Transcript
Marion Pierre:
We will discuss how scholars of
religion can share work related to the study, can share work related issues to
the study of religion and the selection process. We're pleased to host
co-presenters David Campbell, Iva E. Carruthers, Robert P. Jones, Terrence
Johnson, Vincent Lloyd, and Melissa Rogers.
After the presentations, we will
have a Q and A session. Today's webinar will last 90 minutes to make time for
additional engagement with our audience. This webinar is hosted by the Public
Scholars Project, a joint initiative of the Public Understanding of Religion
Committee of the American Academy of Religion and the Religious Freedom Center
of the Freedom Forum. The Public Scholars Project has created this webinar
series to help scholars hone their skills at communicating with a variety of
publics. Our webinars feature scholars and practitioners who can provide tools,
resources, and recommendations for presenting in a variety of settings about a
variety of topics. To view recordings of the past Public Scholars Project's
webinars, as well as this one, please visit the Freedom Center website at
www.religiousfreedomcenter.org/resources/PSP.
At this time, I'm going to
introduce our panel in alphabetical order. First, David Campbell is the
[inaudible 00:01:32] JD professor of American Democracy at the University of
Notre Dame and the Chairperson of the Political Science Department. Dr.
Campbell is also the author of Why We Vote, How Schools and Communities Shape
Our Civic Life. The editor of A Matter of Faith, Religion And The 2004
Presidential Election. And co-editor of Making Civics Count, Citizenship
Education For A New Generation.
Iva E. Carruthers is a founding
trustee and general secretary of the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference. Dr.
Carruthers is Professor Emeritus and former Chairperson of the Sociology
Department at Northeastern Illinois University and co-editor of Blow The
Trumpet in Zion, Global Vision and Action for the 21st Century Black Church. She
is also founder of Lola's House, an open retreat in Chicago.
Terrence L Johnson is Associate
Professor of Religion and Politics in the Department of Government at
Georgetown, excuse me, University, and also an affiliate faculty member of the
Department of African American Studies and the senior fellow at the Berkeley
Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He is the author of Tragic Soul
Life, W. E. B. Dubois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy.
Robert P. Jones is the CEO and
founder of Public Religion Research Institute, PRRI, and the leading scholar
and commentator on religion, culture and politics. He is the author of a
forthcoming book, White Too Long, The Legacy of White Supremacy in American
Christianity and his previous work, The End of White Christian America, which
won the 2019 grower marry award and religion Growemeyer Award in Religion.
Vincent Lloyd is Associate
Professor of Theology and Religious Studies and Director of Americana Studies at
Villanova University, where he also directs the Villanova Political Theology
Project. Lloyd co edits the journal Political Theology and edits the Reflection
and Theory and The Study of Religion book series for the American Academy of
Religion. His book, Black Dignity in Philosophy is forthcoming.
Melissa Rogers is a visiting
Professor at Wake Forest University Divinity School and the non-resident senior
fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. From 2013 to 2017, Melissa served as
a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Executive Director of the
White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Her area of
expertise includes the first amendments rights clauses and religion in American
public life. We'll now hear from our presenters of alphabetical order. After
them, we will have a Q and A session.
David Campbell:
I believe that means I start. Let
me start by asking, am I coming through? Okay. I was having some technical
problems earlier. No echoes or anything. All right. If there are echoes, please
wave at the screen or something and let me know, and I'll try to switch
something here and make it better. Let me begin by thanking the organizers of
this event. First of all, we should note just how quick this organization is.
That this was set up as a Zoom meeting long before any of us even knew what a
Zoom meeting was, that's very impressive. But in addition to their foresight,
it's also worth recognizing how nimble the organizers have been in ensuring
that this discussion includes a broad range of scholars, so that we can talk
not only about longterm issues regarding religion and its role in American
politics, but also what's happening right now in the country on the ground,
which of course is very much on all of our minds. And I do appreciate their
ability to be, as I said, so nimble in putting this together. It's really an
honor to be a part of this.
I am going to spend a few minutes
and talk a little bit about a challenge that I think all of us who study
religion and might be communicating with either the press, or in some other
way, communicating our ideas and thoughts and concepts to a broader audience, a
challenge that all of us face. And that is to walk a fine line between
recognizing the complexity of religion while at the same time giving reporters
or editors or the host of a blog or whoever else you might be working with,
something they can use. Because reporters and editors and people of that ilk,
they generally have a pretty low tolerance for nuance and complexity and yet
nuance and complexity is, generally speaking, what we do. That's going to vary
across disciplines. Some disciplines are maybe a little more into complexifying
and others a little more into simplifying, but in general, as scholars, we're
in the business of making things more complicated whereas folks in the press
are generally in the business of trying to make things as straightforward and
simple and as easy to understand as possible.
And so it's, I suppose one possible
reaction to say, if you're a scholar, "I just give up, I don't even want
to try to communicate with these folks. It's just too hard. If I don't have
10,000 words, I can't get my point across", but I don't think that's the
right spirit to take. And I'm assuming that because we have, as I look at the
screen 94 participants today that at least the group gathered here and maybe
those who have watched this once it's recorded and posted feel otherwise, as I
do, that it is worth at least trying to communicate what [inaudible 00:07:28]
scholars to a broader audience, because let's face it, if we limit ourselves
only to an academic audience, we're only speaking to a narrow niche of society.
Whereas if we can communicate more broadly, obviously we can reach more people
and maybe bring a little greater understanding.
So I thought I might give a
couple of examples of what I'm talking about and then show you how I would
handle those examples and maybe we can learn from that. So two examples,
examples [inaudible 00:07:59] to me as a scientist who has often been the
[inaudible 00:08:04] reporters seeking comment on this, that, or the other
thing. One of the most common questions that I am often asked.
Ben Marcus:
[inaudible 00:08:11] static on
your end. And it seems to be when you're hitting your, the wire of your
headset, and now we lost your audio.
David Campbell:
All right I have changed my
audio. Can you hear that better?
Ben Marcus:
There's a little static, but we
can hear you.
David Campbell:
Now there's static on your end as
well.
Marion Pierre:
[inaudible 00:08:47] the headset?
David Campbell:
I've done that. The irony is that
I can't, I'm in my office right now, where this is supposedly where I have a
better wifi connection then at home. Am I still a staticky?
Marion Pierre:
Yes.
Ben Marcus:
A little bit, one option? If we
can pause now. I'll send you the call in number, or you actually should have
the call number from your registration link, for a phone. And I think that
might be a little bit clearer audio quality.
David Campbell:
All right. So I'll do that and
then mute the phone, or mute my microphone. Why don't you send that to me in
the chat? Just so I don't have to go looking for it.
Ben Marcus:
Okay. I'll do that. And in the
meantime, while I look for that, should we move to Dr. Carruthers and then
we'll come back.
Marion Pierre:
Yes.
Iva Carruthers:
Okay. I'm going to try and I hope
I have greater success than David, but David, we know how much the technology
is always in the background taking over. I too want to thank AAR and the
Freedom Forum for this invitation. And I am certainly very, very mindful that
as we convene at this very moment, the final memorial service for George Floyd
is a happening before he will be laid to rest beside his mother. And so it is
with that fullness of heart for mourning and lamentation that I am here hoping
to offer a word that will be, to some extent, transformative for the way we
even think about the challenges before us.
The Wizard of Oz is full of
multiple lessons, but the one that has always stuck in my mind and spirit is a
narrative of the Lion. The Wizard, says to the Lion, and I quote, "Back
where I come from, we have men who are called heroes. Once a year they take
their fortitude out of moth balls and they have no more courage then you
have." The spineless lion and received from the wizard of Oz, a metal for
courage. But you see, when you think about that story, we know that what the
lion really needed was a heart. The medal of courage can be worn as an outer
symbol of what does not exist. The simulacra of courage is no more than
spineless bravado. When a heart would have given the lion the fearlessness he
so desired.
