>Second, the source continued, Cole appears to lack in collegiality,
>as his penchant for combative blog entries and personal spats
>with detractors might make him an unnerving fixture on Yale.

I'm not sure how to read this.

On the one hand, there certainly are lots of senior faculty members who are extremely put off by the whole "blogging" thing. The way a proper academic communicates is through peer-reviewed written work, or if one really inisists upon engaging with the day-to-day world, through respectable publications like the New York Review of Books, perhaps Foreign Affairs or Atlantic Monthly for the truly vulgar. I recall an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed by an anonymous department chair who noted that being an active blogger tended to count significantly against candidates, not because of content but because senior faculty found it such a bizarre hobby that they found it hard to relate to such candidates, perhaps worrying they'd also start break dancing in the hallways.

Even in the case of a scholar whose blog is quite measured, professional, and related to their research like Dan Drezer, many senior scholars would wonder what the point is -- why waste all that time blogging (for who? the public? but why?) when it could have been used to write another article.

That being said, it's also the case that "collegiality" is the classic way -- so classic it's a cliche -- to reject a generally qualified candidate for reasons that a hiring/tenure committee isn't willing to admit to openly. Under pressure from outside donors? Don't like his politics? Say the applicant isn't "collegial" enough. Hell, my own department has used that excuse.