Incredibly thoughtful post about the godawful mess Mia Bloom created for graduate students at our university. I have refrained from commenting on this because of various university legal proceedings on this issue but Chris is right and we need to respond much more forcefully. https://twitter.com/chrsjcksn/status/1380934479909371912

I feel like time has come for me to say a few things, in the light of Chris's post. I have been losing sleep over this for days now. Even though Mia is not in my department and we are not on speaking terms, I feel embarrassment and shame she brought to GSU to my core.

The problems with her arose since the day of her hiring and there was always strong opposition to her - which is why she was not hired in my dept, even though she's a political scientist. She has engaged in abusive behavior since arriving to GSU - against colleagues, students.

Many, many, many, many faculty have raised these issues to our supervisors. Mia retaliated against all of us, namecalled us, spread rumors about us at conferences, etc. It is relentless. I warned all my students about this and clearly presented the dangers of working with her.

I have brought this latest batch of horribles to the attention of two senior faculty in my department, including the chair, and my understanding is that this will go up the chain, again. Just like before. This happens all the time.

The response I always get is that "you don't even know the half of it" and "everything is tied up in legal" - in other words the university is aware of it and is trying to work through the options. Tenure protections are very strong.

As Chris notes in the post, we as a dept have been going through a process of creating a mission statement that specifically deals with fostering an inclusive and tolerant atmosphere-and her behavior of course is exhibit 1 of what we reject. However, again, she is not in our dept

So this leads me to think of what we can do - as a different department at the same institution - and as individual faculty members. Clearly the least we can do is condemn this and protect our students. but I will also continue to pressure my university to deal with this.

One last thing-what bothers me so much in addition to her abuse and its toleration is that a narrative now exists that "IR is toxic" and "academia is toxic" and "GSU is toxic." No, this person is toxic. It is not helpful to extrapolate from this extreme case to the entire field.

I worry that this narrative normalizes this behavior esp for grad students who think OMG there are these monsters everywhere. I've been in this business for 20 years and this is the most abusive person I have ever met. This behavior is not the norm, never was, and never will be.