Workplace Harassment in the Academic Environment

Over the last decade, claims of workplace harassment have received greater attention.[1] Sometimes called “workplace bullying,” such harassment is commonly defined as behavior by a perpetrator that may involve repeated verbal abuse, offensive conduct that may threaten, humiliate, or intimidate a target, or efforts to sabotage a target’s performance.[2] As commonly defined, the subject behavior is intentional, results in physical or psychological harm to the target, and makes the target’s job performance more difficult.[3] At times, perpetrators, who may include administrators and faculty members, combine their efforts to abuse and harass the target, a phenomenon known as “mobbing.”[4] Both federal and state statutory law currently provide remedies for such behavior where it is motivated by discriminatory animus and the target is a member of a protected class (such as gender or national origin).[5] But no U.S. jurisdiction currently recognizes a cause of action against this sort of behavior when it is not linked to discrimination—in contrast to several European countries that provide remedies for workplace bullying untethered to discriminatory animus. Even though legislation to provide a remedy for such behavior has been introduced in several states, it has not been enacted, and it is often accompanied by strong opposition from employer interests.[6] Courts have likewise been reluctant to expand the law to accommodate such claims.[7] This Article discusses the development of harassment claims that might be pursued in a judicial forum, with an emphasis in the academic context. It suggests that special characteristics, including a decentralized environment, a focus on academic pursuits, and a hierarchical intellectual environment, may allow such behaviors to go unchecked at an academic institution.[8] At the same time, it cautions that categorizing behavior as workplace bullying is necessarily a nuanced determination and that, therefore, any statutory or administrative measures must take care to protect academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas in teaching and research (and faculty and departmental governance) bears the potential at all times to offend powerful and not-so-powerful internal and external interests alike. Accordingly, any measure designed to deal with workplace bullying must recognize this concern and preserve intellectual and creative discourse. That said, like discrimination, behavior that takes the form of harassment or bullying simply has no place on a college campus. Thus, this Article urges academic institutions to raise awareness of workplace harassment and suggests remedial mechanisms to counteract and prevent this problem. [1]. See David C. Yamada, Workplace Bullying and American Employment Law: A Ten-Year Progress Report and Assessment, 32 Comp. Lab. L. & Pol’y J. 251, 251–53 (2010). [2]. Definition of Workplace Bullying, Workplace Bullying Inst., http://www.workplace bullying.org/individuals/problem/definition (last visited Nov. 7, 2011). [3]. Michael E. Chaplin, Workplace Bullying: The Problem and the Cure, 12 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. 437, 445 (2010); Katherine Lippel, The Law of Workplace Bullying: An International Overview, 32 Comp. Lab. L. & Pol’y J. 1, 2–3 (2010) (contrasting the scholarly definition of workplace bullying, which addresses frequency and duration of negative behavior and excludes isolated events or equal strength interactions, with the lay definition of bullying as negative behavior that harms the target). [4]. Audrey Williams June, ‘Mobbing’ Can Damage More Than Careers, Professors Are Told at Conference, Chron. of Higher Educ. (June 11, 2009), http://chronicle.com/article/ Mobbing-Can-Damage-More-Than/47736/. The distinction between bullying and mobbing has been explained: Workplace mobbing is like bullying, in that the object is to rob the target of dignity and self-respect. Here, however, it is not a single swaggering bully that the target is up against, but the juggernaut of collective will. The message to the target is that everybody wants you out of here. Bullies often play leading roles in mobbing cases, whether as targets or perpetrators. Kenneth Westhues, Summary for the Workplace Mobbing Conference (Waterloo Anti-Mobbing Instruments, Novotel, Brisbane), Oct. 14–15, 2004, at 1, available at http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/ ~kwesthue/wami.pdf. Thus, mobbing is group harassment, “a process of abusive behaviors inflicted over time.” Sousa v. Roque, 578 F.3d 164, 167 (2d Cir. 2009). Despite the original distinction between workplace bullying and mobbing, the two terms often are used interchangeably. Jordan F. Kaplan, Help Is on the Way: A Recent Case Sheds Light on Workplace Bullying, 47 Hous. L. Rev. 141, 144 (2010). [5]. See Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 (2006); Alex Long, State Anti-Discrimination Law as a Model for Amending the Americans With Disabilities Act, 65 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 597, 601 (2004). [6]. For example, the Society for Human Resource Management reportedly opposed such legislation in New York on the grounds that it is generally “bad for business” and specifically that (1) human resource professionals are dedicated advocates for employees; (2) employers have adequate incentives to combat workplace harassment because it affects the health and morale of the workforce (as well as the image and profitability of the employers); (3) employers have studied the issue and many have codes of conduct and dispute resolution mechanisms to address it; and (4) such legislation would undermine existing efforts to combat the problem, strain employer-employee relationships, and increase the cost of doing business―given that employers will be called upon to defend frivolous lawsuits from unscrupulous employees or incur liability for lost wages, medical expenses, emotional distress, punitive damages and attorney’s fees. See G. Namie, SHRM Opposes Anti-Bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, Healthy Workplace Bill (June 18, 2010, 4:34 PM), http://healthyworkplacebill.org/blog/?p=144. [7]. See Thomas v. N. Telecom, Inc., 157 F. Supp. 2d 627, 635 (M.D. N.C. 2000) (noting that workplace conduct rarely supports a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress (“IIED”)); see also Crocker v. Griffin, No. COA09-1000, 2010 WL 1961258, at *4–5 (N.C. Ct. App. May 18, 2010) (action brought by four former employees listing twenty-eight acts of supervisor involving “yelling, shouting, or saying insulting or demeaning things” did not state an IIED claim). One court has affirmed a verdict in favor of a plaintiff on an assault theory while allowing an expert witness to testify as to the presence of workplace bullying. Raess v. Doescher, 883 N.E.2d 790, 796 (Ind. 2008). No one rationale completely supports the result in the case. The panel majority determined that the plaintiff failed to properly object to the expert’s testimony on workplace bullying and therefore any error was forfeited. Id. at 797. It further determined that that the phrase “workplace bullying” was a general descriptive term that could be a form of IIED. Id. at 799. Another member of the panel majority found the plaintiff’s objection sufficient, but any error in admissibility harmless because the expert’s testimony went to the merits of an IIED claim which the jury rejected. Id. (Sullivan, J., concurring in result). A dissenting member of the panel determined that the objection had been preserved, and that the testimony concerning workplace bullying was erroneous and not harmless. Id. at 801–02 (Boehm, J., dissenting). [8]. See Piper Fogg, Academic Bullies, Chron. of Higher Educ., Sept. 12, 2008, at B10

