Darla J. Twale

Faculty Incivility: The Rise of the Academic Bully Culture and What to Do About It by Darla Twale and Barbara de Luca covers the rise of incivility amongst faculty in an academic setting. Primarily, Twale and de Luca begin with defining what constitutes incivility, bullying, and mobbing; fitting it into an existing framework for the factors that lead to this behavior; examples of how it plays out in an academic setting; and finally, what to do about it.

The book was insightful and clearly well-researched, though the bulk of the research presented was other peoples' works; the authors did interview and include some case studies that exemplify the behavior they were talking about, but there were not many included. The same names popped up again and again, indicating that it was a very small sample of people interviewed.

The book made a great case for how the unique nature of an academic environment creates tensions that lead to bullying, but even that was very focused - for instance, the tensions between faculty engaged in primarily research versus those engaged in teaching was highlighted, but that doesn't explain why the same culture crops up in community colleges, for instance, where research isn't a primary job duty or widely encouraged.

Twale and de Luca highlight the committee structure as a contributing cause to the rise of incivility: "Using a committee structure to inadvertently entwine others in the mob process without their realizing it signifies the presence of mob behavior. Mobbing through committee decisions camouflages and insulates the real bully or singular instigator (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 1999)" (Twale and de Luca, 2008, p. 23).

Another key point is the tenure process, which is often shrouded in secrecy, confidentiality, and unclear expectations, but again, this does not occur at community colleges, so why does that still exist?

The book is extremely narrow in its focus. It has a small sample size, looks at primarily universities, and faculty vs faculty bullying, with little to no mention of faculty vs staff bullying. It does include administrators vs faculty, but does not go into much depth. Depressingly, this is very much the state of the many books I've looked at - faculty vs faculty bullying is receiving more attention, but little is paid to faculty vs staff interactions, which are well-known to be rife grounds of stress, tension, and bullying behavior.

Additionally, there were several statements that seemed very generalized and poorly supported regarding women vs men - how they carry out bullying and how they respond to bullying; some of these assumptions were very gendered and came uncomfortably close to sexist assumptions.

As for what to do... most of it could only be done at an administrator level.

All in all, too narrow a focus for me. It had some interesting insights, but was too narrow to be useful to a broader audience.… (meer)