About

WHO WE ARE

The Academic Parity Movement is a non-profit organization born out of a need for justice, and the protection of students’, postdocs’, and early career academics’ (including junior faculties) most basic human rights within academic institutions.

We are a group of people from all different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences fighting to end academic discrimination, violence, and bullying with the help of legal professionals, psychologists, researchers and our legislators.

The Academic Parity Movement is represented by K&L Gates LLP (https://www.klgates.com/).

OUR GOALS

Provide a legal pathway for students to pursue their rights following incidents of discrimination, violence, or bullying

Compile data into a comprehensive base for further research

Keep institutions accountable for ensuring students have safe environments in which to study and grow

Parity aims to uproot academic bullying, discrimination and violence by empowering students, postdocs, and early career academics (including junior faculties) themselves with the tools to defend their most basic rights. Historically, minorities such as women, people of color, and immigrants have been disproportionately devastated by the magnified societal prejudices and pressures that are only exacerbated in the lab environment. Together we must take a stand to make the academic world an equitable, accepting, and safe environment.

MEET OUR TEAM

Morteza Mahmoudi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Radiology and Precision Health Program at Michigan State University (MSU). Prior to coming to MSU, he was an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He was a target of academic bullying. His specific research interests include, nanomedicine and regenererative medicine for prevention and treatment of life-threatening conditions. He is among the 2018 most highly cited researchers as reported by Clarivate Analytics.

He and Saya founded the Academic Parity Movement to ensure that no researcher would suffer from violence, discrimination, or academic bullying without sufficient support.

Saya Ameli Hajebi is an artist, graphic designer, and environmental activist. She is currently a national Spokesperson, and local media lead for the Sunrise Movement. She has interviewed with The Guardian, Al Jazeera, BBC, and Buzzfeed News to raise awareness about the climate crisis and represent the Sunrise Movement.

She hopes to incorporate activism and social change in academia, and make a safe learning environment for all with the Academic Parity Movement.

Sherry Moss, PhD, is currently Professor of Organizational Studies in the School of Business at Wake Forest University. Her research interests include leadership, feedback, abusive supervision, multiple job holding, authenticity and meaningful work. She has also served as the Director of the Full Time MBA Program at Wake Forest and as the Area Chair for the Management Faculty.

Her research has been published in prestigious academic journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Executive, and Nature. Her most impactful research has been about abusive supervision (bully bosses).

OUR INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATIVES & ADVISORY BOARD

Jennifer Swann, PhD, has been a professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA for over 25 years. While studying the neurobiology of sex differences she has actively pursued roles within and without higher education that promote equity and inclusion. For example, she has campaigned for inclusion at the university for students, faculty and staff as the founding chair of the Student Diversity Task Force, the Council for Equity and Community and Lehigh’s Faculty and Staff of Color Network. And as the inaugural Director for Student Success in Lehigh University’s College of Arts and Sciences, she has been instrumental in revamping advising for first-year, low income and first-generation students. Professor Swann currently serves on Lehigh Faculty senate where she is working to create a faculty code of ethics and more equitable positions for non-tenured faculty.

Professor Swann is also an active member of her community promoting social justice through participation in End Mass Incarceration, the Allentown Environmental Advisory Council, the Coalition for Appropriate Transportation and the NAACP. She has served on professional development committees for the Society for Neuroscience and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. Her work includes a number of advisory boards – including the Capstone Institute at Howard University, the Neuroscience program at Delaware State, the Ascend program at Morgan State and the Penn State Eberly School of Science. Professor Swann is an accomplished neuroscientist has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, abstracts, book chapters and proceedings in the neurosciences, endocrinology and circadian rhythms.

Leah P. Hollis, EdD, is a noted national expert on workplace bullying and associate professor at Morgan State University. Her most recent book, The coercive community college; Bullying and its costly impact on the mission to serve underrepresented populations, which was released by Emerald publications in 2016 is an extension of her work on bullying in higher education. Other notable work includes, Bully in the Ivory Tower: How Aggression and Incivility Erode American Higher Education is based on independent research on 175 colleges and universities. Findings reveal that workplace bullying occurs at an even higher rate in higher education. She has spoken nationally and internationally to help over 200 schools address incivility on campus. She earned her Doctorate of Education from Boston University, as a Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellow. She is the president and founder of her own consultant group Patricia Berkly LLC, a healthy workplace advocate at http://www.diversitytrainingconsultants.com. Her electronic portfolio is at https://morgan.academia.edu/LeahHollis/Papers.

Loraleigh Keashly, PhD, is a Professor, Associate Dean (Curricular and Student Affairs), and Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Communication, College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, Wayne State University, Detroit. Her research and consulting focus on quality of work relationships particularly the amelioration of uncivil, hostile and bullying behaviors. She has a particular interest in developing bystander efficacy to address negative work relationships and build constructive work relationships. Most recently, she has focused her attention on problematic behaviors in academic environments and works with universities on these issues.

