Ottawa's Dismissal of Denis Rancourt

...The Ottawa administration's decision to fire Rancourt, imposing on him the "capital punishment" of labor relations, was even more vigorously opposed than were the lesser punishments dealt to him in preceding years. In a factual, reasoned letter to the Board of Governors dated 5 January 2009, Rancourt defended himself. Well over a hundred professors and students from Ottawa and elsewhere sent individual letters protesting Rancourt's elimination. Even before the axe fell, the Canadian Association of University Teachers had appointed a three-person Committee of Inquiry to investigate the long series of run-ins, dating back at least to the fall of 2005, between the Ottawa administration and Rancourt.

Is this a case of workplace mobbing in academe? Yes — and more precisely, administrative mobbing. (Click here for the standard checklist of indicators, here for the mainpage of the relevant website, and here for a short, basic article.)

What allows so unqualified a diagnosis is that Rancourt has made comprehensive documentation on the conflict (letters, emails, press reports, videos) publicly available on his blog and at academicfreedom.ca. For want of adequate information pro and con about a professor's dismissal or humiliation, it is often impossible to make more than a tentative assessment of whether it is a case of mobbing or merely a hard but measured and warranted response to some betrayal of academic purpose. In this case, Rancourt has laid bare to the public the actions that got him into trouble, the sanctions imposed, and what is most important, documentary evidence of both his own and his adversaries' views. Thereby he has bolstered his own credibility. Let other aggrieved academics take a lesson: only in so far as full information is publicly available, the cards all on the table, can outside observers make confident judgments and say things worth listening to.

It is plain from the material online that over time, administrators at Ottawa coalesced in the view that Rancourt, despite his stellar research record and the respect given him by very many students, is an utterly unworthy and abhorrent man, fit only for expulsion from respectable academic company. While administrators appear front and centre in this mobbing case, they are joined by dozens, even hundreds of students and faculty who are after Rancourt's neck. According to Karen Pinchin's trenchant article in Maclean's, "nearly one-third of Rancourt’s colleagues at the school have signed a petition of complaint against him." (Click here to read the petition, unambiguous evidence of ganging up.) Even distant pundits like Stanley Fish and Margaret Soltan piled on.

An email from Chemistry Chair Alain St-Amant is telling. Shortly after Rancourt's suspension, with his dismissal pending, St-Amant apparently agreed to debate him on a TV talk show, but then cancelled out. Rancourt sent him an email asking why, and suggesting that administrative or peer pressure was the reason. St-Amant emailed back, "I refuse to enter a battle of wits with an unarmed man. ... This will be the last you will hear from me on this matter. Enjoy the paycheques while they last." The contempt in these sentences is total. With a clever turn of phrase, St-Amant gives Rancourt the ultimate academic insult, that he has no wits, that is to say no intelligence. Then he cuts off communication and gloats that Rancourt will soon be off the payroll. St-Amant would not likely have felt free to send such a message had he not felt himself part of a campus crowd united by scorn for Rancourt.

From the available documents, Rancourt appears to exemplify a type of professor I described in my first book on academic mobbing, a professor I called "Dr. PITA" — acronym for pain-in-the-ass, or in politer terms, a thorn in administrators' sides, the one who makes them see red. Being a team player is not Dr. PITA's priority. Administrative demands that most professors comply with uncomplainingly are occasions for Dr. PITA to raise questions — and more questions.

Real-life professors can become Dr. PITA for any number of reasons. Administrators usually chalk it up to a personality defect. The documentary record suggests that the reason in Rancourt's case, as in many mobbing cases I have studied, is that he has thought deeply enough about education and the search for truth, to realize how much these noble purposes are subverted by the academic structures established to serve them. 

...Awareness of this downside of institutionalization is a common theme of the varied authors Rancourt cites in support of his own brand of anarchism — Paolo Freire, Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault, Herbert Marcuse, Ward Churchill, among others. 

It was apparently Rancourt's deepening understanding of and commitment to what learning actually involves, that led him to refuse to rank and grade his students in the established, expected way. Since grading is central to the institutionalization of learning, he felt obliged to renounce it. This was the sticking point, the offense that became the main official reason for his termination. As Rancourt plaintively wrote in his letter to the Board, "Socrates did not give grades to his students."

