[Air-L] Job Posting: Mediated Communication TT Position / University of Arkansas (Cat Tebaldi)

[Daniel Greene]

I agree with Cat and, especially for colleagues outside the US, want to take a little time to explain why Dr. Carveth's lack of solidarity with Arkansans and applicants to U Arkansas is not just a moral issue but a serious error in political analysis. 

Dr. Carveth is Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University, a public historically Black university (HBCU) in the upper south / Mid-Atlantic state of Maryland—which typically votes Democrat in national elections, though we often have Republican governors. I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, the public, R1, primarily White institution (PWI) a half hour down the road. Dr. Carveth was previously involved in a similar debate on the National Communication Association’s list serv, regarding the rights of faculty to opine on "the illegal immigrant threat and the history of illegals’ [sic] murder and rapes,” and threatened to sue <https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/26/national-communication-association-suspends-discussion-listserv> anyone accusing him or colleagues of racism. 

Morgan State University was recently party to lawsuit that dragged on for almost 20 years but eventually extracted $577 million from the state of Maryland because of its historic underfunding of our HBCUs. In 2013, the presiding Judge who encouraged the parties to enter settlement labeled the situation <https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/03/24/maryland-hbcus-lawsuit-settlement/> a “shameful history of de jure segregation” and “practices of unnecessary program duplication that continue to have segregative effects.”’

I say this not to argue that Dr. Carveth should not throw stones in a glass house, but to demonstrate that the problem of racist attacks on higher education is not reducible to some mean lady from the TV who runs some backwards red state ‘over there.’ More pointedly, my own university has been the site of two killings in the past five years. First, a Black graduating senior from Bowie State, another HBCU, was murdered <https://medium.com/@dan.greene10/it-runs-deep-and-we-cant-talk-it-out-on-campus-racism-and-the-murder-of-richard-collins-iii-86f8fe0dde4c> by a White racist UMD student. Second, a Black football player was killed by unsafe working conditions <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/sports/football/Jordan-McNair-death-settlement-Maryland.html>. When our President attempted to fire the head coach for misconduct, the President was in turn fired by the Regents—though later reinstated after much outcry. This on a campus that is, in many ways, the home of intersectional theory.

The political, economic, and civic institutions of the US are grounded in white supremacy. We can do beautiful, emancipatory things at our schools, but we do them within and against those foundations. Saying that smart people won’t go to Arkansas because of Trumpers is a woeful misunderstanding of the nature of the threat against public universities as integrated, potentially emancipatory spaces. It is not a problem of one mean lady on TV. Such an orientation may leave one unprepared to mentor students of color in primarily White academic fields, and certainly presents no serious theory of change for institutions currently under assault by revanchist forces—the only option is abandonment, or changing the TV channel.  

Any community has its issues. I appreciate AOIR’s willingness to talk it out. In particular, I admire Stephanie’s long commitment to mentorship (I know I’ve benefitted) and to critical political scholarship in internet studies.

Best,
Dan
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Daniel Greene
dmgreene.net

Order my book The Promise of Access <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/promise-access>






> On Nov 16, 2022, at 4:00 PM, air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org wrote:
> 
>  Re: Job Posting: Mediated Communication TT Position /
>      University of Arkansas (Cat Tebaldi)