Cortina, Cortina, and Cortina (2019) bring attention to a very important issue, civility, that is essential to cultivate a culture of dignity in the academic field. The focal article emphasizes the importance of viewing this issue from an industrial and organizational (I-O) perspective to address disruptions on a daily level. On the other hand, the authors highlight the flipside of civility. Civility can be used as a weapon to silence the weak. Further, it can be used to undermine unpopular opinions, which, in turn, may promote a lack of creativity and individual thought among colleagues for fear of being ostracized or ridiculed. We expand on the downside of civility with a more nuanced perspective. Incivility is a complicated phenomenon wherein the intent of the actor cannot be observed. Perception of the target, hence, plays a major role in determining the occurrence of incivility. What if the perception of the target is influenced by implicit biases? What if the actor is perceived as uncivil merely because his or her behavior is inconsistent with the expected role? This commentary discusses how gender role expectations affect female professors in the academic field. Specifically, we discuss how the expected roles of female professors can influence student perceptions of civility exhibited by the professors. Further, we discuss the consequences of these perceptions and provide research and practical implications for I-O psychologists to abate the negative effects. We strongly agree with Cortina et al. (2019) that I-O psychologists should implement necessary steps to control the disruptions and protect the right to freedom of speech. Similarly, free speech of faculty should not be compromised due to stereotypical gender roles. The outcomes associated with civility are largely based on the perceptions of others, so it is essential to understand how one person's behavior may be perceived as civil, whereas that same behavior by another individual may be perceived in a different manner. We argue that women have to go above and beyond significantly more than men in order to receive the same rewards for their civil behaviors. We end this commentary by discussing the potential consequences of these perceptual differences and suggesting practical implications for those in higher education to consider for the betterment of university settings. Gender role expectations Although organizations are moving more and more toward gender equality every day, men and women still face different expectations in the workplace. In line with social role theory (Eagly & Wood, 1991), people are more likely to act in accordance with gender stereotypes (i.e., women are more likely to be communal and men are more likely to be agentic) in order to increase their likelihood of social rewards. Expanding on social role theory, role congruity theory suggests that

Kath et al. (2021) encouraged instructors to practice self-awareness and work on understanding how their expectations and behaviors may affect their ability to foster an inclusive classroom. Furthermore, they recommended that instructors be cognizant of the variety of diversity in terms of surface-level and deeper-level characteristics of students. The authors briefly discuss the promotion of empathy through perspective taking among students. We believe that this strategy can also help instructors foster an inclusive learning environment. Although Kath et al. (2021) recommended excellent guidelines that instructors could practice, we highlight an important concern that instructors should recognize when fostering an inclusive environment. Specifically, excessive empathy and a failure to recognize its limits may lead to impaired decision making and performance (Gino et al., 2013; Waytz et al. , 2013). In this commentary, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of empathy in the classroom and provide recommendations for finding the right level of leniency and accommodations for instructors. We do so by outlining important, relevant empirical and theoretical research and offering best practices that can help instructors develop empathy for an inclusive learning environment while simultaneously maintaining academic rigor. We would like to note here that we are not rooting against practicing empathy. However, instructors should be cautious in its use to avoid compromising the quality of education or academic standards, especially when the possibility of unfair treatment is present.

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Kraiger et al. (2022) present an interesting overview of the current state of industrialorganizational (I-O) psychology graduate programs, specifically highlighting various quality metrics for comparing traditional classroom programs with online programs. An important note on this discussion is that the COVID-19 pandemic forced many traditional programs to become online, for better or for worse. Kraiger et al. report that most learning outcomes are comparable across program modality, with online programs or hybrid programs having a slight advantage on several outcome measures (e.g., declarative knowledge), so we question here how online programs could benefit particular groups of students who may feel a traditional face-to-face program is not for them. Kraiger et al. present various benefits of online programs (e.g., flexibility, lower cost) that may help disadvantaged groups (e.g., single parents). The goal of this paper is to add to this plentiful discussion with another extremely important factor: Can online graduate programs help reduce implicit bias and/or increase equity for disadvantaged groups compared with the traditional face-to-face programs? Thus, we first review empirical research highlighting the discrimination experienced by the disadvantaged groups in graduate programs. Next, we discuss the benefits of online graduate programs that can potentially help address some of the drawbacks that disadvantaged groups have experienced in a traditional academic institution. We then outline a few potential negatives of online graduate programs to caution the key stakeholders of academia. Finally, we provide recommendations for key stakeholders on how to leverage the benefits and reduce drawbacks to provide a meaningful online graduate program experience to these students.

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