While not officially a unit or publication of the National Communication Association, we members of the Communication Center Journal leadership are aware of the controversies surrounding the Distinguished Scholar selection process. We wish to share our support of and call for institutional changes to the National Communication Association to make the organization, its members, awards, policies, culture, publications, and climate more diverse and inclusive. We also wish to express solidarity with those who have and continue to do labor to make our communities more hospitable for and encouraging of difference.
Importantly, we recognize that struggles for diversity and inclusion are not just external or out there but continue within our own Communication Center community. Our centers or labs are integral sites for the acknowledgement, acceptance, and promotion of difference as we provide communication support to peers and colleagues; hire, train, and mentor undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty; model ethical and inclusive communication practices to our campus and surrounding communities; and disseminate information, programming, and research about communication centers, communication education, and the field of communication studies.
As a publication dedicated to the dissemination and communication of research around communication centers, speaking labs, communication education, and so much more, we remain steadfastly committed to the interrogation of our own practices which may help or hurt diversity to flourish on our pages, in our editorial review process, through our recruitment and mentoring of editors and scholars, and the relationships, knowledge, and practice we help cultivate. To this end, we are actively formulating plans to begin a more formal and transparent conversation on how we can ensure that the journal, editorial board, and review process is inclusive and intentionally seeks out the diversity represented throughout the Communication Center and adjacent communities. It is our hope that as the current journal leadership team and editorial board transitions out and we welcome new ones, this moment of disruption and change offers us a chance to make present and public these commitments.
Again, thank you to those who perform the visible and invisible labor of defending, protecting, and promoting inclusive and diverse communities. We support you and join in your unending work.
Signed,
Russell Carpenter, Editor-in-Chief
Kim Cuny, Managing Editor
Paul E. Mabrey III, Book Review Editor
Posted Fall 2019