Niagara conference on workplace mobbing examines failure of academic freedom to prevent abuse

NCWM participants at Niagara University in July
© used with permission

With colleagues from around the world, I participated, as chair of the scientific committee, in the inaugural Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing (NCWM) on July 22-24, 2024, at Niagara University in New York (Savory Tort, Feb. 27, 2024).

Videos from the conference are now posted on a new NCWM YouTube channel and NCWM 2024 playlist.

Here is my introduction to the program, moderating the opening session.

For reasons investigated in the literature, academic workplaces are especially prone to mobbing. Here is my own presentation on academic freedom relative to workplace mobbing.

Here is another contribution to the academic freedom panel from my friend and colleague, Prof. Robert Ashford, Syracuse Law (pictured).

And here is the panel Q&A with Prof. Frances Widdowson (Woke Academy), Prof. Ashford, and me.

I will feature more programs from the conference in subsequent posts.

Conference on workplace mobbing posts presenters

Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division, via Picryl

The Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing is taking shape.

Read more about the interdisciplinary conference at Niagara University, July 22-24, 2024, in the February announcement.  The conference website now features information about presenters and their work. Presenters include:

Dr. Ann Marie Flynn
Dr. Caroline Crawford
Dr. Emily Godbey
Dr. Eve Seguin
Gail Pursell Elliott
Dr. Janice Harper
Dr. Joseph Donnermeyer
Dr. Karen Moustafa Leonard
Dr. Kenneth Westhues
Dr. Peter Wylie
Prof. Richard Peltz-Steele
Prof. Robert Ashford
Dr. Rebecca Pearson
Dr. Qingli Meng
Dr. Walter DeKeseredy

As well, from the conference website:

Host of the conference is Niagara University, which dates from 1856, and which is meeting the challenges of the present century with extraordinary success. Its president, Rev. Dr. James Maher (theology), and its provost, Dr. Timothy Ireland (criminology), will welcome conference participants.

Among sponsors of this conference is the Edwin Mellen Press, which has published more books on mobbing than any other publisher. Professor Herbert Richardson (theology), Its founder and chief editor, now in his 93rd year, will address the conference on cybermobbing. In 1994, he was the subject of what is still the most famous case of academic dismissal in Canadian history. Dr. Eva Kort will also be on hand representing the Edwin Mellen Press.

A book by the late Joel Inbody, his factual analysis of being mobbed as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, will be released posthumously at the conference. His mother, New York educator Kimberly Lewis, will tell the story behind the book, and chronicle the events that led to Joel’s being slain by a gang of six law enforcement officers in New Mexico, in 2023.

Also sponsoring the conference is the Society of Socio-Economists. Its founder and leading light, Professor Robert Ashford, Professor of Law at the University of Syracuse, arranged for a session on academic mobbing way back in 2010, at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Professor Ashford will address the conference on "Mobbing and Academic Freedom."

Registration remains open until July 1, or 100 participants, whichever comes first.  If you or a colleague wish to present as well as attend but are finding out about the conference only now, after the proposal deadline, reach out to Dr. Meng via the conference website to inquire.

Conference on Workplace Mobbing to convene in July, aims to establish mobbing as discrete field of study

PLEASE JOIN US IN NIAGARA IN JULY,
AND SPREAD THE WORD TO YOUR NETWORKS!

The first Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing will convene July 22-24, 2024, at Niagara University in Niagara, New York, and registration is now open for participation and presentation proposals, in-person and hybrid.

The conference is sponsored by Niagara University and co-sponsored by the Society of Socio-Economists. Additional sponsorships are invited; please contact conference registrar Qingli Meng, in criminology at Niagara University, via the conference website.

Mobbing is a form of group abuse of an individual and has been documented in studies in sociology and related fields for almost half a century. Mobbing is associated particularly with workplaces, where persons act in concert to effect a victim's alienation and exclusion from the community.

Workplace mobbing is especially prevalent in academic institutions. A sociologist and expert on mobbing, Professor Kenneth Westhues has studied the phenomenon and why the academic work environment is especially fertile soil for mobbing behavior. Westhues maintains the website, Workplace Mobbing in Academe.

While forms of interpersonal abuse such as harassment and bullying have found traction in law and become recognized in popular culture as wrongful, mobbing has not yet come fully into its own. Mobbing behaviors are complex, involving multiple perpetrators with variable states of culpability, so mobbing is not always as readily recognizable as a more abrupt infliction, such as bullying. Like harassment and bullying victims, especially before the wrongfulness of those acts were widely acknowledged, mobbing victims tend to self-blame and self-exclusion, so might not bring mobbing behaviors to light.

A purpose of the planned conference, therefore, is to disentangle mobbing from adjacent behaviors, such as bullying, harassment, and ostracism. By recognizing mobbing as a discrete phenomenon and focusing study on mobbing as a cross-cutting scholarly sub-field, fields such as psychology, economics, organizational management, employment law, and criminal law can recognize and respond to the problem of mobbing more effectively, bringing relief to victims and preventing victimization to begin with.

A welcome and invitation at the Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing website explains the conference mission better than I have here, as resources available through Westhues's website well explain mobbing and its defining characteristics.

I am chairing the Scientific Committee of the Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing . The interdisciplinary committee also comprises Dr. Meng; Dr. Westhues; Robert Ashford, in law at Syracuse University; Walter S. DeKeseredy, in criminology at West Virginia University; Joseph Donnermeyer, in criminology at Ohio State University; and Tim Ireland, provost at Niagara University.

The conference is grateful for technical and logistical support from Niagara University's Yonghong Tong, PhD; Michael Jeswald, MBA; Valerie Devine, assistant director of support and web development; Michael Ebbole, audio visual systems coordinator; William Stott, audio visual systems specialist; and Chang Huh, PhD.

The Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing is a project of Conference on Workplace Mobbing Ltd., a New York nonprofit organization.