talking with friends or reading mystery novels or engaging in physical exercise or playing with your kids or daydreaming is not.” (þ: PoliBlog)
• Matt Stinson reminds the gallery that Dan’s denial probably had nothing to do with his politics, as the U of C has historically been relatively friendly to conservatives and libertarians.
• Tom Smith extrapolates to the wider question of the value of tenure in the modern academy, and finds the case for tenure today to be wanting.

Stotch also raises an interesting point that is worth discussing at greater length:

Drezner made another huge mistake in trying to conflate blogging and scholarship, and I can only assume that his colleagues deemed this type of work unserious—a perspective with which I largely agree. Looking at his CV, however impressive, might have led his colleagues to believe that once granted tenure, his focus might shift away from his serious work toward more articles, books, conference papers, etc. about blogging—which I assume is hardly what they were looking for when they hired him.

I don’t necessarily believe that Dan’s primary area of expertise (international political economy) is any more “serious” than studying the role of weblogs in domestic political discourse, but it is quite definitely different, and to the extent that institutions hire people to “fill holes” (rather than based on their innate abilities or general competence) I think that could be an issue. Quite clearly, Dan was not hired by the U of C to be a political communications person. On the other hand, there’s no evidence that Dan has neglected scholarship in his primary field.

And I probably need not point out that plenty of tenured faculty take advantage of the security of tenure to spend more time with their families, stagnate scholastically, dodge professional responsibilities, and/or bed undergraduate and graduate students. Somehow the idea of Dan potentially doing research on blogs post-tenure seems like a de minimis concern compared to the other possibilities.

The fine folks at Universal Studios are giving out free passes to preview screenings of Serenity to bloggers. Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

þ: Glenn Reynolds and Dan Drezner.

New to “Chris’s blogroll” (distinguished from the “Active blogroll” on a basis I’m not entirely sure of, and probably a vestige of SN’s brief life as a group blog): Charles Franklin’s Political Arithmetik and the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science’s blog, both of which I first became aware of via Paul Brewer.

Can a blogospheric Perestroika movement be far behind?

Incidentally, I’ve had the distinction of having been taught by Prof. Franklin (albeit for only four days, during the Advanced Maximum Likelihood Estimation course at ICPSR in 2001), at a time when he was sporting a beard and looked like the spitting image of my father.

It’s nice to see Matthew Stinson back in the blogosphere after an extended absence. Drop in and take a look around his fancy new digs… and update your blogrolls!

My apologies for the lack of posting (here and at PoliBlog); our second summer session started today at Millsaps, and I’ve been tied up with that. More posting tomorrow, probably.

At the invitation of Steven Taylor, I will be part of the illustrious group guest-blogging at PoliBlog next week while Steven takes a well-deserved vacation. During the guest-blogging stint, I’ll probably at least link to everything I post there from here.

Steven Taylor is organizing a new TTLB blogging community of professors, known as The Academy. Drop by Steven’s place and let him know if you meet the admissions requirements and are interested in joining the faculty club.

Kevin Drum hasn’t linked the New York Times op-ed page for six weeks, and nobody seems to have noticed—or, for that matter, to have cared. Will someone remind me again who was supposed to be ponying up $50 a year for access to crap like Paul Krugman’s foreign policy nonsense and political commentary from losers.

Class Maledictorian is now Prettier Than Napoleon. Hey, that rhymes!

For all you bloggers out there: here’s a link to a survey being conducted by researchers at MIT.

þ: Amber Taylor.

I suppose RINO is as good a label for me as anything else, so long as I don’t have to pretend to like über-RINO John McCain. Not that liking someone is a prerequisite for getting my vote, mind you: ask John F’ing Kerry. So, I’m in.

Michele, posting basically the same thing I wrote in comments to this post by someone in the “non-reciprocal linking” school (exponded at length here), except it disappeared into the ether:

I don’t really care what YOUR etiquette/rules for trackbacks are. I know what MY rule is: Don’t trackback to my posts unless you’ve linked/referenced them. I see no reason for someone to go through the trouble of sending a trackback which basically says “hey, I’ve written about the same thing as you, but I didn’t reference your post on it at all. However, I’m going to use this nifty automated feature to leave a URL to MY post on your blog!” That’s just god damn RUDE.

