Presidential Address 2004

Truth and Tolerance in the Groves of Academe

Marilyn J. Young

Almost from the moment I became Vice President-elect, I began thinking about this speech: what ‘pearls of wisdom’ would I leave with my colleagues at the conclusion of my service to the Association? The answer did not come easily, and pretty soon I was willing to settle, not for pearls, but for grains of sand.

What did I want to say? I reviewed the speeches of past presidents. In recent years, MaryEvelyn Collins talked about the markers in our lives; Trudy Hanson admonished us not to forget the K-12 teachers who labor in the vineyards, preparing the students who fill our college and university classrooms. Last year, Kate Hawkins cautioned us against the lure of corporate money as the solution to higher education’s fiscal woes. Each was an inspiring speech and a fine example of the craft that so often sets us apart. What contribution could I make?

I thought I might discuss civility and incivility in the academy, focusing on the ways we encourage elitism by discouraging or disparaging not only ideas we deem “incorrect” but whole research traditions. After all, it was on the campuses that so-called “political correctness” flourished. But any follower of CRTNET has seen numerous examples of this phenomenon, and then been heartened by the discussions about civility that followed. And it seems to me that the trend is against sharp dichotomies in research methodologies—though these wars will undoubtedly wax and wane as our discipline continues to find its own voice.

Encouraged by the growing emphasis on oral as well as written communication skills, I thought about revisiting communication’s role in the Liberal Arts, building on the SSCA mission statement: to promote the study, criticism, research, teaching, and application of the artistic, humanistic, and scientific principles of communication. The inclusive precision of that phrase captures what we are about. It envisions a diversity of approaches to increasing our understanding of the human communication phenomenon, and it articulates the strength of our discipline, bringing together the three approaches to examining the human condition: scientific, humanistic, and artistic. No other discipline can make this claim; and in that respect, if no other, communication is at the core of the academic enterprise. After all, when Aristotle stated that “rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic,” philosophy was not just the “Queen of the Sciences” – it WAS the sciences.

And so, it occurred to me to reprise Tom Frentz’s address—the one about the beast we fear to name, e.g., the sense among some of our colleagues that the discipline of communication has no core, no unique content, and therefore is not part of the intellectual mission of the university. This fear makes us vulnerable, sometimes marginalized, too often on the chopping block as institutions contract in times of financial exigency. Or, perhaps worse, relegated to a service department that teaches public speaking. This has created in some a sense of inferiority and a defensive posture that risks nourishing a self-fulfilling prophecy. This issue periodically surfaces in odd ways, such as a CRTNET discussion of the spelling of communication: is there an “S”? How can a discipline that does not even know how its name is spelled—much less agree on what it studies or how—truly be a discipline at all? Perhaps this is what is behind the periodic purges that departments experience. Is this part of a search for academic legitimacy—for acknowledgement by the traditional disciplines of the Arts and Sciences? But, I realized, I would be “preaching to the choir,” and so abandoned that idea as well.

So I thought back over my career, which will be coming to a close in 363 days, and tried to focus on the issues that have been most important to me. Teaching, certainly; scholarship, absolutely. And then I saw the thread that not only wove its way through my own life as a professor, but, I think, brings together some of these other concerns and perhaps provides a practical way to address them. Service. Service to the university, service to the profession. Service as engagement, as involvement. It is part of the triumvirate of the faculty member’s responsibilities: teaching, research, and service. But the order of that trinity all too often becomes the reality. Service—which is engagement in shared governance–becomes the afterthought, or as one Professor stated recently, it is something that you do after you have been promoted to Full. Or perhaps it is something that one does with the time one has left over. One department at my university assigns every faculty member a 50% teaching load and a 50% research load, and service comes out of your own time. Perhaps that is as it should be, but in this time of trying to do more with less, one’s own time shrinks into insignificance. The American Association of University Professors reported in 1994 that faculty worked 48-52 hours per week; in more recent years, the university faculty in the State University system of Florida reported that they worked 55-60 hours per week. According to the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, published by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, full-time faculty members work about fifty-five hours a week, and part-time faculty work nearly forty. That figure includes paid and unpaid hours completed on and off campus. The report also notes that faculty at research institutions spent more than half their time teaching. Unfortunately, as one associate dean noted, when faculty report such long hours, those become the minimum rather than the norm.

