Questioning the Rhetorical Eclipse of Philosophical Leisure: Ad Colloquium Conferendum

Human communication in our postmodern era has degenerated into phatic communication. Phatic communication, appropriate in some circumstances, used unreflectively limits the ability for the development of healthy, idea-laden conversation. The phatic nature of communication represents a loss of human interest in human communication. Philosophical leisure can help to recapture the element of human interest in conversation, which recuperates an over-abundance of phaticity in human communication. Recuperation of communication occurs when ideas drive conversation. Philosophical leisure can help human beings to find substance for those ideas. This study considers how philosophical leisure can enrich human communication

Building a PSU ETHOS

This white paper is about responsive change in higher education where integrative engagement replaces silo-centric traditions and all constituent voices are part of the transformation as they co-create a new educational landscape that leads with the student experience. At Plymouth State University, designing, building, and engaging the integrated cluster initiative invites students, faculty, staff, alumni, business partners, community partners, and partners beyond our local borders to co-create our future citizens, leaders, the educational landscape, local and global communities, and the local and global marketplace. By leading with the student experience, we are learner centric in all aspects of academic and administrative experiences. This provides a framework for how we get there. Working from the book length manuscript, ETHOS vision: Commitment, action, and self-transformation in higher education (Nancy Puglisi and Cheryl B. Baker, 2016), ETHOS stands for: E –Education, T-Teaching, H-Habitat, O-Organizations, and S-Society. We advance two conceptual lenses in this manuscript that we believe will help us envision our individual transformation as we engage organizational transformation. The first conceptual lens has to do with becoming an Educateur, which is a transformational professional within the academy, facilitating learning in the classroom, and actively engaging in the change processes within the organization. An Educateur is responsible, not only for the learning of their students and their own learning but also the environment within which they teach. It is essential that faculty embrace dualistic, Educateurial roles of teacher and organizational transformation emissary. The Educateur co-creates innovative venues in the classroom and within the organization to accomplish an imaginative, reflective, and contemplative environment. The focus for the changes within the classroom and the organization should include: experiential, integrative, community-based and transformational practices restructuring the classroom and the institution to meet the needs of students and the larger external community. The second conceptual lens involves shifting our approach to our teaching methodology from teaching children to teaching young adults. Using the landmark work of Malcom Knowles that identifies six assumptions about the adult learner, we can begin to envision new approaches to teaching and learning that shifts from a teacher-centric model typical with teaching children to a learner-centric model that facilitates learning by self-direction, building on student previous experiences, enabling the learner to co-create their learning, and instead of learning for a test, the learner learns with a different purpose such as to solve a problem or to touch the world around them. By seeing our students as young adults instead of children, we can better meet their diverse learning styles and needs, enhance their learning experience, enable them to own and co-create their educational experiences, and cultivate a mindset of lifelong learning. For further consideration of these ideas, we hope the attached paper is helpful. This paper is not intended as an exhaustive exploration of approaches to teaching. We are intending to identify two significant dispositions that are aligned with our current organizational life, the Educateur and teaching young adult learners

Teaching Communication Ethics as Central to the Discipline

Communication ethics as a field of study within the communication discipline has made significant contributions in a variety of areas, including teaching. This paper offers an historical overview of communication ethics, with special attention to four major approaches to pedagogy – ethics in human communication, moral psychology and intuition, a communication ethics framework, and a critical communication ethics pedagogy. For the department seeking to incorporate communication ethics through stand-alone courses or throughout curricula, the authors suggest ways for communication administrators to address questions of desired competencies for communication graduates, and to articulate related learning outcomes. Future recommendations for the field and administrators are offered. The authors conclude that while communication ethics pedagogy has made significant contributions to the discipline, its potential will only be fully realized when faculty and administrators together construct the right balance of offerings for their departments

Leisure as a Philosophical Act: Thinking, Acting, and Being

Aristotle argued leisure was the first principle of all action; Thomas Hobbes suggested it was the mother of philosophy. Today leisure is more often associated with rest, relaxation, or idleness. These associations have contributed to a misunderstanding and lack of leisure. In our changing technological environment, leisure is overshadowed by a cult of speed where immediacy has replaced thoughtfulness and intentionality which poses communicative challenges to the human capacities of thinking, acting, and being. This essay suggests that reengaging leisure as a philosophical act, thus returning to its classical roots, provides recuperative possibilities for these challenges. Beginning with situating leisure as a philosophical act, then identifying the challenges that confront leisure, I demonstrate how leisure enables the necessary cultivation of thinking, acting, and being which provides recuperation of those human capacities even within our technological environment

Finding “Pity” within the “Haggle and Nag” Rhetoric around Critical Race Theory

This article identifies the challenges involving Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public discourse around the normalization of scholars’ language and rhetoric, while also providing fodder for the weaponization of CRT. Suggests an alternative approach for scholars to refocus CRT in public discourse through the fitting use of rhetorical frameworks. In Short · Anti-CRT discourse is rapidly being used to create public division and enact regressive policies and programs in the US. · Americans are increasingly weary of CRT due to opponents’ normalization of CRT scholarship and weaponization of CRT rhetoric, all which distorts the origins and intention of CRT. · Though scholars have lost some control of CRT public discourse, we can reassume stewardship of CRT through more patient and relatable rhetoric using frameworks such as those by Wayne Booth and Lloyd Bitzer

The Rhetorical Turn to Otherness: Otherwise than Humanism

While offering a public welcome of communicative participation, a communicative dark side of the moderate Enlightenment project emerged. Moderate Enlightenmentrsquo;s corollary companion to wresting power from a limited few is the staggering sense of confidence in the universal ground of assurance that is ldquo;bad faithrdquo; mdash;we fib to ourselves that we can stand above history and affect the future. Absolute conviction of universal access to truth propels through methodological confidence, undergirding the era of ldquo;the rationalrdquo; pursuit of truth, transporting the individual into an ethereal delusionmdash;that one can stand above the historical moment of engagement and cast judgment. This essay calls into question the common assumption that communication begins with the individual. We offer a critique of this assumption in accordance with radical enlightenment scholarship, calling forth a return to Otherness that renders the construct of individual secondary to that which is met.br