I also HATE when trackback is used as a feature to say “I wrote about a subject that you seem to care about and instead of emailing you a note to say hey, check out this post, I think you’ll be interested in it, I’ll just lazily send off a trackback to a completely UNRELATED post of yours, most likely your most recent post, thereby informing you that I’ve said something I consider important and leaving a URL to my very important post in your completey UNRELATED post!”

See where I’m going with this? Stop doing it. It’s arrogant. Take two freaking minutes to send an email. Or don’t trackback at all.

I will delete any trackbacks that don’t reference the post they track. Don’t be an such a self-absorbed ass all your life, ok? Show some manners.

That’s my policy too… if you bothered to find the trackback URL, you’ve already found out how to link to my post. Or, to put it another way, if you want me to send you some of my readers, the least you can do is send me some of yours too. Frankly, to not do so isn’t just rude—it’s spamming, and just because you’re not selling something doesn’t make it not spam.

Ping.

Move along, nothing to see here…

Mungowitz announces his departure from non-anonymous blogging and Michelle Dion takes the opportunity to shoot a promo on him. Are we seeing the beginning of a heel turn for Mungowitz, with Hollywood “Grease” Mungowitz donning a goatee and strutting down the ramp with some hard rock entrance music? Or is he going to turn face and stop tormenting the retail minimum-wage-slaves of the Triangle? Inquiring minds want to know.

In what seems to be becoming something of a theme, I had dinner this evening with yet another blogger—in this case, Signifying Nothing alumnus Robert Prather. We ended up talking for about three hours at the Steam Room Grille, mostly about graduate school but with some forays into politics and economics.

Like Robert, I start summer school Wednesday, albeit at the other side of the desk. I guess I should be working on getting organized for that, although at this point I’m still not even sure if I have enough students to bother teaching the classes, or, for that matter, to bother writing up syllabi—the per-student remuneration works out to be about minimum wage if only one student enrolls, although if you look at it as additional pay (since I am being paid through September 1st by Millsaps on my 9-month contract) rather than living pay it feels better.

Others are already doing the summer school thing, of course: Jeff Quinton isn’t having much fun so far, which I suppose is understandable given the material.

In addition to Robert, another of my favorite bloggers, Timothy Sandefur, has decided to retire from the field. The contributions of both will be sorely missed.

I notified Chris last night and we discussed it via email. I’ll no longer pretend to blog at SN. Even when I have the time to do so, I don’t. School has changed my focus to the point that I’m no longer a motivated blogger and my output, when it’s been there, hasn’t been up to my standards.

On my old Insults Unpunished site, I had a quote by Arthur Alan Leff that went something like “I have an axe to grind, and plenty of fury to turn the wheel”. My fury is gone.

Thanks to Chris for providing me with a forum and, if I get what feels like a permanent swell of fury, I might be back. But I wouldn’t count on it. Thanks to all who have been supportive over the years.

Incidentally, today is my three-year anniversary as a blogger. I was a late starter in the aftermath of 9/11 and had plenty to say; today, not so much. A fitting day to put a clean end to this period in my life.

James Joyner links a MarketWatch piece that claims the New York Times is going to put its op-ed columnists behind a subscription wall; the Times has confirmed this in its own article. While comparisons to New Coke may be premature, I have to wonder who’s really going to pay $50 a year to read Paul Krugman, David Brooks, and MoDo.

One also has to wonder why the Times would want to abandon the mindshare that comes from getting linked from the blogosphere; PaidContent.org has an interview that indicates that some sort of “affiliate program” is in the works, but I don’t think the opportunity for right-wingers to make fun of Paul Krugman’s continuing descent into moonbattery—or for leftists to mock John Tierney and David Brooks—is really worth the subscription fee in the first place (presumably some of which would be kicked back to referrers through the affiliate program). Indeed, the point of having an op-ed page is to influence public opinion; the idea that the Times would curtail its ability to influence local and regional elites, and thus shape public debate over the issues, runs directly counter to that goal.

There are other thoughts from Erik Kennedy of Ars Technica, Steven Taylor, and Julian Sanchez.

