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The conversations I had with members of the UC Davis community began with civility, but almost always ended up with diversity on campus—encouraging it, protecting it, maintaining it, even managing it. The concepts are clearly linked for most of the people with whom I spoke. For many, “civility” was a contentious term, loaded with the weight of histories of oppression and suppression, and unequal to the task of participating in a productive response to the problems of underrepresentation and institutionalized bias. Yet there is agreement that the university should have standards of something like civility to which it holds itself and its community members accountable. It is in thinking about how a university community might be better able to establish and enact a shared notion of civility—or some other, better standard—that talk turns to “diversity.” Whether imposed on the conversation, in the case of civility, or repeatedly invoked in the conversation, as with diversity, these are the terms that frame this inquiry. If we listen to the voices from UC Davis that are represented here, we face two imperatives in moving forward from incidents of incivility on campus: interrogating our focus on civility and intensifying our attention to establishing a truly diverse community in which all members feel both visible and valued. |
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Why Are We Talking about Civility?
In news reports and official statements following the 2010 bias-related incidents, the conversation quickly leapt from the events themselves to the university’s role in promoting civility through “supporting diversity.” The leadership of the University of California repeatedly called for “civility” as the appropriate response to problems of discrimination and bias. In a letter dated February 26th and signed by President Yudof, all of the UC Chancellors, and the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Academic Senate, the university leadership denounced “all acts of racism, intolerance, and incivility.” The joint statement declared these acts “unacceptable” and at odds with the UC’s values, which are laid out in each campus’s “Principles of Community.” In another statement, President Yudof and Regent Gould likewise denounced the hanging of a noose in the UCSD library, writing, “[This act] has no place in civilized society.”
Official statements called on members of the university community to practice civility while standing up against prejudicial speech. In a letter dated February 24th, Chancellor Katehi urged the UC Davis community to “maintain a campus environment of civility and respect in which every student, faculty, staff, and group can thrive.” She echoed the UC leadership’s joint statement, which reminded “all members of the UC community” of their “responsibility to speak out against activities that promote intolerance or undermine civil dialogue.”
The following week, the Chancellor went further, calling on everyone “to be constant and vigilant in our efforts to confront and reject all manifestations of the historical and deep-rooted prejudices and biases that remain in our society.” While this statement alludes to the structural factors that maintain and reproduce inequality, Katehi’s subsequent emphasis on making the campus “hate-free” indicates a more surface-level and individualistic approach. Both the structural and individual aspects matter, but, as one graduate student told me, they are often framed in an either-or manner that makes change seem impossible. According to this graduate student, the official university response has been either to “look at [discrimination and bias] as this massive, inevitable thing that’s… impenetrable. Or, it’s this one person who’s being mean. It’s rarely [presented as] something that we’re all involved with every day, when we don’t think otherwise or challenge the status quo.” Promoting the creation of “hate-free zones” on campus reminds us how our words and actions can affect others negatively in any given time and place, but it also directs our attention toward individual behavior and away from the institutional forces that provide a context for hateful conduct in the first place. In other words, it can direct attention away from the institutional practices that shape who is eligible for a UC education, who is supported with resources, and who feels welcome on campus.
Is Civility even the Right Word?
Despite the apparent popularity of the term “civility” in official university statements and campus media, most individuals I queried indicated that the term is not widely used on the UC Davis campus. There is also no shared understanding of what the term means. For some of the people I talked to, civility as a more or less positive meaning, implying an ability to listen and engage openly with others. Terms such as “civic engagement” or “civic duty” speak to one’s relationship to responsibility for maintaining the collective good. This interpretation of civility is evident in official responses to the 2010 hate crimes and bias-related incidents.
An administrator defined civility as “the ability for people to… appreciate the personal dignity inherent in other human beings… and to be able to communicate and engage… in a way that… allows them to stand… strong and to be passionate about their feelings, viewpoints, and perspectives, but also allows them to engage in… active listening.” He argued that a climate of civility on campus is necessary for the university to fulfill its role “a marketplace of ideas.” Likewise, a faculty member argued that the university should take the lead in modeling civility: “We should do everything we can to make sure that people feel that they’re treated with respect and dignity. And we should repudiate any uncivil, disrespectful, undignified treatment of people in our community… [and] outside our community.” Another source, a staff member, agreed, noting that college students “have to see their history being reflected in the curriculum,” as well as in the university’s official representatives and physical structures.
