A lab run by ecologist Walter Jetz, and heavily funded by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, has long been plagued by bullying and dysfunction. Yale has taken little serious action so far.
A thank you to Michael for the reporting and the brave souls who shared their stories to bring the unethical behavior of Jetz to light. I was someone bullied by Jetz as a young faculty member at another institution. A trend that was, and likely still is, common for him. I want to emphasize that Jetz’s toxicity and unethical scientific practices reach beyond his lab. He bullies and belittles junior faculty probing for situations where he can exploit individuals for their data, ideas, and forced collaboration. Beyond individual cases, he influences and gathers scientific output of other researchers in his positions of power through the broader scientific enterprise. He reviews grants for the National Science Foundation, other funding agencies and foundations. He is an editor at multiple high-profile journals and reviews (very harshly with long delays) manuscripts that he later publishes on very similar topics. I no longer submit papers to journals at which he is an editor despite these journal’s statements on confidentiality, because Jetz does not adhere to ethical practice. Not only has behavior like this damaged individual lives and careers, but it has led to a general distrust of our scientific institutions from funders to publishers as they struggle to protect the less powerful or even acknowledge the potential for internal injustices.
Many around the community in which Jetz works have long suspected that his lab would be quite a toxic place. So sad to see that those suspicions are indeed true, and that Jetz’s ego is damaging the careers of young scientists.
Yes. Up to now the toxic atmosphere in the Jetz lab has been a subject of conversation in the so-called “whisper network.” Now, thanks to the brave researchers who decided to make this all public, it is no longer a secret. Let’s hope that will force Yale to do something about it.
Sadly what you found also extends to companies and corporations.
Those who try to work in supportive, collaborative and ethical ways are bullied/ignored. They then have to leave because life becomes intolerable.
This increases the proportion of people acting in a similar manner and promotes further the bullying, aggressive culture. It encourages others to behave that way in order to 'get on'.
I suspect that one of the problems is that many of the established theories are just wrong and so we have large numbers of people desperately trying to keep the lid on the truth. This also requires a less than desirable set of behaviours.
I can't decide whether it will take decades to rectify or whether, like the Berlin Wall, it will collapse at speed. I will visualise the latter!
Wilson's ideas on Half-Earth have been contested in the scientific literature, e.g. "How to protect half of Earth to ensure it protects sufficient biodiversity" https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat2616
I too was part of a lab where my supervisor was dating the postdoc in the lab and still living together. He is actively practices favoritism, has a lot of ego and loves to feel powerful.
Not long before his death, I was "arguing" with David Graeber on twitter about anarchy and asking him how serial killers and the like could be dealt with under hypothetical left-anarchy. His response (paraphrased) was that literally any way would be better than the way we do it now, which is to allow the sociopaths the climb to the highest levels of authority in our hierarchies and institutions.
While I still don't think left-anarchy is a realistic political program, I'm constantly reminded of the wisdom of Graeber's observation, that hierarchies do tend to self-select for antisocial personality types when it comes to the attainment of positions of power.
How to deal with that tendency is an open question. Working towards and advocating for more accountability and transparency might be our best bet. I wish it didn't feel like a losing battle, but knowing other people are at least aware of some of the problems does give me hope.
I found the old convo, in case anyone wants to see it, btw.
(RIP, David. You are sorely missed, but your insights live on.)
Yes, they seem necessary during wars and similar. But do churches, universities, elementary schools, and fast food chains need to be? Does everything need to be? One of the absolute worst places for a hierarchy is a family and yet many people assume there's only one head of household in any family, from which derives all sorts of evil.
Thanks for writing this piece, Michael. I read every word. In my academic past, I encountered so many toxic situations. It's good to get some sunlight on the problem.
Thanks for the support! The Jetz report has seriously gone viral, amazing. Hopeful that Yale and the Wilson Foundation will be forced to confront this.
I left academia because of the exact statements here of a broken system. I realized if I tried to remain ethical and caring, I would quickly fall behind. And God-forbid I wanted to have a family and be a present mother. Took a pay cut to work for the government as an entomologist and I love every minute of it.
I also work as a postdoc in a lab where the PI created an incredibly toxic atmosphere for the rest of the team. Reading this makes me hope and dream that someday, karma will hit them back and that they will also find their picture and name pinned on top of such an article reporting their misbehaviour to the wider public. It also saddens me to hear about such stories and experiences way too often in academia...