...More often, however, administrators and colleagues find ways to accommodate, sometimes even to honor and reward, the brilliant, unusually effective researcher and teacher whose process of growth has led to reluctance to give grades. Three professors of this kind have written letters of support for Rancourt: John McMurtry, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, John Southin, retired Professor of Biology at McGill University, and David Noble, Professor of Social and Political Thought at York University. These respected academics report that their universities managed to put up with them for decades, albeit sometimes grudgingly, despite their own dissent from conventional systems of student grading.

...Why do some university administrations mobilize collective resources to eliminate professors of the Dr. PITA type, professors like Rancourt or McMurtry or Illich, while others somehow make room for them? One key difference is whether the administrators, despite all the bureaucratic pressures upon them, continue to have a feel for what searching for truth actually means. If they still hear that search as a personal call, they cannot bring themselves to demonize, harass, and try to get rid of one who embodies truth-seeking in a pristine way, despite the administrative challenges such a professor poses. They are able to recognize in Dr. PITA not just bothersomeness and impracticality but successful engagement with inquiry and learning, the fundamental goals of a university...

On the other hand, to the extent a university's administrators are of a purely managerial or technocratic frame of mind, they lose sight of the institution's basic purposes and see a professor like Rancourt as nothing more than sand in the gears of the bureaucracy. They react with rigidity, threats, and punishment instead of dialogue... The administrators and their minions begin circling the wagons against the targeted professor, as if he or she were an invading army and the embodiment of wickedness. Compliant and afraid, many faculty and students join the circle. Energies that could be devoted to some kind of search for truth are expended instead on keeping a genuine, successful searcher outside the embattled circle of imagined rectitude.

...One of the things about Denis Rancourt that has led me to pick his case — out of the very many that come to my attention — for commentary here is his impolitic tenacity in telling the truth as he sees it. As if his troubles with the Ottawa administration over the grading issue were not enough, he committed the further transgression of allying himself with the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — in defiance of President Rock's well-known sympathies. While drawing inspiration from Noam Chomsky, Rancourt has upbraided Chomsky for not being brave enough and serving power too much. And despite drawing much of his support from the left, Rancourt nonetheless published in 2007, an insightful, scientifically informed critique of one of the left's main priorities, the alleged threat of global warming. Here is a man with little more prudence than the storied boy who said aloud that the emperor has no clothes. Any half-way decent educator has to feel admiration for Rancourt and to be glad that Claude Lamontagne and several dozen other professors and students at Ottawa have gone on record as opposing Rancourt's banishment.

The campaign against Denis Rancourt reflects badly on the University of Ottawa, but few professors can accurately say nothing similar has lately happened in their own academic homes. On the whole, Ottawa is not likely a worse educational institution than most others across the continent. We live in what KC Johnson has called, in a 2009 essay in Minding the Campus, "an era of academic mobbing." Some mobbings arise from the left, others from the right, very many from plain intolerance of a skilled truth-seeker with an independent mind. An era of greater devotion to the classic goal of seeking truth is worth working toward.

From: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/Rancourt09.htm

Recent develompents in the Denis Rancourt case

Dear friends,

The following links give a recent update for my case.

The University of Ottawa is now funding an aggressive $1 million defamation lawsuit against me.

I am self-represented because I have no money, having been wrongfully dismissed from my tenured full professorship in 2009.

They now want my spouse's house and everything.

The best pre-lawsuit summary of my case is here; it is a chronological list of the incredible things they did:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/content/article/52.html 

Lawsuit summary:
http://uofowatch.blogspot.ca/2012/07/st-lewis-v-rancourt-in-nutshell.html 

Maintenance and champerty motion:
http://uofowatch.blogspot.ca/2012/06/st-lewis-v-rancourt-update-on.html 

Web page of links for lawsuit:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/background/stlewislawsuit.html

My new book:
"Hierarchy and free expression in the fight against racism"
 http://fightagainstracismbook.wordpress.com/ 

Request for help with legal expenses:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/content/article/52.html 

Please do what you can to inform the public about what the University of Ottawa is doing.

cheers,

Denis Rancourt

Denis Rancourt

"Denis Rancourt is a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. Rancourt is a recognized scientist but is more widely known for his confrontations with his former employer, the University of Ottawa, over issues involving his dissidence and his approach to pedagogy. His conflicts with the university started in 2005 when, in what was termed "academic squatting," he changed a course to focus "not just [on] how science impacts everyday life, but how it relates to greater power structures". In June 2008 a labor law arbitrator sided with Rancourt and ruled that "teaching science through social activism is protected by academic freedom."

