Short stories

I had no idea this happened to others. At my previous job, as an academic radiologist in what purports itself to be the best academic radiology department in NYC, I was first set upon by my section chief, who would behind my back accuse me of not finishing my work, or leaving early–transgression she herself was guilty of, according to the many support staff who finally could not keep this fact from me. I put in a vacation request, six months ahead of time for a week no one else had asked for, and when the week actually came and I was away, an email was sent to my co-workers about how I must have scribbled my name in last over the others who took the week off, apologizing that everyone would now suffer because of my irresponsibility. When I emailed the Vice Chairman of Clinical Affairs to intervene, he completely ignored it.

I was asked to give a lecture at a major conference, the first lecture I’d given, and received virtually no guidance in the process. After I’d given it, my boss never shared the reviews with me. After another section chief told he he’s seen mine, I discovered in fact, i’d gotten better reviews than my boss did. However, when the conference came up the following year, she gave my lecture to someone else, saying that my reviews were terrible, and that someone else asked I not give it.

But it didn’t even stop with my section chief, because despite winning a teaching award from my students, I was given no students to mentor. Ostensibly because I was “part time,” working 4 days a week, and not doing research because I was working on outside creative projects– although I did as much or more clinical work than every person in my section. This was evidently not a role model the chairman felt should be promoted.

I finally decided to quit when my boss was promoted to be Vice Chairman of Education, in charge of the mentoring program! I endured a three month notice before my last day of work, during which I did everything I could to walk out the door without burning any bridges, but during the last week the department refused to digitize the rest of my teaching files, which I was planning to leave behind for my students. At which point I withdrew myself from a propaganda article that was being disseminated to the community about the importance of teaching to the department. From this point on, my chairman refused to make eye contact with me.

Worse yet, my boyfriend, who still worked there, was given carefully worded hints not to be seen with me at any social function, and this contributed to our breakup.

It was the most malignant job I ever had, and three weeks after I left, I looked in my bathroom mirror and saw a face that looked two years younger than the one I had on my last day of work. I am now more academically productive at a small community hospital, than I ever could be at said stalwart of academia.

Thank you.

Posted by Jennifer Martino, MD
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Yes, I was bullied at a major academic institution by my department chair and dean. I was only one in a long line of people who were abused by the chair. The dean condoned it by looking the other way and actually supporting him. Despite a substantial grievance decision against the chair, I was out and he was promoted.

Posted by catch22
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I’m an academic at a university in Georgia, and I’ve been bullied by several colleagues in my department for 12 years. I’ve been treated with disdain, given an unexpectedly bad review when I was pregnant (and told “not to use the pregnancy as an excuse.”)My achievements have been ignored, and new rules were created on the spot to rationalize not giving me promotion. At one time, rumors were spread that I was an alcoholic (I almost never drink!), and that I had been deriding colleagues by name in class. I raised the issue with the University’s affirmative action office(nothing happened, not least because the officer saw her job as one of containing complaints), and four successive deans (all of whom refused to act, and accused me of a “lack of collegiality.”) My productivity was ruined, making it impossible for me to find another job in my field.

I now have major health problems,including cancer. I hate to lose a battle with bullies, which is why I have stuck this out for such an insanely long period, but I’m not sure I can deal with this situation anymore. Meanwhile, I have several supportive and decent colleagues who have helped persuade me that it is not my fault that this has happened (for many years, I did blame myself). And my students’ respect for me has kept me going. Much of the problem is systemic, not only in academe but in this particular region: Georgia has traditionally had an authoritarian culture that values pecking orders, and a “merit” pay system has bred distrust and resentment among faculty. I urge lawmakers to treat workplace bullying as the insidious and enormous problem that it is.

Posted by Anon in GA
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As an assistant professor at a nondescript liberal arts college, I was relentlessly bullied by one of my higher ranked colleagues. She harassed me with phone calls to my home about my failings, egged students on to challenge my grading system, ranted at me in the corridors about trivial matters, and unleashed her temperamental disapproval of me in front of my pupils. I complained to an administrator, who told me to forget it. It turned out that the colleague and the supervisor were having an affair. Needless to say, I resigned as soon as I could.

