The theme of the Boston conference, "Communication @ the Center," was chosen in order to highlight the centrality of communication scholarship in the contemporary world.

The 20th century witnessed the immense impact of communication technologies, from the spread of sound recording, motion pictures, and radio as worldwide phenomena to the emergence of television as a dominant influence in nearly every institution, to the explosion of the Internet at the turn of the new century. And the digital revolution is far from over, as new inventions repeatedly challenge assumptions that were themselves formed only yesterday. This is an exciting and critically important moment for communication scholars to contribute to understanding, and shaping the parameters of, our changing technological and academic environment.

If it once was possible to view communication studies as peripheral to the central mission and focus of the academic universe (as many in the academy did and some still do), that is no longer a defensible position. Today, any credible model of the liberal arts must recognize the centrality of communication for a responsible educational program. If the goal of the liberal arts in higher education is the acquisition of basic intellectual skills, combined with knowledge of the historical roots and cross-cultural variations in human behavior and institutions, then communication is necessarily at the center of that goal. It is the fundamental human trait and the basis of all culture: The forms and media of communication provide the nervous system that links the components of our national and increasingly global political, economic, and social systems.

Communication studies can rightfully claim a central role not only in the basic general education of an informed citizenry, but also in understanding and clarifying many of the central challenges of our rapidly changing world. Among these challenges are: 

•  The globalization of our information environment as we experience a flatter world in which one-way communication is increasingly replaced by multidirectional transmission-in which the North isn't always the source and the South isn't always the receiver.
• The high stakes involved in struggles over ownership of new media as well as the resistance to the ever-greater consolidation of ownership over old and new technologies.
• The crisis in journalism, brought about by (a) the collapse of the economic model of commercially supported news enterprises wedded to an outmoded production and distribution system, and (b) the upheaval wrought by the folks formerly known as the audience taking [partial] control over the means of production and dissemination of information.
• The epochal shifts in our information environment as we learn, both for better and worse, to live with technologies that provide opportunities and challenges unimaginable until recently outside the confines of science fiction - and more are on their way.

In these and many other similar transformative challenges, communication scholars have the opportunity to draw upon a wealth of disparate theoretical and empirical strands in order to clarify questions of real societal import, illuminate complex realities, and help explore solutions to pressing problems as well as long-standing intellectual mysteries. Communication scholars, individually and collectively, need to assert our centrality to any cogent and credible account of the contemporary world.

The opening plenary of the conference provided a platform for the exploration of some of these questions. As those of you who were present will remember, the session was a striking success. First, it drew an overflow crowd, and we had to delay the start of the session while the partition was opened to double the size of the room. Even doubled, however, the room was still packed, with folks standing outside in the hall. Second, and quite gratifyingly, despite starting late, nearly the entire audience remained until the end, even though the opening reception started before the session concluded.

The audience in the room (and the one watching the live stream on the Virtual Conference site) was treated to an unusually thoughtful and provocative set of talks. Sitting in the front of the room, on the platform facing the audience, gave me a perspective familiar to all teachers -the ability to see whether folks in the audience were engaged with the speakers. The answer was resoundingly positive: I didn't see heads bowed as folks read e-mail on their smartphones (although it turns out that some were tweeting about the session), or heads nodding as folks tried to stay awake. On the contrary, the audience seemed quite engaged and attentive.

The lead speaker was Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Professor of the Social Sciences at NYU, who spoke on "Communication as Social Science (and more)." Following Professor Calhoun, Professors Joseph Cappella, Sonia Livingstone, John Durham Peters, and Georgette Wang each spoke on the topic of the plenary session. All of the speakers kindly agreed to have their talks - slightly revised and amended -printed in the "Features" section of the online International Journal of Communication [http://ijoc.org]. It is our hope that these pieces will stimulate thought and conversation among our various communities, and lead to further contributions on this important topic.

Along those lines, one member of the audience at that plenary, Jeff Pooley, responded to the announcement at the session that the talks would appear in IJoC by submitting a paper on the same general topic-specifically addressing the history and status of communication studies in the U.S. academy. We were happy to include this additional contribution to the discussion, and we invite colleagues from around the globe to join in what we hope will be an ongoing conversation on the future of our field. This set of articles is characterized by an overly U.S.-centered focus, despite Sonia Livingstone's and Georgette Wang's important contributions, and so we especially encourage additional interventions from non-U.S. and international perspectives.

Although these talks for the most part do not expound on it, they are occurring in the context of an unprecedented crisis for many of the academic institutions in which ICA members are engaged as faculty, researchers, and students. The academic world has been buffeted by economic and political challenges since even before the onset of the current worldwide economic crisis. As such, any responsible consideration of the state of communication as a discipline and/or field of study, or academic degree program, must address the challenges of the current state of the university and the academic enterprise as a whole. As Craig Calhoun warned, U.S. communication programs have been able to count on the law of large numbers (of undergraduate majors), but that cannot and should not be taken for granted in the future. And in other parts of the world, other factors and forces need to be addressed in order to understand and shape the future of our field. In other words, any true account of our present or realistic vision for our future must contend with the economic, political, and institutional circumstances of our times.