Academics protest at proposal to ban them from blogging

Academics across the world are up in arms at a proposal to bar the senior members of the International Studies Association (ISA) from blogging. The proposal says:

"No editor of any ISA journal or member of any editorial team of an ISA journal can create or actively manage a blog unless it is an official blog of the editor's journal or the editorial team's journal.

This policy requires that all editors and members of editorial teams to apply this aspect of the code of conduct to their ISA journal commitments. All editorial members, both the editor in chief(s) and the board of editors/editorial teams, should maintain a complete separation of their journal responsibilities and their blog associations."

Many members of the ISA, a professional association for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of international studies with more than 6,000 members from 80 countries, have erupted in protest at the proposal, reports Inside Higher Ed. It quotes three critics...

Stephen Saideman, a professor at Carleton university in Canada, said: "I think it's a really strange proposal in 2014... There's still a segment of academia that doesn't engage in any kind of social media."...