Workshop: Transdisciplinary Research on Incivility in STEM Contexts

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Research suggests that sexual harassment and other harassing behaviors are common in STEM contexts, and that an underlying culture of incivility in academic contexts may underlie permissiveness toward harassing behaviors. Incivilities and rudeness typically do not meet a legal standard for hostile workplace environment and are rarely reported or sanctioned. Yet these behaviors can have major consequences on workplace dynamics, including greater work withdrawal, absenteeism, and likelihood of leaving a position. Given that inclusive work environments have been shown to increase research innovation and inventiveness, a culture of incivility also has the potential to harm the production of science. The goal of this two-day workshop is to engage scholars, practitioners, and other stakeholders on the science of harassment and incivility, and the consequences of incivility for scientists and the production of science itself. Scholars from a range of STEM fields and critical studies will be brought together to engage and advance knowledge on these topics. Workshop organizers will broaden participation in this workshop through explicit inclusion policies and financial support for underserved registrants, the inclusion of junior scholars and trainees, and availability of all pre- and post-workshop materials for free online. This workshop will advance knowledge and scholarship on incivility in STEM contexts, including examination of the ways in which issues of incivility manifest in public and scholarly debate, and the ways in which organizational structures, policies, historical contexts and cultures relate to academic environments that tolerate incivility and are not conducive to collaboration and cooperation. This workshop will be participant-driven, with a mixture of organized and unorganized sessions, with note-takers, to capture the scholarship and thinking of a diverse group of participants. Participants will examine variation in academic environments, institutional responses, and individual interpersonal skill sets with respect to uncivil behavior. The minimum outcomes of this workshop will include the production of a post-workshop report that details 1) the workshop participants' new, working definition of incivility, 2) the workshop participants' definition of healthy conflict, and 3) specific recommendations for both institutional and community responses to acts of incivility in scholarly spaces. An open Slack workspace will build on the report to encourage post-workshop activities locally and nationally among interested scholars, practitioners, and advocates.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.