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 Humanities and Social Science Research; Vol. 4, No. 4; 2021 
ISSN 2576-3024   E-ISSN 2576-3032 

https://doi.org/10.30560/hssr.v4n4p12 

 12 Published by IDEAS SPREAD 
 

Academia as an Incubator of Oppression and Violence: A Closer Look 
at Academic Mobbing and Bullying Offline and Online 

Constance Iloh1 
1 Azusa Pacific University, USA 

Correspondence: Constance Iloh, Ph.D., Azusa Pacific University, School of Behavioral and Applied Sciences, 
Department of Higher Education, 901 E. Alosta Ave., Azusa, CA 91702, USA. E-mail: ciloh apu.edu 

 

Received: October 18, 2021; Accepted: October 31, 2021; Published: November 4, 2021 

 

Abstract 

Academic mobbing, bullying, and cyberbullying are pervasive and interconnected harms in academe with scarce 
conversation and intervention devoted to them. The author discusses what these phenomena are and asserts 
academia and its institutions are incubators of oppression and violence as well as protectors of these abuses. The 
text illustrates some of the destructive consequences for targets of these attacks, refuting other conceptualizations 
that downplay the severity of academic mobbing and bullying. The author also contends that understanding of 
academic mobbing and bullying must be multimodal and extend to cyberspace. The text concludes with how both 
gross negligence and the illusion of the academy as a just exemplar sustains these harms. 

Keywords: academia, institutional culture, academic mobbing, academic bullying, organizational culture, abuse, 
aggression, harassment, humiliation, smear campaign, cyberbullying, toxicity, social murder, harm, suicide, 
violence, health risk 

1. Introduction 

On the 12th of April in the year 1994, Justine Sergent was found dead in her garage from carbon monoxide 
poisoning (Cran, 2018). Sergent, a professor and cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University, endured over two 
years of intense scrutiny, humiliation, and degradation of her work and personhood that stemmed from research 
allegations within her institution (Ratelle, 1994; Seguin, 2016). In advance of her death, Sergent detailed in a letter 
“the “nightmare” and “harassment” she believed had “no end in sight” (Westhues, 2005, p.25).” Justine’s battle 
concluded with a suicide many have attributed to academic mobbing. While there are numerous brutal activities 
in the ecosystem that is academia, among the most enduring, deadly, and destructive are academic mobbing and 
bullying. The purpose of this text is to offer a nuanced and critical perspective of academic mobbing and bullying. 
In doing so, I both extend and challenge extant conversations by suggesting that academic mobbing and bullying 
are violent, incubated through academia’s culture, and permeates to the internet. 

2. Academic Mobbing and Bullying 

To be sure, while understudied and typically unaddressed, academic mobbing has already amassed multiple 
definitions. As Metzger, Petit, and Sieber (2015, p.139) report, “the Chronicle of Higher Education defined 
academic mobbing as bullying where members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague.” 
Similarly, Khoo (2010, p. 61) discusses it as “‘non-violent” attacks where “one or a few academicians threatened 
by a target launch a desperate campaign, infecting person after person with the desire to eliminate,” harass, harm, 
humiliate, and tear down that target. While those definitions are useful in outlining some behaviors in academic 
mobbing, they either position this behavior as non-violent or are limiting in conveying its devastation (Iloh, 2021c). 
Seguin’s definition (2016) is particularly instructive as it states that academic mobbing is “strategic,” “led by a 
group of instigators/recruiters,” and often involves “fabrications, anonymous accusations, hateful messages, 
rumors, intimidation, public humiliation, withholding information, tampering with work, downplaying 
accomplishments, defamation, secret convenings to discuss target, and police-like surveillance and scrutiny” that 
makes target out to be a problem. Ultimately, Seguin (2016) sees academic mobbing as a “social murder a person 
can’t survive.” In addition, targets likely experience threats, “rhetoric that borders on hysteria in its exaggerations 
and fabrications,” as well as outright violations and unfairness within the target’s “adjudication and evaluation 
processes (Friedenberg, 20018).” Academic bullying, while in some ways similar to academic mobbing, should 
not be conflated with academic mobbing. Academic bullying is a form of attack usually carried out by one person, 
particularly with positional or social power such that this perpetrator faces no consequences for inflicting harm on 



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a specific target (Keashly, 2019; Westhues, 2005). Thoughtful exploration of mobbing and bullying separately 
could warrant specific forms of intervention and action. 

