Today* I am angry. Yet another person I know who exhibits toxic behaviour in the workplace has been ‘failed upwards’. This is a well known phenomenon whereby individuals are not sacked for poor behaviour, but rise through the ranks of higher education. Taking their (often appalling) behaviour with them to a new institution, usually with a hefty salary and title bump to go with it.

I’ve seen toxic behaviour rewarded multiple times in my career. The young hotshot researcher rewarded with prestigious grants and early professorship despite being openly sexually aggressive towards female colleagues. The bully promoted sideways into a strategic role to remove them from direct line management of junior academics. The professor promoted to senior leadership despite showing a complete lack of regard and basic psychological safety for those they line manage. The Head of Department who freezes out Global Majority colleagues from promotion opportunities, but uses their successes to get themselves promoted for leading an ‘inclusive and diverse’ team.

These examples come from multiple institutions. Some I have worked directly with. Others I am aware of through friends and colleagues in other institutions who have been devastated by the behaviour of these people. This isn’t rare. Almost everyone working in universities has at least one story of toxic bullying, harassment or discrimination they have personally encountered.

As bad as these behaviours are, I’m more angry about the structures that allow this behaviour to go unchallenged, and ultimately rewarded. In most of the cases above, this behaviour was common knowledge. Female colleagues warned not to be left alone with predatory individuals. Early career researchers advised to choose another supervisor, or being deliberately given a supportive second supervisor as the predicted bullying was so inevitable. Colleagues feeling unable to take action other than making snarky comments in private messaging groups, because shocking behaviour has become so normalised. Appalling management so widely known that it is mentioned almost in passing at union meetings. These things are usually not hidden.

Which means that they are not hidden from senior management either. Heads of Department, Deans of Faculty, University executives and Vice-Chancellors are smart people. Formally or informally, these behaviours are known to those in a position to do something about it. But they choose not to.

These situations are almost never resolved through disciplinary action, or by someone losing their job. They are solved by encouraging that person to leave their current role, thereby moving the problem somewhere else. Sometimes that is within the institution but to a position with more prestige but less potential for damage. Or (ideally as far as management is concerned), they move to another institution. The attitude is usually “thank goodness they’ve gone voluntarily so it’s not our problem anymore”.

But it is still someone’s problem. It is now the problem of a whole new department or institution. It still is the problem of those directly harmed by toxic behaviour. It is still the problem of (usually junior and/or minoritised) colleagues who can’t afford to speak up for the sake of their own careers. It is still the problem for those starting from scratch in building any sort of case against the individual. It is still the problem of everyone who is aware of the damage being done, and spending emotional energy trying to do their bit in supporting and warning colleagues under the radar. It is still a problem for everyone.

Frankly, we deserve better from those in senior management roles paid large salaries. A high salary comes with high responsibility. If you are in one of those roles, it is your job to make difficult decisions. That is why you are paid what you are. If you are aware that an individual is causing harm to people around them, a whole department, faculty or institution, you are responsible for allowing that behaviour to continue. I know that HR processes are complex, and legally and morally have to follow a fair process. Many who understand those processes properly will see this blog post as naïve. But that is a problem in its own right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a toxic individual be openly disciplined or fired by an institution. Given some of the behaviour I’ve been aware of, that cannot be right. It is almost always “Professor X has a prestigious position at a new institution so will be leaving us immediately, and we thank them for their service”. This isn’t good enough, particularly for institutions that claim to have core values of inclusion, transparency or ethical conduct.

We also deserve better from hiring committees. If you are hiring someone into a leadership role, you should be checking whether that person is actually an effective and ethical leader. No matter how impressive their CV is. Particularly for senior roles, you should actively finding out if that individual is actually the sort of person you want to hire, or whether you are hiring a ticking time bomb. Universities are pretty terrible at keeping secrets. People will generally talk if asked. I would want to talk to junior colleagues in the direct management chain to ensure I wasn’t about to make an appointment that would create a toxic culture for my organisation.

But of course, there is an inherent conflict of interest here. If someone being bullied is asked ‘I’m thinking of hiring X, are they a bully?’, the response is going to be ‘no – X is great – please hire them immediately’. If the only way of getting rid of toxic people is for them to be promoted out, then individuals will act rationally to protect themselves. So again, this comes back to effective line management of individuals behaving badly. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of junior colleagues to raise concerns. It is the responsibility of senior leaders to act on behalf of those who do not have the ability or voice to make change.

So in short – I’m angry. Everyone working in universities deserves better than this. We have to punish unacceptable behaviour, not reward it with fancy titles and large salaries. ‘Failing upwards’ should not be a term we recognise. A culture that rewards toxicity of individuals is toxic to everyone. And I’ve had enough of it.

*NB This post was written on a day that I was made aware of another example of a toxic individual failing up. I have chosen to publish it several months later to anonymise it, as discussing these cases comes with personal risk. But this makes me complicit in this whole cultural problem. Which makes me angry all over again.