July 03, 2008

Columbia University awarded Divestors of People Standard

Columbia University awarded Divestors of People Standard.
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Academic bullying, or “mobbing,” is common at Columbia University — especially in the “pink collar” departments (e.g. social work, education). It’s impossible to fight because it’s completely a part of the culture here. The sad thing is that we lose the best doctoral students as a result because they see this nonsense for what it is. If they fight it, we get rid of them. Or, if they’re tired, they just leave.

It’s a crime of epic proportions and very few people are talking about it.

— Columbia Prof Jun 26, 11:55 AM
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Academic bullying, or “mobbing,” is common at Columbia University — especially in the “pink collar” departments (e.g. social work, education). It’s impossible to fight because it’s completely a part of the culture here.

This is a very perceptive observation (about the “pink collar” departments as places prone to a bullying culture). At Columbia the Madonna Constantine case is surely a classic example. This can spread to other parts of a campus via divisions of Student Affairs, which have their cultural origin in programs like social work and education. One only has to look at the controlling culture of Student Affairs programs (speech codes, behavior codes, thought control, emotional manipulation) to see that this has less to do with politics per se and everything to do with psychological bullying.

— Student Affairs Observer Jun 28, 10:58 PM
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At Columbia, a colleague reported the social work school to the Fed for grant fraud. She had four boxes of evidence.

Meanwhile, the wife of one of the adjuncts (who had some lowly clerical/clinical position) befriended this colleague. This “wife” reported everything she was told to the deans.

Long story short, this wife now has a faculty position and our colleague was raked over the coals (e.g. she had a sick family member and the school threatened her with eviction from Columbia housing).

Higher ed is one nasty business.

— Another Columbia Prof Jul 2, 11:25 AM

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I did my doctorate there in the hard sciences. The professor lied continually, planned meetings and then `forgot` to show up. Often even when students were presenting in front of the whole department, if you were on his out list. He displayed favouritism that was so pronounced the while it took him 2 years to learn some students` names while others spent almost the whole day with him as he helped them with their research and promoted them as postdocs. The favouritism had racial and gender overtones. In addition, he engaged in gossip and defamation behind students` backs and tactics that sabotaged the timely completion of their work, such as simply not showing up to meetings and not reading their thesis etc. Finally, there was financial abuse, in that I was once not paid as expected due to an error that the University had made - they then blamed me for this. When the fault was found to be theirs there was no apology or pay back for the extra expenses that a missed pay check caused me. The blatant lies were just outrageous and the University does nothing about it. It is chock full of cowards. There is no grievance procedure for the students. It took me years to recover from the bullying. Students ought to avoid this school. I feel as if I threw five years of life in my twenties into the toilet and came away with post traumatic stress disorder. This is a terrible, terrible place. The course work was pretty good, but avoid doing research here - it`s for sociopaths.