Editor's Column

It was June of 2001. I was sitting in an airplane on my way to the AFTA Meeting of the Americas.  At midnight, as we began our descent over the Atlantic coast toward the bright lights of Miami, it suddenly hit me. I have been editing the AFTA Newsletter for three years now. Two reactions to this newly realized fact entered my mind as I saw the small strip of Miami Beach passing underneath the plane. First, Airplanes aren't the only things that fly. Time flies too!  And, second, if I have lost track of the time as I have been working on the Newsletter, one of the reasons must be that I have been more absorbed by the work than I thought.

As the plane touched down on the runway, I realized that the Meeting would provide a chance for me to reflect, not only about AFTA in general, but specifically, as the editor, about the Newsletter. The Meeting has always been a time of reflection for the Newsletter. In the past, Editorial Board dinners were typically held on Wednesday night, after a long opening day. A big chunk of the time at these dinners, aside from the usual eating and connecting, was devoted to planning upcoming issues of the Newsletter and generating ideas for the future. Taxiing toward the arrival gate at the airport, I knew that this Editorial Board meeting would not only break with tradition in terms of the meeting time (the plan was to have a lunch meeting rather than the late night dinner), it would also switch the direction of our reflections from the future to the past. As I left the plane, I realized that the time had come to look back over the last three years and take account of the shape the Newsletter has taken under my editorship, relative to the ideas and wishes I had three years ago.

The Editorial Board meeting was planned for Saturday at noon, well into the AFTA Meeting. Thus, the experience and the energy of the Meeting created the context for our luncheon. Ellen Pulleyblank, Hinda Winanwer, Peter Fraenkel, Linda Wark, and Joellyn Ross attended the meeting, all dedicated and hard working members who have contributed a lot of their time and writing talent to the Newsletter over the past three years. We talked about the dreams Ellen (then the chair of the now dissolved Publications Committee who oversaw the editor) and I had had for the Newsletter as a mechanism for facilitating inclusiveness and diversity. Our dreams quickly came up against the realities of what I have called the "natural" tension between autonomy and control in the relationship between the AFTA Board and the Newsletter, and its implications on the Newsletter's content and design. I have been given great autonomy by the AFTA Board, and equally great support by the Presidents with whom I have worked.

My dream was to create a Newsletter that would serve as a mirror to the organization and its membership. I wanted to create space for the voices of all constituencies in AFTA, make room for controversies that move the goals and aspirations of the organization forward. I thought of the  Newsletter not only as a mirror that would provide a "value-free" reflection of the dominant reality of AFTA, but also as a vehicle that would make the organization look at its "dark" or controversial side. The readers may evaluate for themselves how far we have come in the past three years. In my own judgment, we have not come as far as I would have liked. The reasons lie in the systemic tension between autonomy and control. Organizations such as AFTA have fairly stable structures. We used to call them morpho- or homeostatic forces that ensure the organization's stability and counterbalance morphogenic forces that inject dynamic energy into the system that may threaten its stability. After all, the AFTA Newsletter is not an independent publication, but the official outlet of AFTA. Consequently, there are many morphostatic forces that limit the editor's autonomy. The most obvious representations of these forces, such as the publication of the Board Minutes and other official AFTA information, are probably the least influential. It is more the implicit forces that contribute to the "natural" tension I mentioned above. Some of these forces we discussed at the Miami luncheon. I will summarize them below after pointing out that I am NOT advocating that we grant the editor "total" autonomy and eliminate all control functions the AFTA Board has over the Newsletter. To the contrary, my argument is to make those forces more open in the Newsletter, the organization, and the membership at large.

What am I talking about? Over the past decade, AFTA has made great strides toward addressing issues of diversity on many levels and giving space to diverse voices. Inclusiveness has been one of the crucial buzzwords at Annual Meetings and Board Meetings. Yet, at the same time, voices bubbled from underneath the surface from people who felt excluded and lacked a public voice in the organization. Those were the people to whom I wanted to give space in the Newsletter; I wondered what it was they had to say. To my naïve surprise, they were difficult to find. When I approached them, they were apprehensive and reluctant to get involved. Instead of creating space for multiple and diverse voices, I found myself chasing people to write about issues that seemed important to the organization. What a paradox, I thought. Then I remembered what I had learned in graduate school about isomorphism (and still teach). What I was experiencing was similar to a paradox that AFTA, as an organization, has been struggling with for years: soliciting new members during times of declining membership is a necessity, but, since AFTA's criteria for membership are exclusive, such solicitation must necessarily work within certain boundaries. It seemed as though this structural component of "exclusive inclusiveness" of the organization was being echoed in my struggles to include "voiceless" members in the Newsletter's authorship list. The controversies continue to simmer underneath the surface, but, with a few exceptions, they do not reach the public discourse of the organization and/or the Newsletter.

At its retreat this fall, the AFTA Board will attempt, with the help of an outside consultant, to look at and discuss the organizational structure of AFTA. I hope we will find a way to solve the paradox of "exclusive inclusiveness" on a structural level, and create an organizational culture that will foster diversity that is closer to my dreams for the Newsletter three years ago. I am curious what my thoughts will be approaching the runway of the Hartford, Connecticut airport on my next AFTA trip to attend the AFTA Board retreat. There is something about the experience of sitting in a descending airplane, touching down on a runway, and finding oneself back on safe ground.