Although official university statements and campus media quickly leapt from the problem of discrimination and bias to the solution of “civility,” some people I spoke with on campus expressed ambivalence or even opposition to the concept. To be seen as civil or polite, several people said, one must keep discussion at the surface level and ignore underlying issues related to social structures and histories of oppression. To some extent, this entails setting aside one’s personal or group interests for the perceived benefit of the larger community. As one source observed, civility requires “placing the [maintenance] of social order above my own personal feelings.”
Many of my sources associated civility with the implicit message to “sit down and shut up.” The concept of civility exerts normative power with the potential to label any protest uncivil and thus easily dismissed. Campus community members observed that the individuals who are most likely to be protesting perceived injustice and subsequently be labeled “uncivil” are members of marginalized groups. Members of marginalized groups are less likely to have the power to determine what is or is not “civil.” Civility thus can become a tool to repress dissent.
As a concept, civility reminded those I queried of the historical and contemporary acts of colonial powers to “civilize” “savage” “natives.” As one staff member noted, “civility has a terrible history for people of color,” and is embedded in ideologies and practices of missionary conquest. A graduate student concurred, noting how “civilization discourses and large progress narratives have been used to justify colonialism, to justify war and occupation.” She likened civility to “ideas of respectability that are very much tied to middle-class norms about whiteness and proper familial formations and property ownership.” According to a professor, civility asserts bourgeois values that denigrate poor and working-class individuals and individuals of color:
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It’s a really bougie game to play. … So this is why working class kids, when they come out of Oakland and they just act like themselves, people are like, oh, wow, he’s kind of… aggressive. No. He just didn’t defer to your shit. … And the kids who come [to UC Davis] have to adjust to that. And the ones who survive do adjust. That’s kind of a prerequisite for becoming socialized into the environment, taking off the urban edge and putting on the illusion of civility [while] in the public sphere… When you’re coming out of an urban environment, those are cultural contrasts… that can… really make working class students kind of stand out. … So all working class students stand out, and if you happen to be Black, then you stand out even more… And when you’re like that and you come through town, the cops will stop you [snaps fingers] in a minute. |
From this perspective, civility demands “shucking and jiving” in order to get along and get by. While police officers may give middle-class whites the benefit of the doubt, people of color and low-income people must properly perform submission to authority or risk dire consequences. One graduate student told me that, in her view, we should always ask, “Who gets to be civil? Who is never going to be [seen as] civil regardless of what they do? How is their embodiment and affect always going to be read through certain racialized and gendered lenses that will never allow them to access civility?”
Some sources also recognized that a focus on civility leads to an individualistic approach, which directs attention toward the individual “uncivil” person rather than the “uncivil” (or unjust) situation that s/he is protesting. Because individualism is integral to American ideology, it is understandable that the concept of “civility” has gained popularity in this country. However, discrimination and bias can not be reduced to individual failings; my sources repeatedly discussed structural inequalities within the university that perpetuate a campus climate that is unwelcoming to African Americans, Latin@s, Native Americans, LGBTIQ individuals, non-Christians, and other members of under-represented groups. In 2010 many students at UC Davis and elsewhere protested the UC’s repeated fee hikes and increasing privatization. Some people on the UC Davis campus were critical of protesters’ methods, which included protest marches and one attempt to block interstate highway 80. I spoke to a graduate student who questioned the characterization of that action as uncivil and compared it to the fee increases that the students had been protesting. Flipping the civility rhetoric on its head, she argued, “the exclusion of people of color and low-income people from higher education … is the most uncivil thing possible.” While the term civility has the “potential to be affirming and integrating,” a staff member told me, it often demands too little of individuals with social power. This staff member admitted that she “hates” the term civility because, like “tolerance,” it “is not a high enough standard.” These connotations left several campus community members unwilling to accept “civility” as a common goal.
Is Civility What We really Want?
Civility implies that everyone plays nicely at the same table. However, not everyone is allowed a seat at the table constituted by the University of California. Members of under-represented groups, who protest on behalf of their communities, risk appearing “uncivil” by raising concerns about inequality. Yet protests have been necessary to produce the diversity infrastructure that is present on UC campuses today. The UC Davis Cross-Cultural Center, for example, was founded after several students staged a hunger strike in 1990. A staff member I spoke with noted that student resource centers “didn’t come about because of the goodness of the heart. We came… because of a demand.” The Student Disability Center, likewise, was developed to comply with federal disability protections, which, in turn, grew out of activism by disability rights advocates.
