Young, Battaglia, & Cloud (2010) (UN)Disciplining the Scholar Activist - Policing the Boundaries of Political Engagement

7/24/2019 Young, Battaglia, & Cloud (2010) (UN)Disciplining the Scholar Activist - Policing the Boundaries of Political Engage

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(UN)Disciplining the Scholar Activist:Policing the Boundaries of PoliticalEngagement

Anna M. Young, Adria Battaglia, & Dana L. Cloud

Sixteen years ago, Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter argued in the

Quarterly Journal of Speech that disciplinary territoriality grants legitimacy to

specialists while denying it to out-of-the-mainstream scholars who challenge

disciplinary norms.1 Demonstrating how the practices of writing, publication, and

reward defining what counts as scholarly discourse systematically disadvantage

women, Disciplining the Feminine called on scholars to scrutinize and evaluate

their own rules for engagement and practice.2

Political activism among scholars likewise calls into question unspoken collective

rules, often meeting with a hostile response not unlike those lobbed at womenscholars. Despite a rich and storied tradition of public intellectualism in our field, we

are most rewarded for attending annual conferences to compare notes . . .

constitut[ing our] own universe.3 As activists, we understand engagement to

entail working toward positive social change in a sometimes uncivil, aggressive

manner. As scholars, however, our enthusiasm for engagement is often policed by our

affiliate institutions via various forms of depoliticization and/or apoliticization inside

the academy. Put differently: Agency as publicly engaged scholars becomes subject

to depoliticizing norms when we transgress the border between scholarship and

politics. So, we might ask: What are these norms? How do communication scholars

negotiate this boundary and with what consequences? What do these consequences

reveal about the norms and values of scholarly associations, particularly our own?

Here, we argue that policing the border between activism and scholarship impedes

most significantly the activist scholar who understands engagement as unavoidably

and inherently political, who recognizes objectivity and apoliticization as institutional

smokescreen. Honoring the interdisciplinary history of communication studies, we

Anna M. Young is Assistant Professor in the School of Arts and Communication at Pacific Lutheran University.

Adria Battaglia is Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Illinois College.

Dana L. Cloud is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas atAustin. Correspondence to: Anna M. Young, Ingram 127, School of Arts and Communication, Pacific Lutheran

University, Tacoma, WA 98447, USA. Email: [email protected].

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 96, No. 4, November 2010, pp. 427435


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also argue that boundary policing runs contrary to the ethical commitments of the

rhetorical tradition. In support of these claims, we examine the rhetorical framing of

the 2008 controversy over the National Communication Associations (NCAs)

patronage of the San Diego Grand Hyatt, owned by anti-labor and anti-gay magnate

Doug Manchester.4 Then, we place the efforts of those who chose to boycott theconvention held in the Grand Hyatt in the broader context of the severing of

communication scholarship from its historical commitment to public engagement.

Finally, we issue an invitation to think with us about the potential relationships

between activism and scholarship.

Victimage, Dialogic Free Speech, and Civility in the 2008 Controversy

Institutional responses to activist scholars during the 2008 convention of the National

Communication Association illustrate the rhetoric of boundary policing. Before theconvention, NCA members learned that a grassroots movement of local

Californians*LGBTQ groups and the labor union UNITE HERE*had organized

to boycott the Manchester Grand Hyatt on the grounds of exploitative and

discriminatory practices at the hotel. Responding both to the working conditions

of hotel employees and to Manchesters $125,000 contribution to the passage of

Californias Proposition 8 (against marriage equality for gays and lesbians), many

NCA members asked the leaders of the association to relocate the meeting. The

association refused on economic grounds.

Several hundred NCA members then organized an alternate convention nearby,

dubbedthe UNconvention(playing on the ironic theme of the official conference,unCONVENTIONal!). NCAs e-newsletter CRTNET, its legislative assembly, and

the hallways of departments across the country became sites of vigorous debate as

members argued for reform inside the association and agitation outside of it.

Meanwhile, other NCA members, along with NCA leaders, became increasingly,

publicly incensed. A rhetorical analysis of CRTNET postings, Spectra, and personal

e-mails aimed at activist participants in the UNconvention toward the end of 2008

through the present day reveals how NCA leaders engaged in conservative victimage,

cast activist academics as powerful and caustic aggressors, posited an abstract and

dialogic norm of free expression, and appealed to civility in ways that delimited thescholarly boundaries of appropriate inquiry and action. In short, these rhetorical

moves demonized the political engagement of academic scholars.

