I am a newly hired, tenure-track professor in the social sciences at a large, private university in Southern Cal. Oops, guess I just gave it away where I am!

I read your story and had 2 different and distinct reactions. The first was as someone who experienced bullying in my graduate program. The second was as an undergraduate where you had your worst job.

While I enjoyed my grad experience, I hated my department. Insane is the closest word that captures who immature the majority of the faculty were. I did not expect that a department ranked in the top 5 in my field would at times seem more like an elementary school playground than a community of colleagues. I escaped mostly unharmed, but saw a number of new faculty feel that they had to accept it because they felt they could not do anything about it or leave.

I was floored when I read about your experience at my undergraduate institution. It sounds like a different place than the one I went to! I took a number of classes in your department (was in CORE and loved American History) and never had any idea what was going on behind the scenes. I loved all of my history classes. I loved my time at UD and felt like I had wonderful mentors and models of how engaged faculty should act. It pains me to hear of such ugliness at a place that I deeply love.

I am deeply enjoying my experience (so far) here in Southern Cal. I feel supported by my department and have not seen anything that raises any red flags.

But, that said, I agree with you that feelings of entitlement are not necessarily linked to the protections of tenure. In my case, I think the bullies felt threatened more than entitled. In fact, in so many conversations with them I felt it was their naked ids speaking, not their egos or super egos, as it were–I was frequently just embarassed for them.

As for your mistake, it would have been a nice way for your antagonist to think that you weren’t really referring to her, but some other colleague that she forgot knowing.

I still believe that most bullies were themselves bullied. Because if I don’t believe that–if I thought that bullies were born and not made–how would we ever fix bullying environments and make them better? Isn’t it more optimistic (even if sometimes delusional) to believe that bullies are made and not born that way?