a darker definition of mobbing: a type of workplace pathology in which employees target a co-worker and engage in an ongoing campaign of disrespectful, and even hostile, behavior. Typically, mobbing behaviors are covert and insidious; the mobbing victim is excluded from normal workplace activities and communications, with the ultimate goal of forcing the victim out of the organization. Mobbing is highly stressful because the targeted individual’s social support system is undermined.
Managers may be tacit or active participants in the process. The perpetrated injustices are unfair but usually legal, and may fall within areas that are considered management prerogatives.
Often, mobbing victims are made to appear as though they are at fault, or are viewed as “crazy” or incompetent. When forced from the work group, their departure is depicted as their choice.
The concept of mobbing is not well recognized in the United States. In English speaking countries, research has focused on the concept of bullying behavior between individuals, often when a person in a more powerful position is abusive toward a subordinate or less assertive person. Mobbing, with its overlay of group dynamics, is a more sophisticated and complex set of behaviors. Mobbing is clearly a form of harassment, but in the United States this term is connected with civil rights law, and denotes harmful behavior toward persons who have a protected status, such as race, religion, gender, or national origin.
Research by Leymann and Kenneth Westhues shows that mobbing is more likely to occur in professional settings, where the work is complex, organizational goals may be ambiguous, critical thinking is encouraged, and workers have relative autonomy. Academic libraries share some or all of these characteristics, and in fact libraries can be prime settings for workplace mobbing.
Active, involved management is crucial in controlling the mobbing dynamic. Many library managers have limited management training, and may not have awareness of the concept of mobbing or experience with resolving conflict. Managers are often promoted for their technical expertise, rather than their skill in handling interpersonal matters.
A weak, poorly managed organization may provide the aggressor with opportunities to target an individual.
QAnon believers are in a civil war over a shadowy figure calling himself “Santa Claus.” His fans call themselves “elves,” and will do anything to get on his “Nice List.” https://t.co/NOMk5YSYRj
Nearly 200 colleges face federal civil rights investigations opened in 2019 about whether they are accessible and communicate effectively to people with disabilities.
As a result, colleges are rolling out social media accessibility standards and training communications staff members to take advantage of built-in accessibility tools in platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
For example, last fall, a blind man filed 50 lawsuits against colleges whose websites he said didn’t work with his screen reader. And on August 21, in Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District, the Federal District Court for the Central District of California ruled that Los Angeles Community College failed to provide a blind student with “meaningful access to his course materials” via MyMathLab, software developed by Pearson, in a timely manner.
California State University at Long Beach, for instance, advises posting main information first and hashtags last to make messages clear for people using screen readers. The University of Minnesota calls for indicating whether hyperlinks point to [AUDIO], [PIC], or [VIDEO]. This summer, leaders at the College of William & Mary held a training workshopfor the institution’s communications staff in response to an Office for Civil Rights investigation.
New York’s Lockport City School District, which is using public funds from a Smart Schools bond to help pay for a reported $3.8 million security system that uses facial recognition technology to identify individuals who don’t belong on campus
the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., published an animated video that illustrates the possible harm that surveillance technology can cause to children and the steps schools should take before making any decisions, such as identifying specific goals for the technology and establishing who will have access to the data and for how long.
My note: same considerations were relayed to the SCSU SOE dean in regard of the purchase of Premethean and its installation in SOE building without discussion with faculty, who work with technology. This information was also shared with the dean: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/
Coiner of the term “Digital Native” and author of seven books and over 100 essays, Marc has spoken in over 40 countries, and his writings have been translated into a dozen languages. He currently promotes a new civilization-level alternative in global education, championing an emerging new “Real-World-Impact Education” paradigm that more directly benefits students and the world in which they live.
Previously in his career Marc taught French, mathematics and music and headed an alternative school in New York City, worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (and was its first Product Development Director), and founded and ran a computer game company. Marc holds an MBA degree from Harvard, with distinction, and a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Yale.
his new education plan would work in practice. What would it take to get there from here?
