[Xmca-l] public scholar and influence

[Peter Smagorinsky]

This issue hasn't gotten much traction in terms of discussion (beginning with the NYT piece by Kristoff I posted, followed by Michael G's post of a response by a scoffer). Independent of those, a guy from the American Enterprise Institute has created a metric for evaluating university professors' public influence, published at:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2014/01/the_2014_rhsu_edu-scholar_public_influence_rankings.html

A friend of mine blogged this riposte in response:

http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/should-universities-reward-academics-for-public-influence/

It's an interesting question. For years I wrote only to other teachers and researchers, but since 2010 have begun writing more for newspapers, primarily the Atlanta, GA paper's education blog. I consider this public writing a sideline to my scholarly writing, but as Paul argues in the second link, it probably has more influence than any journal article I could ever write.

One of the metrics used to measure influence is Klout, which seems where you go in order to promote yourself via social media. I'm pretty conflicted about this. It probably is good for your career and your ideas, but to an old-school guy like me, seems unseemly for a university scholar.