Abstract
This article highlights the stories and experiences of three White women who were victims of bullying and mobbing in academic settings. Related literature grounds their experiences and offers insights related to the phenomena including definitions of mobbing and bullying, characteristics of bullies, the prevalence of bullying and mobbing, and the effects of such behaviors on the victims.
“One of the most common forms of bullying in academia involves administrators targeting faculty, as bullying occurs most often between supervisors and subordinates.”
Although we often consider bullying to be the domain of the school playground, workplace incivility is a problem in many occupations, including higher education. In their definition of incivility in the academy, Twale and De Luca (2008) define bullying as acts of hostility of one employee to another and mobbing as bullying by several employees to one or more others. Bullying and mobbing contribute to ill health and general lack of wellbeing among workers in the workplace, and it costs institutions money and time (Escartín, Rodríguez-Carballeira, Zapf, Porrúa, & Martín-Peña, 2009).
Varying definitions of the phenomenon often make the problem difficult to discern and address. Rayner (1997) defines bullying as intimidation, persistent criticism, inaccurate accusations, ignoring or exclusion, public humiliation, malicious rumor, setting one up to fail, and work overload. Escartín, Salin, and Rodríguez-Carballeira (2011) suggest six categories that characterize workplace bullying, including social and workplace isolation, control/manipulation of information, emotional abuse, abusive working conditions, professional discredit and denigration, and the devaluation of one’s professional role. Lewis (2004) adds bullying or mobbing behaviors are either personal in nature such as in name calling, teasing, and insulting, or organizationally derived such as in the form of increased workload, the arbitrary removal of responsibilities, and excessive monitoring of one’s work. Bullying is typically characterized by some measured duration and the purposeful intent “to hurt another person in such a way as to exercise power over another person” (Raineri, Frear, & Edmonds, 2011, p. 23). Bullying, then, is an issue of power, control, and abuse often publicly wielded and always damaging to the victim.
The purpose of this article is to share our experiences as three adult education faculty who were targets of bullying, to provide context for those experiences, and to attempt to articulate how those experiences affected our careers, our identities, and our personal lives. The article is in three parts. First, we provide some background on workplace bullying which includes the gendered nature of the phenomena and some data on its prevalence in academe. Then we present brief autobiographical vignettes of our years working within a bullying culture. Finally, we discuss implications for adult education faculty and recommendations for combating bullying if it occurs.
Characteristics of Bullies and Their Victims
To understand the phenomenon of bullying, it is important to understand bullies. According to Fogg (2008) and Raineri et al. (2011), bullies in academia often feel a sense of inadequacy or lack of self-confidence. To deal with their own lack of confidence, they engage in diverting attention away from themselves onto another. Their focus on the other becomes a relentless public flashing of a real or fabricated flaw that might be evident in the victim/target. In some cases, the flaw mirrors the bully’s perception of her or his own flaws; as bullies are unable to overcome their flaws, they attack the mirrored or invented flaw in their victims.
Researchers indicate workplace bullying is sometimes, but not always, motivated by prejudices such as race, age, or sex. It can occur because an individual simply does not like another person. Yet, evidence suggests young women and very popular employees are more often the recipients of bullying tactics (Fox & Stallworth, 2009). Targets tend to possess positive characteristics and are often admired by others. They tend to be confident, kind, optimistic, competent, and well-liked. Because they possess these qualities, they are seen as threats to bullies. In other cases, the victim is noticeable, perhaps has a distinct physical feature, is an ethnic or racial minority, or is very attractive (Raineri et al., 2011). Gravois (2006) argues those who file grievances or speak out about workplace issues are more likely to be bullied. But perhaps the most common single trait of mobbing targets, he says, is they are highly successful and excel in their work.