Posted by Dulce
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As a survivor of workplace harrassment, I can testify that it can be a devestating personal and professional nighmare. I carry the emotional scars of the experience to this day, and am still healing even though it’s been three years since I left the position. When looking back, I marvel that I didn’t have even more serious health problems as a result of the abuse. The experience took place at a major university, and, because I enlisted the help of the union and filed a claim with the EEOC, the university offered me a settlement which I agreed to, only because of my tattered soul after having stood up for myself over the course of two years.

I learned a lot. Sadly, it was to confirm the saying, “Bad things happen when good people do nothing.” Many staff, academic collaborators and community partners recognized my bosses horrible behavior, and of all who saw what she did, only one stood by me to say she would go the course to defend my case. My union representative kept telling me how much he admired my strenght because one other woman he worked with had attempted suicide because of the stress. I also learned that I needed to learn better how to duck.

Posted by Jan Look
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I have been on the receiving end of about half of the behaviors listed... from my students at a large state university. Eye-rolling and hateful glaring is just the beginning. Foul language in class, name-calling and the spreading of gossip on the web, sabotaging of equipment in the lecture room, the refusal of students not in my class to leave the room when my class begins, and finally, vague but disturbing threats of violence (”I know where you live”) — all of these have happened to me in the last few months. This does not stop when the term is over, either: students and their parents threaten lawsuits over poor grades and bombard me with hateful e-mail and phone messages. My chair has let me know that the evaluations that really count, those from my colleagues, are great, and that all of this complaining and misbehavior from students should be ignored as so much noise: but it’s very hard to do and requires a much thicker skin than mine.

I had thought that a career in higher education would avoid the behavior problems that plague public school classrooms — but it turns out not to be so. I dread going to class so much that it has made me ill. There’s no logic to the harassment: can students really think that they can get a better grade, or somehow get “revenge” for a poor grade, by making my job difficult? All I can conclude is that deliberately hurtful and insulting behavior has become a cultural norm, a kind of knee-jerk reaction to even the smallest disappointment or fear of insufficiency.

Posted by stressed professor
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I have worked in a large, famous public university. I recently left a position where my supervisor yelled, did not listen, excluded, assigned projects but took them over without telling me, and whose manner was rude and abusive. Her supervisor, the higher administration, and ombudsman refused to take action. I found another position on campus. The monster continues her rampage, unchecked. Pathetic.

Posted by diane
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As the manager of a university-based program, I had 2 employees (both women) who were bullies. The one was an overt bully and a destructive gossip. Many other employees complained about her; this resulted is several closed-door “coaching” sessions between us. She was a master of manipulation. Usually, the talks resulted in her sobbing and claiming to be misunderstood. The power of her bullying really came to light one day when she lashed out at me (her boss) and started screaming and swearing. I calmly said, “You are addressing me in an inappropriate manner, and you owe me an apology.” Again, she started crying and begged forgiveness. Unfortunately, within the politically correct university system, I could not fire her for being repeatedly out of control. I could only add comments to her performance appraisal– which led to gossip about me being an unfair boss.

The other bully was very covert until the lid was blown off the office-wide spy ring that she controlled. I was totally fooled and thought she was a hard-working employee– until one day when one of her employees came to me to complain. He claimed that she targeted particular employees for elimination and had 2 male employees who went through trash cans and read other employees’ e-mails to gather the dirt. When it was adventageous for her, she let tid-bits of dirt slip out in gossip. (Of course bully #1 above gleefully spread the gossip around.) Sometimes one of them would bring the misinformation directly to me. “Welllll, I thought you should know….”

Eventually 7 of her employees came to me and confidentially told me about threats and other misdeeds. Part of her downfall was that she openly spoke of her plots in Spanish to one of her cronies; she didn’t realize that the initial informant (an anglo) knew Spanish.

