Non-Communication Association

Submitted by Mike Hogan on November 16, 2009 - 9:08pm.

You may be right that NCA's public relations efforts bite, but the real problem is this particular reporter, Mr. Jaschik. This is the same guy who incorrectly reported two years ago that NCA-Forum had invited Horowitz to the conference, then not only refused to issue a retraction but gave Horowitz a platform to complain about not being invited. Then, to make matters worse, he refused to cover the event that NCA-Forum actually did sponsor, a remarkable conversation between Michael Berube and Anne Neal. That, he said, wasn't "news."

This year, of course, Jaschik not only reported that the most significant panel at NCA was one on how to use PowerPoint, but also ignored the fact that NCA-F sponsored a Town Hall on the very issue he says the organization is afraid to address--the role of professional organizations in political controversies. NCA-F invited more than a hundred representatives of NCA's various interest groups and divisions to weigh in on the topic, but that, apparently, was not "news," even in a story on that topic. Instead, the reporter quoted two guys he probably met in the Irish pub, one with a personal axe to grind, the other apparently oblivious to the fact that there was a major "spotlight" event on this very topic. So, please, I know all you folks get off on lashing out at the powers-that-be at NCA. But this time, at least, the problem is not NCA but an incompetent and lazy reporter.

I agree . . .

Submitted by Jim Aune on November 18, 2009 - 11:40am.

but my comment--I know it was oblique--had more to do with an ongoing theme on this blog (how better to represent ourselves to the rest of academe and the general public) than with NCA's administration per se. I am surprised that no one in the national office has cultivated reporters with IHE and the Chronicle effectively.

Submitted by Adria on November 18, 2009 - 11:45am.

Jim: At the NCA Town Hall Forum, this is what our caucus was charged with. We discussed establishing some sort of PR division as one method for implementing more political responsibility within NCA, at the very least to voice multiple perspectives from members of NCA, if not representing an actual, official organizational stance on issues.

Stay tuned...

The Powers That Be

Submitted by Adria on November 17, 2009 - 8:52am.

I just wrote about the forum. I want to write more, but coming back from NCA is always hectic, so it's going to have to emerge slowly in the next few weeks.

I do want to chime in here and say that, at least from my perspective, this issue isn't about "the powers-that-be" at NCA, unless we mean each one of us. While there's no denying that there are some who have more power in organizations than others, I think the larger issue about the UNconvention and our scholarly organizations in general that we need to be focused on is about stakeholders (Amy Young, Dana and I are working on an article about this): are we being represented and permitted to engage the way we want to be? What can and should scholarship look like? What's the role of our work in the society in which we live? If we are arguing an objective truth, might it not be wise to consider whose truth we are advocating? As my caucus asked at the Forum, if we say that advocacy is inappropriate and better left to "experts", do we not undermine our teaching, our research and our own expertise? These questions are not targeted at one or two or even a legislative assembly alone. They are targeted at each stakeholder because each stakeholder has the power to do something.

So lashing out at the powers-that-be is more about lashing out at those who, like Frederick Douglass so beautifully notes, "profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will."

I hope future conversations demanding recognition for organizational members and their rights target one or two specific individuals less and call out the names of each one of us more.