BY LEAH P. HOLLIS
My Journal of Academic Freedom article “The Ironic Interplay of Free Speech and Silencing discusses academic freedom in the context of workplace bullying. In it, I consider the need to balance free speech rights with an individual’s right to a psychologically safe workplace.
During my campus visits and talks about workplace bullying, testimonials shared with me podium-side confirm that the target of workplace bullying finds nothing theoretical or academic about the experience. In explaining their situations, people can be close to tears about how the organization has erased their humanity and allowed the abuse to continue. Also, I find that the campus community typically knows who the bully is; they know which departments yield high turnover; they know where the ogre has his or her office; they know the liar and tyrant, yet the abuse continues.
Data collections on this topic also show that the academic community is looking to leadership, to one person to solve the problem. Perhaps the savior label is hung on the provost, the vice president, or the dean. This would be great if one person alone could shift the culture and defy entrenched workplace bullying. However, the collective voice is a more realistic solution.
We can take a page from history and look at major social change. I consider Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony as change agents. More recently, I consider Emma Gonzalez, who is speaking out about school shootings, and Malala Yousafzai, who is speaking out about girls’ rights to schooling. These leaders, while inspirational and dynamic, are not doing it alone. When Rosa Parks sat down on that bus in 1955, she then stood up with a community behind her. In 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. walked across that bridge in Birmingham, he walked with scores of people raising their voices for freedom.
The message here is that we as scholars are often the smartest in the room. We choose the life of the mind, knowledge workers who cross-reference hermeneutical, epistemological, transformational, lyrical, diasporic, and other highfalutin interpretations, to extend the academic field. Aside from my slightly humorous hyperbole, we immerse ourselves in high-level yet isolating scholarship. We spend long hours in the library, with the computer, or holed up somewhere reading volumes of research and theoretical approaches.
Research and scholarship are isolating activities, but social activism is not. While our research can inform a movement and social change, our research is not a substitute for a mobilized group acting together. And please know, from my vantage point as a research faculty member, I do not cast aspersions on our critical scholarship. Nonetheless, the message we receive about scholarly advancement is to write and keep writing. If you are having a family dinner, you think you should be writing. It’s time to go to church, but you have that notepad with you to keep writing. You attend your 12-year old’s recital, but you should be writing. Ah you may finally have that promised date night- but wait, you should be writing. Many of us are told to keep a journal by the bed to snag those ethereal thoughts—yes, while sleeping you should be writing! 1 Our profession promotes isolation that yields magnificent production.
However, changing the landscape and flushing out bullies can’t rely on isolation or a savior figure to emerge from obscurity. In changing our work environments, we must emerge from the cubicle and from the laptop screen and bring voices together that not only create anti-bullying policies but apply anti-bullying policies insisting upon department accountability. I have never seen or read of social change being successful just because someone wrote a paper or book. The collective application of knowledge changes the landscape. The collective intelligence in the room can quash workplace bullying.
For more information on workplace bullying check out:
Hollis, L. P. (2016). The Coercive Community College: Bullying and its Costly Impact on the Mission to Serve Underrepresented Populations. Emerald Group Publishing.
1 Thank you to my colleague at McGill University, Nathan Hall. His “always writing” comments from AERA, New York 2018, inspired those comments in the blog
Leah P. Hollis is assistant professor in the department of advanced studies and leadership at Morgan State University. Her book Bully in the Ivory Tower: How Aggression and Incivility Erode American Higher Education (2012) is based on independent research on 175 colleges and universities. Her second book, The Coercive Community College: Bullying and its Costly Impact on the Mission to Serve Underrepresented Populations (2016) examines workplace bullying at 142 community colleges.
The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom publishes scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. The Journal is published online annually, and is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation.
Thank you, Leah. It is precisely that requisite isolation to think and express thinking that puts our profession in peril. I could write a book on this, and it’s title would be, “While You Were Thinking.” Of course, everyone needs increased doses of Vitamin AAUP to get them started (joining the AAUP, forming AAUP chapters, attending workshops to further understand AAUP principles, and becoming active on campus). To restore our profession, we need to advocate for it. This is a massive, DIY project, but we are up to it. If anyone can move people to think, it is us. If anyone can inform people about injustice, it is us. If anyone can be the engine of change, it is us. We can go all the way back to the Phaedrus to see how. Thank you for pointing out the bullying problem. Thank you for recommending we take some time out of all our critical thinking to engage in some critical doing!