Dear Friends and Colleagues:
We, like the rest of other members of the Publications Committee of the ASA,
were taken by surprise by Councils reversal of our ASR editorship choices, and
have struggled, collectively and individually, to frame an appropriate response.
By now you have probably heard about Michael Burawoy?s response--that is, his
resignation from the Committee. Because it has been so widely circulated, you
have probably also gotten a chance to read his letter of resignation. If not,
we are attaching it to this message.
We are writing this letter because we believe that Burawoy's resignation, and
the discussion it has triggered, removes the last barrier to a necessary
discussion among the membership of two very important issues: the procedural
rules that allowed one elected body of the ASA to summarily reverse the actions
of another elected body; and the very important question of intellectual
diversity in our journals. We are hopeful this communication will help to
define those issues, inform the now inevitable public discussion, and help to
frame a proactive policy response that will address these issues substantively.
We hope you will circulate this message to other members of the Association,
particularly since, so far, this is the only way we have of reaching the
membership.
THE PROCEDURAL ISSUE.
As Burawoy's letter forcefully discusses, the nub of the procedural issue is
this: the Committee on Publications, following standard procedure, sent to
Council two nominees for the editorship of ASR chosen from a group of five
applicants. While all the proposals had valuable ideas and proposals, we felt
that only these two were high on all the dimensions the Committee was seeking.
Nevertheless, Council without soliciting the logic behind our decision rejected
both our first and second choices, and instead chose one of the remaining five
candidates. As Burawoy pointed out, this is more than unprecedented. In the
past few years, no one can remember an instance in which the Council rejected
Pub Comm?s first choice (though surely this must have happened in the distant
past); everyone who is knowledgeable agrees that Council has never before (for
any editorship) reached beyond Pub Comm?s nominees to select an applicant who
had not been sent forward.
While this act is not illegal (there is no specific bylaw prohibiting it), it
should be; and it certainly violates the spirit of the recent vote by the
membership to retain an elected Committee on Publications. If we were appointed
by Council, our job would be to follow the direction of Council. But since we
are not a creature of Council, and directly represent the membership, we have an
obligation to make editorial appointments that are consistent with the
principles developed within the committee to fulfill our electoral mandate.
When and if Council disagrees with our actions (that is, when there is a
disagreement between two elected bodies, both representing the membership) this
constitutes an important policy conflict within the Association, and it should
be treated as such. This would normally involve some sort of attempt to define
the issues and adjudicate them. (And it could certainly merit a public airing of
the underlying differences.)
But Council did not treat reversing our judgment as a weighty issue. Instead,
in a short time, in the midst of an already cluttered meeting, it made a final
judgment that brushed aside all our deliberations and planning. And
representatives of Council have consistently refused to detail the reasons for
rejecting our nominees, instead indicating that the Council discussion "raised
the same criteria that were central to the debate in the Committee on
Publications, with slightly different emphasis."
In short, the small amount of official information given us about the Council?s
deliberation appears to suggest that Council reversed our decision because of
slight differences in opinion about what constitutes a good candidate for the
editorship of ASR. And, that because of these slight differences, it took an
action that is unprecedented in the history of the American Sociological
Association.
We cannot know the real thinking of those who voted for this reversal actually
was, but we do know that it must have been ill-conceived. On the one hand,
Council should never reverse the decision of another elected body based on small
differences of opinion or emphasis. On the other hand, if the reversal rested
on what they thought were large differences in policy, they should have engaged
in a dialogue with us to assure that the ultimate outcome was duly considered.
The fragmentary--but we think incontrovertible--information available to use as
members of the Publications Committee leads us to believe that the differences
are indeed significant; and that the underlying substantive issues are worth the
time and energy of a thorough discussion among the membership.
THE SUBSTANTIVE ISSUE.
So what is the underlying dispute about? It has to do with the ancient and very
important issue of intellectual diversity in the ASR. For at least ten years,
since a formal Council resolution about diversity was first passed, the
Committee on Publications has struggled with the tendencies for ASR (and other
journals the Association publishes) to publish articles reflecting less than the
full range of ideas and subjects current in the Association. Four years ago,
Council formally mandated Pub Comm to explore these issues once again, and to
look for ways to broaden the intellectual content of ASR. We have been working
hard toward this end, so far with only limited success. The current editor of
ASR has been particularly diligent in trying a number of strategies (some of
them suggested by the Committee), with only moderate success. He has convinced
many of us on the Committee that the most important problem is broadening
submissions: getting people who would normally not think of the ASR as an outlet
to submit their most important and pathbreaking articles to the journal.