Thanks to Backcountry Conservative Jeff Quinton for name-dropping our humble blog during his appearance on MSNBC’s “Connected: Coast to Coast” yesterday; he specifically referred to my posts on the BRAC list’s impact on Mississippi. If you didn’t see it live or on TiVo delay, Jeff’s link above has the streaming video; I think the Signifying Nothing mention is in response to the first question from Ron Reagan.

I had lunch today with fellow Jackson blogger Shawn Lea at Char… the food was excellent (very good fried catfish and pecan pie) and the company delightful. We shall have to do it again sometime.

My future boss links an interesting article in today’s Duke Chronicle about the curricular and extracurricular use of blogs at Duke.

I’m still pondering to what extent I want to use blogs in my classes; I had a really good idea for using blogs in a State and Local class, but it only would work in a state capital. I probably will decide to work blogging into intro in the fall, at least in a limited fashion, instead of requiring a term paper—the Culture War papers this semester were OK, I guess, but I think there may be a better way to work with that idea in a “journal” type format as opposed to the term paper. (þ: Nick Troester)

My local media infamy continues to increase in this week’s issue of Planet Weekly, one of Jackson’s two alt-weekies:

Such questions [about ties between bloggers and political campaigns, and whether independent blogs are campaign contributions] are becoming more and more prevalent as websites and blogs become more of a force in politics at all levels, said Dr. Chris Lawrence, visiting professor of political science at Millsaps College and webmaster of a blog called “Signifying Nothing,” which he’s operated since 2003 [sic: actually, November 2002, but who cares?]. Such sites can serve as an organizational tool for volunteers, a media channel for voters, or a method for campaigns to get their message out, said Lawrence.

The article is about the Jackson’s Next Mayor blog, which is in something of a pissing contest with the Jackson Free Press, the other alt-weekly; the JFP says JNM is carrying water for incumbent mayor Harvey Johnson’s opponents, while JNM says the JFP is carrying water for Johnson—I’d charge both as being “guilty” on all counts, as a mostly-disinterested observer.

Incidentally, it’s amazing how much more pub I’m getting now that I’m leaving town…

As alluded to below, I am very pleased to announce that I have accepted an appointment as a visiting assistant professor at Duke University for the 2005–06 academic year, which—if nothing else—will make Duke the most blogged political science department in the world. Thankfully for Messrs. Troester and Nyhan, however, Dr. Munger has chosen to inflict me primarily on the undergraduate population.

I’m told that my offer of employment is conditional on learning how to spell Coach K’s full name, so I suppose I should get to work on learning that, as well figuring out why a glorified gym is referred to as an “indoor stadium”—perhaps because the events at the outdoor stadium, absent the good graces of Mr. Spurrier, are such a disappointment.

In other news, the paper I sent to APR got rejected (or, as I like to call it, “revise and resubmit—but elsewhere”). At least it wasn’t in turnaround hell forever.

Update: Will Baude quibbles with my assertion that Duke is now the “most blogged” political science department in the world. If one were to count the joint-appointed and intermittent blogger Cass Sunstein and the silent Jacob Levy, I might grant his point, although I’ll raise him the equally-silent Dan Lee in the Blue Devils’ defense. Of course, Drezner can squash us all like bugs, but on one-person, one-blog rules I think we’re essentially tied.

Further Update: Mr. Troester adds D. Laurence Rice to the list, pulling Duke ahead by my estimation.

The crisis continues: Mr. Baude has dug up two more UC types with blogs. Can my fellow Cameron Crazies meet this challenge?

Congratulations to Jeff Quinton of Backcountry Conservative and his new fiancée on their engagement today in Washington, D.C.

As some may already know, I was one of three participants in a panel entitled “Can academics be bloggers? Can bloggers be academics?” at the Public Choice Society conference in New Orleans, organized by Mike Munger and co-starring Mike and Dan Drezner. I think we had a really good and interesting discussion with the audience, although I’m uncertain how much my participation really enhanced things.

I also had the serendipitous opportunity to catch up with the lovely Leslie Johns from NYU, a friend and fellow TA from ICPSR this past summer; Dan, Leslie, and I ended up having a nice dinner at Arnaud’s (which Dan kindly paid for), followed by some sort of alcoholic slurpee concoction from a Bourbon Street vendor and beignets at Café du Monde.

After a pretty up-and-down week, it was nice to have a low-stress conference and a day with some good company.