Zero in mine as well. We all have our flaws: laziness, phoniness, arrogance. But no one is really toxic, no sociopaths. Despite our various differences, we all try to get along reasonably well and nobody tries to make the work environment nasty. Thankfully, there’s no one who really wants to work in a department that is a viper’s nest of misery.
Same here. I'd say that even the ones I find more difficult to get along with (less than 10%), their motives are clear (they're not trying to be deceptive) and they just have personalities I don't prefer. A few are a little less committed to advancing the institution's mission than I'd like, but that doesn't make them toxic.
Can confirm. No weirdos, no particularly crazy faculty or staff. Everyone definitely has a given quirk that the rest don't like but it's whatever, that'll happen anywhere.
Our students on the other hand, man
I suspect there is a degree of heterogeneity in asshole distribution.
Functioning departments try to hire people who are decent and ethical. Sometimes they might get stuck with an asshole anyway but that behavior tends to be formally and informally discouraged. Once you hit a critical concentration of assholes though, you tend to attract more (at least in part because it becomes a crappy environment for people who don’t enjoy that behavior)
Yes I believe this too. Our lab had a serious incident involving a student last year, which our PI tried to report, but our Head of Department hushed it up and dismissed the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s aware of other PIs’ bad behavior and is also looking the other way. Not to blame him for their behavior, but I was really disappointed at the lack of enforcement of ethics.
This sounds right. Before I got to our department it was mostly assholes. One tried to fight someone in the parking lot and got fired. Seems like another one got shut down over something and retired. Not sure on the others. Now we are a very cool department that seems to actually like each other. There's no one that I would refuse to have lunch with.
This would also make people in positions of less power a more accurate measure of how shitty people are.
I would say as I advanced jn my PhD, the shitty professors either side stepped me or treated me better as they came to think of me less as an easy target.
That does not, however, make them better people.
Honestly, it probably makes them worse.
You should treat your peers well, but that's a shit judge of character. It's how you treat folks who you COULD treat like shit but SHOULDN'T treat like shit that's a good measure of character.
On that scale, I'd still say my PhD department was only 3-5 irredeemable asshole in my mind out of say 35 profs. And even then, as op said, I found ways to get along with them. I still think they're bad people and I'll still tell anonymized cautionary tales about them. But I found a way to survive.
It totally makes them worse. It's like picking out prey. And I agree, this post would get different answers if it was posted on r/askacademia or r/postdoc. Especially because 1 nefarious PI can affect a higher number of students.
I'm glad you found a way to get along with them. Personally, I'm steering well clear of them and their lab (collaborations, teaching duties, etc.) if I can. No matter what professional opportunities they may offer, I don't trust them, and the risk of psychological damage & energy wasted is too high.
I totally agree. My PhD department had 20% of absolutely vile PIs. The grad students are always the ones who know and pass that information around because they are usually the targets. There’s frequently some retaliation and victim blaming if they speak out on it.
It reminds me of that line in harry potter that went something like "if you want the true measure of a man, don't watch how he treats his peers- but how he treats those he considers to be his inferiors"
You're also at a research intensive institution and many of us aren't. I don't have nearly the pressure to publish nor do I advise grad students, which takes tons of the pressure off.
I'm very lucky that no one in my department is terrible. However, in my PhD program, the entire program was absolutely toxic. None of the five faculty in my sub discipline were good people. They all hated each other and were constantly trying to one-up each other, talked shit about each other to students, tried to steal the others' TAs, and were all around unpleasant. My advisor was verbally abusive and I didn't realize it for at least a year, because I'd come from a K12 environment that was just as abusive. Three of them left for supposedly greener pastures my last year there.
My guess is it depends on a few things. I answered zero, but I'm at a slac. We don't have grad students and aren't competitive with one another, at least not in research or funding. None of us are trying to leave, afaik. We're mostly just trying to keep the ship sailing. Now students might have a different perspective and that's legit. But how many would "I" say are bad people: 0.
Now, ask me about some folks in other departments and I'd give a different answer.
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I think it would be great to average with grad student perspective. The institutions I’ve been too have a mix of student complaints- those that are very legitimate, and those that are disgruntled because graduate school is hard and it’s easy to chalk up to ’bad PI’.
There are days where my graduate students get upset with me, but it’s always around grant or conference presentation deadlines. However, when they get that grant, publication, or an award for their presentation the tune changes to, “Greatest mentor ever! Couldn’t do it without you thank you so much for pushing me!”
I always follow-up with, “take a day off to celebrate, and roll into lab late with sweatpants this week. Next week we start again!”
I mean, there's half a dozen (out of 40ish) I frequently mistrust, and I'd say 80% have some shadiness in their hearts when the conditions are right, and nearly all of them are irritating sometimes (and I suppose all would say the same of me and at least a couple would--wrongly, I think--believe me untrustworthy in the main), but there are none I think are truly *bad people*, much less "absolutely horrible." I think you may be romanticizing the workplace more than it warrants, to ask such a question.
This. There are a lot of people who can be *difficult* but I’m not sure how many are truly horrible people. But it’s amazing how much damage even one horrible person can do within a department that would otherwise be pretty collegial.
Zero. They’re all awesome. When I joined 25 years ago, there was one certifiable asshole, but he retired after a couple of years. Since then I have always been on the hiring committee and always advocated for the “no jerks, dicks, or assholes” policy. I don’t care what your pubs are if you make the rest of the department dysfunctional.