Integrated optics prototype beam combiner for long baseline interferometry in the L and M bands

In the last few years, integrated optics (IO) beam combiners have facilitated the emergence of 4-telescope interferometers such as PIONIER or GRAVITY, boosting the imaging capabilities of the VLTI. However, the spectral range beyond 2.2microns is not ideally covered by the conventional silica based IO. Here, we propose to consider new laser-written IO prototypes made of GLS glasses, a material that permits access to the mid-infrared spectral regime. Our goal is to conduct a full characterization of our mid-IR IO 2-telescope coupler in order to measure the performance levels directly relevant for long-baseline interferometry. We focus in particular on the exploitation of the L and M astronomical bands. We use a dedicated Michelson-interferometer setup to perform Fourier Transform spectroscopy on the coupler and measure its broadband interferometric performance. We also analyze the polarization properties of the coupler, the differential dispersion and phase degradation as well as the modal behavior and the total throughput. We measure broadband interferometric contrasts of 94.9% and 92.1% for unpolarized light in the L and M bands. Spectrally integrated splitting ratios are close to 50% but show chromatic dependence over the considered bandwidths. Additionally, the phase variation due to the combiner is measured and does not exceed 0.04rad and 0.07rad across the band L and M band, respectively. The total throughput of the coupler including Fresnel and injection losses from free-space is 25.4%. The laser-written IO GLS prototype combiners prove to be a reliable technological solution with promising performance for mid-infrared long-baseline interferometry. In the next steps, we will consider more advanced optical functions as well as a fiber-fed input and revise the optical design parameters in order the further enhance the total throughput and achromatic behavior

Adult Learners and Short-term Study Abroad: Formation or Transformation?

This paper reports on the identity work in which adult learners engage who are participating in a graduate, short-term, study-abroad program in higher and adult education

Quest to Learn

The design for Quest to Learn, an innovative school in New York City that offers a “game-like” approach to learning. Quest to Learn, an innovative school for grades 6 to 12 in New York City, grew out of the idea that gaming and game design offer a promising new paradigm for curriculum and learning. The designers of Quest to Learn developed an approach to learning that draws from what games do best: drop kids into inquiry-based, complex problem spaces that are built to help players understand how they are doing, what they need to work on, and where to go next. Content is not treated as dry information but as a living resource; students are encouraged to interact with the larger world in ways that feel relevant, exciting, and empowering. Quest to Learn opened in the fall of 2009 with 76 sixth graders. In their first semester, these students learned—among other things—to convert fractions into decimals in order to break a piece of code found in a library book; to use atlases and read maps to create a location guide for a reality television series; and to create video tutorials for a hapless group of fictional inventors. This research and development document outlines the learning framework for the school, making the original design available to others in the field. Elements in development include a detailed curriculum map, a budget, and samples of student and teacher handbooks