Yeah my PI is an absolute pro for that as well. And would openly criticize other PIs whose toxic ethics are made public. It's a wonder sometimes given how shocking it is, such a denial of themselves, if they actually try to cover their acts up, or lie to themselves so hard that they don't realize they are doing the same things they condemn in other people!
The EEB Department at Yale is welcoming and supportive. The problem is not in the department as a whole, but in Jetz's lab in particular. Anyone interested in EEB should not be deterred from applying. Most of the faculty in the department are excellent biologists and good people.
Here also are excerpts from the Yale Faculty Handbook relevant to this case. It has been updated since the events described in the timeline.
"The integrity of the teacher-student relationship is crucial to the University’s educational mission. This relationship vests considerable trust in the faculty member, who, in turn, bears authority and accountability as mentor, educator, and evaluator. When acting in their role as teachers, members of the Yale faculty treat students and trainees with respect. They set an example of academic integrity and educate their students and trainees in the requirements of honest scholarship. They evaluate their students’ and trainees’ work solely on the basis of its intellectual merit and adherence to course or program requirements. They maintain proper professional boundaries and never exploit the unequal institutional power inherent in the relationship between faculty member and student or trainee."
"To protect their colleagues, their students, the University, and the record of knowledge in their field, and to preserve respect for scholarship in the larger community, members of the Yale faculty conduct and publish their research and writing with scrupulous honesty, and they do not allow pecuniary or other improper influences to compromise the integrity of their scholarship."
"In furtherance of Yale’s mission, [faculty] have the right and obligation to criticize their colleagues, staff members, and the University, but they endeavor to do so without personal animus and without seeking to intimidate or coerce. "
I applaud your sustained efforts to address this, especially in the face of Yale's clear disregard for its PhDs and postdocs.
I wonder, though, how many people would see the department as 'welcoming and supportive' when the majority of its senior members voted to promote him multiple times with full knowledge of his actions. If even the protections of tenure were insufficient to encourage them to take a mild moral stand, how supportive of junior scientists are they really?
You make a good point, but since Jetz was promoted, new senior faculty have been hired and promoted and his two strongest supporters have retired. In addition, several outstanding new junior faculty have been hired. The department has been refreshed.
Let me take issue with your facile generalization that Yale clearly disregards its PhDs and Postdocs. Jetz, not Yale, clearly disregards his PhDs and Postdocs, and Yale tries to compensate. Like any large research institution with hundreds of research groups, the quality of mentoring varies across the university, but in my experience (I am now retired), mentors and PhD committees are generally quite supportive, Yale graduate students and postdocs are well paid, the graduate students have teaching loads much lower than do students at many other universities, and they have access to some wonderful resources.
I would like to nuance this. There is basically zero support for postdocs who are looking for help in the department when things are not going well with advisors. The only weak support options have failed all those I know who tried them. I have also witnessed a high number of unhappy early careers outside of the Jetz lab in EEB, so no, it's not just Jetz, it's also the department, and it's Yale. The department has failed many early careers, and has contributed to allow Jetz's abuse, before and after his promotion, until now.
My reply was misplaced below. It says: That's important information. I am emailing it to the department chair and the dean of FAS.
I think you can assume that the Yale administration is now following this thread. Any postdoc in EEB could post an anonymous request here for a town hall to air complaints and an anonymous channel to send information to the chair and the dean and I am pretty sure it would be quickly read. You will not be seeing Yale leaders commenting publicly here, but that does not mean they are not concerned or will not help. In my experience, they can deal with issues much more effectively when people are willing to come forward and identify themselves to the administration, and there are ways of doing so that leave their identities protected.
Unfortunately this seems to be a strategy again relying on the abused to come forward and make all the effort in every way possible, as well as expose themselves in a process led by the administration that has failed everyone except for Jetz, leading to lost time, energy, and degraded mental health.
When there is a crisis with some important matters that affect the Jetz lab and go public (e.g., E.O. Wilson), it's true fact no one from the department or the administration has reached out to lab members to handle the situation. However, lab members have reached out for support within EEB, and it led to nowhere. It's simply unacceptable. How is EEB and the administration supporting lab members right now?
I am also forwarding this to the chair and the dean. I am 3000 miles away and not well enough informed to answer your question.
It might be helpful if you could post here the concrete steps you want them to take. It seems clear that their efforts to improve Jett's behavior with counseling have not worked.
It is always heartbreaking to hear stories like this. There are many bad actors in science, but there are also very many more faculty who behave respectfully and appropriately with collaborators of all career stages.