A Rhetoric of Victimage

Victimage is perhaps the most common trope in political discourse. Some may

remark that this essay engages in a rhetoric of victimage, and certainly, this trope is

not the province of a single ideology, group, or partisan leaning. Insofar as political

engagement in scholarship questions the hegemony of the established institutions

and challenges the assumed neutrality of power, however, it is important to show howNCAs response to the activism of its members reflects a larger, conservative

428 A. M. Younget al.


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cultural discourse, and one that is historically posed against political activism as a

form of engagement.

While the Right often accuses the Left of playing the victim, many self-professed

conservatives also charge liberals, progressives, and radicals with victimizing them,

projecting their own investment in censure and exclusion onto those demandinggreater openness and inclusion. Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez

wonders, [I]f conservatives hate victimhood so much, why then . . . [do

conservatives] encourage [their] base to feel so aggrieved, especially at the hands of

those snottyelites?5 Such an opportunistic logic describes not only the doublespeak

of pundits like David Horowitz (censoring critique in the name of academic

freedom), but also the surprisingly defensive posture adopted by the 2008 leadership

of NCA in response to activist members. Against those standing up for workers and

LGBTQ persons, these leaders claimed to be the victims of a belligerent faction of the

membership.The seemingly official, tangled stance of NCA is characteristic of the column series

it published in its newsletter Spectra, Voices from the Margins.6 The first column

featured self-described conservative scholar Richard Vatz on the challenges of being a

white, heterosexual, and tenured Republican male. Vatzs grievance was followed by

several meaningful columns from the real, rather than imaginary, margins, tackling

such topics as condescension toward community college faculty and the concerns of

members with mobility impairments. In her response denying a request to represent

the labor/LGBTQ movements as voices from the margins, former NCA President

Betsy Bach explained, The intent of the column is to hear voices from the

margins. . . .

I am looking for personal accounts from people who feel margin-alized. 7 Defining the margins as a series of aggrieved, tokenized individuals (rather

than oppressed collectives), Bach pitted the interests of activist scholars against those

of good-faith NCA members facing discrimination.8

In her final column, Engage All Voices, Bach explicitly drew a line between

scholarship and activism with victimage. Noting that she recognized that people

involved in social movements often engage in interactions that are painful for those

they are trying to change,Bach tellingly added, at what cost?9 In particular, she

argued that UNconventioners muted the voices of others, and suggested that it cost

too much to recognize the legitimacy of political advocacy. To liberals seeking coverfor lapses in solidarity with those actually oppressed, the logic is quite compelling:

Blame real victims while casting oneself as martyr.10

Free Speech as Discipline

The second kind of boundary policing that separates scholarship from activism

within communication associations is the paradoxical embrace of a discourse of

freedom, particularly the freedom of expression.11 For example, NCAs official code

of communication ethics upholds commitments to free speech and rational

deliberation.12 Valorizing dialogism, however, becomes conspicuously ideologicalwhen it ignores real antagonism and discourages necessary public confrontation. At a

(UN)Disciplining the Scholar Activist 429


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broad, cultural level, the free speech contract appears politically neutral; within the

field of communication, this contract limits the strongest sense of freedom to the

boundaries of the practices of communication. Our field has been uncomfortable

with what Franklyn S. Haiman describes as protests exceed[ing] the bounds of

rational discourse, which teachers of rhetoric value so highly and are dedicated to

promote.13 Under a rhetoric of border patrol, dissent is construed as a coercive

threat rather than a democratic intervention.

In principle, NCA values all voices and all communicative acts. In reality, it

encourages a kind of communication that falls within the lines, that can pass as

apolitical, and that enables scholars to socially and politically isolate themselves from

the activism of the street. The willful denial of antagonism in the context of

differential power relations was clear in former NCA Executive Director Roger

Smitters defense of the decision to remain at the Manchester: It was a matter offree

speech that Manchester had the right to do what he wished with his money.14

Smitter also suggested that NCA should respect all views and actions equally, as

if the effects of such expressions were limited to the symbolic domain. He

wrote, Those . . . occupying leadership positions in NCA remain committed to the

principles of debate, discussion and dialogue.15 NCA responded to member concern

byinviting Mr. Manchester. . .to attend the spotlight panels.16 Working in tandem

with the trope of victimage, this rhetoric of universal free expression equates money

with speech, and thereby casts UNconvention organizers as enemies of open debate.