And so it is with many badge
wearing Christians and the faithful of other religions. For 400 years,
Christianity has been trapped in the simulacara of white hegemony, oppression,
and racism dressed up in freedom and Liberty for all, In God We Trust and Oh
say can you see, while at the same time spinning a tale of inferiority,
unworthiness and inhumanity as the narrative black lives and black living.
And it begins with a curse of Ham
in a Michael Angelo rendition of a blind blue-eyed Jesus. The epistemology and
hermeneutics of evangelical and white Christianity across denominations, are
embedded in the language of empire. I dare say, in some cases like the lion in
the Wizard of Oz, the narrative spun by evangelical and white Christian can be
so far removed from the centrality of Jesus's ministry That it is difficult to
even call it Christianity. Though, of course, we must know that the God who was
prayed for at the top of the slave ship was not the same guy who was prayed for
at the bottom of the slave ship.
Justice and righteousness gets
construed to be of the spirit and out of human relationship. And thy kingdom
come on earth, as it is in heaven, is a justification for justice delay. Well,
the time has come for truth-telling and America to choose its ultimate fate.
The reality is that despite the frontal attacks on the road to the White House
in 2008 and '12 elections, and the backlash journey to cleanse and take America
back in 2016, it took the vicious inhumane murder of George Floyd with a cloud
of several other public crucifixions in the same period to expose to the world
the brutality in Trump under which black America has been living, while
perpetrating the narrative of In God We Trust.
America has had to look in the
mirror in the midst of a pandemic that brought its economic engine to its knees
and recovery can happen, but the question is, in whose interests? And this time
around it impacts whites like never before more. Moreover, though few in the
media will call out the dangerously close behaviors and characteristics of
fascism, military state and genocide, which is in the air and I note Madeline
Albright dared to do so, some who are even considered as liberal journalists
and Christians still dare to argue, question or make pretend that the language,
behavior and even policies coming from Pennsylvania Avenue are perhaps
idiosyncratic or disingenuous, but still on the continuum of normal or
acceptable.
The truth is, this country is
headed for a blind sided fall off the cliff of a make believe democracy, and
the fall can come fast and hard before this upcoming election. It could be
bathed in episodes of human carnage, state sponsored, or even foreign
infiltrator actors. Leading up to the 2020 election, the seeds of racial
contempt and hatred coded language and protective policies from the Justice
Department to empower the [inaudible 00:14:42] right and intentionally mislabel
the left have been planted. But perhaps the air is different this time around.
The convergence of C-19, the temerity and tenacity of the Black Lives Matter
movement, the George Floyd murder in our face for eight minutes and 46 seconds,
and white youth and adults taking to the streets for now, 14 days, may have
turned this moment into a Zaccheus narrative, which might propel this nation
forward instead of backwards. It will take, however, the language of the
Academy and media to understand and break down a lexicon of justice over
charity, insurrection over riot, bail out over hand out, and reparations over
subsidies and grants.
The Zaccheus narrative is
informative for this transformative imperative moment. Zaccheus stood up and
said to the Lord, "Look Lord, here and now I give half of my possessions
to the poor. And if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back
four times the amount." Zaccheus was a tax collector at the time of Jesus,
allied with colonial foreign and military systems of Jesus's day. His encounter
with Jesus, when Jesus invites him to his home prompts Zaccheus to conversion,
repentance and reparation. His narrative is a story that needs to be told in
the Academy and the church.
As June [inaudible 00:16:06]
approaches the opportunity to really explore a national agenda of reparatory
justice and reparations is upon us. It will require confessions and contrition,
pledges of non repeat, defunding models of inhumanity and systemic racism and
refunding towards human life and justice and equity. An arms distance, so that
decolonization and destructuring can occur. And if not, the struggle will still
continue. As a nongovernmental organization of the United Nations, the
organization I am privileged to represent, the Samuel Dewitt Proctor
Conference, has become a signatory on three important human rights related
documents of the United Nations this week.
In partnership with the ACLU and
the family members of George Floyd and Michael Brown and Brianna Taylor,
Philando Castille, we've issued calling member states and the United Nations
Human Rights Council to convene a special session to address the state's
sanctioned murders and violence occurring in the United States. In partnership
with the International Coalition of People of African descent, we've also
submitted a request and a report on the midterm review of the international
barricade for people of African descent, as well as a note on the impact of
COVID-19 and the response to the pandemic in terms of disproportionate impact
on people of African descent.
In the midst of our mourning and
struggling for human rights and dignity, we have come to the question,
"Can you not discern the times, the signs of the time?" We are
reminded that Martin Luther King said on April 4, that a time comes when
silence is betrayal. It would be ahistorical for me to sit today, and not in
this conversation, look at and feel the ancestral spirit of Bishop Henry McNeal
Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church, who in 1896, when asked the
question about the upcoming election of the presidents, his retort was as relevant
then as it is now. And I will close with that.
And he said, and I quote,
"All the advice we have to give to our people is vote for the gold
standard. What time have we to bother with the gold or silver side either while
we are lynched, burnt, flayed, in prison, et cetera. Two thirds of the time for
nothing. Vote any way in your power to overthrow, destroy, ruin, blot out,
divide, crush, dissolve, wreck, consume, demolish, disorganize, suppress,
subvert, smash, shipwreck, crumble, nullify, upset, uproot, expunge, and
fragmentize this nation until it learns to deal justly with the black man. This
is all the advice we have to give." 1896, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner.
And so I offer up to all of us in
this conversation and to those who are listening, that we must leave this place
ready to explain in terms that everyone can understand what it means when we
say, no justice, no peace. Thank you.
Marion Pierre:
Thank you Dr. Carruthers for
opening us with that. Next, David, are you ready? Do you want to try or shall
we go?
David Campbell:
All right. Can you hear me on the
phone?
Ben Marcus:
That's very clear. Yep.
David Campbell:
All right. Let me apologize for
my technical problems as you may or may not have heard. I actually came into my
campus office today rather than working from home because I thought the
university's wifi would be better and usually it is, and I even had a headset
in order to try to make things better. So I apologize for the technical
problems, but I suppose that's the Zoom world we live in. Let me thank Iva, our
previous speaker, for really very powerful words. Hopefully what I'm about to
say will compliment what you've just heard.
My approach is going to be a
little more nuts and bolts. And that is how it is that we, as scholars can
communicate with a more public audience. And as I was beginning to say earlier,
one of the questions that I often get as a scholar who has studied religion and
politics is about the Catholic vote. And I suppose because I'm at Notre Dame, I
get this question maybe more than others. But reporters often call and they
want me to say, "Well, what's the Catholic vote going to do in this
election?" And the challenge I have in trying to answer that question is
that there is no Catholic vote. That doesn't exist. You could say that there
are Catholic votes, plural, but to speak of one monolithic group of Catholics
in the country would just simply be misleading. But that's a challenge, because
I'm being asked a question and I feel I do have some expertise to share, but at
the same time, I need to recognize that maybe life is a little more complicated
than the question that has been posed to me.
A second example, which speaks
more directly to the current research that I've been doing, is about the
non-religious population. So almost anyone who's paid any attention to
religious trends in the last 20 or 25 years would be aware that there has been
a dramatic growth in the percentage of the population who report no religious
affiliation. First they're often called the religious nuns. So again, I'll
often get the question about the non-religious population. "How are they
going to vote? Are they going to turn out to vote? What can we expect from
them?" And again, the story is more complicated than just simply looking
at all of the religious nuns as a single group.