Protests like the hunger strike in 1990 have been effective partly because university administrators are loathe to attract negative attention to campus. According to the same staff member, “the reason why [administrators] are fearful of students of color or queer people, or whatever the case might be, is because [administrators are] afraid they are going to make [the university and its administrators] look bad. And we do! [Laughs.] But [we do that] because we know what will get a response.” Despite – or perhaps because of – the demonstrated effectiveness of student activism in securing change, the rhetoric of (in)civility has repeatedly been used to discipline and undermine that activism.
For obvious reasons, most of the 2010 bias-related incidents have not been understood as forms of activism or protest – the one exception being the altercation at UC Irvine when Muslim students expressed their opposition to Israeli policies by disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador. Of course, the question of what is a “legitimate” protest is subject to interpretation. Today the expression of overt racism and homophobia is generally frowned upon, but mostly protected as a matter of free speech, provided no one is physically harmed.
In general, the 2010 bias-related incidents targeted individuals, symbols, and institutions belonging to or associated with historically marginalized communities on campus. Informal studies of campus climate prior to the incidents indicate that members of under-represented groups already felt less safe and less welcome on campus than their better-represented peers. Some on campus also felt that the budget cuts, which both preceded and followed the incidents, have had a disproportionate impact on under-represented students, as have cuts to social services and a decline in federal financial aid.
I suggest shifting the conceptual focus away from “civility” and toward “diversity,” which would direct our attention toward the persistent inequalities and structural forms of discrimination that shape who makes it to the UC, whether as a student, faculty member, or staff person. While “civility” is currently a highly marketable term, it is my assessment that a focus on civility obscures the underlying issues related to discrimination and bias and risks silencing the voices of marginalized individuals. In report after report, the University has assessed its “problem with diversity,” repeatedly coming to the same conclusions: among the University’s staff, student, and faculty, white Americans and Asian Americans are over-represented while African American, Latin@s, and Native Americans are under-represented; women as a whole are also under-represented, particularly in the physical sciences and engineering. In contrast to this reality of inadequate and unequal representation exists the desire, expressed by everyone I queried, for the University to reflect more accurately the population of California.
What is Civility?
“Incivility” is typically defined in behavioral terms, referring to commonplace actions and interactions that are perceived as rude, inconsiderate, or disruptive. Accordingly, “civility” indicates the sort of respectful, polite behavior deemed essential to the orderly functioning of modern society. Historically, civility has been associated with the broader “civilizing process” that underwrote the transition to modernity in the West from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Clearly class-coded, this process nevertheless worked against expressions of violence and impulse, enabling new levels of cooperation and spaces of coexistence among dissimilar groups. Less benignly, discourses of civility have been deployed to legitimate notions of white racial superiority, as witnessed by the efforts of colonial powers to “civilize” “savage” “natives.” More recently, in contrast, civility is often framed as tolerance of difference and diversity, particularly along racial/ethnic lines -- indeed, this appears to be the most common framing within university settings today.
The behavioral bias of equating civility with politeness or respect was troubling to some of my sources because it can render invisible broader structures of power. For example, why do we place the burden of incivility on individual graffiti artists, street vendors, or homeless people, instead of on social and economic policies that ensure unequal access to education, economic opportunity, and affordable housing? Which is more “uncivil” -- shouting epithets at college administrators during a rally against fee hikes or the large-scale defunding of public higher education? Ignoring the broader context in which behavior occurs can both obscure the structural dimensions of civility/incivility and lead us to miscast the behavior itself. It can also lead to “easy” solutions, such as publicly denouncing racist, sexist, or homophobic conduct while doing little to change the organization or institutional culture that makes such conduct more or less likely to occur. Individual actions and attitudes may or may not reflect broader societal patterns of racism, sexism, and homophobia; regardless, these patterns themselves should be recognized as structural expressions of incivility.
How Does the UC Speak
about Diversity
The UC has repeatedly asserted the value of student, faculty, and staff diversity to its educational mission in California. The University has created and distributed statements that affirm the value of diversity; established and funded administrative positions and centers targeted toward addressing this issue; and commissioned numerous research reports that present evidence of the continued gap between the university’s rhetorical support and its numerical representation of different populations on campus.
In 1990, UC Davis was the first UC to establish a “Principles of Community” document, which outlines the values of the institution in aspirational terms. The Principles begin by identifying the university’s mission: UC Davis “is first and foremost an institution of learning and teaching, committed to serving the needs of society.” The Principles proceed to “confront and reject all manifestations of discrimination” while valuing diversity for “the richness [it] contribute[s] to our lives.” In a statement in 2010 re-affirming the Principles of Community, Chancellor Katehi explicitly tied diversity to the oft-cited goal of “excellence” and asked university community members “to recognize the obligation we have to foster an environment of civility and respect in which all of us can thrive.”
