Dear Colleagues Firstly, thanks for the positive support for our letter to the ISA about supporting virtual participation at its conferences.
Secondly, we have made some minor amendments in light of comments and feedback from some of you. The new text is below and can be found here<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VziLUPESm1i093AifS1PLhgVHsKOshWyftzm309gtpY/edit> if you want to check that you are still happy to be listed as a signatory. The changes we made were: (i) making this an open call and not just from the ESS community since others are keen to support this and we plan to share it with other groups (ii) changing the opening statement to be less accusatory of ISA for inaction to date (to avoid generating a defensive response) and just stating what we think needs to happen and (iii) listing some of the other exclusions that occur as a result of insisting on attending in person on the basis of suggestions from some of you. If you are happy with these minor changes, no need to do anything. Thanks and best wishes Peter and Prakash REVISED LETTER To the ISA secretariat We are writing to you as members of the ISA with regard to the issue of virtual participation in ISA conferences and events. We request that the ISA enhances its efforts to support online participation in its conferences. We would like to emphasise why we believe proper support for virtual participation is important. These reasons include: (i) Health concerns: in a context of Covid and likely future pandemics, as a result of the probable increase in other zoonotic diseases exacerbated by the accelerated devastation of the natural world, convening large gatherings of people from different parts of the world is unlikely to be a viable model for future conferences. (ii) Environmental impacts of unnecessary travel: one of the greatest contributions we could make as scholars to reducing the environmental impact of our behaviour is to greatly reduce the amount we fly. Many universities are developing travel policies which restrict air travel given its contribution to a range of environmental and health problems and so we urge the ISA to enable participation of scholars keen to engage, but who wish to live more sustainable lives. (iii) Diversity and inclusion: Greater provision of virtual participation can enable more participation from southern scholars who often do not have budget for flights and travel to North America- or face visa restrictions in getting there. This is a key moment to diversify (and decolonise) our discipline and actively supporting wider participation is morally important- and makes financial sense. It is also the case that due to caring responsibilities, or lack of access to travel funds for early career or independent scholars, many other members of our community are excluded from participation by an insistence on being physically present. We realise some of these issues have been raised before with ISA pre-Covid. But given emerging platforms for effective online engagement that Covid has forced the academic community to develop, we believe this is a key moment for the ISA to show leadership in broadening access to its conferences while reducing the environmental impacts of hosting them. While recognising the scholarly and networking value of hosting such events, new hybrid models of engagement where the face to face element is reduced look set to be the new norm. The sooner ISA adapts to this, or preferably leads the way, the better. We do not underestimate the financial and logistical challenges of changing the nature of ISA conferences to enable hybrid models of participation. But equally we believe the association has a duty of care to its members and a responsibility to show leadership by providing more sustainable and inclusive models of conference participation, following the lead of other academic associations. We appreciate your attention to this issue and look forward to your positive engagement with it. This statement is supported by the following individuals: Professor Peter Newell Department of International Relations School of Global Studies University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9SN UK T: (0044) 1273 873159 E-mail: [email protected] ________________________________ From: Peter Newell Sent: 26 May 2021 08:14 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Letter to ISA to enhance support to virtual participation Dear Colleagues Apologies for clogging up your inboxes. Prakash and I have been in discussion about putting together a letter to the ISA to raise our concerns about their continuing failure to seriously support virtual participation in ISA conferences. The text of the draft letter is below and if you wish to support it, please add you name at the end of the letter here<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VziLUPESm1i093AifS1PLhgVHsKOshWyftzm309gtpY/edit>. The idea is to share it with other sections since there appears to be growing disquiet about this issue across our community. Thanks and best wishes Peter To the ISA secretariat We are writing to you as members of the Environmental Studies Section of the ISA, but know the issues we want to raise here are of concern to many other groups that are part of the ISA. We are concerned about the very limited nature of the ISA’s efforts to seriously support online participation in its conferences. We would like to emphasise why we believe proper support to virtual participation is important. These reasons include: (i) Health concerns: in a context of Covid and likely future pandemics, as a result of the probable increase in other zoonotic diseases exacerbated by the accelerated devastation of the natural world, convening large gatherings of people from different parts of the world is unlikely to be a viable model for future conferences. While recognising the scholarly and networking value of hosting such events, new hybrid models of engagement where the face to face element is reduced look set to be the new norm. The sooner ISA adapts to this, or preferably leads the way, the better. (ii) Environmental impacts of unnecessary travel: one of the greatest contributions we could make as scholars to reducing the environmental impact of our behaviour is to greatly reduce the amount we fly. Many universities are developing travel policies which restrict air travel given its contribution to a range of environmental and health problems and so we urge the ISA to enable participation of scholars keen to engage, but who wish to live more sustainable lives. (iii) Diversity and inclusion: Greater provision of virtual participation can enable more participation from southern scholars who often do not have budget for flights and travel to North America- or face visa restrictions in getting there. This is a key moment to diversify (and decolonise) our discipline and actively supporting wider participation is morally important- and makes financial sense. We realise some of these issues have been raised before with ISA pre-Covid. But given emerging platforms for effective online engagement that Covid has forced the academic community to develop, ISA has even fewer grounds to insist on face to face meeting – or even (as has been suggested) charging more for online participation to cover the costs of extra wifi capacity at conference venues. We do not underestimate the financial and logistical challenges of changing the nature of ISA conferences to enable hybrid models of participation. But equally we believe the association has a duty of care to its members and a responsibility to show leadership by providing more sustainable and inclusive models of conference participation, following the lead of other academic associations. We appreciate your attention to this issue and look forward to your positive engagement with it. Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/LO4P265MB4341E2DBA03A77DAFE7BC1AEFE229%40LO4P265MB4341.GBRP265.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.