I took all of this information to Human Resources and followed all of their advice. I gathered 500 pages of evidence against her– personal letters from the wronged employees, progressive dicipline documents, and even her job applications on which she lied about her experience. She played the system to the hilt– claiming racial and ethnic discrimination on my part. In the end, nothing came of it.

The university said I had gathered “too much information,” and they didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer to go through it all and build a case her. Since she was a classified staff employee (very protected in the university system) she moved to another university department — where they didn’t know her past. I was adjunct faculty (very vulnerable in the university system). Consequently, I became the scapegoat and was laid off. The morale of the story: bullies can pick on underlings and bosses!! Getting laid off was the best thing that could have happened to me. It was incredibly stressful dealing with these evil people.

Posted by Pamela
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I work at a college in New England, where I had a bully for a boss. She routinely humiliated her staff in meetings, ignored ideas and suggestions, and discounted her staff members’ expertise. She would not tolerate disagreement, and, with her angry responses to anything she perceived as dissent, created an atmosphere in which no one dared question any of her orders.

I finally realized that she was simply ruling through fear — her own fear, that is. She was so terrified of her superiors that she could not trust any of her staff, for fear they might do something — anything — wrong. Furthermore, she was so afraid of getting in trouble that she based her decisions on fear rather that on what was actually good for the college. What good does that do anyone?

Fear begets fear. The fearful do not make sound or proactive decisions.

Posted by Just Staff
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Bullying is regularly used in academia to attempt to remove tenured professors. The targeted professor is usually labeled as “dead wood”, given higher teaching loads, refused needed resources, denied significant assignments, refused praise for good work and denied salary increases. Gossip is spread to reinforce the “dead wood” label, turning colleagues against the targeted professor.

If the targeted professor stays in the job, his low status, low salary and the fact that he has to constantly endure the poor opinions that his peers are encouraged to hold about him inevitably lead to depression.

If he chooses to leave, he will have difficulty finding another job without good references from the very people who are bullying him - in other words, he will be unable to find a good position. If he has to support a family and pay a mortgage, he cannot leave and so is trapped in a position that leads to stress and depression and the resulting physical problems these factors cause. If he doesn’t quit because of the bullying, he’ll probably be forced to quit for health reasons.
It is time for academia to put a stop to this common practice.

Posted by NN
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From: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/have-you-been-bullied-at-work/

The university has robust quality assurance procedures in place...

An academic has won the right to sue her university for constructive dismissal - even though she signed a "compromise agreement" and agreed a £30,000 severance payment. Angela Ward had worked as a reader in law at the University of Essex for six years when her manager raised concerns about complaints from students.

In response, Dr Ward wrote a "without prejudice" letter to her employer in which she raised a number of complaints against the university but offered an "amicable withdrawal" in return for a negotiated package. A payment of £30,000 was agreed, and she signed a compromise agreement.

After signing the agreement, Dr Ward wrote another letter of complaint to the university. Matters raised included "infirmities in the examination process" in the law department. She claimed that colleagues had revealed the content of exam papers, putting her in an impossible position, that complaints against her were groundless and that university procedures had not been followed.

Dr Ward later decided to sue the university for constructive and unfair dismissal, telling an employment tribunal that the compromise agreement was invalid because she had signed it under pressure.

The university argued that Dr Ward had not followed procedures by raising a formal grievance and that her claim was therefore out of time, as she had left the university more than three months earlier. It also argued that if she had raised a grievance, it was invalidated by the compromise agreement.

The first tribunal agreed with Essex. But the Employment Appeal Tribunal found that the "without prejudice" letter was a valid grievance as it detailed the substance of her complaints in writing. The fact that it contained an offer to settle did not affect this. If a grievance is started, a claimant is given an extra three months to file his or her claim.

Dr Ward's solicitor, James Tait of Shakespeare Putsman, said: "A properly drafted compromise agreement will preclude a tribunal claim. Essex did not draft the agreement properly, and neither did it deal with the grievance. It left itself wide open." If a grievance is raised by an employee and not dealt with by the employer, the compensation awarded in a successful claim may be increased by up to 50 per cent.