The vast majority of scientists are in it not for fame, for glory, or for money, but to advance knowledge. They love the highs of discovery and of solving a problem. They know the work is collaborative, and should not be hierarchical, and they know that mentorship is a fundamental part of the job. For many senior faculty, success is measured in the number of great scientists they helped mentor, and not in citations or number of grants.
Unfortunately, as in every profession, there are people whose ambitions lead them to behave badly. They exploit early career researchers to their own ends. In my experience, these researchers lack empathy, do not value successful mentorship, and do not take on citizenship roles such as journal editing, reviewing, or playing a role in academic societies. They also fail to accept they do anything wrong. Success for them is in dollars and citation metrics.
These people remain in academia because removing them is difficult. Most universities are sufficiently fearful of legal action or claims of unfair dismissal that they do not engage as quickly or effectively in dealing with abuses of power as they should. Many faculty in departments with misbehaving professors know there is a problem, and they intervene and help, but the senior administration often fail to act as appears to have happened at Yale.
We do need to move towards valuing good mentorship more than we currently do, and downplaying the importance of citation metrics. If promotion included assessments from past group members, provided in confidence, this would be a step in the right direction.
I can comment on one aspect of this, from my own reporting. It is true that university administrations very often make it as difficult as possible for faculty to deal with problems within their departments, by taking it out of their hands and then telling everyone they can’t talk about it. In one case I worked on, department members at a public university were kept in the dark about a Title IX proceeding until I waltzed in with a public records act request, got the investigative report which anyone had a right to by law, and wrote about it. All that time the administration was telling grown up faculty members they had no right to know. Unfortunately, Yale is a private university and thus not subject to public records requests, but colleagues should still insist on transparency.
Great job, Michael! It's been really interesting both reading this and seeing people's reactions. Your piece has sparked a much-needed discussion about toxic organizational cultures and individuals and the human cost of their impact on the academic side of the fields of conservation and ecology. Your unwavering support for the underdog is truly inspiring - thank you for making a difference.
Thanks very much, James. I had hoped to retire from doing this kind of reporting long ago, but unfortunately we are still far from solving the problems.
The part of this story that felt like a gut-punch is the letter from the provost to the department stating "that faculty conduct should not be considered in such cases." Again: "faculty conduct should not be considered in such cases." In evaluating the promotion of an ostensible scholar, mentor, and educator to full professor, the provost of Yale University believes that "conduct should not be considered." There is nothing anyone could say to any grad student or postdoc--nothing--that could possible convince them that this is a safe place to work, let alone pursue the scientific endeavor. For shame.
If Yale ends up determined to do nothing about Walter Jetz, it should not be surprised if ECRs and students vote with their feet and stop coming to the lab. Then the university might have to deal with it.
Agreed. Though I should have been more clear that by "this [place]" I meant Yale. After all, the provost has oversight over all departments, not just the Jetz lab, so if they not only tolerate but actively encourage (can we call that letter to the department an institutional form of bullying?) an apparent sociopath in a position of power, then who / what else are they willing to accept?
The Yale Faculty handbook is publicly available on the web. It lays out the rules by which the faculty, and the Provost, act. https://provost.yale.edu/faculty-handbook
In a recent article in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, my colleagues and I offer some recommendations for how universities, professional associations, and other employers of academics might address bullying and other types of interpersonal mistreatment. These include: 1. explicitly promoting respectful and supportive behaviors so they are expected; 2. classifying hostile behaviors as official academic misconduct; and 3. using currently available tools to discourage and prevent hostile behaviors, such as delaying promotions or sabbatical leave, withholding merit raises and opportunities for teaching for extra pay, preventing offenders from serving as principal investigators on research grants, and stopping them from accepting new research students and postdocs.
I have reported the unethical behavior of Walter with a written complaint to the Deans and to the Provost before the Walter promotion in 2014, but my complaint was simply ignored.
This story sounds remarkably similar to the series of events that resulted in the resignation of the entire staff of the Yale University Libraries' Map Collection, one of the great antiquarian research collections ever assembled, under the mismanagement of Jill Parchuk in 2014/15.