Rancourt was removed from all teaching duties in the fall of 2008 because the dean of the faculty of science did not agree with his granting A+ grades to 23 students in one course of the winter 2008 semester. In December, the Allan Rock administration of the University of Ottawa began dismissal proceedings against him and he was banned from campus. This generated a province-wide (Ontario) and national (Canada) public debate on grading in university courses. The university's Executive Committee of the Board of Governors voted unanimously to fire Rancourt on March 31, 2009. Rancourt has expressed the opinion that the grading issue was a pretext for his dismissal..."

The above and much more are part of lengthy entry in Wikipedia. We don't know how accurate the details and the description of events are, so we would caution viewers, but the links below provide further relevant information:

http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/

http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/

http://uofowatch.blogspot.com/

http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/videos.html

White academics 'more likely to land professorships'

White applicants are three times more likely to get a professorial post than black and minority ethnic ones, a new report suggests.

Using data supplied by 21 higher education institutions, the University and College Union study finds that white people applying for professorships are far more likely to be shortlisted for an interview than those from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds and were also more likely to get appointed.

Of the 1,646 white applicants who applied at these institutions between August 2008 and July 2011, 348 were eventually appointed - a success rate of 21 per cent - compared with the 41 of 583 BME applicants given a position - a 7 per cent success rate - the report says.

At senior lecturer level, the success rate for BME applicants was just 4 per cent (109 appointed out of a possible 2,742 candidates) compared with the 11.8 per cent rate for white applicants (456 out of 3,863 candidates).

The report, titled The Position of Women and BME staff in Professorial Roles in UK Higher Education Institutions, published on 29 January, also finds BME staff make up 13 per cent (19,405) of non-professorial academic staff across all UK higher education institutions, but only 7.3 per cent (1,195) of professorial roles.

Meanwhile, women make up 46.8 per cent (76,500) of non-professorial academic staff, but only 19.8 per cent (3,450) of the professoriate.

At the current pace of change it will take almost 40 years for the proportion of female professors to reach the same level as the proportion of female staff in universities and almost 16 years for black and minority ethnic (BME) staff, the report says.

The report has called for universities to take decisive steps to address the shortage of women and BME staff in the upper echelons of academia.

Steps to be taken should include the introduction of a transparent professorial grading structure, the collection of equality data in relation to recruitment and retention and the setting of targets for female and BME representation.

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary said: "We are allowing thousands of staff, who have built up years of knowledge and experience, never to realise their full potential.

"It's like athletes training to Olympic standard but never entering an [Olympic] Games," she added.

"We want universities to take decisive action to stop this terrible waste of talent. They need to examine the reasons why women and black and minority ethnic staff stop climbing the career ladder, and develop new, effective strategies to support them to reach the top."

The report's information was obtained by submitting Freedom of Information requests to all UK universities, of whom 23 replied with comprehensive data.

The report also found women professors earn about 6 per cent less than male professors - a figure that has stayed broadly the same since 2003.

Black professors earned 9.4 per cent less than white counterparts, Chinese professors earned 6.7 per cent less, mixed race 3.5 per cent less, while Asian professors earned 4 per cent more.

From: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=422525

Workplace Bullying In Higher Education

Bullying among children and teens in schools receive extra attention these days, but experts say bullying takes place in other times in our lives.

In fact, workplace bullying is happening at an alarming rate.  Especially in higher education.  Leah P. Hollis, Ed.D., Author of the book "Bully In The Ivory Tower" says 62 percent of people who work in higher education have experienced bullying versus 45 percent of the general population.

Dr. Hollis says, "I surveyed 175 schools and what I found in the return was that a number of people, especially in the entry levels and the middle management were talking about how they were the target of bullying either from the boss or the organization in general.

9 News Now's Anita Brikman interviews Dr. Hollis about her survey and why workplace bullying is more prevalent in higher education than in other professions:

Anita: "What's going on? Why at college and universities?"

Dr. Hollis: "What's interesting is at a college or university we are all trained to be experts in our field to go out and do this wonderful research and create excellent knowledge.  It also is an isolating experience so now when you have to manage people or collaborate or have team building you've already been protected by tenure perhaps or at least in a culture that supports being isolated and also supports a pretty big ego.  So that doesn't always make for the best management skills."

Anita: "So in these case studies, who was saying they are being bullied? Younger educators bullied by tenured folks?"

