Smiling warnings and silent complicity: An autoethnographic reflection on academic bullying and mobbing

Abstract Academic bullying and mobbing are increasingly recognized as systemic features of contemporary higher education rather than isolated interpersonal conflicts. Academic bullying refers to sustained hostile behaviour, often enacted by individuals in positions of power, aimed at undermining a colleague's dignity, credibility, or career progression. Academic mobbing, by contrast, involves group‐based harassment in which multiple actors participate, directly or indirectly, in the marginalization of a target. Drawing on autoethnography, this article presents three anonymized vignettes from the field of chemical engineering to illustrate how identity‐based coercion, institutional indifference, and enabling behaviours operate within academic culture. These narratives are situated within existing empirical literature, including large‐scale survey data on abusive supervision in STEM disciplines. The analysis highlights the central role of power asymmetries, competitive pressures, organizational narcissism, and the normalization of excellence as mechanisms that render bullying morally ambiguous or institutionally invisible. Particular attention is paid to the role of enablers who sustain abusive dynamics through silence, minimization, or victim‐blaming. The article concludes by outlining structural and cultural interventions, including enforceable codes of conduct, systematic data collection, and collective awareness initiatives, as necessary steps toward fostering ethical and inclusive academic environments.