Academic Parity Newsletter
May & June 2024
Greetings allies and members.
This issue of our newsletter includes a selection of the latest research, media and activities related to the issue of academic bullying and harassment. We note two important themes in this issue: first the enduring focus on bullying as systemic and second the growing awareness of, and media attention to, the problem of bullying in the workplace generally and in academia specifically.
As always, stay tuned for more information on our latest activities and thank you for your interest in and support for Academic Parity. A special thank you to those of you who have kindly sent relevant research and articles our way!
In the Research and Literature
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A bullying problem reveals an astronomy and geophysics community in crisis (Nature Comment, May 2024). This comment piece by O’Brien et al, discusses a recent survey of astronomy and geophysics professionals revealing prevalent bullying and harassment in the sector with members of marginalized communities suffering most significantly. The authors assert that the report “serves as a wake-up call” and that the community has a social and moral responsibility to “overhaul our policies so that more robust procedures are in place to protect our colleagues, especially those who have had to overcome so many more barriers to join us in the first place”.
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“In medicine, the morally unthinkable too easily comes to seem normal” (The New York Times, May 2024). This piece is adapted from an essay in Dr. Carl Elliot’s forthcoming book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice, in which the author explores the systemic and cultural explanations that may help to explain lapses of ethical judgment in medicine. Using the recent decision by the US Department of Health and Human Services to require “written informed consent for pelvic exams and other intimate procedures performed under anesthesia” Elliot asserts that the normalization of discomfort and suspension of “natural emotional reactions” at the heart of medical training and practice may have the side effect of normalizing unthinkable practices so much so that medical providers fail to recognize the acts as having a moral valence (what he calls moral perception).
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Academic bullying – one of many stories (Tieteentekijat, April 2024). In this post, Vice President of the Board of the Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers and Senior Researcher at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, Sanni Tiitinen discusses the bullying experience of an international researcher who requested that she write about his case of bullying in the hopes that it might help others. Tiitinen highlights the structural characteristics of academic work that foster bullying (competition, precarity), provides a link to actions targets can take, and encourages targets to get help early and to not forget the value of union help.
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We owe international students a duty of care, not criticism (University World News, April, 2024). In this piece, Dr. Fay Patel addresses the current crises affecting international education by questioning the legacies and logics of “exploitative internationalisation” that underpin international education and asserting that “international higher education institutions (public and private) must adopt a deep-level reflective stance to review their own behaviours, including their inability to embrace racial and social justice perspectives and must take responsibility and become accountable for the negative impact their environments have on international students”.
In the News and Media
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The four-step playbook the NHS uses to break whistleblowers (The Telegraph, May 2024). In this article, Janet Eastham and Gordon Rayner detail the findings of a telegraph investigation that found so many similarities in the way different NHS trusts and clinics dealt with whistleblowers that many doctors assert that the problem can only be understood as systemic. They list the following recurring steps: (1) Investigate the whistleblower, (2) bully and intimidate, (3) weaponsize general medical council, (4) demotion, disciplinary action, dismissal.
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Bullies face a time of reckoning (Financial Times, May 2024). In this article, Isabel Berwick notes the (long overdue) attention to bullying which she asserts “seems to be popping up all over, including in my inbox and on LinkedIn” Berwick attributes some of the attention to the upcoming book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts (Harper Collins, forthcoming 2025) by social psychologist Amy Cuddy. In this post Berwick highlights the fundamental fact that bullying takes a group, asserting, “it is here — by working on disrupting the bullying playbook and asking bystanders to act — that the new dimension of bullying analysis and prevention lies”.
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How to spot a bully in the workplace (Fixable podcast, April 2024). In this two-part episode, hosts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss interview author Amy Cuddy about her forthcoming book addressing the dynamics of workplace bullying. Of note is Cuddy’s definition of bullying: “Bullying is a profound, intentional, targeted, serial and escalating attack on a person’s social and professional integrity and viability that’s carried out by multiple people.”
This and That
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The hybrid Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing is scheduled for Monday to Wednesday, July 22-24, 2024, at Niagara University, Niagara Falls, in New York, USA. Fee and submission details can be found here.
Voices from the Community
Voices from the Community is a space where members of our community share their stories and experiences of academic bullying. Please let us know if you have an experience you would like to share by contacting our newsletter editor at avogelaar@paritymovement.org. Contributions are anonymized but not fact-checked and should be 250 words or less.
“I am a European biomedical researcher on a renewable 5 year fixed-term contract. I have been a victim of inappropriate, hostile, disrespectful and humiliating behavior by my former supervisor, full professor and vice-head of the institute, repeatedly from August 2022 to June 2023. Part of the bullying involved not informing me of a funding decision we received for a common project that she had dropped earlier, and then failing to provide authenticable information about the amount funded. Later, she destroyed the project by organizing the leak of project-related know-how to another university.
I have initiated two procedures: one for workplace bullying and another for violation of research integrity. Both have been handled in an unfair way by the institution, where my former supervisor’s dishonest statements, lies, and presumably falsified documents were never questioned or fact-checked, while the supporting evidence I was bringing was systematically ignored. Institutional communication about the case has been so biased that talking to me is now perceived by most colleagues as conspiring with the Joker. The bullying procedure ended with a Dean’s decision that there had been no inappropriate behavior. Yet, negotiations must have taken place behind the scenes because my former supervisor temporarily resigned from her vice-head position. The research integrity procedure led to a preliminary inquiry report concluding that my former supervisor did not violate good research practices. When I debunked, point-by-point, the report using 50 pieces of supporting evidence, they reacted by inviting me to a pre-dismissal interview. The research integrity procedure ended with the Rector’s official statement that my former supervisor “has not committed a violation of good scientific practice”, and also blaming me for providing too much evidence.
My contract ends soon and the head of department does not want to support my external funding applications or renew my contract, regardless of my (great) professional performance. Rather, he shamelessly justifies this decision as “they are looking for someone for this group, for this society”. Apparently, in their upside-down worldview, refusing to be a victim is “antisocial”. It is incredible to witness such a distortion of victim and offender.
Throughout this experience, I have learned one lesson. When confronted with the evidence of bullying, my hierarchy was “facing a tiger”, the tiger being the hostile, disrespectful, childish, and … thoughtless behavior of my former supervisor. A rational mind facing a tiger would either run away, fight the tiger, or don’t move hoping to remain unnoticed. According to my hierarchy, there is another option: just buttress that there is no tiger. In their upside-down worldview, Truth is subjective; Truth is volatile.”
Until the next issue, wishing you well,
Dr. Alison E. Vogelaar
Newsletter Editor