Counteracting deliberate ignorance of academic bullying and harassment

Understanding ignorance
Psychological motives for deliberate ignorance can depend on the bystander’s status relative to the perpetrator. Strategic motives may be more pronounced in relationships with power asymmetries. For example, junior scientists may anticipate being unfavorably treated by a higher ranked perpetrator and remain deliberately ignorant to protect themselves. Emotion regulation may be a more significant motive when bystanders and perpetrators share a similar rank (e.g., a peer-to-peer relationship between two tenured professors). Witnessing a peer’s unethical behavior can be distressing, and deliberate ignorance can help bystanders to regulate their fear of confrontation with a peer, their guilt for not helping a target, or both.

Perpetrators may choose to ignore the distressing and even traumatizing effects of their behavior on targets in an attempt to escape social or legal accountability. In turn, this can preserve their power and status in academic hierarchies and help them maintain a positive self-image...

The bystander effect has been demonstrated in many studies: The mere presence of bystanders in critical situations can reduce an individual’s probability of helping. Classic explanations are twofold. First, the more people are present, the lower the experienced sense of personal responsibility. Responsibility diffuses. Second, almost all group members can privately reject a norm to help and, at the same time, believe that almost everyone else accepts it. Ignorance can be pluralistic. Recent research suggests that bystander ignorance may also be deliberate, with people having various psychological motives for turning a blind eye to misconduct. For example, consciously choosing not to seek information—one form of deliberate ignorance—can be a way of regulating one’s emotions and deflecting responsibility. Deliberate ignorance can help to avoid distress and the anticipated guilt for not getting involved. Consciously choosing not to act on relevant information—a second form of deliberate ignorance—may be used as a strategic device to eschew responsibility and to avoid possible harm to oneself...

From https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-023-00044-7

Understanding and Preventing Faculty-on-Faculty Bullying

 

...To some degree globally, the academic profession has moved from a well-defined core of elite scholars to a more peripheral faculty who have for university financial concerns penetrated that gradually declining, highly guarded, elite core... 

... As a result, the academic profession sacrifices some autonomy and academic freedom as university leadership becomes more capitalistic, corporatized, and market driven. A ccording to the labor process theory, incivility and bullying can occur as a result of this market-driven, capitalistic worker relationship...

... ivory towers could not possibly be thought of as harboring toxic work climates with menacing bullies and uncivil tormentors. Furthermore, faculty may no longer have that sense of fit they felt when hired into their academic department. As a result, stress arises. So does uncertainty. New negative behaviors and dormant ones begin to surface in the work setting. Often these shifts become the negative response to unsettling change that manifests itself in incivility and bullying...

... In hiring a new faculty member, Lang recalled, “we cast our votes for either a department that would continue to replicate its current values or one that would head in a new direction, the endpoint of which was not entirely clear” (p. 96). Being the minority supporter for a junior colleague placed Lang in jeopardy among senior faculty majority voters. His ethical beliefs and convictions might interfere with his tenure vote in a few years. As his academic year progressed, he assessed that it at least went well for him in his classroom while he still ruminated over the outcome of his search committee service. Meanwhile, Lang tried to make sense of the “cross- and undercurrents of department intrigue and just to try to take everything at face value” and feared being sucked “back into the vicious cycle of departmental politics”...

...Lang concluded that his best offense in the department entailed proceeding “with my head down, my mouth shut, and my eyes and ears wide open”... In any institution, and the university is no exception, much is veiled purposefully and much operates in the shadows from the consumers who study there, from the taxpayers who indirectly fund the enterprise, and the faculty, staff, and administration who choose not to peek under the veil...

From Understanding and Preventing Faculty-on-Faculty Bullying 

Dying to Be Heard?

Leah P. Hollis writes of the need to address workplace bullying after the tragic death of Antoinette Candia-Bailey.

"Many in the higher education community are mourning the untimely loss of a colleague, Antoinette (Bonnie) Candia-Bailey. The former vice president of student affairs at Lincoln University, in Missouri, was only 49 when she died by suicide. In emails sent before she died, she accused the president of Lincoln, a historically Black university, of bullying and harassing her, causing her mental harm.

