The Social Contract

"And if we are to glimpse a social contract leading neither to tyranny nor to chaos, then I prefer at first to consider it simply as a fraction of a larger delusion. And the Greeks had a word for it: Hubris." - Robert Ardrey, The Social Contract

Professor Hall, having dedicated his until-now quite objective if ultimately rather pointless blog to rather lighter affairs, has finally turned to testing the hypothesis of whether or not he possesses an eloquent back side.


The responses to his self-serving drivel have been far from complimentary. Barry Turner, Lecturer in Media Law and Public Administration at Nottingham Trent University, had this to say:

"The protection of sources is a fundamental ethic in journalism and it is not ‘dodgy’ for journalists to keep sources of information from those who would retaliate, usually in the most spiteful manner. Legitimate criticism is not harassment even if it is repeated over and over again."

Whilst 'J. Smith' - presumably an anonymous posting - went a little further:

"I conclude that the Vice-Chancellor’s article comes off as the work of a benevolent dictator and, in the end, as another assault against freedom of debate. People who are criticized or “attacked” online need to learn that the appropriate thing to do is simply to rebut the criticism. If the claims are not true, that should be easy enough to prove. Give a little credit to readers, too, who are generally intelligent enough to discriminate between pure “nastiness” and legitimate complaints."

All of this has proven a little academic, however (no pun intended). A fellow blogger by the name of Erin Baldwin - who we had never heard of before today's events - has revealed a rather interesting fact. After Hall's high-brow bullshit about the evils of "disaffected individuals with personal grievances who hide behind anonymous blogs and e-mail pseudonyms," it turns out that individuals within his own University are actually doing exactly the thing he is railing against others for.

This might yet be compounded by the on-going legal proceedings to trace the source of anonymous comments left on the Times Higher Education website - themselves libelous and authored by somebody with knowledge of the University of Salford's internal data records.

The Greeks did indeed have a word for it. The Americans have a phrase for what might follow - 'humble pie'.