Dr. Hollis: "Typically it was somebody at the entry level, your assistant director, it might have even been the director or just the manager of the department.  Folks who are reporting up-line to Vice Presidents, Provosts, or even the Presidents.  So bullying has to do with power and those with the least amount of power are the ones on the receiving end of bullying."

To see the entire interview, including how workplace bullying in higher education affects students and how can we deal with workplace bullying across the board, click the video tab in the extras link on this webpage.

http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/236168/28/Workplace-Bullying-In-Higher-Education

Academic bullying in social work departments: The silent epidemic

In the United States, workplace bullying and it’s’ consequences are getting more public recognition. Higher education institutions are not immune from this and academic bullying is also coming to the forefront of recognition at universities internationally and in the United States. Little research has been completed to address the concerns of academic bullying by university faculty and the devastating effects of bullying to faculty, to departmental programs the students, to the university and the greater community. There is a gap in the literature regarding academic bullying and social work departments. This paper summarizes the literature on workplace and academic bullying including defining academic bullying, developing an understanding of the reasons bullies bully, and the consequences. The paper concludes by identifying solutions for academic bullying and exploring ethical considerations for social workers.

Academic bullying is a rising phenomenon on college campuses and social work departments are not going unscathed. The consequences of bullying behaviors is the loss of harmonious and collegial relationships, the erosion of departments, increase medical and mental health expenses, loss time from classes and committee work, and possible violations of the social work code ethics. Across university campuses academic bullying is increasing (Fogg, & Piper, 2008; Keashly & Neuman, 2010; Simpson & Cohen, 2004). For whatever reasons, harassment of social work faculty by colleagues is “The Silent Epidemic.”

...To develop a better understanding of academic bullying, it is important to address the motives and reasons why bullies bully. A review of the literature shows that there are many explanations for the workplace bully. These include the organizational culture, employer responses, and the personality characteristics of the target and the perpetrator.

Organizational culture

The nature of organizations, in and of themselves, cause bullying and organizational practices that promote workplace bullying (Rhodes, Pullen, Vickers, Clegg, & Pitsis, 2010). Organizational culture and/or environments frequently support bullying by creating insecurity and uneasiness amongst workers (De Cuyper, Baillien, & De Witte, 2009; Jennifer, Cowie & Ananiadou, 2003). These feelings trigger the bully into lashing out at their coworkers. Conflict at work can create a hostile work environment where bullying is used as a way workers relieve tensions; Thus, creating a culture which promotes poor behavior (De Cuyper, Baillien, & De Witte, 2009; Jennifer, Cowie & Ananiadou, 2003).

Academic settings by their very nature create insecurity, frustration, and competition. Student evaluations and the tenure and promotion process are sources of frustration for faculty and particularly junior faculty. Collegiality and autonomy, although valued in higher education, are not promoted and often are contradicted. “Autonomy and collegiality are critical to academic freedom and the work of the academic, yet these norms are interpreted as preventing action to address what faculty view as problematic behaviors that, in turn, create a climate of non-collegiality” (Keashly & Nueman, 2010, p. 60). Tenure provides faculty with a sense of entitlement to misbehave and use feedback of others as a means of criticism rather than support causing harm to the target. This decreases collegiality and increases academic bullying (Keashly & Nueman, 2010).

Academic freedom is also a source of conflict on many college campuses (Keashly & Nueman, 2010). Under the umbrella of academic freedom, faculty are, “entitled” to teach their own way. As a result, perpetrators use these opportunities to bully because faculty may not be willing to conform. These unique characteristics of academic settings generate cultures and environments which cultivate and support academic bullies (Keashly & Nueman, 2010; De Cuyper, Baillien, & De Witte, 2009; Jennifer, Cowie & Ananiadou, 2003).

Responses of employers

Academic settings are bureaucratic structures with rigid rules and regulations. As a result, they are not designed to deal with conflict between faculty members. Universities that have unions are also not equipped to work with faculty to faculty conflict. Unions are in place to work between faculty and administration (Keashly & Nueman, 2010). In some cases, unions may protect the bully.

The bully depends on promoting on the fear of the target and the targets silence so that silence about their hostility in organizations remains and the bully remains in control a while advancing his/her own agenda. Silence is an organization and amongst managers exasperates the bullying. In those cases, when targets report their victimization, organizations and employers frequently do not respond and if they did respond, their responses increased the bullying for victims (Namie, 2003). Managers and supervisors are not trained to handle bullying in the workplace, and therefore, responding effectively is not easy (Lewis, 2004).

