Through bitter personal experience, she learned how being shunned and ostracized is so destructive. Harper filed a lawsuit, and in an out-of-court settlement, she received a six-figure compensation, but the university admitted no fault.Īfter covering legal expenses, Harper found herself nearly destitute, an unemployable professional, a single parent with a child, exiled from her own profession, and suffering from stress. Eventually the Faculty Senate found that the university had broken their own rules and destroyed her career and owed Harper compensation. Instead of receiving a fair hearing and protection, she was mobbed by university administrators and junior faculty, even including her friends and colleagues.

When her own rights were threatened at work, she reported concerns about an employee’s conduct toward her and other women. Janice Harper was successful, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, established as an expert on health and environment and she had initiated a graduate program in Human Rights, when her promising career as an academic cultural anthropologist was ended by mobbing. While her focus is on the workplace, the lessons apply to mobbing in many other contexts, including in multifamily housing. This is hard-won knowledge gained through extreme adversity and by her courage, persistence, and extensive research. In an important survival guide for victims of workplace mobbing- an extreme form of bullying- Janice Harper presents essential down-to-earth guidance on how targets of mobbing can protect themselves emotionally, socially, and professionally.

A Tree for Max by Jerry Halberstadt