Thanks, Brad, for sharing. As teaching chair, I believe that
proposing such relevant and timely panels is the essence of your position
rather than a conflict of interest. I've shared with Sharon, MAC's
incoming Vice Head/Programming Chair, that she should expect 2-3
proposals from each chair (PF&R, research, teaching) relative to your
respective areas.
Camilla
At 04:45 PM 9/24/2007 -0400, Bradley Gorham wrote:
Fellow MAC members,
Clearly this seems like a good idea for a panel given the volume of
responses that have come in such a short time. I'm sure that many
of us can easily think of similar situations on our own campuses, and I
know that I often get asked by students about how the campus media should
handle diversity issues. My campus (Syracuse) had our own incident
a couple years ago: a "humor" show on the campus TV network did
skits involving jokes about date rape and lynching, and then complained
about censorship when the TV network management tried to change their
content. When the student newspaper publicized this, people on
campus were understandably upset at the makers of the show and the
network for letting them do it. The chancellor shut down to the
network, which turned the dialogue into one of free speech vs. respect
for diversity (a false dichotomy in my mind). Although some
productive dialogue occurred on our campus in the wake of this, the
incident also produced a fair amount of resentment that
lingers.
(Read some of the comments on the
great
article that Calvin Hall linked to and you will see echoes of that
kind of resentment.)
These sorts of incidents occur, unfortunately, at regular intervals, and
they ask us to face some very important questions. I also know
that, equally unfortunately, many of my White colleagues are afraid to
talk about some of these topics in their classes lest they "say the
wrong thing." So I strongly support a session like
this.
As Teaching Chair for the division, I am not sure if I should be the one
to organize it (is it a conflict of interest for the teaching chair to
organize a panel that I then get to have some say on?). However, I
am happy to take that responsibility if you all want me to.
-Brad
Bradley W. Gorham, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Communications
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
Syracuse University
215 University Place
Syracuse, NY 13244
315-443-1950
Camilla Gant, Ph.D.
Director/Associate Professor
Mass Communications
University of West Georgia
678.839.4933
Office
678.839.4926 Fax