Abstract
Bullying is a serious problem in contemporary society because it negatively affects not only people who are victims of bullying and bystanders but also organizations and workplaces. It occurs almost everywhere including K-12 education, postsecondary education, and workplaces. Based on the author’s narrative study, this article explores and theorizes three types of adult bullying in higher education from the academic experiences of 19 gay male faculty of color. The data were collected via in-depth individual interviews using a semi-structured interview guide, transcribed, and analyzed. The data revealed three types of bullying: (a) positional bullying, (b) counter-positional bullying, and (c) unintentional conspirative positional bullying. This article will provide a snapshot of each type of bullying through participant narratives and discuss the implications for higher and adult education in the pursuit of diversity and social justice.
“Higher education perpetuates a sociocultural power imbalance wherein bullying is institutionally enabled as a way to discriminate and marginalize gay people of color.”
Bullying has become a critical social problem in contemporary society. The traditional thoughts and ideas on bullying, that incidents of bullying happen among children only on playgrounds and in school environments, no longer apply (Randall, 2001). Researchers and scholars have agreed bullying physically and psychologically damages individuals and groups of all ages (Twale & De Luca, 2008). At an individual level, victims of bullying are more likely to suffer from psychological symptoms such as depression, nervousness, and stress (Randall, 2001). At a group level, bullying negatively affects an organization by creating a hostile environment where interpersonal conflicts and violence occur frequently, and it can lead to an organization malfunctioning resulting in decreased productivity (Namie, 2003).
Educational settings are no exception in terms of how bullying affects its members and environments. For example, higher education is typically bureaucratic (Twale & De Luca, 2008) and, as such, the positions there become hegemonic with a source of power for some, in which race, gender, and sexual orientation are covered up, cloaked, or treated as if insignificant (Yoshino, 2006). In that way, bullying is allowed to happen in the context of higher education. Higher education, then, perpetuates a sociocultural power imbalance wherein bullying is institutionally enabled as a way to discriminate and marginalize gay people of color (Misawa, 2013). If higher education is to follow through on creating safe and welcoming environments for all students, faculty, and staff, then focus must be shifted to examine how bullying impacts teaching, learning, and institutional policies in higher education.
This article addresses the intersection of racist and homophobic adult bullying in higher education, examines how adult bullying affects the lives of gay male faculty of color in higher education, examines gay male faculty of color’s negative experiences (their “cuts and bruises”) caused by academic bullying, and explores their experiences of being victims of adult bullying related to the intersection of racism and homophobia in higher education. This article pinpoints three types of bullying manifested in the academic lives of the gay male faculty of color in higher education.
Review of Literature
Although incidents of bullying or issues surrounding bullying are not new, critical examinations of bullying in academia only began in the 1980s (Olweus, 1993). Early research on bullying focused mostly on childhood bullying. In particular, researchers focused on childhood bullying in schools, both physical and psychological perspectives, and found behaviors of bullying were developmental issues that appeared among elementary and secondary schoolchildren. However, similar behaviors that appeared in adulthood started being discussed and explored in the 1990s (Adams, 1992; Rayner, Hoel, & Cooper, 2002). Since then, scholars and researchers have widened the focus on bullying to include childhood and adulthood. In particular, workplace bullying has gained major attention (Leymann, 1990, 1996; Namie, 2003; Rayner et al., 2002).
In the same way, children spend most of their time during the day in school, most adults spend long hours of each day for years in the workplace. Researchers have explored how work environments and workplaces are hostile, uncivil, and conducive to bullying. In particular, based on work by Leymann (1990, 1996) and Adams (1992), Namie (2003) emphasized that workplace bullying is epidemic and widespread in contemporary workplaces: “bullying is a form of violence, but only rarely involves fighting, battery or homicide. It is mostly sub-lethal, non-physical violence” (p. 1). Also, workplace bullying has been described as psychological violence or “psychological terror” (Leymann, 1996, p. 165), which indicates that bullying negatively influences people involved in bullying whether bullies, victims, or bystanders and sometimes leads to psychological symptoms like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or, more frequently, suicide ideations (Leymann, 1996; Losey, 2011). In other words, workplace bullying is a serious and endemic issue throughout contemporary society.
