October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and if you were minding your in-box last summer for official statements from the UC Berkeley Administration, you may have noticed Vice Provost for the Faculty Benjamin E. Hermalin’s “Guidelines for Preventing and Responding to Faculty Bullying and Other Demeaning & Disruptive Behavior.” It was years in the making. Drafts dating back to 2016 and 2017 led to Academic Senate review from late 2017 to spring 2018. The Divisional Council discussed the second draft with Hermalin in March 2018. August 1, 2019 it went live. Shared governance in motion, then, slow motion.
The Guidelines-supported by the University Academic Personnel Manual-define what counts to the Administration as bullying, explain how bullying overlaps with protected-category discrimination, describe impacts, and address “remediation” through merit and promotion appraisal. Fair enough, as far as this goes. Inexplicably, however, bullying’s abuse of power is buried in the Guidelines, rather than being placed front and center. Abuse of power can be subtle, insidious; it’s something not fully exposed by a list of behaviors. Actions may be chosen for deniability. Bullying’s impacts are wounding, fear-inducing, and traumatic, not merely a matter of disrespect and disruption of the “workplace environment.”
At its best, VP Hermalin’s Guidelines begin to make bullying and its impacts visible and unacceptable and the potential for disciplinary action clear. At its worst, it is technocratese, chilling to those who have been bullied or have witnessed bullying, and merely a possible new online training annoyance to others. Since August 1, there has been no elaborating communication from the Administration (merely an awkwardly titled HR statement of October 14) or from the Senate about plans for broad, frank, and informed campus conversations; about measures to ensure safe reporting and provide victim support and protection (lists of potential resources don’t cut it); about investigative authority and procedure, the protection of due process, consistency in disciplinary action, and restorative justice; or regarding the oversight and review of prevention, support, and discipline.
Stay tuned for more? It only took three years for the Guidelines to be finalized and issued.
Gregory Levine for the Berkeley Faculty Association