A thank you to Michael for the reporting and the brave souls who shared their stories to bring the unethical behavior of Jetz to light. I was someone bullied by Jetz as a young faculty member at another institution. A trend that was, and likely still is, common for him. I want to emphasize that Jetz’s toxicity and unethical scientific practices reach beyond his lab. He bullies and belittles junior faculty probing for situations where he can exploit individuals for their data, ideas, and forced collaboration. Beyond individual cases, he influences and gathers scientific output of other researchers in his positions of power through the broader scientific enterprise. He reviews grants for the National Science Foundation, other funding agencies and foundations. He is an editor at multiple high-profile journals and reviews (very harshly with long delays) manuscripts that he later publishes on very similar topics. I no longer submit papers to journals at which he is an editor despite these journal’s statements on confidentiality, because Jetz does not adhere to ethical practice. Not only has behavior like this damaged individual lives and careers, but it has led to a general distrust of our scientific institutions from funders to publishers as they struggle to protect the less powerful or even acknowledge the potential for internal injustices.
Many around the community in which Jetz works have long suspected that his lab would be quite a toxic place. So sad to see that those suspicions are indeed true, and that Jetz’s ego is damaging the careers of young scientists.
Yes. Up to now the toxic atmosphere in the Jetz lab has been a subject of conversation in the so-called “whisper network.” Now, thanks to the brave researchers who decided to make this all public, it is no longer a secret. Let’s hope that will force Yale to do something about it.
Having support from well established scientist mean the world to phd students and postdoc experiencing bad behaviors in academia. Thanks Town.
Sadly what you found also extends to companies and corporations.
Those who try to work in supportive, collaborative and ethical ways are bullied/ignored. They then have to leave because life becomes intolerable.
This increases the proportion of people acting in a similar manner and promotes further the bullying, aggressive culture. It encourages others to behave that way in order to 'get on'.
I suspect that one of the problems is that many of the established theories are just wrong and so we have large numbers of people desperately trying to keep the lid on the truth. This also requires a less than desirable set of behaviours.
I can't decide whether it will take decades to rectify or whether, like the Berlin Wall, it will collapse at speed. I will visualise the latter!
Wilson's ideas on Half-Earth have been contested in the scientific literature, e.g. "How to protect half of Earth to ensure it protects sufficient biodiversity" https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat2616
I too was part of a lab where my supervisor was dating the postdoc in the lab and still living together. He is actively practices favoritism, has a lot of ego and loves to feel powerful.
Great article!
Not long before his death, I was "arguing" with David Graeber on twitter about anarchy and asking him how serial killers and the like could be dealt with under hypothetical left-anarchy. His response (paraphrased) was that literally any way would be better than the way we do it now, which is to allow the sociopaths the climb to the highest levels of authority in our hierarchies and institutions.
While I still don't think left-anarchy is a realistic political program, I'm constantly reminded of the wisdom of Graeber's observation, that hierarchies do tend to self-select for antisocial personality types when it comes to the attainment of positions of power.
How to deal with that tendency is an open question. Working towards and advocating for more accountability and transparency might be our best bet. I wish it didn't feel like a losing battle, but knowing other people are at least aware of some of the problems does give me hope.
I found the old convo, in case anyone wants to see it, btw.
(RIP, David. You are sorely missed, but your insights live on.)
https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1290271085233991680
We could dispense with hierarchies.
Yes, they seem necessary during wars and similar. But do churches, universities, elementary schools, and fast food chains need to be? Does everything need to be? One of the absolute worst places for a hierarchy is a family and yet many people assume there's only one head of household in any family, from which derives all sorts of evil.
Agree. And we definitely need a democratization of science. Bosses and workers are not the appropriate structure.
Thanks for writing this piece, Michael. I read every word. In my academic past, I encountered so many toxic situations. It's good to get some sunlight on the problem.
Thanks for the support! The Jetz report has seriously gone viral, amazing. Hopeful that Yale and the Wilson Foundation will be forced to confront this.
I left academia because of the exact statements here of a broken system. I realized if I tried to remain ethical and caring, I would quickly fall behind. And God-forbid I wanted to have a family and be a present mother. Took a pay cut to work for the government as an entomologist and I love every minute of it.
I also work as a postdoc in a lab where the PI created an incredibly toxic atmosphere for the rest of the team. Reading this makes me hope and dream that someday, karma will hit them back and that they will also find their picture and name pinned on top of such an article reporting their misbehaviour to the wider public. It also saddens me to hear about such stories and experiences way too often in academia...
Yeah my PI is an absolute pro for that as well. And would openly criticize other PIs whose toxic ethics are made public. It's a wonder sometimes given how shocking it is, such a denial of themselves, if they actually try to cover their acts up, or lie to themselves so hard that they don't realize they are doing the same things they condemn in other people!
