Incivility and Music in Higher Education

Drawing on methods derived from practice-led research in the creative arts and those of a more formal scholarly approach, the chapter assesses the impact of incivility, which often leads to bullying and other forms of physical, sexual, and psychological violence, on music academics in higher education. The chapter explores the gendered and raced nature of incivility, and the star system, which is both heightened in music and heightens the potential for incivility and violence. The gendered nature of incivility, bullying, and other forms of violence is linked to the figure of the ‘superstar musician’, a trope that pervades the academic space as much as it performs itself in real life. The chapter is illustrated with fictitious stories and other material in the public domain. The chapter adapts Alvin Lucier’s ‘I am sitting in a room’ (‘We are sitting in a room’) as a refrain that both structures the writing and is used to mimic the repetitive behaviour of the bully. The central argument is that the binary nature of incivility and other forms of violence hinders our ability to understand at an organisational level, the dynamics that give rise to violence. Focusing on the individual obscures the role played by the university systems, including those that govern codes of conduct and anti-discrimination policies, and those that encourage destructive competition. The private nature of the processes used for handling complaints are opaque, lacking transparency. Emphasising the processes used for formal complaints makes the university reactive rather than proactive. More attention needs to be paid to the systems that obscure the violence and less to the processes used to address the violence. The chapter considers what needs to shift to prevent incivility and violence in music in higher education and what some of the preventative measures might look like in the university and music settings. The chapter is motivated by a firm belief that the university is obliged to keep its workforce safe.