Black women, in particular, note yet another woman of color, by her account, cut down by her organization, and they are startled that her employer, an HBCU, seemingly allowed this to occur. Unfortunately, scholars of workplace bullying are not surprised because time and again in our research respondents comment that they have considered suicide to escape a bully.

I have been studying workplace bullying for more than a decade. Between 58 and 62 percent of higher education employees face workplace bullying. The percentages are higher for women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. These vulnerable populations often do not have the power to resist organizational aggression and betrayal.

Though several states (California, Maryland, Minnesota, Tennessee and Utah) have some type of legislation or policy in place to prohibit workplace bullying, these are penned to protect the powerful employer; only Puerto Rico has strong workplace bullying protections in place. Workplace bullying is still to a large extent legal in the U.S., where under federal laws harassment must be tied to protected class status (race, gender, age, ethnicity, national origin, etc.) for an employee to take independent legal action.

Some organizations dismiss bullying as stemming from personality conflicts or difficult employees. However, workplace bullying is based on a power differential; when someone abuses the power they have over another, that abuse of power leads to emotional and psychological damage for the target. As we reflect on higher education, we know the bastions of power lie in the presidents’, provosts’ and deans’ offices. A close look at American Council on Education data on the college presidency reveals that such powerful positions are held primarily by white men. The power structures in higher education still fall along racial and gendered lines.

While it was once considered a universal, colorblind phenomenon, workplace bullying data confirm that race and gender matter and are statistically significant factors in the higher education workplace when it comes to bullying. Yet across many colleges and universities there appears to be widespread apathy about this problem. In a recent study of more than 200 human resources personnel at four-year institutions, more than 61 percent stated they didn’t know about workplace bullying training and that workplace bullying just isn’t a priority at their institution.

I fear what we are witnessing at Lincoln University may amount to an organizational betrayal that cost a vice president her life. In reviewing the emails, one can see that Candia-Bailey, a 1998 graduate of Lincoln who took the vice president of student affairs job just last spring, submitted complaints about President John Moseley to the institution’s board and to human resources and sought accommodations for “severe depression and anxiety” under the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act. After receiving a negative performance evaluation this past fall, Candia-Bailey asked for a specific performance plan, but she claimed Moseley sidestepped the request. She received notice of termination Jan. 3 and was warned that if she did not vacate her campus apartment by the time her firing went into effect, in February, campus police “will promptly remove you and your possessions from the apartment.” I imagine her being stunned and appalled, feeling betrayed by her own alma mater. 

If one did not think a Black woman could be abused at an HBCU, reflect on a recent study I conducted in which Black women from HBCUs made up 62 percent of the sample. Over all, the study revealed poor treatment and the abuse they faced while trying to achieve tenure. Between unequal-pay issues, overloaded course assignments and outsize service requirements, Black women are still treated like second-class citizens in the academy..."

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/01/22/tragedy-workplace-bullying-opinion

 

Academic bullying: Desperate for data and solutions

 

Q: What is the scope of the problem?

A: We don't have robust and comprehensive data in this field, because the targets of bullying don't feel safe talking about it. There is a fear of retaliation, job loss, visa cancellation, or mobbing and ganging-up behaviors, which results in a code of silence. One survey found that the rate of people who are bullied in academia and report it is less than 2%. One leading researcher on academic bullying pulled together a meta-analysis of studies and found that the prevalence of academic bullying is roughly more than 30% across the globe. The Max Planck Institutes in Europe conducted a survey of more than 9,000 of their employees and reported in 2019 that 10% had experienced bullying in the past year. To me, the fact that Max Planck proudly published that figure means that 10% is a very low number for bullying across academia. Personally, I think the rate is much higher and is probably highly dependent on the type of institution. At highly ranked institutions, where competition for joining labs is high and where lab workers can easily be replaced by another candidate, I would guess the incidence is even higher.

