ACADEMIC PARITY MOVEMENT

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 want to extend our heartfelt thanks to each and every one of the speakers, panelists, participants and organizers of our 4th Annual Conference, “STEM the Bullying: Stakeholder Insights”. Recordings of the presentations and discussion can be found here. We hope that the conference was useful to the community and are eager to reflect and build upon the insights gained from this conference in our enduring commitment to the elimination of academic bullying and harassment in all its forms and guises. 

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

• “Shrouded in secrecy: how science is harmed by the bullying and harassment rumour mill” (Nature, Career Feature, April 2024). This article by Sarah Wild is part one of a two-part series exploring the community fallout from harassment and bullying misconduct that reflects upon the ripple effects of secrecy surrounding disciplinary processes. A forthcoming article will investigate how changes to institutional responses could benefit academia.

• “Instrumental social justice in higher education: Eight surveys for workplace bullying and social justice research” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Dr. Leah P. Hollis’s extensive book begins with an examination of the racialized nature of research methods in higher education inquiry and proceeds with eight concrete research case studies and aligning instruments as a “pathway to minimize statistics anxiety for social justice solutions”.

• “How sacked whistleblower Susanne Täuber’s career fared after she spoke out” (Nature, Career Column, March 2024). In this piece, Dr. Täuber details the on-going consequences of and insights related to her decision to challenge her university’s gender-equity policy. Ultimately she encourages readers to “trust their gut” when it comes to a toxic work environment and to “take [their] bright mind to a place where it will be valuable”.

• “Bullied in science: I quit my job and launched an advocacy non-profit” (Nature, Career Column, March 2024). In this piece, Dr. Mahmoudi explains how his experience of academic bullying at a former institution led him to co-found the Academic Parity Movement, a non-profit organization that aims to raise awareness, create community and empower targets.

• “How to stop ’passing the harasser’ urged to join information-sharing scheme” (Nature, news, March 2024). This piece by Sarah Wild describes a new campaign launched by the 1752 Group urging UK universities to join the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, a step they assert will make it more difficult for harassers to move to different universities without disclosing their misconduct findings.

• EP Academic Freedom Monitor, 2023 (Scientific Foresight Unit (STOA), European Parliamentary Research Service, 2023). This report presents the 2023 edition of the EP Academic Freedom Monitor, consisting of two studies and their joint key findings and proposed policy options. The study notes several areas of concern threatening academic freedom including direct attacks by political operatives or civil society actors and more indirect forms of interference including changes to institutional governance and a transition to more executive institutional leadership. 

• “Power and inaction: Why organizations fail to address workplace bullying” (International Journal of Workplace Health Management, 2020, 13(3)). This article from the archive by Hodgkins, et al notes the need for “a realistic assessment of the role of both individual and organisational power in the creation and maintenance of the problem” of bullying in workplaces and asserts that we need to move away from the futile practice of identifying “bullying” to an examination of the organizational cultures that permit abuses of power and the ill-treatment of workers. 

In the News and Media

• The professional destruction of a dual career couple at a preeminent European technical university (Epistimi, April 2024). This post by Professors Janet G. Hering and Patricia A. Maurice presents the recent farewell lecture delivered by ETH Prof. Simon Lilly as it exposes the backstory and controversy behind his wife Prof Marcella Carollo’s controversial dismissal from ETH in 2019.

• “From the playground to politics, it’s the bullies who rule. But it doesn’t have to be that way” (The Guardian, March 2024). In this piece, writer and columnist George Monbiot asserts that the prominence of, and prosperity associated with, bullying behaviors on the playground, in politics, and the workplace is an outcome of the “zero-sum” logic of neoliberalism–a dominant narrative that characterizes human life as a struggle that some win and others lose. Given that human beings are capable of controlling our own behavior, Monbiot asserts that we can and “should stop celebrating coercive and controlling behavior [and] replace a competitive ethos with a cooperative one”. 

• “Workplace bullying and harassment can be catastrophic – now’s the time to step up” (People Management, February 2024). In this article, Michelle Robinson-Hayes provides a broad review of the myriad costs associated with workplace bullying and harassment noting the recent worker protection bill in the UK (an amendment of the Equality Act 2010) which received royal assent on 26 October 2023 and is expected to come into force in autumn 2024.

• “A rookie workplace anti-bullying activist scores a win in Oregon” (Minding the Workplace, February 2024). This blog post by David Yamada details a US state level senate bill brought by an anti-bullying activist group that was recently enacted in Oregon.

• “CEO who resigned after calling out bullying and reporting her company to HMRC awarded £185k at tribunal” (People Management, March 2024). This article by Isabel Jackson details the case of a CEO who was recently awarded recompense after a UK employment tribunal ruled that she had endured “detrimental treatment” by her employer as a result of having made protected disclosures about workplace bullying and other unlawful/unethical practices.

This and That 

• We want to draw your attention to the organization–CASE (Coalition Against Slapps in Europe)–and its directive to expose and fight back against the use of lawsuits (abusive litigation) to bully and intimidate those who speak out in the public interest.

• Also of potential interest to our community members, the Movement for a Free Academia–a transnational initiative springing from “a shared frustration over the existing structures of research as well as a shared yearning of an alternative more compassionate and creative academia”–that has recently  introduced their Gothenburg Manifesto and are seeking signatures.

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.

“In my university, we don’t get paid as PhD students and we usually have part time jobs and apply for different scholarships to provide for life and research expenses. In my first year, I applied for a national elite foundation scholarship and at that time, my supervisor mocked me about it, asking: ‘are you elite?’ Fortunately it wasn’t up to him and I got the scholarship. In my second year, I decided to apply for a well-known scholarship for research. When I presented it to my supervisor, he first pretended he didn’t know about the scholarship and made me go to his office multiple times to explain the scholarship and why I wanted to apply for it. It became clear later that he did know about it and he just wanted me to get annoyed and give up on applying. When he realized I wasn’t giving up, he finally agreed to help me apply. I prepared the documents but they needed to be submitted from my supervisor’s account. Even though I sent him the documents and reminded him multiple times that the deadline was close, he never uploaded them pretending he had forgotten. Eventually we missed the deadline despite reminding him multiple times, even the day before the deadline. Two weeks later, I found out that the deadline had been extended. I asked him once again to upload them. He finally gave up. He gave me his log-in credentials and asked me to do it myself. On his account, I noticed he had already applied for multiple scholarships from that organization even though he had pretended to me that he didn’t know anything about the scholarship. Clearly,  his intention from the beginning was to prevent me from getting a scholarship. 

Over time my peers and I realized that our supervisor’s behavior varied depending upon who he was talking to–those from underrepresented groups often faced harsh criticism, sometimes even yelling and insults, whereas those from privileged groups tended to be treated with more kindness and understanding. I couldn’t help but compare myself to privileged students and wonder what I was doing wrong. Eventually I realized that it wasn’t my fault—it was our supervisor’s prejudice.”

Until the next issue, wishing you well,

Dr. Alison E. Vogelaar

Newsletter editor

The Academic Parity Movement

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