Although bullying in workplaces and primary and secondary schools had been explored and researched by scholars, bullying in postsecondary and higher education had not been explored extensively until the late 1990s, when major publications on bullying in higher education were first published. Incidents of bullying turned out to have also occurred in academia as in any other social or work environment. Higher education had been an untouched area, in particular, because it contained scholars and researchers who were supposed to be ethical and professional (Misawa, 2010b). Twale and De Luca (2008) examined the nature of academic bullying and incivility in higher education and found contemporary higher education models based on business and corporate culture created uncivil and hostile environments, which made people act and behave unethically and unprofessionally. Keashly and Neuman (2010) also pointed out faculty behaviors have likely changed over time just as the culture in higher education has changed over time. From their extensive review of literature on academic bullying, they provided two propositions:
Proposition 1: When faculty bullying does occur, aggression will be indirect (as opposed to direct) in form, given the norms of academic discourse and collegiality. (p. 53)
Proposition 2: Tenured faculty exposed to bullying will be more likely than untenured faculty to “retire on the job,” or lower the quality of their courses, or less likely to engage in “discretionary” service-related behavior. (p. 54)
Those propositions indicate academic bullying in higher education negatively influences not only faculty but also programs and institutions due to their performance. So, although bullying in academia in higher education has gained much attention in the recent years, it still seems to be treated as a generic kind of bullying that can happen to anyone. But as bullying involves power dynamics and positionality between two or more people in a single context, it needs to be further examined. Although there are publications on gender-based bullying (e.g., Simpson & Cohen, 2004), racial/ethnic bullying in workplaces (e.g., Fox & Stallworth, 2005), and bullying based on sexual orientation (e.g., Rivers, 2011), it is still rare to find publications that address bullying issues based on the intersection of gender, race, and sexual orientation (Misawa, 2010a, 2010b, 2013; Sallee & Diaz, 2013). One of the first such studies to address the intersection of gender, race, and sexual orientation with regards to bullying provided an operational definition of racist and homophobic bullying (Misawa, 2010b) that will be utilized, but slightly modified, to discuss three types of racist and homophobic bullying:
An incident of bullying involves a victim who is a gay person of color and somehow less powerful in terms of physical, psychological, or sociocultural positions than the bully or who fits the bully’s racist homophobic stereotype, and a perpetuated recurrent or singular; unwanted or unwarranted; intimidating, humiliating, offensive, threatening or excluding conduct on the part of the bully that sustains the bully’s position of power and destroys the victim’s well-being, dignity, and safety or is significant enough to cause the victim physical and/or psychological harm. (Misawa, 2010b, p. 14)
Subsequent sections will address the methodology, findings regarding the three types of bullying, and discussion and implications.
Method
The qualitative research approach of narrative inquiry was implemented for the study of 19 gay male faculty of color, recruited with the snowball sampling technique and each interviewed via telephone for more than 1 hr. The interview elicited information from the participants about their academic experiences as gay men of color. A semi-structured interview guide—a mix of more- and less-structured questions (Polkinghorne, 1995)—was utilized, as the research topic was personal and emotional. Open-ended interview questions related to demographics and in classroom and on campus experiences and were designed so participants could freely communicate. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, organized by themes, and closely examined. The names used to describe participants were pseudonyms. This article will address three types of bullying found in the study.
Findings
The analysis of the study’s data revealed bullying manifested itself in three ways: (a) positional bullying, a type of bullying engaged in by a person in a position of power; (b) counter-positional bullying, a type of bullying engaged in by a person who is in a position of less power but whose positionality empowers them to bully a person disenfranchised by race, gender, or sexual orientation; and (c) unintentional conspirative positional bullying, a type of bullying engaged in simultaneously and collaboratively by a group of at least two people, in respective superior and subordinate positions of power, thereby enabling them to bully a person in a position of power situated between them, by means of that person’s race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Positional Bullying
Professor Fredric Smith, an African American gay male faculty member, was an assistant professor denied tenure. He analyzed that experience and felt wronged because everything had been going well, and he had received excellent reviews while on the tenure-track at his institution—not even one person had told him he needed to build more research time to obtain tenure. Reflecting on the experience, Professor Smith believed his positionality influenced the denial of his tenure; in particular, race was likely a prominent factor:
I think more race than anything [led to my tenure denial] because there were only four African American professors here in my department. So, the dean had fired one of them, denied me tenure, gave my supervisor [who is African American] a limited contract. So, my supervisor only got a 2-year contract as our division head. Normally, most people get a 4-year contract. So, it seems like there’s some racism. Only because there’s just a few of us now, three of us are almost out the door. So, I think that’s a big thing.
According to another participant, Professor Terry Davis, being a gay male faculty of color in higher education had not been easy. There were already very few African Americans on campus at his previous institution, and Professor Davis sensed some discrimination was going on behind his back. He had even imagined how his race and sexual orientation could one day be obstacles in his career as a gay male faculty of color at the institution:
Well, my first couple of years there, I always felt like there was a target on my back, and I really, I was really having a hard time finding out specifically why. I knew that I was one of very, very few African Americans on campus on faculty, and then also being gay . . . I know that my performance was never given the same weight as the other people’s performance, when I would publish a major piece . . . get teaching awards, those were always diminished and minimized, and my contributions were devalued.