In fact, I would say that's
actually very misleading to speak of them as though they are one block within
the population, but as has been noted in the chat I see, reporters and editors,
they generally don't have the bandwidth for a lot of complexity. And so this is
a challenge. What do we do with that? And I'm reminded of a quote, that's
probably apocryphal, but nonetheless useful. It's often attributed to Albert
Einstein and Einstein once said, supposedly, that any theory should be as
simple as possible, but no simpler. In other words, we should have a clear
point, a point that can be phrased simply, which is different then saying
simplistically, but rather straightforwardly or in a way that's easy to
understand. So it should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
So in practical terms, my advice
is, when communicating about otherwise complicated issues to pick one wrinkle,
one bit of nuance and focus on that. So let me give you a couple of examples of
what I mean by that. So, when I'm. Let me give you a couple of
examples of what I mean by that. When I'm asked the question about the Catholic
vote and I respond by saying, "Well, there is no Catholic vote, there are
Catholic votes." I could go on and give an hour long lecture about the
many complexities that you would find within the American Catholic population,
let alone the global Catholic population, but I don't do that.
I generally try to find one
important distinction, the one that I typically would focus on would be white
or Anglo Catholics versus Latino Catholics, because almost everything that gets
written about Catholics in the United States is actually about white Catholics,
which again, is kind of misleading, because it turns out they're a shrinking
share of the Catholic population, whereas Latinos, of course, are a growing
share, and those two groups are very different politically.
Now, there are other distinctions
that I could draw, young Catholics, old Catholics, even within the Latino
population, there are distinctions. Obviously within the white Catholic
population there are distinctions. But when I'm trying to make a point, I
generally focus on just one distinction and try to get that point across.
Similarly, when talking about the secular or the non-religious population, I'm
[inaudible 00:24:08] one distinction and the one that I would typically draw is
between those people who are simply not religious. That is, they define
themselves by what they are not.
People who are not religiously
affiliated would be a good example versus what my coauthors and I call
secularists, people who have affirmatively embraced a secular worldview. They
use a secular identity. They think of the world in secular terms. They often
don't have a religious affiliation either, but they're very different than
people who just define themselves by what they are not. The people who are
simply non-religious, they're often not just disconnected from religion,
they're often disconnected from civic institutions of all sorts, quite
alienated in many cases, and therefore often Trump voters.
Whereas, the secular population,
those who have affirmatively taken on a secular identity, they're very engaged
politically and often they are on the progressive end of the spectrum. You
might think of them as being Bernie Sanders voters. To try to group those two groups
together is, again, just highly misleading. Now, there are lots of other things
that I could say, lots of other data that I could share with a reporter, but if
I was talking about the secular population, that's the main distinction that I
would want to focus on.
I could give lots of other
examples. Evangelicals, almost everything that's written about evangelicals in
America is about white evangelicals. Well, it turns out there are actually lots
of different types of evangelicals and so if you're asked a question about
evangelicals, it's probably useful to draw a distinction. But not too much
nuance, or else you'll lose the person you're trying to communicate with. You
can say the same about the Jewish population and about the black church, et
cetera.
Since my message here is to keep
it simple, I will not go on too much longer. Let me just close with an
observation that all of us should remember when you're coming from the academy
and engaging publicly, whether it's with a reporter or with an editor. That is,
that we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person, of that editor,
of that reporter. Remember, they're under a deadline. They have limited space.
What they write needs to conform to the norms of journalism. For example, they
don't want to bury the lede.
Whereas, as I mentioned, we are
in the business of trying to communicate complexity and nuance. We should
remember that even with the constraints that the journalists or the editors
might have, they've come to us because we understand the nuance, because of our
expertise. In walking that fine line, we need to remember their constraints
while also trying to communicate what we know. If you remember nothing else
from what I've said, remember to give them some nuance, but just a little, not
too much at once.
The good news is that if you
succeed, and if you develop a rapport with a reporter or with an editor or with
the host of a website or whatnot, they will call you back. They will call on
you again, which will give you yet another opportunity to introduce a little
more nuance and make another point in a self-reinforcing process that just
rolls on. It's not just a one-shot deal. It's an opportunity to build a
relationship and therefore communicate more and more as time rolls on. Bottom
line, keep it simple, but not too simple and with that, I'll close. Thank you.
Marion Pierre:
Thank you David. Now we will have
Terrence Johnson. TJ?
Terrence Johnson:
Good afternoon everyone. I want
to thank the organizers again for an invitation for this great forum. I just
want to begin in terms of expressing my own trepidation, in terms of how we
often think about, we in terms of the academy, think about how we engage the
public. I have primarily engaged what Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham calls the
counterpublic as a way to engage public life. In part because, when I entered
the Academy, there was this sort of strange kind of, sort of cloud over
particularly African American scholars, in terms of, "Well, are you going
to do real intellectual work or are you going to become a public
intellectual?"
I never quite understood why that
dichotomy existed and never quite understood why many of my colleagues, they
bemoaned leaders or thinkers like Cornel West, or Michael Eric Dyson, or bell
hooks. As a result, I was always torn in terms of, "What is my role in
terms of as a scholar, as an intellectual, and in terms of the places I'm
engaging." I decided early on, I wanted to engage places where I felt
safe, where I felt that my views could actually grow, and also in places where
I could learn from the folk I'm engaging.
I primarily worked within the AME
church and within churches where I've lived to think through sort of a number
of issues as it relates to politics, as relates to religion. And also, from
that, I have in some ways really kind of ignored things like media and/or
university as a place where I could engage in part because I see that they turn
to us, us being African-Americans, women like Latinx folk, they turn to us in
moments of crises. I'm not sure, when we make these responses or write our
editorials, that they do more than to appeal to a kind of very liberal media.
I've always been just torn as to,
"How do I respond when I receive invitations or requests to make a
comment?" I primarily stay in the counterpublic and that's been my choice.
Now I'm beginning to sort of rethink that kind of engagement to figure out, may
I expand it? One way I've been doing so is, I've written a blog recently trying
to think through this. I'm beginning to figure out, how do I use my experiences
within the counter-public, within these black churches, to help inform what's
happening now, also to inform my own scholarship?
What's interesting is that what
I'm hearing is a very interesting kind of call that I've read in the
literature, but haven't heard publicly in quite some time, probably not since
the sixties, this whole idea that Black Lives Matter, and especially sort of
the black women who are pushing forth this agenda around police reform and
criminal justice reform, are really calling out ... Alicia Garza mentioned this
the other day, this whole idea that the system is working as it was designed.
In other words, there's a whole
push in terms of, "How do we move away from this idea of reforming the
system to actually this idea of the system needs transformation?" As
scholars, how do we make sense of that? Whether or not your group was stating
it, my push is this idea that, let's take the question head on. What does it
mean then as a starting point, that we start with our basic research question
that the system is actually broken and it's actually, we're not broken but
designed to work in this way. And if that's the case, how does it change our
scholarship? How does it change our approach?
I've been thinking these
questions through with Audrey Lorde, the notion of the master's tools and
wondering whether or not, what does it look like then to rethink the very
tools, rethink the very questions we are raising, if we turn to non-traditional
thinkers or traditions thinkers that we have sort of marginalized? What does it
mean to have a kind of gender-based and sort of racialized-based approach,
thinking about reform, thinking about transformation, and thinking about the
very questions that we are engaging?
I really want to situate some of
my comments in terms of this idea of helping communities, think about big
questions but also listening to communities and allowing their questions, their
concerns to inform not only my scholarship, but how I see and engage them and
how I see and engage my students in the classroom. I think I want to end there
and then wait for questions to push me a bit more in my own thinking. Thank
you.
Marion Pierre:
Thank you Terrance. Next, we will
have Robbie, Robert P. Jones.
