In conjunction with her article  When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not,  Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog

Dutt-Ballerstadt, Reshmi

English

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Linfield College DigitalCommons@Linfield Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works 10-3-2018 Challenging Calls for Civility Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt Linfield College, rdutt-b@linfield.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/englfac_pubs  Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, First Amendment Commons, Higher Education Commons, Higher Education Administration Commons, Political Theory Commons, Rhetoric Commons, and the Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons DigitalCommons@Linfield Citation Dutt-Ballerstadt, Reshmi, "Challenging Calls for Civility" (2018). Faculty Publications. Published Version. Submission 54. https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/englfac_pubs/54 This Published Version is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield, with permission from the rights-holder(s). Your use of this Published Version must comply with the Terms of Use for material posted in DigitalCommons@Linfield, or with other stated terms (such as a Creative Commons license) indicated in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, or if you have questions about permitted uses, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. Challenging Calls forCivilityGuest Blogger / October 3, 2018BY RESHMI DUTT-BALLERSTADTWe find ourselves living in a precarious space and time within our institutions where suddenlythere has been a resurgence in appeals to civility codes (that perhaps started with StevenSalaita’s firing from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, in August 2014 as a result of histweets).  Following the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the rise of the extreme rightideologies that have infiltrated within various institutions, there has been a shift to a differentkind of civility code to accommodate the free speech rights.  These civility codes requirefaculty and students to engage in “mutual respect” with vile and discriminatory ideas andideologies being openly promoted on college campuses. We are being told that all ideasmust be debated and any form of protest or disruptions against these vile ideas are seen as“uncivil.”It is undeniable that the free speech as used by the extreme right, as they have forced theirways into various college and university campuses have proved to be downright racist,sexist, homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic among other things.  In other words, theextreme right have co-opted free speech to promote hate speech, exclusions, anddiscriminations of the protected class— at the same time demanding that institutions makelegitimate space for such promotions of exclusionary ideas.Salaita wrote in his article “Why I Was Fired” that “Incivility is the only civilized response tobarbarity.” Yet, post the election of Donald Trump as the US president in 2016, we are onceagain witnessing a rise of barbarity as white supremacy and ethno-nationalism and fascismhave unleashed attacks on various minoritized subjects and groups by using college anduniversity campuses as their recruiting grounds.  Here faculty members are subjected torebukes, surveillance and trolling by various right wing organizations like Turning Point USA(which hosts the Professor Watchlist).  The Watchlist targets professors who teach or haveprotested various forms of white supremacy, white male privilege, intellectual racism, andothers.  Ted Thornhill, an African American sociologist teaches a course called “WhiteRacism” at Florida Gulf Coast University and is named as the “Professor of the Month” forSeptember 2018 on the Professor Watchlist.  While the Watchlist is one such site rebukingfaculty members for their social justice oriented teaching, remarks and research, sadly, manyof our neoliberal institutions have caved into the pressures of the extreme right groups andtheir donors and have taken punitive measures against many faculty members for theextramural speeches and utterances instead of protecting their academic freedom of thesefaculty members.When I wrote the article “When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value andWhat We Do Not,” for the Journal of Academic Freedom, I was well aware that both freespeech and calls for civility have always been deeply embedded in forms of exclusions. What has often counted for civil behavior or who had access to free speech historically havealso privileged the ruling class, the colonizers, the bourgeois, and males with a deepheteronormative sense of being in the world.  Yet, Tobias Kelly and Sharika Thiranagamahave reminded us in their article “Against Civility” that “being civil when facing gross injusticeappears simply hypocritical and inauthentic.  Advocating civility can place etiquette andmanners above equality and justice, and the call for all of us to “get along” risks glossing overserious and important political divisions.”  It is precisely these forms of “incivility” as forms ofprotest (and not physical violence) that various faculty and students across the country haveused to object to promotions of exclusionary tactics.While important political divisions on various institutions have indeed been glossed over, Ihave been consistently taken aback by the glossing over of weakening of various diversityinitiatives (deliberate or not) on college and university campuses by repeated calls to broadenthe definition of “diversity and inclusion” to include exclusionary ideologies as masked under“viewpoint diversity.”  Viewpoint diversity, or what is also been called as “ideological diversity”is also present in the selection process in some academic journals or academicconferences.  In September 2017, an article published in Third World Quarterly titled as “ACase for Colonialism” by Bruce Gilley received overwhelming condemnation from the globalacademic community demanding the retraction of the article. A petition signed by over10,000 academics made it clear that “We do not call for the curtailing of the writer’s freedomof speech … Our goal is to raise academic publishing standards and integrity. We therebycall on the editorial team to retract the article and also to apologize for further brutalizingthose who have suffered under colonialism.”  Vijay Prasad, who served on the editorial boardof the Third World Quarterly not only spoke out against the paper on social media but alsosaid how the publication of Gilley’s article violated Third World Quarterly‘s postcoloniallegacy.”  On September 13, 2017 Prasad tweeted, “@thirdworldq was started as anintellectual venue for anti-colonial thought, to build ideas against colonialism.” At the heart ofthe debate was the question of academic freedom and its relationship to free speech.  JoanScott has reminded us over and over again that “free speech makes no distinction aboutquality; academic freedom does.”It is this “quality” (or a lack thereof) that is precisely at stake here as this debate on freespeech have led to both veiled and serious attacks by the right on various diversity initiatives. Weakening of diversity initiatives are bound to have serious repercussions on not just therights of the protected class of students and faculty on college and university campuses, buta detrimental impact on curricula expansions and implementations using various socialjustice frameworks that were borne out of the civil rights and women’s rights movements inthe 60s and early 70s.  At a time when we are witnessing an erosion of rights –– immigrant,women, sexual minorities, disabilities, religious –– we cannot afford to not see through thesmoke screen of how free speech and civility are being used to provoke and promote theseerosions.Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt is a professor of English and co-coordinates the gender studiesprogram at Linfield College and holds the Edith Green Distinguished Professorship for2018-19. She is the author of a scholarly monograph, The Postcolonial Citizen: AnIntellectual Migrant (2010), and her forthcoming co-edited book of essays, Civility, FreeSpeech, and Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins, will bepublished in 2019.The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom publishes scholarship on academicfreedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collectivebargaining. The Journal is published online annually, and is supported by fundingfrom the AAUP Foundation.

Challenging Calls for Civility

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Challenging Calls for Civility

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