A spokesperson for Essex said: "The university has robust quality assurance procedures in place. However it is not our policy to comment on ongoing cases, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal has now referred this case back to the Employment Tribunal."

From: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk, by Melanie Newman

Bullying can't be seen as 'entertainment'

In a low quivering voice, Mary (name have been changed) a highly qualified teacher, sobbed as she told us the story of her distressing experience.

"I loved teaching but now I am totally shattered, and I have lost all belief in myself. I am not able to face a class of students. The awful bullying by my colleagues in the staff room got to me eventually. I couldn't take it anymore. I resigned and took a less-paid non-teaching job. But I am struggling to cope with the deep hurt and psychological pain I suffered."

John, (name has been changed) a State employee who is a victim of bullying, told us his sad story. "My job is on a rota basis but my bullying boss repeatedly changes my rota without informing me. Frequently, when I report to work, the bully's buddies inform me that my rota has been changed and that my boss wants to see me. When I report to the boss in his office he denies that he has sent for me. As I leave the office I am pained to see the sneers on the faces of the bully's buddies. I am often left with no work to do. I feel that life is not worth living. I would be better off dead".

John is not alone in experiencing suicidal tendencies resulting from workplace bullying. Research has shown that 14-20 per cent of all suicides are associated with bullying. Mary and John are among a very large number of people who experience workplace bullying. The Samaritans' recent survey has revealed that one in four workers is bullied.

Anti-bullying organisations have indicated that they are receiving a substantial increase in the number of calls for assistance from victims of workplace bullying. Clinical psychologist Marie Murray states: "Workplace bullying has been found to increase during times of social change and economic uncertainty and when people value commercial achievements over community factors. Increase in stress, in commuting time, in family pressure, in child-minding concerns and in mortgage repayments mean that a significant number of people arrive to work each day highly stressed and this gets articulated in bullying behaviour towards clients or work mates."

Those who are both younger or older or those from minority groups are more likely to be targets for bullying. The less experienced, less established employees are more likely to be intimidated by older more powerful people in an organisation or by unreasonable organisational demands. Equally those who are at the older age scale are often fearful of change, afraid of losing pension rights and because they are unlikely to obtain new employment elsewhere they are in a position of greater dependency than those in their middle years. All the these factors make it easier for bullies to operate unchallenged in the workplace.

Workplace bullying is the repeated acts of aggression that undermine the dignity of individuals at work. These acts can be direct or indirect, whether verbal, psychological, physical or otherwise. Cyber bullying by text messages or email is becoming more frequent. Bullying can cause enormous distress, often resulting in emotional damage, a lack of self-esteem, depression, a decline in physical health and loss of job satisfaction. Many victims feel trapped, desperate and emotionally crippled as a result of the horrific experience of bullying. Heinz Layman, the internationally renowned researcher, says that workplace bullying is psychological terror. Jacinta Kitt, the well- known Irish researcher, believes it is psychological torture. Bullying, which causes horrific psychological pain to victims, must never be accepted as a form of entertainment. The offensive TV scenes of bullying on the part of some celebrity chefs tend to normalise and legitimise workplace bullying.

Edmund Burke's statement: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." is relevant to this problem. Victims of bullying and those who would like to help them can learn practical and effective strategies for confronting bullies at the National Conference on Bullying in the Workplace at the Regency Hotel Conference Centre, Swords Road, Dublin 9 on April 15 and April 22, from 7pm to 10pm.

Minister Billy Kelleher TD, Mr David Begg, Professor Patricia Casey, Governor John Longeran, Senior Counsel Anne Dunne and other professionals will address the conference. For details, phone (01) 838-8888 or (087) 918-0777 or email: info@awarenesseducation.org

Rev Dr Tony Byrne CSSp and Sr Kathleen Maguire PBVM MA founded the Awareness Education Office, which offers programmes on bullying in the workplace, home and school.