In these circumstances, what becomes of the concept of service, especially as it is manifested in shared governance? At a meeting I attended recently, one senior faculty member described what we do as “the best job in the world.” I could not agree more. But one reason why it is the best job is the role faculty have played in the development of the university and its curriculum and in the creation of professional associations. The “Community of Scholars” –both medieval and modern–depends on the engagement of faculty outside the classroom and the laboratory. What will the Post-Modern Community of Scholars look like? Will it be a community at all?

Already we can see erosion of the concept of shared governance. Last year, Kate Hawkins addressed the perils of the corporatization of higher education; another consequence of that trend is the perception that faculty governance—along with faculty rights—are irrelevant and dispensable. Joan Wallach, chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, delivered the first annual Neil Rappoport lecture on Academic Freedom and Shared Governance in 2001. In that speech, she noted that,

University of Georgia

President Jimmy Cater told a story when giving the 1997 commencement address at Duke University that I would like to share with you. I have taken some creative liberties with it, but you’ll still get his point.

A man who had been a longtime faculty member in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia passed away and was suddenly whisked to the gates of heaven where he was met by St. Peter. St. Peter demanded, “name” and the man replied “Jerry Hale.” St. Peter asked “Why are you here?” The man replied “I was a husband, a father, and a decent college professor. I tried to be a good person. I am hoping to get in.”

St. Peter asked “What did you ever do for others?” The man said, “Well think of my work! Over the course of my career I molded the minds of thousands of students.” An angel hovering nearby was trying hard to keep from laughing. St. Peter said “Uh, yeah, about that . . . around here, we’ve all seen you lecture. Have you done anything more tangible to help others?”

Professor Hale thought for a while and said, “Well my wife and I wrote a $50 check to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Oh yeah, there was also the time when a fire damaged a neighbor’s home. I dug around in the garage and found some clothing and a chair we gave to them. That stuff had to be worth at least $50.”

St. Peter turned to the angel and said, “go down to earth and check out his story.” The angel left and returned a short time later. He told St Peter “Everything he said is true. What shall we do with him?” St. Peter said “Give him back his $100 and tell him to go to hell!”

I am a Presbyterian by marriage and hope those of you with Judeo Christian religious beliefs will forgive a bit of theological license with the concepts of grace versus works and salvation, and that those of you with very different belief systems will look beyond the unique metaphysical elements of the story and see it for what it is: A call to action in a world desperately in need of social servants and social justice.

What I love most about my chosen field of study is that communication, more than any other academic, intellectual, or applied pursuit, has the ability to improve the human condition. I have reached a point in my career where simply imparting information to young people, and then hoping that they will use what they have learned to benefit the communities in which they live, is not enough to sustain or satisfy me. I have come to believe that the privilege of teaching young people carries with it the added responsibility of encouraging them to engage in uncommon citizenship. This afternoon I want to exhort you to join me in that pursuit by making a for greater emphasis on service learning.

Our institutions of higher learning, our region, and our nation are facing a financial crisis that is the most difficult since the Great Depression. The National unemployment rate is 8.5%. The number of people unemployed in the United States of America is greater than the populations of Georgia and South Carolina combined. Seven states in our region — Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee — are currently among the nation’s top 15 states in rates of unemployment.

Data related to homelessness are lagged by a year, but one year ago when the economy was in better shape than it is now, 3.5 million Americans, 1% of the total population and 10% of the population living below the poverty level, experienced homelessness. 44% of the homeless population is families with children. Most families in the United States are two or maybe three missed paychecks away from being homeless.

According to UNICEF of all the nations in the world, only Mexico has a greater proportion of its children living in poverty than the United States. Moreover, poverty in this country is on the increase.

So there is little doubt that our communities are in need of our energies and our expertise. Learn and Serve America describes service learning as “a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.” The field of communication is uniquely positioned to teach theory and practice in ways that integrate meaningful community service, make for more consequential learning experiences, and strengthen communities in this time of great need. Most importantly, every area of our field can adapt its curriculum to include service learning.

