In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Richard T. Marcy and Valerie J. D’Erman about their article “The Sensemaking and Construction of Political Narratives in Academic Settings,” from Telos 200 (Fall 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss Max Weber’s distinction between political advocacy and university teaching, and how this distinction is relevant for analyzing territorial acknowledgments; why the framework of narrative sensemaking is appropriate for analyzing territorial acknowledgments; the way in which territorial acknowledgments have developed through a process of sensebreaking, sensegiving, and senselocking; how the territorial acknowledgment represents a kind of truth in academia; Weber’s distinction between neutrality and objectivity and his argument that all research inevitably has some sort of value orientation; and how that value orientation should function in the university, particularly with regard to the university’s civic function. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 200 are available for purchase in our online store.
The Sensemaking and Construction of Political Narratives in Academic Settings
Richard T. Marcy and Valerie J. D’Erman
Introduction
In recent years, there has been something of an explosion of news stories about various college and university campuses across North America experiencing heightened levels of political advocacy and political unrest. Visible examples include the “canceling” of invited speakers who have been deemed offensive by select student groups[1] or petitions calling for the removal of instructors who have been accused of using harmful language.[2] While these examples shed light on some of the more intense political debates circulating in higher educational institutions, they are also newsworthy stories precisely because they suggest strong divisiveness in worldviews in action—the contradiction between different conceptions of “truth” within the campus venue. Less newsworthy, but no less important, are the introductions of new narratives that have become “truth” over time via general acceptance on the part of campus populations. As established organizations, academic settings are also sites of group behavioral norms and values in and of themselves, with self-contained perceptions and assumptions of what ideas ought to become institutionalized norms and what ideas ought to be excluded. Put another way, the college/university campus is an important site of political narrative-making as well as social debate.
Our aim in this paper is to explore how some political narratives are helped in becoming institutionalized “truth” on campus through particular strategies and tactics that rely on an evolving sensemaking process. Universities have long been sites of multiple narratives—whether via organizational norms, disciplinary debates, or individual assertions—and our focus here is on the process by which some truths become the only acceptable truth on today’s campuses. We delineate the way in which the worldviews (the “truth”) that underpin the employment of advocacy statements go from being an individual statement of challenge to the status quo, to becoming a new group norm and organizational truth. Using as a case study the example of the use of territorial acknowledgments, we further rely upon literature from various disciplines to highlight the sensemaking processes at work through this evolution. The relationship of this topic to that of the Telos symposium is twofold. First, the very examination of statements such as territorial acknowledgments is a provocative exercise in and of itself, as doing so could be perceived as calling into question the typically expressed rationale underpinning such acknowledgments, which we are not doing. This rationale is presently a part of administrative meaning-making at many institutions, making this type of inquiry somewhat novel. Second, the recent institutionalization of some advocacy statements, such as the territorial acknowledgment, showcases the process of how political narratives can, over time, become entrenched as new organizational “truths.” The case of the territorial acknowledgment is ripe for this investigation because issuing the acknowledgment has gone largely uncontested on campuses, despite some instances of contestation outside of academia.[3] While initially a political statement, the offering of the acknowledgment has now become normalized behavior within regular campus life—in effect, the primary “truth” considered appropriate for both organizational norms and individual assertions. This case study is notable for a consideration of the pursuit of truth on academic campuses for a number of important reasons, not the least being that not all forms of political advocacy have been absorbed as truth in the same manner within university settings. One critical example of non-absorption can be found in the University of California’s 1950 requirement that all faculty members must sign a statement pledging their disavowal of the Communist Party or face dismissal. This requirement was met with wide-scale resistance, and the resulting pushback and lawsuit rendered the statement unconstitutional.[4] Another more recent example of a large backlash to an administrative nudge would be the Danes’ rejection of a new organ donation proposal (of which there were typically high acceptance rates) due to the government’s recent altering of policy that clearly had the intention of further increasing donation rates.[5]
Our purpose in this paper is to explore how some cognitive and political processes may have helped normalize the establishment of territorial acknowledgments as expected practice. To be clear, our purpose is not to engage in any political debate over the land rights of different First Nations groups within Canada and the United States. Rather, the use of territorial acknowledgments and other advocacy statements as examples in this paper is only to further examine the process by which particular political perspectives within academia have become dominant in today’s campuses. Using the example of the territorial acknowledgment, we suggest that the concept of sensemaking and the different stages of a sensemaking cycle are helpful tools for understanding the process whereby new truths are established. The cycle often begins with sensebreaking, where a challenge to the worldview is introduced—in the case of territorial acknowledgments, activism on the part of Indigenous peoples and their academic allies that through various strategies and approaches serves to dislocate the preexisting worldview of the roles of different peoples on North American land. This stage is often followed by a second stage—sensegiving—where a new worldview is given via new theoretical frameworks, government policies, and group practices. The final stage is what we call senselocking, which we define as the maintenance and furthering of challenger ground for the entrenchment of the new worldview. These three stages serve to introduce and reinforce the new truths and norms as adopted by a majority within an organization.
Our intention in this paper is to examine some of the cognitive and political processes at work underpinning the leveraging of political statements, using the territorial acknowledgment as an example, and to highlight some important developments in the evolution of the territorial acknowledgment in line with the stages of the above sensemaking cycle. The historical narrative of the interplay between Indigenous land and colonial settlers is one that has become increasingly politicized in the context of current identity politics and, within that context, has become synonymous with a pointed political perspective of social justice on many academic campuses. This perspective has made large strides in achieving a new worldview on campuses across North America; to the extent that any one individual has a claim at stake in defending or resisting this new truth, it behooves them to recognize how these processes have unfolded.
The paper begins by providing some basic background on the history and evolution of the territorial acknowledgment. The following section engages with scholarly work on political narratives and meaning-making from a broad organizational “sensemaking” approach as well as from narrower academic venues. We then analyze the case study of the territorial acknowledgment through sensemaking concepts in order to examine some of the likely political and cognitive processes at work. Our examination suggests that the incorporation of the acknowledgment into all levels of academic institutional life is not only a scholarly addition of a new historical frame of reference but also part of a larger political struggle from a more activist-based academe that seeks to displace prior notions of truth and further solidify its own position.
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1. Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, “Who Decides What Is Acceptable Speech on Campus? Why Restricting Free Speech Is Not the Answer,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 13, no. 3 (2018): 299–323, https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618767324.
2. Numerous examples are provided in Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin Books, 2018).
3. Graeme Wood, “Two Major B.C. Cities Reject Indigenous Land Acknowledgements,” New Westminster Record, January 19, 2021, https://www.newwestrecord.ca/bc-news/two-major-bc-cities-reject-indigenous-land-acknowledgements-3276591.
4. Nancy K. Innis, “Lessons from the Controversy over the Loyalty Oath at the University of California,” Minerva 30, no. 3 (1992): 337–65, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41820882.
5. Job M. T. Krijnen, David Tannenbaum, and Craig R. Fox, “Choice Architecture 2.0: Behavioral Policy as an Implicit Social Interaction,” Behavioral Science & Policy 3, no. 2 (2017): 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1353/bsp.2017.0010.
