Yesterday evening, we emailed the members of our community about an upcoming event in our IPDI Ideas Series. Next Friday, we are hosting Verizon for a discussion about broadband deployment.

Over the course of the past few hours, we have received many emails from the community. Along with the numerous RSVPs are a number of angry, outraged writers, some of whom question the integrity of IPDI for hosting a big, bad company like Verizon for a discussion about broadband.

We’re answering those emails individually. At the same time, I want to address the collective concerns of those emails: people are mad at IPDI for inviting Verizon into the conversation.

Allow me to defend our decision.

1. As part of the academy, IPDI fulfills an important purpose that often cannot be fulfilled in the private sector – the purpose of functioning as a forum, open to everyone, regardless of his or her political beliefs, religion, nationality, ethnicity, actions or employer. Last month, we hosted Google, one of Verizon’s chief rivals, to converse with attendees of our IPDI Ideas Series. This month, we allow Verizon a chance to address the audience. Future events will look at the role of censorship and ways in which the technology community can engage citizens in policy discussions. I firmly believe that the exclusion of Verizon’s voice in this discussion is anti-intellectual, as is the exclusion of dissenting voices. I hope all will attend the event, and I hope some of those dissenting voices will approach us with ideas for future events. Send your questions and ideas to ipdi@ipdi.org.
2. Verizon is not paying IPDI to address its audience. Nor did Google pay IPDI to address our audience last month. We invited each company to participate because of their unique and sometimes conflicting perspectives.
3. We like good, hard conversations. We think that ideas – and solutions – arise from conversations that look under the surface. We hope that you will bring your questions – however controversial – to the event. Dissenters are welcome. We simply ask that our audience treat our discussants politely and respectfully as members of the community.

At the end of the day, I cannot apologize for asking a controversial organization to participate in our IPDI Ideas Series. Without controversy, without someone playing the role of the villain and someone else the role of the gallant hero, without disagreements and without difficult conversations, the IPDI Ideas Series could not exist. I will, however, state firmly that all are welcome – defenders of free speech, defenders of big business, advocates, techies, students and professors alike – as valued members of our community.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 11:16 am and is filed under Censorship, Events, IPDI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.