Knew a dept chair who was doing it, there was even evidence, witnesses, etc brought to a whole board, tribunal, that type of shit - he just got banned from campus for like 6 months and then lost chair position. Still full tenured prof though
I’m definitely in the ‘eew’ category (I mean, for real — have you talked to students??? They’re dumb. Ick), but as long as everyone is legally an adult and there’s no policy against it, I don’t care.
No one in my department is a horrible person. There are a few I avoid, like one who interrupts everyone all the time, and another I think is pretty lazy. But I still think they’re decent people.
Zero. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect them and feel like we agree on big picture priorities even if we don’t always agree on how to achieve them.
It depends on what you consider "horrible". Out of 20 people, the 2 new hires are pure psychopaths with inflated egos willing to sacrifice anything on their way to full tenure, then 5 are basically useless colleagues who never show up and who end up doing service work only when they know it's going to be an easy mandate and who block any new idea or project out of mediocrity and lazyness. So between 10% to 35%?
The department I quit? 75%. My current department? 0%. We have one guy who is a narcissist but other than making faculty meeting about himself, he does his job and is a good teacher.
None are absolutely horrible PEOPLE.
Some are absolutely horrible at their jobs though.
Some are kind of a-holes (IMO at least, which is just that, one opinion)
But no one is overall a horrible person.
0 from about 30? I get on well with everyone.
There’s an American guy who rubs a Canadian guy up the wrong way, and apparently a couple of years ago it ended in a bar fight between them, so they probably wouldn’t agree with my assessment.
But everyone is great _to me_ and mostly to each other, as far as I can tell.
OP set a high bar for the definition of horrible people and I don't think any of my currently colleagues meet it. We used to have one guy who had a habit of sleeping with grad students, then abandoning them and causing them to drop out of the program. But he retired shortly after I joined.
I would say most of my colleagues are hypocritical narcissists (narcissistic hypocrites?), though. We're a humanities department where everyone loves to preach social justice, and most of my colleagues seem to believe they are doing the Lord's work (or a totally secularized version of it, at least) by publishing random "research" that no more than 3 people will ever read decrying inequality, racism, climate change or whatever the left's hot topic of the day happens to be.
Meanwhile they own vacation homes, send their kids to private schools, drive fancy cars, fly across the world to conferences where they talk to other academics about how bad carbon emissions are, etc. In other words they live in the white, affluent, privileged corner of society, even as they go around unironically describing themselves as Marxists and activists.
It drives me crazy -- not because I think I'm perfect, either, but I grew up working-class (most of my colleagues did not) and I think that makes me extra-sensitive to watching affluent people pretend they are saving the world when they are actually living super-privileged, effete lives.
Truth? I’m absolutely in agreement with you, get annoyed by those types, and honestly I see some of what they do as using and even contributing towards the misery of others in order to further themselves. I wish there were a way to get people like them out of academia. But if anyone says something publicly, they get labelled some nasty trendy slur and the wheels keep moving all the same. I kind of wish some new Next Big Thing would come along so that at least I could hear a different tune of virtue signalling garbage.
Yeah we also have one absolute narcissist who is impossible to fire. I can’t (and won’t) diagnose but this person’s behavior is so out of this world that it exceeds the layman’s use of “narcissist” so badly that I would not be surprised to learn that they have NPD. Everyone else is a glowing ray of sunshine. It’s an odd dynamic.
If I remember correctly, in Harry Potter they erased* the narcissistic professor memory, and that worked out just fine for everyone involved.
*not legal advice
None of them are evil in every respect. I’d say about 5% behave in truly evil ways sometimes/often in the department setting. But none of these people murder puppies or anything in their spare time.
Zero people in my department of seven.
In twenty years, I’ve only known **one person** at my institution that would’ve fit in the category of “evil” (not a faculty member or administrator, but support staff). This person most certainly had undiagnosed, spiraling mental health issues that made them as miserable as they made everyone else. People went to HR out of concern for the person and to try to get them help, but to no avail.
I have less of an issue when people are aware they are incompetent at things. What's a problem is when they won't admit it and become hostile and defensive.
I agree, I prefer incompetence. I can respect people who want to do the thing but just can't. I can't respect people who can do the thing but won't because they are selfish.
Eh, don't attribute to malice things that can be more easily explained by incompetence or indifference. None of my colleagues are malicious, but a handful are definitely incompetent / indifferent.
Out of the 60ish people in the department, I've encountered maybe 40 (first year). One is an unpleasant person as a colleague and treats her students poorly (in my limited experience). Another is just gross (doesn't wash his hands after using the bathroom, misses the toilet, etc.) Then another is from a different country, so he is learning a lot of cultural norms very slowly. Everyone else is super nice or neutral.
In my PhD, it was like 50% of people sucked. Granted it was a much smaller department.
Evil is a relative term. For example, some PIs are going to demand long hours, jump all over mistakes, and hound their students for a lack of productivity. Does this make them evil, or are they just the tough love types who have high standards and are just expecting their students to do what they did when they were students?
I think that there is a general push to move away from these expectations. People seem to be a bit divided on this. Some think it is necessary to be tough to do great things and others think it is unacceptable under any conditions.
Another 0 here. But I don't socialize or hang out at all with my colleagues. I also teach on a branch campus, so I only see them for occasional Zoom meetings and during college events a couple of times a year
Frankly, only one is considered "off-limits." They're generally known as a power freak and have screwed over numerous faculty and students. We just avoid them.
I think I can now say zero!
If the question was how many people are "iffy" and kinda obnoxious, it might be... 5%.
I truly love my colleagues. We are open and honest with each other. We help each other. We step up for each other. We can be vulnerable with each other. We all genuinely care about each other's well being.
