Uncivil Disobedience and Democracy: An American Perspective

From the time of the Athenian democracy there has been the debated question of whether protest and dissent, especially uncivil disobedience to the law was supportive or destructive of a people’s democracy. The debate continues unabated today. In a recent collection of essays titled Protest and Dissent, Professor Susan Stokes offered an answer to the question Are Protests Good or Bad for Democracy? (Schwartzberg, 2020, p. 269). After considering both possibilities, she concludes, as had James Madison in Federalist 10, that protests “are a natural by-product of freedoms of expression and association which, if curtailed, would threaten democracy itself.”(Schwartzberg, 2020, pp. 281). Building a society that is democratic and recognizes the need for frequent reform is challenging. In meeting those challenges difficult and profound moral choices often confront us

A Duty to Report: Alternative Journalism as Political Obligation to Resist and Remedy Injustice

Traditional media tenets of objectivity and impartiality have led to amoral and passive journalistic practices, which reinforce problematic status quos and allow inequality to flourish. Journalists ought to utilize their positions of power in democratic societies to address and rectify injustice through responsible reporting practices. This argument is supported with a theory on political obligation and duty by philosopher Candice Delmas, who argues that obeying the law in just states validates a duty to disobey the law in unjust states which infringe on citizen rights. Journalists have the ability to adequately fulfill this duty; however, this is not always acted upon due to the limitations of journalistic objectivity. Alternative forms of journalism are identified as approaches by which journalists may accomplish their duty to resist injustice. Alternative journalism places a greater emphasis on social responsibility and community building and are better models for journalists to achieve ideal media practices to improve societies and challenge injustice

ASCJ 2022 Annual Conference Paper

Financed by Title III funds, I attended the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (AJCS) 2022 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Conference took place from Wednesday, March 16th through Saturday, March 19th. It was a large conference, attended by over 1500 people, covering an entire floor of the Las Vegas Rio Hotel. Of note, the guest speaker was Father Boyle of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles who spoke on reforming members of criminal gangs. I attended sessions from Wednesday through Friday, presenting at 11:00 AM on Wednesday to about 100 attendees. In my presentation, I argued that the wave of police protests since Ferguson has produced a “future shock” in most Americans that was caused by the failure of the United States to reform racialized criminal justice policies first put in place at the time of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. I continued on to a deeper analysis of race and criminal justice by showing their historical relationship to colonialism. I then discussed how citizens have organized the recent police protests around anti-colonial narratives produced on new cell phone and internet communication technologies. I then discussed how the resulting “future shock” and the recent protests could have been avoided if more people would have listened to Tofler’s 1979 ideas on the future and Lyotard’s 1979 theory on narratives. I closed by showing how both colonialism and narrative theory can be applied to assist the police and lawmakers to resolve issues resulting from the police protests

An Analysis of Campus Civility: Best Practices from Student Affairs Professionals

Incivility on college campuses is an issue that can disrupt the learning environment and the retention of students, as well as harm the reputation of a college campus. This is a pertinent issue for leaders in higher education to address and to promote a more civil campus both inside and outside of the classroom. There is no research that addresses how Student Affairs Professionals best promote civility on college campuses, and this study fills that research gap. This qualitative study was conducted using Student Affairs Professionals at eight SUNY institutions. The Generational Theory and Work Place Incivility Theory were utilized to frame this research. The researcher collected data relating to civility initiatives from websites, civility statements, workshops, and interviews with three Student Affairs Professionals. The researcher then analyzed this data and found that Student Affairs Professionals are promoting civility through Offices of Diversity and Inclusion, Student Handbooks, dialogues and conversations with students, and creating programs utilizing current issues that may spark debate. The researcher also found that there are no centralized efforts on college campuses within this study to create civility initiatives

Hate and harm

From a psychological point of view, hate speech can be conceptualized as harmful intergroup communication. In contrast to other forms of incivility, hate speech is directed toward individuals because of their (perceived) social identity. This explains why the harm of hate speech can extend to entire social groups and societies. Hate speech therefore cannot be separated from pre-existing power structures and resource inequalities, as its harm is particularly severe when coping resources are already deprived. Psychological research on the perpetrators of hate speech links hate speech to a lack of empathy and the acceptance of, or even desire for social inequalities. In summary, hate speech jars the norms of democratic discourses by denying fellow humans basic respect and violating the democratic minimal consent of human equality. Overall, the chapter demonstrates the usefulness of a (social) psychological perspective on the harms of hate speech for both researchers and practitioners