Targets of academic mobbing and bullying are especially likely to be racially minoritized, younger, and women 
(Lampman, 2012; 2016; Prevost & Hunt, 2018). These targets also typically have less power, allies, and resources 
than their aggressors. Perpetrators and initiators of academic and mobbing and bullying often possess multiple 
sociopathic characteristics (Khoo, 2010; Westhues, 2005) and are also more likely to be men (Hoenigman Meyer, 
2021). Accordingly, academic mobbing and bullying are enabled in academia through multiple forms of abuse as 
well as power, resource, and information asymmetries in higher education (Iloh, 2019; 2020; 2021b). Those 
impacted by academic mobbing and bullying can find themselves struggling to navigate, let alone survive, the 
spiritual, professional, emotional, and psychological assaults they are experiencing within their workplace and 
beyond (Iloh, 2021a; 2021c; 2021d; Williams, 1991). Additionally, due to the complicity of others in the academic 
setting, a target may find any attempts to address such behavior exhausting and futile. Perpetrators are likely to 
even recruit harassers and saboteurs from other spaces and institutions to magnify harm to a target. Initial 
perpetrators might also continue attacks against their target even after the target exits the environment. Thus, the 
aggression and relentlessness of academic mobbing and bullying pushes targets to adopt the belief that they will 
have no relief and a spectrum of suffering, torture, and loss is imminent. 

3. Academic Mobbing, Bullying, and the Internet 

Given all that has been detailed about academic mobbing and bullying, it is no surprise that they can extend to the 
world wide web. With the prevalence of social media accounts, websites, and blogs dedicated to the stalking, 
trolling, harassing, defamation, and bullying of certain academics; mobbers and bullies have help in spreading the 
reach of their harm. Moreover, academics can seek the help of such harmful and biased platforms to aid them in 
targeting their colleagues. For example, enlisting a blog/website to surveil, troll, and harass a scholar is a way to 
amplify mobbers and bullies’ attempts to defame, publicly humiliate, demoralize, and terrorize their target. Not 
only can the academic mobber or bully continue to covertly harass their target with anonymous comments of vitriol; 
the readership or followership of that platform can join the mobbers/bully in doing so as well. These attempts to 
direct hatred, animosity, and discrediting to a target can also lead to heightened visibility of the target such that 
they also receive threats of harm and violence from strangers. 

4. Outcomes of Academic Mobbing and Bullying 

Academic mobbing and bullying, whether online or offline, can lead to a plethora of personal, professional, and 
life consequences for targets. As it relates to potential professional outcomes, mobbing and bullying can be a 
catalyst for a variety of forms of withdrawal or departure from the organization or profession as a whole. This can 
include, “resignation, denial of tenure, taking permanent or recurring sick leave, job dismissal, or having all their 
responsibilities withdrawn (Seguin, 2016).” Additionally, targets may find it hard to persist in their profession, as 
attacks on their work and ability to work impact their productivity. Academic mobbing and bullying can leave 
targets struggling psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Specifically, academic mobbing and 
bullying can prompt high levels of anxiety, stress, feelings of distress, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, 
outside threats of harm from others, and even suicide (Cassell, 2011). According to Seguin (2016), over 12 percent 
of academically mobbed professors die of suicide. The aggregate of prolonged stress from academic mobbing and 
bullying can also lead to health challenges and illnesses that result in premature death. As such, framing academic 
mobbing and bullying as non-violent is not only irresponsible, it minimizes severe consequences and fatalities. 