Robert P. Jones:
Hi everybody, I'm really thrilled
to be here and honored to be with such distinguished panel. Thank you, Dr.
[Carruthers 00:32:27], Dr. Johnson, Dr. Campbell. I'm in a little bit of a
unique spot, having come out of the academy and heading a nonprofit
organization, the Public Religion Research Institute, where we have kind of one
foot in the academy, but one foot kind of in the media landscape and kind of
art of our day-to-day and week-to-week work is trying to push things into the
media, help reporters there.
One thing I want to say is, I've
noticed in the chat things that there are some reporters with us today. I just
personally want to say thank you for all the work that you're doing. It has
never been more important than I think for the work of scholars and the work of
reporters today. I want to thank all of you for your courageous work out there,
kind of telling the truth about what's happening. I thought I'd share one,
actually an email exchange I had with a reporter this morning who works at this
intersection of racial justice and religion and politics.
The reporter just said in a
quote, "Looking ahead to the rest of this year toward the election,"
said this, and the report use the word our and that's because this reporter
like works at this intersection of religion and politics, and just said this, "American
politics has steadily evolved more toward our interests and expertise with
racial, cultural, and religious identity moving to the absolute center of the
state." This is from a veteran political reporter that really does see
this nexus as being the thing that's going to define the next election in our
current coverage and going forward into the election in a good publicly
accessible scholarship and good reporting, never been more important to help a
public, really help our democracy and help the public be informed.
I want to say just a couple of
things on substance that may help provide some frames in terms of that nexus of
things, maybe no. I've spent a lot of time looking at kind of the demographics
and the shifts among white Christians in particular. That shift really has set
the stage for Trump and it's set the stage for where we are today. Just a
couple of things that may be helpful because I think sometimes, nuts and bolts,
framing something that you're pitching to a reporter or in an op ed with some
data is often a really good way to get attention and get it anchored, get your
argument anchored and reporters more and more are relying on, things like
quantitative data. You don't have to be a quantitative person to use it well,
but being on the lookout.
I'm going to give you just a few
things from some of our recent work that I use all the time, kind of talking
points I use a lot to help explain the place we're in, the demographic shifts.
The biggest one that I laid out in the end of White Christian America was that
white Christians, that is all Christians, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox taken
together, white non-Hispanic Christians have dropped from 54% of the population
at the beginning of Barack Obama's presidency in 2008 when he was running for
president to 42% today. That's 12 points basically over a decade. It is a huge
drop and a big tipping point in the country.
The other sort of news underneath
this is that, white evangelicals in the last ten years have actually been part
of that drop rather than being exempt from that drop as they were in decades
prior to the last one. Just looking at white evangelicals, they dropped from
21% in 2008 to 15% today and drop 2% points just since 2016, so when you think about
how close the last election was, this one is likely to be a drop in a core
group like that for president Trump's coalition, for example, I spent a lot of
time talking to reporters about this. This has happened nationwide but it's
also happened in those key battleground states in the Midwest. Michigan for
example, in 2016, 18% white evangelical, today it's 15.
The other kind of big thing
that's going on that explains some of our dynamics is that the two political
parties have sorted themselves along the lines of race and class ... Sorry,
race and religion and class too, but race and religion predominantly. The
Republican Party today is self-identified Republicans are 70% white and
Christian. Self-identified Democrats are only 30% white and Christian. This I
think explains a lot about what priorities are there, what the two parties see
and don't see as priorities, and even as realities in the country. It's
important to hang onto.
Lastly, as soon as I'm done, I'll
stick the reference. We just had some polling last week that got covered in the
New York Times and others about a drop in Trump favorability since March. Just
a couple highlights. Trump's favorability dropped 15 points among white
evangelicals, and it dropped 27 points among white Catholics since March.
That's the big one, given the high percentage of white Catholics in those
battleground states that, electorally speaking matter. White mainline
Protestants interestingly enough have been just basically volatile. They've
kind of moved around a lot, but not as clear drop as among white evangelicals
and white Catholics. Just important to remember that all three of those groups
voted majority for Trump in 2016.
Everybody knows the kind of white
evangelical number, 81% voted for Trump, but people probably don't realize, and
reporters don't often. The white Catholics voted 64% for Trump and white
mainline Protestants, which we think about as a more liberal end of the white
Protestant overall voted 57% for Donald Trump. Just a couple of facts there and
then I'll kind of wrap with a few things just from my experience both this year
in the particular moment we're in, and just in general about connecting with
reporters.
The media landscape is always
crowded, but it's never been more crowded than I've seen it this year. We've
got a pandemic, we have national protests everywhere around racial justice
issues, we have a president who's ignoring the former and pouring gas on the
flames of the latter, and we have a national election coming up. More than
ever, just in terms of practical terms, if we want kind of break through, we
have to kind of think about what is it that's going to break through that much
noise and what do we really have to offer? Just as, on a personal note, someone
who tries to write op eds on a fairly regular basis, I've never had more
difficulty getting an op ed placed in a national publication than I have this
year. It's just a really tough landscape out there.
I think, thinking local, thinking
state paper of record, thinking local television. Those kinds of things are a
really important strategy for this year. Then I was thinking about what can we
offer as academics? We can certainly offer area expertise. I think David talked
about that pretty well, but some other things that I've found that reporters
come to us for are historical perspective, the long view. Can we say something
like, "Yeah, we've been here before and this is how it went." Or,
"No, actually this is something unique, something we haven't quite faced
in this form before." But offering that kind of big picture from deep
expertise in the field or a look underneath. I think this is something else
that is really helpful for reporters.
If you see ripples going on to
the pond, what's underneath the surface causing it? Lines like, "Look,
what's really going on here is X." And offering that to help reporters
just cut through things and gets some clarity. And I think the last thing, I
think I'll put it here as a challenge. I do think the academy has often, as
journalists' training do, often conditioned all of us to be neutral on all
things in many ways, that's certainly objectivity and there's certainly some
things important about that, but I think in the current environment, we're
going to have to think beyond defying people on all sides. This is kind of my
take on it and that, even as scholars, we can call things a threat to
democracy. We can call things a threat to justice, either that takes us a
little bit out of our comfort zones.
I think sometimes we think the
options are, you can do that but in order to do that, you have to leave your
expertise behind. I think we can actually do that and bring our expertise with
us along the way. I guess the last couple of points here, just in terms of the
kind of breaking through more than ever, it's always true for op eds and short
pieces under a thousand words but it's one argument, it's one point. In that
one point is in the first or second sentence, and then it's tied with a title,
a couple that make people want to read. Just a couple I've used in the past
that, I worked a lot actually on the title, "The Republican time machine
that might elect Trump." Makes you want to read it. One I wrote recently,
"At Sojourners white supremacy is a threat to public health." Very
quick short statements that sort of make you want to get in and read.
Lastly, the one thing that I
think I did not know about connecting to media and getting things into the
media is that, it really is about relationships at the end of the day. Knowing
a reporter and being a resource to them, even if it's on background and you're
not getting quoted, sending reporters things on a regular basis, even if it's not
an official pitch so that they began to see you as a resource, I think is one
way to start.
Starting with local reporters and
building relationships there, and then building your way up. Or if there's a
particular national reporter that is just writing all the time, right in your
area, make sure you're in touch with them. I make a point when I'm in New York,
I try to take a reporter to coffee. Even if it's just, I'm not pitching
anything, I'm just trying to get to know them and let them know what we have
coming up. Send them your latest article. Find out ... I think David says, what
can you do to make their job easier? It's daunting, I think to most of us as
academics, to think about getting an assignment at 9:00 AM and having to turn
it in at 5:00. You've got to have it fact-checked, you've got to have
interviews, you've got to have sources, multiple sources, coherent writing, and
that's all got to happen in eight hours. Figuring out there.