This insight figured as a part of our deliberations on the ASR editorship. Both
of our designated nominees were, of course, superbly qualified in terms of the
other criteria we utilize in selecting an editor. But each of them also
addressed the issue of intellectual diversity in ways that appeared to have a
reasonable chance of broadening submissions. For many of us, this was a point
in their favor, since it would help advance the diversity project that had been
part of our mandate for the past four years. We should reiterate, however, that
this factor was by no means the primary qualification of either of the
candidates we sent to Council.
While this diversity issue was not the central one in our deliberations, we
believe that it is central to Council?s unprecedented refusal to select either
of our nominees, in two different ways. First, by reaching beyond our nominees,
Council has brushed aside our efforts to broaden the intellectual content of the
ASR. Even if this was unintentional, it represents a major threat to this
ongoing effort. Second, we don?t think it was unintentional. A reasonable
inference from what is known to us about their decision is that at least some
members of Council felt that the attempt to diversify the content of the ASR
would alter its content: that at least some articles traditionally accepted by
the Journal would be replaced by other articles not traditionally a part of the
ASR mix.
We do not deny that any attempt at change involves some danger to good aspects
of the current arrangement. For example, it is a legitimate concern that a more
diverse ASR might mean that high quality articles in one area would be replaced
by articles of lesser quality in another area. That is, intellectual diversity
might lead to a decline in standards. We agree that this is something to be
concerned about, and that is why Council?s action is so unfortunate: the
insights and approach our two selections would have maximized the chances of
diversifying the content while maintaining (or even raising) the standards of
the Journal.
The question about whether and how to accomplish intellectual diversity is the
nub of the issue, and it is a very important one for the content of our journals
and for the future of the profession. Those of us who support the diversity
project believe that there are strong structural forces (in every profession and
every journal) that work against the inclusion of productive new areas and
important new paradigms. No one is to blame for this, but without careful
planning and self conscious effort, our journals will fail to acknowledge and
nurture at least some of the most significant new developments in sociology.
For those of us who have grappled with these issues, Council?s actions are an
enormous setback. We have worked hard to identify solutions to these problems
that do not undermine the prestige and quality of the ASR and other ASA
journals. And these have been swept aside. We remain committed to addressing
these issues, but we need some assurance that our future work will not also be
swept aside.
To gain this assurance, we need two things: procedural gu
arantees that our
decisions cannot be casually reversed, as they were in this case; and a strong
mandate from the membership that specifically embraces the principles of
intellectual diversity that we have been trying to implement.
This is why the dispute between Council and Publications Committee needs to be
openly debated and resolved by the membership. If it is, we are confident that
our position will be vindicated: that the membership will support our efforts to
broaden the content of ASR (and other ASA journals); and agree with us that it
can be done while we also raise the quality of the journal. And we also feel
that the specific tactics and more general strategies of our nominees will be
vindicated and perhaps ultimately implemented.
Such a public discussion is one way to assure that this sort of confrontation
will not re-occur. We are confident that a full airing of the issues will
assure the sort of procedural changes that preclude arbitrary reversal of Pub
Comm by Council. Without such changes, Publications Committee deliberations
will be contaminated by the need to anticipate the reaction of Council. This
will have a pervasive chilling effect, not only on the diversity project, but
other Pub Comm policy initiatives as well.
THE ISSUE OF CONFIDENTIALITY
One of the most difficult parts of this controversy has been the rules of
confidentiality, and the way they have been applied to the actions of Pub Comm
and Council. These rules initially prevented Pub Comm from even understanding
the logic of Council?s action and they remain a hindrance to an airing of the
differences between the two bodies. They have also--until Burawoy?s
resignation--prevented most members of the Association from appreciating the
existence of an important policy conflict within the elected leadership.
It is important to make explicit the rationale for confidentiality, at least as
it is applied to personnel decisions. It?s primary goal is to protect
individuals who participate in collective decisionmaking by making such
deliberations secret--at least when they apply to the qualifications of specific
individuals. The secrecy of the deliberations is meant to insure that people
speak freely (and critically) about colleagues and other individuals they know
personally. Its secondary goal is to protect those who are the subject of this
decision-making. People will be less willing to stand for public or
professional office if they feel that it will become the occasion for public
(and often unjustified) criticism.
The underlying principle is simple: we protect our nominees from public
criticism when and if it does not prevent the full debate of policy issues. We
do not offer or give such protection when the broader needs of the organization
demand public debate, as the deliberations of Congress over Presidential
appointments illustrates.
