Civility

I keep thinking about the problem of civil discourse in the academy.

Today, there's a think piece on Inside Higher Ed's web site in which Susan Herbst proposes that, through our approach to teaching, academics could help improve the civility quotient in society at large.

I wish I thought we were in a position to make that work. The problem is, students see not only how we lead discussions in class but also how we treat each other and our external publics.

It seems to me that we in the academy have a lot of work to do on ourselves if we are to help make things better in the larger culture. Unfortunately, it seems to me that we are a significant part of the problem right now.

Before we could lead any change by giving an example of civil debate to our larger culture, first we would have to learn the basics of civil debate within ourselves. Academics may debate the easy cases civilly -- that is, the small intramural controversies among those who fundamentally agree. But we are as vicious as AM talk radio when it comes to matters of real social significance. There are few measured, calm discussions then.

For example, when Mark Lilla proposed in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently that "conservatism is a tradition, not a pathology," the comments section below that article showed what academics are really like when truly fundamental disagreements such as those that vex us today are at stake. Measured and calm it was not.

I have been deeply guilty of ridiculing and vituperating those with whom I have disagreed. In late 2008, I decided to start working on not doing that any more. Some people who were enjoying the show have asked me why I disappeared from certain debates. The reason is that I decided then to try to stop doing damage to relationships and institutions I care about.

I fall off that wagon embarrassingly often, though I will say in my own favor that I have not often done so in front of the wide world or in print in this past year, but I think I've learned that it's worth the effort.

We in academia have been practicing incivility for decades, and we've gotten very good at it. Maybe if enough of us start today trying to calm ourselves down, in twenty or thirty years we might be in a position to offer help to someone else.