Among those I spoke with, the general consensus was of thoughtful respect for the “Principles of Community” as a document. I spoke with an administrator who saw the Principles as “an asset” that UC Davis uses to recruit new faculty and staff. The Principles signal to prospective employees, “they are joining a community… that’s going to welcome their differences and ideas and perspectives and their differences as it relates to a fact of being human.” I spoke with a staff member who considered the Principles to be “an amazing document” that spells out both the rights and the responsibilities that we each have to one another as members of this community. Another staff member I spoke with admitted once feeling that the Principles were “hokey” and “nice words on paper” without enough action backing them up. Over time, however, they grew on her and she has come to appreciate UC Davis for writing such goals and espousing them publicly. However, the challenge of making the Principles a reality remains. As a non-binding document, the Principles are unenforceable.
The UC’s Diversity Statement, which was approved in 2006, defines diversity broadly as “the variety of personal experiences, values, and worldviews that arise from differences of culture and circumstance.” The statement asserts that achieving diversity on campus is necessary for the UC to fulfill its role in service to the state: “The State of California has a compelling interest in making sure that people from all backgrounds perceive that access to the University is possible for talented students, staff, and faculty from all groups.” This language emphasizes the perception of the UC’s accessibility, not the personal experience or even quantitative measurement of the UC as accessible. Diversity is asserted as providing educational value by developing individuals to participate effectively in a globalized world. “Diversity aims to broaden and deepen both the educational experience and the scholarly environment, as students and faculty learn to interact effectively with each other, preparing them to participate in an increasingly complex and pluralistic society.” The statement concludes by tying the goal of diversity to the university’s role in identifying and fostering talent: “The University particularly acknowledges the acute need to remove barriers to the recruitment, retention, and advancement of talented students, faculty, and staff from historically excluded populations who are currently underrepresented.” This language recognizes that under-represented groups are “historically excluded” from the university, but stops short of committing the university to action.
How Does the UC "Do" Diversity?
The UC has studied the issue extensively, appointing task forces to research and document the problem in published reports. These reports serve as a record of the University’s public commitment to the issue. The 2006 report of the President’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity, for example, quotes a 1997 report on outreach at the UC:
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The University of California has a long-standing commitment to the goal of enrolling a student body that encompasses the diversity of the state of California. … Diversity at the University contributes in a direct and positive way to the educational experience and also serves to provide opportunity and social mobility to all sectors of society. |
As this quote indicates, the stated goals of the UC mirror those that came up in my conversations with UC Davis students, staff, faculty, and administrators.
As discussed in the 2006 report, the Supreme Court recognized in Grutter v. Bollinger that promoting diversity represents a “compelling state interest.” For the UC, this interest is twofold: first, a university community that is made up of a variety of ideas, interests, and experiences enhances the UC’s academic mission by fostering the development of communication and other “soft” skills that are necessary in an increasingly globalized world. Second, promoting equal opportunity of access to the UC allows the institution to “maintain our legitimacy as a public land grant university.” The report suggests ways for the university to promote diversity within the constraints of Proposition 209, which prohibits the consideration of race, ethnicity, or gender in public university admissions, hiring, and contracting, by explicitly tying the values of diversity to a richer academic experience.
One way that the university can support diversity in a substantive manner is by recognizing and rewarding community members’ “diversity work” on campus. In fact, the UC has revised its Academic Personnel Policy to allow tenure and promotion considerations to do just that for academic employees. However, one faculty source noted that most faculty members are still reluctant to include such work in their formal reviews because of the appearance that doing so “pads” one’s CV, filling space that ought to contain more traditionally scholarly work. In addition to the formal policy change, a cultural change spearheaded by university leadership is necessary to fully count university employees’ contributions to diversity. Arguably, such a change is also needed at the national level: the UC would have further impetus to promote diversity if the official rankings of colleges and universities took such measures into account, rather than focusing on standardized test scores that are in turn correlated with socioeconomic status.
Employees from under-represented groups tend to be over-burdened with requests to do diversity work, yet much of this outreach on the part of university administration feels like tokenization. Both a graduate student and a faculty member confided that they were sought after to serve on committees in order to provide a “racial thumbs-up” or graduate student “stamp of approval.” These experiences mirror the general sense I gained from conversations with members of the university community that the UC claims to support diversity, but fails to back that up effectively with substantive change.
What's the Distance between
Speaking and Doing?