Some universities are relying more on adjunct and part-time faculty due to the economic crisis. The use of part-time help enhances the hostile work environment because adjuncts are not permanent fixtures in the department and have little or no investment to maintain a healthy and collegial work environment. They are expendable and vulnerable. Thus, they often fall prey to academic bullies by becoming the target, by witnessing the bullying, or participating in a way to save their job (Keashly & Nueman, 2010).

The Target

The personality of the target has been given as a reason that bullies bully (White, 2007, Einarsen, 1999, O’Moore, Seigne, McGuire, & Smith, 1998; and Field, 1996). However, there is contradicting evidence about whether a victim’s personality increases the likelihood that they will be bullied. Some research suggests that bullies may perceive the victim to be aggravating or annoying and therefore, they are bullied (Jennifer, Cowie & Ananiadou, 2003). Other research suggests that anyone is at risk of being bullied. If an individual has less power in the workplace (Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Hjelt-Back, 1994) more often than not they become the targets of choice.

Namie and Namie (2009) report that victims of bullying are people who generally have a solid work ethic. Targets want to heal the sick, teach and develop the young, care for the elderly, work with the addicted and abused in society. They are ripe for exploitation. While they focus on doing good and noble things and wait to be rewarded for their quality work, they expose their backs for the bully to sink her or his claws into (Namie & Namie, 2009, p. 23).

Characteristics of the Perpetrator

Personality characteristics of the perpetrator are attributed to perpetuating workplace violence. Perpetrators of bullying in the workplace often have been victims themselves of bullying in the past (Edwards & O’Connell, 2007; Hauge, Skogstad, & Einarsen, 2009). Bullies learn early on that lashing out was a viable form or self-preservation and thus, they continue to use these tactics in workplace settings (Hauge, Skogstad & Einarsen, 2009).

Perpetrators who are in positions of power may use their power to target victims (Farmer, 1993; Edwards & O’Connell, 2007). Supervisors and managers are often workplace bullies because they have more power than workers (Ortega, Hogh, Pejtersen, & Olsen, 2007).

Bullies may also suffer from low self-esteem and use bullying as a means to increase personal worth (Cooper, 1999; Edwards & O’Connell, 2007). The workplace bully may also have decreased coping skills which puts them at risk for bullying behavior (De Cuyper, Baillien, & De Witte, 2009; Jennifer, Cowie & Ananiadou, 2003). According to Namie and Namie (2009), workplace bullies are go-getters who want to get ahead and they are willing to use abuse to do so.

According to Wiedmer (2011, p. 38) and the Bully Online (para 3) report that the bully at work often

• Possess vindictiveness in private but charming in public;
• Display self-assuredness to mask insecurity;
• Portray self as wonderful but actual behaviors contradict this
• Can’t distinguish between leadership and bullying behaviors
• Counter attacks and denies when asked to clarify
• Manipulates others through guilt
• Are obsessed with controlling others
• Use charm and behave appropriately when superiors are present
• Are convincing and compulsive liars in order to account for matters at hand
• Excel at deception, lack conscience, and are dysfunctional

Employees and/or employers that repeat and are persistent with these behaviors at work are deemed workplace bullies (Wiedmer, 2011).

Effects of Workplace Bullying Faculty, Departments, and Universities

Workplace and academic bullying affects not only the target and perpetrator but also other faculty, departments, and the university as a whole. The assumption is that the target is the one who suffers and that workplace bullying is in an individual trend, but research shows this is simply not the case. Workplace and academic bullying is devastating to all involved including the bully (Rhodes, Pullen, Vickers, Clegg, & Pitsis, 2010).

Absence from work and turnover of faculty are the biggest consequences of workplace bullying (Keashly, & Heuman, 2010). Targets and witnesses often leave or are driven out because of the stress and torment of the bully (Rhodes, Pullen, Vickers, Clegg, & Pitsis, 2010; Halbur, 2005). According to “the Corporate Leavers Survey, 2007, two million professionals voluntarily left their jobs due solely to workplace unfairness by not addressing bullying behaviors, and costing corporate America approximately $64 billion annually” (Query & Hanley, 2010, p. 4).

Academic bullying is becoming more commonplace in university settings. Social work is not immune to this phenomenon that has emerged across academic campuses. As professional social workers, it is our responsibility to address these issues. Because of the ethical commitment to social justice, social workers are in the best position to talk about and address this issue. If we, as professional social workers, cannot talk about bullying, and if we cannot do something to intervene on behalf of ourselves and our colleagues, then who will?