Twenty years have passed since renowned Harvard Professor Larry Lessig coined the phrase “Code is Law”, suggesting that in the digital age, computer code regulates behavior much like legislative code traditionally did.These days, the computer code that powers artificial intelligence (AI) is a salient example of Lessig’s statement.
Good AI requires sound data.One of the principles,some would say the organizing principle, of privacy and data protection frameworks is data minimization.Data protection laws require organizations to limit data collection to the extent strictly necessary and retain data only so long as it is needed for its stated goal.
Preventing discrimination – intentional or not.
When is a distinction between groups permissible or even merited and when is it untoward? How should organizations address historically entrenched inequalities that are embedded in data? New mathematical theories such as “fairness through awareness” enable sophisticated modeling to guarantee statistical parity between groups.
Assuring explainability – technological due process.In privacy and freedom of information frameworks alike, transparency has traditionally been a bulwark against unfairness and discrimination.As Justice Brandeis once wrote, “Sunlight is the best of disinfectants.”
Deep learning means that iterative computer programs derive conclusions for reasons that may not be evident even after forensic inquiry.
Yet even with code as law and a rising need for law in code, policymakers do not need to become mathematicians, engineers and coders.Instead, institutions must develop and enhance their technical toolbox by hiring experts and consulting with top academics, industry researchers and civil society voices.Responsible AI requires access to not only lawyers, ethicists and philosophers but also to technical leaders and subject matter experts to ensure an appropriate balance between economic and scientific benefits to society on the one hand and individual rights and freedoms on the other hand.
Besides writing prize-winning fiction, the Nobel Laureate has fought tirelessly for civil liberties. With his new book, ‘The Call of the Tribe,’ he promotes liberal thought and pays tribute to seven authors who embrace it. We talk to him about liberalism, intellectual blindness and the dangers facing democracy today
liberalism defends some basic ideas: freedom, individualism, the rejection of collectivism and nationalism – in other words, all the ideologies or doctrines that limit or annihilate freedom within society.
Nationalism is present, but my impression is that, as with Catalonia, it’s a minority and the strength of democratic institutions is going to gradually undermine it until it’s derailed.
I wanted to be a communist. I thought communism represented the antithesis of a military dictatorship, corruption and, above all, inequality.
But the communism in Latin America was pure Stalinism, with parties subject to the Comintern in Moscow.
Fidel invited myself and a dozen other intellectuals to speak to him. We spent the whole night, 12 hours, from eight in the afternoon to eight the next morning, basically listening to him speak. It was impressive, but not very convincing.
In the case of misinformation and manipulation, communism was incredibly clever at distorting things, undermining honest people and masking lies with false truths that came to substitute reality.
Although school security has grown into a $2.7 billion market — an estimate that does not account for the billions more spent on armed campus police officers — little research has been done on which safety measures do and do not protect students from gun violence. Earlier this fall, The Washington Post sent surveys to every school in its database that had endured a shooting of some kind since the 2012 killings of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Conn., which prompted a surge of security spending by districts across the country.
In 2016, Utah’s Union Middle School had a surveillance system, external doors that could be accessed only with IDs and an armed policewoman, known as a resource officer, when a 14-year-old boy shot another student twice in the head during a confrontation outside the building just after classes ended.
“Even if we would have had metal detectors, it would not have mattered,” wrote Jeffrey P. Haney, district spokesman. “If we would have had armed guards at the entrance of the school, it would not have mattered. If we would have required students to have see-through backpacks and bags, it would not have mattered.”
The survey responses are consistent with a federally funded 2016 study by Johns Hopkins University that concluded there was “limited and conflicting evidence in the literature on the short- and long-term effectiveness of school safety technology.”
Much of what can be done to prevent harm is beyond any school’s control because, in a country with more guns — nearly 400 million — than people, children are at risk of being shot no matter where they are. A 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that, among high-income nations, 91 percent of children younger than 15 who were killed by gunfire lived in the United States.
The solution, Goudreau concluded, was to embed former Special Operations agents, posing as teachers, inside schools. He argued that the benefits over resource officers were obvious.
