Professor to discuss race, rhetoric

Mark McPhail, a noted scholar in the rhetoric of race, will deliver the 19th annual J. Jeffery Auer Lecture in Political Communication at 5:30 p.m. today in the Indiana Memorial Union State Room East.\nMcPhail, a professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, will speak on "Race, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Innocence." The Department of Communication and Culture's program for the lecture explains McPhail's background.\n"Professor McPhail's interest as an African American in the rhetoric of racism was initiated in his doctoral dissertation," the program said. "Most recently, his published work had critiqued the fallacies of racial reasoning in the rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan and Afrocentricity.\n"He has spoken recently to university audiences on topics such as communicating peace through dialogue, the politics of difference, the rhetoric of blackness, and spirituality in the rhetoric of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr."\nProfessor Robert Ivie, chairman of the Department of Communication and Culture, elaborated on McPhail's interests.\nMcPhail has written extensively about topics such as racism and Zen. He has published poetry, but is more specifically a rhetorical scholar.\n"He is a person who concerns himself with the language of racism," Ivie said. "He is trying to find a way to cope better with racism than we do. He is as concerned with black racism as he is white racism."\nOne of McPhail's focuses is to use the power of words for the betterment of human relations.\nAssistant professor of communication and culture Robert Terrill urged students to attend the lecture.\n"One of the great advantages of attending a Big Ten university is that you have opportunities like this," Terrill said. "It is my feeling that you are almost obligated to take advantage of them. It is also an opportunity to see some of the ways that some (of) the material you're learning in your classes can be applied toward real world problems -- in this case, racism."\nSenior Sam McCormick, president of IU's communication honor society, Lambda Pi Eta, said he is interested in what McPhail has to say.\n"One of the things we explore in LPE communication honors society is the idea that language is implicitly moralistic," McCormick said. "It actively shapes the way we see ourselves and others. I anticipate that McPhail's lecture will illustrate this idea not as something to avoid, but rather as a way of compassionately and peacefully managing day-to-day conflict -- in this case, racism."\nMcPhail has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Wayne State University, the University of Utah and Miami University of Ohio in intercultural communication, communication criticism, communication and culture, media and diversity, the African-American experience and racism, sexism and discrimination.\nThis lecture is in honor of Auer, the former head of the Speech and Theatre Department. Auer became department head in 1958 and remained at IU for 20 years. After retirement, he continued to be a popular lecturer, speaking on topics related to public communication.\n"The lecture is to honor (Auer)," Ivie said. "This lecture was established upon his retirement and brings in leading scholars in political communication."\nIvie said there have been many well-respected speakers for the J. Jeffery Auer Lecture, which has been held since 1983. In the past, speakers have come from universities across the country, such as the University of California-Davis and the University of Maryland.\nA reception will follow the lecture in the Indiana Memorial Union State Room West.