Let me give you some diverse examples from my own experiences, those of my colleagues at the University of Georgia, and from other communication scholars that shared their visions and practices with us in Savannah and here in Norfolk.

My colleague Tina Harris teaches courses in Interracial and African American Communication. Her students develop workshops on communication and diversity and have successfully taken them into the community. Her students have put perspective taking and interracial communication skills to work for Community Connections, an organization that assists Athens residents in finding needed social services and in placing volunteers with a variety of social service organizations.

My colleague Ed Panetta teaches courses in argumentation and debate. He and students from his classes have begun a debate program at the Lee State Prison, a medium security facility in Leesburg Georgia. Prison officials view the program as training in alternative dispute resolution and believe it has the potential to reduce violence and recidivism in the lives of participating inmates.

My colleague Don Rubin, teaches intercultural communication. He and his students have helped a burgeoning population of federally placed, youthful political refugees, assimilate into American life often in openly hostile communities. His students have tutored young refugees, and helped them with English language skills, so that they may succeed in school and heighten the chance for academic success and a better life in a new country.

Students in small group communication courses in my department have applied concepts related to group communication and dynamics while assisting the Northeast Georgia Food Bank, a local senior center, the Athens Area Homeless Shelter, Special Olympics, the Department of Family and Children’s Services, and local soup kitchens.

Last year at the Savannah conference, I was reminded of the role performance studies scholars and students played in enriching the lives of Arizona seniors. The Desert Readers performed for us and discussed how they took readers theater productions to senior centers in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Deanna Sellnow and Dick Conville shared with us how they incorporated service learning into courses in public speaking and interpersonal communication, respectively. Yesterday I attended a session featuring Joy Hart and Khandi Walker. They offer students an interdisciplinary, study abroad, service learning course related to health communication in Belize.

My former colleague Kevin DeLuca included service learning in his environmental communication class. A central premise in Kevin’s environmental communication class was the notion that visual images of, and experiences with the environment, influence how we communicate regarding the environment and interact with it. For years his classes maintained a community garden and helped maintain green space around Athens. Consumer advocates indicate that community gardens can save families significant amounts of money while improving their nutrition.

Kevin also taught classes on the rhetoric of social movements. If you are a Department Chair, Head, Assistant Dean, Associate Dean, or Dean, or if you have served in any of these roles, will you please raise your hands? His assignment to students in the rhetoric of social movements was one that would have kept Chairs, Heads, and Deans awake at night. It was simply to “create a social movement.” The occasional phone call I had to make to the University’s Office of Legal Affairs, for example to see if we were subject to litigation for mass produced posters showing consumers in gas masks to protect themselves from the ingredients of a popular Atlanta based soft drink, were more than offset by the benefits of successful student initiated projects. One such campaign included a giant igloo built out of plastic water bottles to educate the community about how few plastic bottles are recycled. The area around the igloo included receptacles where plastic bottles were deposited for recycling. Americans drink an average of 167 bottles of water annually and recycle only 23% of them. Thirty eight billion water bottles end up in landfills every year. Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 a gallon and 90% of the cost is in the manufacturing and labeling of the bottle.

Finally, students in a mass communication classes, interpersonal communication classes, and nonverbal communication classes, took up the Darius Goes West cause that I promoted at last year’s conference. They hosted screenings and other events related to the award winning documentary film and, in the process raised money for Duchene Muscular Dystrophy research.

About a month ago I received an email from a friend who is a member of SSCA and one of its Past Presidents. The email inquired about the content of my Presidential Address. When I said it would have a service learning theme, I got a simple two word response: “too safe.”

The National Clearinghouse for Learn and Serve America surveyed 349 colleges and universities. They found that only 12.2% of faculty members included service learning in their courses. When 87.8% of university faculty members eschew service learning it seems to me the safe thing would be to advocate business as usual. Instead, I want to advocate the unusual: greater community involvement in the learning process.

Research shows that there are four major impediments to wider use of service learning. They are a lack of rewards for faculty participation, a lack of resources to offset costs, the feeling that the service offered is insignificant, and the perception that service learning is not a good fit for a particular course or set of courses.

