When a University manager says "We are listening."

The phrase "We are listening" is a cliche in the neoliberal University.

It is a cliche because of its usage as a Public Relations (PR) terminology in the hands of University managers. A carefully crafted press release, looked over by a team of over ten managers at different levels of the University bureaucracy, will turn to listening as a rhetorical trope. In its recurrence, listening becomes an empty signifier, distanced from its powerful and transformative role as a communicative act.

As I have argued elsewhere, the neoliberal University is the PR University. PR being used in its performative role as spin. The understanding of PR by management therefore is reduced to its role in crafting press releases, developing a crisis response team, setting up crisis response events, and developing digital interventions to address the rapidly changing digital opinion environment.

In a digital climate where the experience of a student or the grievances of a staff member can quickly pick up steam and generate public attention, the PR University is always attuned to a performance of listening. Typically this performance of listening takes the form of a digital surveillance team or a content monitoring team to keep tab on Facebook posts, twitter handles, and Instagram accounts. Listening, devoid of its communicative roots, is turned into a data gathering function of the PR team.

During crises, the performance of listening works as a tactical tool, one intended to allay public outcry against the organization and its practices. Crises typically emerge as specific events that depict the problematic organizational practices. Under such circumstances, the PR University positions itself as a listening University.

The challenge with such a superficial approach to listening is that it gives away its lack of authenticity.

Devoid of a grounded commitment to opening up the structures of the University so they are rendered visible, listening fails to consider its transformative potential. Without the recognition that crises often emerge because of the absence of infrastructures of listening, rhetorical claims to listening are vacuous.

The transformative potential of listening is in changing the bureaucratic processes and undemocratic formations of the organization that underlie the perpetuation of problematic organizational practices.

Holding Universities accountable so the problematic behaviors don't perpetuate themselves calls for critically examining the claims to listening that Universities make.

To begin the process of listening, students, staff, and faculty must demand University management do the following:

A) Make transparent information resources, decision-making processes, and existing decision-making frameworks addressing the problem. This calls for democratic sharing of information about decision-making processes, past records with these decision-making processes, and the identified gaps in the decision-making processes. The formation of a crisis around a specific issue will also call for data sharing around other elements of the problem connected to the same issue. An incidence of sexual violence in a specific domain (say student discipline) points to the broader culture of sexual violence, which therefore calls for data sharing in areas such as (a) staff experiences with sexual violence; (b) faculty experiences with sexual violence; and (c) student experiences with sexual violence where the source of violence is a faculty member.

B) Make transparent frameworks for stakeholder participation and developing insights into the decision-making process. Create frameworks for collaborative research where students, staff, and faculty participate in identifying gaps, in brainstorming over research questions, in developing research design, as well as in identifying frameworks for data analysis. Attention must be paid to the frameworks for participation of those at the margins of the University who experience the problem identified. Make sure the data are analyzed collaboratively, arriving at solutions that would dismantle and transform the existing structure. With problems such as racism and sexual harassment that are deep-rooted, the process of culture change must address both short term and long term strategies. The change strategies must be clear and specific. For instance, in the case of sexual harassment, for various levels of decision-makers in the management hierarchy, clear disciplinary consequences must be developed for not addressing sexual harassment according to the specified guidelines. Say a Head of Department or a Dean asked the harassed student to be silent to give the perpetrator a chance, he/she must be asked to resign on the basis of specified process and upon investigation.

C) Develop clear change outcomes that are explicit, measurable, and indicative of change.  For instance, to state that the number of incidences of sexual harassment on campus would be reduced to half is the type of outcome that won't work in a University where operational definitions have been unclear, there is a prevailing culture of under-reporting, and the "old boys network" prevails. In such circumstances for instance, the change outcome must be first and foremost about having adequate and mandatory reporting that is rapidly available to students, staff, and faculty. Also, ensuring democratically elected and rotating presence on disciplinary bodies is key. The process and framework for elections must be overseen by a democratically elected body such as a student senate or an elected faculty senate.

Ultimately, a listening University is one that begins with a fundamental commitment to being transparent and being held accountable. Student, staff, and faculty evaluations of campus climate for instance can be gathered by student-led research, to be stored and made available publicly.

These are some of the entry points to what listening means as a site for transforming an organization. Recognize listening doesn't take place in authoritarian structures. For organizations to listen to our voices, we must organize, collectivize, and democratize organizational spaces.

Unfortunately, much of the tactical work of the PR University works ironically to silence and co-opt voices. Collective student, staff, and faculty voice are key anchors to this process of change. Such nonsensical attempts at performing listening must be first taken down so our Universities can be governed as democracies.