The result was a paradox: appealing to a commitment to free expression as a means to

neutralize the articulation ofpolitics as scholarly engagement.17

Civility as Discipline

Finally, the norms of civility and decorum also operate as border patrols, disciplining

the activist-scholar into forms of engagement that would only reinforce, rather than

reform, the status quo.18 Indeed, resistance to change is reflected in appeals to civility,

for it assumes that conflicts are matters of disagreement always resolvable in polite

talk.19 For example, referencing a contentious meeting of the associations governing

body in 2009, Bach criticized the conflict as uncivil:

[O]ne of the best ways that we can practice what we preach is byengaging in civildiscourse. This is central to our continued future success as a discipline. I oftenwonder what those outside of our discipline would think if they walked by aLegislative Assembly meeting or read CRTnet [sic] regularly. We are at times lessthan civil with each other. A perfect example is provided in the events thatsurrounded last years dissention [sic] over the convention location at theManchester Hyatt. I wonder how civil some of the emails flying back and forthwould be perceived by those unfamiliar with either the situation or the credos ofour association.20

This passage enacts the paradoxical position that ideal communication is cotermi-nous with self-policing speech. Practicing what we preach*an ideal wholly



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embraced by participants in the UNconvention*amounts to censoring in the name

of propriety.

Only an organization that hopes to deny its discrepancies of voice and power could

reject with such outrage stakeholders challenge to expandrather than constrict the

voices of its members alongside the voices of workers and LGBTQ communities.Making the argument for greater attention to the redress of inequality shows up the

organization to be less than neutral, and because the organization is devoted to the

study of communication, the great neutralizer among our god terms, antagonistic

communication appears on its face to be uncivil. We suspect that this conundrum

explains the vitriolic and defensive response among even well-meaning believers in

the virtues of democratic communication against its most engaged practitioners.

With the invocation of civility, calls for change are muted in favor of the status quo.

This drive toward equilibrium and the status quo, this desire to avoid the true

engagement of social transformation and change, is not reducible to the innerworkings of NCA, of course, especially in the context of recent cross-disciplinary

witch hunts against activist scholars in the wider academy.21 No academic

organization exists in a vacuum, but rather, all are party to larger cultural struggles *

and histories. During the red scare, it was professional suicide to be public about

politics. Now, this once-necessary caution has become a disabling norm warranting

the discipline of critical scholars like Cornel West, who left Harvard after being

scolded that his work creating rap CDs and starring in the Matrixseries was not a

legitimate part of his academic scholarship and a waste of his professional time, or

Robert Jensen, publicly rebuked for an antiwar column as a fountain of undilutedfoolishnessby then-University of Texas president Larry R. Faulkner.22 One of the

authors of this essay received an email exhorting her to refrain from political

argument about NCAs 2010 convention (again sited at a boycotted hotel) on

CRTNET. Perversely, the scholar signed his email, Its a great day to communicate!

The message isPlease keep your politics to yourself and out of the business of NCA.

If scholars want to win favor, publish, earn acceptances to conferences, and receive

tenure or promotion, they must bend to the institutional demand to be apolitical

and objective,a standard that is both impossible and ridiculous.

The Activist Scholar: A Rhetorical Model

Scholar activists regard creative, positive social change as their major goal. In this

brief essay, we have identified what we understand as the three ways in which a border

is created between scholarship and politics so as to make it difficult to be a scholar

activist. A rhetoric of victimage, an abstract and dialogic conception of free

expression, and appeals to civility all limit activism to traditional, accepted modalities

of academic scholarship like pedagogy and publication while quashing even the idea

of political activism as appropriateto the life of the mind. We want to conclude

with a number of suggestions for how best to combat and resist the unnecessary andunproductive disciplining of such boundaries.



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At the outset, we took it as axiomatic that engagement must entail working for

social change for the scholar who sees herself as an activist. Here, we suggest that

whether one likes it or not, an activist position is inherent to all forms of public

engagement. From classical rhetoric to Gramscian cultural studies, pragmatist

philosophy, and public sphere theory, the rhetorical tradition has celebrated criticalpublic engagement as the preeminent task of the intellectual. Ekaterina V. Haskins

discovers this principle at work in Isocrates, whose challenge to Aristotle lay in the

refusal to separate theory and practice.23 On this view, the teaching and practice of

rhetoric are performatively grounded and socially productive forms of human

agency; any separation among theory, pedagogy, and public practice is artificial.

Public sphere scholar G. Thomas Goodnight observed, [T]he interests of the

public realm*whether represented in an appropriate way or not*extend the stakes

of argument beyond private needs and the needs of special communities to the

interests of the entire community.