The late George Carlin did a monologue he called “Free Floating Hostility.” It was a rant about 20 things he detested. I must confess that after 9 years as a Department Head I have my own monologue of Academic Free Floating Hostility. I am pleased to say that my own colleagues rarely push these hot buttons for me, but university faculty members in general are pushing them with greater and greater frequency. One of the hot buttons is the notion that we should only be doing things for which we are tangibly (which is code for financially) rewarded. What ever became of the notion of doing something because it was the right thing to do? What ever became of a norm of social responsibility? To my colleagues in the audience that are Chairs, Heads, or Central Administrators I urge you to build rewards for service learning into your department’s, college’s, or university’s merit pay policies. Because some day I am confident there will be pay raises again. To every professor, and graduate teaching assistant, I urge you to engage in service learning regardless of the financial rewards. Do it because your students, your community, your state, and your country need you to do it.

If you forgo service learning because you think service learning requires personal or departmental resources I say to you that the infrastructure is in place in your communities for useful service learning opportunities. All it will require is your creativity and your time. All of our communities have non-profit social service organizations, food banks, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, senior centers, refugee populations, community green spaces, plastic bottles, or jails waiting for the help that we can bring.

If you are thinking to yourself, “I cannot do anything significant.” I would remind you of one of my favorite quotes. It is attributed to Helen Keller: “I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” My advice is to start where you are and to do what you can.

If you believe your classes are not amenable to service learning, I refer you to my previous list of courses that have successfully incorporated service learning. Service learning can be included in courses from every area of the field from argumentation to health communication, from rhetoric to public relations, from interpersonal communication to performance studies, from mass communication to intercultural communication, from public speaking to organizational communication, and beyond.

I hope when my life is over somebody doesn’t slip me a C note and tell me to go to hell because I haven’t done enough to strengthen my community. With my luck hell wouldn’t be a fiery pit. It would be personalized and I’d spend eternity in a faculty meeting or listening to students ask if “that stuff is going to be on the test.” I am committed to accomplishing small tasks, service learning projects, as if they were great and noble. I am committed to providing my students rich opportunities for learning and reflecting in a context with real consequences, so as to encourage civic engagement and to create stronger communities. Our students, our communities, our states, and our country need that commitment from all of us.

My goal is that one year from now SSCA members will have doubled the number of classes that include service learning, and that two years from now that quantity will have doubled again. I am giving you all an assignment for the next year. It is to create a social movement! And make the social movement a new service learning class.

The founders of the AAUP argued that membership in disciplinary communities (which maintain standards) protects the individual scholar from interference by “political or ecclesiastical authority, or from the administrative officials of the institution in which he is employed.” They contrasted trained and qualified scholars with “incompetent outside authorities” and insisted that the powers of governing boards and administrators be limited to their own areas of expertise—finance, management, and general administration. The second point remains critical today: it is this very expertise that protects and legitimates critical scholarship and that enables faculty to distinguish between good and bad scholarship, to decide when the boundaries of reasonable thought and good professional practice have been breached. The faculty’s role in governance, in other words, is the foundation for academic freedom.

Writing in the January 4, 1998, issue of the New York Times, James Shapiro, a college professor, put it this way:

The danger today is that the administrations that now set policy at most universities are increasingly tempted to act as if they are running a business—letting profit motives drive educational policy. In such a climate, revenue-generating programs and inexpensive part-time professors are winning out over a committed faculty, good libraries, and small classes. American universities have achieved their international prominence precisely because they have, until now, recognized the value of free inquiry, open expression, and discovery that is driven not by financial gain but by broader social ends. The crisis on today’s campus is not, as the news media would have it, about the culture wars but about the almost impossible choices that will have to be made if universities are to lead, not merely imitate, a rapidly changing society.

These ideas are not new. We have been concerned about the trends reflected in these statements for some time now. But I submit to you that if we are to protect both our discipline and our profession, to ensure that those who follow us into the “groves of academe” will also have “the best job in the world,” we must become and we must remain engaged in the governance of our institutions and our profession. If we succumb, if we just teach our classes and retreat into our studies, oblivious to what is happening around us, we may not recognize the academy we leave to those who are studying with us today. Shared governance only works if we make it work.

