The speech I gave (or rather tried to give) at the ceremony we held on Wednesday 6 November 2024 with participants from different countries around the world to commemorate Prof Dr Maxwell McCombs at CIM2024...
...
I'd like to welcome you all to this special session in memory of Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs. In addition to those of us here in the room, we have colleagues from around the globe joining us online. I'd like to give them a heads-up from here.
We also have friends who can't be here right now, but they've sent video recordings for this meeting. I'd like to thank them for that.
After these welcomes and thanks, I don't really know where to start.
Because I think this is the most difficult session and the most difficult moment of this symposium, which I've been trying to organize in one way or another for more than 20 years.
It was not until this moment in time that I was able to put together in my mind what I was going to say here.
Just a few months ago I was corresponding with Prof. McCombs and we were talking about who to invite to this symposium, what to do, how to do it, how he could participate in some way, and now we are starting this session where we are remembering him with mercy.
In these complex feelings and thoughts, in moments when all the colors blend together, when I was thinking about what I should say and how I should say it, one of the books I read came to my mind amidst the crowd in my mind.
My dear professor, Prof. Ali Atıf Bir, recommended me to read this book.
It was the end of the 1990s.
On the one hand, I was working on my doctoral thesis, on the other hand, I was working for the newspaper, and on the other hand, I was going through one of the most difficult periods of my young life.
A book that has been on the world's bestseller lists for years.
It has sold 20 million copies in 38 languages.
It has sold 67 editions in Turkey.
Maybe you've read it too.
Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
When I borrowed this book from the library, recommended by my professor Ali, and read it for the first time, I didn't understand much. Then I bought it and read it several times over the years. I summarized it and even gave it as a gift to my students and friends on various occasions.
For more than 10 years, I have placed this book at the top of the reading list in my Effective Communication Techniques course.
Every time I read the book, I understood something else, I made another interpretation.
There is a chapter in that book.
In the chapter entitled “Starting with the end in mind”, Covey asks us to imagine a funeral. Our own funeral three years from now.
Four people will speak at the ceremony. The first person is a family member, the second person is a friend who can tell us something about our personality, the third person is someone from work or a colleague, and the fourth person is someone from a social organization we served.
Covey asks us to imagine who would say what at our own funeral.
And now we are gathered here to commemorate Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs.
Many academics from many countries around the world are paying tribute to him.
Of the many lives that Prof. McCombs touched while he was alive, only those that I have been able to recognize, and those that I have been able to reach quickly, in a short period of about a month, will be speaking here today at this commemoration.
I believe that if we had a little more time and if we could reach a little more people, many more people would have joined us today to express their thoughts and feelings about him.
I stopped for a while and thought about this...
***
Then I remembered one of the interesting books that was the subject of one of our reading and discussion nights with my roommates during my university years. Eric Fromm's “To Have or To Be”.
I think we didn't really understand that book when we first read it either.
Today, as I start to move forward in my 50s, I can better see the difference between having and being.
For more than 10 years, on the first day of my Effective Communication Techniques course, which I have been teaching with great pleasure, I ask my students to take a special notebook and pen for themselves and write something in this notebook every evening as if they were keeping a diary.
On the back pages of the notebook, I want them to write a question title on each page and I expect them to try to answer these questions in any way until the end of the semester.
The first of these questions is: What is your biggest dream?
Then I ask them to describe what it means to have such a dream, to visualize this dream in their minds, to describe it in writing or painting if they wish.
In fact, I see that this question I have been asking for years is somehow related to “having” or setting goals. Earning money, becoming rich, going abroad to study, living another life, I don't know, writing and directing a musical, opening a charity organization and many other things are some of the things my students tell me...
But “being” is a bit more than that.
What will happen when we make money, what will happen when we become professors, what will happen when we go abroad, what will happen when we write and direct musicals, or when we open and run a charity organization; what kind of person will we, ourselves, will become when this happens?
What will the person we imagine, his/her background, personality traits, family, relatives, relatives, friends, colleagues and the environment he/she lives in be like?
And perhaps most importantly, what kind of person do I want to be in this life?
This is one of the questions that will be written in the notebook in our next lessons...
Another question was “Who are some of your role models in your life? Which aspects of them do you look up to?”
Then I ask my students, “Who is a mature person?”
I take one of my students to the blackboard and ask them to write down the characteristics of a mature person.
