A Sample Target Story. My comments in italics
Maria Smith
“My story begins as an assistant professor in my home country, during which time I also held visiting professorships at prominent research universities in Europe and the United States. I had successfully developed a technology with the potential to diagnose human diseases and I had both published and patented my work.
In 2015, I reached out to a renowned group of researchers at a prestigious research institution to see if I could collaborate with them to translate my technology for clinical use. They invited me to give a job talk for a position within their group.
Afterward, one senior principal investigator (PI) in the group offered me a postdoctoral position within his group, with the promise of a quick promotion to a more independent position to follow. This should have been my first red flag warning. I assume the red flag was that the position was junior to what she might have expected, but with the promise of a quick promotion, which was in his gift, that’s grooming: offer her less but promise more.
However, I was quickly promoted to instructor within his group. I oversaw three postdoctoral researchers and took over much of the grant writing for the lab. In addition, my supervisor (PI) asked me to do some very unprofessional, personal things for him such as editing photos of his family, writing his promotional letters, creating an overly flattering Wikipedia page for him, and nominating him for awards. This should have been the second red flag, A huge one: getting a colleague to do menial tasks for you, is grooming: he’s checking that she will accept being professionally disrespected.
At the same time, this PI was very encouraging about translating my technology into a diagnostic test for clinical applications and together we submitted a patent for this idea. If this idea and work were hers, why is he on the patent? This is all casting couch stuff – I can and am doing great things for your career but…! About one year after I joined the lab, he and I had an explosive disagreement about who should get senior authorship of a publication related to my diagnostic test. All of the experimental work and analysis for which had been done prior to joining his group. Once the bully has been threatening I would record on my phone every encounter with them thereafter. You’d have to be careful not to get caught as the institution could argue that it represented a breach of trust and dismiss you but the fact the bully is threatening you can be used to justify the recording but check your individual circumstance with an employment lawyer.
At this point, the full-on harassment began. He called me at home on my cell phone and even sometimes late at night. He wanted details about the technology, but scolded me for putting them into emails. (I didn’t know it at the time, but he was secretly starting a company based on my technology.) Never take work calls at home unless you are officially working from home, in which case, I wouldn’t take calls outside of working hours unless I was on-call. Having a written record is always a good idea.
Throughout the next year, a pattern of bullying behaviors emerged in our in-person or phone meetings; He used all the bully’s tactics: berating, shouting profanity, attempting to humiliate me in front of colleagues, and threatening to terminate my job, among other things. Nearly all of these happened behind closed doors.
But I put up with these behaviors because I was succeeding in my science. Our patent was filed, and I had won an internal university grant for $300,000. He had promised to help me get promoted to an assistant professor position.
Instead, during a time when my supervisor (PI) was away on sabbatical, I received a one-two sucker punch to the gut: a letter terminating my position due to a ‘lack’ of funding and a request for access to my raw data from the company that my supervisor had set up based on my patented technology without my knowledge. An attempt to weaken her whilst demanding all her work.
In an email, I confronted the PI and asked for an explanation. At the same time, I contacted my institution’s ombudsman office and a top administrator to find out what my options were. My stress and anxiety levels were through the roof. In an instant it seemed that I might no longer have a job or health insurance at a time when we were starting our family. One of the reasons I hate America’s type of ‘healthcare.’
As I refused to respond to his continued phone calls, my PI flew back from his sabbatical and requested a meeting in his office. I did not feel physically safe meeting in his office, and so we met in a public coffee shop off campus. Another red flag. When I confronted him, he threw an emotional fit, which flowed from rage to tears. He brought up the assistant professor promotion again and even dangled the idea of bringing me into the company. Yes should have met on campus with colleagues close by.
At the time, I decided to take a forgiving approach. But in hindsight, he was simply manipulating me. Later, I would learn he had a pattern of behaving badly and then begging for forgiveness and promising to do better. Too often, academic bullying is akin to having an abusive domestic partner – one who has more financial and political power over and uses it against you.
The only time I have seen a bully change is when their job is under threat due to their behaviour, then as soon as the penalty elapses, they start bullying again. Think about it, why would a bully change? What they do works for them! On occasions when a bully is called out or caught, they WILL LIE, ‘Oh my mother’s just died, I’m very stressed.’ If investigating, I would ask for the death certificate. Lying is one of a bully’s most-used tools. A ‘forgiving’ approach is always a mistake with a bully, as it assumes the bully is a reasonable person.
Two years after joining the bully’s research group, I was promoted to a fully independent position, with my own designated laboratory and office space, and I would report to the department chair. I also won two more prestigious internal grants. My new independence and success had me feeling secure, but my former supervisor had also been promoted to the head of the institutional center that housed our labs, still casting a menacing shadow over my work.
Over the next six months, I developed a new technology that improved upon the first diagnostic test and filed a patent for it. When my former PI somehow found out, he started asking for a meeting and questions about it. When I met him in a public space on campus, he again threw an ugly scene, yelling at me that he should share in the patent. I would have colleagues there to witness his behaviour and or record it.
Immediately, a new wave of retaliation began: text messages from colleagues pressuring me and weird, newly placed restrictions on running my lab that other assistant professors didn’t share.
It was a classic bait and switch pattern of an abuser. When his bullying tactics didn’t work to get what he wanted, he’d dangle an offer of career advancement. Once he had his way, he’d go right back to bullying. If I complained to a higher administrator, he threatened my job and promised to destroy my reputation and career chances. I was yo-yoing between humiliation, manipulation, AND making progress in my research and career. It was a completely unsustainable state of affairs.
By this point, I had formulated a backup plan and had applied to other assistant professor positions. When things had escalated to the point that I raised an official institutional complaint, I had a written offer from another employer.
The institution found my complaint to be valid and a pattern of bullying behavior by my former PI, yet they only chose to reprimand the bully and send him to a training course. (A tactic they had already used in the past with this professor, which had clearly failed.) My only option was to continue working in the same research center and department where this menace held a very senior position. Instead, I resigned and moved to my new institution.
Although this may seem like a bad outcome, I’m very much at peace today to be doing my science in a supportive, nonhostile environment.
So she won but the perpetrator could continue to bully other people. I think she should have appealed the institution’s outcome as it hadn’t worked previously. A bully won’t stop until either his tecniques don’t work anymore or the institution tells him he will be fired next time.
Every time you are bullied, you become more visible and vulnerable to the next bully you meet, and that bully doesn’t have to be at work. It could be someone in your family, a neighbour, a friend, someone who is in a club or association you belong to, or someone trying to scam you – salespeople use some of the same techniques.
#AcademicBullying