Positional bullying also appeared when this study’s gay male faculty of color tried to collaborate with colleagues and instead found race and sexual orientation became significant factors. Professor Shane Edwards, an African American associate dean, talked about how a group of gay male White professors were unsupportive and even seemed to be trying to make him fail:
When it comes to grant dollars, I mean I feel like I had the most resistance from other gay folks. I feel the least supported by White gay men in an academic environment. I feel like the least support I get is [from them] because they are pretty devious. We happened to cover a lot of common ground in terms of research. I have a few examples where they (White gay male tenured full professors) cited me in their literature, and then turned around and [did] something that’s clearly not to my advantage. I can also think of an example where I got excluded from a grant by another White gay male researcher who had every opportunity to support my scholarship, but did not.
Professor Edward Turner, an African American associate professor, also talked about how White gay male professors were not inclusive:
I have not found too many White gay male professors to be really [the] kind of people who are open and who don’t have racial prejudices. I see so many of them don’t have to think about [the] racial aspect. They are already privileged because they are White people . . . I think the other thing [that] has been hurtful for me is being excluded from the White gay professor population. I’ve been excluded from them because they don’t want to include race. They still have racial attitudes—negative racial attitudes.
The examples demonstrated how people with dominant institutional and sociocultural identities bullied gay male faculty of color due to their race and sexual orientation. The following examples will demonstrate counter-positional bullying, opposite to positional bullying, situations where gay male faculty of color were in supposedly more powerful institutional positions, but that did not prevent bullying from occurring.
Counter-Positional Bullying
Professor Melvin Kelly, a Black associate professor, had experienced being questioned by a student as to whether he was knowledgeable about the content he was teaching. From his experiences, such a thing was not uncommon; the same sort of negativities from his students had appeared over and over during his academic career:
You know, there are a lot of other things [that] happened in my career, but they are basically the same sort of things where . . . students are permitted to be disrespectful. Here is an example. Well, I was teaching one class, an introductory class, a first year class. We were talking about jurisprudential theory. So, one of the theories we were talking about was the law of economics. So, I was pointing out some of the analytical problems with the standard neoclassical theory. So, after the class, one of the students wrote an email to the class saying that he needed to correct some of the things that I had said about economic theory because I was wrong. So, he made this long list of things that I had said were wrong. So, I responded to the email and pointed out why I was taking those positions and positions that he was taking might be consistent with what he learned in Microeconomics 101. When you study [other] schools of economics, you have other perspectives and see things differently. So the students were upset by that . . . That was a problem.
When some students who were White and heterosexual perceived their gay male professors of color knew content or material the students themselves did not know, they seemed to automatically start questioning how their professor could have such knowledge. They did this to Professor Kelly and others in the study; gay male professors of color commonly had their own knowledge questioned, and even challenged, by students.
Professor Wesley Vasquez, a Latino assistant professor, talked about student evaluations where his sexual orientation was a factor used in degrading him publicly as a professor:
It’s not uncommon in my student evaluations to see the word faggot. That word has come up many times [when] students have taken the [opportunity] to say, “He is too much of a faggot.” Something like that. I don’t think it happens to straight people. They [student evaluations and students] make me angry, but I don’t feel hurt by them anymore because I have very little respect for student evaluations.
Gay male faculty of color also reported their evaluations from students were often laden with racist remarks or racial stereotypes. Professor Oscar Martin, a Black associate professor, described an experience where he had received student evaluations from predominantly White female students:
So, when they encountered me as a professor, they’re so used to these negative thoughts about who they think young [People of Color] are that they think I can fit them. And I frighten them. They are uncomfortable because a lot of time they just never encountered somebody like me, a Black male professor. So, they need to deal with their own issues of ageism, sexism, and racism . . . So, you know, I would get teaching comments back like you know, “Dr. Martin is brilliant and well versed in his subject. But he comes with this cocky [attitude]. And, he is intimidating.” Which reminds you, if you realize, it has nothing to do with my teaching. If the teaching evaluation is actually supposed to be about teaching, then why are you so concerned about who you perceive me to be?
The examples demonstrated how counter-positional bullying appeared in the academic lives of gay male faculty of color. The following examples will show a combination of positional and counter-positional bullying situations, where two people in positions of greater and lesser power than the target colluded to bully a gay male faculty of color in higher education.