- Tony Byrne and Kathleen Maguire, from: http://www.independent.ie

Research themes

The management at Sussex are introducing interdisciplinary 'research themes' to give the university a distinctive identity and to enable researchers to make more effective bids for large interdisciplinary grants. Resources would be directed towards these themes.

One issue that has been raised in the internal debate on this is that there is a danger of gearing research themes to the current strategic priority areas of the Research Councils, at a time when these strategic priority areas are themselves increasingly dictated by the government. On the latter point see the following from Education Guardian on 19 February:

"There has definitely been a switch from responsive funding for
projects that individual academics think up to funding for projects
that match the AHRC's strategic plans," says Tom Gretton, head of
the history of art department at UCL.

"It is clear that they want research whose findings can easily be
measured. We have moved from research that is critical to research
that is manageable, and in the process academics are being turned
into civil servants, because they will inevitably only submit
proposals for study into areas they know the government think are
worthwhile."

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,,2257830,00.html

Obviously the main problem here is the progressive abandonment by the Research Councils of the Haldane Principle that provides the rationale for their existence: the principle that research funding priorities should be set by the academic community rather than by politicians. This abandonment itself represents a serious erosion of the collective freedom of research of the academic community. However if universities then reinforce the Research Councils' priorities in their internal allocations of resources then arguably this erosion will be compounded.

Has anyone had experience of the 'thematisation' of research in response to govenment funding priorities at other universities? If so, please let me know, on or off list.

Andrew Chitty, University of Sussex

...The role of power, professions and ”on the job‘ training

...There also needs to be a clear system for reporting abuses of power or experience of victimisation. Where formal structures to enable this do not exist within an organisation, or if the bully is the boss, there needs to be an independent body with power to investigate and take action. Finally, the targeted person has the fundamental right to report instances, of being heard, to be believed and not to face reprisals as a result of speaking out.

At an individual level, it is clear from the above analysis that in most circumstances where hierarchical workplace bullying occurs, that individual counseling and mediation sessions will not adequately address the issue. We need to recognise some people who bully do so in full knowledge of the power they exercise and the knowledge their actions enjoy immunity from scrutiny or reprisal because of their location within the system and because they understand and manipulate the system to their advantage.

There is a need for affirmative action that privileges the account of those who have been disempowered and degraded by virtue of simply doing their job. In addition, the individual who has been targeted needs to be encouraged to delink serial episodes of workplace bullying, for to see them as cumulative inevitably leads to self-blame and recrimination...

From: Mental health and workplace bullying: The role of power, professions and ”on the job‘ training, by Lyn Turney

Easter Greetings

Letter to Editor - Times Higher Education Supplement

The following is a letter to the Editor of THES in response to a request for suggestions/ comments:-

Dear Mr Kelly,

Thank you for your email. I look forward to being of assistance to Times Higher Education as a member of the Reader Panel.

At this time, I would, indeed, suggest that THES return to its prior practice of addressing one of the most pressing issues in Higher Education today, namely that of the epidemic of bullying and mobbing in our universities and further education institutions. In particular, I would draw attention to the practice of elimination rituals, whereby for various reasons, staff are eliminated from their positions through being pressurized in various ways in order to cause them to either resign on poor health grounds or to respond strongly, thereby creating circumstances by which they may then be subjected to dismissal on conduct grounds. Or else, various circumstances are created--i.e. "rules" that are targeted at selected staff members in order to place them in breach of policy, thereby justifying
dismissal.

This seems to happen disproportionately to disabled persons, to members of minority races and non-British born staff, who are vulnerable by virtue of their immigration status to being sent back to their native country without recourse to natural justice, as well as to to many individuals who are considered as whistleblowers and those who produce research that is either controversial or challenging to the power structures within their institutions, thereby breaching all semblance of protections for academic freedom. In the end, it is students who lose out when high-performing academics are destroyed by such practices.

I understand that one or more articles are/were in progress at THES on this subject, but that they were quashed by new management at THES on the basis that such articles would "offend" advertisers, namely British universities. I would hope that THES would have greater courage than to be beholden to their increasingly managerialist advertisers when it comes to reporting on important stories of wide public interest to people within the field and among the general public.

