So, what are your suggestions for this?

I’m not saying it’s right for people to keep their heads down. I’m suggesting that intervention by colleagues, while necessary, may not be sufficient.

I have one very important thing to say about bullying:

The most important way to get it to stop is for other tenured faculty to take off their “me, me, me” blinders and say to the bully, “This crap has got to stop.” That is especially true of the department chair.

Can you tell that I’ve been bullied? It’s a long, long story which ended happily so I don’t feel a driving need to tell it now.

The good news is that no one I know regrets leaving a bullying environment. It will take a while to get over your experience, but it will happen. I think I would have gotten over it faster if I had gone into counseling. A friend of mine is doing that now, and it’s been enormously helpful for her. A sympathetic counselor will give you some perspective, and (sadly) my bet is that ze will probably have heard your story dozens of times over.

There are places where you can thrive. You just had bum luck with this job.

I happened upon your blog when doing a google search for “academic bullies.” As you may discern, I, like so many of your other readers, am struggling with some extremely difficult colleagues. Indeed, I feel a tremendous sense of mourning because I entered the department in admiration of my colleagues’ work and extremely eager to work with and learn from them. But, for the sake of my own sense of self-worth, this is now out of the question.

Your posts and your example helped me to come to terms what’s happening to me and to make some decisions about next steps. I’m sure you’ve long tired of the topic. But I think that it’s important to say “thank you” when someone has given you something valuable in life.

So thank you.

(I think I know her…no?) I don’t know if it’s material or not, but please inform her of my error, described in the latest post. My apologies again for not fact-checking my initial posts on this topic.