There's one other thing, someone
said to me early on that I think [inaudible 00:43:08] stayed with me is,
"Answer the phone and return emails immediately." I think our
intention is to take an hour because we want to get all of our sort of things
in line and get all of our talking points typed up. By that report, many
reporters have moved on. Just last week, I had one that I took 45 minutes just
because I didn't see it, and by the time I had them, they had booked somebody
else. I think just kind of realizing how quickly reporters have got to move on
the stories that they have and being willing to kind of stay with them and be a
resource. And it's fine to say, "Look, I'll have to call you back on that
one, I have to look that up." I think that's fine for folks, you don't
have to have everything lined up first. I want to end where I started and
say, I do think this is a really important time for scholars, for reporters. We
have a real public service to offer that perhaps in our lifetime has never been
more important with everything going on today. Thank you to [inaudible
00:44:08] for funding this and for the Freedom Forum and also to the AAR.
Marion Pierre:
Thank you, Robbie. Thank you for
those comments. And I too, I'm glad to see we have journalists at the webinar
today. Also, it is so nice to be able to hear, to feel the balance with your
voices and your context, and to be able to bring that together. This is a
wonderful mixture and we look forward to the engagement with the questions from
our audience. Next, we will have Vincent Lloyd.
Vincent Lloyd:
Thanks so much for having me
here. I want to take the charge quite narrowly of providing tips for sharing
religious studies tip with the public. I think when we imagine the academy, or
the academic space on one hand and the mass media space on the other, the
distance between the two can seem very great and very dramatic, and it can seem
daunting to move from one to the other with different norms, different values,
and so on. But in the last generation, this new space of what we might call
semi-academic but public-facing blogs has blossomed.
I'd like to think with us about
that space as a venue where there's possibility for bridging that huge gap
between the mass media space and the academic space. Along with that, thinking
about how an academic who might be used to writing a 9,000 word scholarly
article for peer review, instead of distilling that down into the four-sentence
soundbite, could think about distilling that down to 1,000 words that could be
shared with an audience that might be a... could be shared with an
audience that might be a mix of academics in a variety of fields and some
nonacademics and some folks from the media looking for background and context
for what they're writing. And space, I would think of venues like Religion in
Politics, Immanent Frame, the Berkley Forum, the Australian Public
Broadcasting, ABC Religion & Ethics site has been doing a lot of this sort
of thing recently. Previously, Religion Dispatches and then the journal that I
edit, Political Theology, has a public-facing website, politicaltheology.com,
as well. Just to give you an example of what the space looks like, the journal
that I co-edit, Political Theology, for the typical article we publish we get
maybe 150 readers who access the article. On the website for a 1,000 or 1,500
word post we get about 20,000 readers every month who are looking at that
content.
So, it's a significant order of
magnitude, increase in readership, but it's also not the 100s of 1000s or more
people that one might get talking to the folks from CNN or the New York Times.
And I think it is important to remember that this space didn't exist a
generation ago. And so, senior colleagues might have reluctance or lack of
knowledge about what it looks like. And so it can take some getting used to for
peers to engage with that space. And there are advantages and disadvantages to
engaging with it.
One advantage, as I mentioned, is
audience size, international readership. And one can get this bigger portion of
the public beyond just one's immediate colleagues that one can speak to.
Accessibility, that these things are open access as opposed to an academic
journal, where one has to be a member of the guild, in general, to have the
access through a library.
And also, if one is interested in
doing more mass media work, the visibility that one gets from writing in these
sorts of venues without as much of a concern about dumbing down for the general
public. Now that you can try out ideas for a broader public, without feeling
constrained or anxiety about speaking very, very broadly.
Disadvantages that often occur to
people, it could be a distraction from the standard economic path of
publication toward tenure. The subtleties can be lost when expanding to a
broader audience. And there can be an amount of overhead involved in switching
one's mode of writing from a scholarly journal style of writing to a broader
style of writing.
So, I'd just like to name a
couple of myths and then six tips. First myths. One myth that I think one often
hears is that only certain topics will have a wider appeal. Only certain topics
will be of interest to people beyond your 20 or 40 colleagues in the academy.
While not every topic will be of interest to everyone, I do think that the
things that motivate us to study what we study in the academy are of things
that we can communicate to many people. Even if it's about a 15th-century monk
or about very eccentric religious community far away. What originally motivated
us can be communicated and will be of interest to others.
Another myth that there is some
technical expertise that's needed in writing for the public. In fact, just like
students worry about academic writing for the first time, but they can do it
without a huge amount of effort. There may be some psychological anxiety, but
without a huge amount of effort, one can do it.
And then thirdly, that people
don't care about academic debates and what we're doing in scholarly writing is
intervening in a sort of internesting debates between different academic
factions. But in fact, those debates can be of interest to the general public.
They can add drama to a story. I was just reading a nice piece in the Boston
Review about different philosophers writing about hope in different ways, but
framed as here are the intuitive appeals to this camp's position. Here are the
intuitive reasons to take this camp's position. And here's how they're fighting
with each other and now you as a reader are made views of, take sides, or see
the new view that the author is going to present.
Finally, just six quick tips for
this kind of writing. First, talk to a nonacademic about your academic work. So
if you have a neighbor, or a family member, or someone whose life does not
center around universities. Explain what you're doing and why you're doing it,
in your scholarly work, to that person, can be a great starting point for
communicating in a 1,000 words to this semi-public blog audience.
Second, what we do in the
classroom all the time is also communicating to this kind of semi-public
audience. Students who need things explained, who need things put clearly, but
who have an interest and capacity to engage with intriguing and surprising
ideas.
A third, and this isn't a
surprise to anyone, foregrounding storytelling, starting and weaving in
specific stories of specific people that can be given character and
personality. Which even if you're writing about Hobbes, or Locke or Karl Barth,
there are still stories there that they can be foregrounded and can give you a
means to get into the ideas, or the history, or the literature that has been the
center of your academic interests.
Fourth, experimenting with
first-person writing, even if it's not something you're very comfortable with,
or that you'll end up using in the long term. Trying it out, I think, can be
helpful in getting an understanding for yourself of what's motivating you and
what it might look like to try different voices and different modes of
communicating.
Fifth, as I mentioned previously,
using academic debates to generate a conversation and to garner a reader's
interests.
And then finally, being sure that
one moves beyond conventional wisdom or what one would read in an op-ed page.
One doesn't want to just regurgitate the sorts of things that one could read in
the New York Times but showcase the particular expertise that you have and that
you get from going deep in your learning of whatever the topic is that you're
translating for this semi-public audience.
Thank you very much. I look
forward to the discussion.
Marion Pierre:
Thank you, Vince Lloyd, for the
myths and the tips. Next, we will have Melissa Rogers.
Melissa Rogers:
Great. Hello everybody. It's
great to be with you and, I too, want to thank AAR, and Luce, and the Freedom
Forum, and all these terrific panelists who have given so many wonderful tips,
and I'm looking forward to engaging with everybody on the call. I also want to
thank all the reporters and other scholars who are on the call. What I think
the goal here is for us to find ways for academic work to find a broader
audience.
And today we're, of course,
looking at trying to find that broader audience during a presidential campaign.
And the goal beyond that, of course, is to deepen people's understanding of
important issues that are religiously inflected. So, how do we reach those
goals?
Well, one way is to look for ways
in which your work intersects with issues that may be raised during the
presidential campaign.
And so the area where I am going
to focus on is where religion may intersect with law and public policy during
the campaign. Now, I know that most aren't lawyers or public policy analysts on
the call, but you're all obviously working on religion in some way. And these
legal and policy issues very much need your voice to fill out a broader
understanding of how religion plays into these legal and public policy issues.
