Notes on The Rhetoric of Civility and Soft Repression

The Rhetoric of Civility as Soft Repression

Civility functions as a mechanism to silence dissent without physical violence; described as soft repression.
Civility codes promote polite, non-polemical engagement to achieve consensus in social-political discussions.
They encourage respectful addressing of disagreements and frame the campus as a space for respectful dialogue.
Right-wing threats to faculty (cyber-attacks, threats) have occurred since early cases (Ward Churchill, Steven Salaita). Sanctions against offending faculty (e.g., Salaita hire retraction; Ciccariello-Maher firing) are used to protect the university’s branding and funding.
Targeted scholars are disproportionately people of color, women, and researchers focused on race or gender; these strategies are overtly repressive and coercive.
The rhetoric of civility operates alongside explicit coercive tactics, functioning as a form of soft repression that disciplines dissent.
Civility codes emerged well before 2016 and intensified after the 2016 election and the rise of antagonistic student protests against right-wing speakers.
The standard civility code asks members to engage in measured, non-polemical tones, avoid antagonistic confrontation with differing political opinions, and treat the campus as a space for respectful dialogue.
Etymology and meaning: civility links to citizenship, courtesy, and social order; the term’s roots connect to excluding those deemed
"uncivilized" to maintain capitalist social arrangements.
Invitational rhetoric, often cited as civility, misses analyses of systemic obstacles to individual agency in oppression and inequality.
Civility is not simply etiquette; it can normalize power relations and suppress antagonism toward dominant groups.
Civil disobedience is sometimes framed within civility debates as a force for social justice, but historically it has been perceived as uncivil by those in power; violence against protesters exposes the limits of civility.

The Rhetoric of Moral Equivalence

Moral equivalence is a rhetorical tactic used to equate different wrongs to demand sanction or obliteration; its inverse use can deflect criticism by suggesting parity in wrongdoing.
Right-wing speakers claim an equal hearing for their rhetoric, regardless of content, and universities sometimes condemn content while defending free speech in principle.
Such positions create a prior constraint on speech and set standards by which faculty, staff, and students are evaluated for antagonistic discourse.
A well-known example: at UC Berkeley, February 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos faced 1,500 protesters; officials canceled the appearance citing violence concerns; Chancellor Dirks emphasized the right to free expression and the campus values of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity, highlighting the tension between free speech and civil order.
These events illustrate the rhetoric of moral equivalence in which opposing voices are argued to deserve equal treatment irrespective of their content or intent.

The Rhetoric of Civility in Practice (Codes, Institutions, Initiatives)

FIRE reports indicate disciplinary trends: 50\% of private universities and 61\% of surveyed institutions have potential disciplinary codes, including civility codes.
Evergreen State College’s civility code: “Civility is not just a word; it must be present in all our interactions.”
Johns Hopkins University has a civility initiative modeled after Forni’s Choosing Civility.
Rutgers University conducted workshops to foster more caring communities; the aim was to reduce “acting out” and to emphasize the ethics of caring for everyone at Rutgers.
There is a broader trend of channeling political controversy into affect and care, shifting discourse toward emotional and relational management rather than content-based critique.
Education administration and related fields have framed civility as a deficit to be addressed through programming for faculty, staff, and students; programs emphasize dialogue, tolerance, mutual respect, and courtesy.
NICD membership and university civility codes form a network of institutional responses to campus controversy; examples include Hamilton College, Pepperdine, UVA, Fresno State, Kansas State, UC-Chicago, Tufts, UNH, ASU, WSU, Duke, and the University of Akron among others.
The civility discourse often substitutes affective care for political confrontation, effectively policing dissent while presenting itself as a neutral facilitator of dialogue.
Civility codes normalize the governance of campus speech and can marginalize critical voices, particularly from marginalized groups.

Civility, Free Speech, and Academic Freedom: Debates and Defenses

Some scholars (Spencer, Tyahur, Jackson, 2016) defend civility as a condition for academic freedom, emphasizing awareness, acknowledgement, and respect for human dignity, and linking civility to political friendship and worldmaking for democracy’s survival.
Cloud and Lozano-Reich have argued that invitational rhetoric (a form of civility) misses analyses of systemic obstacles to individual agency under oppression and inequality.
Civil disobedience traditions (MLK, 1963) are cited by defenders of civility as mechanisms for social justice, yet civil disobedience has historically been viewed as antagonistic by those in power and linked to state violence against protesters, revealing the limits of civility.
Today, civility rhetoric can discredit antagonism toward far-right activity on campuses by claiming a balance of speech rights for all participants, regardless of power dynamics or content.
In campus protests against White supremacist presence, calls for civility can mask unequal power relations and legitimize suppression of radical critique.

Theoretical Context and Critical History

The critique of civility in rhetorical studies traces back to debates over the rhetoric of confrontation (Scott & Smith, 1969) and the defense of the rhetoric of the streets (Haiman, 1967).
More recent critiques include Duerst-Ringler (2016) on the cynical use of civility in right-wing responses.
Salaita (2015) argues civility can enable elites to discriminate against movements (e.g., Palestinian liberation) by prioritizing decorum over justice.
The author’s contribution centers on civility as a rhetorical practice characterized by arguments for moral equivalence and the relegation of political will to affect, thereby sustaining elite power.

Affective Politics, Power, and Differential Oppression

Civility rhetoric relies on affect to discipline dissent and render oppression as ideas or feelings rather than lived experiences for marginalized groups.
It functions to disavow differential power and to deny the reality of White supremacist threat on campuses.
The rhetoric of civility often serves as a mechanism to discipline those who challenge unequal power structures and to suppress attention to systemic inequality.