Filling the Space: A Framework for Coordinated Global Actions To Diminish Academic Bullying

Abstract

Academic bullying is a serious issue that affects all disciplines and people of all levels of experience. To create a truly safe, productive, and vibrant environment in academia requires coordinated and collaborative input as well as the action of a variety of stakeholders, including scholarly communities, funding agencies, and institutions. In this Viewpoint, we focus on a framework of integrated responding, in which stakeholders as responsible and response‐able parties could proactively collaborate and coordinate to reduce the incidence and consequences of academic bullying while at the same time building constructive academic cultures. The outcome of such a framework would be to create novel entities (e.g. centre of excellence in academic ethics and civility) and actions (e.g. incorporating bullying records into institutional rankings) that accelerate successful responses to academic bullying.

STEM the Bullying: An Empirical Investigation of Abusive Supervision in Academic Science

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated academic incivility and changed the patterns of behaviors. off in terms of scientific value, increases the likelihood that earlycareer scientists (e.g., graduate students or post-docs) will feel "stuck" in their labs, perceiving little opportunity to change their circumstances without losing months or even years of work [15]. This is consistent with evidence in organizational research that the lack of "perceived alternatives" is a powerful predictor of a target being willing to stay with an abuser [7].…”

“…At the same time, there is behavior specific to academic science that must also be captured in any systemic study of academic bullying. This behavior includes abusing authorship or violating intellectual property rights [14]; threatening to cancel funding, positions, or visas [15]; and damaging budding scientists' reputations through bad recommendations or speaking negatively about them to others [16]. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of Tepper's measure to understand the extent of abusive supervision in academic science.…”

“…Finally, exhausted, over-worked scientists may experience a depletion of personal or psychological resources [26] and react harshly to provocation from subordinates through conflict or poor performance [9]. Each of these antecedents suggests that power differentials between PIs and graduate students or postdocs, for example, exacerbate the likelihood that those in positions of authority may unleash their wrath toward those in less powerful positions [15,16,27]. The unique aspects of science, which require focused work on a series of studies or experiments that may eventually pay…”

Harassment as a consequence and cause of inequality in academia: A narrative review

“…Other scholars have recently advocated for such a multi-stakeholder approach, most notably by introducing the Framework for Coordinated Global Actions To Diminish Academic Bullying. 59 Hollis 52 argues that workplace bullying should constitute a human rights violation, and that universities are particularly important in fighting harassment, because of the high prevalence of workplace bullying in higher education. Scholars recommend that university policy makers proactively confront resistance against the implementation and enforcement of anti-harassment measures among those with privilege and power.…”

Academic harassment: The need for interdependent actions of stakeholders

“…However, their limited coordinated actions created a safe environment for bullies to thrive in academia. 1 Therefore, creating platforms including conferences 2 to bring various stakeholders together to share their insights on addressing academic bullying is critical, as it seems an effective pathway to remove “power poisoning” at any level in our science backyard, 1 As scholars of academic harassment, we propose the following steps in improving the crosstalk between stakeholders…”