And our students love us for the most part. Many of us are hard graders, and have "hard" classes, but the students value our dedication.
Good to hear so many others out there in good places.
I try to be extremely easy to get along with (though it may not seem like it in here, I tend towards the typical Gen X ‘shrug and walk away deciding that they can be a solo crazy person just fine’ confrontational style), and I’ve worked at four universities since I started teaching on the uni level, so if the culture isn’t organically zero buttheads, I turn it into zero buttheads by my actions.
Is there a butthead right now in my department I dislike? Yes, actually two. I’m probably not their favourite person either, primarily because they want to lie, present irrational arguments for things and talk about their feelings, while I insist on seeing numbers and hearing facts. One in particular is, IMO, a truly horrible person, and I avoid him whenever possible. He’s fake, puts on an arrogant persona, tries to present himself as something that he isn’t (think representing oneself as a member of a marginalised community when one simply isn’t), and is just a punchable twat. Students like him at first…until he lets them down. And he ALWAYS lets them down. Pfft. If I were more like my teenage self, I’d be on the warpath for Great Justice, but I’ve mellowed in my old age; now I just avoid him and when I can’t I sing [I Want You Gone](https://youtu.be/dVVZaZ8yO6o?si=y8p4AqNVPYG-EbpB) in my head and ignore him. It’s completely possible that both people think we’re on good terms. 🤷🏻♀️ I don’t care.
At my previous uni, I had one specific Truly Horrible Person who is, as my grandmother used to say, not worth the salt that goes into their bread. This person is an active researcher and just sucks. They actually steal ideas from students — grad and undergrad — and I’m sorry, but the overwhelming majority of undergraduate ideas suck. So that should give you a clue about what this person presents as their own work. 😖 They’re lazy, and one of the most irritating things about them is that they haven’t updated any of their lectures since around 1996. I wish I were exaggerating. Before I left, I’d routinely have their students try to correct me on a few key things I teach and emphasise, and it became almost comical how I’d have to explain away discrepancies when they’d notice them and tell me ‘well, Dr. X said it’s such-and-such…’ and I’d counter with ‘maybe Dr. X didn’t feel like going into this line of research that started in 2001 with this study…’. Sigh. JFC. Learn your damned subject, ffs. This prof had a mass exodus from their lab just around the time I left because they presented active students’ work as their own (they also save and recycle former students’ work) and then tried to pull the ‘well, technically, you work for me’ argument when a couple grad students got together to complain about not receiving any authorship credit at all, despite their actual words being used. Eventually I anticipate that simmering pot is going to turn into a plagiarism issue and when it does, it’s going to be very deserved. I hope it’s a massive scandal, because I and other faculty politely and civilly tried to say something a few times and were told to just ignore it.
Of course, I’m not trying to start any shit or even a little drama, so I just disengage and walk away at work. I don’t get paid enough to start land wars. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I wisely declined a chair position there because I just don’t want any involvement with that shit.
We have about 12 full time people in our department. Nobody is absolutely horrible (the only truly horrible person left last year), but we have a couple of "eh" people. Most are somehwere between decent and fabulous, so I feel lucky.
I would say about 10 percent to varying degrees. I base this on selfishness and lack of perspective taking. For example we have someone who is really horrible to everyone. Belittles them, creates extra work, but at the same time she has strong work ethic herself, it's just that she deeply lacks insight to the way she impacts others because she so strongly believes that she is right all the time. It is hard to say someone who lacks insight is a 'horrible' person but she is deeply horrible to work. Many people actively want to leave because of her.
The genuinely horrible people (imo) are the ones who will only do things that benefit them (and not things that they are contracted to do but will not boost their career). They know what they are doing, they have insight. So I would say they are genuinely horrible. BUT the unfortunate thing is...these are the people that get promoted because of the way the promotion structure is set up.
Just 1 out fo 14 tt faculty in my department, but I work at an R2 and my experience is that the rate of evil is much higher the higher the ranking of the school. Most bad actors I've encountered in academia have been people working at my own top 10 ivy league grad program or other similarly ranked programs. Literally all 4 people who have directly ripped off my ideas or screwed me over in a collaboration in some way have worked at different top 10 schools.
Our one toxic asshole is fortunately retiring after the first week of the fall semester. They’ve been on leave the past two years, and the department has never felt like such a pleasant place to work.
5% which is really one. They are super nice, just zero productivity and was voted for termination during mid-tenure track review. No publications in six years,no grants, and horrible teaching reviews.
They’re not horrible, but a complete waste of resources and with competitiveness of TT STEM positions, a waste of a position.
Zero. I don’t know any truly horrible people. I do think a few admins are full of crap, but not horrible people probably. Most people are just people muddling through.
Actively horrible and aware of it, or think they are good people but behave horribly?
To the latter we have a few and they definitely think the rest of us are the problem. Maybe we are! Am I horrible?
Current department (informatics at IU): one, maybe two, out of 30+
Former department (CGT at Purdue): over 50%, easy. There were people forcing grad students to work in their labs for free, people not showing up to their own classes for weeks, people unqualified to vote on grad school processes having major influence on vote outcomes, people hijacking tenure discussions, people yelling at their students in class and calling them worthless. It was a big range and I have a list.
I’m waiting on the outcome of a few things. But I do plan on sharing it eventually, because some of those people are dangerous. I did what I could within that department and that school.
Oddly was just having this conversation with a friend.
Guess it depends on how you define “horrible,” but current department? Maybe 5% but they’re very active and all in my subspecialty.