Solutions must be developed to create safe collegial work environments for social work faculty that align with the professions code of ethics. Academic bullying should be addressed at all levels, and faculty should use their practice training to create solutions for alleviating academic bullying, including but not limited to: admitting the problem exist, developing solutions directed toward eliminating bullying in the academic environment, and advocacy that supports addressing the underlying issues that foster unrest and the emergence of bullying behaviors. It is imperative that creative problem solving take place in university social work departments and university campuses to prevent and stop academic bullying.

By: Jan C. Kircher, Ph.D.; Cath Stilwell, Ed.D.; Elizabeth Peffer Talbot, Ph.D.; Sandra Chesborough, Ph.D.

Presented at: NACSW Convention 2011, October, 2011, Pittsburgh, PA

Christmas wishes...

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
with every legal word I write
where jewels of justice glisten
and the 'Dailys' listen
printing truths that end the bully's might

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
with bullies buried deep in snow
may their hearts be frozen
with fri-i--i--i-ight
facing truths that turn them deathly white
-------------------------------------------
I do not think they can comprehend the concept of the fires of the need for justice that burns within the target's heart...

By Lin Johnson

Kenneth Westhues, Correction of Mobbing Episodes in Higher Education

The insight in Schneider’s analysis [q.v.] of the “ineducability of administrators,” their common reluctance to rescue mobbing targets or even to grasp the concept, derives from his use of Max Weber’s favoured method of social research, verstehen, his stepping into administrators’ shoes and looking at things from their point of view. Schneider’s similar insight into the peril faculty associations put themselves in if they support the target has the same origin: understanding from the inside the political constraints on the association leadership.

Schneider is right that mobbing is a “loaded characterization” and mobber a “stigmatizing term.” By definition, the mere application of the term mobbing to a sequence of events in a university (or any other organization) is going to be contested by the instigators and the main participants, since it implies that reason and evidence do not support what they are doing, that in mobilizing for a colleague’s humiliation and eventual elimination, they have been “carried away” by collective passion into wreaking unwarranted harm on their scapegoat (another loaded term), as well as on the values underlying academic life.

This problem in the scientific study of mobbing is so fundamental one is tempted to switch to some other specialty. Why make trouble for yourself? All the social scientist has to say is, “By standard measures, it looks to me that so-and-so has been mobbed.” The beleaguered target may say thanks, but the great majority of those involved will do all in their power to keep this diagnosis off the table, and if they feel obliged to respond, they may well ratchet up their attack on the target, or even broaden it to include the scholar who has called it mobbing.

To whom, then, can one look for acknowledgement that a mobbing has indeed occurred, and for action toward turning back the mob and rescuing its target? Who will take the risk of disagreeing with an angry crowd?

There is no formulaic answer. A mob is sometimes stopped by a single person – a dean, a professor, maybe a secretary – with strength of character enough to stand up and say, “Cut it out. Lay off. There will be no ganging up in this workplace.” Far more mobbings than ever make the news are nipped in the bud by one man or woman who has guts. A famous example occurred long ago in the Middle East. A brave, charismatic rescuer shamed mobbers into slinking away by saying, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” That rescuer, of course, was himself mobbed sometime later, fatally.

To the question of how to correct a mobbing, a further answer is that if the mobbing has reached an advanced stage, the odds of full correction are close to nil. Leymann could not cite a single case from all his years of research, in which the mobbing target was given an apology and fully reintegrated into the workgroup. Once you’ve been collectively expelled, you can never quite go home again. The most one can hope for is mitigation of the target’s losses, in terms of reputation, respect, position, income, health, friendships, family. The realistic question is how to achieve as much mitigation as possible – the difference, for instance, between departing with a large buyout or with nothing but life and the chance to start over somewhere else.

Regardless of how much correction is won, the correcting agent is generally from outside the organization in which the conflict has occurred. Mobbing comes into clearest focus at a certain distance. Outsiders’ vision is less clouded by mobbers’ passion. Once informed of the evidence, outsiders can more easily see what has gone on and label it accurately. Further, outsiders are less vulnerable to the mobbers’ wrath. They face fewer penalties than insiders do for framing the events (to use Schneider’s term) in a way that transfers some blame from the target to the righteous enforcers of virtue.

Here are four examples of outsiders who have played in some cases a corrective role.

