Public Attacks - Usually a Bad Idea
Justin Bathon on Monday, November 1, 2010 at 6:34PM Over the weekend, a furor arose in our little ed. leadership community over an article by Fenwick English listing the names of the The 10 Most Wanted Enemies of American Public Education’s School Leadership. One of the named individuals, Rick Hess, called them out on it - and rightly so. It was a bad move.
Over the past several years, UCEA has sought to better engage the policy arena - thinking that by doing so we can increase the quality of leadership preparation, the leaders they produce, and thus our schools. This is a valid and noble goal as the quality of some preparation programs is highly suspect.
But, UCEA must walk a fine line when it comes to advocacy of positions or criticism of others. Being a member of UCEA now for many years, it is absolutely no secret that it has a position - a highly liberal one. But, UCEA is a institutional membership organization, not an individual membership organization. Meaning, my university and most other research universities around the country are the real members, not the professors. And, I would imagine, there is a substantial divide between the positions of institutions and the positions of ed. leadership professors. How many university presidents would create such an enemies list?
If we (and I am still very supportive of UCEA) are going to enter the advocacy arena in a bigger way, it must be done with class - even if the opposition lacks it in your opinion. We fancy ourselves as scholars and believe in the power of ideas, let us permit those ideas to be our positions.
Reader Comments (5)
Interesting post, Justin, and I agree that with scholarly writing (and life in general) it's a good thing to promote civility and respect in our intellectual discourses. I had one question. Hess indicates that the article or commentary in the UCEA Review is somehow the "official" stance of the organization. Out of curiosity, I was trying to figure out if the views of the article are meant to represent the views of only the author or somehow indeed constitute some kind of official view of the UCEA. The distinction would seem of importance. As someone who focuses on higher education, I'm not all that familiar with UCEA or the publication. But would the publication, for example, permit Hess to write a counterpoint commentary in which he could name the original author as a top enemy of education? I was just curious on that issue. Thanks for sharing about this.
The UCEA Review is sort of a quasi-journal type thing. They are in the process of making it more like a journal with actual articles and commentary - so that is probably adding to the confusion. But, nothing like this has ever come out of it before. It is not just a step beyond previous Reviews, it is a football field beyond - so I understand Hess in thinking it is somewhat representative of the organization. With the editorial board, I doubt they would have let Hess do a follow up (although they might now because of the furor).
I'm with you, Justin. I like Fen and I know this is par for the course for him; it's his MO. The UCEA Review was NOT the right venue for that piece. Now, if he would just embrace social media...
Um, the UCEA Review is NOT the official mouthpiece of UCEA. As it notes, "The Content of the UCEA Review is not peer reviewed and any opinions printed in the Review should not be viewed as a statement by UCEA, UCEA Executive Board members, UCEA member institutions or UCEA faculty. The opinions expressed are those of the authors alone."
I don't think UCEA, institutional members, interested faculty, or anyone else should be censoring UCEA Review articles. I'd rather the Review was a place for multiple perspectives and a collective understanding that the onus of any contentious writing falls on the author(s), not UCEA.
Plus I want you at my back (and not with knives, either) when I post my guaranteed-to-be-contentious feature article this coming spring!