Q: Why do you think bullying thrives in the academic environment?

A: There are several reasons for it, but in my opinion, we have no regulations or laws aimed at preventing academic bullying, and this is why institutions feel they cannot do anything about it. At every institution where I have worked, I have had to take mandatory sexual harassment training, but there has never been a single institution where there was training on how to handle bullying, how to report it, or what to do if you witness it. Typical university general harassment policies cover only people in protected classes from being discriminated against due to aspects such as their ethnicity, gender, age, and religion. There are no structures in place to address harassment that are based on an abuse of power by those ranked more highly in the university system—and especially by those who have already achieved tenure as professors. There's no Title IX–like office for bullying.

https://www.science.org/content/article/academic-bullying-desperate-data-and-solutions

Open and Closed Universities Redux

Here we complement the previous posting with a study of the 10 worst performing Non-Russell Group Universities.

Again, we give total number of complaints to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), as well as complaints per 1000 staff (using publicly available estimates of the total number of employees). These statistics are a proxy for the openness of the University. Fewer complaints to the ICO indicate greater propensity to disclose data, as well as better staff-management relations.

We recollect that the worst performing Russell Group university was Oxford with 99 complaints. When normalised to total employees, this is ~ 6.7 complaints per 1000 staff.

The Non-Russell Group has produced six universities worse than Oxford. The performance by St Mary’s University, Twickenham is extraordinary with 70 complaints amongst barely 1100 employees. When normalised by head count, this is by some way the worst performance of any university in the UK. The 21 Group would be interested to hear of any explanation.

The next five universities — London Metropolitan, East London, Birkbeck College, Brunel and Northampton — all generate more complaints to the ICO per 1000 staff than Oxford. This suggest a closed culture, desultory management and poor employee engagement.

We recollect that the ICO is the last resort for Freedom of Information or data protection complaints. Consensual and open universities should not be generating such large numbers of complaints.

So far, we have merely looked at total number of complaints (whether or not the complaints were upheld). In the next posting, we will look at which Universities are failing to comply with the recommendations of the ICO in the case of upheld complaints.

https://21percent.org/?p=854

Inside Claudine Gay’s resignation and the hyper scrutiny haunting Black women in higher ed

 

On Jan. 2, former Harvard University president Claudine Gay resigned from her position. She was the second woman and first person of color to serve as president in the university’s 386-year history. People called for her resignation due to accusations of plagiarism and anti-semitism.

Some individuals like conservative activist Christopher F. Rufocelebrated Gay’s resignation online. “This is the beginning of the end for DEI in America’s institutions. We will expose you. We will outmaneuver you. And we will not stop fighting until we have restored colorblind equality in our great nation,” Rufo said in a Jan. 2 tweet.

However, Black women in higher education like racial, social and gender justice educator Ericka Hart, who was previously firedfrom Columbia University in 2020 for raising concerns about a student’s comments, are calling out the discrimination and racism behind the pressures Gay had to endure.

“We (Black and non Black people of color) have to really sit with how these institutions do not give two s**** about us and will see us out expeditiously if we do not follow their white supremacist agenda,” Hart said in a Jan. 4 Instagram post. Other Black female administrators and professors in higher education as well are now posting and speaking about the extreme pressures they have also faced in these positions compared to their white counterparts.

For Cal Poly Pomona professor and former provost Dr. Jennifer Brown, Gay’s resignation made them deeply saddened about the struggles she knows she has gone through. “I really have no words to describe how it feels to get to a certain point in your career and to have it be so short lived, due to circumstances outside of your control. I could just say that I know firsthand when you are targeted for something the impact it has on your mental health or on your physical health,” Dr. Brown said.

These struggles and racial disparities in higher education can also be seen when looking at the statistics of tenure. A 2021 data setfrom The U.S. Department of Education found that tenured Black women only made up 2.8% of tenured faculty at U.S. universities.

