RHETORICAL CRITIC

So an organization that I am a member of, the National Council of Teachers of English, released this statement yesterday. It’s not long, so I’ll reproduce it here. I also got it in an email.

This week NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English released a statement regarding the war in Israel and Palestine. The statement, as read, openly supports one side of the conflict and was unauthorized by NCTE leadership. We have received correspondence from members questioning who published the statement, what their role is, and wanting to make sure NCTE knew about it. This statement was not published by NCTE or its leadership team. Neither the Presidential Team of the Executive Committee nor NCTE staff were made aware of this statement prior to its publication.

As a leadership team, we deeply respect the varied opinions of our members. Intellectual freedom is critical to our organization, our members, and the students we serve.

We seek to ensure that members and the public are able to easily understand whose ideas are being espoused in statements and that NCTE and others are not intentionally or unintentionally misrepresented.

So, NCTE’s Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias In the Teaching of English apparently made “a statement regarding the war in Israel and Palestine,” but where? I can’t find it. Was it deleted? Did it only go out as an email, or on social media? It can’t be the “Celebrating Arab Narratives” post of 11/9, which doesn’t reference the war and was last week. Or is it? Who knows with this level of oblique reference.

Frankly, this is a really curious bit of rhetoric. It’s not a retraction. More of a disavowal. But there’s a sentence that is rather chilling: “We have received correspondence from members questioning who published the statement, what their role is, and wanting to make sure NCTE knew about it.”

This doesn’t make any sense. The members of the standing committee are public, unless that webpage is badly out of date, and even so, I don’t buy anyone innocently asking who wrote it, or what their role is, or even wanting to simply inform NCTE leadership about it.

Sure. Just some concerned citizens.

I wonder if anyone will clear this up. I can’t be the only confused and uninformed member of NCTE.

I also can’t be the only one worried about censorship. The 11/16 email/statement espouses academic freedom… but the tone says otherwise. It’s weird.

It’s not like I take my political cues from a gigantic organization like NCTE, or even my pedagogical ones, but many colleges and their respective organizations have let academic freedom slip into sixth or seventh place in the last couple of years, in terms of principles.

Update:

Ok, found a PDF circulating on social media. It seems to be an opening statement by the committee to be delivered at NCTE 2023 (Nov. 16-19). I am not confident I am reading the original, or the one to be actually delivered (or if it has been delivered orally), so I won’t reproduce it here; the file’s title is different from the title in the text, suggesting the language is/was in flux.

My earlier concerns about censorship hold. The PDF that I see names the committee, and as the members are public, the NCTE “response” remains… off.