Sussex v-c: ‘dramatic change’ needed to tackle bullying culture

I would argue that this is a sector wide problem that is usually not addressed (openly or at all) other than through meaningless and noneffective policy documents and guidelines rather than a fundamental governance, attitudinal and cultural change that is required. Also, I would doubt that the main issue today is with widespread problems between academics and students (I am not denying that these terrible cases still exist). This is because more often than not the bullying (or intimidation or gaslighting and so on) is used by senior and middle management and academics (often with the backing of HR at my place of work, for example) as a tool to keep pesky staff in their place, coerce them into submission or silence and also to eventually manage them out (making them resign without the need for severance pay, for example). This all, of course, takes place behind closed doors (as an "informal" chat and "word of advice") and outside official procedure (to avoid documentation and a legally relevant paper trail) or is masked as "support" (i.e. performance and capability procedures). UK academia is a nasty place and has a toxic management culture (a bad mixture of public service bureaucracy, autocratic top-down control and corporate ruthlessness) but of course nobody is prepared to talk about this because people are scared, willfully ignorant (i.e. career minded) and the perpetrator often in a position of power. Kudos to Adam Tickell for openly talking about the problem and he is right that there are "external factors" at play as well (the elephant in the room is government policy). Yet, he may also want to have a chat with his VC chums next time they meet. It starts with them and this is an inconvenient truth that may hurt their feelings and self-image.

I have not worked in the UK system for 17 years, so my experience is dated. And concerned staff-staff interactions, Unfortunately one UK university I know would take some beating when it came to the sort of behaviour now identified as bullying. One process used was called ‘appraisal’ which was extraordinarily subjective, done on paper in those days, and what was said, being 1-1, could not be challenged. One had to be resilient to cope with this. I hope this is no longer the case there, or anywhere, although An Academic identifies similar ‘behind closed doors’ situations. Much more serious in my view was the treatment of younger female staff by older men. The mindset of many men, not all, born before ca. 1950 was conditioned from birth to treat women as second class citizens and whatever we did to promote equal opportunities and treatment fell on deaf ears. There were no adequate means of addressing the issue, because senior managers were drawn from the same group. Maybe today is different, but there must be historical cases of abuse which could easily topple some institutional managers if exposed today. I very much hope that the VC of U Sussex can work with his peers to address these issues.