Workplace Harassment: An Unacceptable Situation

You might notice that this email looks a lot different to the other emails we have sent you before. This is because we are trying to highlight the difficult but crucial issue of workplace harassment, without normalising it.

Academia often has steep hierarchies with a dependency on a single person for funding, project completion, and crucial recommendations. These are the right environment for workplace harassment. We do not mean to imply that the PI is the harasser in all cases, or even the majority of cases, but rather acknowledge the fact that there is a unique set of social dependencies as rules in academia that can allow power abuse to fester and go unaddressed.

Though harassment has happened to previous generations and happens at many institutes, that is no excuse to minimize its impact on researchers' lives; nor normalize its presence in labs, or oversimplify it behind a #phdlife. Harassment does not always have a clear origin in a conflict and a harasser can be motivated by many reasons. However, incidents of bullying or harassment in Academia are too common, as one third of academics report they have been bullied in the past year and around 40% say they have witnessed it. This is three times higher than in general work place. That’s why we need to talk about it.

What is harassment?

Harassment, scientific or not, is the repeated mistreatment of someone, usually caused by an abuse of power. Actions leading to harassment can be intentional or not, and leave the victim distraught, anxious, humiliated, or cause damage to one's project or career. Further, harassment when unaddressed will often perniciously impact the mental and physical health of the victims, erodes creativity, productivity for the victim and often the whole team.

We do not tolerate Harassment in the workplace

We as PhD representatives want to bring attention and consideration to the power imbalances which exists at all levels of the workplace. This is not intrinsically problematic in itself, but our goal is to raise awareness of the the misuse of power to harass and bully, and to raise awareness in how to address such situations.
This form of stress should not be normalised and requires a different mode of action than the previously noted stress sources during our PhDs.

Be Aware of the Problem

If you have first hand experience with this, do not blame yourself. Bullies take advantage of their power to degrade your self-esteem and often find ways to justify to themselves and those around that you somehow 'deserve this' - that this is somehow appropriate. However, this is false. The treatment of others that leaves them feeling attacked, powerless, violated and wronged is not to be justified. These actions rather occur not due to one person 'deserving it' but rather a person in power abusing those that they can. The underlying reason that harassers are driven to inflict harm on others is varied, but it can only occur when the social system fails to protect the victim.

What can you do if you feel yourself or someone around you is the victim of harassment:

1. Take care of your mental health - The MDC now pays for an external counsellor so this person is free click here. Or visit your doctor (for eg. getting a sick leave until you are back on your feet).
2. Document everything: who, when, how and witnesses. This is extremely important to do as early as possible even when you think you won't be building a case or going to talk to anyone. These can be used later when working within the administration to explain the situation or build a case.
3. If you want to confidentially consult/discuss your options on how to resolve the situation with someone outside of your lab: you can visit the intranet page and open a case with one of the Points of contact, like Michaela Herzig. All Points of contact are all extremely professional, keep confidentiality, speak english and german and will help you along the way. If you did this already, note that the MDC changed recently and everyone is more aware of this problem. You are fully entitled to ask for a behavioural change from the perpetrator.
4. Talk with your committee (TAC). They are there to ensure your successful completion of your PhD and can fight on your behalf. This is also why one should put persons on the committee that are of equal political power or greater than your lab boss. Also in times of need you can extend your committee and add new committee members to help.

What is being done at the MDC?

We should celebrate that the MDC is trying to become one of the first academic institutions in Europe to create and implement a comprehensive structure to deal with harassment. This is a truly a pioneering project we should be proud of.
Currently there is a task force composed by several groups of employees including us PhD reps, deciding on a code of conduct for the MDC as well as clear procedures in case of harassment, with consequences for the perpetrators. This is a unique opportunity to participate together and implement a comprehensive structure that fits our needs, instead of this being decided top-down. We are currently working really hard on it, contact us if you have suggestions for us.