Goings on at the General Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary, illustrate how bullying behaviors can occur at virtually any type of workplace.
Sharon Otterman reports for the New York Times on a developing situation involving the fate of eight Seminary faculty members who were dismissed after protesting the behaviors of the school’s new dean and president, Kurt H. Dunkle:
A year after [Dunkle’s] arrival, however, the seminary has fallen into turmoil. Eight of its 10 full-time faculty members walked off the job on Friday to protest what they described in letters to the school’s board of trustees as Mr. Dunkle’s overly controlling management style, his habit of making vulgar and offensive remarks, and his frequent threats to demote or fire those who disagreed with him.
The work stoppage, faculty members said, was intended to force a dialogue with the board and, ideally, to lead to the firing of Mr. Dunkle. Instead, the tactic backfired. On Monday, the board dismissed the eight faculty members, leaving the seminary’s roughly 140 students, a month into their term, without professors to teach them.
Otterman’s article goes into considerable detail, and the story will be familiar to those who have experienced or witnessed bullying behaviors in the non-profit and educational sectors.
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Related posts
Workplace bullying and mobbing in academe: The hell of heaven? (rev. 2014)
Workplace bullying in the non-profit sector (2011)
When the bullying comes from a board member (2011)
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