PRSA Doesn't Want You If You Are Passionate About PR, Or a Christian

I am a PhD, APR, Fellow and long-time volunteer for PRSA. But the national board rejected me for my professional views and personal values in the name of "diversity."

I noted with interest an email that the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is once again seeking board members. The email specifically said they are seeking “diverse candidates who are representative of the broad-based constituencies we serve” who will “lend your talent and voice to PRSA leadership."

But what you need to know is they have a different view of diversity, and they really don’t want to hear anything they don’t already think. In my personal experience running for the board last year, I was significantly insulted personally and professionally by the process.

For one, I was called a “PR purist” in a negative connotation. They never described specifically what this means, but in my short interview with the nominating committee I stressed that the PRSA mission statement speaks of being the “premier public relations organization” and yet it speaks in the rest of the document more vaguely about “communications.” I pointed out that PR is both more specific and much broader than what communication connotes, and I encouraged the board to define and defend the breadth of the term “public relations” to indeed be its thought-leading organization. If that makes me a “purist,” I’ll take it and leave the board to its professional “impurities” as I continue to advocate for the profession and what it is.

I was also told without explanation that I had violated PRSA’s diversity code. I can only assume they read some of my personal blog and social posts in which I shared my own perspective about “woke” trends and different conceptions of diversity—in which I cited numerous BLACK professionals and writers and other persons of color who share these views. I also have commented on parental rights with regard to sexual identity of their children and the intervention of school personnel without parental consent on these matters. In this case I was expressing a deeply held and widely shared perspective based in my own Christian values and worldview regarding sex and gender. As such, I did not violate diversity, I am an expression of it.

Incidentally, the Pew Research Center reported that 66% of Black Democrats believe whether someone is a man or woman is determined by their sex at birth. If any of those Black Democrats were a PRSA member and expressed that view, would they be in violation of the diversity code? Also, a recent NYU/PR Week study showed that 68% of PR professionals identify as “progressive” and only 7% like me as “conservative.” I thought ending discriminating against minorities was the point of diversity programs. It is the nominating committee that violates the very essence of diversity in rejecting me—and implicitly many others—for not adhering to a pre-determined monoculture of singular accepted perspective. PRSA mistakes conformity for diversity, and compliance for tolerance.

I am not alone among PR professionals and members of PRSA with my faith-based perspective. At the recent ICON I had wonderful conversations with a diversity of people who share both my professional views and personal perspective. These included a Latina from Texas who reads and appreciates my posts and a Black co-panelist from Pennsylvania who is a pastor in addition to his PR work. We had long conversations in which we shared agreement on professional and personal matters. I have worked and still do work productively with people with whom I disagree with on social issues. We understand each other and our differences, but work together with honest respect. Is not that the nature of “diversity”? I have chaired the search committees for all of my tenure-track colleagues in the academic department I have headed for a decade, and I am the only white male among the 6 of us. Does this look like someone who does not have a diverse mindset?

I am also not alone in my professional perspective and zeal for defining what public relations is at a higher level. I recently came across a conference paper from 2016 co-authored by a respected scholar and a veteran PR professional. In it they make their own call for what the national board would call ‘purity’: “Practitioners are not journalists; they are not marketers. The associations (like PRSA) seem dedicated to blurring those distinctions. If the associations are themselves trade associations, rather than professional societies, they will continue to appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of best practices.”

I am writing all of this not just as personal complaint, but on behalf of the above and other professionals who are not represented by PRSA’s national board. I have in recent months learned of other complaints about the nominating committee and PRSA national leadership. These come from people I know personally who confided in me—both from experience as board candidates and members of the nominating committee itself. I also am concerned that many PRSA members who share my professional and personal faith perspectives are not represented and are viewed with disdain by national leadership, and these members are not aware of that disrespect.

My application for the board included many supportive letters from colleagues in my own chapter and around the country. They and others could not understand how a PhD, APR, Fellow with years of experience as a professional and educator and dedicated service from local chapter to national committee, could be rejected. In other words, people who have known me for 30 years at close range are shocked by the insult of a group of people who talked to me for 20 minutes on Zoom.

I am a man of integrity, so I completed the work I committed to as co-chair of a College of Fellows committee even after being insulted by the national board. That work included conducting and analyzing focus groups and a resulting plan for the College to use going forward to promote accreditation and, in turn, membership in the College. But I must leave that to others to implement.

I will remain a member of PRSA to maintain my membership in the College of Fellows and the Educators Academy, where I have formed many good relationships, including with many reading this, over the years. But, because I am a man of integrity, I can no longer in good conscience give my time and talent to an organization which does not represent—and even diminishes—my well-considered professional perspective, and is not inclusive of my personal identity as a Christian.