Censorship in IEEE

Censorship in IEEE


Somewhere around November 22, 2024, I received an email from an IEEE entity, suggesting to read an article written by Fred Schindler, IEEE Technical Activities Vice President, 2024 (“Reengagement?”, November 19, 2024, https://technical-community-spotlight.ieee.org/reengagement/). In this post he lamented about decline in numbers of industry engineers & practitioners when it comes to their participation in IEEE membership and overall involvement. I found his essay as pointless - primarily because it missed any ‘corporate’ responsibility within & around IEEE leaderships for that decades-long issue. Instead, Mr. Schindler accused industries’ managements for decreasing support. And he expressed a ‘desire’ (desire by whom?) to revert the bad trend.

As I disagreed with Mr. Schindler’s opinion, I decided to post a comment and express my opposition to his view. Let me provide the content I uploaded:

“This article of Fred Schindler is something frequently called [at least in my country] as ‘crocodile’s crying’. He says: “For the past several years, there has been a desire to strengthen IEEE’s engagement with industry.” What a hypocrisy! I have been listening to such claims for decades of my membership. But look to members of organizing committees in most IEEE conferences: 90% (if not more) are from academia. Look at DLP programs: Almost no practitioners and industry engineers! If only mediocre academics deserve to be sponsored in DLP/DVP and similar programs, where IEEE is going to go?”

The website responded: “Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.”

Ten minutes later, I refreshed the page – only to learn that my opinion wasn’t visible. (It just disappeared from the page.)

Ok, I then decided to change the way and refer my opinion as a ‘reply’ to some other comments, and I found a reaction written by a Bob Donaldson who had said:

“Every industry faces the point in time where they have wandered away from their core competency. IEEE is not an industry leader. They are an academic and science facilitator across a too broad spectrum of interest areas. While the Standards Association( I worked on a standard that took 4 years to finalize) has many standards that are industry recognized and adopted. How many of the standards in the IEEE inventory are industry adopted? The IEEE is a hoarder. You need to simplify your focus areas and drive the energy of your volunteers to things that matter to industry. Look at you executive leadership, it is largely academic. I worked on an Excom and I must say the process was tedious and ponderous. Retired or academics made up the committee. The IEEE needs to determine how they can be relevant to industry in the future and then see if that is something that can be done. Industry is moving so fast in these arenas that practically can the IEEE lead industry or will you be at best a theoretical round table providing good services but not be in the industries inner circle.”

So I tried to reply by uploading this:

“I agree with most statements provided by Mr. Donaldson. If industry engineers are only good to give money for their membership, and their companies as conference sponsors, it’s not the way to go. By the way, this article of Fred Schindler is something frequently called [at least in my country] as ‘crocodile’s crying’. He says: “For the past several years, there has been a desire to strengthen IEEE’s engagement with industry.” What a hypocrisy! I have been listening to such claims for decades of my membership. But look to members of organizing committees in most IEEE conferences: 90% (if not more) are from academia. Look at DLP programs: Almost no practitioners and industry engineers! If only mediocre academics deserve to be sponsored in DLP/DVP and similar programs, where IEEE is going to go?”

The website responded again: “Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.”

Ten minutes later, I refreshed the page – only to learn that my opinion wasn’t posted.

I felt so disappointed after facing a censorship within IEEE Technical Activities. Amazing! What does it mean? Was that page just a promotional venue for Mr. Schindler, then acting IEEE Technical Activities Vice President?

And roughly two months later, I received another email from an IEEE entity, offering me to support Mr. Schindler’s intention to be a candidate for 2026 IEEE President position by petition. Amazing! The same person whose website team exercises censorship while using IEEE resources for his personal self-promotion, now wants me to support his electoral intention!?

No way, Sir!