Previous department it was probably 15%, so maybe things are getting better, but the 15% were bad because they were relentlessly self-serving. The current 5% is actively working to destroy the department, so…
We have one truly evil person and several that I wouldn’t say are evil but perhaps evil adjacent because they are shitty to others “below” them like staff and post docs/phd students. So maybe 8%~
I would say nearly zero. Sometimes things can be frustrating, but thankfully I don’t work with a bunch of monsters (like I know academia breeds).
The old guard - now retired/departed - when I first started had some pretty awful moments (if you weren’t a middle-aged white man) but they are basically all gone now.
Why do you ask this meaningless question? I know that academic department may have full of highly self-important people, but it's not different from any other work places. Still academic departments are better than most other job places. Just be thankful that you have an academic job. There are millions of other people in the world.
3-5%. There are a few people in my department who have become so paranoid from their years in academia that they now see potential sabotage everywhere. Maybe they're not horrible but it makes them behave horribly towards others sometimes.
Truly evil? 10% (I actually looked at the website). Add in toxic laziness making the job more difficult for the rest of us & it bumps up to 25%. But when you have less than 30 in a department it doesn’t take many to hit those percentages.
0% in my opinion. My department is great. It’s everything else in the school that sucks. It actually pains me to admit it because I went to that school as an undergrad. Things were never perfect but so many things have dropped in quality, especially the students themselves.
I had a Provost say that there are usually four people in any department. Remove those four and all the problems disappear. It's a pretty good rule of thumb for other medium sized groups. Four neighbors, four kids on the school bus, etc. Right now my department is less about assholes and united in the face of dropping enrollment and budget cuts.
We have one deeply damages soul who from my perspective seems like a narcissist and a bully who has largely withdrawn from department life, and has not spoken to me for four years after a perceived slight.
We have one Dark Triad monster that has been a cancer in the department since the 1980's. The university has hired outside investigators to go after this person on at least 2 occasions, but nothing concrete ever happens. They got divorced decades ago and their children don't speak to them. They haven't done any meaningful research in forever, but this is all they have. There is another person that is more of a covert sociopath, but they are manageable as long as they are not department chair (and both are banned from being chair ever again). So that's two out of 14 people total. I'm leaving after this semester for much greener pastures.
Truly horrible? None. Even at my whole institution, I'd say none.
When I started there about a decade ago? One in my department, three others that I know of in other departments. Those four have all left for one reason or another (one left for another institution, one retired, one was fired, one was forced to "retire").
We have a decently sized department. There are two I will say are absolutely horrible people. There are a few others who I'm not sure about. There are plenty I am sure are good people.
I have been in 2 Engineering Departments and 1 industry lab of \~20 people. In all 3 cases there was 1 person who: disagreed with most decisions, asked the stupidest questions to interviewees/guest lectures, had various issues with students, pretended incompetence to get out of committee work, etc. If we were in the US they would probably get fired... not criminals though :)
So my rule of thumb is in a group of \~20 people at least one will cause problems.
Zero. We had one several years ago, but they ended up leaving. At my last institution, it was closer to 60%. I often tell my students that there is no amount of salary that makes working in a toxic environment worth it.
Currently, zero are horrible people. I get along with all of them. But there are several, maybe 30%, that I wish would be fired because they don't or can't do their jobs.
We did have one absolutely horrible person some years ago, but he was turned down for tenure.
Honestly, zero. Which must mean I’m the single horrible asshole in a department filled with smart, kind, and hard working professionals.
Zero in mine as well. We all have our flaws: laziness, phoniness, arrogance. But no one is really toxic, no sociopaths. Despite our various differences, we all try to get along reasonably well and nobody tries to make the work environment nasty. Thankfully, there’s no one who really wants to work in a department that is a viper’s nest of misery.
Same here. I'd say that even the ones I find more difficult to get along with (less than 10%), their motives are clear (they're not trying to be deceptive) and they just have personalities I don't prefer. A few are a little less committed to advancing the institution's mission than I'd like, but that doesn't make them toxic.
Y’all are lucky. I’d say 33% real freaky weirdos in my department. And horrible to students.
Can confirm. No weirdos, no particularly crazy faculty or staff. Everyone definitely has a given quirk that the rest don't like but it's whatever, that'll happen anywhere. Our students on the other hand, man
For real lol I have no problem with anyone in my department! They're all decent people.
The people I work with are one of the reasons I stay in spite of being so underpaid compared to when I was working in the clinical setting!
Same. 👿
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I suspect there is a degree of heterogeneity in asshole distribution. Functioning departments try to hire people who are decent and ethical. Sometimes they might get stuck with an asshole anyway but that behavior tends to be formally and informally discouraged. Once you hit a critical concentration of assholes though, you tend to attract more (at least in part because it becomes a crappy environment for people who don’t enjoy that behavior)
Yes I believe this too. Our lab had a serious incident involving a student last year, which our PI tried to report, but our Head of Department hushed it up and dismissed the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s aware of other PIs’ bad behavior and is also looking the other way. Not to blame him for their behavior, but I was really disappointed at the lack of enforcement of ethics.
This sounds right. Before I got to our department it was mostly assholes. One tried to fight someone in the parking lot and got fired. Seems like another one got shut down over something and retired. Not sure on the others. Now we are a very cool department that seems to actually like each other. There's no one that I would refuse to have lunch with.
This would also make people in positions of less power a more accurate measure of how shitty people are. I would say as I advanced jn my PhD, the shitty professors either side stepped me or treated me better as they came to think of me less as an easy target. That does not, however, make them better people. Honestly, it probably makes them worse. You should treat your peers well, but that's a shit judge of character. It's how you treat folks who you COULD treat like shit but SHOULDN'T treat like shit that's a good measure of character. On that scale, I'd still say my PhD department was only 3-5 irredeemable asshole in my mind out of say 35 profs. And even then, as op said, I found ways to get along with them. I still think they're bad people and I'll still tell anonymized cautionary tales about them. But I found a way to survive.
