Confronting Faculty Incivility and Mobbing

C onfronting faculty incivility requires understanding how incivility is defined and experienced within academic workplaces. Incivility often manifests as bullying or mobbing ( Koonin and Green 2004 ). Twale and De Luca (2008) suggest that “bullies need support from others to be successful, a bully often acts in consort with others, that is, a mob” (20). When individual bullies gain allies and networks, they become a mob. Mobbing is “ganging up on someone using rumor, innuendo, discrediting, humiliation, isolation, and intimidation in a concentrated and direct manner” ( Koonin and Green 2004 , 73). The ultimate goal of mobbing is to dominate, subjugate, and eliminate one’s target ( Twale and De Luca 2008 ). Mobbing affects nearly 15% of the working population in the United States ( Twale and De Luca 2008 ).