“Black women experience institutional barriers at every stage of the academic process, starting with admission into graduate programs, yielding a small pool of credentialed graduates available for tenure-track faculty positions. Then the tenure process further culls the herd,” Boston University Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Malika Jeffries-ELsaid in a 2021 BU Today article...

From: https://www.nj.com/reckon/2024/01/black-brilliant-broken-inside-claudine-gays-resignation-and-the-double-standards-haunting-black-women-in-higher-ed.html

Fifth of UK research staff ‘bullied in past two years’...

One in five research staff in UK universities have faced bullying or harassment in the past two years, a major survey has found.

According to the latest annual Culture, Employment and Development of Academic Researchers Survey (Cedars), which collected responses from 9,351 researchers from 66 institutions, some 21 per cent of respondents said they had been bullied or harassed recently – a level that rose to 24 per cent among female researchers who identified as mid-career or senior staff, compared with 18 per cent for their male counterparts.

Women are also less likely to report incidents of bullying or harassment, with 59 per cent saying they would feel comfortable doing so compared with 70 per cent of men, according to the survey carried out by Vitae, part of the Careers Research & Advisory Centre (Crac).

Female staff are less likely to trust the investigatory process regarding bullying, with 45 per cent stating they did not trust or did not know whether to trust formal procedures on bullying compared with 37 per cent of men.

The publication of the Cedars data on 7 September comes amid increased discussion about the importance of having a healthy research culture in UK universities, with Research England and the other funding councils for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland intending to increase the weighting of research environment in the REF 2028 to the same level as impact – 25 per cent.

With proposals to streamline how research environment is assessed also under consultation, some have suggested the Cedars survey data or its approach to assessing research culture could even be used to compare different institutions for the purposes of awarding some £2 billion annually in block grant research funding. 

According to the latest data from Cedars, there is considerable scepticism about the fairness and transparency of hiring and promotion of research staff, with just 33 per cent of early-career researchers agreeing that promotions at their institution were made on merit. For those who identified as mid-career or senior researchers, that proportion rose to 44 per cent.

Only about half of research staff (48 per cent) said they felt valued for their contributions to their institutions, with even higher levels of established researchers saying they were not valued for peer review (73 per cent) or management duties (56 per cent). About a third (30 per cent) said they did not feel valued for their teaching.

On research integrity, 69 per cent of respondents said they believed their institutions promoted the highest level of research integrity, and less than 10 per cent said they felt pressurised into compromising research standards or integrity. Around two-thirds said they felt comfortable reporting incidents of misconduct, with female staff feeling less comfortable than male staff at all career levels.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/fifth-uk-research-staff-bullied-past-two-years

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UNESCO: Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel

• Institutional accountability

(h) ensuring that higher education personnel are not impeded in their work in the classroom or in their research capacity by violence, intimidation or harassment;

(k) the creation, through the collegial process and/or through negotiation with organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel, consistent with the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech, of statements or codes of ethics to guide higher education personnel in their teaching, scholarship, research and extension work;

• Rights and freedoms of higher-education teaching personnel

26. Higher-education teaching personnel, like all other groups and individuals, should enjoy those internationally recognized civil, political, social and cultural rights applicable to all citizens. Therefore, all higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression, assembly and association as well as the right to liberty and security of the person and liberty of movement. They should not be hindered or impeded in exercising their civil rights as citizens, including the right to contribute to social change through freely expressing their opinion of state policies and of policies affecting higher education. They should not suffer any penalties simply because of the exercise of such rights. Higher-education teaching personnel should not be subject to arbitrary arrest or detention, nor to torture, nor to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In cases of gross violation of their rights, higher-education teaching personnel should have the right to appeal to the relevant national, regional or international bodies such as the agencies of the United Nations, and organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel should extend full support in such cases.

28. Higher-education teaching personnel have the right to teach without any interference, subject to accepted professional principles including professional responsibility and intellectual rigour with regard to standards and methods of teaching. Higher-education teaching personnel should not be forced to instruct against their own best knowledge and conscience or be forced to use curricula and methods contrary to national and international human rights standards. Higher education teaching personnel should play a significant role in determining the curriculum.

