Bullying isn’t restricted to youngsters. A study shows that it is a trend that can make life miserable for academics too.
Bullying can happen anywhere, to anyone, and a Rutgers-Camden nursing scholar has shed light on how it is becoming increasingly common in academia.
“What worries me is the impact that bullying is having on the ability to recruit and retain quality educators,” says Janice Beitz, a professor at the Rutgers School of Nursing-Camden. “It has become a disturbing trend.”
Beitz is the co-author of “Social Bullying in Nursing Academia”, an article published in the September/October 2013 edition of Nurse Educator that draws upon interviews of 16 nursing professors who were the victims of social bullying in an academic nursing workplace.
“We don’t know how widespread this is, but it exists,” says Beitz, who said she too was bullied in her career.
“Not many people look at bullying in the academic environment. We wanted to raise awareness of it.”
In the study, Beitz notes that among the most common cases of bullying, academic administrators are targeting faculty, but in some cases, faculty are bullying other faculty members or their administrative superiors, reports Science Daily.
“The bully can make life miserable for the target,” she explained.
“That’s because in an administrative role, a bully has the power to make decisions about the target. Part of it is the unique nature of higher education.”
“The tenure process is different than any other environment. Administrators in academia have power over colleagues, and sometimes that power causes them to bully their subordinates,” she said.
From: http://www.canindia.com/2013/12/bullying-makes-life-miserable-for-academics-study/
4 comments:
What about professors who bully students? This happens ALL the time, and nobody will do anything about it.
One of the objectives of bullying is petty politics. While I was teaching, one of my colleagues became assistant department head soon after I started my job. He had taken a disliking to me from the very beginning and, once he was on a position of authority, used it to torment me.
At the same time, while he was there, most of the people that were hired in our department just happened to be his buddies. It came as no surprise to me that after I quit, my position was filled by one of them. That continued until he retired.
To this day, I have no idea why he hated me.
In my department, after my department head was bullied out of his job, the new department head, previously a part-time lecturer, set her sites on ridding the department of all six Jewish staff, including me. One by one, all were eliminated.
I have been bullied in the most unprofessional way possible by a senior manager and, nothing was done about it until I decided enough was enough and put in a formal grievance in with full documentation and evidence against the senior manager who had been bullying me. The whole process was dragged out and false allegations were made against me! It turns out that I ('The Victim').... am now seen and treated as the perpetrator!!!
There is so much 'gate-keeping' and lies around bullying, harassment and discrimination, that the truth cannot come up for air...
The individuals 'in power' within the organisation(s) do not want to actually admit that this bad behaviour is consistently going on within their organisation and, no one person wants to be the one to 'press the button' to start the fair process going!!
It has got to the point where one has to think that they ('The Powers That Be') actually endorse this kind of behaviour themselves!!
Post a Comment