"If you have included access to a web site in support of your candidacy, we
would like you to know that, while we would be most interested in reviewing any information
on that site related to your teaching, research, or administrative abilities, you may want
to remove any personal information that may be outside those areas."
Of course, such clean divisions between professional and private seldom take place online ...
though I see that Rich Rice recently pulled the livecam still from his homepage. Probably a good idea.
(oops, no, I was wrong about that)
Keeping it strictly professional: just found out I'm on a panel with
Don McCabe, from the Center for Academic Integrity, on Nov. 18th. Now there's a
cause to believe in. But is it personal?
What?!
How discouraging. I hope only this particular institution feels this way; otherwise I guess I can kiss my chances of getting a job goodbye. They obviously aren't well-versed in the ethics of depublishing on blogs.
CultureCat
what's funny is that
"this is one of the reasons I have avoided writing about personal stuff on my weblog. and one of the reasons it is not nearly as fun to read as those who do publish personal stuff," he says, thinking of used cd stores ;)
Ouch!
That's pretty ridiculous. When I was on the market I wanted people to know as much about me as possible so that they knew what they were getting themselves into. Committees google candidates all of the time to see what comes up. They want to know more, they find newspaper articles, recipes, etc. I still see Rich's cam image, artistic as it might be at this second :-)
sb
Blog
nothing personal...
one school with which i am intimately connected (not syracuse, btw) recently told faculty that they would not accept photos for the department website that depicted faculty with their families or holding their babies or children; such pics were considered too "personal" for the academic presence...
these is frightning times...
I now know exactly where this came from
Just got a letter with the exact same passage metaspencer quoted. :( I still have a real problem with depublishing, so I'm going to leave the personal information up and just see what happens. Depublishing it would be dishonest -- and I say that not as an appeal to blogging ethics, but in terms of my representation of myself as a job candidate. I feel like getting rid of all my personal material would carry an implicit promise that if I were to get hired, I would no longer post personal writing to my weblog. I do want to continue speaking freely on my weblog (though not about colleagues or students, which a trawl through my archives will show that I've never done), and I would post personal reflections, observations, etc. in the future.
Not to mention that what with the internet archive and Google's cache, removing anything would be an empty gesture anyway.
CultureCat