Sorry to hear about your negative experiences. Yale knowingly exposed ECRs to abusive conditions for more than a decade.
The EEB Department at Yale is welcoming and supportive. The problem is not in the department as a whole, but in Jetz's lab in particular. Anyone interested in EEB should not be deterred from applying. Most of the faculty in the department are excellent biologists and good people.
Here also are excerpts from the Yale Faculty Handbook relevant to this case. It has been updated since the events described in the timeline.
"The integrity of the teacher-student relationship is crucial to the University’s educational mission. This relationship vests considerable trust in the faculty member, who, in turn, bears authority and accountability as mentor, educator, and evaluator. When acting in their role as teachers, members of the Yale faculty treat students and trainees with respect. They set an example of academic integrity and educate their students and trainees in the requirements of honest scholarship. They evaluate their students’ and trainees’ work solely on the basis of its intellectual merit and adherence to course or program requirements. They maintain proper professional boundaries and never exploit the unequal institutional power inherent in the relationship between faculty member and student or trainee."
"To protect their colleagues, their students, the University, and the record of knowledge in their field, and to preserve respect for scholarship in the larger community, members of the Yale faculty conduct and publish their research and writing with scrupulous honesty, and they do not allow pecuniary or other improper influences to compromise the integrity of their scholarship."
"In furtherance of Yale’s mission, [faculty] have the right and obligation to criticize their colleagues, staff members, and the University, but they endeavor to do so without personal animus and without seeking to intimidate or coerce. "
I applaud your sustained efforts to address this, especially in the face of Yale's clear disregard for its PhDs and postdocs.
I wonder, though, how many people would see the department as 'welcoming and supportive' when the majority of its senior members voted to promote him multiple times with full knowledge of his actions. If even the protections of tenure were insufficient to encourage them to take a mild moral stand, how supportive of junior scientists are they really?
You make a good point, but since Jetz was promoted, new senior faculty have been hired and promoted and his two strongest supporters have retired. In addition, several outstanding new junior faculty have been hired. The department has been refreshed.
Let me take issue with your facile generalization that Yale clearly disregards its PhDs and Postdocs. Jetz, not Yale, clearly disregards his PhDs and Postdocs, and Yale tries to compensate. Like any large research institution with hundreds of research groups, the quality of mentoring varies across the university, but in my experience (I am now retired), mentors and PhD committees are generally quite supportive, Yale graduate students and postdocs are well paid, the graduate students have teaching loads much lower than do students at many other universities, and they have access to some wonderful resources.
I would like to nuance this. There is basically zero support for postdocs who are looking for help in the department when things are not going well with advisors. The only weak support options have failed all those I know who tried them. I have also witnessed a high number of unhappy early careers outside of the Jetz lab in EEB, so no, it's not just Jetz, it's also the department, and it's Yale. The department has failed many early careers, and has contributed to allow Jetz's abuse, before and after his promotion, until now.
My reply was misplaced below. It says: That's important information. I am emailing it to the department chair and the dean of FAS.
I think you can assume that the Yale administration is now following this thread. Any postdoc in EEB could post an anonymous request here for a town hall to air complaints and an anonymous channel to send information to the chair and the dean and I am pretty sure it would be quickly read. You will not be seeing Yale leaders commenting publicly here, but that does not mean they are not concerned or will not help. In my experience, they can deal with issues much more effectively when people are willing to come forward and identify themselves to the administration, and there are ways of doing so that leave their identities protected.
Unfortunately this seems to be a strategy again relying on the abused to come forward and make all the effort in every way possible, as well as expose themselves in a process led by the administration that has failed everyone except for Jetz, leading to lost time, energy, and degraded mental health.
When there is a crisis with some important matters that affect the Jetz lab and go public (e.g., E.O. Wilson), it's true fact no one from the department or the administration has reached out to lab members to handle the situation. However, lab members have reached out for support within EEB, and it led to nowhere. It's simply unacceptable. How is EEB and the administration supporting lab members right now?
I am also forwarding this to the chair and the dean. I am 3000 miles away and not well enough informed to answer your question.
It might be helpful if you could post here the concrete steps you want them to take. It seems clear that their efforts to improve Jett's behavior with counseling have not worked.
It is always heartbreaking to hear stories like this. There are many bad actors in science, but there are also very many more faculty who behave respectfully and appropriately with collaborators of all career stages.