I have very valuable teachers, people who have been my role models in my life, who have guided me, whose guidance I have carried the traces of their guidance at important stages of my life.
Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs is one of them. Perhaps one of the most important ones.
Prof Dr Uğur Demiray, Prof Dr Ali Atıf Bir, Prof Dr Haluk Gürgen, Prof Dr İnal Cem Aşkun, Prof Dr Ali Murat Vural, Prof Dr Halil İbrahim Gürcan, Prof Dr Orhan Gökçe, Prof Dr Suat Gezgin, Prof Dr Engin Ataç, Prof Dr Sezen Ünlü, Prof Dr Şan Özal-Alp, Prof. Dr. Fevzi Sürmeli, Prof. Dr. Zühtü Altan, Retired General Prof. Dr. Oktay Alnıak, Prof. Dr. Donald Shaw, Prof. Dr. Werner Severin, Prof. Dr. Serra Görpe, Prof. Dr. Ahmet Yalçın Kaya, Prof. Dr. Erol Özmen, journalist and late Önder Baloğlu are the first names I remember...
I would like to thank each and every one of them for touching my life and for the impressions they left in my life.
I believe it is important to thank people in one's life.
I have always expressed this gratitude in my letters to Prof. MCcombs, especially in the last days of his illness.
I also remember now what he wrote to me...
***
Actually, I have told the story several times on various occasions from the very beginning.
At the end of the 1990s, I was writing my PhD thesis. We had decided to cover the issue of privatization in economic journalism with the agenda-setting theory. I somehow reached the e-mail address of Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs, the father of agenda-setting theory, through the dial-up internet connection of that day. Then I started writing questions to him about my thesis. I sent him e-mail after e-mail.
Later, Prof. McCombs said, “You bombarded me with questions”.
He answered my questions without getting tired, bored or bothered.
Like my thesis advisor Prof. Dr. Uğur Demiray, he guided my thesis.
I completed my thesis in 1999.
In 2001, we invited Prof Dr Maxwell McCombs and his close friend, the late Prof Dr Donald Shaw, the other father of agenda-setting theory, to a symposium on Media and Manipulation hosted by our faculty here in Eskişehir. With the organization of Prof Dr Uğur Demiray, we made a short tour of Turkey with two cars, Prof Dr Judith Litterst and our late, beloved teacher Merter Oral.
We traveled more than 2000 kilometers from Istanbul, Konya, Nevşehir, Ürgüp, Göreme, Eskişehir, Istanbul, Konya, Nevşehir, Ürgüp, Ürgüp, Göreme, Eskişehir. Professor Uğur and his sponsoring friends covered the gas money, meals and most of our expenses.
We gathered many beautiful memories.
A year later, with the scholarship I received from Prof. McCombs, I went to the USA as a visiting scholar. I met my friend of half a century, Prof. Serra Görpe, who was there as a visiting scholar like me, and we shared the same room next door to Prof. McCombs.
With the encouragement of Prof. Dr. Uğur Demiray and Prof. Dr. Suat Gezgin, we planned this symposium there together with Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs and Prof. Dr. Serra Görpe.
The name father of the symposium was Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs.
In fact, in the notes I took, the first name of the symposium was Communication in the New Millennium, but I realized later that I had written Communication in the Millennium to use CIM as an abbreviation, with some carelessness.
The first aim of the symposium was to be a bridge between Turkish and American communication scholars and to develop dialog between communication scholars.
In those years, in order to get a gray passport, one had to go back and forth to Ankara twice, and then again for a visa.
Thanks to this symposium, we got a 10-year visa to the U.S. We started traveling to the U.S. every year, every two years.
In 2003, about 40 academicians attended the first symposium we organized in Austin. Each time we were hosted by a different city and a different university in the U.S. In Turkey, apart from Anadolu University, Istanbul University and Atatürk University hosted this symposium.
In more than 20 years, I think more than 1000 papers were presented, more than 1000 academics participated in this symposium, presented papers in English for the first time in their lives, visited the USA, and developed communication, cooperation and dialogue between scholars.
We now have a Facebook group with over 700 members, a web page with open access to all symposium proceedings, an Instagram and YouTube channel.
In 2003, we planted this seed in the soil, and it has turned into a young sapling with the meeting of sun, air and water...
***
So, what comes to mind when we think of Prof. Maxwell McCombs as an exemplary person, an outstanding academic?
