Shoot the Messenger: A Personal Account of Academic Mobbing

Abstract

This paper recounts my experience as an engaged faculty member and mobbing victim at my former university over almost a decade. The paper also discusses the lessons that I feel my case has for the study of workplace mobbing, in particular, in academia, and more specifically, with respect to intramural academic freedom, that is, the academic freedom to critique the university itself. Issues discussed include the demise of shared academic governance, the chilling effect of campus respectful environment statements, the professionalization of faculty associations and unions, the kangaroo courts of external investigations, the demise on campus of the primacy of the facts and the truth, and the personal consequences on mobbing victims. There is some concentration on how university statements on respectful workplace environments are overriding intramural academic freedom, and how they are encouraging academic mobbing. University administrations and faculty unions should not continue to mob and shoot the messengers. I offer this paper in the hope of helping to stem this troubling tide in the halls of today’s mob-ruled academia.