This is Jon Rowe and I am going to be a new blogger here. But I am not alone. The One Best Way (formerly Positive Liberty, a blog eaten up by the technology monster) is merging with this blog. (Yes, like what corporations do.)
As listed on my profile, I am a community college professor and attorney with JD, MBA, and LLM graduate degrees. I don’t practice much. Just teach and blog. I have written a little for “real,” in print publications (I’m always in the market to write if interested); but find blogging much easier to get my voice out. 🙂
I’m a political libertarian with a wide variety of eccentric interests. Though I have acquired a vast knowledge of religion and the American Founding (especially as it relates to the personal religious beliefs of the American Founders and those who influenced them).
I realize this is a “public affairs” blog and as such I will tend to publish here on the American Founding/religion as it relates to more “current” concerns. I have another group blog American Creation where all we do is study the history of religion and the American Founding from a variety of perspectives (over there we have non-believers, Mormons, evangelical Protestants, traditional Roman Catholics and Unitarian Universalists as posters and commenters; we “check” eachother in a way that I would argue is as good as any scholarly peer review process; indeed I see this “checking” process as one of the larger virtues of the blogsphere in general).
Finally, everything I publish I archive on my personal blog. When Positive Liberty went down, I was happy I kept my archive.
While not a libertarian myself, I’ve been fascinated by its illumination compliments of the Tea Party’s notoriety. That said, I’m particularly appreciative of elucidating voices (vs. the echo chamber chatter).
However, I am also a long-practicing UU by way of a non-denom fundamentalist Christian upbringing. (I never saw the inside of a public school until 9th grade– it took me 6 months to re-condition myself not to shoot up out of my desk chair when called upon by a teacher. No Bible class? Really? Hot damn.)
So I’m equally looking forward to checking out your other blog.Report
Sorry about your last post disappearing. We’re moving to a new host and that’s probably what happened but who knows? Technology is a strange beast.Report
Aside from interaction, why do you bother blogging? What role does blogging fill that peer-review does not; in particular, is there an answer that does not put the blog readership in the role of pre-peer-review?Report
glad too see you over here as well.Report
Thanks all.
Trizzlor. That’s a very good question. I have some ideas in the future about publishing in footnoted scholarly review places. But I’ve never really worked on it. (The three places I have published are scholarly, but not footnoted. One is an Encyclopedia and two are monthly periodicals). You see I am a community college professor (indeed one who teaches overloads every semester; I’m teaching 21 credits this semester) and we aren’t required to publish.
I like to write and blogging allows me to circumvent the gatekeepers and get probably a bigger audience. But one can spill into the other. I have gotten the offers from the blogs.
I do plan on taking some of what I’ve done and turning it into footnoted articles and then a non-self published book. But that has nothing to do with advancing my career in Academia (I’m already an Associate Professor; and I don’t think this will matter much when I try to become a full Professor).
They will be vanity publications.Report
This is one reason I’d really like to teach at a community college after I get done with this dissertation- I really love teaching and am pretty lukewarm about the conference, publication, research circuit. So I like the places that community colleges place emphasis.
Also, welcome aboad!Report
Thanks and best of luck.Report
I think it would be pretty interesting to see a blurring between blogging and publishing where the blog post is still a full-fledged work rather than a rough draft, but the idea, once crystallized, is published additional. Welcome, too!Report
It’s probably a pipe dream, but I would someday like to see a regular print version of the League with polished versions of the best stuff posted here as well as additional material that was maybe too long to fit here.Report
BTW: I get some questions about do you really want to be a community college professor or move to a higher college? The answer is I don’t see myself moving on (though John Lennon once said “life is what happens when you are making other plans”).
I have tenure and CC profs are compensated on par with profs at 4 year institutions. The only way I’d make a voluntary lateral transfer is one that comes with tenure and a comparable compensation. I don’t see that happening unless I do something really special in the future.Report
Greetings and welcome.
My end goal would be a small teaching oriented school, myself, but I happen to like research. I just don’t see the time 🙂Report
American Creation has always been one of my favorite blogs. Hopefully your addition here will add some light to this blog’s affairs. Lookin’ forward to your posts here.Report