We Need to Talk about How We Communicate at Our Universities
It is a uniquely challenging time to be employed or a student at a university, especially if you are Black woman or a student(s) with divergent opinions. From the high profile firing of Claudine Gay at Harvard and its aftermath, to the tragic suicide of Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey, Vice President of Student Affairs at Lincoln University, and several others in recent years, to the Toronto Star’s investigation into my own university’s Law School and the student letter in support of Palestine — where there's a bad news story, institutions of higher learning are in it.
While some commentators have boiled the issues down to a lack of respect for Black women at these universities and the problem of workplace mobbing, defined as a form of group aggression where a group silently manipulates a high performing person so that they will leave. In the case of Gay and Candia-Bailey, a petition on change.org is calling for the adoption of stringent anti-mobbing policies.
I agree with much of what has been said, but I also think at the root of all of these cases is a breakdown in communication. I have worked at universities for 15 years (including my PhD years), and the issues are universal. Schools brand themselves as environments where the ideals of “excellence,” “free speech,” and “critical thinking” are not only encouraged but nurtured; in reality, however, these ideals are increasingly challenged by a lack of respect for difference (of opinions), real commitments to diversity (of cultures), and the courage to nurture multiple points of views (and politics) on our campuses.
When there is a breakdown in communication, most folks at universities approach the problem with an equality lens that seeks to treat every situation the same, every action and dissenting opinion as an attack on the university’s “values”. Individuals who dare to challenge existing “processes” are also branded as “difficult,” “disobedient,” and in my experience, the threat of punishment is also dangled over their head. Because I’ve worked in the private sector and at universities, I have a particularly unique perspective on these issues.
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When you work for a company, an employee has to be “all-in” in some respects with the product(s) and/or service(s) offered by the company. You know what the company does, why you were hired, and what you and your team are there to do. If you work in marketing versus sales, for example, you might have different roles but your objectives as it relates to the company are the same — you want the company to be successful, as measured through profits, contracts, and/or customer feedback.
The roles and responsibilities at a university are just not as clearly defined. Too many people don’t know and in some cases don’t care about the university’s number one product — ideas. We are all supposed to be here for the greater good of ideas and the preservation of thought as it relates to knowledge production and creativity however, after decades (this shift did not happen in 2020) of administrative branches ballooning in size including the creation of new roles, faculty ratios not keeping pace with student enrollments, universities adopting growth-by-international-students plans, and donors becoming more powerful than university presidents, there are so many branches of the university today with competing interests, which complicate the channels of communication, and how we come to consensus around “shared” values, aims, and goals.
The challenges of these competing interests become visible in high profile cases, but in the everyday life of these universities too many administrators, faculty, staff, and students simply do not know how to communicate in healthy and productive ways that centre the university’s most valuable product — ideas. Instead, personal insecurities, enlarged egos, and in some cases, people in roles they have no business being in, are tasked with complex portfolios that they are not equipped to handle, and when problems arise they not only don’t know what to do or say, they have never received any formal training on what to do or say.
I love being a professor because I love ideas, being part of a student's learning and development, exploring new ideas through research, public speaking, writing and even edits — I genuinely love it all. But if the university of the 2020s does not change, it will lose faculty, and not attract and retain students who also care about ideas and learning. The university itself might not exist within our lifetime if things don’t change — the crisis is more existential than we think it is.
The private sector has its challenges but at least you know who the big bad wolf is, and who is Little Red Riding Hood. The rules of engagement are more transparent and there is some room to negotiate the rules of engagement as situations ebb and flow.
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At universities, on the other hand, you often do not know who is who, and therefore, trust becomes an issue, which manifests through the toxic modes of communication to address conflict — hence the feelings of isolation, dysfunction, and despair when you’re the target of bullying or mobbing. Too often, you are on your own and the offices that say they are there to “support” you are, in reality, only there to maintain the university’s image and reputation.
Even my alma mater, the University of Windsor recently had to publicly apologize for not recognizing the work of a Black graduate student, Willow Key in the 'We Were Here: Bringing the Stories of Windsor's McDougall Street Corridor to Life' project," after giving an award to three white faculty members who were also involved in the project. Such oversights, slights, and the devaluation of a Black graduate student is tantamount to mobbing, and it’s sadly an experience too many, myself included, have had to endure when we were in graduate school.
