The Travel Ban: ICA's Position, Actions Taken to Help Attendees
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
VOLUME 45, ISSUE 3 APRIL 2017 The Travel Ban: ICA’s Position, Actions Taken to Help Attendees, and Next Steps by Laura Sawyer, This confusing and evolving situation has What is ICA Doing to Help? ICA Executive Director raised serious concerns for many mem- bers of the ICA community, particularly • ICA has retained legal counsel spe- As you all know, the Trump administration those intending to participate in the upcom- cializing in visa issues to advise any released a travel ban in February 2017 that ing annual conference in San Diego. member seeking to visit the US for affects nationals of seven countries and As the ICA Executive Committee asserted the San Diego conference, including their ability to enter the US. This policy was in a statement to our membership and larg- assistance in interpreting the new fed- challenged by the American Civil Liberties er community in February in response to eral policy and applying for entry. This Union (ACLU) as a violation of the U.S. the first ban, this situation “run[s] counter service is offered at no charge to ICA constitution. The courts—including a high- to ICA’s commitment to ensure full and members and other potential attend- er court which heard the appeal—agreed equal participation of all members of our ees. Please e-mail me (Laura Sawyer, with the ACLU, and the White House organization and participants in our global Executive Director), to be connected rescinded the ban. President Trump then academic community.” with this resource. issued a second, slightly less restrictive order, removing one country from the list We continue to assess the policy’s impact • The ICA office remains ready to and asserting that those with active visas on members and attendees. We recognize assist members in procuring visas to are still welcome. members’ concerns regarding the uncer- attend ICA conferences and events. tain and changing situation, appreciate Standard invitation letters for visa While a slight “improvement,” this ban has your feedback and perspectives, and will purposes are available, as always, via also been challenged in court by the ACLU remain in dialogue with our entire academ- the submission website (log in and and numerous individual plaintiffs. The ban ic community as this situation evolves. choose “download invitation letter” has now been blocked in a lower court in a In the meantime, we want to make every- from the green menu). If you have a decision citing its overt motive to discrim- one aware of the following actions, which special circumstance and need addi- inate against people on the basis of their aim to preserve your right as scholars to tional help or special wording in your religion and national origin, again a direct freely present your work and to collaborate violation of the U.S. constitution. with your peers. see TRAVEL BAN, page 4 Board of Directors Takes Important Steps at April 2017 Newsletter - ICA Midyear Meeting by Laura Sawyer, many thanks to Shyam Sundar (Pennsyl- membership approval to become official). ICA Executive Director vania State U), to whom we are grateful for The Task Force on Division/Interest Group his four years of service as editor of JCMC! Coordination/Mentoring was converted The ICA Board of Directors held their For more information on this transition, to a standing committee to oversee the Midyear Board Meeting in January 2017 please see last month’s newsletter article. five-year review process for divisions and in San Diego, taking action on several interest groups, serve as a clearinghouse important issues. Several of the decisions The Board of Directors created a Task for best practice information regarding have been or will be covered in depth in Force on Visual Identity to begin the pro- group governance, and develop methods their own newsletter articles; however, a cess of a visual identity refresh in advance for cross-divisional collaboration. synopsis of major decisions is below. of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the On the recommendation of the Publica- association’s identity as “ICA” (coming up In addition to approving President-Elect tions Committee, the Board approved the in 2019), and a Task Force on Ethical Con- Paula Gardner (McMaster U)’s proposed appointment of Rich Ling (Nanyang Tech- siderations to review and possibly revise 2017 Nominating Committee, chaired by nological U), as the new editor of the Jour- ICA’s mission and ethics statement and to Gianpietro Mazzoleni (U Degli Studi de nal of Computer Mediated Communication create a white paper on these topics (any (JCMC). Congratulations to Rich, and proposed changes will be submitted for see MIDYEAR, page 5 1 Communicating With International Communication Association 2016–2017 Board of Directors Power in a VUCA Executive Committee Peng Hwa Ang, President, Nanyang Technological U World Paula Gardner, President Elect, McMaster U Patricia Moy, President Elect-Select, U of Washington Amy Jordan, Immediate Past President, U of Pennsylvania Peter Vorderer, Past President, U of Mannheim Francois Heinderyckx, Finance Chair (ex-officio), U Libre de Bruxelles President’s Laura Sawyer, Executive Director, ICA Message Members-at-Large Colleen Mills, U of Canterbury Akira Miyahara, Seinan Gakuin U Lilach Nir, Hebrew U Peng Hwa Ang Magdalena Wojcieszak, U of Amsterdam Nanyang Technological U Student Members Charlotte Loeb, U of Mannheim Tamar Lazar, U of Haifa There is one acronym that describes our current situation—VUCA. It stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Division Chairs Sahara Byrne, Children, Adolescents, and the Media, Cornell U It is a word that came from the U.S. military, and that came into Lee Humphreys, Communication and Technology, Cornell U common usage after the end of the Cold War. Since then it has David Park, Communication History, Lake Forest College been used as the backdrop for managing and leading organiza- Katharine Sarikakis, Communication Law & Policy, U of Vienna tions. René Weber, Communication Science and Biology, U of California - Santa Barbara Bruno Takahashi, Environmental Communication, Michigan State U VUCA is an apt description for the turnaround in situations we Federico Subervi, Ethnicity and Race in Communication took for granted. At the end of the Cold War, in 1990, the wall Natalia Rybas, Feminist Scholarship, Indiana U East Nicholas Bowman, Game Studies, West Virginia U dividing East from West Germany came down in a display that Shiv Ganesh, Global Communication and Social Change, Queensland U of went viral. More than 200 free trade agreements were drawn Technology after 1990, according to the World Trade Organization. Airlines in Evelyn Ho, Health Communication, U of San Francisco 1990 carried slightly more than 1 billion passengers; in 2015, they Kevin Wise, Information Systems, U of Illinois Stephanie Kelly, Instructional & Developmental Communication, North carried 3.5 billion. Carolina A&T State U Stephen Croucher, Intercultural Communication, U of Jyvaskyla Today, however, not even 30 years out, populist sentiments the Ascan Koerner, Interpersonal Communication, U of Minnesota Henrik Ornebring, Journalism Studies, Karlstad U world over are reversing these developments. Alena L. Vasilyeva, Language & Social Interaction, U of Massachusetts Amherst As individuals, vagueness and uncertainty are not what we like. Lance Holbert, Mass Communication, Temple U We prefer certainty: Witness our desire for tenure. Bart J. van den Hooff, Organizational Communication, VU U Amsterdam Alison Hearn, Philosophy, Theory, and Critique, U of Western Ontario Peter Van Aelst, Political Communication, U of Antwerp But in our work, we can and do address the VUCA world. Stephen Harrington, Popular Communication, Queensland U of Technology Diana Ingenhoff, Public Diplomacy, U of Fribourg Chiara Valentini, Public Relations, Aarhus U By that, I do not mean that I accept the unfair charge that we in Giorgia Aiello, Visual Communication Studies, U of Leeds the academy make things unnecessarily complex. To say that is to misunderstand what science and research are about. Interest Group Chairs Good research does not make the world more complex and Taiquan Winson Peng, Computational Methods, Michigan State U Janice Krieger, Intergroup Communication, U of Florida confusing; Good research makes the world more understandable. Travers Scott, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Studies, Clemson U Take our models and theories. They shine a spotlight on some Eve Ng, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Studies, Ohio U phenomena and “simplify” them so as to make the world a little Amanda Lotz, Media Industry Studies, U of Michigan less complex. Some of our models and theories have predictive Veronika Karnowski, Mobile Communication, LMU Munich Marie Hardin, Sports Communication, Pennsylvania State U possibilities and thereby reduce ambiguity. In law and policy around the Internet, a common prescription is that laws should have wide consultation before being promul- Editorial & Advertising gated. Such consultation gives legitimacy to the rules and also Michael J. West, ICA Director of Publications ICA Newsletter - April 2017 Newsletter - ICA pre-empts issues that may have been overlooked by the drafters. The wider consultation is messy and do slow things down. But in Jennifer Le, ICA Manager of Conference Services Kristine Rosa, ICA Member Services and Fundraising Coordinator the longer run they make for a more certain world. ICA Newsletter is published 10 times annually (combining January-February and June-July issues) by the International Communication Association. see PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE, page 8 2 Free Speech and Propaganda: Past and Present by Paula Gardner human rights to fair treatment and equal access. These conversa- ICA President Elect tions are of course crucial to societies dedicated to free exchange, McMaster U where we work to distinguish fact from fiction and propaganda. There is a lot of discussion lately One of our special additions to the ICA Conference in San Diego regarding the value of free speech, is Pictures Creating Image, an exhibition of print-based propagan- particularly in response to pub- da from around the globe, brought to us by Dr.