Filling the Space: A Framework for Coordinated Global Actions To Diminish Academic Bullying

Abstract

Academic bullying is a serious issue that affects all disciplines and people of all levels of experience. To create a truly safe, productive, and vibrant environment in academia requires coordinated and collaborative input as well as the action of a variety of stakeholders, including scholarly communities, funding agencies, and institutions. In this Viewpoint, we focus on a framework of integrated responding, in which stakeholders as responsible and response-able parties could proactively collaborate and coordinate to reduce the incidence and consequences of academic bullying while at the same time building constructive academic cultures. The outcome of such a framework would be to create novel entities (e.g. centre of excellence in academic ethics and civility) and actions (e.g. incorporating bullying records into institutional rankings) that accelerate successful responses to academic bullying.

Keywords: academic bullying; coordinated global actions; harassment; integrated responding ethics.