the rise of the academic bully

Warfare is common and no less deadly because it is polite.

--J. Victor Baldrige (cited as epigraph to Faculty Incivility)

Dark times. I read the book a couple of years ago, shortly after it was published, in an attempt to make sense of certain behaviours whose increasing frequency seemed to me to suggest a disturbing pattern and a sea-change in human relations.

Little did I realise then that I would come full face with it as, having been forced to emigrate in search of an academic position (non-existent in my country), I struggled to survive in another culture that generally treats foreign scholars with the utmost contempt.

Again, it is not that Japanese universities are alone in this appalling rise of academic incivility and camouflaged aggression. However, certain cultural traits – namely the overvaluation of consensus (和) and the mechanisms of social control developed to suppress criticism and dissent as well as to manipulate or hide information – make it more covert, insidious, and yet no less deadly. As the authors of Faculty Incivility argue:

To keep cultural acts hidden is a subtle form of incivility; secrecy permits control, and control contributes to a culture of incivility. . . . A façade of social order and control often masks an underlying current of the general rudeness that prevails throughout society in general and the academy in particular. (p. 5)

It would take far too long to summarise the intricate argument developed by Twale and De Luca in the book, but since someone else has done it quite nicely in a review available on Amazon.com, I take the liberty of reproducing it here:

Some journalists . . . have ascertained that today . . . selfishness, disrespect, rudeness, and self-absorption are on the rise and incivility has become a serious societal problem. Since academy represents an image of society, the incivility amongst academics is dominantly visible. Generally, civility increases amongst individuals as they age but it rarely increases as a result of educational level. Uncivil acts occur among academics more often than one would like to admit. According to the authors, people bully and aggress others because of their personal insecurities, lack of self-confidence, envy, and inability to cope with the challenges of life. A hostile workplace often is the result of a power imbalance that leads to aggression, and workplace incivility. Further, when silent treatment, micromanagement, demotion, being given less responsibility , gossip, overloading with work, indulging in self-promotion, harboring rumors, breaking confidentiality, playing favorites, ignoring positive contributions, backstabbing, scapegoting, marginalizing, dismissing others' valid opinions and ideas, consistently interrupting, envy, and lies persist over a longtime, a bully or mob culture begins to develop and flourish in the academy. In some departments, bystanders are aware of what is going on but usually do nothing to support the target(s) for fear of retaliation. Through careful manipulation, bullies who are usually "charmers" and liars may acquire roles and responsibilities of a leader such as department chair or even dean. The way academy conducts its business, mobbing or group-bullying through committee decisions camouflages and insulates the real bully or singular instigator.

The authors point out that academic life can become competitive to the point of being dysfunctional. The individual faculty competes for space in top-tier journals, most publications per year, biggest offices with windows, grant money, and the most golden status in the administration's eyes. Further, in academy, at times, selected faculty members reach the status of urban legend. The value of their credentials is so inflated by themselves or administration that students and distant colleagues may believe that they walk on water and gain legendry reputation that is more pomposity and pretence than actual value and substance.

In sum, the book presents an insider's view of the sad tale of academy where individuals with doctorates [and sometimes even without them!] proclaim godlike status for themselves. They engage in underhanded acts of brutality towards one another usually unheard and unseen by the general public. Ironically, most outsiders to the academy think of it as a peaceful, nourishing haven where scholarly minds ardently pursue the quality life of the intellect. The authors conclude by emphasizing that incivilities and the bully culture of the academy are inconsistent with the normative expectations of civil society. They make suggestions on how the incivilities of the professorate and the bully culture of academy can be curtailed. This book is an eye opener.

In a dog-eat-dog world where self-absorption, unscrupulousness and philistinism have become the rule of the day and the privileged instruments of career advancement, there seems to be little protection or hope for those exiles who are in academia because they still believe it is a place where ideas may count and intellectual life flourish.

A belief that is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Some, witnessing the gradual devaluation of humane inquiry in an academia now entirely at the service of the status quo and a ruthless managerialism, have already proclaimed ‘the death of universities’. I tend to agree, more and more. Also, from what I have observed here over the past four years, I cannot but fully agree with the view that Japanese universities in particular are 'a huge tatemae erected against the very idea of education' (a quote from Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan, if I'm not mistaken) – and of scholarship, I should add.

Once again, Japan leads the way -- in the worst possible manner.