Bullying is endemic in academia, an environment riddled with hierarchies and hyper-competition, exacerbated by an over-reliance on temporary contracts and the pressure to land highly coveted tenured positions. To give a sense of the size of the problem, in any 12-month period, on average, 25% of faculty members self-identify as being bullied, while 40–50% say they have witnessed others being bullied, according to a synthesis of studies published in 2019 (L. Keashly in Special Topics and Particular Occupations, Professions and Sectors (eds P. D’Cruz et al.) https://doi.org/gbgn; Springer, 2019). A survey that year of 9,000 staff at the Max Planck Society, the German research organization, found that 10% had experienced bullying behaviour in the past 12 months, and 17.5% reported bullying events over a longer time frame (see Nature 571, 14–15; 2019). One in five of the graduate students who responded to Nature’s 2019 global PhD survey reported experiencing bullying, and 57% of those reported feeling unable to discuss their situation without fear of personal repercussions (see Nature 575, 403–406; 2019). As universities around the world grapple with pandemic-related stressors, including cutbacks, layoffs and furloughs, an environment could emerge in which bullying behaviours increase, says Loraleigh Keashly, a researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, who studies academic bullying. A 2020 paper that she co-authored with Morteza Mahmoudi, a nanotechnologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, suggests that the pandemic could fuel abusive academic-workplace behaviours owing to worsening psychological health and economic and social inequities (M. Mahmoudi and L. Keashly Bioimpacts 10, 139–140; 2020). ...
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", language="en", issn="0028-0836", doi="10.1038/d41586-021-01252-z", url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01252-z" }