So, what I'm going to do is tick
off just a few issues that you can think about anticipating where your work as
a scholar about religion might intersect with those legal and public policy
issues. Then I'm going to list a few dates that you might be able to anticipate
that might be relevant to your work and to the presidential campaign. And of
course, that's because reporters often have to work on the basis of news hooks.
So, you have to pitch them
something that is going to be relevant. Someone earlier in the call mentioned
Juneteenth, June 19th, and that's coming up. So, some of your work on racial
justice and religious communities, you can prepare either commentary that you
want to shop around to journalists, or pitch even a radio program, or pitch you
as a guest on a television program.
So, that's the significance of
the dates. And then I'll just close out with a few other tips to add to those
of my colleagues. So, some of the issues that I just wanted to mention to you
are that President Trump and his administration have taken a wide range of
executive actions under the banner of religious freedom and that those
executive actions, many of them are highly contested. And Trump will continue
to make much of those during the election. They relate to a lot of different
issues, including the service of faith-based organizations, working with federal
funds. And where nondiscrimination laws and policies that apply to those funds,
either attach to religious organizations, they're receiving those funds or not.
They also relate to things like the tax-exempt status of nonprofit 501(c)(3)
organizations, whether they're religious or non-religious.
And of course, we all know
there's a lot of debate about how that should work in terms of various
communities in the United States. Church communities that might be inviting
elected officials to come to their houses of worship, to make statements.
President Biden has already
issued a plan for what he calls Safeguarding America's Faith-Based Communities.
It includes an emphasis on prosecuting hate crimes that are based on religion
and increasing security grants for houses of worship that are threatened.
You can expect, I think, during
the presidential campaign to hear debate about what President Trump has
established as a quote, unquote Faith and Opportunity Initiative versus the
White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that was in the
White House when President Obama and Vice President Biden served there.
Also, I will just mention that
the United States Supreme Court is looking at many blockbuster issues that are
religiously inflected. And those issues include issues of the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals Program, about immigration, and that deal with issues of
religious organizations and when they can discriminate and when they can not
discriminate.
They're looking at many other
issues, such as the rights of LGBTQ persons under federal law. So, I can talk
on and on about these issues, but they're all very significant and may serve as
ways for you to begin to weigh in and deepen the discussion around those
issues. I wanted to mention one other Supreme Court issue that's very
important, and that is the Court may reconsider the legal standard that it uses
to evaluate claims for the free exercise of religion.
And this, I think, just opens a
wealth of opportunities for religion scholars to begin to talk about free
exercise and how they see it manifested and ways in which changing the standard
might affect those religious practices. So having said that, let me just put up
very quickly, if I can, some dates that you might want to look at as dates that
might be hooks for your work. The United States Supreme Court in June over
series of Mondays, and maybe more dates, will be handing down decisions. So, if
you have some research at the ready, you may want to look at what the cases
are, and how your work intersects with those decisions. And maybe even tee up
an op-ed.
I already mentioned Juneteenth.
We have June 20th, the Poor People's Campaign Virtual Moral March on D.C. This
is Reverend Dr. Barber's march. The latter part of June will be the resumption
of President Trump's rallies. There are going to be religious events connected
to those rallies, so that's another good hook. In July and August before the
DNC Convention, Vice President Biden will name his vice presidential choice,
which he has promised to be a woman and is likely to be an African American
woman.
Just going to reel these off very
quickly in the interest of time. And August 13th, that case that I mentioned
earlier about free exercise standards. There's going to be briefs filed in that
case in August. The DNC is going to meet in Milwaukee, we think in August,
although I put a asterisks by that and the RNC Convention, because we don't
know exactly what those conventions will look like, in part, due to COVID. On
March 28th, if you were watching earlier, you saw Reverend Al Sharpton announce
that he and Martin Luther King the third are going to sponsor a march on Washington
for equal justice, and racial justice, and civil rights. And then in September,
October, we have the Family Research Council's Value Voter Summit.
Then we begin to enter the
presidential debate. And interestingly, the presidential debates are all
happening at what I would call religiously inflected universities. The first
one being at Notre Dame University, the second one on October 15th, the vice
presidential debate being at the University of Utah, which is obviously a state
school, but the fact that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
plays such a prominent role in that state, I think will make it possible for
you to pitch research in that area if that's what you do. And then the
presidential debate on October 22nd at Belmont University, which is a Baptist
school. Red Mass, I put in there because that is the Mass that the Catholic
Church does before the opening of the United States Supreme Court term for
2021. So that might also be a hook.
So let me just close by saying
that, I think the tips that have already been provided are so wonderful. I
think empathy, with reporters, is a wonderful thing to do. Reporters have hard
jobs, and so how can we be helpful to them? I think that's the right
orientation. How can we help them do their jobs and work with them? I think
it's very important to take the initiative, as some have already mentioned. To
reach out to reporters, not wait for them to reach out to you. To send them
things, just little bits of things that may be useful. You may or may not be
quoted, but they'll begin to regard you as someone that can be helpful to them.
And then when there are things
that go wrong in that relationship where you are misquoted, or when something,
maybe, a title is put on an op-ed that you think does violence to your work, to
immediately contact them and be very constructive about it, to say, "Hey,
this looks great. There's just one problem here that I'm sure you can
understand because of this. And I hope we can get this fixed immediately."
And I would say nine times out of ten, you're going to find some response to
your concerns, and that will keep the relationship going in a positive way.
So with that, I'll just stop and
look forward to the conversation.
Marion Pierre:
Thank you all so much. Thank you,
Melissa, for sharing and for all of your comments and your resources and the
tools for a journalist, as well as our scholars. And reminder for our audience,
you can submit your questions to a specific presenter or to the panel at large.
So Ben will now handle the question and the answer session.
Ben Marcus:
Great. Thank you, and thanks
again to our panelists for their fantastic presentations. I've learned a lot
throughout this session, and I appreciate all of you making time to be here and
thanks to our audience for sticking around a little bit longer. We wanted to
make sure that our panelists had enough time to say what they had to say and
that you all had enough time to submit your questions. So now is the time to do
that. We have plenty of time. We'll be staying here until about 1:30 Eastern to
answer your questions.
And I know that a number of
people have already posed questions in the chat and I've been collecting those.
So, I'll read out a few at a time and then turn it over to you all. None of
them have been directed at a particular presenter. They're all general
questions. So feel free to unmute yourself, panelists, and let us know your
thoughts.
So one is from attendee named
[Alyssa 00:19:13]. She asks, "Can any of the panelists speak to gender
differences in writing for the public?" She says that she's one of the
co-editors of Women in Theology, which is a blog and suspects that some of the
ad hominem responses that they get on that blog might be particular to a
gender. So that's one question.
Another question is about
Muslims... So this is more of a content-based question, but one of our
attendees, is in an Ummah, in the area, and asked about reporting on Muslim
communities and the election since Muslims have often been used as a political
issue in every election in recent time. And one-third of Muslims in America are
African-American. Does anyone want to comment on the specifics of doing public
scholarship, about Islam in America, around the election?
And then one more question that
I'll pose to the group is about, maybe a little bit more specific to our
faculty colleagues on the panel. The question is, as a new faculty member, my
question is how careful do I need to be, or not be, about bringing my personal
bias or viewpoints into the classroom?
We have three different
questions, and people on the panel can tackle those in any different order that
they'd wish to. So, does anyone want to comment maybe on that first question
about gender? Second question is about Islam in the United States and how to
comment on Islam leading up the election? And the third is about faculty
members? Maybe I can volunteer one of our panelists. Vince, do you want to just
talk about the faculty question, since you're a faculty member on the panel?
