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Does the abuse take the form of behaviors besides harassment found in other workplace environments, or is the behavior specific to the academic setting? I expec

Does the abuse take the form of behaviors besides harassment found in other workplace environments, or is the behavior specific to the academic setting? I expected the later but the article seems to describe the former. Is this academic bullying or is it more like “workplace harassment in academia”?

analog31 4y ago
I think the differences are not hard-edged. Rather, academia is a "category" because of particular circumstances that allow bosses to groom victims and escape scrutiny. Perhaps two notable features are: 1. Your career is dependent on staying in the good graces of your present and former bosses. When I changed industry jobs, I didn't get permission from my boss, I'm pretty darn sure nobody ever contacted any of my former bosses, or seriously questioned why I was looking for a new job. 2. There is literally no direct supervision or observation of professors. They are free agents, in both teaching and managing their subordinates (grad students, postdocs, research staff). Most of those people probably have never even met their boss's boss. They are completely isolated within their silo. 3. Many of the workers are just starting in their careers, thus are less likely to have the experience and confidence to confront a toxic boss. I always re-iterate in these discussion that I had a great professor in grad school, and we're still friends.
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derbOac 4y ago
At some level, I think all bullying is the same, but I do think there are some differences in the forms it takes, or the consequences. This might be controversial, but my personal impressions are that there is more denial about bullying in academic than many nonacademic settings. This is part of the point of the article I think ("breaking the silence" of the title). There's a sense that academics is "above human weaknesses" or something, and there's a certain culture endemic to a lot of entrenched promotion and tenure that denies the existence of these things, or minimizes it. I think this denial leads to certain issues in turn, like more serious consequences for victims. Any field with similar denial would probably be similar. Probably related to this is that the oversupply of academics and competitiveness in it I think leads to more significant consequences for victims, and coupled with institutional denial (if not cultural denial), I think it leads to fewer ways to rectify it, with fewer consequences for aggressors. I think the nature of tenure leads to extreme forms of it. You can't fire at will someone you dislike or want to target, if you're a bully, so you resort to extreme falsehoods and slander basically to get them to leave. Basically (putting aside reasons for leaving like not wanting to do academics anymore, or wanting a change of career, or family issues, etc.), if it takes someone doing something really bad to leave a tenured position, they either have to be doing something really bad, you have to make it look like they're doing something really bad, or you have to make it so bad for them they end up doing something bad. This leads to weird situations where in another field you might just axe an area, but in academics if the political whims shift, you might have the people in power mudslinging about colleagues just because they're not interested in research area X and want to make the entire department look like themselves.

analog31 4y ago

I think the differences are not hard-edged. Rather, academia is a "category" because of particular circumstances that allow bosses to groom victims and escape scrutiny. Perhaps two notable features are: 1. Your career is dependent on staying in the good graces of your present and former bosses. When I changed industry jobs, I didn't get permission from my boss, I'm pretty darn sure nobody ever contacted any of my former bosses, or seriously questioned why I was looking for a new job. 2. There is literally no direct supervision or observation of professors. They are free agents, in both teaching and managing their subordinates (grad students, postdocs, research staff). Most of those people probably have never even met their boss's boss. They are completely isolated within their silo. 3. Many of the workers are just starting in their careers, thus are less likely to have the experience and confidence to confront a toxic boss. I always re-iterate in these discussion that I had a great professor in grad school, and we're still friends.

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derbOac 4y ago

At some level, I think all bullying is the same, but I do think there are some differences in the forms it takes, or the consequences. This might be controversial, but my personal impressions are that there is more denial about bullying in academic than many nonacademic settings. This is part of the point of the article I think ("breaking the silence" of the title). There's a sense that academics is "above human weaknesses" or something, and there's a certain culture endemic to a lot of entrenched promotion and tenure that denies the existence of these things, or minimizes it. I think this denial leads to certain issues in turn, like more serious consequences for victims. Any field with similar denial would probably be similar. Probably related to this is that the oversupply of academics and competitiveness in it I think leads to more significant consequences for victims, and coupled with institutional denial (if not cultural denial), I think it leads to fewer ways to rectify it, with fewer consequences for aggressors. I think the nature of tenure leads to extreme forms of it. You can't fire at will someone you dislike or want to target, if you're a bully, so you resort to extreme falsehoods and slander basically to get them to leave. Basically (putting aside reasons for leaving like not wanting to do academics anymore, or wanting a change of career, or family issues, etc.), if it takes someone doing something really bad to leave a tenured position, they either have to be doing something really bad, you have to make it look like they're doing something really bad, or you have to make it so bad for them they end up doing something bad. This leads to weird situations where in another field you might just axe an area, but in academics if the political whims shift, you might have the people in power mudslinging about colleagues just because they're not interested in research area X and want to make the entire department look like themselves.