Decolonizing academic communication: How systemic pedagogies of public discourse can dismantle knowledge hierarchies and democratize expertise in higher education
Original framing: “From jargon to impact: Teaching undergraduates the art of public communication” — Phys.org
The current emphasis on public communication in universities traces back to the Enlightenment’s project of rationalizing knowledge and separating it from 'superstition' or 'tradition,' a move that systematically erased Indigenous and oral epistemologies. Historical precedents like the 19th-century missionary schools in Africa or the forced assimilation policies in the U.S. and Canada reveal how public communication was weaponized to impose dominant narratives. Even earlier, the Roman *ars rhetorica* was used to consolidate power, demonstrating how communication training has always been tied to political control. The article ignores these historical patterns, treating public communication as a benign skill rather than a tool with a long legacy of exclusion and domination.
The article’s framing of public communication as an 'art' to be taught in universities obscures its role as a structural mechanism for maintaining knowledge hierarchies and power imbalances.
By treating communication as a neutral skill, it ignores centuries of historical patterns where public discourse has been weaponized to justify oppression, from colonial assimilation policies to modern corporate propaganda. Indigenous and marginalized voices, such as those from Freire’s critical pedagogy or the Zapatista movement, offer alternative frameworks where communication is tied to collective liberation rather than individual 'impact.' The trickster perspective further reveals how the solemnity of mainstream communication training masks its complicity in reinforcing elite dominance, while cross-cultural examples like *jeong* or *wa* demonstrate that public discourse is deeply contextualized and ethical. Future modelling must prioritize scenarios where communication is used to dismantle power structures, not just replicate them, and universities must confront their historical role in extracting and erasing knowledge to truly democratize expertise.