The Kind Academic

A guest post by Dr Michael Cahalane

From Gabi: I’m delighted to welcome Michael Cahalane from the UNSW School of Information Systems and Technology Management as our guest contributor. Michael thoughtfully weaves kindness into his teaching, research, and leadership, embodying what it means to be a Kind Academic. In this post, he explores the roots of “nice” and “kind,” and what their differences reveal about teaching and learning in universities.

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What does it really mean to be kind in the academic world? Is it the same as being nice, or does kindness ask something deeper of us as educators, colleagues, and members of a scholarly community?

In contemporary academic life, kindness and niceness are often used interchangeably, yet their histories reveal very different moral and social sensibilities. To cultivate a genuine pedagogy of kindness, it is worth tracing these words to their linguistic roots and reflecting on how their meanings have evolved over time.

The Origins of “Nice”

The word nice originates from the Latin nescius, meaning “ignorant” or “not knowing.” It entered English through Old French, where it described someone who was “foolish” or “simple.” In Middle English, it carried similar negative senses, referring to a person who was “ignorant” or “senseless.”

Across the centuries, nice underwent a complex series of shifts. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it came to mean “refined” or “delicate,” and later “precise” or “fastidious.” By the eighteenth century, its dominant meaning had softened into “pleasant” or “agreeable.”

Niceness often concerns manner rather than moral intention.

Today, nice conveys politeness and affability, yet it also carries a sense of ambiguity. Being nice can involve avoiding disagreement or seeking comfort over honesty. In this sense, niceness often reflects social appearance more than ethical substance.

The Origins of “Kind”

The word kind has a very different lineage. It comes from Old English cynde or gecynde, meaning “natural” or “of one’s kind,” related to cynn, meaning “family” or “kin.” In its earliest uses, kind referred to belonging and shared nature, a quality that linked members of the same kin group. Over time, this sense of natural affinity developed into a moral idea: benevolence, compassion, and goodwill toward others.

Kindness rests on an awareness of shared humanity.

Kindness expresses connection rather than compliance and seeks to uphold dignity rather than comfort. To act kindly is to respond with integrity, to care for the wellbeing of others, and to maintain respect even when decisions are difficult or inconvenient.

Kindness in the University

Within the university context, this distinction has practical significance. A pedagogy of kindness does not involve lowering standards or offering empty encouragement. Niceness may sometimes obscure avoidance, such as hesitation to provide challenging feedback or reluctance to hold firm expectations.

Kindness, by contrast, requires attentiveness, fairness, and intellectual honesty. It asks educators to balance compassion with rigour, to design learning experiences that promote both confidence and critical thought, and to foster academic spaces where students feel valued even when their ideas are being tested.

Kindness is an ethical orientation that supports both excellence and wellbeing.

This approach recognises that educators and students are part of a shared academic community, united by mutual respect and a commitment to learning. In this sense, kindness becomes a professional ethic that sustains both the intellectual and emotional life of the university.

Conclusion

The linguistic histories of kindness and niceness remind us that the words we use carry traces of our values. While nice has travelled from ignorance to pleasantness, kind has preserved a lineage rooted in kinship and moral regard.

A pedagogy of kindness builds upon this deeper inheritance. It seeks to humanise education, cultivating environments of trust, responsibility, and care. Through this lens, kindness becomes a way of sustaining the university as both a place of learning and a community of shared purpose.

As academics, we might each ask ourselves: In our daily practices of teaching, supervision, and collaboration, are we striving to be nice, or are we striving to be kind?