The Timetable for Another Man's Freedom

Abstract

Martin Luther King, Jr's. letter from Birmingham City Jail is forty years old this spring. It stands among his most persuasive work. It was addressed to liberal clergy who labeled civil rights demonstrations he led as unwise and untimely. More troubling than Ku Klux Klan, King wrote, is the white moderate ... who constantly says, 'I agree with you in goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;' who paternalistically feels that he can set timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by myth of time and who constantly advises Negro to wait until a 'more cooperative season'. King's timely engagement - extreme in eyes of many of his contemporaries and colleagues - challenged social norm as it brought state-sanctioned segregation to its knees and gave rise to an Alabama libel case, New York Times v Sullivan (1964), that would provide deepened constitutional protection for meaningful citizen and press engagement in full-bodied debate of public discourse. Forty years after Birmingham, legacy of civil rights revolution King helped to ignite is present in University of Michigan admissions policies now before United States Supreme Court. At stake in decision expected later this spring, according to University of Michigan Assistant General Counsel Jonathan Alger, is future of race and national origin as admissions criteria at public and private colleges and universities, race targeted financial aid, outreach programs aimed at minority students, and institutional autonomy and academic freedom in decision making. Each element, of course, is likely to have direct impact upon graduate and undergraduate programs in journalism and mass communication education. Symposium, new research analyses contributed by Lee Becker and his team at University of Georgia, and Rick Stephens' report from AEJMC Professional Freedom and Responsibility Committee follow and are presented as elements of a continuing Educator commitment to assessment of diversity in its broadest reach in journalism and mass communication education. careful study by Becker, Huh and Vlad presents a disturbing timetable. At present rate of growth, it will be 2035 before faculty looks like students enrolled in 2003 journalism and mass communication programs in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. And, as Georgia team points out, The target is moving ... by 2035, percentage of students who are members of racial and ethnic minorities is likely to be higher than it is today. Symposium provides responses of six journalism and mass communication professors to two assessment questions: * Do our journalism and mass communication programs infuse sufficient depth and academic rigor about diversity into undergraduate and graduate education? * Do our pedagogies adequately enable understanding of complex nature of diversity within processes and practices of mass communication? …