BY JUDY ROHRER

See a larger version of this photo in the author’s Journal of Academic Freedom article.

It feels like every week there is a new case of an instructor being fired, released, or not renewed because of some (usually progressive) political statement or action. The increasing number of us in untenured and contingent positions find ourselves self-censoring in meetings, stressing over student evaluations, second-guessing our political activism, habitually googling ourselves—and almost always doing this in isolation.

“Conditioning critique on the conventions of bourgeois civil liberties, and in deference to specters of recrimination, abrogates any meaningful notion of political independence.” These are the words of Steven Salaita in his recent article, “My Life as a Cautionary Tale,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I reference Salaita’s story in my new Journal of Academic Freedom article “Compulsory Civility and the Necessity of (Un)Civil Disobedience.” What I somehow didn’t realize when I was writing the article is that Salaita now drives a school bus. Really, a school bus, where he is known as “Mr. Steve.” No university will hire him, not even for an office job. His argument: civil liberties and academic freedom are well and good, but “they’re helpless against the capitalist impulse to eliminate disruptors.”

On the other side of the table, administrators in the neoliberal university continue their successful deployment of discourses of civility to discipline “disruptors.” In fact, just recently on this blog it was reported that conservative members of the board of governors and high-level administrators at UNC–Chapel Hill have been secretly creating and finding funding for a “Program on Civic Virtue and Civil Discourse”—a badly disguised Trojan horse to create a “beachhead” for like-minded ideologues. The weaponization of “civility” often comes when administrations are challenged or when there are larger political tensions.

In my article I provide a few examples, including drawing on my experience in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election. On the morning after the election my university president sent an email to the whole campus community with the subject line “Civility and Embracement.” With no recognition of the impact of Trump’s win on students of color, Muslim, and immigrant students, the university president wrote, “Our democracy is strong and good. Let’s all support each other. Free speech is good, but let’s encourage all among us to be civil, thoughtful, and respectful…” Instead of following this prescribed path (read: compulsory civility), I decided on (un)civil disobedience and posted “Dear Students” signs following a model shared by a comrade in another institution (see photo above).

Along with many other scholar-activists, my article calls for more (un)civil disobedience, more solidarity, more organizing across institutions. Salaita writes, “I didn’t do nearly enough to support my contingent comrades—because I didn’t properly see them as comrades.” Let’s learn from his cautionary tale. Let’s work to resist academic hierarchies, fictional meritocracies, our egos, and our fears—creatively, collectively—as disruptors, killjoys, and uncivil actors in and across the academy.

Guest blogger Judy Rohrer is currently the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Eastern Washington University. Information about her publications is at http://judyrohrer.mystrikingly.com.

Read the complete volume of the 2019 Journal of Academic Freedom at https://www.aaup.org/JAF10.