[discuss] Academic sector appointments to the 1net steering committee

[Milton L Mueller]

Seun:

No Giganet member from Africa volunteered for the task. I suspect no one from Giganet (certainly not me) would object if a suitable academic candidate from Africa, not a member of Giganet, surfaced and asked to be considered. Suitability, I would insist, involves more than simply being from Africa however. They have to know what is going on, be reasonably familiar with the network of people involved in IG, aware of the diverse positions. So if you or anyone has specific recommendations to make, and that person(s) wants to be considered, I'd be happy to take this back to the GigaNet steering committee for modification. Unlike our friends in the ICC, we're not too proud to make improvements in our work.

Regarding volunteering, we made a point of noting that this 1net coordinating committee was not going to be a cute little feather one can put in one's resume, but was going to be a lot of work that would not be related to the things academics specialize in: substantive proposals, scholarship, research or teaching; it would, instead, be a lot of email traffic and tedious reviewing of candidates for other positions that the 1net group will appoint and a lot of struggling and discussions to reach consensus among a large group. Possibly the low number of volunteers reflected a realistic attitude toward the nature of the committee.

As for why Giganet, I would say, what other academic organization is focused on Internet governance, is aware of what is happening, and is ready to respond to the need in the time frame required? I doubt you can find any.

Regarding US-centric, tosh! only one of the people on that list actually lives in the US, and he is an Indian native. Only one is a US citizen. One other has a temporary job affiliations to a US institution, but has strong ties to Tunisia as a result of his research. This is a highly transnational group, and scholarship and academia is one of the most globalized arenas.



From: Seun Ojedeji [mailto:seun.ojedeji at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2013 1:10 PM
To: Milton L Mueller
Cc: adiel at afrinic.net; discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] Academic sector appointments to the 1net steering committee

Hello Milton,

I don't understand what is going on here. How can we say we are looking to have a more inclusive internet Governance(through 1Net) and yet its committee representation does not reflect such. If there are 5 people to be nominated doesn't it naturally determine the region for representation. What happened to Africa institution as this list does not seem to represent them in anyway? what is the process taken to come up with these names? and why is it giganet that is leading in this?
On a lighter note, i have observe and almost convinced that it seem representation in 1net is still very much US centric(Yet to be convinced otherwise).
Regards

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu<mailto:mueller at syr.edu>> wrote:
Giganet is the Global Internet Governance Academic Network. Its members span many disciplines, from computer science to political science, and are all actively engaged in research and teaching on Internet governance.

We initiated a nominations process around December 5 and after some discussion on the list and among the organization's Steering Committee, the following 5 names are being sent to 1net for the Academic positions on the 1net steering committee

Angela Daly (Australia)
Ramesh Subramanian (India/USA)
Stefania Milan (Italy, NL)
William Drake (USA, CH)
Ben Wagner (DE, UK, USA)

Milton Mueller
Chair, GigaNet Steering Committee
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://faculty.ischool.syr.edu/mueller/


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Seun Ojedeji,
Federal University Oye-Ekiti
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