Academic Conferences: The big and small wahala
Sabella
I’ve just renewed my membership to three learned associations. Year after year, I wonder why the fees are so steep. In addition to the fees, you also pay the registration fee if you intend to attend the yearly conference (for a total of $400-500 per association for someone like me). I am not going to ask what they do with all that money.
Depending on the location of the conference, you must also pay for your plane ticket, ground transportation, hotel and dining, and the miscellaneous costs. If your institution is funding you or if you have funds from other sources, then, no wahala. Otherwise, you must be ready to cough out, say, $1500-2000 a year for a conference within the USA. Going overseas? Well, that’s baba nla wahala from Montgomery, Alabama.
These associations are very important, and so is attending/presenting at conferences. But what do you do if your institution does not have the funds, you are unable to secure external funding, or are not financially buoyant? Chai, that na mountainous wahala.
I was in Argentina in December 2019, and in North Georgia in February 2020. But because of the impersonal nature of online conferences, I have not attended or presented since. If the pandemic allows, I will be back on the road beginning summer 2022.
As an aside: Covid-19 will be with us for a very long time. Loss of human lives or not, human suffering or not, the reality is that some forty percent of the total global population will refuse to be vaccinated. But sha, wear your mask; wash your hands; and social distance. But above all else: get the third shot…get boosted. Happy New Year!
Sabella
Toyin Falola
Sabella, the Victorious, Olusegun in Yoruba:
You have raised an important issue. I am heading out to Nigeria tomorrow, and it has to be so short a letter, to parody So long a Letter by our lovely Mariama Ba.
I started to manage associations from 1981 until my recent disengagement, which has nothing to do with your concerns but what I want to do with the last decade of my long career.
There are two models:
- run an association on passion and reduce the cost
- Professionalize an association and increase the cost. I cannot tell you the salaries we pay, like that of the executive boss, which is more than that of a professor.
Both carry serious risks. Option (a) takes you to patrimonialism and authoritarianism, like an African state. If not well-managed, one person is the voice, the President, the Secretary, the Treasurer, like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or Kenyatta’s Kenya. The association begins to look like a dictatorship awaiting a coup. Collapse is imminent; only we don’t know when. Presentations of that kind of association can be fake. Since no one sees the books, it may run on lies and exaggerations. In option (b), you move toward a democracy, which, if not put in check, can lead to fragmentation.
Your payment, in some instances, is an insurance protection. If you attend a conference in Nigeria and get kidnapped, the way it is resolved is tied to the option above. A professionalized association must do something. The African Studies Association can mobilize quickly to reach Kamara Harris, and the less professionalized cannot.
Each member defines needs and values. That need can be as small as getting out of the house to signal relevance to family members or simply to drink beer with colleagues.
However, as most people get older and become accomplished, professional networks begin to disintegrate, replaced by social and emotional networks. Let me close with a Yoruba proverb:
It is because of funeral rites and decent burials that we worship in churches and mosques.
Alas! the guys you meet at conferences will not attend your funeral; it is those you meet in places of worship and social circles who will turn out in large numbers. You wont die, just making things clearer.
TF
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Sabella Abidde
Greetings Prof. Falola,
Thanks for your response. I appreciate it. As my God-believing and God-trusting friends and family would say: I wish you traveling/journey mercies. Do have a safe trip to and from our dear country, Nigeria.
I do not know the inner workings of learned associations. I have been asked or encouraged a few times to “come in,” but I have always rebuffed such offers because I do not have the temperament, the skills, or the talents for such endeavors.
The only time I ran anything or assisted in running anything was during my first twelve years in this country when I was fully and professionally engaged with the hospitality and culinary industry. Compared to the academy, it was, in my opinion, a less stressful environment.
But really, I have great admiration for those who run learned societies. Hence, I never criticize them unless, of course, they are resoundingly and tragically incompetent. Based on your explanation, I think I can deduce where much of the money goes.
Overall, I prefer the second model – the professionalized type. Even so, I think that the membership and registration fees for organizations like the African Studies Association (ASA) can be reduced across the board. The ASA can do that because, from what I see, it has at least seven ways of making money.
The biggest turn-off for me is not the membership and registration fees. It is usually the size of the association. Until Covid-19 made a mess of most things, I have been attending smaller conferences. I like the intimacy. You get to know most members and they in turn get to know you.
Unlike big associations like the ASA, ISA, and the APSA, one need not be a star or a celebrity-scholar to have a packed room listening to one’s presentation. It doesn’t appear as if a good number of attendees are showing off. Nonetheless, after four years of hiatus, I’ll be returning to the ASA this year.
I agree with you that “each member defines needs and values…as most people get older and become accomplished, professional networks begin to disintegrate, replaced by social and emotional networks.” One of the things I miss most after several decades of sojourn in the US is the social and emotional networks that are prevalent back home.
Ha, sooner or later, one will exit the stage. Today, tomorrow, or sometimes within the next fifty years, my ride will come to a complete stop. It is not something I dread. I welcome the good-death – the non-violent and non-lingering type.
Again, thanks for your response. Stay safe and stay well in our beloved Nigeria. Happy New Year!
Sabella
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
''It is because of funeral rites and decent burials that we worship in churches and mosques.
Alas! the guys you meet at conferences will not attend your funeral; it is those you meet in places of worship and social circles who will turn out in large numbers. You wont die, just making things clearer.''
TF
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Toyin Falola
Sir:
When I return, I will say more as this is an area of my competence, although I am mediocre in many others.
However, there is a perception that organizations make a lot of money. The ASA and other associations make the bulk of their money during conferences. Once they lose money during a conference, the rest is difficult. I noticed recently that the ASA reduced its fees; what it means is that it must increase its membership. There are problems, which is why they keep begging for money. They have to go to cities that people love—New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle, etc. Unfortunately, these are also the places where hotels are expensive.
Anyone with serious health issues must not attend a non-professionalized association for two reasons. First, if they don’t have insurance or you don’t have insurance, such an association cannot protect you. I had to arrange a private plane to lift someone from West Africa to France when she had a stroke, and when she stabilized in Paris, then to the US on another private plane. Only a large professionalized association can do this.
In my Austin conference, I insure all participants who ride on the bus that I provide. To do so, they must stay in the hotel where I put them. They stay in a cheaper hotel to cut costs, but they expose themselves to danger. I have had people who arrived in airports and from there to the hospital.
At any conference, people fall sick, and you must check the type of insurance you have before you travel to far places. Anyone who wants its corpse to return to a place of birth must organize his/her life to meet that goal.
TF
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