This posting was inspired by Alexander Russo's May 15 posting in This Week in Education titled "Complaints and Misunderstandings."

The blogosphere is still new enough that the nature of the blogger's relationship with individuals and institutions that are the subject of postings, and with the blog's audience, are in flux. There are no commonly-accepted rules that guide these interactions. In the interest of advancing the ball, this post covers how communications about items on edbizbuzz are managed, and where the editor draws the line on what's "fair game" in his treatment of subjects and people.

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House Rules

Your editor recently had an unfortunate exchange with someone he has never met expressing their own (and their friends’ or colleagues’) disapproval of the posting on AEI’s recent conference on the influence education research is (not) having on education policy.

The edbizbuzz policy on readers’ input is very simple.

• If a reader makes a comment on a posting using the software on the page, it will go up and stay up as is, minus racial, gender, religious, ethic and sexual epithets. Your editor is obliged "to take it as well as he dishes it out."

• If a reader decides to comment on the post via email, it is treated as a letter to the editor and subject to posting in whole or part, and will generally be posted in whole.

• If a reader makes a comment via email but asks that the material not be used, the materials will be not be attributed to the writer or used in ways that make the writer known to insiders, but they are subject to posting.

In this case, the writer of the email was told that their comments would be posted, and responded by asking that they not be posted. Your editor obliged (the comments impunged your editor's intentions, but some were attributed to a third party and perhaps the writer felt a confidence would be betrayed) and asked the writer to be clear about their intentions in the future. The writer was huffy about the request, asserted this was not the nature of their relationships with education reporters at the national newspapers, and stated that edbizbuzz should not expect communications from that source in the future. Your editor replied that he was sorry the writer was unhappy with the request, pointed out that the unsolicited communication was basically a letter to the editor (to underline that point, your editor describes himself as "your editor" in every single post) and explained the rules were for senders' protection as much as your editor's.

The rationale here is simple - the person writing an email about a post is in a better position to decide what they want to see repeated in public than the person reading the email. By itself, the communication of an unsolicited comment to an editor suggests the writer has no expectation of privacy. Edbizbuzz is a blog and blogs are about debate and discussion. Historically, decisions about disclosure have been first and foremost the responsibility of the person dealing with the press, not the other way around – particularly when the communication is not part of a long-term relationship, but a one-off.  This may not be how every blogger handles communications about their posts, but it is a defensible policy grounded in reasonable and widely understood principles.

By now readers of edbizbuzz have noticed that your editor is not the clubby/insider-game/strictly entre-nous/just us girls type. If you have something to say about this blog and want to express it to the editor – the best place is the page where you’ve read the post. There is simply too much email coming across your editor’s desk for him to decide what’s public and what’s not, or to call and ask every time, or to be responsible for figuring out what a writer would wish they hadn't said if they saw it in print. Moreover, if one has a comment for the editor, shouldn't one be prepared to express and defend it in public? What possible interest is served by keeping your comments secret? Not the interest of public dialouge.

Drawing the Line on What's Fair Game
The specific comments about the posting on the AEI confab come down to three charges; that your editor’s comments about the organizers and participants were: 1) "disparaging," 2) "ad hominem," and 3) "venomous." You may want to re-read the post.

The gist of the term “disparaging” is the intent to slight or belittle the object of one's statements

“Ad hominem” originally meant attacks against the man rather than his ideas, but now refers to any debating strategy that appeals to prejudice instead of reason.

“Venomous” speech is deliberately harmful and, like vicious gossip, aimed at hurting the person addressed in the remarks.

Your editor certainly aims to make the targets of his critiques uncomfortable about their positions, but not about who they are. He pleads “not guilty” on all counts.

Unless it is hurtful to be identified as part of the education policy wonk scene in Washington, someone associated with Harvard, or a colleague of AEI's Fredrick Hess, the accuser has an odd sense of what’s venomous.