There are practical consequences of involvement. Looking back to my earlier comments about the role of communication in the academy, I would suggest to you that often the questions about our discipline arise out of ignorance of what it is that we do. By become engaged, involved in the governance of our institutions, we have the opportunity to educate our colleagues. This is a battle that has to be fought and won one institution at a time; sometimes it is easy, sometimes it seems nearly impossible, but visibility and understanding go a long way toward creating legitimacy.

And, of course, professional associations are the natural off-spring of shared governance and the Community of Scholars. These Associations add to our intellectual strength and promote scholarly growth; from a practical perspective, they can also provide governance experience, and they can serve as a resource for professional standards. While a university is many things and one of the most important of those is its faculty, a professional association such as SSCA is, literally, nothing without its membership. If we do not engage, if we are not involved, professional associations will simply cease to exist. Where then will be the Community of Scholars?

In his play, A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt included a wonderful scene between Sir Thomas Moore and his son-in-law, Roper, over the fate of Richard Rich, who was a spy for the King and ultimately Moore’s betrayer. Roper wanted Moore to arrest Rich, for it was obvious he meant trouble. Moore refused, because to that point Rich had done nothing wrong. “It’s the law,” Moore says, “and if it were the devil himself, the law would protect him.” Roper, feeling intense loyalty to his father-in-law, argued that he would cut down all the laws in England to get at the devil. Moore then observes, “and when the devil turns round on you, where will you hide, all the laws being flat?” So, paraphrasing Bolt’s Moore, if we fail to engage, if we abdicate our responsibilities toward shared governance, where will we take shelter when the grove of academe lies flat?

Now, I am not naïve; I realize that the pressures are great, particularly on younger faculty, and that all of us need to husband our time carefully. Even the AAUP recognizes that heavy service responsibilities can negatively impact performance in teaching and research. And I know that academic service is often devalued by those who evaluate us; but that is exactly the point. If we take that same view, they win. I also know that it is possible to make a difference.

In 1996-1997, I had the privilege of chairing the Advisory Council of Faculty Senates, an association of SUS Senate Presidents and vice presidents. At that time, the State University System of Florida was governed by the legislature through a Board of Regents. The ACFS developed a proposal to create a faculty regent—a kind of parallel to the student regent. Because of the structure of the Board and the process for adding seats, that idea did not become policy, but the group persevered. In 2000, the Florida Legislature abolished the Board of Regents and created in its place individual Boards of Trustees at each of the universities. Those trustees are appointed by the governor; they consist of politicians, community representatives, and, in some cases, former university presidents. Faculty Senates at all 10 universities worked overtime to establish collegial relationships with their Boards of Trustees, with varying degrees of success. But, slowly, at least some of those Boards came to realize that faculty could be helpful and were not the roadblocks to change that they had envisioned. Meanwhile, Senator Bob Graham was distressed by the demise of the Board of Regents, and what that represented, and came out against the change, eventually creating what came to be known as the “Graham Amendment” [Florida has provision for citizen initiatives to amend the state constitution]. Graham chose a former Regent from Orlando as the person to spearhead the campaign to get the amendment on the ballot; it so happened that the chair of the ACFS that year was from the University of Central Florida in Orlando; they got together and the amendment that emerged included 2 key provisions: the president of the faculty senate at each university would hold a seat—with voice and vote—on the Board of Trustees for that university; and, the chair of the statewide ACFS would sit as a full member of the Board of Governors [an oversight board which the amendment created]. To further oversimplify a story that is far more complicated than I can recount here, the group collected the requisite number of signatures to put the amendment on the ballot and it passed in November 2002, becoming part of the Florida Constitution in January 2003. Today, the president of the Faculty Senate sits as a full member of each Board of Trustees and the chair of the Advisory Council of Faculty Senates sits on the Board of Governors. As a result of the tireless work of dedicated faculty, we have a voice at the table.

But of course, it doesn’t end there. Thomas Jefferson told us that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the same is true if we are to preserve the quality of academic life that drew us into the academy in the first place. Many of my current and former students are here today [at least they are at this convention, if not in this room]. I hope that when they join the Community of Scholars the groves of academe will be thick with the trees that have sheltered and nurtured us and that they, too, will enjoy the “best job in the world.”

And I hope these grains of sand I have shared with you today will be the irritant that will move you to become engaged in the governance of your institution and your profession—and thereby “make it so.”