The year Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs and Prof. Donald Shaw published their first agenda-setting theory paper was also the year I was born: 1972...
Over time, agenda setting theory has evolved into first, second and third level agenda setting theory.
I have also aged over time, like childhood, youth and middle age.
In the previous session, we discussed in detail where the agenda-setting theory has come from over time. The third level agenda-setting theory now focuses on the link between the maps in our minds and the media. The most important question is when you think about a person or a topic, what comes to your mind first?
I wanted to ask you in this session: What comes to your mind first when you think of Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs?
I would like you to think about the answer to this question.
On the other hand, before this meeting, I visited our professors in our department one by one and asked them this question. I collected their answers. What do you think they said? Let me read it now:
"Academician, pioneer, father of theory, fatherly, calm, musical, humble, kind, intellectual, hardworking, productive, writer, friendly, warm, helpful, faculty member, exemplary professor, valuable person, smiling, sincere, respectful, honest, in favor of the truth, in favor of science, a good researcher, an important leader, guiding, supportive, horizon-opening, answering all questions in the most relevant way, listening carefully, human like a human being, communication theories, communication models, fathers of communication, Prof. Dr. Donald Shaw, Prof. Dr. Werner Severin, Prof. Dr. Jim Tankard. Prof. Dr. Donald Shaw, Prof. Dr. Werner Severin, Prof. Dr. Jim Tankard..."
These are the impressions formed among the faculty members of our department when we write them down...
The cornerstones of the picture that has formed in our minds over the past quarter of a century...
***
The last time I visited Prof. McCombs in Austin before the symposium we organized in Los Angeles in 2015. He hosted me at his home. We went together to his post-retirement desk at the University.
There was a photo I took with his wife Betsy at the breakfast table that morning, and I searched for it to exhibit it in our slide show, but somehow I couldn't find it. It remains as one of the beautiful memories in my mind.
***
Until a few days before he passed away, Prof. McCombs and I were in constant correspondence. He acted as an intermediary for publishers to publish our last TÜBİTAK project as an English book. He also guided us for the publication of our article. Until the last moment, we communicated with him about finding guests for the organization of the symposium and making it happen.
We thank Prof. Lance Holbert for his participation in this year's symposium at Prof. McCombs' invitation.
However, Prof. McCombs' health problems have been up and down over the years. Despite all these health problems, I remember that he always had a smile on his face and I believe that he stood firm with his academic work until the very end.
I don't know exactly from how many different countries in the world, but I know that there are tens and hundreds of students that he raised, that he gave a hand to, that he worked for, like me.
***
Prof. McCombs will remain in this world for many years to come as one of those unique personalities who will set an example for many of us, both in his passion for his profession as an academic and in the way he reached out to his students and friends.
His ideas will continue to come to life in the articles and books he wrote. I am also very happy to pass on his torch to the younger generations and our dear friends in our country.
We are moving forward on the path illuminated by this light of science that we have lit together, and we are trying to pass this torch to future generations.
***
In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, apart from the habit of “starting with the end in mind”, the other habits mentioned in brief can be summarized as being proactive, prioritizing important tasks, thinking win-win in interpersonal interactions, trying to understand first and then to be understood, and creating a great synergy together.
I believe that thanks to the International Communication Symposium, we have created a great synergy by bringing together nearly 150 academics from 67 universities from 12 different countries from America to Turkey and 12 different countries around the world.
I wish that this synergy will continue in the future without diminishing on the path illuminated by our leading and exemplary professors.
I also believe that Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs, together with Prof. Dr. Donald Shaw, Prof. Uğur Demiray and our other academic professors, will light our path of science, our human and academic personality, and guide us for many more years as stars in the sky lighting up our nights.
In this relay race, we will try to pass this torch to our own students with what we have learned from them.
This will be the last organization in which I will personally chair the organizing committee. I would like to pass the baton to the next generation. I believe that I have completed my mission for this symposium.
I had shared these views with Prof. McCombs before his death and received his approval.
I am confident that next year my young friends will continue this symposium with a much better organization by adding their own original ideas. I would like to say that especially the realization of the index registration of the symposium is a very important step to be taken in the future.
Finally, as I conclude my remarks, I would like to express my respect and love to our fallen friends, including Prof. Dr. Maxwell McComb, and wish them happiness in heaven.
I would like to thank you all for attending this meeting and being a part of this synergy.
I am glad you are here.
Prof Dr Erkan Yüksel