Vincent Lloyd:
Sure. I think that the classroom
is another space where we engage with the public. Being interviewed on CNN or
quoted in the New York Times can still capture our imagination of what
scholarly engagement with the public looks like. We forget that every year
we're engaging with 100s of members, depending on your institutional context of
the public, who require some of the same skills in terms of translating
scholarly knowledge to the public that engaging with the mass media requires,
and relationship building, and so on.
In terms of the specific question
about biases or personal views, I've seen colleagues, very successfully, both,
bring their own views into the classroom and have seen colleagues, very
successfully bracket their own views in the classroom, at least in the
performance. Obviously, we're all in the way we construct our syllabi, and then
the way we talk to students and the views we present are bringing in our
perspective and are making an argument. But I don't think there's one right
path. I think if one is bracketing one's views that... Both techniques can
provide opportunities for students to feel welcome if they're done well, and
for students to practice a kind of public engagement that we want--kind of public engagements that
we want them to be doing when they are reading the media, or when they are
talking with others in their future lives.
David Campbell:
Ben can, can I speak to that one
as well? Just briefly.
Ben Marcus:
Yeah, please.
David Campbell:
So I'm the chairperson of a
relatively large department. I have about 45 faculty and we're all in political
science, obviously. And it's sort of a game among undergraduates I suppose. At
least, according to my teaching evaluations, to try to guess the political
affiliation of their professors, because most undergraduates seem to be under
the impression that we are supposed to be neutral. And I think they get that
coming out of high schools or whatnot. And of course that's a myth, right?
You're, as an academic, free to express your opinions as you wish in the
classroom. The advice that I give assistant professors, as well as my graduate students,
is that they need to develop their own teaching persona. So as Vincent just
noted, some people bracket their personal beliefs and try to present themselves
as an objective observer in the classroom, others choose not to do that.
I actually think both are fine.
It's just a matter of developing a persona that works for you. But the thing to
keep in mind is that if you have chosen, in the classroom, to adopt more of a
neutral persona, that then means that there are moments when you can really
draw the students' attention by making a normative statement, because it'll
sound unusual. It will be like, "Wow, now this professor is saying
something that is not just the neutral observer, above the fray," and
there are trade offs there because, if you choose that mode, it means you're
not going to say as much that might come from your own beliefs, but perhaps you
feel will have more impact. And of course the alternative is to have your
opinions expressed on a more regular basis.
If you are someone that chooses
to express your opinions on a regular basis. And this sort of goes to the point
about dealing with ad hominem attacks on blog posts, you need to be braced for
what will happen with your teaching evaluations, because you're inevitably
going to offend some student. That isn't necessarily a problem, but that's just
something to be prepared for. But that happens when you're trying to be neutral
as well. Maybe the moral of the story is you'll never satisfy students and
maybe don't worry too much about the course evaluations and do your own thing.
And develop your own persona so that you are being authentic to your own
beliefs and what you feel is best pedagogically.
Iva Carruthers:
Can I enter this conversation in
a different way to answer the first and second question around women and
Muslims and tie it into, I think what we just heard? So I think the way I would
want to think about the issue of women and Muslims and the question of
neutrality is to begin to think a little more deeply about the a priori
assumptions that we come into spaces with. Which begins to shape the very way
in which we respond. Whether we're responding in terms of expressing our point
of view or taking a posture of neutrality. I would argue that there is never a
posture of neutrality and that what we need to probably do more of is just to
claim what our assumptions are, what our frame of reference is, what our sense
of who we are is so that we can create authentic learning environments and
conversational environments.
So one of the problems that I
have with even the notion of nuance is that if you're not at the table, or if
you have grown up in an environment where the system [inaudible 01:12:54]
picture of the structures and your learnings, having a view or an appreciation
for these others, and we understand, that Terrance has asked us, what it means
to act in the space of being counter. And so being counter is in itself a
necessary point of view for him to even get his space at the table to converse
with. You can't nuance, if you're not at the table. And if you are at the table
and you don't know the experiences of those who are outside, whether they be
women, whether they be black people, whether they be Muslim, then there's no
way for your editorial decision to be a neutral one. You're just pretending
that it's neutral when in fact, from the moment that the decision came to the
table, it was already pre described as either being a counter one or one that
would affirm the position that you hope. And I think that this nation is at a
point where we have to be very clear and honest about what it's going to take
to include, not just conversationally, but in fact, to change the paradigm and
the lens through which we see these counter people or counter cultures or
counter groups.
Ben Marcus:
Thank you very much. That was a
really great discussion between the three of you. And I think that you all
brought up really helpful and complimentary points. So, thank you. I do want to
note that there was a question that I think was answered, but just so that
everyone who might not have been monitoring the chat, there was a question
about whether the AAR would provide opportunities for those who want to have
more public support for scholars are interested in having more public media
involvement. And I want to note that Dory, Tony, who's the new chief. I don't
want to get the title wrong, the chief-
Marion Pierre:
The public engagement.
Ben Marcus:
-public engagement at the AAR.
Thank you, mentioned that AAR is planning more opportunities to help scholars
with public media involvement, including conversations between journalists and
scholars. So, stay tuned for that. If you're interested, I'm sure that folks at
the AAR would be happy to hear from you, but they'll also be providing more
information in the future about that.
This is a bit of a nuts and bolts
question, and I think that Robbie, you brought this up a little bit in your
presentation as well, but the question is how do scholars of religion and
politics go about pitching articles or op-eds to national or regional
newspapers, blogs given the complexity of religion and techno religion and
theology? Do you have any like really concrete, any of you have, have concrete
ideas about that pitch process? What do you include? You include just a
paragraph about what it is that you plan to write. Do you include the entire
article? How do you pique their interest? What do you put in the subject line
to make sure that they read your email when you're pitching?
Robert P. Jones:
Well, I'll jump in. The first
thing I would say is I've never had an op-ed published that went through the
generic email or a form on a newspaper. I think that's mostly a waste of time.
So you really have to track down who the op-ed editor is and at least get the
pitch into their inbox. And I think, op-ed, you put something that, again, to
Melissa's point, op-eds have to be timely if you write. Sometimes they talk
about evergreen op-eds and those were okay. But what evergreen usually means is
that they sit on the editor's desk for months and months and months before they
go anywhere. So, hooking it to what's going on in the news and sort of ahead of
time, I think too. These editorial calendar that Melissa put up was really
helpful to be ahead of the game. So a week ahead of, if you know, right
Juneteenth, that's a peg. So if you know that, get it a week, don't send it
June 18th. They've already made their decisions by then, send it like June 12th
or 10th. So that's, if you're writing for Juneteenth, you've probably got to
the end of this week to get something again and that's it.
Just kind of being aware of how
those calendars work. And then I think just what I've tried to do, usually is
not send the whole thing. Usually as a pitch I send a paragraph. Because if you
can't say it in a paragraph, it's not going to be a good op-ed right. It kind
of getting it really here's my lead. Here's what it is. And I'm going to say
these three things about it, and I'm equipped to say it because of XYZ. You
know, I'm the right person to say it.
Melissa Rogers:
I'd add something there. Those
are great pieces of advice. Another thing is you, you want this thing published
right? Somewhere, you worked on it, you put some time into it. You want it
published somewhere. So when you send it, send it to your best option. And that
may be the best outlet that you can think of, or the one that you think is most
likely to accept it, or some combination of both. And when you send it, say,
you can either say then, or 24 hours later, say by the way if you could let me
know by tomorrow night, whether you're going to be able to accept this, that
would be terrific. That's then not saying that they have to, but encouraging
them to think about a timeline. And the reporters understand this, if they're
not going to run it, you want somebody else to run it.