First, the courts, which are sometimes helpful if the mobbers have been clumsy enough to commit a clear violation of the target’s rights as an employee or citizen. An example this spring was a jury’s finding for Ward Churchill, in the latter’s suit against the University of Colorado for wrongful dismissal. This verdict did not exonerate Churchill and he will not likely get his job back, but clearly, it restored a fair bit of what his adversaries had robbed him of.

Second, arbitrators and other outside adjudicators established for dispute resolution by university policies and collective agreements. Like courts, these quasi-judicial bodies sometimes rescue mobbing targets, depending on how flagrant are violations of the relevant terms and conditions of employment. The rescue is partial at best. In a case of administrative mobbing at Waterloo, where the target had been formally dismissed on trumped up grounds of sexual harassment, the arbitrator overturned the dismissal and ordered reinstatement. But by the time judgment was handed down, the target had been suspended for two years, his lab had been dismantled, his nerves were shot. He eagerly accepted the university’s offer of a buyout.

Third, the media. The Chronicle of Higher Education’s relentless exposure of mobbings at Southern Illinois University over the past five years is a good example of the limits of the press’s power. Despite national embarrassment in this prestigious medium, the lethal regime of President Glenn Poshard is still in place. But this is also an example of the power of the press. Mobbers’ victory is total, and so is the target’s defeat, if the facts of a case are never even exposed to public view. The Chronicle’s stories have scraped a little of the dirt from the names of professors besmirched at SIU, and to that extent, lessened the extent of their social elimination.

Fourth, organizations like the AAUP, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), and NAS (The National Association of Scholars), for which academic freedom is a core value, and to which professors routinely appeal, if their freedom is infringed upon. I devote half of my book, The Remedy and Prevention of Mobbing in Higher Education, to two mobbing cases at Medaille College in Buffalo, New York, which were in great part corrected by the administration there, once AAUP exposed them in a report and threatened the college publicly with censure. FIRE has had many similarly dramatic successes, which it customarily trumpets on its website.

Among other outside organizations that may play a corrective role in academic mobbing are professional and learned societies, accrediting bodies, churches, granting agencies, student organizations, and interest groups that agitate on behalf of whatever social category (women, gays, Jews, blacks, Evangelicals, Palestinians, or whoever else) the mobbing target belongs to.

To the many targets of academic mobbing who write to me, I routinely suggest taking pen or pencil and listing on a sheet of paper every outside body that might conceivably be helpful if called upon (then to weigh this list soberly against a list of all the outside bodies the mobbers might be able to recruit on their side)...

From: http://qufa.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/kenneth-westhues-correction-of-mobbing-episodes-in-higher-education-2009-posted-3-december-2012/

Prof. Hassan Abdalla is still at it...

How do I recognise a bully:

• Jekyll & Hyde nature - vicious and vindictive in private, but innocent and charming in front of witnesses; no-one can (or wants to) believe this individual has a vindictive nature - only the current target sees both sides;
  


• is a convincing, compulsive liar and when called to account, will make up anything spontaneously to fit their needs at that moment;


• uses lots of charm and is always plausible and convincing when peers, superiors or others are present, the motive of the charm is deception and its purpose is to compensate for lack of empathy;


• relies on mimicry to convince others that they are a "normal" human being but their words, writing and deeds are hollow, superficial and glib;


• displays a great deal of certitude and self-assuredness to mask their insecurity;


• excels at deception;


• exhibits much controlling behaviour and is a control freak;


• displays a compulsive need to criticise whilst simultaneously refusing to acknowledge, value and praise others;


• when called upon to share or address the needs and concerns of others, responds with impatience, irritability and aggression;


• often has an overwhelming, unhealthy and narcissistic need to portray themselves as a wonderful, kind, caring and compassionate person, in contrast to their behaviour and treatment of others, the bully is oblivious to the discrepancy between how they like to be seen (and believe they are seen), and how they are actually seen;


• has an overbearing belief in their qualities of leadership but cannot distinguish between leadership (maturity, decisiveness, assertiveness, trust and integrity) and bullying (immaturity, impulsiveness, aggression, distrust and deceitfulness);


• when called to account, immediately and aggressively denies everything, then counter-attacks with distorted or fabricated criticisms and allegations; if this is insufficient, quickly feigns victimhood, often by bursting into tears (the purpose is to avoid answering the question and thus evade accountability by manipulating others through the use of guilt);


• is also ... aggressive, devious, manipulative, spiteful, vengeful, doesn't listen, can't sustain mature adult conversation, lacks a conscience, shows no remorse, is drawn to power, emotionally cold and flat, humourless, joyless, ungrateful, dysfunctional, disruptive, divisive, rigid and inflexible, selfish, insincere, insecure, immature and deeply inadequate, especially in interpersonal skills.

