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 thank all those who presented and attended the annual APM conference on June 15 in Bern, Switzerland. The conference brought together a diverse group of experts—including researchers, funding agencies, university administrators, and policy advocates—to address the critical issue of bullying and harassment within academic institutions. The discussion moved from considerations around gender and class, to the role of funding agencies in holding toxic institutions accountable, to the power dynamics that produce and perpetuate bullying, and the phenomenon of upward bullying. We are delighted to have expanded the community and for the collaborations that will follow. 

As always, stay tuned for more information on our latest activities and thank you for your interest in and support for Academic Parity. Thank you to those of you who have kindly sent relevant research and materials our way! 

In the Research and Literature

• An analysis of functional relationships between systemic conditions and unethical behavior in German academia (Meta-Psychology, May 2026). This piece is an English language version of a report filed by a commission that the German Psychological Society (DGPs) appointed in 2022. Based on expert interviews, a literature review, feedback from the community, and discussions within the commission, Nicole Boessel-Debbert et al. identified the following actors in the academic system that enable and/or promote unethical behavior: (P1) negligent or fraudulent research practices, (P2) abuse of power, (P3) inadequate supervision of Early Career Researchers, (P4) poor quality of teaching, (P5) counterproductive incentives, (P6) overburdening of professors with tasks, (P7) fixed-term and short-term employment, (P8) unnecessarily strong power imbalance, (P9) an ineffective peer-review system, (P10) questionable assessment practices in hiring professors, (P11) lack of clarity of, and low commitment to, ethical standards, and (P12) weak control and sanctioning mechanisms. The report concludes with concrete recommendations for systemic changes that apply specifically to the German system but may also be useful outside German academe. 

• Corrupting U?: Workplace bullying, ethical erosion and corruption contagion in public higher education. (Public Organization Review, May 2026). Guided by corruption contagion theory, this mix-method study by Leah P. Hollis of 505 public university employees explored the links between bullying, unethical financial decisions, and occupational health. Regression analyses demonstrated bullying significantly predicted unethical decision-making and reduced well-being. Hollis asserts the confirmed relationship between bullying and corruption highlights a critical starting point for corruption detection.

• Institutional response to harassment in academia: experiences from key practitioners (Gender and Education, May 2026). This study, by Stijn Klarenbeek et al, examined the everyday work experiences of the three types of complaints practitioners at Dutch universities–confidential advisors, ombudspersons, and members of complaints committees–in order to assess what they do and cannot do about harassment in academia. Their findings indicate that the complaint infrastructure functions as a leaky pipeline, in which relatively many people share their experiences of harassment with the confidential advisor, yet decide to not forward with the complaint. In short, the more formal the process gets, the more people drop out. Moreover, interviews revealed that practitioners working within the complaint infrastructure primarily viewed themselves as individual problem-solvers, leaving the structural and organizational causes of harassment largely unaddressed.

In the News and Media

• Two more women allege harassment by Cambridge professor (The Times, April 2026). Following an external inquiry that upheld four counts of sexual misconduct against Cambridge Professor Goldhill, Times journalist Sean O’Neill reports that two additional female academics also alleged they had experienced sexual harassment from Goldhill in incidents spanning a 20-year period. Goldhill denied the allegations but resigned from his positions at the University and King’s College “with immediate effect” facing the potential of disciplinary hearings. 

• Royal Society honoured professor accused of sexual misconduct (The Times, May 2026). Following investigation of multiple complaints of inappropriate touching, sexualized language, and sexual harassment, Cambridge Professor Herbert Huppert was stripped of his college fellowship in 2025 and barred from the King’s College campus. Despite these sanctions, Sean O’Neill reports that Huppert was still named a recipient of the Royal Society Bakerian Medal and the Royal Medal, prompting questions about the Society’s vetting procedures 

• NIH grant cuts disproportionately hit minority and female scientists (Nature, May 2026). In this piece Max Kozlov discusses the results of a recent survey of the termination of thousands of research grants by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) last year. The survey found that these cuts disproportionately hit researchers from groups that have been historically under-represented in the biomedical sciences, including women, people of colour and investigators from sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQ+).

• They did the math: Why employees stay silent at work (Substack, May 2026). In this piece by Kevin Sansberry, This is where the popular framing of employee silence goes wrong. The dominant organizational response to silence is to treat it as a communication problem, a courage deficit, a training opportunity. Bring in a consultant, run a psychological safety workshop, install an anonymous hotline. What the research actually shows is that employees who stay silent have usually read the environment correctly. The problem is not that they lack the skills or the nerve to speak. The problem is that the organization has given them accurate information about what speaking costs and the employees who stay silent have usually done the math. The question practitioners need to be asking, says Sansberry, is not why people don’t speak up. It is what the organization has done to make silence the rational choice. 

• Poor supervision is pushing young researchers out of academia (Nature, June 2026). In this piece, Mohana Basu summarizes the findings of a survey of more than 2,600 researchers from 65 countries about their positive and negative experiences with supervisors. Among other things, the findings highlight the importance of supervision in determining doctoral success. We recommend this piece, published in 2025, that similarly tackles the issue of abusive supervision.

Voices from the Community

Voices from the Community section 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 300 words or less.

“The power that professors hold over the careers of postdocs and students is a serious problem in academia. My former mentor tried to use this power to plagiarize my work in an extreme and absurd form.

I worked for many years with a renowned professor and NAS member at one of the leading US universities. Over time, my project diverged from his primary research area toward the evolution of aging. Both the professor and I believed that my work represented a paradigm shift. Although initially supportive of the project, he began delaying manuscripts, disrupting collaborations, and diminishing my credit for papers I designed and wrote. I have no explanation other than that he wanted to keep me academically dependent until the evidence became undeniable and he could claim credit for my discoveries. After 10 years of working with him, I finally asked him about his regular promises of helping me find an independent position. His tone immediately changed and he told me that I was “not ready” and “not the right person to work independently.” He further claimed that it was “not his business to help his people get employed” and that he would not “spare his precious political coins” to help me through his networking. He also stated that I needed a few more high-profile publications before I could apply for a job. Unfortunately, that meant another 7-10 years, since only the draft-to-submission writing took him ~2-3 years. Part of this is explained by the fact that he is a pathological lounger who barely shows up in the lab except during the grant season and is typically occupied with conferences and travel. As a tenured professor living a comparatively easy life, he was in no hurry to get my pieces published or to help me find a permanent position. He even justified my poverty-level salary by saying that, as a foreigner, I should simply be grateful for the chance to work in the US. His wife, also a renowned NAS member, defended this as “the way the world is built” and “how science works.”

The final breaking point was when he returned a barely recognizable version of a manuscript I had given him six months earlier. Despite having little expertise in the topic, the professor mutilated the paper, destroyed the main deliverables, and made it seem as though my theory emerged from his work (work for which he is famous but has recently come under scrutiny as irreproducible and potentially fabricated). 

Luckily, I obtained a tenure-track position in China. However, the substantial work I produced during those 10 years remains unpublished and my complaints to university authorities produced no results. I believe my case is one of bullying and, more significantly, of a systemic problem: unchecked professors can degrade professionalism and ethics, damaging scientific integrity and harming junior academics to indulge their own distorted impulses and lifestyles.”

Until the next issue, wishing you well,

Dr. Alison E. Vogelaar
Newsletter Editor

The Academic Parity Movement

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