So you give them what, you know,
24 to 48 hours, depending on the case. And then if you haven't heard from them,
write him back and say, "Since I haven't heard from you, I'll have to
assume, unless you get back to me very quickly that you won't be able to take
my piece this time, but I'll look forward to sending you more pieces in the
future," and then move on to your other outlet. And again, put a time
limit on them so that you're not left at the end of the day with something that
you can't get published at an outlet, because you just let it sit on a
reporter's desk. It's really up to you to stay after them in a kind and helpful
way. But one that makes it clear that you have a deadline too.
Terrence Johnson:
And I also want to add that, like
Robert said, I've recently tried to get a few things published and when you
send them to the op-ed at New York times, general kind of email, it just
doesn't work. And I've discovered that with the help of a media person at
Georgetown, it's been really helpful to kind of get something out there. But
without her assistance, I was kind of just kind of locked out of the process.
And I have now begun the process of kind of like reaching out to a reporter I
met months ago to try to reconnect because I think having that kind of personal
encounter is helpful. I also have someone reach out to me just on Twitter. I'm
not a huge Twitter person. I actually don't like about it. I'm forcing myself
to use it more, and a reporter contacted for a quote recently. And again, based
on the kind of the people I follow. So I think those might be some things to
kind of take into consideration as well. Using your university media person and
also, using Twitter as a potential outlet, as well. And contacting reporters
before you actually want their help.
Ben Marcus:
David, I think I actually needed
your phone just because there was a little bit of feedback.
David Campbell:
Can you hear me now? As they say.
If I can just quickly build on, what's been said, and I agree with all of that.
I was actually going to make the same point about finding somebody at your
university who might be able to help you at least identify who the individual
is at a given newspaper to contact. But just remember that, building on what
Melissa said, you do not want to send one piece to multiple publications at the
same time, because that could put you in the rather awkward situation of more
than one actually accepting it. And then you have to decline someone having
accepted your piece, which is likely to burn a bridge. That might've been
obvious but I know in some disciplines, people submit academic articles to
multiple journals at once. This is not a situation where you'd want to do that.
Ben Marcus:
Great, thank you. Very helpful. I
think given the time that we have left I'll turn it back over to Marianne, is
there a moderator and give her moderator's privilege to pitch out a last
question or share any last thoughts.
Marion Pierre:
Yes, I just want to again, say
thank you to the six panelists for showing up and allowing us to hear your
voice, from your context. And to help us as scholars, as human beings, get a
clearer view of where we are in light of what the election that's coming forth.
And again, a very special thank you to Dr. Iva Carruthers to Dr. Vincent Lloyd
and to that Terrence Johnson for last week coming up and helping us. Thank you
so much for accepting that. And if there are no more questions, I just want to
remind everyone that we will have another special edition webinar in July
providing tools and resources for our faculty members and scholars in
preparation for the fall semester.
Ben Marcus:
Great, thanks. I guess then with
our last five minutes, I would just want to leave time for our panelists. If
you have 20 seconds or 30 seconds of closing thoughts, please feel free to
share them.
Terrence Johnson:
I just want to encourage
everyone. Don't forget about your local museums and to a local sort of think
tanks. You know, I've found that working with the Smithsonian has been very
helpful, not only in terms of extending my syllabi, but also reaching again,
different kinds of publics. So don't forget those outlets have potential public
that you can engage and actually put on symposiums and forums as well.
Ben Marcus:
Great.
Robert P. Jones:
I'll just offer two, quick
things. One is that PRI does have a public fellows program and we are looking,
we're in our year two of three. And part of that program really is to train
scholars, to be more publicly engaged. If you have some interest in that, you
can drop me a note and we can continue some information you can see in our
website now as well. But I just want to say thanks again to everyone for all
the work I know all of you are doing out in your publics and to the reporters
online as well.
Ben Marcus:
Thank you.
Iva Carruthers:
I would like to thank everyone
and only add that I hope we all pay a little more attention to the power of
words and language. I was reminded that right after Katrina, and very
immediately, black people were called refugees. A group got together and
created a lexicon for newsrooms. And I know that in this moment right now, the
same as being done, but I do want to reiterate that all of us have a deep
responsibility to understand the words have power. Thank you.
Ben Marcus:
Thank you for that. Maybe I think
David, Melissa, or Vince.
Vincent Lloyd:
Thank you all for being here and
my only parting word of wisdom would be to not forget about the value of pure
research and scholarship itself. Even as media engagement can be tantalizing
and important and can reach broader audiences. The work in the library and the
archives and the databases has an enormous value as well.
Ben Marcus:
Great. Thank you for that
reminder.
David Campbell:
I'll give the advice that if
you're going to do a zoom call, you should test out your technology before the
call. That would be my main piece of advice. But let me just reiterate
something that's been said, but I think it's worth repeating as sort of a final
point. And that is the importance of relationships when you're working with the
media. A lot of what ends up in print or on the air does actually come from a
relationship that's been built. And that in turn requires patience. Again,
remember to think about the constraints on those folks in the media. They have
very difficult jobs. And so if emails go on answered or you're being asked to
do something at the last minute, it's only because of the particular, somewhat
difficult, circumstances that those press people are in.
Melissa Rogers:
I'll just say a few miscellaneous
things. One is, I remember recently a reporter telling me that they were
dismayed by how long it took some people to get back to them on email. So I
would just say, and I know those of us who email other academic colleagues are
used to perhaps taking our time, meaning, you can get back to the next day or
something like that. And reporters, I think really appreciate it when you get
back to them, if you can't immediately and say, "Oh, I'm on a phone call
right now, but I'd be happy to talk to you." Especially if they're asking
you for a quote and say, "Hey, I'm on a phone call right now, but I'll
call you right back." And so they know that you're out there, you've got
their message and you're going to respond to them.
You're not always able, but if
you're able to respond to them immediately and give them a sense of when you
can get back to them and get back to them quickly, that's appreciated. Another
thing is we're appropriately thinking about diversity and the kind of voices
that are in the public square. Who has not had a opportunity that they should
have to address wider publics? And it's a good time to be thinking about those
of us who do have context with immediate, to be sure where we're sending names
of people that we think that they haven't heard from enough and that we're
working with organizations like ReligionLink, I believe I'm getting that right,
where they send around contact information for sources that could be tapped for
particular stories. So I think it's an obligation that, some of us who have
those relationships, to continue to try to work, to broaden the diversity of
voices that are heard, especially at this time in our nation's history. And
then the last thing I will say is just one publication that I have been working
with recently is Emory University Law school's canopy forum, and it's focus is
on legal issues, but it's not just for lawyers. So if you have an issue that's
religiously inflected and legally inflected, that might be a good academic
option that perhaps not as many people know about, that should know about it.
Thanks everybody.
Ben Marcus:
Great. Thank you. Well, that's
perfect. That brings us to time. I want to thank again, really, truly all of
our panelists. I appreciate your flexibility and your willingness to share your
time and expertise with us on this webinar. We sincerely appreciate it. And
thanks to all of the attendees for joining us today, we know you have a lot of
different zoom options these days, and we appreciate you joining us for this
webinar. I want to invite all of you if you'd like to continue the
conversation, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
You should have my email address in the zoom registration link. And I'm sure
that my colleagues, Maryanne and Doria at the AAR would also be happy to hear
from you. And if you'd like to connect with any of our panelists, you can shoot
me an email and I'd be happy to put you in touch. Thank you, all of you, for
joining us today. And I hope you all have a wonderful day.
David Campbell:
Thank you. [crosstalk 01:29:13]
Melissa Rogers:
Thanks Ben. Thanks everybody.
[crosstalk 01:29:13]
Marion Pierre:
Thank you everybody.