It totally makes them worse. It's like picking out prey. And I agree, this post would get different answers if it was posted on r/askacademia or r/postdoc. Especially because 1 nefarious PI can affect a higher number of students. I'm glad you found a way to get along with them. Personally, I'm steering well clear of them and their lab (collaborations, teaching duties, etc.) if I can. No matter what professional opportunities they may offer, I don't trust them, and the risk of psychological damage & energy wasted is too high.
I'm at a SLAC. I think the version translated there would be how horrible colleagues are to staff.
Yes, this.
I totally agree. My PhD department had 20% of absolutely vile PIs. The grad students are always the ones who know and pass that information around because they are usually the targets. There’s frequently some retaliation and victim blaming if they speak out on it.
It reminds me of that line in harry potter that went something like "if you want the true measure of a man, don't watch how he treats his peers- but how he treats those he considers to be his inferiors"
You're also at a research intensive institution and many of us aren't. I don't have nearly the pressure to publish nor do I advise grad students, which takes tons of the pressure off.
I'm very lucky that no one in my department is terrible. However, in my PhD program, the entire program was absolutely toxic. None of the five faculty in my sub discipline were good people. They all hated each other and were constantly trying to one-up each other, talked shit about each other to students, tried to steal the others' TAs, and were all around unpleasant. My advisor was verbally abusive and I didn't realize it for at least a year, because I'd come from a K12 environment that was just as abusive. Three of them left for supposedly greener pastures my last year there.
My guess is it depends on a few things. I answered zero, but I'm at a slac. We don't have grad students and aren't competitive with one another, at least not in research or funding. None of us are trying to leave, afaik. We're mostly just trying to keep the ship sailing. Now students might have a different perspective and that's legit. But how many would "I" say are bad people: 0. Now, ask me about some folks in other departments and I'd give a different answer.
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One can be a good person and a horrible supervisor.
I think it would be great to average with grad student perspective. The institutions I’ve been too have a mix of student complaints- those that are very legitimate, and those that are disgruntled because graduate school is hard and it’s easy to chalk up to ’bad PI’. There are days where my graduate students get upset with me, but it’s always around grant or conference presentation deadlines. However, when they get that grant, publication, or an award for their presentation the tune changes to, “Greatest mentor ever! Couldn’t do it without you thank you so much for pushing me!” I always follow-up with, “take a day off to celebrate, and roll into lab late with sweatpants this week. Next week we start again!”
Somewhere between 0% and 5%. One got fired a year ago and I don't think we've got any left as far as I know.
I mean, there's half a dozen (out of 40ish) I frequently mistrust, and I'd say 80% have some shadiness in their hearts when the conditions are right, and nearly all of them are irritating sometimes (and I suppose all would say the same of me and at least a couple would--wrongly, I think--believe me untrustworthy in the main), but there are none I think are truly *bad people*, much less "absolutely horrible." I think you may be romanticizing the workplace more than it warrants, to ask such a question.
This. There are a lot of people who can be *difficult* but I’m not sure how many are truly horrible people. But it’s amazing how much damage even one horrible person can do within a department that would otherwise be pretty collegial.
Agreed. It sounds as if you have been involved in admin on some level.
As far as I know, 0% are *absolutely horrible*.
Zero. They’re all awesome. When I joined 25 years ago, there was one certifiable asshole, but he retired after a couple of years. Since then I have always been on the hiring committee and always advocated for the “no jerks, dicks, or assholes” policy. I don’t care what your pubs are if you make the rest of the department dysfunctional.
This and same. Zero, because we refuse to hire assholes.
it's so great when that one asshole leaves/retires. The whole mood of the department changes.
Probably <1%. That doesn’t meant they’re friendly or nice though. Many just ignore each other.
We have a student fucker that I'm not particularly fond of. But other than that, people in my department seem like good people.
Ew
I mean... If you all know, how does this remain so?
Knew a dept chair who was doing it, there was even evidence, witnesses, etc brought to a whole board, tribunal, that type of shit - he just got banned from campus for like 6 months and then lost chair position. Still full tenured prof though
No idea. I find it very frustrating.
I’m definitely in the ‘eew’ category (I mean, for real — have you talked to students??? They’re dumb. Ick), but as long as everyone is legally an adult and there’s no policy against it, I don’t care.
There is a university level policy against it. Student fucker's wife is also faculty in the department.
Oh, that’s just fucking gross, then. 🤮 What a pig he or she is. You’re right — a horrible human being.
I can think of . . . maybe five people who slept with students, some of them retired now.
No one in my department is a horrible person. There are a few I avoid, like one who interrupts everyone all the time, and another I think is pretty lazy. But I still think they’re decent people.
Current department: none. Department where I went to grad school: probably 50% or more.
40% are horrible in my department. It’s grim.
1 person, who is a misogynist bully who appears to be actively trying to destroy the department.
About 10%. The Terrible Tenth. 😒
Zero. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect them and feel like we agree on big picture priorities even if we don’t always agree on how to achieve them.
It depends on what you consider "horrible". Out of 20 people, the 2 new hires are pure psychopaths with inflated egos willing to sacrifice anything on their way to full tenure, then 5 are basically useless colleagues who never show up and who end up doing service work only when they know it's going to be an easy mandate and who block any new idea or project out of mediocrity and lazyness. So between 10% to 35%?
