Abstract
Political conversations in the classroom have increasingly been challenging for faculty in higher education. Any misdeeds or transgressions—whether correctly or incorrectly interpreted that way—can easily find their ways outside the classroom. Theoretically, with the speed of social media, a clip of those conversations could already spread locally (if not nationally or internationally) before the class period is over. Many faculty members experience the current political climate as walking on eggshells when polarizing topics, such as ones on abortion, vaccine safety, or diversity training, are brought up in class.
If leading civil debate on contentious subjects is not difficult already, these interactions are increasingly framed by discourse of the post-truth—situations in which people believe information based on their emotions and beliefs rather than a factual basis supported by actual evidence. Based on their dire warning that “hegemonic forces in society use communication to falsify, obfuscate, and shape information for nefarious reasons” (p. ix) and a need to make sense of their own classroom discourse influenced by post-truth elements, David Kahl, Jr. and Ahmet Atay published an edited volume on the Pedagogies of Post-Truth. The former is a professor of Communication at Penn State Behrend and the latter is an associate professor of communication at the College of Wooster. Atay is also series editor of Critical Communication Pedagogy by Lexington Books. This volume is one of four in that collection.
The two editors had quite an agenda with topics they wanted to cover: (a) The history of post-truth and hegemony; (b) The news media and its relationship to the university; (c) Academic freedom; (d) Critical communication pedagogy as a means to locate truth; (e) The education of journalism students; (f) Civic engagement in a post-truth era; (g) The use of dialogue to combat post-truth; (h) Ways to develop student agency by resisting post-truth messages; and (i) Ways to develop information, critical media, and new media literacies.
Packed in 10 relatively short chapters, not counting the introduction chapter, it becomes clear that the editors intended to cover a lot of ground, and the authors clearly delivered. With this wide approach, there is something for everyone: from novices searching for better understanding of foundational terms related to critical communication pedagogy and post-truth to faculty already well versed in those literatures but searching for more effective approaches in the classroom. Importantly, the book does not become overly complicated for novices to follow along, yet still is provocative enough to keep more experienced readers engaged. The latter is probably the case because of recent, continued efforts by state legislators to undermine academic freedom and the tenure system—most recently seen in Indiana where now promotion and tenure decisions need to take into account “intellectual diversity” and the implementation of post-tenure review every 5 years, also to examine whether individual faculty present “intellectual diversity” (see Quinn, 2024).
Hence, the opening chapter on academic freedom under threat by Ann Savage from Butler University (coincidentally located a few miles from Indiana’s Statehouse) is timely. Many other chapters focus primarily on critical communication pedagogy, such as an individual chapter by Kahl Jr. and another chapter by Jennifer Zenovich and Leda Cooks from Call State University East Bay and the University of Massachusetts, respectively. Robert Razzante and Lore/tta LeMaster, both from the Arizona State University communication studies doctoral program with the latter still teaching there as an assistant professor, also focused on critical communication pedagogy, but shared personal experiences in the classroom with intellectual undermining by students with post-truth discourse as well. Overall, these chapters make a robust case of why educators need to think critically about dealing with beliefs not founded in science.
Another chapter that stands out is the one from Fitchburg State University’s J. J. Sylvia IV (Civic engagement and dialogic approaches to post-truth in the classroom). Among other things, Sylvia discussed how traditional teaching of media literacy could actually backfire in the Post-Truth Era. Although standard questions to assess the origin and intent of media messages are important to become more media literate (“Who created this message?” “What values, lifestyles, and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message? and “Why is this message being sent?”), these same questions could also make people critical and skeptical of any information—even factual messages with an overwhelming scientific support. Such post-truth thinking also undermines information from fact-checking sites, Sylvia continued, as they also are analyzed in terms of their biases. Sylvia explained that information from fact-checking websites should not be without any scrutiny, but that automatic assumptions about their biases provide unfounded excuses to ignore that content by placing it on the same par of any other source—whether it is heavily researched, similar to many fact-checking sites, or not at all.
Overall, this edited volume provides food for thought on teaching sensitive topics in class. It is certainly not a teaching manual with numerous lesson plans ready to be implemented (although there are tidbits here and there that certainly could lead to lesson plans or the development of skills to lead classroom debates on political subjects). That was also not necessarily the intent of this work. Instead, it is a great stepping stone for faculty wanting to learn more about critical communication pedagogy because of personal experiences or hearing about the accounts of others in which students challenge evidence and facts while relying on unsubstantiated beliefs rather than presenting evidence and facts themselves.