Tag Archives: mobbing

Peter Wylie on academic mobbing at the University of British Columbia #ubc #ubcnews #ubconews #bced #highered

The account and evidence of how, when, where, and why Professor Wylie (Peter) was mobbed by UBC administrators are disturbing. It’s a travesty that he had to endure this mobbing. Faculty are tremendously grateful that he brought the facts out for an airing and hearing.

My Campus Administration, Faculty Association, Senate, and Me: A Case Study in Academic Mobbing

Peter Wylie
Faculty member, University of British Columbia

This in the author’s view is a clear case of academic mobbing. The case fits perfectly with what is argued that almost all scholars who study academic mobbing agree is its primary characteristics; it is initiated by administrators whose malfeasance was questioned or revealed though the expression of academic free speech; the target tend to be tenured professors who publicly speak out about administrative wrongdoing; it involves manipulation or misrepresentation of the facts regarding the victim’s motivations or behavior; the target’s colleagues are either poisoned against him or her, or choose not to support the victim due indifference, or a lack of conviction, and the target is left personally and professionally injured, while the perpetrator(s) goes unpunished (MacDonald et al., 2018, para. 12). To this the author would add that the kangaroo court investigation procedures of the university are merely an extension of the academic mobbing process. (pp. 206-207)

Read More: Wylie, P. (2019). My Campus Administration, Faculty Association, Senate, and Me: A Case Study in Academic Mobbing. In C. M. Crawford (Ed.), Confronting Academic Mobbing in Higher Education: Personal Accounts and Administrative Action (pp. 187-210). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Peter Wylie: My Faculty Association and Me: A Case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing

My Faculty Association and Me: A Case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing

By Peter Wylie

This paper recounts recent experiences of mine with the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty Association (UBCFA). I am a tenured Associate Professor at UBC, Okanagan campus (UBCO) and I began my FA role as 1st Vice-Chair of the Okanagan Faculty Committee (OFC), an executive position on this standing committee of the FA, in July 2017. The paper is couched in terms of the relatively recent concept of academic mobbing, defined as “an insidious, non-violent and sophisticated kind of psychological bullying that predominantly takes place in college and university campuses.”1 It also employs the concept of “sweetheart unionism” defined as a deal between an employer and union officials that benefits both at the expense of employees; in this case, a deal between UBCO and UBCFA that benefits UBCO management and FA Executive Director and staff in Vancouver at the expense of UBCO faculty members.

My Faculty Association and Me A case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing.pdf

Welcome back to the “respectful environment” of your academic workplace

All characters and actions in the story linked below are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or activities experienced in any supposed “respectful environment” of an academic workplace is purely coincidental.

From McSweeney’s:

“Everyone Did Such a Great Job in the Leadership Workshop Today Except Spencer”

By Tim Sniffen

 

Workplace bullying: Family of Journal Editor Who Committed Suicide Sues U. of Virginia

The Chronicle: Family of Journal Editor Who Committed Suicide Sues U. of Virginia

Two years after Kevin Morrissey, a former managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, killed himself following complaints he made about workplace bullying by his boss, the former VQR editor Ted Genoways, Mr. Morrissey’s family has filed a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against the University of Virginia, which publishes the award-winning journal.

The suit also names as defendants several current and former university employees, including Mr. Genoways and John T. Casteen III, who is president emeritus and continues as a faculty member at the university.

The lawsuit, filed last Wednesday in Virginia circuit court on behalf of Mr. Morrissey’s siblings and his father by Douglas R. Morrissey, one of Mr. Morrissey’s brothers, says the university failed to adequately respond to numerous complaints Mr. Morrissey made about Mr. Genoways in the weeks before his death. Mr. Morrissey complained at least 25 times, the suit says, to the offices of the president, human resources, and employee relations, saying Mr. Genoways had banned him from the journal’s office for unspecified “unacceptable workplace behavior.”

Workplace CFP: Academic Mobbing

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

www.workplace-gsc.com

CFP: Academic Mobbing

Special Issue of Workplace 2012
Editors: Stephen Petrina & Wayne Ross

Editors of Workplace are accepting manuscripts for a theme issue on Academic Mobbing. Academic mobbing is defined by the Chronicle of Higher Education (11 June 2009) as: “a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague.” The Chronicle continues:

If rumors are circulating about the target’s supposed misdeeds, if the target is excluded from meetings or not named to committees, or if people are saying the target needs to be punished formally “to be taught a lesson,” it’s likely that mobbing is under way.

As Joan Friedenberg eloquently notes in The Anatomy of an Academic Mobbing, the toll taken is excessive. Building on a long history of both analysis and neglect in academia, Workplace is interested in a range of scholarship on this practice, including theoretical frameworks, legal analyses, resistance narratives, reports from the trenches, and labor policy reviews. We invite manuscripts that address, among other foci:

  • Effects of academic mobbing
  • History of academic mobbing
  • Sociology and ethnography of the practices of an academic mob
  • Social psychology of the academic mob leader or boss
  • Academic mobbing factions (fact + fiction) or short stories
  • Legal defense for academic mob victims and threats (e.g., Protectable
  • political affiliation, race, religion)
  • Gender norms of an academic mob
  • Neo-McCarthyism and academic mobbing
  • Your story…

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to APA or MLA style.

If interested in co-editing or authoring, please contact Stephen Petrina (Stephen.petrina@ubc.ca) or Wayne Ross (wayne.ross@ubc.ca). This issue will ideally launch in September 2012.

‘Mobbing’ Can Damage More Than Careers, Professors Are Told at Conference

The Chronicle News Blog: ‘Mobbing’ Can Damage More Than Careers, Professors Are Told at Conference

Washington — It probably wouldn’t be that hard for faculty members to imagine that academic mobbing — a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague — could derail their careers. But a discussion of the phenomenon today at the American Association of University Professors’ international conference on globalization, shared governance, and academic freedom illustrated that the consequences can be much worse.