29. Higher-education teaching personnel have a right to carry out research work without any interference, or any suppression, in accordance with their professional responsibility and subject to nationally and internationally recognized professional principles of intellectual rigour, scientific inquiry and research ethics. They should also have the right to publish and communicate the conclusions of the research of which they are authors or co-authors, as stated in paragraph 12 of this Recommendation.

30. Higher-education teaching personnel have a right to undertake professional activities outside of their employment, particularly those that enhance their professional skills or allow for the application of knowledge to the problems of the community, provided such activities do not interfere with their primary commitments to their home institutions in accordance with institutional policies and regulations or national laws and practice where they exist.

• Self-governance and collegiality

31. Higher-education teaching personnel should have the right and opportunity, without discrimination of any kind, according to their abilities, to take part in the governing bodies and to criticize the functioning of higher education institutions, including their own, while respecting the right of other sections of the academic community to participate, and they should also have the right to elect a majority of representatives to academic bodies within the higher education institution.

32. The principles of collegiality include academic freedom, shared responsibility, the policy of participation of all concerned in internal decision making structures and practices, and the development of consultative mechanisms. Collegial decision-making should encompass decisions regarding the administration and determination of policies of higher education, curricula, research, extension work, the allocation of resources and other related activities, in order to improve academic excellence and quality for the benefit of society at large.

• Discipline and dismissal

48. No member of the academic community should be subject to discipline, including dismissal, except for just and sufficient cause demonstrable before an independent third-party hearing of peers, and/or before an impartial body such as arbitrators or the courts.

49. All members of higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy equitable safeguards at each stage of any disciplinary procedure, including dismissal, in accordance with the international standards set out in the appendix.

50. Dismissal as a disciplinary measure should only be for just and sufficient cause related to professional conduct, for example: persistent neglect of duties, gross incompetence, fabrication or falsification of research results, serious financial irregularities, sexual or other misconduct with students, colleagues, or other members of the academic community or serious threats thereof, or corruption of the educational process such as by falsifying grades, diplomas or degrees in return for money, sexual or other favours or by demanding sexual, financial or other material favours from subordinate employees or colleagues in return for continuing employment.

51. Individuals should have the right to appeal against the decision to dismiss them before independent, external bodies such as arbitrators or the courts, with final and binding powers...

From: https://en.unesco.org/about-us/legal-affairs/recommendation-concerning-status-higher-education-teaching-personnel

The fight to end bullying in academia: UK researchers launch nationwide campaign

A group of academics and other staff members at several UK universities have launched an independent initiative to combat bullying and harassment in higher education. One of the group’s goals is to advocate for the establishment of an independent ombudsperson to which people who have been bullied can turn if they feel that their institution does not deal with a complaint adequately.

“We’ve become increasingly concerned about the prevalence of bullying in UK universities, and the fact that most universities seem to accept a very high level of bullying,” says Wyn Evans, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a leader of the group. It is called the 21 Group, after the reported 21% of staff members at Cambridge who described experiencing bullying or harassment in a 2018 survey.

Surveys of various UK university departments and academic disciplines indicate that roughly 30–40% of students, scholars and other members of staff experience bullying or harassment by someone in their department or field, Evans says. Bullying can have pernicious and long-lasting effects on a person’s work and mental health.

The 21 Group, which launched on 1 November, has two initial goals. One is to gather broader data on bullying at UK universities by asking people to collect and share information on the number of bullying complaints received, and investigations done, by their institutions. The second is to advocate for an independent ombudsperson’s office to be set up for the UK higher-education system, giving people someone to turn to if institutions handle complaints about bullying badly. Such a body exists for undergraduate students — the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education — but not for others within the university system.

Internal investigations by universities often exonerate the subject of the complaint, who might be a senior professor or other person in a position of power, says Evans. “Far too many UK universities prioritize limiting reputational damage to the institution over doing the right thing for their staff and students.”

More info at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03418-3