From: http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/amibeing.htm

Another story of the power of a university versus a victim...

Once upon a time there was, in fact there still is, a high-achieving student in South Australia who wanted to be a clinical psychologist. A mature age student, a mother, someone who wasn't afraid to speak up if necessary. She loved her study and did very well at it. She had switched careers to pursue a subject and career path that fascinated her. She juggled her commitments with two pre-school children at home. Her daughter still anxiously remembers when mum was locked away every weekend working feverishly at her study.

This student was excited about taking her study towards a future career, and about completing her first ever research project in a supervisor relationship. That year, however, became hell. Her supervisor constantly told her her thesis wasn't working, that she needed to rethink and rewrite, which she did about 14 times. Other staff members scowled at her and ignored her. Finally, after months and months of rewrites, of missing many invaluable family and friend moments as the stress and the extra work took its toll, of a steadily declining grade point average, they told her, probably one of the highest achieving students in the year, that her research project was not viable and she would have to return the following year and repeat.

She was shocked, she spiralled into depression and anxiety, yet her motivation and love of the topic (not to mention stunning ignorance about what was really going on: a bullying campaign designed to eliminate her and get her away from a very dodgy department) drove her to return with fresh determination and a desire to make the most of another opportunity to learn how to do a research project. Her new supervisor was competent and efficient, the work got done swiftly and the student eventually achieved a first-class honours. That year, however, was also hell. She knew staff members were watching and testing her, she knew that a lot of her research project participants were fake and had been briefed instead of being genuine. She knew that her study and project were being negatively impacted by staff, for example by asking participants not to turn up to test sessions, while her fellow students were bolstered by support. (And in fact the student's project partner went on to win a University prize. The price of silence?) The student lost 20 kilograms in the course of a year. She hated going to campus, she shook like a leaf every time, she was scared of running into the staff from the psychology department. She got through her thesis, quit her job in a different sector of the university, and turned down a scholarship and two interviews for postgraduate study because she could no longer stand the stress of being in an environment were everyone seemed determined to test and undermine her.

Two years later and well away from the university, and she has been victimised and harassed by staff members of this department on an almost daily basis. Only, they do it indirectly; they get others to do their dirty work so that she can't prove anything. Her house and car are repeatedly sabotaged, and almost every time she goes out there is someone throwing something negative about her into her face, only subtly for example through passersby conversations. The police told her to go to the university, the university told her to go to the police. People with a great deal of power use it to abuse her covertly. She has filed complaints in all the relevant places, yet the power of these people in a small city means that she has constantly been hitting her head against a brick wall. All she wants to do is postgrad study in her beloved topic at a different university and to be left alone, yet these goals are undermined by academics from the first university. Her ex-supervisor refuses to answer the student's emails and phone calls requesting a reference (which the supervisor gave happily two years ago, and which had obviously been good as it got the student to interview stage). There has ostensibly been no contact between the supervisor and the student since the student left the university two years ago. The student emails other staff members, asking for a statement of duties that would at least outline some of the activities she undertook during her study, following the advice from literature about dealing with bullies. There is no response.

Consequently, the student applies for post-grad studies at two other universities, using an ex-employer reference and a friend reference. She gets (hallelujah) an interview at one university, but the other one does not take her through to interview stage. When she asks for feedback as to why, they send her a general response. She, however, suspects that the glaring omission of not having her Honours supervisor provide an academic reference may be to blame.

The day of her interview, which she gets through only by using anti-anxiety medication, she gets an email from the Dean of the Faculty of the first university. The Dean says she will provide a statement in response to the student's requests for a reference from staff memberes. Her statement says only that the student got a first-class Honours, and stated her GPA. She said that was all she could provide (rightly so, the student had never met her). The student wrote back, asking if she could please explain why her ex-supervisor was ignoring her and negatively affecting her chances for future study by failing to give her a reference. The Dean wrote back, saying that the reason was that two years had elapsed, and that the university could not help the student further. The student knows that there is in fact no time limit on reference giving. She rings the student association, but as usual no one can help one little old student with a target on her head to fight the might and abusive power of academic staff at a university.

The student waits to discover the outcome of her interview. But years of damage have been done.

This is a true story.