Unintentional Conspirative Positional Bullying
Gay male faculty of color end up having to negotiate power relationships within an academic hierarchy and, in doing so, often encounter situations where they are caught in between people who are organizationally and socioculturally more privileged and people who are organizationally and socioculturally less privileged, and so experience bullying from both sides. For example, Professor David Green, an African American assistant professor, experienced unintentional conspirative positional bullying where his credibility as a professor was diminished through conspirative interactions between his chair and student, believed by him to be because of his race:
This is also related to being a gay male faculty of color. I was doing an independent study for an African American student on African American literature . . . She was a good student, but the student wanted to try to get into the honors project, and I didn’t think that that student was strong enough to do the honors project, and I told my chair that. The student went to my chair (a White female [professor of] African American Literature . . .), and she [the student] tried to get my chair to get me to [accept her into the honors project]. And I had a very difficult meeting with my chair over this scenario . . . and I felt that I should be able to make the assessment of her [my student] . . . Not the chair, not the student. I should be able to have that determination. And, I felt that the chair was . . . encouraging me to accept the student for the project. And, I was adamant and mentioned that she was not strong enough to do the honors project . . . And, when the chair . . . she eventually said, “Okay. You made that call.” So, she [the chair] decided to do the honors project with her [the student]. I felt disrespected, actually. And, my judgment wasn’t valued there by both the chair and the student. I was kind of ignored.
Professor Green reflected on his experience of being controlled by both his White female chair and student and, in doing so, expressed how he felt he had been ignored and discounted in the professional assessments from both sides:
Within the academy, you know, people are very smart. People have PhDs. That does not mean that they understand racial dynamics or sexual dynamics. They can be just as racially unaware and sexually naive or bigoted as anybody else . . . For instance, [the White female chair] did not seem to understand the gravity of the situation [described above] . . . I had a conversation with her about that when the student went above my head. And, I said to the chair, “I am an African American professor, and she is taking an independent study on African American Literature. And it’s the professor who teaches African American Literature [who] says that it is not probably a good idea to turn this into an honor’s project. And, the student goes over your head to a White female professor to try to get you to change your mind. That’s disrespecting the professor you are working with.” And, apparently the chair herself needed me to tell her that . . . I did not feel validated when my judgment was dismissed.
The narratives above show that the gay male faculty of color’s journeys in higher education have been rough and that those three types of bullying—positional, counter-positional, and unintentional conspirative bullying—have left them “cut and bruised.” Those types of bullying affected the physical and psychological well-being of the participants.
Discussion and Implications
The narratives from this study’s gay male faculty of color demonstrate bullying exists in some places in higher education. In particular, the gay male faculty of color in the study expressed how their academic citizenship had been undermined through bullying based on racism and homophobia. They reported often encountering negative and hostile experiences on campus that damaged their physical and psychological well-being from administrators, departmental chairs, colleagues, and students due to bigoted ideas and stereotypes about race and/or sexual orientation. This article, in turn, reflected on some examples that show a need for adult educators and administrators to make an effort to understand these forms of academic bullying based on positionality, so such bullying can be easily detected and effectively prevented.
There are several practical implications for adult educators based on the study’s three types of bullying. For one, adult educators could become anti-bullying advocates who conduct professional development seminars on the issue of bullying on campus. There is a need to teach awareness about bullying and power dynamics that examine case scenarios such as those uncovered in this study, and there is a need to set up ground rules on how people should treat and respect each other in higher education and in the adult education classroom, no matter what intersection of identities one has. Adult educators should spend time defining and discussing what constitutes ethical and appropriate behaviors in classrooms and on campus to create more democratic, inclusive, and safer educational environment for adults. This study may be a good point of reference for adult educators wanting to do so and for adult educators seeking to advocate and teach anti-bullying approaches for adults.
Another implication is adult educators should focus on social justice and intersectionality. Even in today’s conventional education, race and sexual orientation are rarely treated together (Misawa, 2010b, 2013; Yoshino, 2006), so there is also a need for adult educators to focus on teaching diversity and multiculturalism less monolithically by acknowledging that adults often hold combinations of intersecting identities. Particularly important is adult educators address the intersection of race and sexual orientation when they teach about diverse populations and when they practice social justice. The findings of the study indicated that the gay male faculty of color were consistently targets of bullying from their White and heterosexual administrators and colleagues and even their students. Such situations make it imperative for adult educators to create a series of courses and workshops on social justice and bullying that deal specifically with bullying as it applies to the intersection of race, sexual orientation, and other sociocultural identities.
In addition, adult education administrators can use this study to consider how power dynamics and positionality among students and administrators play out in academic settings and how those can enable bullying to occur in startling ways that involve faculty. Social justice–oriented adult educators can use this study as a starting resource to help them develop support groups and community projects that deal with issues of adult bullying. And all of us could benefit from thinking about ways to stop others from being “cut and bruised” by bullying in what is supposed to be a safe and inclusive environment where we raise the leaders of our communities.
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 Biography
Mitsunori Misawa, PhD, is an assistant professor of the higher and adult education program in the Department of Leadership, and the interim director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Memphis. His research areas are adult bullying, racial and sexual minorities in higher education, power dynamics, positionality, feminist pedagogy, critical race theory, and queer issues.