24

Pragmatist John Dewey likewise believed thatscholars should shape reality toward positive social goals, not stand aside in self-

righteous isolation.25 Antonio Gramsci argued, The mode of being of the new

intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence but in active participation in practical

life, as constructor, organizer, [and] permanent persuader. 26 In contrast to

traditional, hyper-specialized, technical intellectuals, Gramsci argued, the engaged

scholars role is to mediate the relationship between intellectual knowledge and

practical activity in their conjoint emergence.27 More recently, Michael Eric Dyson

has argued that academics must look beyond a comfortable career, a safe niche

behind academes protective walls, and a serene existence removed from cultural and

political battles that shape the nations fate.28 In other words, all scholars arepolitical, since even an apoliticalstance is a stance in favor of the status quo.29

To be sure, all scholarship works for change, be it for understanding or social good.

In this spirit, we entreat our colleagues to work with rather than against us in the

project of extend[ing] the stakes of argument . . . to the interests of the entire

community.30 Here we offer a partial list of principles to inform the ongoing

conversation about the relevance of activism in, about, and out of our disciplinary

communities.

1. Talk among yourselves. We respect both the need and the desire to in traditionaldomains, but we also must make the case for the relevance and importance of

publishing in fora that reach other audiences. Winning credibility for such efforts

requires ongoing research about the relationships between scholarship and

activism.31

2. Think style. Russell Jacoby encourages critical intellectuals to write and speakto

and for the educated public*surrender[ing] the vernacularof specificity for a

more publicstyle.32

3. Space out. The great success of the UNconvention in San Diego was that we acted

and interacted in public space with constituencies outside of NCA that are

invested in specific issues in a particular geography. We occupiedspaceonlineand on camera. One of the unfortunate outcomes of campus life is the perception



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that the campus is life. We must stop physically isolating ourselves from the

broader publics to which we belong because it reifies an antagonistic relationship

between scholars and citizens outside the boundaries of the campus.

4. Infiltrate institutions. One of the ideas advanced at the UNconvention roundtable

in Chicago in 2009 was to get elected to positions of power in our homeinstitutions and within NCA in order to promote scholar-activist goals.

5. Be active. Communication studies is a discipline founded in the public interest,

and our skills are central to political engagement and social change. As Aristotle

reminds us in his Politics, Man [sic] is by nature a political animal(1253a1).

6. Pull together. Solidarity is sometimes elusive when the interests of subsections of

a larger community (workers, LGBTQ members, members with disabilities) are at

odds. Even so, we must engage in sustained, respectful conversation on the basis

of shared criteria to decide whose interests should have priority, and when.

7. Reframe politics as our job description. What we do and say has*

or shouldhave*meaning and consequences beyond our hallowed halls. The artificial

constructs of neutrality deny the broader meaningfulness of our work and our

ethical obligation to be public and political.33

Across the sweep of modern history, students and scholars have been vital to

grassroots movements, from the Free Speech Movement and the struggles for civil

rights in the 1960s, to the antiwar demonstrations of the 1970s, to the marches

against South African apartheid in the 1980s, and todays movements for social

justice. With Haiman, we recognize that we will not attain those conditions by

closing our eyes to the realities of the world about us and condemning out of handthe contemporary rhetoric of the streets.34 The productive travesty of the

UNconvention*however faithful it was to the associations stated embrace of

controversy*was that it revealed our collective involvement in relations of and

struggles over power. Neither the language of victimage, the appeal to civility, nor the

advocacy of a paper freedom can undo that revelation. We seek to dismantle the

artificial boundary separating our scholarly community from the exigencies of an

unjust world. We invite you to join us.

Notes

[1] Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter, Disciplining the Feminine,Quarterly

Journal of Speech80 (1994): 402.

[2] Blair, Brown, and Baxter, Disciplining the Feminine,402.

[3] Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York:

Basic Books, 1987), 7.

[4] We mention the discourse of particular individuals not to single them out as anenemy,but

to recognize their official and structured roles as defenders of the norms of the discipline. We

are all as much spoken by the narratives and ideals that govern us; our target is that set of

narratives and ideals, not individual leaders or members.

[5] Gregory Rodriguez, The GOP as Victim,Los Angeles Times, September 15, 2008.[6] Betsy Bach, Engage All Voices,Spectra, December 2009, 3.



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[7] Betsy Bach, email message to Adria Battaglia, February 14, 2009 (emphasis added).

[8] We stand unequivocally with community college professors and persons with mobility

impairments, among all other exploited and disadvantaged groups.

[9] Bach, Engage All Voices,3.

[10] Byliberal,we mean those who believe in freedom of action and who advocate progressive

political reform.

[11] See Adria Battaglia,The Rhetoric ofBFree Speech: Regulating Dissent Since 9/11(PhD

diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2010).