Sincerely...

Name withheld

Speak out!

No one speaks out because they fear that if they do, they will be the next target.

It takes great courage to speak out. But speak out, we must do!

And we must name names and point fingers, else speaking out will be like tossing a handful of sand into the desert.

Anonymous

We must work in solidarity

I work in academe but I was unaware of workplace bullying until my friend, an employee of the federal government, committed suicide in 2005. Since then I have been an advocate for Healthy Workplace legislation.

I formed a group http://groups.google.com/group/connecticut-bullybusters/. Many of the people in the group, or people who won't join for fear of someone finding out but who have contacted me, are state employees and work in state community colleges or universities. They are faculty, staff, and sometimes students.

We have an obligation to look directly at this problem, as colleagues, citizens and workers. Even if it hasn't happened to us, it certainly could. Reading the stories of bullied people, hearing them at meetings, is almost unbearable because lives are shattered. I came to this blog because of a post on the New York Times blog for an article on Workplace Bullying. We must work in solidarity.

Post by anonymous

Not only in America...

The story below repeats itself in many different versions and combinations in this country too (and perhaps many others). There are many (ex) academics who have suffered and continue to do so in a very similar manner to the story described below. Sadly, these things do no happen only in America...

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After a very successful career at a major U.S. private university, I accepted some time ago an offer from another major private university to become chair of a department that had been in trouble for years, with the mandate to bring its house in order and improve its stature both within and outside the university. With the help of a supportive dean, I was successful beyond anyone’s expectations, bringing the department to national attention and recruiting a sizable number of good graduate students in competition with the some of the best schools in my discipline.

There was a widespread perception that I was one of the best department chairs in the university —one administrator described what I had done for the department and the university as a “miracle.” It wasn’t easy, since faculty in my department were often at odds with one another, and one female faculty member was antagonistic to me from the outset, trying to undermine my role behind my back by spreading false stories among the faculty. She had limited success, since, apart from one important supporter, she alienated most of the other members of the department with insults and false accusations.

Some of those who have described their mobbing experiences have characterized themselves as “outspoken,” a trait which is supposed to be protected by academic freedom, but which can unfortunately lead to the active hostility of colleagues. I was just the opposite, supporting and encouraging all faculty and staff, including my antagonist and those who were less competent or productive among the faculty, in both their professional lives and their inevitable personal difficulties. My administrative credo was based on integrity, fairness, openness, and positive support for everyone.

At one point, however, I was forced to remove one of the less competent faculty from a minor administrative role she had abused for years, not only for poor administration and repeatedly upsetting other faculty and students, but because I couldn’t believe anything she said to me. At approximately the same time, I also had to let go a part-time adjunct who, in four years, had proved herself manifestly incompetent in a vital area of the department’s activities. The latter individual was a close friend of the former, and both of them had friends in the department.

In a matter of months, this group had organized its first mobbing effort against me, and joining forces with the original antagonist and her supporter, voted that my appointment as chair not be renewed. The dean was taken aback, interviewed most of the faculty individually, and declared himself “sickened,” by their conduct. Nevertheless, he believed I had lost too much support to continue as chair, insisted on my resignation, and admitted in the process that the same group of faculty, if they got their way in this matter, would probably cause further trouble in the future. I am reminded of a story circulated at my previous university about its president admonishing a faculty member about to take a dean’s position at another institution, “Never fire anybody. No matter how bad he or she may be, everyone has friends, and those friends will be after your blood.”

That president’s attitude had seemed to me an inappropriate way to run a university (there were some rather poor officers in his administration), but both his words and those of my own dean proved prophetic, for not only did I lose my chairmanship, but for the next couple of years I was subjected to a series of public slanders from the mob that had ousted me and their male supporter, to the point of where I complained in writing to one of them—my long-term antagonist. What happened afterward was a wholly unexpected shock.