Mean Girls and Their Friends
Bullying often has gendered undertones. While it is still common for women to be bullied by men in the workplace, the Workplace Bullying Institute conducted a study in 2010 finding women bullies target other women 80% of the time. Although not the traditional form of sexism, woman-on-woman bullying often mimics stereotypically male behaviors in the workplace (Chatel, 2011). Women may act as many males have over the years by bullying and intimidating women to establish, and continually re-establish, the power structures often inherent in traditional male–female relationships.
Research has found evidence that bullying leads to emotional issues, health disorders, extreme stress, and feelings of worthlessness and shame (Workplace Bullying Institute, 2010). Some reports insist the effects of bullying exceed those experienced by victims of sexual harassment. Co-workers, too, experience guilt and stress related to the target’s experiences, particularly because they do not know how to solve the problem nor do they have the courage to try to stop it, as their own future might be placed in jeopardy. As a result, organizational turnover and low productivity is a consistent result of a culture that allows bullying (Fogg, 2008; Raineri et al., 2011).
Bullying in Academia
While little is known about the prevalence of bullying in academia, substantial evidence exists, and more academics are breaking the silence (“Bullying,” 2013; Fogg, 2008; Gravois, 2006; Lewis, 2004; Nelson & Lambert, 2001; Raineri et al., 2011; Twale & De Luca, 2008). One of the most common forms of bullying in academia involves administrators targeting faculty, as bullying occurs most often between supervisors and subordinates. The tenure process gives administrators and senior faculty very specific powers to make life-altering decisions about co-workers. This phenomenon, unique in academia, makes junior faculty especially vulnerable to bullying administrators (Beitz, 2013).
In addition, the culture of an organization is heavily influenced by the behavior modeled by the organization’s leaders. Tolerating, reinforcing, or rewarding bullying behaviors among upper and mid-level administrators and senior faculty perpetuates these behaviors throughout the organization (Cleary, Walter, Andrew, & Jackson, 2013). Nelson and Lambert (2001) label such patterns of intimidation and harassment in higher education as “ivory tower bullying” (p. 84). Their study found the organizational structure and overarching value system of higher education institutions provide ample fodder for the kinds of intimidation reported or observed by their participants. Gravois (2006) reports bullying occurs more often in institutions in which long-time employees have high job security, there are few objective measures of performance, and loyalty to some ill-defined higher purpose outside of the institution is prevalent. Academia is well situated for bullying cultures to flourish.
Furthermore, universities support segregated areas of specialization that routinely rely on internal systems of controls. In fact, the structure of colleges and universities make them the ideal environments for bullying behavior (Twale & De Luca, 2008). Sometimes, the specific culture of a higher education organization allows for the cultivation of certain bullying behaviors seen as protective patterns which ultimately lead to normalization. Consequently, evaluations of bullying come to be seen as matters of opinion, particularly pertinent in an environment whose main source of exchange is opinion itself (Nelson & Lambert, 2001).
Pushed Around on the Playground: Stories We Shouldn’t Tell
In the brief personal accounts below, we chronicle small excerpts from our experiences. We are three White women, over the age of 40, accomplished and well-respected. At the time of our experiences, we were all highly productive, high-achieving assistant or associate professors. We had received grants, awards, and honors as faculty members, and we each were regarded nationally as emerging or accomplished scholars and teachers.
Although much research has been done on bullying across varying workplace settings, little is known about how people come to mark certain experiences as bullying and how certain demographics, including gender, affect sense-making processes in bullying situations (Escartín et al., 2009; Escartín et al., 2011; Salin, 2011). We offer our experiences as an initial step toward filling the gap in the literature regarding bullying in the academy. Our stories, written here as short autobiographical accounts, are laced with critical insights, bound up by emotional memory. It is what we remember and how it appeared to us at the time. The discursive power relations embedded in our experiences reveal some of the complexities involved in recognizing we are White, female, and privileged, yet experiencing ourselves as beings who were bullied, ignored, and undermined.
