Can academic bullying be stopped?

...Academic bullying is ubiquitous. A survey of more than 2,000 academics (primarily post-doc and graduate students in life sciences) revealed 84% had experienced “sustained hostile behavior from one’s academic superior.” According to study coauthor and Wake Forest University business professor Sherry Moss, “those who had been bullied or abused were unlikely to report the abuse due to fear of retaliation.”

Silence, however, is a dangerous solution. “One thing that keeps coming up about bullying is the impact on people’s health—insomnia, panic, mania, anxiety, even suicidal ideation—because they feel trapped in a situation or organization that does not support them,” says Leah Hollis, associate dean of access, equity, and inclusion at Penn State University...

...Despite starting as a tenured associate professor, Keller recalls being essentially “ignored” by the department. Although most associate professors were promoted after three years, Keller remained one for a decade. After insisting that it was long overdue, the department relented and began the promotion process—but stopped it once she got pregnant. Eventually, Keller received the promotion, but the battle further ostracized her in the department.

 

... Rather than being ignored like Keller was, some instances of academic bullying aim to destroy a career. That is what happened to Nancy Olivieri, a University of Toronto pediatrics professor. In 1989, she started a clinical trial on a blood disease drug. When data revealed safety concerns about the drug, the pharmaceutical company that made it—and funding the study—curtailed the trial and threatened to sue her if she released the data. When Olivieri argued for more safety testing of the drug, the company did sue her, and her hospital tried to fire her and have her medical license revoked. Fortunately, the Canadian Medical Protective Association defended her...

 

Addressing academic bullying after it occurs isn’t enough; proactive solutions are needed. “Most higher education and research institutions have adequate policies and measures in place to reduce bullying, discrimination, and harassment,” says Janet Hering, professor emerita of environmental chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. “They don’t work because they are not taken seriously and implemented.”

Ending systemic academic bullying might require even broader protection—like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which protects workers. “If I had a magic wand, there’d be federal legislation prohibiting workplace bullying,” says Hollis. “And it would be a serious part of the accreditation reviews of colleges and universities.”

From https://www.science.org/content/article/can-academic-bullying-be-stopped

 

 

 

"... If you’re that unhappy, please do us all a favour and leave. We’ll hold the door open for you so that it doesn’t hit your arse on the way out..." Professor of Law Paul Myburgh

 

An internal survey at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) law school has revealed issues with its work culture, with one staffer saying they believed there would be “serious consequences” for speaking up against senior leadership.

And one senior professor has clapped back at staff for leaking results of the survey after no action was allegedly taken to address the unsatisfactory results, saying they should leave if they are unhappy.

A spokesperson from AUT said they did not wish to comment on the emails but were concerned about the results of the survey.

Twenty of the 26 law staff responded to AUT’s “Your Voice” survey for 2024, which found the law school had “lower favourable ratings than the faculty average across most factors”, as described by the business, economics and law faculty.

Results of the recent survey leaked to the Herald showed;

• 20% have personally experienced discrimination at work in the past six months
• 35% have personally experienced bullying or harassment at work in the past six months
• 30% feel comfortable reporting inappropriate behaviour
• 5% believe AUT would intervene if someone was not delivering in their role

In a series of emails between law staff following the results, acting dean Mike French said he was not sure there was much to be gained by the school discussing the staff responses and was “not very clear” on how best to address or deal with reports of bullying...

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-university-of-technology-survey-uncovers-concerning-law-school-workplace-higher-staff-bullying-rates/G27CB6BR3JGRPI2VX6DP4I4UEI/

Professor of Law Paul Myburgh is a complete arsehole... The arrogance of this piece of shit is based on the impunity the system provides to protect him.

Auckland University of Technology survey uncovers concerning law school workplace; higher staff bullying rates

 

An internal survey at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) law school has revealed issues with its work culture, with one staffer saying they believed there would be “serious consequences” for speaking up against senior leadership.