A few months later I received a letter from what was by that time a new, interim dean (who was being vetted as the permanent dean), saying that a group of women in my department had accused me of sexual harassment and other offenses, a committee had been appointed to oversee an investigation, and an outside attorney had been hired to do the investigating and report to the committee and the dean. The process was very secretive, in violation of every aspect and safeguard of the university’s own policy (which had never been published and was kept hidden from me and my attorney) as well as in violation of every safeguard for handling such matters published and recommended by the U.S. Department of Education.

Nevertheless, the investigator made it clear through numerous comments to me and to several other witnesses, that she not only found no fault with me, but also found my accusers so outrageous that at one point she blurted out, “How can you work with such people?” She also declared that she planned to recommend that the university hire a psychiatrist to assist the department. Her judgment concurred in detail with the more general assessment of the university’s highest personnel officer (also a woman), who declared the ringleaders “crazy and hysterical.”

The report of the investigator was not what the dean wanted, since he couldn’t afford a group of women complaining that he was insensitive to their grievances while he was still under consideration as the permanent dean. He has therefore kept the report under wraps ever since and refused under any circumstances to release it. Meanwhile, from friendly departmental witnesses I learned that the mobbers had been meeting secretly for several months, intimidating and threatening students and staff, and acting in general like a typical lynch mob obsessed with groupthink. I also learned that the investigator had uncovered numerous instances of outright fabrication on the part of the mobbers, in addition to false statements, radical distortion, and pettiness in all their other allegations.

Nevertheless, the two faculty committees eventually involved in the investigation were easily misled by the dean and the university’s legal office, documents were withheld from them by university officials, they did not interview witnesses themselves, nor was I given adequate opportunity to respond to either committee. At the end of the investigation, the dean tried to get me to resign my tenure in return for a couple of years’ salary and the threat of dire consequences if I didn’t. I refused, since senior positions in my field are scarce as hen’s teeth and my discipline isn’t marketable outside the academy.

Without my ever seeing the written complaint the mobbers had submitted and without a hearing, the dean then banned me from my department, my salary and benefits were cut, and I was suspended from teaching for a period of time. I do not fault the faculty committees for ill-will, or even overweening arrogance, but for naiveté in being unprepared to believe that there wasn’t anything to the hundreds of accusations the mobbers had thrown at me (their meetings had generated some truly wild stories and hysteria), and for incompetence in running a complete and fair investigation. Sometimes where there is smoke there is no fire, but only purveyors of smoke.

In reaction to what had been done to me, I attempted, at great expense, to sue the university, but without success—my suit was dismissed on a technicality. Private universities can get away with vastly more misconduct than the courts allow public universities. However, I did obtain detailed information about the dishonesty that attended this matter from beginning to end, not only on the part of the complainants, but on the part of the dean and the university’s legal office. The information, to me, was worth the price of the lawsuit. The subsequent decade has been difficult, in part because of the detailed information about injustice that I uncovered and have been unable to use to any effect. Even though I have interviewed elsewhere as a finalist for several administrative positions, the necessary disclosure of my difficulties with my present university terminated each of those possibilities. Openings for senior professors in my field have been rare, and although I’ve been a finalist for both positions I’ve applied for, in each case I lost out to younger candidates. In recent years, in response to my formal complaint about the dean to the Board of Trustees, my annual salary increases have been reduced to a pittance in relation to everyone else’s. So much for academic freeedom.

My professional life at my university is now filled with ironies. My teaching has been restricted to an introductory course for non majors that others in my field don’t want to teach, nor am I allowed to do any interdisciplinary teaching or teaching in other departments, even though in the past I had taught highly successful interdisciplinary courses and courses in two departments other than my own.

Fortunately, the students who register for my present course are mostly quite good, and I receive some of the best student evaluations in the university despite the deadening effect of teaching the same thing year in and year out. But I have no opportunity to work with majors in my field, and I am deprived of being part of the life of the university, which I always enjoyed. On the other hand, since I am not included in or asked to do anything other than teach my course, I have far more time for my own research and publications than ever before.