Writing this piece has not been easy or without trepidation. We continue to fear retribution, and we each carry scars left from this experience. Our hope is that by analyzing, naming, and sharing our experiences, we might offer solace to those experiencing similar circumstances. We also hope that by recognizing certain behaviors as bullying, similar bullying environments might be acknowledged, addressed, and curtailed.
Story 1: Your Research is Not Valid and Will Not be Supported
When I was in school, a group of older girls bullied me. They hurled painful insults, threw me up against the lockers between classes, and threatened to beat me up if I told anyone. I remember asking my mother why this was happening to me. I was no threat to them. Why had they targeted me?
Thirty years later, I was going through my third year review as an assistant professor. I’d received accolades from my department colleagues, chair, and national peers with five published peer-reviewed articles, additional refereed papers from adult education research conferences, manuscripts under review, funded internal and system grants with colleagues across the institution, and articles in progress. My final step in the review was to meet with upper administration.
The upper administrator began our meeting with, “I have some questions and some concerns.” My heart stopped. What did she mean? She declared my research was inappropriate to her vision of adult education. She questioned the publications from my dissertation and directed me to discontinue all international projects because others in the college were already doing that work. I was left speechless, confused by her lack of understanding about my discipline and the work I’d been doing. She declared the unanimous positive votes I’d received from the department committee and chair were invalid, claiming they did not possess the expertise to appropriately judge my work. She threatened I would not get tenure with my current research focus and instructed me to change my research areas completely. I knew I could not start over with a new research agenda in my third year and get tenure a few years later. She was assaulting my career, which felt strangely reminiscent of the attacks I experienced in school. As I was leaving, she stopped me to say, “You’re obviously very ambitious.” It was not meant as a compliment.
Although at the time I didn’t know to label it bullying, this supervisor’s actions were typical bullying behaviors: verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation, and professional sabotage (Workplace Bullying Institute, 2010). As well, at college-related gatherings I was physically ignored and my graduate program was threatened (even though staff-run reports indicated we had very strong enrollments). In one-on-one meetings, this administrator told me she knew of professors who would not support my work/tenure. Colleagues confided she had discouraged them from working with me.
I believed if I just worked harder I could change this person’s mind about me and about my research. But, nothing changed. I began to hate my job as a result of my interactions with her—I questioned my place in adult education, questioned myself as a viable researcher and academician. Even though I felt supported by colleagues, the bullying overshadowed their support and left me hopeless. Like many who are bullied in the workplace, I believed my only option was to leave (Rayner, 1997). Losing time on my tenure clock and giving up a program I loved, I joined another university. A year later I received national recognition of my research with our field’s Early Career Award.
Unfortunately not knowing why I was targeted, I find I am very careful not to attract too much attention. I’ve not sought collaborations across my institution as I had previously; I keep my head down and try not to look too ambitious.
Story 2: You’re Incompetent and You Will Not Hold Any Leadership Roles
I received a telephone call from our department chair’s secretary one morning, just 4 months after I began my new position as an associate professor in a large university. Some upper level administrators were angry, I was told, and they demanded several of my colleagues and I meet with them immediately. I had never been summoned by an administrator in this manner and was alarmed. Six White women, all over the age of 40, waited anxiously for the administrators to appear. Apparently, a young man was threatening to sue the College because he was not accepted in our doctoral program. At this meeting, we were belittled and talked to in a condescending manner. The upper level administrator told us we were not permitted to speak at all. We were called incompetent and accused of jeopardizing the entire graduate program with our faulty methods of candidate selection. Eventually, in the weeks to come, our campus attorneys exonerated us from any wrong-doing, but no apology was forthcoming from this administrator.
Incidents like the one described above were commonplace, and after a year in this new position, I had considerable remorse. After being wooed to this university from another institution in which I was highly regarded, I found myself in a dreadful situation. The same upper level administrator seemed to display a special affinity for men and, to a lesser extent, women of color. They were granted privileges not extended to White women faculty. In this minority-serving institution, considerable allowances were made to representative faculty. I understood this and supported these goals. However, administrators in this setting targeted White women, a trend supported by the research (Chatel, 2011).