And one senior professor has clapped back at staff for leaking results of the survey after no action was allegedly taken to address the unsatisfactory results, saying they should leave if they are unhappy.

A spokesperson from AUT said they did not wish to comment on the emails but were concerned about the results of the survey.

Twenty of the 26 law staff responded to AUT’s “Your Voice” survey for 2024, which found the law school had “lower favourable ratings than the faculty average across most factors”, as described by the business, economics and law faculty.

Results of the recent survey leaked to the Herald showed;

• 20% have personally experienced discrimination at work in the past six months

• 35% have personally experienced bullying or harassment at work in the past six months

• 30% feel comfortable reporting inappropriate behaviour

• 5% believe AUT would intervene if someone was not delivering in their role

In a series of emails between law staff following the results, acting dean Mike French said he was not sure there was much to be gained by the school discussing the staff responses and was “not very clear” on how best to address or deal with reports of bullying.

In response, results of the survey were leaked by staff.

After learning the results of the survey had been leaked, AUT professor of law Paul Myburgh sent an email to all law school staff with the subject line, “the coward who did this should be utterly ashamed of themselves”.

“Civilised human beings wash their dirty linen indoors. If you’re that unhappy, please do us all a favour and leave. We’ll hold the door open for you so that it doesn’t hit your arse on the way out,” the email read.

When Myburgh’s email was also leaked and he received an email from a member of the public saying he was “famous for all the wrong reasons”, Myburgh sent another email to staff, saying they were “Pathetic. Puerile. Pusillanimous”.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-university-of-technology-survey-uncovers-concerning-law-school-workplace-higher-staff-bullying-rates/G27CB6BR3JGRPI2VX6DP4I4UEI/

Academic bullying is hidden in plain sight

 

"...And, above all, there is no mention of emails, emails, emails: hundreds, thousands of them, full of unnecessary or impossible jobs – emails telling you off for not doing said unnecessary or impossible jobs – emails undermining you in front of others – emails magnifying minor failures – or emails damning with faint or ambivalent praise. Those emails sent on Monday mornings, to upset you at the start of the week – emails sent on Friday afternoons, so you dwell on them all weekend. Emails, emails, emails incessantly scything to and fro above you, like a razor-sharp pendulum, looming closer and closer…

In the tale by Edgar Allan Poe that famously depicts such a torture device (a scything pendulum, that is, not email), the reader hardly glimpses the torturers themselves. For all but the opening of the story, the Holy Inquisitors remain offstage, operating the torture machinery from afar. This is what technology of many kinds – from inquisitorial pendulums to institutional email to X/Twitter to academic acronyms – facilitates: for torture to be inflicted remotely, for the torturers to remain invisible.

Of course, the beauty of “cyber-bullying” and “trolling” is that the torturers can disown their own torture devices: It wasn’t me, guv’nor. I didn’t do nothing. Perhaps it wasn’t anyone. Perhaps it was the victim themselves crying “Wolf!” Remote bullying can efface itself, X accounts can be anonymised, passive-aggressive emails reinterpreted (Of course I didn’t mean that) – to the extent that the victims themselves come to be suspected of paranoia: There’s no one there, there’s nothing wrong, it’s all in your head, stop imagining things, stop attacking yourself.

At worst, the people expressing such concerns onstage turn out to be the very same torturers who are invisibly operating the technology behind the scenes: What a shame, you need help, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. Very, very good care.

That’s because one of the paradoxical signs of bullying, in my limited experience, is kindness. Beware academic mentors, people who wear their pastoral skills on their sleeves: to care for someone, to take them under your wing, is to exercise a dangerous power. If nothing else, it imposes a debt of gratitude upon them. It also has the added benefit of muddying the waters when it comes to complaints, tribunals, solicitors. The bully can point to moments of kindness (carefully recorded, of course) that seem to undermine the complainant’s claims: But look how nice I was on this and that occasion.

