Academics are, on the whole, excellent communicators. We hone our communication skills over thousands of hours; crafting research papers, articulating our ideas at conferences, mentoring our students, and engaging in the performance art of lecturing. So one might ask “when it comes to some of the really big academic decisions we make as an institution, why is it that we are not good at getting an effective message out there and engaging in a much broader open discussion of principle and practice?”
At least part of this is a function of available time. With so many pressing issues at hand, not to mention the ever-present round of meetings, it can be hard to prioritise the time necessary to engage fully in this communication process. But that isn’t the whole story.