Whenever there was any cause to intimidate or lay blame, I was bawled out along with the other White women. In my second year at this institution, I completed a truthful evaluation of the administration. After that, my problems became much worse. I was outwardly threatened, and it was suggested I keep my mouth shut if I wanted to get another job in any other university. The upper administrator stopped all work on any committee in which I held a leadership role. Often times bullying victims are removed from positions of leadership or responsibility in their institutions (Lewis, 2004). I was forced to resign from any position of leadership I held in the College.
Once my status was evident to others, I found myself victimized at the department level as well, particularly by a department chair who wanted to gain favor with upper administration. My classes were changed from graduate courses to undergraduate courses without my consent. Students were advised to remove me from their doctoral committees. A colleague in another department across the university told me she had been advised not to pursue any collaborative grant work with me, as anything with my name on it would never make it past the upper administrator’s desk. Although I had many colleagues in the department who held me in highest regard, they were powerless to curtail the negative energy that seemed to surround me. My good work was not recognized, and I feared the ruination of my career. I sought counseling outside of the institution. When I asked for a leave of absence, my request was refused, and I was pressed to resign. Fortunately, I was able to escape this dreadful situation. But the side effects of this experience continue to reverberate in my life through family and work relationships.
Story 3: You’re an Incompetent Teacher
After years of hard work and personal sacrifice, I graduated with my PhD. I was thrilled to be hired, along with a colleague, to develop the curriculum, teach the courses, coordinate the program, and advise the students for a new adult education graduate program. I began my career filled with energy, excitement, and purpose. As new faculty, my partner and I worked long days to design a curriculum to meet the standards set by the Commission of Professors of Adult Education and the needs of the city and region. During our second semester as faculty, with a framework developed, courses decided, and our initial cohort of 15 students providing excellent feedback, we were told to begin marketing the program. A college administrator called a meeting to discuss possible strategies.
I arrived a little ahead of my colleague and the department chair and was shown into the administrator’s office. As I began to describe some of the work we had done to assess the needs of the community, and the ways we had designed the program to meet those needs, the administrator cut me off with a dismissive wave of his hand saying, “If you don’t have 15 people minimum in every class next semester, you’ll be teaching underwater basket-weaving to fill your schedule.” The administrator finished the meeting by only addressing the chair and threatening to cut the program if courses were not “full” in the next academic year. That was the first of many such meetings with administrators, and it set the tone for my time at that institution.
A vivid memory of being mobbed came as I taught an interdisciplinary doctoral course, rarely taught by junior faculty. The students in this course hailed from a variety of disciplines, and in an effort to assure that I met everyone’s needs, I chose the materials carefully from a broad range of perspectives. I designed the initial syllabus and assignments in such a way as to allow students to focus on their particular teaching and research areas. I spent part of the first 3-hr class period letting the students pore over materials and decide, in small groups, what they most needed to focus on. Then, we came together to decide on a collaboratively designed syllabus.
Months later, one student, unhappy with his grade, complained to the upper administration that I “didn’t have a syllabus.” Although I had posted the initial syllabus online before the first class day (as required), and added the full schedule of readings after the first class, the upper level administrator called the department chair and announced I was unprepared to teach the class, had no syllabus, and was not to be allowed to teach doctoral courses. The chair, in a meeting with senior faculty at the time she took the call, hung up and announced I was “a problem,” because I was teaching the coveted doctoral course unprepared. Fortunately, I’d given my syllabus to the PhD program coordinator before the course started, and she was at that meeting. She openly disputed the assertion. But in that atmosphere, described to me by one senior faculty as “cut-throat,” several present faculty ignored facts and preferred to spread unfounded rumor. I suddenly found myself the brunt of snide comments. Yet, I had no power to dispute the rumor because no one openly discussed it with me.
