Organizational Communication in Crisis: Beyond Academic Civility

Organizational communication, as field and practice, was arguably in crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic. Work intensification streaming from the neoliberal university (“Neoliberal U”) was already colliding with racial intensification in the communication discipline, evident in growing calls to break the unyielding grip of whiteness on the field’s professional apparatus (“Whitewashing U”). The year 2020 saw this collision come to a head, issuing a renewed imperative to address the racist foundations and continuing inequities of higher ed and academic disciplines. This chapter dwells on one element of that system: “academic civility,” the primary mode of professional communication that constitutes scholarly relations. I argue that academic civility connects and sustains Neoliberal U and Whitewashing U. I use my own experience to illustrate how this is so, playing on the recently popularized notion of “Karen” as a composite of racist habits associated with white women. Accordingly, I call for a shift in professional communication, from immaculate politeness (or moralizing perpetual composure) to imperfect presence (or assuming flawed engagement). My goal is to suggest how white faculty in particular can take meaningful action on the 2020 racial imperative and, in so doing, improve the quality of their work lives too.