Tag Archives: workplace bullying

Dr. Leah P. Hollis, a Boston University Martin Luther King Jr Fellow for Social Justice, has been awarded the Lucy Wheelock Alumni Award for 2022. Specifically, the Boston University/Wheelock alumni network honors Hollis for “championing causes such as workplace bullying, discrimination, pay inequity, and gender bias.” Many of her colleagues comment that Hollis’ advocacy inspired the historical 9% raise for faculty and the introduction of more substantial pay bumps as the point of tenure and promotion. Boston University Professor and Dean Emeritus, Dr. Hardin Coleman stated, “it is impressive they way in which Dr Hollis uses her research and practical experience to effect real change in the world that often benefits the most vulnerable.” Hollis’s efforts align with Morgan State core values of excellence, integrity, respect, diversity, innovation, and leadership. Therefore, she is a recent awardee of the Dr. Iva G Jones award, the highest award bestowed on faculty at Morgan State University for research, teaching, services, and character.

Hollis has dedicated her academic research to workplace bullying and specifically how bullying disproportionately affects women and people of color. Her research informs her Social Justice course which won an award from AERA (American Educational Research Association). Hollis has penned over 50 articles and worked with over 300 colleges and universities to curtail costly and health-harming workplace bullying on campus. In the last year, she has completed two books with Routledge, Human Resource Perspectives on Workplace Bullying in Higher Education Understanding Vulnerable Employees’ Experiences (2021) and Black Women, Intersectionality, and Workplace Bullying Intersecting Distress(2022). Hollis continues to work through her consulting group, Patricia Berkly LLC

Miami University & Metropolitan State

March 18, 2019bullying, Discrimination, workplace bullyingdiversity training, higher education, stop bullying, workplace bullyingleahhollis

Dr. Hollis was out again this winter spreading the word about workplace bullying in higher education. First, she visited Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her two day trip included a training for the School of Education, and the second day she participated on a panel for the Psychology Department.

This March 2019, Dr. Hollis visited Metropolitan State in St. Paul, MN. Her keynote talk for the faculty reflected on how workplace bullying hurts diversity. She also gave some solutions on how leaders can stamp out abusive bullying behaviors.

If you would like Dr. Hollis to visit your campus, contact us directly. Time is overdue to STOP! workplace bullying on campus.

Bullying and Brain damage

September 15, 2017bullyingbrain damage, workplace bullyingleahhollis

Did you know that being stressed out could cause brain damage?

These are the findings from Dr. Klaus Miczek, a Tufts University psychologist. He found a way to replicate bullying for rodents. By placing a larger and aggressive rat in a cage with younger rats, Miczek observed how the more aggressive rat pushed and abused the younger rats.

Those younger rats produced more stress hormones called corticosterone. He also found that his hormone could stay in the brain long after the incident. For young and developing brains of children, such stress creates a higher propensity for drug abuse, alcoholism, anxiety and depression.

Dr. Miczek found that four different incidents, of only five minutes each, had a lasting effect on the rats. In children with higher stress hormones, the immune system is weaker and memory is challenged. Bullying in humans kills nerve cells.

Therefore, those who face bullying for years are not only enduring the abuse at the time, the targets are compromising healthy brain activity to stay in an abusive situation.

For more information on this neuroscience research, please visit Brainfacts.org http://www.brainfacts.org/in-society/in-society/articles/2015/bullying-and-the-brain

Read more posts by Leah Hollis, Ed.D. here. Leah is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire.

Interview on WUSA9 Workplace bullying in higher education

January 4, 2013bullying, cyberbullying, sexual harassmentbullying, harassment, workplace bullyingleahhollis

Interview on WUSA9 Workplace bullying in higher education

By Thomas James

http://workplaceviolencenews.com/

Bullying among children and teens in schools receive extra attention these days, but experts say bullying takes place in other times in our lives.

In fact, workplace bullying is happening at an alarming rate. Especially in higher education. Leah P. Hollis, Ed.D., Author of the book “Bully In The Ivory Tower” says 62 percent of people who work in higher education have experienced bullying versus 45 percent of the general population.

Dr. Hollis says, “I surveyed 175 schools and what I found in the return was that a number of people, especially in the entry levels and the middle management were talking about how they were the target of bullying either from the boss or the organization in general.

9 News Now’s Anita Brikman interviews Dr. Hollis about her survey and why workplace bullying is more prevalent in higher education than in other professions:

Anita: “What’s going on? Why at college and universities?”

Dr. Hollis: “What’s interesting is at a college or university we are all trained to be experts in our field to go out and do this wonderful research and create excellent knowledge. It also is an isolating experience so now when you have to manage people or collaborate or have team building you’ve already been protected by tenure perhaps or at least in a culture that supports being isolated and also supports a pretty big ego. So that doesn’t always make for the best management skills.”

Anita: “So in these case studies, who was saying they are being bullied? Younger educators bullied by tenured folks?”

Dr. Hollis: “Typically it was somebody at the entry level, your assistant director, it might have even been the director or just the manager of the department. Folks who are reporting up-line to Vice Presidents, Provosts, or even the Presidents. So bullying has to do with power and those with the least amount of power are the ones on the receiving end of bullying.”

To see the entire interview, including how workplace bullying in higher education affects students and how can we deal with workplace bullying across the board, click here.

Source: WUSA9.com

Workplace Bullying: Battling it out in higher education….

August 30, 2012bullying, Discriminationaggression, bullying, workplace bullyingleahhollis

Workplace Bullying: Battling it out in higher education….

Workplace bullying is a documented phenomenon in corporate sectors and in Europe. Workplace bullying is actually an extension of the school yard bullying. Workplace bullying targets the people who are viewed as reasonable, empathetic or in the lower power position. It is interesting then, that of late, several people have approached Patricia Berkly about their careers in higher education. Workplace bullying is a critical issue that destroys the careers of many. And as studies show, workplace bullying disproportionately affects women, people of color, the LBGT community and those over 40 in greater numbers.

Bullying means harassing, offending, socially excluding someone or negatively affecting someone’s work tasks.. it has to occur repeatedly and regularly over a period of time (about six months)… it is an escalating process, the person confronted end up in an inferior position and becomes the target of systematic negative social acts. (Einarsen, Hoek, Zapf, and Cooper, 2003, p 22).

Therefore, when a seasoned colleague feels he or she is hanging on until retirement, enduring put downs and unreasonable criticisms from a newly appointed leaders, workplace bullying can be the reason. When the department or division cowers in its tracks just to make it another semester because their ideas are not valued, workplace bullying may be at the root.

Patricia Berkly LLC is focusing on an original study on workplace bullying in higher education administration. The goal will be to identify the cause of workplace bullying, the targets of workplace bullying and offer solutions to workplace bullying.