Talking "politics" in communication courses

I'm one of the people who teaches the J-School's huge survey course, J201 "Introduction to mass communication." (I gather that Comm Arts has a similar course -- or courses.) We break our survey into three units -- entertainment, strategic communication, and journalism -- while paradoxically trying to get across to our students that all three professions and industries are intimately related, in both the "old media" of print and broadcast, and the "new media" of digital netcast. And in an attempt to be relevant, we rely not on a $100 textbook, but on a xeroxed course reader that changes substantially each semester. After all, we reason, this class should provide students with the historical background, structural analysis, and critical thinking skills needed to grapple with the biggest communication issues of our day -- for example, debates over the individual and social effects of television, new political-economic patterns of media convergence, the performance of our media system in times of natural and/or technological disaster like Hurricane Katrina, and the responsibilty of our media system during a global "Long War" (formerly known as the "War on Terror").

So far so good. Most students understand that communication studies should, by definition, engage with the most contentious public debates of the day -- debates which seep into our entertainment, our political and commercial speech, and of course our news. But each semester I get a small but vocal minority of student evaluations which stridently disagree with this construction of the course -- and, it would seem to be, of the entire university itself. For example, with the three-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war occurring during my J201 course this semester, we used communication examples about the US relationship to the Middle East, the Arab world, and the Islamic world throughout the course -- in all three units. It was by no means the only thing we talked about. But to my mind, having such an extended and relevant case study -- supported by lectures, readings, films, assignments, quizzes and exam questions -- allowed students to slowly build competency in an issue while slowly understanding the various communication research and practice angles on that same issue.

Here's how some of my students reacted, however, to talking "politics" in a communication course:

"Strongly biased ... normally wouldn't matter, but a large portion of the class was spent on a seemingly pointless Iraq rant"

"I didn't like the focus on war, although it is a current event, I felt like I was in a poli sci class much of the time."

"The subject matter had a lot to do with politics and I did not like that."

"I thought it was too focused on politics."

"It was very biased."

"Good class, however some aspects of the class, such as the parts referring to politics, seemed to be a forum for the prof to express his views."

"Political discussion w/the war - too much complaining."

"At times seemed very political and war oriented. Does sort of fit -- but maybe covered too much?"

"Downey, stop using the course packet as a form of liberal propaganda!"

The charges of "liberal bias" don't actually surprise me ... just like the charges of "liberal bias" in the media, the acts of questioning and critiquing are now too-easily equated with rejecting and criticizing. (The web site Free Exchange on Campus is a good resource for more on these debates.) We don't duck these accusations in J201, but instead spend a fair amount of time in class talking about media watchdog groups on both the right and left, analyzing studies of political opinion related to news-watching habits, and exploring admissions by journalists and editors themselves of poor reporting. In fact, my goal is to get my students to leave behind the simplistic charges of "liberal" vs. "conservative" and instead concentrate on (a) how each of those two blanket categories can encompass many contradictory values and beliefs;(b) how a journalist's personal ideals might matter less than their professional values, constraints, and reward systems; and (c) how the real test of quality for any journalism is whether it is clear, transparent, rational, convincing, and useful in helping readers understand their world.

What really worries me, though, is the equation of charges of "bias" to charges that the course is simply "too political." How in the world could one teach about communication without contextualizing that communication within the "political" (or, "political-economic and social-cultural") realities of any particular time and place? Now, out of about 350 student evaluations returned, only the nine excerpted above mentioned such interlinked complaints of "too political" and "too biased". The vast majority of written comments on the evaluations -- hundreds of them -- revealed that most of our students really appreciated our approach in the course. Yet the fact that a small minority could so misunderstand what our course was for -- and what, I think, their university education is for -- really bothers me.

A recent article in the American Association of University Professors journal Academe dealt with some similar issues. In "Fomenting Dissent on Campus", author and associate professor Terri A. Hasseler asks "Do we teach students to disagree with dominant positions and to use their political franchise? Do we speak openly about problems at our institutions?" and concludes, "Too often, we fear that we will be seen as insubordinate or disloyal to our colleges or universities, and thus we neither model nor teach the importance of dissent." She continues:

How do we create a system that allows for a healthy exchange of competing ideas? First, we need to consider some of the obstacles to creating (or re-creating) an engaged academic community in a culture in which corporate, commercial, and capitalistic practices have been naturalized into the university structure. The new corporate academy relies on a highly managed workforce and a clearly defined clientele. Anna Marie Cox, in her study of the rise of the corporate university, quotes John Sperling, the chief executive of the University Phoenix: “This is a corporation, not a social entity. Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop [students’] value systems or go in for that ‘expand their minds’ bullshit.” What he dismisses as nonsense, however, is the stuff that allows for dissent as opposed to docility, control, and uniformity.

To Hasseler, a corporatized university helps reproduce a consumerized student. She cites an example from her own experience:

Not long ago, I asked students in a first-year class to write an essay applying principles of the new urbanism we had been discussing to buildings on campus. Recent construction has made my campus attractive and greatly improved the environment. I wanted to see if students could analyze whether the institution had responded to a particular ideological approach to urban planning. I thought the essay topic would give them a chance to apply some critical-thinking skills. Most, if not all of the students, however, ignored the instructions and came back with what I can only characterize as promotional statements for the campus; they seemed to think that was what I wanted.

Perhaps I did a poor job in preparing them for this exercise, but what struck me very hard, even after classroom discussion, was their hesitancy to critique the campus in any way. They saw criticism as disloyalty and tried to convince me that nothing needed improvement. The essays echoed what they had heard on campus tours. These newly admitted students were heavily invested in the brand name of what they had purchased. Such investment made it difficult for them to accept or to engage in critique.

This echoes what some of my students seemed to feel was their loyalty to "brand America" in talking about the Iraq war. In fact, at no point did I ask my students to provide and defend their own opinions about the war itself, its goals, or the way it has been conducted. Instead, we tried to wrestle with whether our media system encourages or enhances or even allows such debate -- and under what circumstances. Perhaps the distinction is too subtle for many college sophomores. Or perhaps they don't feel that they are "purchasing" a discussion of politics when they spend their tution dollars on a communication course.

Hasseler ends with a call to faculty to do a better job at "modeling" dissent -- showing how responsible professionals have an obligation to articulate and defend the knowledge that they trust, utilize, and themselves produce in a civil and productive manner, even if that knowledge leads them to question and critique existing power structures. (I might call this the "definition of good journalism" or the "definition of good scholarship".)

I don't currently express my own dissent in the J201 classroom (unless my oft-expressed snarky dissatisfaction with local TV news counts). In fact, I'm not actually convinced that, in my role as the first professor whom students in the J-School encounter, I should model dissent in my class by taking time to articulate my own beliefs about Katrina and Iraq, about Google and Microsoft, or anything else for that matter. But I do believe that communication departments and courses have a particular responsibility to help students understand the practices of dissent and the structures which enable or constrain that dissent. Dissent is by definition a form of communication directed toward -- and also to the side of -- existing power. Even if we don't choose to model the practice of dissent in the classroom ourselves, we should insist upon retaining the right to reveal and analyze the process of dissent for our students.

I'd be very curious to hear how other faculty, staff, and graduate students have encountered and/or dealt with such issues in their communication classrooms.