This sort of weaponised kindness can be deployed remotely, too. One of the times I came closest to losing my mind, under the shadow of my professorial bully, was when a mature student told me, as if spontaneously, that my boss cared for me, that they were concerned about my mental well-being, that they really liked me and wished I liked them back. I went away thinking: Oh, perhaps I’ve been unfair to them. Perhaps I was wrong all along. Perhaps it’s all been in my head..."

From: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/academic-bullying-hidden-plain-sight

When a Department Self-Destructs. Battles over money. Allegations of racism. A chair ousted.

 

...Now all of that ugliness is being aired by Kunin himself. He’s writing a book about what happened and publishing installments — 23 as of this writing — on Substack. The newsletter, named after the Pixies song “Weird at My School,” pokes fun at the literary world inhabited by its author. Except Kunin’s characters aren’t fictional. He describes what his colleagues said and how they acted and quotes from their many emails to depict a department run aground by dysfunction. The story he tells is one of intolerance, vendetta, ego, and timidity. People who work in places like Pomona’s English department “do not say what they think,” Kunin writes. “Inevitably, in this working environment, they forget how to think for themselves.”

Polemics abound about self-censorship in academe. What makes Kunin’s project distinct is his willingness to root around in the dirt of his department, unearthing petty and bizarre disputes and holding them up to the light. He hopes to illustrate a broader phenomenon: that academic freedom is too easily sacrificed at the altar of agreeableness. That allegations of racism can be used to muzzle discourse. That when colleagues avoid conflict at all cost, what’s acceptable to think and say constricts until there’s little space left for anything unorthodox.

Even before he published his newsletter, most of Kunin’s colleagues had stopped speaking to him, at least in the way that colleagues typically do. Laying bare your coworkers’ absurdities risks torpedoing whatever’s left of those relationships. So why do it? What is there to be gained, other than glares in the faculty lounge?

...He says no one took minutes at department meetings, so there was no record of what decisions were made and people sometimes forgot. The decisions themselves were determined in a haphazard way — sometimes by vote, sometimes not, and often by, as he writes, “weak consensus.”

...As chair he’d been embroiled in so much pointless conflict, but this one, over a course he wanted to teach, was something he actually cared about. He told Gray he was tired of being bullied and wanted to display intellectual bravery. He thought that was important, particularly at Pomona, where a Gallup poll had found that 63 percent of surveyed professors agreed that the campus climate prevented people from saying things they believed because others might find them offensive. “The result of self-censorship is academic dishonesty,” Kunin would write in a lengthy statement to the dean, “and the only cure for self-censorship is not to do it.”...

From: https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-a-department-self-destructs

Just four in 10 black early career scholars would report bullying

 “Insidious” unconscious bias in universities is a greater challenge to the career prospects of black academics than the need for more immediate income, according to a new study.

Workplace environments meant that fewer than four in 10 (38 per cent) of black early career academics say they would feel comfortable reporting bullying or harassment, the survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) finds. 

This was having an effect on career paths, with 81 per cent of the nearly 100 academics surveyed agreeing that they faced particular challenges as a black academic – and just 10 per cent disagreeing.

Unconscious bias is identified as a challenge to progression in an academic career, with half of participants (54 per cent) saying it was the most significant factor, followed by lacking a community of people like them (52 per cent). These issues were thought to be more of a hindrance to their careers than the need for immediate income (48 per cent).

Becca Franssen, lead author and partner in education and research at executive search firm GatenbySanderson, told Times Higher Education that the findings were “unsurprising and still worrying”.

Dr Franssen said unconscious bias training – routinely offered to staff by their universities – did not address systems, processes and criteria that are “inherently biased”, and neglects one of the most commonly cited issues in the survey: that black academics feel barred from conversations about progression...

From: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/just-four-10-black-early-career-scholars-would-report-bullying

The biggest threat to an organisation's reputation...

 

A department’s culture...

"...A department’s culture is an unwritten, unspoken, but strongly felt worldview, a system of values and cognitions that determines how things get interpreted, what decisions are made, and what the quality of actions taken will be. This culture is distinct, separate, and bigger than individuals in the department because those who have been around for some time have been conditioned by the culture...”