The vast majority of scientists are in it not for fame, for glory, or for money, but to advance knowledge. They love the highs of discovery and of solving a problem. They know the work is collaborative, and should not be hierarchical, and they know that mentorship is a fundamental part of the job. For many senior faculty, success is measured in the number of great scientists they helped mentor, and not in citations or number of grants.
Unfortunately, as in every profession, there are people whose ambitions lead them to behave badly. They exploit early career researchers to their own ends. In my experience, these researchers lack empathy, do not value successful mentorship, and do not take on citizenship roles such as journal editing, reviewing, or playing a role in academic societies. They also fail to accept they do anything wrong. Success for them is in dollars and citation metrics.
These people remain in academia because removing them is difficult. Most universities are sufficiently fearful of legal action or claims of unfair dismissal that they do not engage as quickly or effectively in dealing with abuses of power as they should. Many faculty in departments with misbehaving professors know there is a problem, and they intervene and help, but the senior administration often fail to act as appears to have happened at Yale.
We do need to move towards valuing good mentorship more than we currently do, and downplaying the importance of citation metrics. If promotion included assessments from past group members, provided in confidence, this would be a step in the right direction.
I can comment on one aspect of this, from my own reporting. It is true that university administrations very often make it as difficult as possible for faculty to deal with problems within their departments, by taking it out of their hands and then telling everyone they can’t talk about it. In one case I worked on, department members at a public university were kept in the dark about a Title IX proceeding until I waltzed in with a public records act request, got the investigative report which anyone had a right to by law, and wrote about it. All that time the administration was telling grown up faculty members they had no right to know. Unfortunately, Yale is a private university and thus not subject to public records requests, but colleagues should still insist on transparency.
Great job, Michael! It's been really interesting both reading this and seeing people's reactions. Your piece has sparked a much-needed discussion about toxic organizational cultures and individuals and the human cost of their impact on the academic side of the fields of conservation and ecology. Your unwavering support for the underdog is truly inspiring - thank you for making a difference.
Thanks very much, James. I had hoped to retire from doing this kind of reporting long ago, but unfortunately we are still far from solving the problems.
The part of this story that felt like a gut-punch is the letter from the provost to the department stating "that faculty conduct should not be considered in such cases." Again: "faculty conduct should not be considered in such cases." In evaluating the promotion of an ostensible scholar, mentor, and educator to full professor, the provost of Yale University believes that "conduct should not be considered." There is nothing anyone could say to any grad student or postdoc--nothing--that could possible convince them that this is a safe place to work, let alone pursue the scientific endeavor. For shame.
If Yale ends up determined to do nothing about Walter Jetz, it should not be surprised if ECRs and students vote with their feet and stop coming to the lab. Then the university might have to deal with it.
Agreed. Though I should have been more clear that by "this [place]" I meant Yale. After all, the provost has oversight over all departments, not just the Jetz lab, so if they not only tolerate but actively encourage (can we call that letter to the department an institutional form of bullying?) an apparent sociopath in a position of power, then who / what else are they willing to accept?
Since that letter was written, the faculty code of conduct has been revised, conduct is considered in promotions, and there is a new provost.
The Yale Faculty handbook is publicly available on the web. It lays out the rules by which the faculty, and the Provost, act. https://provost.yale.edu/faculty-handbook
This is encouraging! I appreciate that it's public. I wonder if this is / will become the norm.
In a recent article in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, my colleagues and I offer some recommendations for how universities, professional associations, and other employers of academics might address bullying and other types of interpersonal mistreatment. These include: 1. explicitly promoting respectful and supportive behaviors so they are expected; 2. classifying hostile behaviors as official academic misconduct; and 3. using currently available tools to discourage and prevent hostile behaviors, such as delaying promotions or sabbatical leave, withholding merit raises and opportunities for teaching for extra pay, preventing offenders from serving as principal investigators on research grants, and stopping them from accepting new research students and postdocs.
Richard Primack, Boston University
Here is a link to the article:
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2613
I have reported the unethical behavior of Walter with a written complaint to the Deans and to the Provost before the Walter promotion in 2014, but my complaint was simply ignored.
Please use the contact email you can find on Michaelbalter.com. Thank you.
This story sounds remarkably similar to the series of events that resulted in the resignation of the entire staff of the Yale University Libraries' Map Collection, one of the great antiquarian research collections ever assembled, under the mismanagement of Jill Parchuk in 2014/15.
Thanks, I will have to read up on that.