Pooya Sareh, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Creative Design Engineering Lab (Cdel) at the University of Liverpool, UK. Prior to these current appointments, he was Course Leader and Lecturer of Engineering Design in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London (2016-18), and a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art. He graduated from Cambridge University with a PhD in Engineering (Structural Mechanics) in 2014, during which he also attended the Florence Academy of Art, Italy. Subsequently, he joined the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London as a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Robotics. He holds BSc (First Class Hons.) and MSc (Distinction) degrees in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, and the University of Sheffield, UK, respectively.

He has a special interest in investigating cases of bullying, mobbing, and discrimination in academic environments.

Timothy David Noakes, MD DSc, best known for his work in sports science and for his support of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, is a South African scientist and emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town in the division of Excercise Science and Sports Medicine. He is also a member of the National Research Foundation (South Africa), and listed as one of their highest-rated members.

His research in sports science has lead to the publication books including, The Real Meal Revolution and Lore of Nutrition: Challenging Conventional Dietary Beliefs.

Susanne Täuber, PhD, is Rosalind Franklin Fellow and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen (Netherlands). She graduated from Friedrich-Schiller University Jena (Germany) with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology. She studies the effects of organizational and societal change on polarization and social cohesion, particularly when change concerns moral norms and values.

Dr. Täuber is interested in the dynamics that undermine the effectiveness of diversity initiatives and anti-harassment policy. She is a member of the Dutch national advisory committee on diversity in higher education and research. Her advocacy for culture change in academia has been published for instance in Women’s Higher Education Network, Nature and The Lancet.

Saman Hosseinpour, PhD, is the surfaces and interfaces group leader at the Institute of Particle Technology at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany). He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in material science and engineering in Iran and later was promoted as a faculty member of the Department of Material Science at Azad University. After finishing his Ph.D. at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH-Sweden) he moved to Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP-Germany) as a postdoc.

He has always been keen on supporting young researchers against academic bullying and actively works toward increasing the awareness regarding scientific and personal misconduct in academia.

Nafisa M. Jadavji, PhD, is a Neuroscientist. She is an Assistant Professor at Midwestern University (US) and Research Professor at Carleton University (Canada). In 2012, she completed her doctoral training at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. Her laboratory investigates how the brain responds to different biological processes throughout the lifespan.

Dr. Jadavji has been interested in the prevalence and consqeuences of academic bullying. She lead the eLife Ambassador Anti-bullying initiative in 2019 to 2020, which accomplished creating a bullying awareness video as well as writing a blog post on what academic bullying looks like. These resources are available on GitHub, https://github.com/Academic-Anti-Bullying/Academic-Anti-Bullying-Blog

Jillian Richmond, PhD, earned her undergraduate degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology from the Johns Hopkins University, and her doctoral degree in Pathology & Immunology from Boston University School of Medicine. She performed a postdoctoral fellowship in chemokine biology at Massachusetts General Hospital before moving to the Harris Lab at UMass to study chemokines in vitiligo, an autoimmune disease characterized by CD8+ T cell-mediated destruction of melanocytes. She has also studied formation of autoreactive resident memory T cells that make vitiligo refractory to treatment. Her laboratory now focuses on T cell migration and function in other autoimmune skin diseases including Cutaneous Lupus Erythematosus and Morphea.

Arianna Gianakos, DO, PhD, is currently a foot and ankle orthopedic surgery fellow at Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and will be completing her surgical training internationally as the first IONA and Sports Medicine International Travel Fellow. She is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam with her area of focus on Gender Studies & Gender Equity in Orthopaedic Surgery. Dr. Gianakos is one of the founding members of #SpeakUpOrtho where she is leading a SpeakUp Coalition Call to Action Initiative with leaders in various medical specialties across the country aiming to improve the culture of residency training to effect policy change. She is a physician advocate in Physician Just Equity providing peer-support to physicians who experience workplace conflicts, through education, research, empowerment and advocacy while facilitating institutional culture change. Dr. Gianakos is actively involved in leading several collaborative research projects regarding residency education and improving the medical work environment and has given numerous lectures on the topics of gender discrimination, bullying in medicine, and residency education. She has recently been awarded the first ever Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society Courage award for her work. She serves as a leader in mentorship programs including the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society Professional Development Committee, and the AOFAS Humanitarian Committee and is a member in both the Women in Orthopaedics Worldwide group and the International Orthopaedic Diversity Alliance.

WHO WE ARE

OUR GOALS

MEET OUR TEAM

OUR INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATIVES & ADVISORY BOARD

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