Is it possible to write a policy for academic blogging that respects a university’s mission but doesn’t amount to censorship? The vice-president for academic affairs asked me to draft a policy for student bloggers. Since we are a Catholic institution, the administrator’s off-the-top-of-her-head suggestions included suggestions like “no foul language” and “no links to porn”. Since it’s possible that an anonymous commenter (or spammer) might leave offensive content on a site, or the contents of a page linked to by a blogger might change, and since a student might actually want to research the usage of a curse word or do a feminist study of pornography, I don’t think a list of “thou shalt nots” is going to help. (We’ve already had one of those lists for thousands of years, and so far it hasn’t solved all of our proglems.) —Dennis G. Jerz —Examples/Discussion on Academic Blogging Policies? (KairosNews)