Hate and harm

From a psychological point of view, hate speech can be conceptualized as harmful intergroup communication. In contrast to other forms of incivility, hate speech is directed toward individuals because of their (perceived) social identity. This explains why the harm of hate speech can extend to entire social groups and societies. Hate speech therefore cannot be separated from pre-existing power structures and resource inequalities, as its harm is particularly severe when coping resources are already deprived. Psychological research on the perpetrators of hate speech links hate speech to a lack of empathy and the acceptance of, or even desire for social inequalities. In summary, hate speech jars the norms of democratic discourses by denying fellow humans basic respect and violating the democratic minimal consent of human equality. Overall, the chapter demonstrates the usefulness of a (social) psychological perspective on the harms of hate speech for both researchers and practitioner

Student Incivility: Nursing Faculty Lived Experience

Incivility against nursing faculty by nursing students is recognized as an area of increased concern in nursing education. Academic incivility is any speech or behavior that negatively affects the well-being of students or faculty members, weakens professional relationships, and hinders the teaching–learning process. The negative experience that this may potentially have on nursing faculty is disturbing. Taking into consideration that these negative experiences may result in harm to the nursing faculty member’s health and well-being, it is important to understand the multifaceted tribulations that confront nursing faculty members who are subjected to student incivility. This investigation looked at the phenomenon of incivility from the nursing faculty members’ perspective. The purpose of this study was to describe and understand the experiences nursing faculty have had with nursing student incivility at a college or university. In addition, this study strived to provide an emic view of student incivility towards nursing faculty and the resulting impact this incivility may have on nursing faculty members. Congruent with the purpose of this study, the phenomenological method, guided by interpretivism and constuctionism, was used. This method helped illuminate and understand the lived experiences described by nursing faculty members who participated in this study and, in turn, helped to answer the research question. The conceptual model for fostering civility in nursing education provided the framework for this study. Twelve nursing faculty members at seven colleges or universities in Ohio and Michigan were interviewed and provided rich descriptions of their experiences with student incivility. A phenomenological method was used to analyze transcripts from the participants’ interviews, resulting in six identified themes: subjected to a variety of unacceptable student behaviors, time consuming, tarnished reputation, support is beneficial, harmful to health and well-being, and questioning the future

Incivility of Nurses in Uganda: Causes and Skills Needed to Cultivate Civility

The research was undertaken to establish the causes of incivility and skills needed for cultivating civility among practising nurses. Workplace incivility is a common phenomenon. Unfortunately, not much is known about it in Uganda’s health sectors and this motivated this research.    A qualitative approach was used and a total of 195 respondents were interviewed to establish their experiences with nurses in public and private hospitals around Kampala. The qualitative data was thematically analysed. Incivility was found to be higher in the public than in the private hospitals, and with diverse causes. The lowest rates were in the Christian-founded not-for-profit facility. Interpersonal skills were found to be most needed to cultivate civility. Nursing administrators are instrumental to cultivating civility. They and other stakeholders are, however, cautioned that all these take commitment and careful planning if better outcomes are to be realised from the nurses and the health sector in general. Keywords: incivility, nurses, health sector, Uganda

Making Civility Democratic

Historically, the concept of civility has been bound up with undemocratic notions of hierarchy and deference. Using insights from studies of civility by social psychologists, linguists, sociologists, historians, and political theorists, this article advances the theory that the legal profession’s self-consciously isolating professionalism ideology allows judges and disciplinary tribunals to apply deference-based notions of civility in their decisions to sanction lawyers. This theory would predict that the lawyers most likely to be sanctioned for incivility and rudeness are those from whom society expects the most deference. To test this theory, the author conducted an empirical study of every available case during a ten-year period in which a court labeled the speech or behavior of a lawyer “uncivil,” “offensive,” or “unprofessional.” In each of these cases, the same judge or disciplinary tribunal made a subsequent decision: whether to impose some form of sanction beyond merely condemning the attorney’s behavior by labeling it unprofessional or lacking in civility. Statistical analysis of this database of 315 cases confirmed the predictive value of the theory: the lawyers in this data pool at the greatest risk of being sanctioned for incivility beyond condemnation in a reported opinion were those who represented individuals (rather than entities), spoke defiantly to judges, and were accused of making false statements about the qualifications or integrity of judges. The article’s analysis of the Michigan Bar’s efforts to sanction well-known attorney Geoffrey Fieger for criticizing the judiciary, identifies other problems associated with the legal profession’s current approach to incivility. Framing these issues as primarily about attorneys’ rights to speak freely produces a doctrinal stalemate between professionalism’s laudatory goals of protecting the rule of law and the integrity of the judicial system, and their devastating First Amendment critique. The article suggests that the way around the impasse is for legal actors to be better informed by the concerns other disciplines have voiced about punishing citizens in a democratic society for being impolite, and to acknowledge the contingent nature of our judgments that certain speech or behavior is rude, impolite, offensiveness or disrespectful. The article concludes that making civility a more democratic norm requires greater restraint and respect. Unless a court’s ability to administer justice in a pending case is threatened, the government should refrain from legislating proper behavior and respect the rights of lawyers to use their freedom in ways some find inappropriate