Targets of bullying are often the most vulnerable members of the scientific workforce—they may be low-paid graduate students or postdocs, living in a foreign country, navigating a foreign language and culture, and whose immigration status is tied directly to their employment. They may also have young families, be living paycheck-to-paycheck, and have health insurance and other benefits that depend on a contract position that can be revoked with little to no notice or cause. Finally, targets on the low end of a power differential are not likely to be supported by their institutions, particularly institutions that rely on the big grant earnings brought in by senior “bullies.” This book is a brief guide to the causes of academic bullying and to their solutions.
1. You Are a Target, Not a Victim
Morteza Mahmoudi
2. A Sample Target Story
Maria Smith
3. Causes of Abusive Supervision: The Case of Bullying in Academic Science
Sherry Moss
4. Targets’ Responses to Abusive Supervision
Sherry Moss
5. Mobbing in Academia
Mehdi Kamali, Saman Hosseinpour, Jennifer Swann, Hossein Pooya Sareh, and Morteza Mahmoudi
6. What to Expect After Speaking Up?
Krzysztof Potempa
7. Possible Solutions to Academic Bullying in Higher Education
Morteza Mahmoudi and Sherry Moss
8. Epilogue
Morteza Mahmoudi
Biography
Morteza Mahmoudi is an assistant professor at the Department of Radiology, Michigan State University (MSU), USA, and a member of the Precision Health Program at MSU’s College of Human Medicine. Prior to MSU, he was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, USA. His specific research interest is in nanomedicine and regenerative medicine for the development of new nano-based platforms for prevention and treatment of life-threatening conditions. Aside from nanomedicine and regenerative medicine, Dr. Mahmoudi is also very active in the social sciences and specifically in drawing the attention of the scientific community to the rising issues of academic bullying and gender imbalance in science. His reports have been published in top-tier journals, including Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, Science, and The Lancet.
