New Year Wishes

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Join our Facebook group

Join our Facebook group. Anyone can see the group description, but only members can see the Wall, discussion board, and photos.

The group is called: Bullying of Academics in Higher Education

You can also access the group through: Facebook me!

University of KwaZulu-Natal

We, friends of the University of KwaZulu-Natal,

Affirming our commitment

* to Academic Freedom as a freedom fundamental to the existence of Universities as institutions of critical research and learning, enshrined in the Constitution of South Africa
* to the transformation of universities in the context of post-apartheid South Africa;

Noting that

* the University management instituted disciplinary action against two Professors, Nithaya Chetty and John van den Berg, both highly valued academics, as a result of their publicly initiating a debate about academic freedom at UKZN
* on 11 November a constitutionally mandated Science and Agriculture Faculty general meeting to discuss this issue was cancelled after intervention by the University management
* the University has employed a team of advocates and attorneys, and an outside lawyer as adjudicator, using public funds to prosecute these staff members
* the normal legal costs of an internal disciplinary inquiry at UKZN would bankrupt any university employee;

Believing that

* this disciplinary action was unjustifiable, divisive, and immensely damaging to the reputation of the university
* Professor van den Berg has signed an apology which does not accord with our interpretation of what he is alleged to have done
* the cancelling of the Science and Agriculture faculty general meeting is an unprecedented attack on academic freedom at the University
* this cancellation of a meeting called in accordance with the constitution of the faculty appears to be in line with other attempts to silence members of our university community who are critical of the current climate at UKZN
* the UKZN management has enacted a concerted and long standing campaign to silence any opposition lodged against the University administration or leadership;

Call upon the University Management:

* to withdraw the charges against Professors Chetty and van den Berg
* to remove outside legal representation from the prosecution and adjudication of disciplinary inquiries
* to allow academics, students and other groups to freely meet and to freely express opinions and concerns
* to uphold the internationally accepted standards of academic freedom, the constitutional rights of South Africans for freedom of expression and affirm the role of academic freedom in fostering collegiality, and critical debate, within the university
* to recognize, in accord with the 1997 Unesco declaration on the rights of higher education teachers and the recent Chetty vs Adesino decision, that Academic Freedom must include the right to criticize the management of the University and to discuss these criticisms with the wider interested public and the media

AND

* call on our fellow academics and students, in South Africa and abroad, to support us in creating an open, active and responsive environment at UKZN.

SIGN THE PETITION

Also read: Newspaper Coverage

Workplace Bullying — State of the Science, 2008

Anybody seeking an overall picture in 2008, of research and scholarship on workplace bullying, mobbing, harassment and abuse, need look no further than the Sixth International Conference on these topics, held in Montreal, Quebec, in the first week of June. It was an extraordinary event, drawing major researchers from about thirty countries.

Have a look at the conference website.

Study the presentation titles on the conference program.

Read the following independent reports on the conference by three members of the research team on workplace mobbing at the University of Waterloo:

"Language Barriers and Bullying," by Hannah Masterman, Research Assistant;

"Theoretical Dialects and Conflicting Perceptions," by Rachel Morrison, Research Assistant; and

"The Birth of a Learned Society," by Kenneth Westhues, Professor of Sociology.

Learn from retrospectives on the conference by leaders of the anti-bullying movement in the United States:

"The WBI Report," by Gary and Ruth Namie, Workplace Bullying Institute, Bellingham, WA (external link);

"Immersion in the Twisted World of Abuse at Work," by David Yamada, Professor of Law, Suffolk University, Boston.

Even if you don't read Spanish, you will enjoy the pictorial record of the conference posted by the delegation from Mexico on the rich website of Marina Parés, Acoso Moral.

Ponder the provocative assessment of current research in Kenneth Westhues's presentation at the conference, "Critiques of the Anti-Bullying Movement and Responses to Them."

Study the outcomes of Court Cases on Moral Harassment in Japan, as reported by the Association Against Workplace Moral Harassment, half a dozen of whose members took part in the Montreal conference.

From: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/mtlbullyingmain.htm

Coming soon...

All about Kingston University...

Coming soon, a few tales about a certain public official who could not tell the truth when asked a simple question by a reporter: - What did you know and when did you know it?

Anonymous

Fairy Tales...

During my studies for my M. Sc., there were rumours about my supervisor having published data obtained by one of his Ph. D. students without that student's knowledge or permission, let alone giving him credit.

During my thesis research, I read some papers written by that supervisor. He could have produced one excellent publication with the data he had but, instead, half of it went into one paper, half into another, and half the data from each of these papers went into a third. Amazing: three papers for the price of one!

The supervisor died a few years ago. His obituary described him in glowing terms, emphasizing his generosity and the sacrifices he made for his students. When I was his student, he was nothing of the sort. I knew him as a work-shy incompetent who freely exploited others to maintain his reputation. Either he underwent a miraculous transformation or somebody wrote fairy tales about him.

El Cid

Bosses admitting that there's a problem? Only in one's dreams

Bosses admitting that there's a problem? Only in one's dreams.

Most of my supervisors, both in industry and academe, saw themselves as perfect as only those who were perfect became supervisors.

At the place where I used to teach, my last supervisor and I had an on-going dispute which lasted several years, a dispute which *he* started and maintained. One year, he conducted a survey in our department about his management style. The questions were posed in such a way that the results could only portray him in the best terms. Mark Twain's observations on statistics were, thereby, verified.

El Cid

Survey of HR Professionals - Trends and Remedies

...When asked to identify the factors which impair their organisation's ability to deal effectively with bullying, the most commonly cited factors were management's unwillingness to acknowledge a problem and prevailing management style...

From: http://www.digitalopinion.co.uk/bullying-hrmanagers-remedies.html

Not accountable

... not accountable? A Professor at a reputable university and a recipient of the Brian Mercer Award for Innovation uses his PhD students to do work relating to the commercialisation of his invention but claims in the annual PhD reviews, sent to the Dean of the faculty, that the students did work of academic quality. He then asks one specialist researcher, towards the end of the PhD student's research, to act as a co-supervisor. This gives him the incentive to include the specialist researcher's own work in the PhD student's theses. He spreads the academic work done among the PhD students. An old story, No?!

Anonymous