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.

But harassment, and its close relation bullying, comes in many flavours. It doesn’t 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’ll call them Professor Z, refuses to teach, because it’s more important to get grants, and so leaves the work to junior faculty (Dr Y) – who of course can’t then find the time to apply for grants themselves? This is such a common problem in my experience (although not, I’m 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.

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’t being supportive of Professor A’s preferred candidate, and so he chose this particular weapon to neutralise my position. It’s easy to deconstruct the remark with hindsight. I’d like to think in later years I’d have been better able to defend myself.

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 – as I’m observing from afar – 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’s 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.   Professor L can sit there puzzled why their loyal behaviour – 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.

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 ‘how long do you want to rant at me this time, Athene?’. 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’t 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’s no doubt tantrum.

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’s undoubtedly strong case make the cut? When they are elected to their national academy, does the department celebrate or does it say – as happened to a friend of mine – that it ‘wasn’t their turn’ and therefore they wouldn’t celebrate the success? To take an extreme example, when Christiane Nűsslein-Volhard was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Director of her institute told her ‘Can you please organise the champagne yourself. I’ve no time to take that.’ As she put it ‘some colleagues couldn’t bear I got the prize.’

Our universities are as full of insecure people as anywhere else, indeed it’s 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.