Ms. Mentor

Backstabbers and Underminers

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Question (from "Felicia"): I'm up for tenure in a few weeks and am still reeling from the last few semesters. First there was a department evaluation claiming, out of the blue, that I make "mean and insensitive" remarks. Then, in a public meeting, my chairman torpedoed a proposal I'd written. After that he told me, privately, that the evaluation committee had done me a favor by not mentioning that I'd offered sexual favors for promotion. (I did no such thing.) Then people outside the department started looking at me funny and asking if I'm really happy here. There was an air of tension and mystery.

Eventually I filed a complaint against my chairman's destructive and slanderous behavior. Once I met with the dean and provost, all the insanity stopped. Everyone was suddenly friendly, and even my chairman (who'd spent a year taking me off projects) was complimenting me. I don't know whether I'll get tenure, but I feel like I've been through months of hazing, stopped only because I howled to the provost. Colleagues at other campuses have also run into last-minute buzz saws, including false accusations. How common is this hazing, and what should victims do?

Question (from "Hugh"): I'm a visiting assistant professor (on a one-year renewable contract) at a wealthy liberal-arts college where student evaluations are the only things that "count." After an in-class student mutiny (not uncommon here), my boss said I should "respond humbly" (give in on everything), or be out of a job. Some changes would be educationally harmful, so I refused. When very few students enrolled for my next semester's course, my boss said I probably wouldn't be rehired.

Then a seemingly friendly colleague, "Iago," invited me to a secret off-campus lunch. He said he was "worried" about my teaching so he had been soliciting student opinions. I later found out he'd been telling students not to take my course, but to sign up for his instead. Is there anything I can do about a pseudo-friend who turns out to be a poaching snake?

Question (from "Melissa"): In my department, promising scholars are denied tenure because they threaten the status quo. Junior colleagues leave, and the remaining untenured hole up in their offices, terrified that they might say the wrong thing. We've stopped socializing and become notorious as a toxic department. We even had "consultants" (therapists?) for a while, but nothing much changed (some say there weren't enough drugs). Can one survive a noxious work environment, when the surroundings -- city, kids' schools, friends -- are perfectly fine?

Answer: Ms. Mentor would like everyone to dwell in harmony. In her utopia, new faculty members would be hired judiciously, nurtured and mentored, rewarded with tenure, and honored with feasting, singing, triumphant laurel wreaths, odes, and raises.

But sometimes the real-life swim to tenure is through a swamp infested with alligators waiting to chomp on vulnerable flesh. Survivors have deep wounds. Some go on to administer the same browbeatings to later newbies, and call it "bracing." Ms. Mentor calls it sadistic.

What can newbies do about the backstabbers, the hazers, the underminers, and the bullies?

Retaliation rarely works, because bullies have the power. (Felicia may be an exception.) Decamping to another college is one way out. So is quitting academe entirely. But suppose you want to keep on and get tenure in the field that's been your life's work? And you don't want to wake up every morning with sore jaws, because you've been grinding your teeth in your sleep?

What do you do about the monster down the hall?

Sometimes, as Felicia found, the monster lurks, quiescent, until your tenure year -- whereupon a volcano of criticism erupts. Students' minor complaints are logged in; letters of praise are somehow lost. Sometimes outside referees are told to write "balanced" (negative) reports.

When Ms. Mentor began her career, this Sexist Stutter Step, or last-ditch hazing, was a common torment for academic women. Her files bulged with tales. Now it most often appears in male-dominated fields, such as science and engineering, but all newbies need to keep careful tenure diaries, with all professional correspondence. They need to ask advice, make alliances, share information. They should write down all instances of hostile environment (date, place, who said what) and any lies and procedural errors. These will be ammunition for a grievance if tenure is denied, or if -- as with Felicia -- one's life has already become hellish.

Hugh, meanwhile, cannot tell the world he's been stabbed in the back. He mustn't pour out venom in e-mail messages, which are always passed along, and he must be gracious when he talks about his stint at Iago's college. No one wants to hire a complainer. Hugh may vent to nonacademic friends, and pride himself on his integrity. Ms. Mentor hopes that another department will recognize his merits and help him forget the treacherous pounding he's endured.

Ms. Mentor isn't quite sure what ails Melissa's "toxic department." Is it a lack of "vision," a generational clash fraught with mutual sneering? Or do Melissa's colleagues fight and sulk over curricula, money, or lab space? Are they trying to create or undermine new programs, lure each other's students, or steal each other's private stashes of chalk?

Coping strategies include lying low. Go to the campus only for teaching and office hours, ignore hostile e-mail messages, and eschew contact with toxic colleagues. (This works for tenured professors, but the untenured do have to be seen and make nice.) Meet students and good colleagues at coffee shops away from one's academic building. Make friends outside the campus, and create service-learning courses to promote community work. Doing research on historical sites, building a playground, or expanding a food bank will make all the snarlings and snipings seem silly.

Meanwhile, Ms. Mentor will not allow backbiters and underminers to hunker down in their offices and then come roaring forth to smite the vulnerable. Department and committee chairs should be reminding everyone about ethics, fairness, policies, and manners. Senior professors should stop bullies and frothers: "Now, Joe, that won't do."

If Joe won't stop, he can be sent away -- or, as cynics would have it, "palmed off on someone else." He can be nominated for senior administrative posts and endowed chairs at other universities, with glowing recommendations.

"But how could you do that?" Ms. Mentor hears someone crying -- someone who wants to be a martyr.

She would rather believe that Professor Bully will cheer up and become Professor Sweetie in new surroundings. Or if he won't, he'll be without his circle of co-conspirators, and it will be much harder to drum up support for pointless pummeling of the vulnerable.

For backstabbers and underminers, being left alone -- a mix of shunning and solitary confinement -- is the ultimate punishment. It will be bracing for them. Of course, Ms. Mentor would never condone Schadenfreude, but sometimes even academics behave badly.

If they do, they should be forced to eat their lunches, and spend their lives, all by themselves.

Question: I'm about to get tenure at Majestic U., where I've been demure and professionally dressed all along, but I just saw a bright orange sweatshirt that says, "Majestic Girls Rock!" On the day I get tenure, should I wear that boldly tacky shirt to teach in?

Answer: Definitely.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor writes this column as holidays and tenure decisions lurch into view. She wishes good news to good people, clumps of spam to the bad, and new opportunities to the resilient and righteous.

Ms. Mentor welcomes ripostes, rants, queries, and suggestions for Valentine's Day. She rarely answers letters personally, never uses real names, and disguises identifying details. Many general themes are covered in her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia and in The Chronicle's other Careers columns and its online forums.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com

Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.