Sodowsky, G. R. (2008). Getting along with colleagues. In K. D. Hostetler, R. M. Sawyer, & K. W. Prichard (Eds.), The art and politics of college teaching (2nd ed., pp. 171–177). New York: Peter Lang.

Fewer leaders, more leadership

 ...Much of the complaint levelled at university leaders stems from common (and often hyperbolic) assessments of their excessive remuneration; their lack of moral authority, ethical integrity, compassion, empathy, and care for others; their non-consultative crisis-management model of governance; and their appropriation of universities as personal legacy and vanity projects. They are also associated with the normalisation of exploitative and precarious labour practices; an epidemic of staff bullying, harassment, and discrimination (habitually by managers they are seen to protect); and the perpetuation of structural inequalities within universities. As if such accusations were not enough, they are also blamed for indecision and apathy not only in the face of government aggression and policy hostility, but also in defending the value proposition of the university as a public good and in responding to challenges of digital disruption and financial vulnerability. When viewed as absentee landlords, the contribution of university leaders, in respect of substantive leadership, is made further hard to ascertain or confirm.
 
However, if leadership is found wanting within universities, it is not just among those in positions of apex authority. The problem is more diffuse and deep-rooted. Notwithstanding, it has culminated in a blame game and villainisation of university leaders that oversimplifies and fails to redress a systemic failure of leadership within universities; the reasons for which are polymorphous...

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducation/2024/05/23/fewer-leaders-more-leadership/

Shrouded in secrecy: how science is harmed by the bullying and harassment rumour mill

 

"...Academia continues to struggle with bullying and harassment, despite social protest movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter drawing attention to it. According to Nature’s 2021 global salary and job satisfaction survey, 27% of the 3,200 self-selecting respondents said they had observed or experienced discrimination, bullying or harassment in their present position, up from 21% in 2018. In Nature’s 2022 graduate student survey, 18% said that they had personally experienced bullying, down from 21% in 2019. And in last year’s survey of postdoctoral researchers, 25% reported experiencing discrimination and harassment.

These behaviours create unsafe spaces in academia — particularly for women and minority groups — that reinforce inequalities1, drive researchers out of academia and can even put people at risk of physical harm2.

Because misconduct investigations are usually shrouded in secrecy, colleagues are often left to base their responses on rumours and hearsay, and unsure how to interact with an accused peer.

There are also several good reasons for closed investigations, including various competing interests around privacy and due process, many of them employment-law protections. Furthermore, survivors of harassment might not want their cases publicized, and those accused might want to defend their case without being tried in the court of public opinion first.

“Harassment is actually not an individual issue,” says Anna Bull, who is based in York, UK, and is the director of research at the 1752 Group, a UK organization that studies and advocates against sexual misconduct. “It is a community issue.”

...There are no definitive statistics on either the prevalence or the extent of confirmed findings of harassment and discrimination in academia. But, in a 2018 report that summarized studies on sexual harassment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine estimated that more than half of female faculty members and staff have encountered or experienced sexual harassment. In a 2022 survey of more than 4,000 self-selected early- and mid-career researchers in Brazil, 47% of women had experienced harassment at work. Only a small fraction of reported incidents will result in formal disciplinary action. Of those that result in a finding of misconduct, an even smaller number will be made public.

...Total transparency about bullying and harassment cases can also be problematic, because many survivors might not want to disclose what happened to them, says Mark Dean, chief executive of Enmasse, a workplace behaviour-change consultancy company in Melbourne, Australia.

“There’s a reasonable chance that an unwanted announcement will further traumatize an individual,” he says, adding that respecting a survivor’s wishes is fundamental, and should inform any action. The complainant might want to put the matter behind them or they might fear other forms of career-damaging retaliation. Although many colleagues might guess who the complainant is after a suspected harasser leaves, this can be less traumatic than a public announcement, Dean says..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00986-w