5. Academia as an Incubator and Sustainer of Oppression and Violence 

One might ask why these forms of violence are so prevalent within academe. Academia is a breeding ground and 
facilitator of mobbing and bullying (Barratt-Pugh & Krestelica, 2019). Specifically, it is an ecosystem that 
establishes and sustains an oppressive and hegemonic culture with power asymmetries that embolden perpetrators. 
Moreover, it is also an incubator and protector of abuse, aggression, whiteness, professional jealousy, epistemic 
violence, cruelty, nepotism, retaliation, competition, hazing, and harassment that multiple members of its 
ecosystem uphold, from students to senior leaders. For example, a young Black early career professor could be a 
target of mobbing and bullying that involves coordinated harassment and discrediting from students, faculty, and 
leaders whose identities are privileged and weaponized. Poisonous forms of leadership, colluding, anti-
intersectional understandings of maltreatment, toxic positivity, and groupthink also support and elevate the harms 
of mobbing especially. “If professors aim to put a colleague down, one strategy could be to wear the target down 
by shunning, [humiliation], bureaucratic hassles, [discrediting and sabotaging work], and withholding of deserved 
rewards (Khoo, 2010, p. 61).” Through academic mobbing and bullying, any vitriol for a target that perpetrators 
possess can be transformed into material damage in the target’s life. 



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The unwillingness of academia to take action against academic mobbing and bullying takes many forms, including 
ignorance and unbelief (Cassell, 2011). Through her dialogue with senior scholars, Erika Marin-Spiotta finds, 
“many view harassment as an injustice that happens somewhere else, not in their field or institution (2018).” 
Because of refusal and denial; targets of academic bullying and mobbing are left vulnerable to even more harm, 
gaslighting, retaliation, or silencing if/when they do consider addressing these conditions.  

Academia, or those most protective of its culture, might be intentionally slow or unwilling to address academic 
mobbing and bullying. Ignorance and negligence of academic bullying and mobbing means institutions can avoid 
accountability for their harmful rituals and conditions. Those who raise concerns about an institution, problem, 
department, or leadership may be bullied or mobbed, which then quiets and/or invalidates voices advocating for 
change. Moreover, institutions addressing these forms of misconduct would mean an interrogation of their own 
abuses of power, whiteness, anti-Blackness, racism, discrimination, ageism, sexism, misogynoir, xenophobia, 
punitiveness, and systems of oppression. Additionally, through academic mobbing and bullying, a target who could 
pursue legal options for institutional wrongdoing may be too exhausted, maligned, ill, or fearful to do so after 
extensive attacks. 

6. Conclusion 

My premise here is that we must situate academic mobbing and bullying as more than just footnotes in the 
understanding of academic organizational culture, but as the violent, destructive, and multi-modal phenomena that 
they are. Moreover, in framing these aggressions as health threats, it is my hope that society can elevate concerns 
about the egregious ways those in academia harm others. In reviewing the legacy of Justine Sergent, there exists 
only a paucity of articles that name the brutality Sergent experienced. Additionally, countless minoritized scholars 
who too have suffered irreparable harm harbor stories unknown. Refusing to identify, confront, and eliminate 
academic mobbing and bullying not only disguises what lies within academic spaces, it sustains a culture that 
jeopardizes lives. 

Short Biography of the Author 

Constance Iloh is a social scientist committed to identifying the abuses and inequities embedded within the culture 
of social institutions such as higher education. Dr. Iloh works at Azusa Pacific University where she is an Associate 
Professor in the Department of Higher Education within the School of Behavioral and Applied Sciences. As a 
multidisciplinary scholar, Iloh finds possibility in working from the lenses of anthropology and business especially. 
Some of Professor Iloh’s recent work includes “Do it for the Culture: The Case for Memes in Qualitative Research” 
which appears in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods and “The Broken Yellow Brick Road: A 
Narrative Exploration of the College-Going Decisions and Trajectory of a Low-Income Single Mother of Color” 
published in Education Sciences. Dr. Constance Iloh received the honor of being listed as a Forbes 30 under 30 as 
well as having her work featured by NBC Universal, NPR, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, The Chronicle of 
Higher Education, Politico, and others. Constance’s website is www.constanceiloh.com. 

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