Via the Houston Chronicle: SMU lecturer takes heat for telling blog

Earlier this month, Elaine Liner, an adjunct professor who taught writing and ethics classes in SMU’s public relations department since 2024, revealed in an online publication that the blog was hers. Liner, who writes freelance theater reviews for a Dallas weekly, also let it be known that in late March she was told her contract to teach at the school would not be renewed.

Ironic that she taught ethics.

And there are reasons why blogging about work, especially in detail, is a bad idea.

I actually do question whether the blog had anything to do with her firing–since she was not renewed in March, but didn’t go public until May. Given that most people don’t know what a blog is, the odds that the departmental admin found her blog and figured out that it was hers, and then decided to fire her over it is pretty slim.

So says SMU:

School officials said Liner was not invited back for reasons other than the blog, although they would not discuss specifics. Rita Kirk, chairwoman of the public relations department, said she wanted to move the department toward hiring more full-time faculty. Liner, listed on a campus directory as a lecturer, is still working toward a master’s degree.

Indeed, for a school of SMU’s prominence to be hiring someone sans even a masters degree to teach is pretty bad. Especially given that in a population the size of the DFW Metroplex that finding qualified adjuncts can’t be all that hard.

Indeed, her public discussion of the blog seem far more aimed at self-promotion than of fighting the good fight for free speech.

Along those lines this concluding quote isn’t very endearing:

“I heard the two words every writer waits a lifetime to hear,” she said. “Movie deal.”