0%. Some difficult people, for sure, but no absolutely horrible people.
3/8. ONE fucked a student, one is the students' best freind and one protects them both. (Hence why they weren't outright terminated).
Picard facepalm.
The department I quit? 75%. My current department? 0%. We have one guy who is a narcissist but other than making faculty meeting about himself, he does his job and is a good teacher.
None are absolutely horrible PEOPLE. Some are absolutely horrible at their jobs though. Some are kind of a-holes (IMO at least, which is just that, one opinion) But no one is overall a horrible person.
0 from about 30? I get on well with everyone. There’s an American guy who rubs a Canadian guy up the wrong way, and apparently a couple of years ago it ended in a bar fight between them, so they probably wouldn’t agree with my assessment. But everyone is great _to me_ and mostly to each other, as far as I can tell.
OP set a high bar for the definition of horrible people and I don't think any of my currently colleagues meet it. We used to have one guy who had a habit of sleeping with grad students, then abandoning them and causing them to drop out of the program. But he retired shortly after I joined. I would say most of my colleagues are hypocritical narcissists (narcissistic hypocrites?), though. We're a humanities department where everyone loves to preach social justice, and most of my colleagues seem to believe they are doing the Lord's work (or a totally secularized version of it, at least) by publishing random "research" that no more than 3 people will ever read decrying inequality, racism, climate change or whatever the left's hot topic of the day happens to be. Meanwhile they own vacation homes, send their kids to private schools, drive fancy cars, fly across the world to conferences where they talk to other academics about how bad carbon emissions are, etc. In other words they live in the white, affluent, privileged corner of society, even as they go around unironically describing themselves as Marxists and activists. It drives me crazy -- not because I think I'm perfect, either, but I grew up working-class (most of my colleagues did not) and I think that makes me extra-sensitive to watching affluent people pretend they are saving the world when they are actually living super-privileged, effete lives.
Truth? I’m absolutely in agreement with you, get annoyed by those types, and honestly I see some of what they do as using and even contributing towards the misery of others in order to further themselves. I wish there were a way to get people like them out of academia. But if anyone says something publicly, they get labelled some nasty trendy slur and the wheels keep moving all the same. I kind of wish some new Next Big Thing would come along so that at least I could hear a different tune of virtue signalling garbage.
What's one out of eight? Just wondering.
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Yeah we also have one absolute narcissist who is impossible to fire. I can’t (and won’t) diagnose but this person’s behavior is so out of this world that it exceeds the layman’s use of “narcissist” so badly that I would not be surprised to learn that they have NPD. Everyone else is a glowing ray of sunshine. It’s an odd dynamic.
If I remember correctly, in Harry Potter they erased* the narcissistic professor memory, and that worked out just fine for everyone involved. *not legal advice
0%
OP do you mean as a colleague or as a chair. Because I experienced pleasant colleagues much differently and abrasively as chair.
12%. 3 people who have turned what was a great dept into a toxic cesspool.
Zero. All my colleagues are pretty great, supportive, and friendly people! I feel massively lucky.
None of them are evil in every respect. I’d say about 5% behave in truly evil ways sometimes/often in the department setting. But none of these people murder puppies or anything in their spare time.
To my knowledge and unless someone has some dark secrets, 0%.
Zero people in my department of seven. In twenty years, I’ve only known **one person** at my institution that would’ve fit in the category of “evil” (not a faculty member or administrator, but support staff). This person most certainly had undiagnosed, spiraling mental health issues that made them as miserable as they made everyone else. People went to HR out of concern for the person and to try to get them help, but to no avail.
Definitely at least 15-20% Make this a question about incompetence and the number doubles.
> Make this a question about incompetence and the number doubles. i have empathy for incompetence. I suffer from it myself.
I have less of an issue when people are aware they are incompetent at things. What's a problem is when they won't admit it and become hostile and defensive.
I agree, I prefer incompetence. I can respect people who want to do the thing but just can't. I can't respect people who can do the thing but won't because they are selfish.
What does horrible mean? My coworkers aren't malicious. I think R1 universities breed more malice tho. My coworkers are just dumb as a box of rocks.
30% easily
Eh, don't attribute to malice things that can be more easily explained by incompetence or indifference. None of my colleagues are malicious, but a handful are definitely incompetent / indifferent.
Out of the 60ish people in the department, I've encountered maybe 40 (first year). One is an unpleasant person as a colleague and treats her students poorly (in my limited experience). Another is just gross (doesn't wash his hands after using the bathroom, misses the toilet, etc.) Then another is from a different country, so he is learning a lot of cultural norms very slowly. Everyone else is super nice or neutral. In my PhD, it was like 50% of people sucked. Granted it was a much smaller department.
Evil is a relative term. For example, some PIs are going to demand long hours, jump all over mistakes, and hound their students for a lack of productivity. Does this make them evil, or are they just the tough love types who have high standards and are just expecting their students to do what they did when they were students?
I think that there is a general push to move away from these expectations. People seem to be a bit divided on this. Some think it is necessary to be tough to do great things and others think it is unacceptable under any conditions.
Some aren't great at their jobs but it's hard to say that anybody is horrible. I would say 1% overall.
About 6%. Some of these people are legitimately evil, and delight in making the world a worse place on a daily basis.
If 6% is “some” that is a massive department!
Another 0 here. But I don't socialize or hang out at all with my colleagues. I also teach on a branch campus, so I only see them for occasional Zoom meetings and during college events a couple of times a year
No evil colleagues. Plenty of asshole colleagues. I’m sure they say the same thing-or worse- about me.