The actions of those administrators, because of their positions of power, were classic acts of mobbing (Twale & De Luca, 2008). Colleagues, who seemed to relish the poisonous atmosphere, began making “helpful” public comments to me about course preparation. The public condescending remarks replaced an accomplished teaching record with innuendo and suspicion.
This was around the same time that my research had received national attention and was written about in The Chronicle of Higher Education. According to Davenport, Schwartz, and Elliott (2004), targets of mobbing often have a record of success, and mobbers often times attack when the target is most vulnerable, like following a serious medical procedure or illness, which occurred while I was a faculty at that institution. Even when one is at her best, fighting rumor and innuendo is impossible. It affected every aspect of my work life and slowed my recovery from illness. That type of vicious mobbing, veiled as efforts to improve faculty teaching or as student advocacy (Nelson & Lambert, 2001), was rampant in the college and aimed at a select few. The contrast between the joys of working with our students, who were overwhelmingly bright, hard-working, enthusiastic, and inspiring, and working with a few colleagues and administrators who were mean-spirited bullies, was almost surreal.
After 4 years in that environment, I chose to lose the time on my tenure clock by moving to another institution. Swimming up the tenure stream is difficult enough without constant criticism, open ridicule, and unexpected ambush. I continued to work harder, thinking I could earn their respect, even though my health had become precarious. But national accolades and student tributes didn’t negate the subtle undermining of my confidence, as well as my health. While certain faculty were given course releases, travel funds, little service work, and authorship with senior faculty on numerous publications, others labored under constant criticism, rejected requests, impossible service loads, and no research or publication guidance. Bullying was modus operandi.
Discussion and Implications
Writing this article has been an interesting, albeit painful, experience for us. We have stopped and started it multiple times over the past 2 years. At an earlier point, we decided the experience was still too raw for us. Analyzing our experiences, revisiting the pain, the confusion, the anger, and the extreme self-doubt, was like opening up the wound, afresh. To do this work, we first had to step way back and try to look at it from a distance. Through the process of the analysis and writing, though, we feel we have worked through some necessary steps in the learning and healing process.
As McIntyre (1995) argued, “Perhaps nothing can ensure it [bullying] stops, but at least we could name this pattern of conduct for what it is—bullying, rank-pulling, cowardly abuse of hierarchy, and intimidation” (as quoted in Nelson & Lambert, 2001, p. 237). We hope our experiences here have illuminated the pernicious characteristics and some of the effects of bullying that affect faculty of adult education programs. We also hope our stories and the presented related research will help others to speak up about an all too prevalent and nefarious practice in the academy.
Adult education programs are housed in myriad places within university organizations (Tisdell, Wright, Taylor, Bush, & Greenawalt, 2014). Our careers are sometimes impacted by administrators and colleagues who do not understand the breadth of the field, are ill-informed about the interdisciplinary nature of our work, and have a narrow view of the field as adult basic education. Furthermore, the discipline is shrinking and the faculty aging (Tisdell et al., 2014). To help keep the field healthy, junior faculty need to be encouraged to seek advice from external sources, knowledgeable about academic bullying, if they experience a work environment like we describe here. We experienced cultures of bullying initiated from top administration and perpetuated down through the ranks. As a consequence, the bullying overshadowed others’ support and our own ability to see any future in our workplaces. The uniqueness of college and university settings—with the tenure and promotion process, ambiguous expectations, and subjective evaluations—requires constant critical inquiry and reflection upon the impact on faculty careers, development, and academic freedom resulting from the potential for bullying and uncivil cultures.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biographies
Audrey M. Dentith is an associate professor of adult learning and development and educational leadership at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She researches feminist work and ecological initiatives in the community.
Robin Redmon Wright is an assistant professor of adult education at Penn State University, Harrisburg, PA. Her research concerns critical informal adult learning through popular culture and everyday activities.
Joellen Coryell is an associate professor of adult, professional and community education at Texas State University, San Marcos, TX. She researches international adult education and adult educator professional development.