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"I don't understand how, especially an institute like the University of Windsor that is purposefully trying to work on doing anti-Black racism work within its campus, this appropriation of the work of a Black graduate student was allowed," she said Leslie McCurdy, who is also a playwright and performance artist, in an interview with CBC Windsor
During my PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University, I learned a lot about theories and histories of communication, but I did not receive any training on how to communicate in university settings. There was — and remains — an assumption that, as students, folks will just figure it all out and be professional by the time they enter the field as faculty. Professional communication is not part of the training.
Passive aggressiveness, lying, deceit, betrayal, and a lack of respect were some of the common experiences I had when I was a grad student. I vividly remember one experience where a PhD student asked for my assistance on a grant. I did so in the spirit of collegiality but when the person won the grant, they never spoke to me again, even when I passed them in the hallway of the Arts Building they completely ignored me as if we had never known each other. I didn’t know what to think at the time so I returned the favour and moved on. It was a few years later that I realized that yes, adults “discard” people with just as much frequency as middle-schoolers. My naivety about graduate school ended right there.
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Publicity photo for Gone with the Wind, 1939 featuring Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland and Vivian Leigh
Over the next four years, I had many transactional relationships with fellow graduate students and even some faculty that also left me feeling quite disturbed about the state of education. But then I remembered something — education is made up of people, so there is no reason to loose faith in education, it’s about seeking out better people. If you’ve read the article I wrote for The Conversation in 2019, “I Am Not Your Nice Mammy,” it was inspired by my experiences as a graduate student. Many of the poor communication skills are learned, and experienced when we are students. That’s why they are so entrenched and seem to be getting worse.
In my decade’s long career as an educator, I have experienced a lot of communication breakdowns with faculty, students and staff. When it comes to conflict — having difficult (but necessary) conversations or navigating intercultural differences, and emails, the biggest whammy of them all — there are often few resources that one can draw on to resolve the conflict or sometimes to even know what is at the root of the problem itself.
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When conflict arises in academic settings, many people become avoidant, which leads to defensiveness, and a lack of trust. Further, at many universities, there are procedures that, while not intended to, also encourage people to act in passive aggressive ways when they experience conflict. Human-centred responses like conversation have been replaced with documentation, and of course, there are the emails from people you don’t know sent to half dozen people you’ve never met. In too many instances, emails have replaced face-to-face conversation.
Most people think it appropriate when sending an email about a conflict to use the “cc” function in correspondence because in their mind, they are letting all parties know that someone (the person receiving the email) has done something wrong. When cc’ing someone’s authority figure first, however, you are engaging in a form of bullying. This is a passive-aggressive tactic akin to the tattling antics of kindergarteners.
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“If you’ve ever opened an email at work and found a colleague has inexplicably copied your boss on a message to you about a minor concern, you likely know the irritation this tiny electronic bomb can cause: Does your co-worker not trust you to resolve the issue without your boss’s scrutiny? Is the presence of your boss in the cc field intended to imply you’ve been negligent on the matter in the past? Why, for the love of God, is your manager being dragged into what should be a routine interaction easily handled between two colleagues?,” writes Alison Green, Slate.com.
When you use the cc function but then don't explain who the cc’d people are, and most importantly, why you have decided to include them in your email, you are using email to intimidate someone — even as that might not be your intention. As IT specialist Nick Ellis writes in a LinkedIn post, better ways to use the cc function in an email include:
Mentioning who the people cc'd in the email are;
If you are emailing someone who is a peer or senior, let your supervisor or boss know who they are in relation to the content of the email.
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Most people don’t know this about me but from the ages of 9 to 12, I was a competitive chess player. Me and my sister represented our public school at tournaments, and we were good — the killer twins! What I learned playing chess I have carried into my adult life, the most notable being that life is not meant to be played in defensive mode.
Here’s the Harvard Business Review’s 8 Email Etiquette Tips. These tips could be a great way to start the new year on a new footing with your emails.
In chess you have to take into account all angles from the point of view of your team (the pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen and king), yourself (what kind of person are you when you’re winning and when you’re losing?), and your opponent (what are their patterns, how do they respond to losing?). Chess asks you to think about how you approach a challenge. Once you understand your patterns, you understand that defending yourself is futile. Instead, the aim is to see your blind spots, your patterns, other people’s blind spots and patterns, and then make contentious choices based on this holistic awareness of the game.
It’s time for universities to get out of defensive mode, especially as it relates to intelligent, articulate, and highly motivated Black women. We have, historically, been at the centre of social change movements for a reason. But at the same time, as individuals, we also have our own healing work to do. The process toward making our universities places where new ideas, collaborative approaches, and community-based solutions are nourished has to be reciprocal. The need for radical thinking and holistic awareness has never been more urgent if we are to preserve the university’s most valuable asset — ideas.
