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Representatives from several UK universities have set up a dedicated advocacy group to which targets of bullying can go for support.
The 21 Group takes its name from a 2018 survey of staff members at the University of Cambridge (pictured), which found that 21% of respondents had experienced bullying or harassment.Credit: Martin Anderson/Alamy
A group of academics and other staff members at several UK universities have launched an independent initiative to combat bullying and harassment in higher education. One of the group’s goals is to advocate for the establishment of an independent ombudsman to which people who have been bullied can turn if they feel that their institution does not deal with a complaint adequately.
“We’ve become increasingly concerned about the prevalence of bullying in UK universities, and the fact that most universities seem to accept a very high level of bullying,” says Wyn Evans, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a leader of the group. It is called the 21 Group, after the reported 21% of staff members at Cambridge who described experiencing bullying or harassment in a 2018 survey.
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Surveys of various UK university departments and academic disciplines indicate that roughly 30–40% of students, scholars and other members of staff experience bullying or harassment by someone in their department or field, Evans says. Bullying can have pernicious and long-lasting effects on a person’s work and mental health.
The 21 Group, which launched on 1 November, has two initial goals. One is to gather broader data on bullying at UK universities by asking people to collect and share information on the number of bullying complaints received, and investigations done, by their institutions. The second is to advocate for an independent ombudsman’s office to be set up for the UK higher-education system, giving people someone to turn to if institutions handle complaints about bullying badly. Such a body exists for undergraduate students — the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education — but not for others within the university system.
Internal investigations by universities often exonerate the subject of the complaint, who might be a senior professor or other person in a position of power, says Evans. “Far too many UK universities prioritize limiting reputational damage to the institution over doing the right thing for their staff and students.”
Anti-bullying researcher Morteza Mahmoudi, a co-founder of the Academic Parity Movement, which works to end bullying in academia around the world, says he welcomes the new UK-focused group. Having a central organization to which targets of bullying can go for support is crucial for building collective strength to advocate for more effective policies, he says. That’s particularly important when institutions do not offer enough support to people who have been bullied, or prevent them from speaking out by requiring them to sign a non-disclosure agreement to resolve a case. “Perpetrators are almost always protected, while targets frequently face retaliation,” says Mahmoudi, who is also a nanoscience and regenerative-medicine researcher at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
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How effective the 21 Group will be remains to be seen. Those wanting to make progress on bullying must work with a diverse range of stakeholders, including funding agencies and legal organizations, Mahmoudi says.
Evans says the new group hopes to build on the momentum gathered by the fight against sexual harassment in academia that began several years ago with the #MeToo movement, and to expand it to bullying more broadly. There’s plenty of work to be done, says Anna Bull, an education and social-justice researcher at the University of York, UK, and a co-founder of the 1752 Group, which works to end sexual misconduct at UK universities. “More people speaking up and campaigning on this issue is without a doubt a good thing, as there are still major challenges in bullying and harassment and more people are still suffering,” she says.