On the personal attack aspect of "ad hominem," Hess did organize the conference and is therefore accountable for it, but the attack on his decision not to bring industry to the table is not an attack on Hess as a white male, or any other feature that might invoke readers’ prejudices against him as an individual.

Similarly, none of the remarks in the posting can reasonably be interpreted as slighting, unless the reader considers terms like “pro-market," “right-of-center,” “member of the policy-wonk club,” "eduwonk,” and “inside the beltway” more prejudicial than descriptive.  Maybe they are bit like the n-word, where it’s ok for people in the group to use the term among themselves, but not for outsiders. Still, your editor knows that's what folks in those clubs often call themselves (and has been so pegged himself at times in his career.)

Education policy is a contact sport

First-year law students learn "the case of the eggshell-thin skull" in torts. A robber hits a man over the head, intending to knock him out and run off with his cash. The man turns out to have an unusually thin skull and is killed by the blow. The robber is caught. In court, he explains that he robbed quite a few people before and only hit them hard enough to knock out a normal man. He argued that he did not intend to kill and should not be guilty of murder because of his victim’s eggshell-thin skull. (In traditional common law, there was only murder - manslaughter and degrees of murder are a legislative innovation.) The court rejected the defense and the robber was hung for murder.

When it comes to the effects of physical force, "you take your victim as you find him." When it comes to speech, the First Amendment of our Constitution protects statements made to the man with eggshell-thin eardrums or corneas, and the maker of those statements.

Writers have their own way of discussing the issues and their own followings. Your editor does not go easy on people who make decisions or take actions he does not agree with. He tries not to write about trivial decisions and actions. But, this writer goes to the point - not the person, and argues the merits in a pointed fashion.

edbizbuzz is not particularly enamoured with the conventional wisdom held by institutions, or what everyone else does, nor is great deference given to cliques, experts or authority figures. Frankly, such deference merely concedes to them the right to use their personal status as a rhetorical shield, while they can decry opponents who might use ad hominem attacks as a sword. That seems hypocritical - and your editor agrees with neither. The focus of edbizbuzz is ideas held by people in positions of influence. As some say, “this is business, not personal.”

Having spent twelve years as a policy wonk at RAND managing a number of "high stakes" and controversial projects, your editor can assure readers that the researcher's greatest fear is someone pointing out that they have missed a crucial and, in retrospect, obvious factor that renders their analysis less than completely relevant. This is also the fear of the investor, the CEO, indeed most people. This was the thrust of the "beef stew without the beef " comment on the AEI conference. It is entirely plausible that some folks involved with the conference didn't appreciate the critique, but instead of defending the approach that was taken, decided it would be easier to respond by claiming your editor was making personal attacks. Which was a rather clever way to make an ad hominem attack of their own against your editor.

At RAND, the purpose of the in-house "murder board" - complete with researchers who truly enjoyed taking their colleagues arguments apart, and were asked to attend because of their sense of the jugular - was to avoid complacency and so make sure the obvious was not missed in the real world. Lawyers use the "mock trial," athletes "scrimmage," and soldiers conduct "live-fire" exercises for the same purpose. Your editor's experience from lessons learned/mistakes made in many aspects of our emerging school improvement industry - from policy analysis, to equity and grant investment, to firm strategy, to association management, to small businessman - is that most failures might well have been avoided if plans were subject to honest, open - even blistering, review beforehand, rather than being allowed to incubate in the comfortable atmosphere of groupthink.

Education policy is a contact sport. Ironically, getting it right is not an "academic exercise." A great deal is at stake - namely our childrens' future and our nation's destiny. And a lot of adults' livelihoods and sense of purpose is affected as well. Your editor takes all this no less seriously than he did national security in a prior life. Some may thinks that's a bit corny; too bad. If you have a fragile ego, and are in a position where your ideas may be called into question, edbizbuzz is not the first thing you will want to read sitting at the kitchen table with your morning coffee.  But if you can take the heat or, better still, enjoy or even welcome it,  and think the merits of any case made by this editor don’t stand up to scrutiny, you will have unimpeded access to our readers to say so. Period.