Outside the university I have an international reputation for my scholarship, integrity and personality, and I am treated with great friendship and respect by colleagues elsewhere. I am frequently invited to international conferences and asked to speak and give workshops on endowed series at other institutions. I’ve served on doctoral committees at other universities and on review committees for departments in my field, including the Ivy league. I’m constantly asked by younger colleagues for fellowship recommendations, and by department chairs for tenure and promotion evaluations, including some from the most prestigious departments and universities in the country. I am regularly asked to do peer reviews for the most important journals in my field.

No one either inside or outside the university who knows me believes any of the allegations of the mobbers, and the effect of my being disciplined and rusticated has been to bring disapprobation from colleagues all across the country on my university, my former department and the colleagues who mobbed me. In the past decade the department has been mostly ruled by the mobbers and their supporters, and each in a series of chairs has ruined a specific aspect of the department. The once thriving graduate programs have either disappeared or are hanging on by a thread; no longer are there applicants from important undergraduate departments in our field. Recruiting of new faculty has also been problematic because of the widespread negative reputation of the department. These chairs have further fouled their own nest by retaliation against faculty and staff who supported me or who even insisted on remaining neutral. Firings of faculty and staff over the past decade have been legion, including non-tenured faculty who were outstanding in their subject areas. Even the university administration is fed up with a department that is the source of constant problems.

Nevertheless, the dean not only overlooks this kind of behavior, the university has refused to investigate numerous thoroughly documented grievances of serious retaliation, despite piously advertising each year that it does not permit retaliation of any sort. Many current faculty stay away from the department, only showing up for their classes and avoiding as much contact with its ruling clique as possible.

All this has happened in the decade in which I have been gone from the department and had no influence over it whatsoever, so I clearly was not the problem. Almost all faculty and all of the staff are afraid of the current chair, who was the leader of the mobbers (this appointment alone illustrates the irresponsibility and cynicism of the dean). The department is now in almost as bad shape as it was before I arrived. Recently the university has instituted a code of conduct, emphasizing professional integrity, which all faculty are required to sign, but whose standards none of the department chairs who followed me, nor the dean himself, who is widely criticized throughout the university for dishonesty, could ever meet. But of course, they will never be held to account.

How have I coped with all this over the past decade? It hasn’t been easy. On the one hand I have very few duties and still receive a full-time salary and benefits, even if somewhat reduced, and can continue to do so as long as I wish. This is comforting financial security. As an academic cousin of mine put it, “You’re in academic Heaven—you just had to go through academic Hell to get there.” When I talk to colleagues at other universities about my situation, they sometimes jokingly ask, “How can I get such a deal?” But I hardly view it as heavenly. In my innermost being I’m a teacher—at my previous university I won all the major teaching awards—and it’s very frustrating not to be able to expand my teaching into new and interesting areas or to be able to engage majors and graduate students in my field. It’s difficult not to be able to share in the life of the institution through committees and interactions with colleagues—something which I always found interesting and rewarding, even if sometimes overly time consuming. I had for decades been an active and forceful supporter of women’s role and rights in the academy, but I now find myself uncomfortably suspicious of women in a way I never was. I now wonder what someone to whom I’ve been pleasant, supportive, and helpful might be plotting behind my back.

Perhaps most difficult of all, however, has been the shattering of my belief in the societal role of universities as committed to truth and as bastions of justice and ethical conduct. I’ve seen plenty of bad behavior by both individual faculty and administrators over my long career at four different private institutions, but I had never before encountered or even heard of a systematic, sustained Orwellian environment, not only within a department, but at the central core of a university. The very foundation of why I became an academic in the first place has been dislodged, and I find myself in that otherworld of big brother who officially declares that black is white and who defines reality, not according to facts and objective judgment, but according to what is expedient for the pursuit of authoritarian power and control. I feel like an alien in my own country, a refugee with no place to flee. I’m sure that most other “mobbees” are in far worse circumstances, though probably are not any more angry, than I.

Name and institution withheld at writer’s request for fear of further retaliation.