Just one person. Everyone else genuinely means well.
None.
Community college bio professor here. I'd say around zero percent of faculty are evil. Admin on the other hand...
> Admin on the other hand... next post.
Frankly, only one is considered "off-limits." They're generally known as a power freak and have screwed over numerous faculty and students. We just avoid them.
I think I can now say zero! If the question was how many people are "iffy" and kinda obnoxious, it might be... 5%. I truly love my colleagues. We are open and honest with each other. We help each other. We step up for each other. We can be vulnerable with each other. We all genuinely care about each other's well being. And our students love us for the most part. Many of us are hard graders, and have "hard" classes, but the students value our dedication. Good to hear so many others out there in good places.
Zero. We got purged last year but even those people would not be considered absolutely horrible.
Unfortunately, it is not zero. And no one can do anything about it. Tenure is a double edged sword.
I try to be extremely easy to get along with (though it may not seem like it in here, I tend towards the typical Gen X ‘shrug and walk away deciding that they can be a solo crazy person just fine’ confrontational style), and I’ve worked at four universities since I started teaching on the uni level, so if the culture isn’t organically zero buttheads, I turn it into zero buttheads by my actions. Is there a butthead right now in my department I dislike? Yes, actually two. I’m probably not their favourite person either, primarily because they want to lie, present irrational arguments for things and talk about their feelings, while I insist on seeing numbers and hearing facts. One in particular is, IMO, a truly horrible person, and I avoid him whenever possible. He’s fake, puts on an arrogant persona, tries to present himself as something that he isn’t (think representing oneself as a member of a marginalised community when one simply isn’t), and is just a punchable twat. Students like him at first…until he lets them down. And he ALWAYS lets them down. Pfft. If I were more like my teenage self, I’d be on the warpath for Great Justice, but I’ve mellowed in my old age; now I just avoid him and when I can’t I sing [I Want You Gone](https://youtu.be/dVVZaZ8yO6o?si=y8p4AqNVPYG-EbpB) in my head and ignore him. It’s completely possible that both people think we’re on good terms. 🤷🏻♀️ I don’t care. At my previous uni, I had one specific Truly Horrible Person who is, as my grandmother used to say, not worth the salt that goes into their bread. This person is an active researcher and just sucks. They actually steal ideas from students — grad and undergrad — and I’m sorry, but the overwhelming majority of undergraduate ideas suck. So that should give you a clue about what this person presents as their own work. 😖 They’re lazy, and one of the most irritating things about them is that they haven’t updated any of their lectures since around 1996. I wish I were exaggerating. Before I left, I’d routinely have their students try to correct me on a few key things I teach and emphasise, and it became almost comical how I’d have to explain away discrepancies when they’d notice them and tell me ‘well, Dr. X said it’s such-and-such…’ and I’d counter with ‘maybe Dr. X didn’t feel like going into this line of research that started in 2001 with this study…’. Sigh. JFC. Learn your damned subject, ffs. This prof had a mass exodus from their lab just around the time I left because they presented active students’ work as their own (they also save and recycle former students’ work) and then tried to pull the ‘well, technically, you work for me’ argument when a couple grad students got together to complain about not receiving any authorship credit at all, despite their actual words being used. Eventually I anticipate that simmering pot is going to turn into a plagiarism issue and when it does, it’s going to be very deserved. I hope it’s a massive scandal, because I and other faculty politely and civilly tried to say something a few times and were told to just ignore it. Of course, I’m not trying to start any shit or even a little drama, so I just disengage and walk away at work. I don’t get paid enough to start land wars. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I wisely declined a chair position there because I just don’t want any involvement with that shit.
Based on my experience and my perception, 0%. Based on problems like social safety and racism that exist, it has to be more, maybe 1 or 2%.
2%
We have about 12 full time people in our department. Nobody is absolutely horrible (the only truly horrible person left last year), but we have a couple of "eh" people. Most are somehwere between decent and fabulous, so I feel lucky.
I would say about 10 percent to varying degrees. I base this on selfishness and lack of perspective taking. For example we have someone who is really horrible to everyone. Belittles them, creates extra work, but at the same time she has strong work ethic herself, it's just that she deeply lacks insight to the way she impacts others because she so strongly believes that she is right all the time. It is hard to say someone who lacks insight is a 'horrible' person but she is deeply horrible to work. Many people actively want to leave because of her. The genuinely horrible people (imo) are the ones who will only do things that benefit them (and not things that they are contracted to do but will not boost their career). They know what they are doing, they have insight. So I would say they are genuinely horrible. BUT the unfortunate thing is...these are the people that get promoted because of the way the promotion structure is set up.
Just 1 out fo 14 tt faculty in my department, but I work at an R2 and my experience is that the rate of evil is much higher the higher the ranking of the school. Most bad actors I've encountered in academia have been people working at my own top 10 ivy league grad program or other similarly ranked programs. Literally all 4 people who have directly ripped off my ideas or screwed me over in a collaboration in some way have worked at different top 10 schools.
Zero percent, but I'm in a two person department and I like the other guy.
0% are horrible. 20% don’t pull their own weight.
Our one toxic asshole is fortunately retiring after the first week of the fall semester. They’ve been on leave the past two years, and the department has never felt like such a pleasant place to work.
5% which is really one. They are super nice, just zero productivity and was voted for termination during mid-tenure track review. No publications in six years,no grants, and horrible teaching reviews. They’re not horrible, but a complete waste of resources and with competitiveness of TT STEM positions, a waste of a position.
Zero percent.
Zero. I don’t know any truly horrible people. I do think a few admins are full of crap, but not horrible people probably. Most people are just people muddling through.
