Jeremy: I respect your work and your intellect, but I actually took you up on your challenge and found Cornwell to be quite reasonable and fascinating. I had found some of his points to be valid in the past but I had never talked to him, and I think that it would be prudent for a person as gifted as you are intellectually to keep and open mind and be receptive to ideas from those who may differ in approach from you. Even Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell found that they actually liked one another once they reasoned together despite their two polar opposite views on morality and politics. I believe that the guest list from his conference is impressive, and I spoke with some colleagues on Capital Hill about this conference and they are planning on coming. For example, Barbara McCombs is one of the foremost experts in the area of learner centered education and she has actually created guidelines for APA's National Headquarters in Washington. This is why there is a buzz going on about this conference in Washington because she has a following in the DC metro area, and so do many of the other speakers. There are others who are equally well-known individuals who will be participating at this conference and I do not agree with you that it will make their vita suspect. In fact, I think that it may be benefit those who participate because of the number of other great minds who will be presenting. One could call this guilt by association in a positive sense rather than the negative one that has been suggested. Many of the presenters are in high demand and they are usually compensated because they are the best. I know that you are not suggesting that the leading scholars in academia should not be compensated well because that is an idea that led academia to lose their best minds to the business world because of financial reasons like the dying of tenure. Academia can learn one thing from business: the customer, or the student, is the reason that the institutions of higher learning exists. Therefore, it is imperative that each of us as scholars dedicate ourselves to increasing graduation rates, embracing low-cost digital and open-sourced publishing and developing our human capital especially with lower-social economic groups and minorities. These students are competing in a global economy and this will require new approaches that may differ from traditional education as your colleague in Madison Dr. J.P. Gee has been suggesting for several years. The fact that any academic conference may be profit driven is not disturbing to me as long as the conference is learner centered and geared towards assisting scholars in becoming better communicators and learner centered. All education begins with communications, and unfortunately as a communications professional and a scholar, I find that this is the problem in education in general: too many of us did not embrace, perfect or even study communications and therefore we talk at our students and one another and not to our students and one another. At the end of the day its your choice, but you are brilliant, do not major in minors because frankly it is beneath you and you are capable of so much more based on your vita and your talks on this board alone. Name calling is one of the tenets of propaganda that each of us should try to avoid because it usually has a boomerang effect. Keep up your great work! Chris -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of James Whyte Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 12:51 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Doctorow on Dealing With Trolls Has anyone in this organization actually made the attempt to get to know Reid Cornwell. His telephone number is on his emails. If so, what did that produce. Is he a jerk devoid of valuable qualities? What? Is everyone willing to accept the assertions unquestioned? From a scholarly point of view, one would think this malevolent character would be the object of curiosity as the poster child for Internet deviancy.IMHO true scholarship demands that one interrogate the accusers and the accused and determine for oneself what is the truth. Is it possible that WRC has been labeled a troll and the accusers are reifiying the label so that they don't have to be accountable? I'd be willing to bet Reid Cornwell would be willing to talk to anyone that called (friend or foe). It seems he is too up front to do otherwise. E.G. Boring nailed this whole drama 79 years ago. James. Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote: Yes, I think we should be very wary of getting involved with dr. reid cornwell. his empire is expanding of course. if you google him you will see that he has at least 3 different institutes/centers/ foundations all related to his corporate entity, he has several conferences, which he seems intent on leveraging academic expertise to promote. To me, it sounds very much like a profit from conferences system, leveraging academic expertise, which I find distasteful. I also find it distasteful that he has appropriated the emails from the list and is spamming members. It is spam in as much as it was unrequested and there is one profit making entity involved. If you received his personal invitations, i suggest you think twice, because it is likely that everyone on the list received very much the same invitation. I personally wouldn't want to have one of his conferences on my vita, i think it would have negative mojo to some people who have been bothered by him before. Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ --------------------------------- Got a little couch potato? 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