Thoughts on academic abuse
Throughout my 12 years in higher education, I’ve been fortunate to work with many amazing mentors, collaborators, and students. However, much of my experience has involved the classic challenges of graduate research; being taken advantage of by faculty, not being credited for work, and having ideas discussed in an open collaborative forum transformed into other’s grant proposals. I’ve watched faculty and students overtly sexually harass their peers and employees with no repercussions, I’ve been asked to use grant funding for faculty members’ personal expenses and to ignore plagiarism in cases where full tuition-paying students were involved. I’ve seen admissions processes in which applications for entire nationalities were excluded based on the perception that a specific group is “bad at design”. What is it about architectural and design research that fosters bad actors and structurally toxic behavior? Are these practices ubiquitous in academic settings? In design, does the notion of starchitects or singular artistic vision lead researchers astray, or allow them to rationalize bad behavior? Is it the wild west feeling of a space with a relatively short research history when compared to biology or physics that allows for nonreproducible research filled with specious claims? Is it a perceived lack of understanding of norms and professional conduct, or a genuine lack of awareness of ethical research and leadership practices?
In business and professional settings I have worked in restaurants, on farms, in factories, mechanical engineering firms, machine shops, non-profit offices, architecture firms, and design consulting practices. In each of these spaces I’ve had both good and bad colleagues and managers, but rarely have I experienced the gaslighting and overt intellectual theft I commonly see in my research career. So what gives? And more importantly, what can we do about it? Here are a few thoughts, please share your own.
Don’t harass people… take the time to learn about what constitutes inappropriate behavior. There is almost no role in an academic setting where you don’t have considerable power over the professional success and opportunities of someone you work with. This is a very serious responsibility and is somewhat different from other professional contexts. For many, leaving and finding a different job or mentor is incredibly difficult if not impossible. Academia is kind of like making a deal with the Mafia… many of the best offers are ones you really can’t afford to refuse… As a result, taking responsibility for your actions and the implications of your behavior is a fundamental part of the job, a moral imperative. Really, you’re the only one who can directly address the problem.
Openly discussing misconduct. In five separate incidents, colleagues have shared with me that they have chosen not to report sexual harassment simply because they feared it would only take up their time, detract from their academic careers and reputations, and result in no meaningful action to punish the perpetrators. I’ve lost track of the number of instances of academic misconduct in research that I have seen colleagues let go for the same reasons.
Using positions of power to set a good example. In my experience, the best mentors understand the responsibility that comes with leading a lab or project and take seriously the role of communicating expectations, following through on recommendations, and listening to student feedback. While this seems simple, I have found such behaviors to be rare, perhaps because most faculty have not been required to, or taken the time to learn about effective leadership practices. Its possible to be a perfectly kind and thoughtful person while being a poor leader at the same time, purely out of ignorance.
Do the work to understand what is required to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a reality. We are all asked to take new DEI trainings each year because, on the whole, we continue to fail to turn these trainings into sustained positive action. In my experience the more wide-ranging the background and perspectives of a research team the more impactful and compelling the work is.
Creating and sticking to agreed-upon expectations and norms in research projects and academic relationships. Putting in writing expectations around authorship, time commitments, and resources at the start of the project can go a long way to reducing the inherent challenges of the extreme power dynamic between faculty and students.
Be generous. Perhaps the least tangible of these points, the best mentors and collaborators in my experience are generous and empathetic. They check in often, offer to revisit expectations and project goals and communicate openly about what’s going well and what isn’t. This is hard, just as it is in any relationship, however, the rewards can be lifelong collaboration, mutual support, and excellent research. Not to mention warm fuzzy feelings when you open your email. Imagine that!
The point is, it takes active effort to be a good colleague. So, if we are working together and I fail to meet the standards discussed above, call me out, I will listen, and work with you to improve. It might be uncomfortable, it might be scary, but my goal in writing this is to explicitly solicit direct feedback and normalize such discussion while promising not to impose chilling repercussions on those who speak up. Tell me I did the math wrong, point out if I’m failing to serve all my students equitably, speak up if we missed something, even if it scraps the whole project, let me know if I’m not meeting your expectations for our collaboration. I’ll thank you, continue working with you if you’re willing, and happily write you an even better letter of recommendation. Feel free to hold me to that too!