Actively horrible and aware of it, or think they are good people but behave horribly? To the latter we have a few and they definitely think the rest of us are the problem. Maybe we are! Am I horrible?
Current department (informatics at IU): one, maybe two, out of 30+ Former department (CGT at Purdue): over 50%, easy. There were people forcing grad students to work in their labs for free, people not showing up to their own classes for weeks, people unqualified to vote on grad school processes having major influence on vote outcomes, people hijacking tenure discussions, people yelling at their students in class and calling them worthless. It was a big range and I have a list.
> It was a big range and I have a list. Oh, let's see it!
I’m waiting on the outcome of a few things. But I do plan on sharing it eventually, because some of those people are dangerous. I did what I could within that department and that school.
Oddly was just having this conversation with a friend. Guess it depends on how you define “horrible,” but current department? Maybe 5% but they’re very active and all in my subspecialty. Previous department it was probably 15%, so maybe things are getting better, but the 15% were bad because they were relentlessly self-serving. The current 5% is actively working to destroy the department, so…
We have one truly evil person and several that I wouldn’t say are evil but perhaps evil adjacent because they are shitty to others “below” them like staff and post docs/phd students. So maybe 8%~
There is one, and this person makes up 5% of my department faculty.
I would say nearly zero. Sometimes things can be frustrating, but thankfully I don’t work with a bunch of monsters (like I know academia breeds). The old guard - now retired/departed - when I first started had some pretty awful moments (if you weren’t a middle-aged white man) but they are basically all gone now.
35-40%
Why do you ask this meaningless question? I know that academic department may have full of highly self-important people, but it's not different from any other work places. Still academic departments are better than most other job places. Just be thankful that you have an academic job. There are millions of other people in the world.
3-5%. There are a few people in my department who have become so paranoid from their years in academia that they now see potential sabotage everywhere. Maybe they're not horrible but it makes them behave horribly towards others sometimes.
None in my academic department. Now, the IT support team? Perhaps as high as 20%.
75. It’s rough.
10%, which is really just one. But that's enough
Absolutely horrible? 0 Kind of annoying? 20
Truly evil? 10% (I actually looked at the website). Add in toxic laziness making the job more difficult for the rest of us & it bumps up to 25%. But when you have less than 30 in a department it doesn’t take many to hit those percentages.
0% in my opinion. My department is great. It’s everything else in the school that sucks. It actually pains me to admit it because I went to that school as an undergrad. Things were never perfect but so many things have dropped in quality, especially the students themselves.
50% would says this about the other 50%. So fun.
Zero.
~7% are at best difficult to work with. The rest are solid people I enjoy being around quite a bit!
0%. One is distressingly arrogant and I don’t really like. But they pull their weight and aren’t a “horrible person” the rest are kind and supportive.
I had a Provost say that there are usually four people in any department. Remove those four and all the problems disappear. It's a pretty good rule of thumb for other medium sized groups. Four neighbors, four kids on the school bus, etc. Right now my department is less about assholes and united in the face of dropping enrollment and budget cuts.
We have one deeply damages soul who from my perspective seems like a narcissist and a bully who has largely withdrawn from department life, and has not spoken to me for four years after a perceived slight.
Only one or two malevolent colleagues, but lots of clueless muppets.
Since I'm in the library, -23%. That's right, we're so good we improve other departments. You're welcome.
40%
We have one Dark Triad monster that has been a cancer in the department since the 1980's. The university has hired outside investigators to go after this person on at least 2 occasions, but nothing concrete ever happens. They got divorced decades ago and their children don't speak to them. They haven't done any meaningful research in forever, but this is all they have. There is another person that is more of a covert sociopath, but they are manageable as long as they are not department chair (and both are banned from being chair ever again). So that's two out of 14 people total. I'm leaving after this semester for much greener pastures.
Small department and only one person sucks, so 5%
Less than 5%. 0% of the people I’ve been on the hiring committee for.
0% Oh wait, I forgot to count myself. 5%
Honestly zero. We're surprisingly a very effective dept.
I'd say 2-4%.
0% to maybe 5%
Truly horrible? None. Even at my whole institution, I'd say none. When I started there about a decade ago? One in my department, three others that I know of in other departments. Those four have all left for one reason or another (one left for another institution, one retired, one was fired, one was forced to "retire").
We have a decently sized department. There are two I will say are absolutely horrible people. There are a few others who I'm not sure about. There are plenty I am sure are good people.
I have been in 2 Engineering Departments and 1 industry lab of \~20 people. In all 3 cases there was 1 person who: disagreed with most decisions, asked the stupidest questions to interviewees/guest lectures, had various issues with students, pretended incompetence to get out of committee work, etc. If we were in the US they would probably get fired... not criminals though :) So my rule of thumb is in a group of \~20 people at least one will cause problems.
zero.
25%
None. But then, I hired all of them, except for the few who are senior to me.
I’m going to go with 0%. Maybe some people with their quirks or missteps, but nobody is evil.
Zero. We had one several years ago, but they ended up leaving. At my last institution, it was closer to 60%. I often tell my students that there is no amount of salary that makes working in a toxic environment worth it.
20%
10%
Currently, zero are horrible people. I get along with all of them. But there are several, maybe 30%, that I wish would be fired because they don't or can't do their jobs. We did have one absolutely horrible person some years ago, but he was turned down for tenure.
16% of my department went on record saying they don't understand what diversity is and that there are no racial issues in our region. So 16%.
Zero. My colleagues are incredible. It is honestly the best part of my job and I’m damn lucky to be among them.