The university has produced countless reports on diversity, yet tends to follow through on recommendations more often when the state and/or accrediting agencies compel the university to make change. This pattern is evident in both the pressures to increase the number of women faculty in the UC and to amend the UC Davis General Education requirements. Crises, like the hate-based incidents of 2010, tend to spark discussion about necessary changes and produce small financial allocations that support such change, but public interest tends to wane quickly, removing the external pressure for action. Monies that are allocated – like with the 2010 incidents – often spark controversy because of a lack of awareness about how money flows (or does not flow) through the university. A staff member and a graduate student informed me that, to the untrained eye, increased funds for diversity efforts come at the expense of other university priorities. Partly due to a lack of transparency about university finances, many in the university community perceive a zero-sum financial game that does not match reality. To those interested in substantively promoting diversity on campus, like one staff member that I spoke with, the infighting fueled by this perception is much ado about nothing as the money is often little more than “window dressing” (to quote one staff member) on the problem, not a real solution.
Creating reports on the problem – which appears to be the university’s specialty – is a worthwhile effort, but requires a great deal of time, thus putting distance between the incident motivating the report and a report’s publication. Experience indicates that if money is not dedicated immediately after the initial outrage, then money is unlikely to be allocated at all. At times, sustained protest by university community members has succeeded in altering the campus landscape: a hunger strike by UC Davis students in 1990 led to the creation of the Cross-Cultural Center, which in turn led to the development of the LGBT Resource Center. Such protests – which may be deemed uncivil in today’s lexicon – have proven necessary for substantive change.
Simply claiming to support diversity, as the UC has done for a number of years, is not enough to produce either equitable representation or a welcoming campus climate because structural forms of discrimination are still in place throughout societal institutions. To truly support diversity, the university must put teeth into its rhetoric. One place to start is by addressing the many barriers to attaining a UC education, barriers that are faced disproportionately by low-income people, people of color, and families without college experience.
Unfortunately, the current financial climate indicates a move in the opposite direction. While increasing fees for all students, the university has taken some steps to lessen the burden for low-income families, often by granting loans that are then translated into student debt. According to my sources, the appearance of UC Davis as an accessible institution and the morale of university employees have been negatively affected by the fee increases and other consequences of budget cuts such as the consolidation of ethnic studies programming in Hart Hall. Current efforts to increase the enrolment of out-of-state students, who are charged higher fees than residents, strike many as inconsistent with the university’s mission as a land grant public institution, supported by California taxpayers. In the words of one faculty member, “as the University of California becomes more publicly inspired, as opposed to publicly supported,” the gaps between the university’s rhetoric and its practices come to light.
What Can't The University Do?
Addressing concerns about representation – whether in numbers, in substantive support, or in the curriculum – poses significant challenges that are outside of the university’s control. In addition to coping with varying state support for higher education, the university is directly and indirectly affected by state laws such as Propositions 209 and 13.
Since 1996, Proposition 209 has prohibited public institutions like the UC from considering race, ethnicity, or sex in its admissions, hiring, and public contracting procedures. This proposition caused confusion about was or was not permissible. I spoke with an administrator who reflected on this tension.
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Prop. 209 did not in effect stop the University of California’s commitment to having a diverse faculty and staff and having a very diverse student body that was reflective of the state of California. A lot of folks felt that our commitment to diversity actually was maybe ended or terminated with Prop. 209. So [it was a challenge to help] people to reconcile Prop. 209… [with] our commitment to diversity. |
Because of Proposition 209, the university has had to be more creative to attract and retain individuals from under-represented groups. The law prevents the university from using the most straightforward approach, which is to woo such individuals with scholarships based on their group membership. A professor lamented the difficult situation: “with the budget cutting [and] with low minority enrollment perceived in the UC campuses… there are many minority applicants who kind of get the idea that they’re not particularly wanted at the University of California. I’m not saying that’s true, but I think they perceive that. And they get offered large amounts of money sometimes from private schools and they say, ‘Gosh, these people really want me and they’re coming after me.’” Despite personally opposing the law and wanting to have more members of under-represented groups on campus, university administrators, from President Yudof on down, are compelled to abide by it.
Likewise, Proposition 13, which has been in effect since 1978, significantly altered funding for K-12 public schools. The result, in the eyes of one professor, was the “systemic undercutting of public education in the state.” While voters in more affluent districts, such as Davis, can and do elect to tax themselves more to pay for smaller class sizes, new facilities, and other educational resources, voters in poor communities are less able to do so, resulting in widely disparate per-pupil spending by public school districts. While Propositions 209 and 13 present challenges specific to California, the under-representation of African Americans and Latin@s at public universities is a nationwide problem because all schools draw from an educational pipeline that produces disparate outcomes by race/ethnicity.