Recently I sat down to dinner with two old friends, one male,one female. Our conversation turned to harassment and what emerged was pretty grim. The man referred to an incident when an older and powerful woman had groped him during an important conversation (presumably under the table), which I guess was not a story I was expecting. The woman, like me, could share many incidences of petty indignities and inappropriate behaviour occurring at different career stages. We had all survived, but were no doubt coloured by our experiences.<\/p>\n
But harassment, and its close relation bullying, comes in many flavours. It doesn\u2019t have to be sexual in nature, but it almost invariably involves some sort of power imbalance, real or perceived. That is why it is so particularly common directed against early career researchers, but power can take many shapes. Who controls budgets, teaching loads or signing off of grants, for instance, each of which will give a measure of power regardless of seniority. Does it count as bullying when a senior professor, I\u2019ll call them Professor Z, refuses to teach, because it\u2019s more important to get grants, and so leaves the work to junior faculty (Dr Y) \u2013 who of course can\u2019t then find the time to apply for grants themselves? This is such a common problem in my experience (although not, I\u2019m glad to say, in my own department where such behaviour was not tolerated). If that does count as bullying, who is the perpetrator? The junior faculty member is put in an impossible position since who do they complain to? Should it be the head of the teaching committee (or equivalent), the head of department or Professor Z? Each will pass the buck undoubtedly, and the complainant will gain a black mark against their name simply for complaining. Yet the reality is that the power imbalance is being used in ways that hinder the career progression of Dr Y.<\/p>\n
That is a clear case of egotism\/selfishness driving bad behaviour. There are many other motivators ranging from anxiety to jealousy, causing bullying across the faculty chain, and so often no one does anything. On one occasion, when I was on a panel appointing a new lecturer, one professor (Professor A) essentially accused me of not knowing what I was talking about, although I was the most expert member in the room on the particular sub-discipline in question, and certainly more knowledgeable than Professor A was in the area. I was so taken aback I said nothing. Nor did anyone else. At my subsequent appraisal I raised the matter, surprised both that no one had defended me nor had any follow-up apology been made. I was told the professor in question was waiting for me to apologise. For what? Again, I was too startled to defend myself. It left me feeling isolated and uncertain. The cause of the outburst was undoubtedly because I wasn\u2019t being supportive of Professor A\u2019s preferred candidate, and so he chose this particular weapon to neutralise my position. It\u2019s easy to deconstruct the remark with hindsight. I\u2019d like to think in later years I\u2019d have been better able to defend myself.<\/p>\n
Jealousy can play out in lots of ways, such as an attempt to knock an opponent out of the action, and can be implemented at a structural level, even \u2013 as I\u2019m observing from afar \u2013 directed against senior and successful folk by other senior but less successful academics. A head of department can facilitate such action, by blocking funding or space to go to the successful professor (let\u2019s call them Professor L) to allow their work to flourish. Why would they want to do this? Jealousy again, or possibly an unwise decision to back the wrong horse. \u00a0\u00a0Professor L can sit there puzzled why their loyal behaviour \u2013 perhaps fulfilled by dutifully and brilliantly delivering their teaching load – and excellent grant successes are being penalised. Again, just as for a younger colleague, making a complaint can only cause the behaviour to worsen.<\/p>\n
What head of department wants to be reminded of their misjudgements? They can feel guilty and lash out as a result. I was once greeted by one head of department, who undoubtedly had just caved in to a more senior professor to my detriment, with the completely gob-smacking but effective remark of \u2018how long do you want to rant at me this time, Athene?\u2019. Yet again, I had no response; he had successfully neutralised my would-be complaint, while making it clear I could let off steam and it wouldn\u2019t make the slightest difference. Do they teach senior management useful phrases like this to derail complainants? Was that harassment or bullying? It was certainly using a power imbalance to put me in my place and, the source in this case, was undoubtedly and rather visibly that the head of department had felt his own weakness in the face of another senior professor\u2019s no doubt tantrum.<\/p>\n
That was but a passing annoyance, with fairly limited damage to me. But a long-running campaign against Professor L can be much more damaging, and yet can occur slowly but steadily over years. When PhD students are distributed, does Professor L get their fair share over the years? When a university sift for a big grant call is carried out, does Professor L\u2019s undoubtedly strong case make the cut? When they are elected to their national academy, does the department celebrate or does it say \u2013 as happened to a friend of mine \u2013 that it \u2018wasn\u2019t their turn\u2019 and therefore they wouldn\u2019t celebrate the success? To take an extreme example, when Christiane N\u0171sslein-Volhard was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Director of her institute told her<\/a> \u2018Can you please organise the champagne yourself. I\u2019ve no time to take that.\u2019 As she put it \u2018some colleagues couldn\u2019t bear I got the prize.\u2019<\/p>\n Our universities are as full of insecure people as anywhere else, indeed it\u2019s probably a worse environment because competition sits at the heart of what we do, the drive to be first, to get that grant, to receive that accolade and so on. So, being flawed human beings, people will use whatever weapons they have to hand, driven by jealousy and anxiety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently I sat down to dinner with two old friends, one male,one female. Our conversation turned to harassment and what emerged was pretty grim. The man referred to an incident when an older and powerful woman had groped him during … Continue reading