[12] For example, Smitter cites the NCA Credo as an extension of classical ideals defining our

proper aspirations to all forms and settings of communication and function as a social

contract in a democratic society.Roger Smitter, The Development of the NCA Credo for

Ethical Communication,Free Speech Yearbook41 (2004): 2.

[13] Franklyn S. Haiman,The Rhetoric of the Streets: Some Legal and Ethical Considerations,

inReadings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest, ed. Charles E. Morris III and Stephen H. Browne

(State College: Strata Publishing, 2001), 13.

[14] James Brandon,#10560,email to CRTNET mailing list, September 19, 2008.

[15] Roger Smitter, #10554,email to CRTNET mailing list, September 16, 2008.

[16] Smitter, #10554.

[17] See Herbert Marcuse,Repressive Tolerance,inA Critique of Pure Tolerance, ed. Robert Paul

Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 95137.

[18] See Robert Hariman,Decorum, Power, and the Courtly Style,Quarterly Journal of Speech

78 (1992): 14972.

[19] See Nina M. Lozano-Reich and Dana L. Cloud,The Uncivil Tongue: Invitational Rhetoric

and the Problem of Inequality,Western Journal of Communication73 (2009): 220 26.

[20] Betsy Wackernagel Bach, On Practicing What We Preach, (presidential address, annual

convention of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, November 14, 2009),

http://www.natcom.org/NCA/files/ccLibraryFiles/Filename/000000002131/Pres%20Address%20

2009.pdf.

[21] See Dana L. Cloud,The McCarthyism that Horowitz Built,Counterpunch, April 30, 2009.

[22] Larry R. Faulkner, Jensens Words His Own,Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2001.

[23] Ekaterina V. Haskins, Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle (Columbia: University of

South Carolina Press, 2004).

[24] G. Thomas Goodnight, The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument:

A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation,Journal of the American Forensics

Association18 (1982): 21427.

[25] John Dewey, The Collected Works of John Dewey: The Later Works, ed. Jo Ann Boydston

(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969 1991).

[26] Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).

[27] Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 3, 10.

[28] Michael Eric Dyson,The Michael Eric Dyson Reader(New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004),

xxvii.

[29] Gramsci,Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 3. See C. Kay Weaver, Reinventing the Public

Intellectual through Communication Dialogue Civic Capacity Building, Management

Communication Quarterly21 (2007): 92104.

[30] For purposes of space and avoiding tangents, we will bracket the much-needed discussion

about what kinds of workcounttoward tenure. See the debate at What If College Tenure

Dies?New York Times, July 19, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/07/19/

what-if-college-tenure-dies?scp1&sqtenure%20university&stcse.

[31] This already growing literature includes Lawrence R. Frey and Kevin M. Carragee,

Communication Activism, vol. 1,Communication for Social Change(Cresskill, NJ: Hampton



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Press, 2007); Seth Kahn and JongHwa Lee, Activism and Rhetoric: Theories and Contexts for

Political Engagement (New York: Routledge, 2010); Omar Swartz, In Defense of Partisan

Criticism: Communication Studies, Law, and Social Analysis (New York: Peter Lang, 2005);

Omar Swartz, Transformative Communication Studies: Culture, Hierarchy and the Human

Condition (Leicester, UK: Troubador, 2008); George Cheney, Morgan Wilhelmsson, and

Theodore E. Zorn, 10 Strategies for Engaged Scholarship, Management Communication

Quarterly16 (2002): 92 100; J. Kevin Barge, Jennifer Lyn Simpson, and Pamela Shockley-

Zalabak, ed., special issue, Journal of Applied Communication Research36 (2008); Lee Artz,

Steve Macek, and Dana L. Cloud, Marxism and Communication Studies: The Point Is to

Change It(New York: Peter Lang, 2006). Approaches vary, from considering scholarship as

activism, pedagogyasactivism, and activism asinformingscholarship. Our approach might

be best described as activism and scholarship in dialectical relationship.

[32] Jacoby, Last Intellectuals, 26.

[33] See Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Conventional Wisdom*Traditional Form: A Rejoinder,

Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (1972): 45154. Also see Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, The

Rhetoric of Mythical America Revisited, in Critiques of Contemporary Rhetoric, ed. Karlyn

Campbell and Thomas R. Burkholder, 2nd ed. (New York: Wadsworth, 1996), 202 12.[34] Haiman, Rhetoric of the Streets,24.



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Young, Battaglia, & Cloud (2010) (UN)Disciplining the Scholar Activist - Policing the Boundaries of Political Engagement