It was inevitable that once academic blogs started to get noticed by peers and colleagues in academia that many of the traditional political catfights associated with ivory towers and hallowed halls would emerge in the new media.

And so it is that conservative newsweekly Human Events salivates at the prospect of drawing attention to a critique of Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan and high-profile liberal Middle Eastern scholar, by Martin Kramer, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

What is most interesting about the spat is not the old story of left/right politics or the minutae of the conflict but the number of intersection points with the challenges of academic blogging. Follow the links in order to get an idea: 

So what does this little tale tell us about the state of academic blogging? Obviously much more research would be required if you were interested, and BlogScholar isn't, in understanding the truth behind the tit-for-tat of the two bloggers. But what is of interest is how this type of debate can serve to further distance blogging from other forms of academic publishing.  Powerful academics have often carried out very public disagreements through letters, journal publications or books but the unique challenges of this type of discussion through blogging are apparent. Memory is lost. Postings are changed, deleted or rewritten. Blogs are proving a valuable real-time resource for sharing of ideas and thoughts but can also be seen to serve a self-indulgent desire to frame the public discussion, influence readers, but offer little academic credibility. And isn't that the most common critique of blogs?