As Burawoy indicated in his letter of resignation, Council?s reversal of Pub
Comm?s decision has put enormous strain on the customary secrecy of the
appointment process. If Council had organized a dialogue between the two
bodies, we might have resolved the differences in an orderly manner that
satisfied our electoral mandates without creating a policy dispute. But by
reversing our decision, the Council created two very important policy disputes:
one over our ongoing diversity efforts and another over the governance rules of
the ASA. Since they are both very important and since they involve differences
between two elected bodies, these disputes should be discussed by the
membership.
The Publications Committee sought to organize such a discussion, but was
frustrated in these efforts. We were told that confidentiality rules were
absolute in this instance; that there could not even be a public acknowledgment
that Council reversed our decision; that the minutes of Council, when published
in Footnotes, would contain no reference to the reversal.
Pub Comm was bound by these rules, and framed its response accordingly. This
makes Burawoy?s resignation all the more important, because he has brought the
issue to the membership when Pub Comm was prevented from doing so.
When Burawoy's letter expresses his regret for breaking the confidentiality
rules in order to raise these issues with the membership, he is referring to
these rules. We support him in his argument that the larger issues raised by
Council?s actions justify this breach. That is, while he has broken the letter
of the rule as it is being applied in this instance, he is not violating the
spirit of confidentiality. Confidentiality should not apply when a key policy
issue is at stake--one that requires the voting membership to be informed.
But there is also a way in which confidentiality should simply not be an issue
at all. The two policy issues raised by Council?s action are almost (but not
quite) divorced from issues of personnel. One is the issue of diversifying the
intellectual content of the ASR, and about the conditions under which this can
occur; and the other is about Council?s right to reverse the nominations of the
Committee on Publication, and how disagreements between the two bodies should be
appropriately adjudicated.
We believe that debates over these issues can be conducted with minimal
reference to the individual candidates that triggered this dispute. Burawoy?s
letter makes it clear that this is possible. It only requires that those
engaged in the debate do their best to avoid unnecessary reference to these
individuals.
But we realize that however careful everyone is, there already has been some
invasion of the traditional privacy accorded to the process of selecting
editors. And there will be more in the immediate future. So be it.
Confidentiality is not an absolute right. It must be compromised when larger
issues about the organization are at stake, and everyone (present and future
editorial candidates included) should acknowledge that and understand it when
they become involved in seeking office in the organization. We should limit the
discomfort that derives from this discussion by making every effort to organize
an orderly interchange of ideas, with the goal of resolving these issues; and
therefore prevent the debate from gravitating toward unproductive public airing
of personal information.
And most importantly, we have to realize that confidentiality has already been
breached. Even before Burawoy's letter was written and circulated, many of us
have been fielding questions and rumors that were surprisingly detailed in their
knowledge of the events. With Burawoy's letter spreading rapidly through the
net, there will soon be general knowledge of the broad outline of the issues
involved. Even if it were better to keep silent (which we don?t believe), that
is no longer possible. The only possibility is to have an open discussion; and
to conduct it responsibly.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE
We speak in this note as members of the ASA, but our positions on Pub Comm give
us a strong sense of the importance and urgency of these issues. We hope that
this statement will help generate an atmosphere in which the following can
occur:
First, a reasonable public discussion of the issues raised by these events.
Hopefully this will appear in Footnotes, where all parties can carefully state
their positions and the membership can get a clear sense of what is at stake,
from the perspective of all those involved.
Second, Pub Comm has submitted a list of procedural proposals to Council that
would codify the relationship between these two elected bodies. Hopefully these
proposals will be published in Footnotes, but briefly, they involve the
following: (1) The Chair of Publications Committee will present the nominations
for editorships to Council, with a detailed rationale for the decisions; (2) if
Council cannot accept any of the designated candidates put forward by Pub Comm,
it will return the nominations to Pub Comm, together with a set of reasons for
the veto; (3) if mutually agreeable candidates cannot be found, a conference
committee will be appointed to negotiate a compromise.
We are hopeful that these can be quickly passed and implemented, and thus
prevent a re-occurrence of this unfortunate event. The membership should think
through these issues and make sure that the new procedures are satisfactory.
Third, and most important, we need to settle on a viable way of increasing the
intellectual diversity in the ASA journals. As this event demonstrates, there
are strong differences of opinion within ASA leadership and within the
organization as a whole. We hope that this unfortunate incident will at least
be the occasion for the membership to inform itself about this issue and that a
clear sense of how to proceed will emerge.
Michael Schwartz
University at Stony Brook
Chair, ASA Committee on Publications
Elizabeth Higginbotham
University of Delaware
Member, ASA Committee on Publications