Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 will take her political commentary to a public forum beginning May 23 with her first weekly blog posting on TPMCafe.com, a website created by Joshua Marshall '91.
"The new generation gets their news in new ways," Slaughter said. "By appearing on TPMCafe.com, there is a fair chance Princeton students will read me."
Wilson School professor John Ikenberry will join her in a blog on national security issues, going head to head with other policy experts.
The website will feature four blogs on political issues ranging from "Washington Insider Politics" to "Middle-Class America."
Slaughter said she is primarily interested in commenting on United Nations reforms, the future of multilateralism and America's War on Terror.
"We need a more nuanced strategy for fighting terror," she said, "Right now we are against terrorism and pro-democracy, but what does that mean?"
TPMCafe.com is an outgrowth of an existing weblog that Marshall has been running since 2000, called talkingpointsmemo.com, also devoted to political opinion writing.
Marshall used that site to post his own blogs on topics ranging from Social Security reform to the ethics of House Majority Leader Tom Delay.
He has recently commented on the Frist Filibuster on campus, praising student efforts and filibuster organizer Asheesh Siddique '07.
"It held Frist up to a deserved mockery," Marshall said.
A self-proclaimed centrist Democrat, Marshall does not intend to maintain a partisan balance on either of his sites.
"We're not trying to be a Republican-Democrat exchange," Marshall said. All six commentators on the national security blog are politically liberal and will debate over "progressive foreign policy".
When asked if the site's political bias would compromise her neutrality as a professor and academic, Slaughter said she was unconcerned.
"I have no problem publishing op-eds that make pretty clear where my politics are. This is like a rolling oped column, but with the great advantage of being more spontaneous," Slaughter said. "If I were a relentless partisan myself maybe it would be a problem."
Slaughter said her blog postings on TPMCafe.com will be an adjunct to print publications. She has received publication rights from Marshall for her blogs.
Despite the burgeoning success of weblogs since they became popular in the late 1990s, Marshall doubts they can replace print journalism.
"Political journalism is like an ecosystem with different niches—blogs have carved out a particular niche but they still could not exist without daily newspapers," Marshall said.
Nonetheless, he credits the informal political commentary that blogs provide with significantly changing the nature of political debate.
"Blogs represent a young person's movement against formalism," Marshall said. "It's the attitude that serious subjects can be addressed in serious ways without the stodgy style of an academic journal."
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